"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.