A Little Rebel, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford [best novels to read for beginners txt] 📗

but she cannot read that.

"Well, not quite perhaps," says she, relenting slightly. "But nearly. And if you don't care you will grow like her. I hate people who lecture me, and besides, I don't see why a guardian should control one's whole life, and thought, and action. A guardian," resentfully, "isn't one's conscience!"

"No. No. Thank Heaven!" says the professor, shocked. Perpetua stares at him a moment and then breaks into a queer little laugh.

"You evidently have no desire to be mixed up with _my_ conscience," says she, a little angry in spite of her mirth. "Well, I don't want you to have anything to do with it. That's _my_ affair. But, about this concert,"--she leans towards him, resting her hand on the edge of the carriage. "Do you think one should go _nowhere_ when wearing black?"

"I think one should do just as one feels," says the professor nervously.

"I wonder if one should _say_ just what one feels," says she. She draws back haughtily, then wrath gets the better of dignity, and she breaks out again. "What a _horrid_ answer! _You_ are unfeeling if you like!"

"_I_ am?"

"Yes, yes! You would deny me this small gratification, you would lock me up for ever with Aunt Jane, you would debar me from everything! Oh!" her lips trembling, "how I wish--I _wish--_guardians had never been invented."

The professor almost begins to wish the same. Almost--perhaps not quite! That accusation about wishing to keep her locked up for ever with Miss Majendie is so manifestly unjust that he takes it hardly. Has he not spent all this past week striving to open a way of escape for her from the home she so detests! But, after all, how could she know that?

"You have misunderstood me," says he calmly, gravely. "Far from wishing you to deny yourself this concert, I am glad--glad from my _heart_--that you are going to it--that some small pleasure has fallen into your life. Your aunt's home is an unhappy one for you, I know, but you should remember that even if--if you have got to stay with her until you become your own mistress, still that will not be forever."

"No, I shall not stay there for ever," says she slowly. "And so--you really think----" she is looking very earnestly at him.

"I do, indeed. Go out--go everywhere--enjoy yourself, child, while you can."

He lifts his hat and walks away.

"Who was that, dear?" asks Mrs. Constans, a pretty pale woman, rushing out of the shop and into the carriage.

"My guardian--Mr. Curzon."

"Ah!" glancing carelessly after the professor's retreating figure. "A youngish man?"

"No, old," says Perpetua, "at least, I think--do you know," laughing, "when he's _gone_ I sometimes think of him as being pretty young, but when he is _with_ me, he is old--old and grave!"

"As a guardian should be, with such a pretty ward," says Mrs. Constans, smiling. "His back looks young, however."

"And his laugh _sounds_ young."

"Ah! he can laugh then?"

"Very seldom. Too seldom. But when he does, it is a nice laugh. But he wears spectacles, you know--and--well--oh, yes, he _is_ old, distinctly old!"


CHAPTER VI.


"He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."


"The idea of _your_ having a ward! I could quite as soon imagine your having a wife," says Hardinge. He knocks the ash off his cigar, and after meditating for a moment, leans back in his chair and gives way to irrepressible mirth.

"I don't see why I shouldn't have a wife as well as another," says the professor, idly tapping his forefinger on the table near him. "She would bore me. But a great many fellows are bored."

"You have grasped one great truth if you never grasp another!" says Mr. Hardinge, who has now recovered. "Catch _me_ marrying."

"It's unlucky to talk like that," says the professor. "It looks as though your time were near. In Sophocles' time there was a man who----"

"Oh, bother Sophocles, you know I never let you talk anything but wholesome nonsense when I drop in for a smoke with you," says the younger man. "You began very well, with that superstition of yours, but I won't have it spoiled by erudition. Tell me about your ward."

"Would that be nonsense?" says the professor, with a faint smile.

They are sitting in the professor's room with the windows thrown wide open to let in any chance gust of air that Heaven in its mercy may send them. It is night, and very late at night too--the clock indeed is on the stroke of twelve. It seems a long, long time to the professor since the afternoon--the afternoon of this very day--when he had seen Perpetua sitting in that open carriage. He had only been half glad when Harold Hardinge--a young man, and yet, strange to say, his most intimate friend--had dropped in to smoke a pipe with him. Hardinge was fonder of the professor than he knew, and was drawn to him by curious intricate webs. The professor suited him, and he suited the professor, though in truth Hardinge was nothing more than a gay young society man, with just the average amount of brains, but not an ounce beyond that.

A tall, handsome young man, with fair brown hair and hazel eyes, a dark moustache and a happy manner, Mr. Hardinge laughs his way through life, without money, or love, or any other troubles.

"Can you ask?" says he. "Go on, Curzon. What is she like?"

"It wouldn't interest you," says the professor.

"I beg your pardon, it is profoundly interesting; I've got to keep an eye on you, or else in a weak moment you will let her marry you."

