A Little Rebel | Page 8

of June, he may be seen
sitting bolt upright in a hansom on his way to the unlovely house that
holds Miss Jane Majendie.
As he enters the dismal drawing-room, where he finds Miss Majendie
and her niece, it becomes plain, even to his inexperienced brain, that
there has just been a row on somewhere.
Perpetua is sitting on a distant lounge, her small vivacious face one
thunder-cloud. Miss Majendie, sitting on the hardest chair this hideous
room contains, is smiling. A terrible sign. The professor pales before it.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Curzon," says Miss Majendie, rising and
extending a bony hand. "As Perpetua's guardian, you may perhaps have
some influence over her. I say 'perhaps' advisedly, as I scarcely dare to
hope anyone could influence a mind so distorted as hers."
"What is it?" asks the professor nervously--of Perpetua, not of Miss
Majendie.
"I'm dull," says Perpetua 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