The Torch Bearer

Excerpt

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....