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, graceful——
"Leave us!" says the professor sharply. Hardinge, with a profound bow, quits the room, but not the house. It would be impossible to go without hearing the termination of this exciting episode. Everett's rooms being providentially empty, he steps into them, and, having turned up the gas, drops into a chair and gives way to mirth.
Meantime the professor is staring at Perpetua.
"What has happened?" says he.
CHAPTER VII.
"Take it to thy breast;
Though thorns its stem invest,
Gather them, with the rest!"
"She is unbearable. Unbearable!" returns Perpetua vehemently. "When I came back from the concert to-night, she—— But I won't speak of her. I won't. And, at all events, I have done with her; I have left her. I have come"—with decision—"to stay with you!"
"Eh?" says the professor. It is a mere sound, but it expresses a great deal.
"To stay with you. Yes," nodding her head, "it has come to that at last. I warned you it would. I couldn't stay with her any longer. I hate her! So I have come to stay with you—for ever!"
She has cuddled herself into an armchair, and, indeed, looks as if a life-long residence in this room is the plan she has laid out for herself.
"Good heavens! What can you mean?" asks the poor professor, who should have sworn by the heathen gods, but in a weak moment falls back upon the good old formula. He sinks upon the table next him, and makes ruin of the notes he had been scribbling—the ink is still wet—even whilst Hardinge was with him. Could he only have known it, there are first proofs of them now upon his trousers.
"I have told you," says she. "Good gracious, what a funny room this is! I told you she was abominable to me when I came home to-night. She said dreadful things to me, and I don't care whether she is my aunt or not, I shan't let her scold me for nothing; and—I'm afraid I wasn't nice to her. I'm sorry for that, but—one isn't a bit of stone, you know, and she said something—about my mother," her eyes grow very brilliant here, "and when I walked up to her she apologized for that, but afterwards she said something about poor, poor papa—and—well, that was the end. I told her—amongst _other _things—that I thought she was 'too old to be alive,' and she didn't seem to mind the 'other things' half as much as that, though they were awful. At all events," with a little wave of her hands, "she's lectured me now for good; I shall never see her again! I've run away to you! See?"
It must be acknowledged that the professor doesn't see. He is sitting on the edge of the table—dumb.
"Oh! I'm so glad I've left her," says Perpetua, with indeed heartfelt delight in look and tone. "But—do you know—I'm hungry. You—you couldn't let me make you a cup of tea, could you? I'm dreadfully thirsty! What's that in your glass?"
"Nothing," says the professor hastily. He removes the half-finished tumbler of whisky and soda, and places it in the open cupboard.
"It looked like something," says she. "But what about tea?"
"I'll see what I can do," says he, beginning to busy himself amongst many small contrivances in the same cupboard. It has gone to his heart to hear that she is hungry and thirsty, but even in the midst of his preparations for her comfort, a feeling of rage takes possession of him.
He pulls his head out of the cupboard and turns to her.
"You must be mad!" says he.
"Mad? Why?" asks she.
"To come here. Here! And at this hour!"
"There was no other place: and I wasn't going to live under her roof another second. I said to myself that she was my aunt, but you were my guardian. Both of you have been told to look after me, and I prefer to be looked after by you. It is so simple," says she, with a suspicion of contempt in her tone, "that I wonder why you wonder at it. As I preferred you—of course I have come to live with you."
"You can't!" gasps the professor, "you must go back to Miss
Majendie at once!"
"To her! I'm not going back," steadily. "And even if I would," triumphantly, "I couldn't. As she sleeps at the top of the house (to get air, she says), and so does her maid, you might ring until you were black in the face, and she wouldn't hear you."
"Well! you can't stay here!" says the professor, getting off the table and addressing her with a truly noble attempt at sternness.
"Why can't I?" There is some indignation in her tone. "There's lots of room here, isn't there?"
"There is no room!" says the professor. This is the literal truth.
"The house is full. And—and there are only men here."
"So much the better!" says Perpetua, with a little frown and a great deal of meaning. "I'm tired of women—they're horrid. You're always kind to me—at least," with a glance, "you always used to be, and _you're _a man! Tell one of your servants to make me up a room somewhere."
"There isn't one," says the professor.
"Oh! nonsense," says she, leaning back in her chair and yawning softly. "I'm not so big that you can't put me away somewhere. That woman says I'm so small that I'll never be a grown-up girl, because I can't grow up any more. Who'd live with a woman like that? And I shall grow more, isn't it?"
"I daresay," says the professor vaguely. "But that is not the question to be considered now. I must beg you to understand, Perpetua, that your staying here is out of the question!"
"Out of the—— Oh! I see," cries she, springing to her feet and turning a passionately reproachful face on his. "You mean that I shall be in your way here!"
"No, no, NO!" cries he, just as impulsively, and decidedly very foolishly; but the sight of her small mortified face has proved too much for him, "Only——"
"Only?" echoes the spoiled child, with a loving smile—the child who has been accustomed to have all things and all people give way to her during her short life. "Only you are afraid I shall not be comfortable. But I shall. And I shall be a great comfort to you too—a great help. I shall keep everything in order for you. Do you remember the talk we had that last day you came to Aunt Jane's? How I told you of the happy days we should have together, if we were together. Well, we are together now, aren't we? And when I'm twenty-one, we'll move into a big, big house, and ask people to dances and dinners and things. In the meantime——" she pauses and glances leisurely around her. The glance is very comprehensive. "To-morrow," says she with decision, "I shall settle this room!"
The professor's breath fails him. He grows pale. To "settle" his room!
"Perpetua!" exclaims he, almost inarticulately, "you don't understand."
