"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.