The professor moves uneasily.

"May I ask how you knew I _had_ a ward?"

"That should go without telling. I arrived here to-night, to find you absent and Mrs. Mulcahy in possession, pretending to dust the furniture. She asked me to sit down--I obeyed her."

"'How's the professor?'" said I.

"'Me dear!' said she, 'that's a bad story. He's that distracted over a young lady that his own mother wouldn't know him!'

"I acknowledge I blushed. I went even so far as to make a few pantomimic gestures suggestive of the horror I was experiencing, and finally I covered my face with my handkerchief. I regret to say that Mrs. Mulcahy took my modesty in bad part.

"'Arrah! git out wid ye!' says she, 'ye scamp o' the world. 'Tis a _ward _the masther has taken an' nothin' more.'

"I said I thought it was quite enough, and asked if you had taken it badly, and what the doctor thought of you. But she wouldn't listen to me.

"'Look here, Misther Hardinge,' said she. 'I've come to the conclusion that wards is bad for the professor. I haven't seen the young lady, I confess, but I'm cock-sure that she's got the divil's own temper!'" Hardinge pauses, and turns to the professor--"Has she?" says he.

"N--o," says the professor--a little frowning lovely crimson face rises before him--and then a laughing one. "No," says he more boldly, "she is a little impulsive, perhaps, but----"

"Just so. Just so," says Mr. Hardinge pleasantly, and then, after a kindly survey of his companion's features, "She is rather a trouble to you, old man, isn't she?"

"She? No," says the professor again, more quickly this time. "It is only this--she doesn't seem to get on with the aunt to whom her poor father sent her--he is dead--and I have to look out for some one else to take care of her, until she comes of age."

"I see. I should think you would have to hurry up a bit," says Mr. Hardinge, taking his cigar from his lips, and letting the smoke curl upwards slowly, thoughtfully. "Impulsive people have a trick of being impatient--of acting for themselves----"

_"She_ cannot," says the professor, with anxious haste. "She knows nobody in town."

"Nobody?"

"Except me, and a woman who is a friend of her aunt's. If she were to go to her, she would be taken back again. Perpetua knows that."

"Perpetua! Is that her name? What a peculiar one? Perpetua----"

"Miss Wynter," sharply.

"Perpetua--Miss Wynter! Exactly so! It sounds like--Dorothea--Lady Highflown! Well, _your_ Lady Highflown doesn't seem to have many friends here. What a pity you can't send her back to Australia!"

The professor is silent.

"It would suit all sides. I daresay the poor girl is pining for the freedom of her old home. And, I must say, it is hard lines for you. A girl with a temper, to be----"

"I did not say she had a temper."

Hardinge has risen to get himself some whisky and soda, but pauses to pat the professor affectionately on the back.

"Of _course_ not! Don't I know you? You would die first! She might worry your life out, and still you would rise up to defend her at every corner. You should get her a satisfactory home as son as you can--it would ease your mind; and, after all, as she knows no one here, she is bound to behave herself until you can come to her help."

"She would behave herself, as you call it," says the professor angrily, "any and every where. She is a lady. She has been well brought up. I am her guardian, she will do nothing without _my_ permission!"

_Won't she!_

A sound, outside the door, strikes on the ears of both men at this moment. It is a most peculiar sound, as it were the rattle of beads against wood.

"What's that?" says Hardinge. "Everett" (the man in the rooms below) "is out, I know."

"It's coming here," says the professor.

It is, indeed! The door is opened in a tumultuous fashion, there is a rustle of silken skirts, and there--there, where the gas-light falls full on her from both room and landing--stands Perpetua!

The professor has risen to his feet. His face is deadly white. Mr. Hardinge has risen too.

"Perpetua!" says the professor; it would be impossible to describe his tone.

"I've come!" says Perpetua, advancing into the room. "I have done with Aunt Jane _for ever,"_ casting wide her pretty naked arms, "and I have come to you!"

As if in confirmation of this decision, she flings from her on to a distant chair the white opera cloak around her, and stands revealed as charming a thing as ever eye fell upon. She is all in black, but black that sparkles and trembles and shines with every movement. She seems, indeed, to be hung in jet, and out of all this sombre gleaming her white neck rises, pure and fresh and sweet as a little child's. Her long slight arms are devoid of gloves--she had forgotten them, no doubt, but her slender fingers are covered with rings, and round her neck a diamond necklace clings as if in love with its resting place.

Diamonds indeed are everywhere. In her hair, in her breast, on her neck, her fingers. Her father, when luck came to him, had found his greatest joy in decking with these gems the delight of his heart.

The professor turns to Hardinge. That young man, who had risen with the intention of leaving the room on Perpetua's entrance, is now staring at her as if bewitched. His expression is half puzzled, half amused. Is _this_ the professor's troublesome ward? This lovely,