"I do indeed," returns she brightly. "I've often settled papa's den. What! do you think me only a silly useless creature? You shall see! I'll settle you too, by and by." She smiles at him gaily, with the most charming innocence, but oh! what awful probabilities lie within her words. Settle him!
"Do you know I've heard people talking about you at Mrs. Constans'," says she. She smiles and nods at him. The professor groans. To be talked about! To be discussed! To be held up to vulgar comment! He writhes inwardly. The thought is actual torture to him.
"They said——"
"What?" demands the professor, almost fiercely. How dare a feeble feminine audience appreciate or condemn his honest efforts to enlighten his small section of mankind!
"That you ought to be married," says Perpetua, sympathetically. "And they said, too, that they supposed you wouldn't ever be now; but that it was a great pity you hadn't a daughter. I think that too. Not about your having a wife. That doesn't matter, but I really think you ought to have a daughter to look after you."
This extremely immoral advice she delivers with a beaming smile.
"I'll be your daughter," says she.
The professor goes rigid with horror. What has he done that the
Fates should so visit him?
"They said something else too," goes on Perpetua, this time rather angrily. "They said you were so clever that you always looked unkempt. That?" thoughtfully, "means that you didn't brush your hair enough. Never mind, I'll brush it for you."
"Look here!" says the professor furiously, subdued fury no doubt, but very genuine. "You must go, you know. Go, at once! D'ye see? You can't stay in this house, d'ye hear? I can't permit it. What did your father mean by bringing you up like this!"
"Like what?" She is staring at him. She has leant forward as if surprised—and with a sigh the professor acknowledges the uselessness of a fight between them; right or wrong she is sure to win. He is bound to go to the wall. She is looking not only surprised, but unnerved. The ebullition of wrath on the part of her mild guardian has been a slight shock to her.
"Tell me?" persists she.
"Tell you! what is there to tell you? I should think the veriest infant would have known she oughtn't to come here."
"I should think an infant would know nothing," with dignity. "All your scientific researches have left you, I'm afraid, very ignorant. And I should think that the very first thing even an infant would do, if she could walk, would be to go straight to her guardian when in trouble."
"At this hour?"
"At any hour. What," throwing out her hands expressively, "is a guardian for, if it isn't to take care of people?"
The professor gives it up. The heat of battle has overcome him. With a deep breath he drops into a chair, and begins to wonder how long it will be before happy death will overtake him.
But in the meantime, whilst sitting on a milestone of life waiting for that grim friend, what is to be done with her? If—Good heavens! if anyone had seen her come in!
"Who opened the door for you?" demands he abruptly.
"A great big fat woman with a queer voice! Your Mrs. Mulcahy of course. I remember your telling me about her."
Mrs. Mulcahy undoubtedly. Well, the professor wishes now he had told his ward more about her. Mrs. Mulcahy he can trust, but she—awful thought— will she trust him? What is she thinking now?
"I said, 'Is Mr. Curzon at home?' and she said, 'Well I niver!' So I saw she was a kindly, foolish, poor creature with no sense, and I ran past her, and up the stairs, and I looked into one room where there were lights but you weren't there, and then I ran on again until I saw the light under your door, and, "brightening, "there you were!"
Here she is now, at all events, at half-past twelve at night!
"Wasn't it fortunate I found you?" says she. She is laughing a little, and looking so content that the professor hasn't the heart to contradict her—though where the fortune comes in——
"I'm starving," says she, gaily, "will that funny little kettle soon boil?" The professor has lit a spirit-lamp with a view to giving her some tea. "I haven't had anything to eat since dinner, and you know she dines at an ungodly hour. Two o'clock! I didn't know I wanted anything to eat until I escaped from her, but now that I have got you," triumphantly, "I feel as hungry as ever I can be."
"There is nothing," says the professor, blankly. His heart seems to stop beating. The most hospitable and kindly of men, it is terrible to him to have to say this. Of course Mrs. Mulcahy—who, no doubt, is still in the hall waiting for an explanation, could give him something. But Mrs. Mulcahy can be unpleasant at times, and this is safe to be a "time." Yet without her assistance he can think of no means by which this pretty, slender, troublesome little ward of his can be fed.
"Nothing!" repeats she faintly. "Oh, but surely in that cupboard over there, where you put the glass, there is something; even bread and butter I should like."
She gets up, and makes an impulsive step forward, and in doing so brushes against a small ricketty table, that totters feebly for an instant and then comes with a crash to the ground, flinging a whole heap of gruesome dry bones at her very feet.
With a little cry of horror she recoils from them. Perhaps her nerves are more out of order than she knows, perhaps the long fast and long drive here, and her reception from her guardian at the end of it—so different from what she had imagined—have all helped to undo her. Whatever be the cause, she suddenly covers her face with her hands and burst into tears.
"Take them away!" cries she frantically, and then—sobbing heavily between her broken words—"Oh, I see how it is. You don't want me here at all. You wish I hadn't come. And I have no one but you—and poor papa said you would be good to me. But you are sorry he made you my guardian. You would be glad if I were dead! When I come to you in my trouble you tell me to go away again, and though I tell you I am hungry, you won't give me even some bread and butter! Oh!" passionately, "if you came to me starving, I'd give you things, but—you——"
"Stop!" cries the professor. He uplifts his hands, and, as though in the act of tearing his hair, rushes from the room, and staggers downstairs to those other apartments where Hardinge had elected to sit, and see out the farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it may prove, to its bitter end.
The professor bursts in like a maniac!
CHAPTER VIII.
"The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose."
"She's upstairs still," cries he in a frenzied tone. "She says she has come for ever. That she will not go away. She doesn't understand. Great Heaven! what am I to do?"
"She?" says Hardinge, who really in turn grows petrified for the moment—_only _for the moment.
