A Little Rebel

by Duchess

After this, he seems too overcome to continue his reflections, so goes back to the fatal letter. Every now and then a groan escapes him, mingled with mournful remarks, and extracts from the sheet in his hand—

"Poor old Wynter! Gone at last!" staring at the shaking signature at the end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icy clutch that should prevent the poor hand from forming ever again even such sadly erratic characters as these. "At least," glancing at the half-read letter on the cloth—"this tells me so. His solicitor's, I suppose. Though what Wynter could want with a solicitor—— Poor old fellow! He was often very good to me in the old days. I don't believe I should have done even as much as I have done, without him… It must be fully ten years since he threw up his work here and went to Australia!… ten years. The girl must have been born before he went,"—glances at letter—"'My child, my beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love, will be left entirely alone. Her mother died nine years ago. She is only seventeen, and the world lies before her, and never a soul in it to care how it goes with her. I entrust her to you—(a groan). To you I give her. Knowing that if you are living, dear fellow, you will not desert me in my great need, but will do what you can for my little one.'"

"But what is that?" demands the professor, distractedly. He pushes his spectacles up to the top of his head, and then drags them down again, and casts them wildly into a sugar-bowl. "What on earth am I to do with a girl of seventeen? If it had been a boy! even _that _would have been bad enough—but a girl! And, of course—I know Wynter—he has died without a penny. He was bound to do that, as he always lived without one. Poor old Wynter!"— as if a little ashamed of himself. "I don't see how I can afford to put her out to nurse." He pulls himself up with a start. "To nurse! a girl of seventeen! She'll want to be going out to balls and things—at her age."

As if smitten to the earth by this last awful idea, he picks his glasses out of the sugar and goes back to the letter.

"You will find her the dearest girl. Most loving, and tender-hearted; and full of life and spirits."

"Good heavens!" says the professor. He puts down the letter again, and begins to pace the room. "'Life and spirits.' A sort of young kangaroo, no doubt. What will the landlady say? I shall leave these rooms"—with a fond and lingering gaze round the dingy old apartment that hasn't an article in it worth ten sous—"and take a small house—somewhere—and— But—er—— It won't be respectable, I think. I—I've heard things said about—er—things like that. It's no good in looking an old fogey, if you aren't one; it's no earthly use,"—standing before a glass and ruefully examining his countenance—"in looking fifty, if you are only thirty-four. It will be a scandal," says the professor mournfully. "They'll cut her, and they'll cut me, and—what the deuce did Wynter mean by leaving me his daughter? A real live girl of seventeen! It'll be the death of me," says the professor, mopping his brow. "What"—wrathfully—"that determined spendthrift meant, by flinging his family on my shoulders, I—— Oh! Poor old Wynter!"

Here he grows remorseful again. Abuse a man dead and gone, and one, too, who had been good to him in many ways when he, the professor, was younger than he is now, and had just quarrelled with a father who was only too prone to quarrel with anyone who gave him the chance, seems but a poor thing. The professor's quarrel with his father had been caused by the young man's refusal to accept a Government appointment—obtained with some difficulty—for the very insufficient and, as it seemed to his father, iniquitous reason, that he had made up his mind to devote his life to science. Wynter, too, was a scientist of no mean order, and would, probably, have made his mark in the world, if the world and its pleasures had not made their mark on him. He had been young Curzon's coach at one time, and finding the lad a kindred spirit, had opened out to him his own large store of knowledge, and steeped him in that great sea of which no man yet has drank enough—for all begin, and leave it, athirst.

Poor Wynter! The professor, turning in his stride up and down the narrow, uncomfortable room, one of the many that lie off the Strand, finds his eyes resting on that other letter—carelessly opened, barely begun.

From Wynter's solicitor! It seems ridiculous that Wynter should have had a solicitor. With a sigh, he takes it up, opens it out and begins to read it. At the end of the second page, he starts, re-reads a sentence or two, and suddenly his face becomes illuminated. He throws up his head. He cackles a bit. He looks as if he wants to say something very badly—"Hurrah," probably—only he has forgotten how to do it, and finally goes back to the letter again, and this time—the third time—finishes it.

Yes. It is all right! Why on earth hadn't he read it first? So the girl is to be sent to live with her aunt after all—an old lady—maiden lady. Evidently living somewhere in Bloomsbury. Miss Jane Majendie. Mother's sister evidently. Wynter's sisters would never have been old maids, if they had resembled him, which probably they did—if he had any. What a handsome fellow he was! and such a good-natured fellow too.