Produced by Al Haines
THE TORCH BEARER
BY
REINA MELCHER MARQUIS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MY HUSBAND
FOR WITHOUT HIS HEARTENING FAITH IN MY
WORK, HIS GENEROUS SYMPATHY WITH IT,
AND HIS DISCERNING CRITICISM OF IT, THIS
BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.
THE TORCH BEARER
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 institution 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 assumed 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 amusements 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 leafage 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 snobbery, 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_ pass 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 gods
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 cockle shells 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 assented. "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 pronouncement 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?
Confess now--haven't you?"
But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does.
And neither have you, Peter. Sheila is different from you and me. You
know her mother was Irish--full of whimsical fancy and quaint
superstitions."
"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."
"Of course. You were only a boy when she died." And her eyes filled
with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in
fairies--even when she was face to face with a reality like death. And
Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough
to tell her about them. She never says anything about it, but I know
that she has a whole world which I can't share--the dream-world her
mother bequeathed to her."
"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.
"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful. But, Peter, it's sad for me
because--because I can't follow her there."
She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and
suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely
tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no
more--among them the door of fairyland.
"It's true," she said bravely, as if they had looked at those closed
doors together and she were answering his thought. "I'm an old woman
and I've lost the way to fairyland. So I want you to go with Sheila in
my place. I want you to guard her dream--and keep _her_ safe, too.
I'm afraid for her, Peter--I'm afraid!"
"Dear Mrs. Caldwell, how can I walk where your foot is too heavy?" And
Peter's voice was very gentle.
"Ask your poets that. I was never one for the poets. I can sew a fine
seam and make my garden grow--nothing more. But you have the store of
poetry--and you have youth."
"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who
was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."
"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what _I_ call the heavy foot.
But Theodore Kent is a good boy. He's just not good enough for Sheila.
I can't understand the child's liking him!"
Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair
shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and
smiling. His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat
bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy,
closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.
"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a
critical atmosphere.
"In the back garden. What do you want, Ted?"
He lifted a battered volume. "She promised to help me with this
rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of
Sheila's superior cleverness.
"Well, run along and find her." And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as
if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"
"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to?
What has it done for _me_?" murmured Peter, answering the glance. And
then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted. I
must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."
The back garden belied its humble name. The kitchen windows opened
upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect.
Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had
never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations.
The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been
bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in
bright beds and along the smooth walk. Toward the end of the garden,
and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming
branches to the spring wind.
And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a
still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were
drawing near.
At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm.
"Don't speak to her!" he whispered.
And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir nor
grow aware of their presence.
She was a slender little shape, lying there on the fresh grass--a thin
child, with a pale face and black hair braided away from it; a child
who was not actually pretty, nor, to the eyes of the casual observer,
in any other way remarkable. But to Peter she seemed touched, for the
moment, with the glamour of enchantment, this small dreamer communing
with her fays.
"Don't speak to her!" he said again, as Ted moved restively. "She's as
far away as if she were in a different world," he added softly, and
only to himself.
But Ted, overhearing, nodded comprehendingly. "Sheila does make you
feel like that sometimes, even if she _is_ standing right by you all
the time. She's queer--Sheila is. But," and he spoke boastfully,
though still in the cautious undertone Peter had used, "but I always
call her back!"
Peter looked down at him, at the frank, wholesome, unimaginative face,
fatuous now with the vanity of power.
"_I_ always call her back!" the boy repeated proudly.
"Yes," said Peter slowly, "you--and people like you--will always call
her back. But not this time, Ted--not this time. I'll help you with
your rhetoric myself. Sheila has better things to think of just now."
And putting his hands on the boy's shoulders, he turned him about for
retreat.
It occurred to Peter then that he was fulfilling Mrs. Caldwell's trust,
but he shook his head dubiously, nevertheless. He had saved one dream,
but--the future was long and the people like Ted were many and
intrepid. Suddenly he saw what life might do to a being like Sheila
and something of the fear and tenderness that Mrs. Caldwell had felt
smote upon his heart.