"That girl! My ward! All women are demons!" says the professor bitterly, with tragic force. He pauses as if exhausted.
"Your demon is a pretty specimen of her kind," says Hardinge, a little frivolously under the circumstances it must be confessed. "Where is she now?"
"Upstairs!" with a groan. "She says she's hungry, and I haven't a thing in the house! For goodness sake think of something, Hardinge."
"Mrs. Mulcahy!" suggests Hardinge, in anything but a hopeful tone.
"Yes—ye-es," says the professor. "You—_you _wouldn't ask her something, would you, Hardinge?"
"Not for a good deal," says Hardinge, promptly. "I say," rising, and going towards Everett's cupboard, "Everett's a Sybarite, you know, of the worst kind—sure to find something here, and we can square it with him afterwards. Beauty in distress, you know, appeals to all hearts. Here we are!" holding out at arm's length a pasty. "A 'weal and ammer!' Take it! The guilt be on my head! Bread—butter—pickled onions! Oh, not pickled onions, I think. Really, I had no idea even Everett had fallen so low. Cheese!—about to proceed on a walking tour! The young lady wouldn't care for that, thanks. Beer! No. No. Sherry-Woine!"
"Give me that pie, and the bread and butter," says the professor, in great wrath. "And let me tell you, Hardinge, that there are occasions when one's high spirits can degenerate into offensiveness and vulgarity!"
He marches out of the room and upstairs, leaving Hardinge, let us hope, a prey to remorse. It is true, at least of that young man, that he covers his face with his hands and sways from side to side, as if overcome by some secret emotion. Grief—no doubt.
Perpetua is graciously pleased to accept the frugal meal the professor brings her. She even goes so far as to ask him to share it with her—which invitation he declines. He is indeed sick at heart—not for himself—(the professor doesn't often think of himself)—but for her. And where is she to sleep? To turn her out now would be impossible! After all, it was a puerile trifling with the Inevitable, to shirk asking Mrs. Mulcahy for something to eat for his self-imposed guest—because the question of Bed is still to come! Mrs. Mulcahy, terrible, as she undoubtedly can be, is yet the only woman in the house, and it is imperative that Perpetua should be given up to her protection.
Whilst the professor is writhing in spirit over this ungetoutable fact, he becomes aware of a resounding knock at the door. Paralyzed, he gazes in the direction of the sound. It can't be Hardinge, he would never knock like that! The knock in itself, indeed, is of such force and volume as to strike terror into the bravest heart. It is—it must be—the Mulcahy!
And Mrs. Mulcahy it is! Without waiting for an answer, that virtuous Irishwoman, clad in righteous indignation and a snuff-colored gown, marches into the room.
"May I ask, Mr. Curzon," says she, with great dignity and more temper, "what may be the meanin' of all this?"
The professor's tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth, but
Perpetua's tongue remains normal. She jumps up, and runs to Mrs.
Mulcahy with a beaming face. She has had something to eat, and is
once again her own buoyant, wayward, light-hearted little self.
"Oh! it is all right now, Mrs. Mulcahy," cries she, whilst the professor grows cold with horror at this audacious advance upon the militant Mulcahy. "But do you know, he said first he hadn't anything to give me, and I was starving. No, you mustn't scold him—he didn't mean anything. I suppose you have heard how unhappy I was with Aunt Jane?—he's told you, I daresay,"—with a little flinging of her hand towards the trembling professor—"because I know"—prettily—"he is very fond of you—he often speaks to me about you. Oh! Aunt Jane is horrid! I should have told you about how it was when I came, but I wanted so much to see my guardian, and tell him all about it, that I forgot to be nice to anybody. See?"
There is a little silence. The professor, who is looking as guilty as if the whole ten commandments have been broken by him at once, waits, shivering, for the outburst that is so sure to come.
It doesn't come, however! When the mists clear away a little, he finds that Perpetua has gone over to where Mrs. Mulcahy is standing, and is talking still to that good Irishwoman. It is a whispered talk this time, and the few words of it that he catches go to his very heart.
"I'm afraid he didn't want me here," Perpetua is saying, in a low distressed little voice—"I'm sorry I came now—but, you don't know how cruel Aunt Jane was to me, Mrs. Mulcahy, you don't indeed! She—she said such unkind things about—about——" Perpetua breaks down again—struggles with herself valiantly, and finally bursts out crying. "I'm tired, I'm sleepy," sobs she miserably.
Need I say what follows? The professor, stung to the quick by those forlorn sobs, lifts his eyes, and—behold! he sees Perpetua gathered to the ample bosom of the formidable, kindly Mulcahy.
"Come wid me, me lamb," says that excellent woman. "Bad scran to the one that made yer purty heart sore. Lave her to me now, Misther Curzon, dear, an' I'll take a mother's care of her." (This in an aside to the astounded professor.) "There now, alanna! Take courage now! Sure 'tis to the right shop ye've come, anyway, for 'tis daughthers I have meself, me dear—fine, sthrappin' girls as could put you in their pockits. Ye poor little crather! Oh! Murther! Who could harm the like of ye? Faix, I hope that ould divil of an aunt o' yours won't darken these doors, or she'll git what she won't like from Biddy Mulcahy. There now! There now! 'Tis into yer bed I'll tuck ye meself, for 'tis worn-out ye are—God help ye!"
She is gone, taking Perpetua with her. The professor rubs his eyes, and then suddenly an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards Mrs. Mulcahy takes possession of him. What a woman! He had never thought so much moral support could be got out of a landlady—but Mrs. Mulcahy has certainly tided him safely over one of his difficulties. Still, those that remain are formidable enough to quell any foolish present attempts at relief of mind. "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!"
