The Torch Bearer.
by Reina Melcher Marquis.
CHAPTER I
Peter Burnett stood on the top-most of the broad white steps leading to the "Shadyville Seminary for Young Ladies." He had just closed the door of that sacred inst.i.tution behind him, and with a sigh of relief which was incompatible with the honors of his professorship. But Peter had never duly valued his position of instructor to Shadyville"s feminine youth, though his reverence for scholarship was deep and sincere.
It was Friday afternoon, and freed from the chrysalis of his bread-winning duties, he was about to spread his wings for the flight of his inclination. He looked out on the April greenery of the town with the fastidious gaze of one who has the world to choose from; for though he was a poor young school-master, clad in a shirt that had been darned too often, he was also a Burnett of Kentucky and born to a manner of leisure and arrogance.
Slowly, and with this manner at its best, he began to descend the steps. His whole lax figure a.s.sumed an air of indolence that, for all his lack of imposing proportions, subtly invested him with distinction, and he set a dallying, aristocratic foot upon the quiet street. In that descent he triumphed over the mended shirt--and forgot it.
From Friday afternoon until Monday morning--the brief interval when little girls are reprieved from lessons--he had indeed the world to choose from; or, to be accurate, the social world of Shadyville, of Kentucky, and of the larger south. Within that radius he might take his amus.e.m.e.nts where he would and it was a matter of some amazement to those less privileged than he that he made such unspectacular use of his opportunities. Why, thought they, should Peter Burnett waste his holidays over a country walk or a copy of Theocritus when he might be fashionably golfing, dancing a cotillion or flirting at a house party?
Not that Peter neglected these pursuits--being a more astute young man than his reserved face and tranquil gray eye would indicate--but that he paused occasionally in the round of them for what his admirers considered less worthy diversions.
And he was pausing now, as he loitered along the wide, silent street with its trees in pale, sweet leaf.a.ge and its old-fashioned houses showing a prim gayety in the bloom of their garden closes.
He loved this street which stretched the length of the town; beginning in homes of a humble sort; breaking, a little farther on, into a feverish importance as it ran along before the doors of the shops; gathering dignity unto itself as it gained the site of the Shadyville Seminary; and finally advancing, in the evolution of a social consciousness, through the select upper end of town, where it spread itself ingratiatingly beneath the feet of the "prominent citizens" and clung smugly to well-trimmed hedges instead of skirting shop doors, and dingy fences. Peter called its course its "rise in life"--so obvious was its sn.o.bbery, its persistent climbing; but his ridicule was the tolerant ridicule of affection. He knew the street like the nature of an old friend; he saw it like the face of one; and if he laughed now and then at its weaknesses, he was none the less certain to enjoy its company.
To walk along _with_ a street--not merely upon it--was one of his favorite pastimes, and this afternoon he pursued it in great contentment, with no thought of what its end should be, nor any definite desire. For it was his theory that to walk with a street, divining its moods and discovering its little dramas, was in itself an adventure, and need not lead to one.
But though he was content to stroll with the street, particularly in this pleasant neighborhood of its upper end, he soon halted, perforce, at the greeting: "Peter, you _won"t_ pa.s.s me by?"
It was a blithe voice that addressed him, pretty and clear, but it was not the voice of youth; and Peter, glancing toward the veranda whence it came, saw sitting there an old lady who was like the voice, pretty and blithe and brave, though with no affectation of a youth long gone.
His face lighted at sight of her, and he hastened up her garden path.
"Dear Mrs. Caldwell!" he cried, both hands extended. And then, with pleased alacrity, he settled himself upon the step at her feet.
"It"s worth while taking a walk up this way," he remarked appreciatively.
"Now confess," laughed the old lady, "confess that _I_ am not the adventure you are seeking this afternoon!"
"I wasn"t seeking one at all," disclaimed Peter, "but I couldn"t refuse a divine accident." And as she shook a chiding head at his flattery, he went on firmly: "It"s the wayside adventures like this which have long since decided me to start out with none in view. The G.o.ds presiding over a wayfarer"s destiny always offer him something better than he could have provided for himself!"
