Miss Primrose: A Novel. Gilson Roy Rolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ had a fine, white, haggard face, too stern for a little child to care for, but less forbidding to a growing school-boy who had found by chance that it softened wonderfully with memories of that Rugby where Tom Brown went to school; for Dr. Primrose had conned his Xenophon within those very ivied-walls, and, what was more to Bertram Weatherby, under those very skies had fled like Tom, a hunted hare, working fleet wonders in the fields of Warwickshire.

      "A mad March hare I was, Bertram," he would tell me, the light of his eyes blazing in that little wind of a happy memory, only to sink and go out again. Smoothing then with his fine, white hands the plaid shawl which had been his wife's and was now a coverlet for his wasted knees, he would say, sadly:

      "Broomsticks, Bertram – but in their day there were no fleeter limbs in Rugby."

      There on my upper shelf is an old, worn, dusty copy of the Odes of Horace, which I cannot read, but it bears on its title-page, in a school-boy's scrawl, the name and date for which I prize it:

      "David Buckleton Primrose, Rugby, a. d. 18 – ."

      He laughed as he gave it to me.

      "Mark, Bertram," said he, "the 'a. d.'"

      "Thank you, sir," I replied, tremulously. "You bet I'll always keep it, Mr. Primrose."

      "Dr. Primrose," he reproved me, gently.

      "Doctor, I mean. Maybe Tom had one like it."

      "Likely," he replied. "You must learn to read it."

      "Oh, I will, sir – and Greek."

      "That's right, my boy. Remember always what Dr. Primrose said when he gave you Horace: that no gentleman could have pretensions to sound culture who was not well-grounded in the classics. Can you remember that?"

      Twice he made me repeat it.

      "Oh yes, sir, I can remember it," I told him. "Do you suppose Tom put in his name like that?"

      "Doubtless," said Dr. Primrose, "minus the a. d."

      "I didn't know you had a middle name," I said.

      "Buckleton was my mother's maiden name," he explained. "She was of the Wiltshire Buckletons, and a very good family, too."

      "David Buckleton Primrose," I read aloud.

      "Lineal descendant of Dr. Charles Primrose, Vicar of Wakefield," added the minister, so solemnly that I fairly caught my breath. I had no notion then of whom he spoke, but there was that in the chant of his deep voice and the pleasant, pompous sound he gave the title, which awed me so I could only stare at him, and then at Horace, and then at him again, as he lay back solemnly in his chair, regarding me with half-shut eyes. Slowly a smile overspread his features.

      "I was only jesting. Did you never hear of the Vicar of Wakefield?"

      "No," I said.

      "There: that little yellow book on the third shelf, between the green ones. He was its hero, a famous character of Oliver Goldsmith's. He also was a clergyman, and his name was Primrose."

      "Oh," I said, "and did he go to Rugby, sir?"

      Now, though the doctor laughed and shook his head, somehow I got that notion in my noddle, and to this very day must stop to remember that the vicar was not a Rugby boy. I have even caught myself imagining that I had read somewhere, or perhaps been told, that his middle name was Buckleton. One thing, of course, was true of both Primroses: they lived a. d.

      II

      LITTLE RUGBY

      Hunting fox-grapes on a Saturday in fall, or rambling truantly on a fair spring morning, and chuckling to hear the school-bells calling in vain to us across the meadows, it was fine to say:

      "Gee! If there was only a game-keeper to get into a row with!"

      And then hear Peter's answer:

      "Gee, yes! Remember how Velveteens caught Tom up a tree?"

      It was fine, I say, because it proved that Peter, too, knew Tom Brown's School Days, and all about Slogger Williams and Tom's fight with him, all about East and Arthur and Dr. Arnold, and Tom in the last chapter standing alone in the Rugby chapel by the doctor's grave.

      One night in winter I remember keeping watch – hard-pressed was Cæsar by the hordes of Gaul – a merest stripling from among the legions, stealthily deserted post, braving the morrow's reckoning to linger in delicious idleness by his father's shelves. There, in a tattered copy of an old Harper's, whose cover fluttered to the hearth-rug, his eyes fell upon a set of drawings of a gate, a quadrangle, a tower door with ivy over it, a cricket-field with boys playing and scattering a flock of sheep, a shop (at this his eyes grew wider) – a mere little Englishy village-shop, to be sure, but not like others, for this, indeed, was Sallie Harrowell's, where Tom bought baked potatoes and a pennyworth of tea! And out of one full, dark page looked Dr. Arnold – a face as fine and wise and tender as Bertram Weatherby had fancied it, so that he turned from it but to turn back again, thinking how Tom had looked upon its living presence in more wondrous days. Cæsar's deserter read and looked, and looked and read again, beside the hearth, forgetting the legions in the Gallic wilds, forgetting the Roman sentry calls for the cries of cricketers, and seeing naught but the guarded wickets on an English green and how the sheep browsed peacefully under the windows in the vines.

      Schoolward next morning Rugby and Cæsar nestled together beneath his arm. He found his Little Rugby on a hill – a red brick school-house standing awkwardly and solemn-eyed in its threadbare playground, for all the world like a poor school-master, impoverished without, well stocked within. It was an ugly, mathematical-looking Rugby, austere and angular, and without a shred of vine or arching bough for birds or dreams to nest in, yet Bertram Weatherby hailed it joyfully, ran lightly up its painted steps, and flung wide open its great hall-door. A flood of sound gushed forth – laughter, boisterous voices, chatter of girls, and the movement of restless feet. Across the threshold familiar faces turned, smiling, familiar voices rose from the tumult, his shoulders tingled with the buffets of familiar hands.

      "Hello, Bildad!"

      "Hello, old saw-horse!"

      "Hello, yourself! Take that!"

      But suddenly, in the midst of these savage greetings, that gentle pressure of an arm about him, and Peter's voice:

      "Hello, old man!"

      Bertram would whirl at that, his face beaming; they had met but yesterday – it was as years ago – "Hello, old man! Look, Peter!"

      But a gong clanged. Then all about them was the hurry and tramp of feet upon the stairs. Lost in the precious pages, they climbed together, arm in arm, drifting upward with the noisy current and through the doors of the assembly-hall.

      "See, Bertram – the cricket-bats on the wall!"

      "Yes; and the High Street – and Sallie Harrowell's!"

      "And the doctor's door!"

      Through another door just then their own masters were slowly filing, their own doctor last and weightiest of all, his smooth, strong face busy with some chapel reverie.

      "The Professor's like Arnold," Bertram told Peter as they slipped together into their double seat.

      The СКАЧАТЬ