How many to-morrows is she going to remain here? Oh! Impossible! Not an hour must be wasted. By the morning light something must be put on foot to save the girl from her own foolhardiness, nay ignorance!
Once again, sunk in the meshes of depression, the persecuted professor descends to the room where Hardinge awaits him.
"Anything new?" demands the latter, springing to his feet.
"Yes! Mrs. Mulcahy came up." The professor's face is so gloomy, that Hardinge may be forgiven for saying to himself, "She has assaulted him!"
"I'm glad it isn't visible," says he, staring at the professor's nose, and then at his eye. Both are the usual size.
"Eh?" says the professor. "She was visible of course. She was kinder than I expected."
"So, I see. She might so easily have made it your lip—or your nose—or——"
"What is there in Everett's cupboard besides the beer?" demands the professor angrily. "For Heaven's sake! attend to me, and don't sit there grinning like a first-class chimpanzee!"
This is extremely rude, but Hardinge takes no notice of it.
"I tell you she was kind—kinder than one would expect," says the professor, rapping his knuckles on the table.
"Oh! I see. She? Miss Wynter?"
"No—Mrs. Mulcahy!" roars the professor frantically. "Where's your head, man? Mrs. Mulcahy came into the room, and took Miss Wynter into her charge in the—er—the most wonderful way, and carried her off to bed." The professor mops his brow.
"Oh, well, that's all right," says Hardinge. "Sit down, old chap, and let's talk it over."
"It is not all right," says the professor. "It is all wrong. Here she is, and here she apparently means to stay. The poor child doesn't understand. She thinks I'm older than Methusaleh, and that she can live here with me. I can't explain it to her—you—don't think you could, do you, Hardinge?"
"No, I don't, indeed," says Hardinge, in a hurry. "What on earth has brought her here at all?"
"To stay. Haven't I told you? To stay for ever. She says"—with a groan—"she is going to settle me! To—to brush my hair! To—make my tea. She says I'm her guardian, and insists on living with me. She doesn't understand! Hardinge," desperately, "what am I to do?"
"Marry her!" suggests Hardinge, who, I regret to say is choking with laughter.
"That is a jest!" says the professor haughtily. This unusual tone from the professor strikes surprise to the soul of Hardinge. He looks at him. But the professor's new humor is short-lived. He sinks upon a chair in a tired sort of way, letting his arms fall over the sides of it. As a type of utter despair he is a distinguished specimen.
"Why don't you take her home again, back to the old aunt?" says
Hardinge, moved by his misery.
"I can't. She tells me it would be useless, that the house is locked up, and—and besides, Hardinge, her aunt—after this, you know— would be——"
"Naturally," says Hardinge, after which he falls back upon his cigar. "Light your pipe," says he, "and we'll think it over." The professor lights it, and both men draw nearer to each other.
"I'm afraid she won't go back to her aunt any way," says the professor, as a beginning to the "thinking it over." He pushes his glasses up to his forehead, and finally discards them altogether, flinging them on the table near.
"If she saw you now she might understand," says Hardinge—for, indeed, the professor without his glasses loses thirty per cent. of old Time.
"She wouldn't," says the professor. "And never mind that. Come back to the question. I say she will never go back to her aunt."
He looks anxiously at Hardinge. One can see that he would part with a good deal of honest coin of the realm, if his companion would only not agree with him.
"It looks like it," said Hardinge, who is rather enjoying himself. "By Jove! what a thing to happen to you, Curzon, of all men in the world. What are you going to do, eh?"
"It isn't so much that," says the professor faintly. "It is what is she going to do?"
"Next!" supplements Hardinge. "Quite so! It would be a clever fellow who would answer that, straight off. I say, Curzon, what a pretty girl she is, though. Pretty isn't the word. Lovely, I——"
The professor gets up suddenly.
"Not that," says he, raising his hand in his gentle fashion—that has now something of haste in it. "It—I—you know what I mean, Hardinge. To discuss her—herself, I mean—and here——"
"Yes. You are right," says Hardinge slowly, with, however, an irrepressible stare at the professor. It is a prolonged stare. He is very fond of Curzon, though knowing absolutely nothing about him beyond the fact that he is eminently likeable; and it now strikes him as strange that this silent, awkward, ill-dressed, clever man should be the one to teach him how to behave himself. Who is Curzon? Given a better tailor, and a worse brain, he might be a reasonable-looking fellow enough, and not so old either—forty, perhaps—perhaps less. "Have you no relation to whom you could send her?" he says at length, that sudden curiosity as to who Curzon may be prompting the question. "Some old lady? An aunt, for example?"
"She doesn't seem to like aunts," says the professor, with deep dejection.
"Small blame to her," says Hardinge, smoking vigorously. "I've an aunt—but 'that's another story!' Well—haven't you a cousin then?—or something?"
"I have a sister," says the professor slowly.
"Married?"
"A widow."
("Fusty old person, out somewhere in the wilds of Finchley," says Hardinge to himself. "Poor little girl—she won't fancy that either!")
"Why not send her to you sister then?" says he aloud.
"I'm not sure that she would like to have her," says the professor, with hesitation. "I confess I have been thinking it over for some days, but——"
"But perhaps the fact of your ward's being an heiress——" begins Hardinge—throwing out a suggestion as it were—but is checked by something in the professor's face.
"My sister is the Countess of Baring," says he gently.
Hardinge's first thought is that the professor has gone out of his mind, and his second that he himself has accomplished that deed. He leans across the table. Surprise has deprived him of his usual good manners.
"Lady Baring!—_your _sister!" says he.
CHAPTER IX.
"Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters."
