A Little Rebel | Page 8

sullenly.
The professor glances keenly at the girl's downcast face, and then at Miss Majendie. The latter glance is a question.
"You hear her," says Miss Majendie coldly--she draws her shawl round her meagre shoulders, and a breath through her lean nostrils that may be heard. "Perhaps you may be able to discover her meaning."
"What is it?" asks the professor, turning to the girl, his tone anxious, uncertain. Young women with "wrongs" are unknown to him, as are all other sorts of young women for the matter of that. And this particular young woman looks a little unsafe at the present moment.
"I have told you! I am tired of this life. I am dull--stupid. I want to go out." Her lovely eyes are flashing, her face is white--her lips trembling. "Take me out," says she suddenly.
"Perpetua!" exclaims Miss Majendie. "How unmaidenly! How immodest!"
Perpetua looks at her with large, surprised eyes.
"Why?" says she.
"I really think," interrupts the professor hurriedly, who sees breakers ahead, "if I were to take Perpetua for a walk--a drive--to--er--to some place or other--it might destroy this ennui of which she complains. If you will allow her to come out with me for an hour or so, I----"
"If you are waiting for my sanction, Mr. Curzon, to that extraordinary proposal, you will wait some time," says Miss Majendie slowly, frigidly. She draws the shawl still closer, and sniffs again.
"But----"
"There is no 'But,' sir. The subject doesn't admit of argument. In my young days, and I should think"--scrutinizing him exhaustively through her glasses--"in yours, it was not customary for a young gentlewoman to go out walking, alone, with 'a man'!!" If she had said with a famished tiger, she couldn't have thrown more horror into her tone.
The professor had shrunk a little from that classing of her age with his, but has now found matter for hope in it.
"Still--my age--as you suggest--so far exceeds Perpetua's--I am indeed so much older than she is, that I might be allowed to escort her wherever it might please her to go."
"The real age of a man now-a-days, sir, is a thing impossible to know," says Miss Majendie. "You wear glasses--a capital disguise! I mean nothing offensive--so far--sir, but it behoves me to be careful, and behind those glasses, who can tell what demon lurks? Nay! No offence! An innocent man would feel no offence!"
"Really, Miss Majendie!" begins the poor professor, who is as red as though he were the guiltiest soul alive.
"Let me proceed, sir. We were talking of the ages of men."
"We?"
"Certainly! It was you who suggested the idea, that, being so much older than my niece, Miss Wynter, you could therefore escort her here and there--in fact everywhere--in fact"--with awful meaning--"any where!"
"I assure you, madam," begins the professor, springing to his feet--Perpetua puts out a white hand.
"Ah! let her talk," says she. "Then you will understand."
"But men's ages, sir, are a snare and a delusion!" continues Miss Majendie, who has mounted her hobby, and will ride it to the death. "Who can tell the age of any man in this degenerate age? We look at their faces, and say he must be so and so, and he a few years younger, but looks are vain, they tell us nothing. Some look old, because they are old, some look old--through vice!"
The professor makes an impatient gesture. But Miss Majendie is equal to most things.
"'Who excuses himself accuses himself,'" quotes she with terrible readiness. "Why that gesture, Mr. Curzon? I made no mention of your name. And, indeed, I trust your age would place you outside of any such suspicion, still, I am bound to be careful where my niece's interests are concerned. You, as her guardian, if a faithful guardian" (with open doubt, as to this, expressed in eye and pointed finger), "should be the first to applaud my caution."
"You take an extreme view," begins the professor, a little feebly, perhaps. That eye and that pointed finger have cowed him.
"One's views have to be extreme in these days if one would continue in the paths of virtue," said Miss Majendie. "Your views," with a piercing and condemnatory glance, "are evidently not extreme. One word for all, Mr. Curzon, and this argument is at an end. I shall not permit my niece, with my permission, to walk with you or any other man whilst under my protection."
"I daresay you are right--no doubt--no doubt," mumbles the professor, incoherently, now thoroughly frightened and demoralized. Good heavens! What an awful old woman! And to think that this poor child is under her care. He happens at this moment to look at the poor child, and the scorn for him that gleams in her large eyes perfects his rout. To say that she was right!
"If Perpetua wishes to go for a walk," says Miss Majendie, breaking through a