"Oh, Peter! Peter!" protested the old lady, "what a book of pretty speeches you are!" But the two smiled at each other with the happy understanding of friends to whom disparity of years was no barrier.
"And how does your garden grow, Mistress Mary?" Peter presently inquired.
Mrs. Caldwell looked out upon her trim flower beds where bloomed tulip and crocus in April festival. "My silver bells and c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.ls grow very well," she answered, in the spirit of the rhyme, "but"--and her delicate old face quivered into an anxious quickening of life--"but, Oh, Peter! I fear my pretty maid grows too fast for her own good."
"Sheila? Then you"ve seen?" And Peter sat up eagerly, shedding the garment of his indolence.
"Then you"ve seen!" returned Mrs. Caldwell. "But what have you seen, Peter? What do you think of her?"
"I think," said he slowly, "that she has the most delightful mind I"ve ever encountered."
Pride leapt into Mrs. Caldwell"s eyes, but, as if to make quite certain of him, she demurred: "She"s only a little girl, Peter--only a little twelve-year-old girl."
"Yes," he a.s.sented. "That"s why I"m so sure of her quality. At her age--to be what she is! Why, Mrs. Caldwell, her mind is like light!
And it isn"t just a wonderfully acute intelligence either. She has the feeling, the intuition, too. It"s as if she thinks with her heart sometimes!" And his face glowed as it never did save for something precious and rare.
"Have you considered her future?" he added.
Mrs. Caldwell smiled: "What do you suppose I"m living for?"
"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly. His grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was inherited.
"To make her so much wiser!"
"Wiser?" And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him.
For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might have withered and spoiled it. To him the wisdom of such living was beyond compare.
But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser. Peter, in my youth it wasn"t ladylike to be too wise. I had a few womanly accomplishments. I sewed. I sang. I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte Bronte. And I gardened a little--with gloves on and a shade hat to protect my complexion. And sometimes I made a dessert. Peter dear, I was a very nice girl, but--!" And she flung up her hands with a gesture that mocked at her futility.
"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.
"Oh, yes, she can--if some one wiser than I teaches her!"
"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville Seminary. ""I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"""
Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder. "I"m very serious," she said. "Here"s my little orphaned Sheila--my dead boy"s child--with no near kin in the world but me. And I"m not fit for the task of helping her to grow up. Oh, Peter, will _you_ help?"
"You know I will! At least, I"ll try."
She smiled at him through her earnestness. "Your rhetoric isn"t enough," she warned him. "All you know isn"t enough. You"ll have to keep on learning too, Peter, if you"re really going to help her."
"I will," he promised again. "I"m twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar--but I can still learn."
Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter. To tell you the truth, I"ve been really a little frightened lately."
"About Sheila? But she"s so sweet!"
"And so strange! She isn"t like a child. And it"s not because she"s outgrowing her childhood, for she"s not like a young girl either.
Peter"--and Mrs. Caldwell"s voice sank to a whisper now, as if she communicated a dangerous thing--"Peter, she"s like--_a poet_!"
Peter laughed outright at her timid p.r.o.nouncement of the word. "But is that so terrible?" he teased. "All poets are not mad, after all."
"Oh, you may laugh. I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is funny. But it"s genuine terror, Peter. What should I do with a poet on my hands? I tell you, I"m not wise enough to--to trim the wick of a star!"
"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet. What makes you think she"s likely to be?"
"You know how she reads--quite beyond the ordinary little girl"s appreciation?"
"Yes--but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of any sort. And I"m responsible for her reading. It isn"t so precocious after all. I"ve just given her simple, beautiful things instead of simple, silly ones."
"But, Peter, I"ve another reason besides her reading. She goes off by herself and sits brooding--dreaming--for hours at a time. I"ve come on her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn"t even realize that I was there--she was so rapt. She looked as if she were seeing visions!"
"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly. "I"ve seen visions in my time, and I"m no poet. Haven"t you--when you were as young as Sheila?