"I see no reason why she shouldn't be," says the professor calmly—is there a faint suspicion of hauteur in his tone? "As we are on the subject of myself, I may as well tell you that my brother is Sir Hastings Curzon, of whom"—he turns back as if to take up some imaginary article from the floor—"you may have heard."
"Sir Hastings!" Mr. Hardinge leans back in his chair and gives way to thought. This quiet, hard-working student—this man whom he had counted as a nobody—the brother of that disreputable Hastings Curzon! "As good as got the baronetcy," says he still thinking. "At the rate Sir Hastings is going he can't possibly last for another twelvemonth, and here is this fellow living in these dismal lodgings with twenty thousand a year before his eyes. A lucky thing for him that the estates are so strictly entailed. Good heavens! to think of a man with all that almost in his grasp being happy in a coat that must have been built in the Ark, and caring for nothing on earth but the intestines of frogs and such-like abominations."
"You seem surprised again," says the professor, somewhat satirically.
"I confess it," says Hardinge.
"I can't see why you should be."
"I do," says Hardinge drily. "That you," slowly, "you should be Sir Hastings' brother! Why——"
"No more!" interrupts the professor sharply. He lifts his hand. "Not another word. I know what you are going to say. It is one of my great troubles, that I always know what people are going to say when they mention him. Let him alone, Hardinge."
"Oh! I'll let him alone," says Hardinge, with a gesture of disgust. There is a pause.
"You know my sister, then?" says the professor presently.
"Yes. She is very charming. How is it I have never seen you there?"
"At her house?"
"At her receptions?"
"I have no taste for that sort of thing, and no time. Fashionable society bores me. I go and see Gwen on off days and early hours, when I am sure that I shall find her alone. We are friends, you will understand, she and I; capital friends, though sometimes," with a sigh, "she—she seems to disapprove of my mode of living. But we get on very well on the whole. She is a very good girl," says the professor kindly, who always thinks of Lady Baring as a little girl in short frocks in her nursery—the nursery he had occupied with her.
To hear the beautiful, courted, haughty Lady Baring, who has the best of London at her feet, called "a good girl," so tickles Mr. Hardinge, that he leans back in his chair and bursts out laughing.
"Yes?" says the professor, as if asking for an explanation of the joke.
"Oh! nothing—nothing. Only—you are such a queer fellow!" says Hardinge, sitting up again to look at him. "You are a rara avis, do you know? No, of course you don't! You are one of the few people who don't know their own worth. I don't believe, Curzon, though I should live to be a thousand, that I shall ever look upon your like again."
"And so you laugh. Well, no doubt it is a pleasant reflection," says the professor dismally. "I begin to wish now I had never seen myself."
"Oh, come! cheer up," says Hardinge, "your pretty ward will be all right. If Lady Baring takes her in hand, she——"
"Ah! But will she?" says the professor. "Will she like Per—— Miss
Wynter?"
"Sure to," said Hardinge, with quite a touch of enthusiasm. "'To see her is to love her, and love but'——"
"That is of no consequence where anyone is concerned except Lady Baring," says the professor, with a little twist in his chair, "and my sister has not seen her as yet. And besides, that is not the only question—a greater one remains."
"By Jove! you don't say so! What?" demands Mr. Hardinge, growing earnest.
"Will Miss Wynter like her?" says the professor. "That is the real point."
"Oh! I see!" says Hardinge thoughtfully.
The next day, however, proves the professor's fears vain in both quarters. An early visit to Lady Baring, and an anxious appeal, brings out all that delightful woman's best qualities. One stipulation alone she makes, that she may see the young heiress before finally committing herself to chaperone her safely through the remainder of the season.
The professor, filled with hope, hies back to his rooms, calls for Mrs. Mulcahy, tells her he is going to take his ward out for a drive, and gives that worthy and now intensely interested landlady full directions to see that Miss Wynter looks—"er—nice! you know, Mrs. Mulcahy, her best suit, and——"
Mrs. Mulcahy came generously to the rescue.
"Her best frock, sir, I suppose, an' her Sunday bonnet. I've often wished it before, Mr. Curzon, an' I'm thinkin' that 'twill be the makin' of ye; an' a handsome, purty little crathur she is an' no mistake. An' who is to give away the poor dear, sir, askin' yer pardon?"
"I am," says the professor.
"Oh no, sir; the likes was never known. 'Tis the father or one of his belongings as gives away the bride, niver the husband to be, an' if ye have nobody, sir, you two, why I'm sure I'd be proud to act for ye in this matther. Faix I don't disguise from ye, Misther Curzon, dear, that I feels like a mother to that purty child this moment, an' I tell ye this, that if ye don't behave dacent to her, ye'll have to answer to Mrs. Mulcahy for that same."
"What d'ye mean, woman?" roars the professor, indignantly. "Do you imagine that ——?"
"No. I'd belave nothin' bad o' ye," says Mrs. Mulcahy solemnly. "I've cared ye these six years, an' niver a fault to find. But that child beyant, whin ye take her away to make her yer wife——"
"You must be mad," says the professor, a strange, curious pang contracting his heart. "I am not taking her away to—— I—I am taking her to my sister, who will receive her as a guest."
"Mad!" repeats Mrs. Mulcahy furiously. "Who's mad? Faix," preparing to leave the room, "'tis yerself was born widout a grain o' sinse!"
The meeting between Lady Baring and Perpetua is eminently satisfactory. The latter, looking lovely, but a little frightened, so takes Lady Baring's artistic soul by storm, that that great lady then and there accepts the situation, and asks Perpetua if she will come to her for a week or so. Perpetua, charmed in turn by Lady Baring's grace and beauty and pretty ways, receives the invitation with pleasure, little dreaming that she is there "on view," as it were, and that the invitation is to be prolonged indefinitely—that is, till either she or her hostess tire one of the other.
