A Little Rebel by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (freenovel24 txt) 📖

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