The professor's heart sinks a little as he sees his sister rise and loosen the laces round the girl's pretty, slender throat, begging her to begin to feel at home at once. Alas! He has deliberately given up his ward! His ward! Is she any longer his? Has not the great world claimed her now, and presently will she not belong to it? So lovely, so sweet she is, will not all men run to snatch the prize?—a prize, bejewelled too, not only by Nature, but by that gross material charm that men call wealth. Well, well, he has done his best for her. There was, indeed, nothing else left to do.
CHAPTER X.
"The sun is all about the world we see,
The breath and strength of very Spring; and we
Live, love, and feed on our own hearts."
The lights are burning low in the conservatory, soft perfumes from the many flowers fill the air. From beyond—somewhere—(there is a delicious drowsy uncertainty about the where)—comes the sound of music, soft, rhythmical, and sweet. Perhaps it is from one of the rooms outside—dimly seen through the green foliage—where the lights are more brilliant, and forms are moving. But just in here there is no music save the tinkling drip, drip of the little fountain that plays idly amongst the ferns.
Lady Baring is at home to-night, and in the big, bare rooms outside dancing is going on, and in the smaller rooms, tiny tragedies and comedies are being enacted by amateurs, who, oh, wondrous tale! do know their parts and speak them, albeit no stage "proper" has been prepared for them. Perhaps that is why stage-fright is not for them—a stage as big as "all the world" leaves actors very free.
But in here—here, with the dainty flowers and dripping fountains, there is surely no thought of comedy or tragedy. Only a little girl gowned all in white, with snowy arms and neck, and diamonds glittering in the soft masses of her waving hair. A happy little girl, to judge by the soft smile upon her lovely lips, and the gleam in her dark eyes. Leaning back in her seat in the dim, cool recesses of the conservatory, amongst the flowers and the greeneries, she looks like a little nymph in love with the silence and the sense of rest that the hour holds.
It is broken, however.
"I am so sorry you are not dancing," says her companion, leaning towards her. His regret is evidently genuine, indeed; to Hardinge the evening is an ill-spent one that precludes his dancing with Perpetua Wynter.
"Yes?" she looks up at him from her low lounge amongst the palms. "Well, so am I, do you know!" telling the truth openly, yet with an evident sense of shame. "But I don't dance now, because—it is selfish, isn't it?—because I should be so unhappy afterwards if I did!"
"A perfect reason," says Hardinge very earnestly. He is still leaning towards her, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on hers. It is an intent gaze that seldom wanders, and in truth why should it? Where is any other thing as good to look at as this small, fair creature, with the eyes, and the hair, and the lips that belong to her?
He has taken possession of her fan, and gently, lovingly, as though indeed it is part of her, is holding it, raising it sometimes to sweep the feathers of it across his lips.
"Do you think so?" says she, as if a little puzzled. "Well, I confess I don't like the moments when I hate myself. We all hate ourselves sometimes, don't we?" looking at him as if doubtfully, "or is it only I myself, who——"
"Oh, no!" says Hardinge. "All! All of us detest ourselves now and again, or at least we think we do. It comes to the same thing, but you—you have no cause."
"I should have if I danced," says she, "and I couldn't bear the after reproach, so I don't do it."
"And yet—yet you would like to dance?"
"I don't know——" She hesitates, and suddenly looks up at him with eyes as full of sorrow as of mirth. "At all events I know this," says she, "that I wish the band would not play such nice waltzes!"
Hardinge gives way to laughter, and presently she laughs too, but softly, and as if afraid of being heard, and as if too a little ashamed of herself. Her color rises, a delicate warm color that renders her absolutely adorable.
"Shall I order them to stop?" asks Hardinge, laughing still, yet with something in his gaze that tells her he would forbid them to play if he could, if only to humor her.
"No!" says she, "and, after all,"—philosophically—"enjoyment is only a name."
"That's all!" says Hardinge, smiling. "But a very good one."
"Let us forget it," with a little sigh, "and talk of something else, something pleasanter."
"Than enjoyment?"
She gives way to his mood and laughs afresh.
"Ah! you have me there!" says she.
"I have not, indeed," he returns quietly, and with meaning. "Neither there, nor anywhere."
He gets up suddenly, and going to her, bends over the chair on which she is sitting.
"We were talking of what?" asks she, with admirable courage, "of names, was it not? An endless subject. My name now? An absurd one surely. Perpetua! I don't like Perpetua, do you?" She is evidently talking at random.
"I do indeed!" says Hardinge, promptly and fervently. His tone accentuates his meaning.
"Oh, but so harsh, so unusual!"
"Unusual! That in itself constitutes a charm."
"I was going to add, however—disagreeable."
"Not that—never that," says Hardinge.
"You mean to say you really like Perpetua?" her large soft eyes opening with amazement.
"It is a poor word," says he, his tone now very low. "If I dared say that I adored 'Perpetua,' I should be——"
"Oh, you laugh at me," interrupts she with a little impatient gesture, "you know how crude, how strange, how——"
"I don't, indeed. Why should you malign yourself like that?
You—_you—_who are——"
He stops short, driven to silence by a look in the girl's eye.
"What have I to do with it? I did not christen myself," says she. There is perhaps a suspicion of hauteur in her tone. "I am talking to you about my name. You understand that, don't you?"—the hauteur increasing. "Do you know, of late I have often wished I was somebody else, because then I should have had a different one."
Hardinge, at this point, valiantly refrains from a threadbare quotation. Perhaps he is too far crushed to be able to remember it.
"Still it is charming," says he, somewhat confusedly.
"It is absurd," says Perpetua coldly. There is evidently no pity in her. And alas! when we think what that sweet feeling is akin to, on the highest authority, one's hopes for Hardinge fall low. He loses his head a little.
"Not so absurd as your guardian's, however," says he, feeling the necessity for saying something without the power to manufacture it.
"Mr. Curzon's? What is his name?" asks she, rising out of her lounging position and looking, for the first time, interested.
"Thaddeus."
Perpetua, after a prolonged stare, laughs a little.
"What a name!" says she. "Worse than mine. And yet," still laughing, "it suits him, I think."
Hardinge laughs with her. Not at his friend, but with her. It seems clear to him that Perpetua is making gentle fun of her guardian, and though his conscience smites him for encouraging her in her naughtiness, still he cannot refrain.
"He is an awfully good old fellow," says he, throwing a sop to his
Cerberus.
"Is he?" says Perpetua, as if even more amused. She looks up at him, and then down again, and trifles with the fan she has taken back from him, and finally laughs again; something in her laugh this time, however, puzzles him.
"You don't like him?" hazards he. "After all, I suppose it is hardly natural that a ward should like her guardian."
"Yes? And why?" asks Perpetua, still smiling, still apparently amused.
"For one thing, the sense of restraint that belongs to the relations between them. A guardian, you know, would be able to control one in a measure."
"Would he?"
"Well, I imagine so. It is traditionary. And you?"
"I don't know about other people," says Miss Wynter, calmly, "I know only this, that nobody ever yet controlled me, and I don't suppose now that anybody ever will."
As she says this she looks at him with the prettiest smile; it is a mixture of amusement and defiance. Hardinge, gazing at her, draws conclusions. ("Perfectly hates him," decides he.)
It seems to him a shame, and a pity too, but after all, old Curzon was hardly meant by Nature to do the paternal to a strange and distinctly spoiled child, and a beauty into the bargain.
"I don't think your guardian will have a good time," says he, bending over her confidentially, on the strength of this decision of his.
"Don't you?" She draws back from him and looks up. "You think I shall lead him a very bad life?"
"Well, as he would regard it. Not as I should," with a sudden, impassioned glance.
Miss Wynter puts that glance behind her, and perhaps there is something—something a little dangerous in the soft, soft look she now turns upon him.
"He thinks so, too, of course?" says she, ever so gently. Her tone is half a question, half an assertion. It is manifestly unfair, the whole thing. Hardinge, believing in her tone, her smile, falls into the trap. Mindful of that night when the professor in despair at her untimely descent upon him, had said many things unmeant, he answers her.
"Hardly that. But——"
"Go on."
"There was a little word or two, you know," laughing.
"A hint?" laughing too, but how strangely! "Yes? And——?"
"Oh! a mere hint! The professor is too loyal to go beyond that. I suppose you know you have the best man in all the world for your guardian? But it was a little unkind of your people, was it not, to give you into the keeping of a confirmed bookworm—a savant—with scarcely a thought beyond his studies?"
"He could study me!" says she. "I should be a fresh specimen."
"A rara avis, indeed! but not such as the professor's soul covets.
No, believe me, you are as dust before the wind in his learned eye."
"You think then—that I—am a trouble to him?"
"It is inconceivable," says he, with a shrug of apology, "but he has no room in his daily thoughts, I verily believe, for anything beyond his beloved books, and notes, and discoveries."
"Yet I am a discovery," persists she, looking at him with anxious eyes, and leaning forward, whilst her fan falls idly on her knees.
"Ah! But so unpardonably recent!" returns he with a smile.
"True!" says she. She gives him one swift brilliant glance, and then suddenly grows restless. "How warm it is!" she says fretfully. "I wish——"
What she was going to say, will never now be known. The approach of a tall, gaunt figure through the hanging oriental curtains at the end of the conservatory checks her speech. Sir Hastings Curzon is indeed taller than most men, and is, besides, a man hardly to be mistaken again when once seen. Perpetua has seen him very frequently of late.
CHAPTER XI.
"But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels."
"Shall I take you to Lady Baring?" says Hardinge, quickly, rising and bending as if to offer her his arm.
"No, thank you," coldly.
"I think," anxiously, "you once told me you did not care for
Sir——"
"Did I? It seems quite terrible the amount of things I have told everybody." There is a distinct flash in her lovely eyes now, and her small hand has tightened round her fan. "Sometimes—I talk folly! As a fact" (with a touch of defiance), "I like Sir Hastings, although he is my guardian's brother!—my guardian who would so gladly get rid of me." There is bitterness on the young, red mouth.
"You should not look at it in that light."
"Should I not? You should be the last to say that, seeing that you were the one to show me how to regard it. Besides, you forget Sir Hastings is Lady Baring's brother too, and—you haven't anything to say against her, have you? Ah!" with a sudden lovely smile, "you, Sir Hastings?"
"You are not dancing," says the tall, gaunt man, who has now come up to her. "So much I have seen. Too warm? Eh? You show reason, I think. And yet, if I might dare to hope that you would give me this waltz——"
"No, no," says she, still with her most charming air. "I am not dancing to-night. I shall not dance this year."
"That is a Median law, no doubt," says he. "If you will not dance with me, then may I hope that you will give me the few too short moments that this waltz may contain?"
Hardinge makes a vague movement but an impetuous one. If the girl had realized the fact of his love for her, she might have been touched and influenced by it, but as it is she feels only a sense of anger towards him. Anger unplaced, undefined, yet nevertheless intense.
"With pleasure," says she to Sir Hastings, smiling at him almost across Hardinge's outstretched hand. The latter draws back.
"You dismiss me?" says he, with a careful smile. He bows to her—he is gone.
"A well-meaning young man," says Sir Hastings, following Hardinge's retreating figure with a delightfully lenient smile. "Good-looking too; but earnest. Have you noticed it? Entirely well-bred, but just a little earnest! Such a mistake!"
"I don't think that," says Perpetua. "To be earnest! One should be earnest."
"Should one?" Sir Hastings looks delighted expectation. "Tell me about it," says he.
"There is nothing to tell," says Perpetua, a little petulantly perhaps. This tall, thin man! what a bore he is! And yet, the other—Mr. Hardinge—well he was worse; he was a fool, anyway; he didn't understand the professor one bit! "I like Mr. Hardinge," says she suddenly.
"Happy Hardinge! But little girls like you are good to everyone, are you not? That is what makes you so lovely. You could be good to even a scapegrace, eh? A poor, sad outcast like me?" He laughs and leans towards her, his handsome, dissipated, abominable face close to hers.
Involuntarily she recoils.
"I hope everyone is good to you," says she. "Why should they not be? And why do you call yourself an outcast? Only bad people are outcasts. And bad people," slowly, "are not known, are they?"
"Certainly not," says he, disconcerted. This little girl from a far land is proving herself too much for him. And it is not her words that disconcert him so much as the straight, clear, open glance from the thoughtful eyes.
To turn the conversation into another channel seems desirable to him.
"I hope you are happy here with my sister," says he, in his anything but everyday tone.
"Quite happy, thank you. But I should have been happier still, I think, if I had been allowed to stay with your brother."
Sir Hastings drops his glasses. Good heavens! what kind of a girl is this!
"To stay with my brother! To stay," stammers he.
"Yes. He is your brother, isn't he? The professor, I mean. I should quite have enjoyed living with him, but he wouldn't hear of it. He—he doesn't like me, I'm afraid?" Perpetua looks at him anxiously. A little hope that he will contradict Hardinge's statement animates her mind. To feel herself a burden to her guardian—to anyone—she, who in the old home had been nothing less than an idol! Surely Sir Hastings, his own brother, will say something, will say something, will tell her something to ease this chagrin at her heart.
"Who told you that?" asks Sir Hastings. "Did he himself? I shouldn't put it beyond him. He is a misogynist; a mere bookworm! Of no account. Do not waste a thought on him."
"You mean——"
"That he detests the best part of life—that he has deliberately turned his back on all that makes our existence here worth having. I should call him a fool, but that one so dislikes having an imbecile in one's family."
"The best part of life! You say he has turned his back on that." She lets her hands fall upon her knees, and turns a frowning, perplexed, but always lovely face to his. "What is it," asks she, "that best part?"
"Women!" returns he, slowly, undauntedly, in spite of the innocence, the serenity, that shines in the young and exquisite face before him.
Her eyes do not fall before his. She is plainly thinking. Yes; Mr. Hardinge was right, he will never like her. She is only a stay, a hindrance to him!
"I understand," says she sorrowfully. "He will not care—ever. I shall be always a trouble to him. He——"
"Why think of him?" says Sir Hastings contemptuously. He leans towards her; fired by her beauty, that is now enhanced by the regret that lies upon her pretty lips, he determines on pushing his cause at once. "If he cannot appreciate you, others can—I can. I——" He pauses; for the first time in his life, on such an occasion as this, he is conscious of a feeling of awkwardness. To tell a woman he loves her has been the simplest thing in the world hitherto, but now, when at last he is in earnest—when poverty has driven him to seek marriage with an heiress as a cure for all his ills—he finds himself tongue-tied; and not only by the importance of the situation, so far as money goes, but by the clear, calm, waiting eyes of Perpetua.
"Yes?" says she; and then suddenly, as if not caring for the answer she has demanded, "You mean that he—— You too think that he dislikes me?" There is woe in the pale, small, lovely face.
"Very probably. He was always eccentric. Perfect nuisance at home. None of us could understand him. I shouldn't in the least wonder if he had taken a rooted aversion to you, and taken it badly too! Miss Wynter! it quite distresses me to think that it should be _my _brother, of all men, who has failed to see your charm. A charm that——" He pauses effectively, to let his really fine eyes have some play. The conservatory is sufficiently dark to disguise the ravages that dissipation has made upon his handsome features. He can see that Perpetua is regarding him earnestly, and with evident interest. Already he regards his cause as won. It is plain that the girl is attracted by his face, as indeed she is! She is at this moment asking herself, who is it he is like?
"You were saying?" says she dreamily.
"That the charm you possess, though of no value in the eyes of your guardian, is, to me, indescribably attractive. In fact—I——"
A second pause, meant to be even more effective.
Perpetua turns her gaze more directly upon him. It occurs to her that he is singularly dull, poor man.
"Go on," says she. She nods her head at him with much encouragement.
Her encouragement falls short. Sir Hastings, who had looked for girlish confusion, is somewhat disconcerted by this open patronage.
"May I" says he—"You permit me then to tell you what I have so long feared to disclose. I"—dramatically—"love you!"
He is standing over her, his hand on the back of her chair, waiting for the swift blush, the tremor, the usual signs that follow on one of his declarations. Alas! there is no blush now, no tremor, no sign at all.
"That is very good of you," says Perpetua, in an even tone. She moves a little away from him, but otherwise shows no emotion whatever. "The more so, in that it must be so difficult for you to love a person in fourteen days! Ah! that is kind, indeed."
A curious light comes into Sir Hastings' eyes. This little Australian girl, is she laughing at him? But the fact is that Perpetua is hardly thinking of him at all, or merely as a shadow to her thoughts. Who is he like? that is the burden of her inward song. At this moment she knows. She lifts her head to see the professor standing in the curtained doorway down below. Ah! yes, that is it! And, indeed, the resemblance between the two brothers is wonderfully strong at this instant! In the eyes of both a quick fire is kindled.