“A TOUCH CAN MAKE OR A TOUCH CAN MAR”
The school was chosen and Toinette placed therein. What momentous results often follow a simple act. When Clayton Reeve placed his little girl with the Misses Carter, intending to leave her there a few months, and seek the change of scene so essential to his health, he did not realize that her whole future would be more or less influenced by the period she was destined to spend there. No brighter, sunnier, happier disposition could have been met with than Toinette’s when she entered the school; none more restless, distrustful and dissatisfied than her’s when she left it, nearly six years later.
If we are held accountable for sins of omission, as well as sins of commission, certainly the Misses Carter had a long account to meet.
Like many others who had chosen that vocation, they were utterly incapable of filling it either to their own credit or the advantage of those they taught. While perfectly capable of imparting the knowledge they had obtained from books, and of making any number of rules to be followed as those of the “Medes and Persians,” they did not, in the very remotest degree, possess the insight into character, the sympathy with their pupils so essential in true teachers.
It is not alone to learn that which is contained between the covers of a book that our girls are sent to school or college, but also to gather in the thousand and one things untaught by either books or words. These must be absorbed as the flowers absorb the sunshine and dew, growing lovelier, sweeter and more attractive each day and never suspecting it.
And so the shaping of Toinette’s character, so beautifully begun by the wise, gentle mother, passed into other and less sensitive hands. It was like a delicate bit of pottery, the pride of the potter’s heart, upon which he had spent uncountable hours, and was fashioning so skilfully, almost fearing to touch it lest he mar instead of add to its beauty; dreading to let others approach lest, lacking his own nice conceptions, they bring about a result he had so earnestly sought to avoid, and the vase lose its perfect symmetry. But, alas! called from his work never to return, it is completed by less skilful hands, a less delicate conception, and, while the result is pleasing, the perfect harmony of proportion is wanting, and those who see it feel conscious of its incompleteness, yet scarcely know why.
We will skip over those six miserable years, so fraught with small trials, jealousies, deceptions and an ever-increasing distrust, to a certain Saturday morning in December.
The early winter had been an exceptionally trying one, and Toinette, now nearly fourteen years old, had seen and learned many things which can only be taught by experience. She had seen that in some people’s eyes the possession of money can atone for many shortcomings in character, and that certain lines of conduct may be condoned in a girl who has means, while they are condemned in a girl who has not; that she herself had many liberties and many favors shown her which were denied some of her companions, although those companions were quite as well born and bred as herself, and with all the latent nobility of her character did she scorn not only the favors but those who showed them, and often said to her roommate, Cicely Powell: “If I chose to steal the very Bible out of chapel, Miss Carter would only say, ‘Naughty Toinette,’ in that smirking way of hers, and then never do a single thing; but if Barbara Ellsworth even looks sideways she simply annihilates her. I hate it, for it is only because Barbara is poor and I’m—well, Miss Carter likes to have the income I yield; I’m a profitable bit of ‘stock,’ and must be well cared for,” and a burning flush rose to the girl’s sensitive cheeks.
It was a bitter speech for one so young, and argued an all too intimate acquaintance with those who did not bear the mark patent of “gentlewoman.”
The six years had wrought many changes in the little child, both in mind and body, for, even though one had been cramped, and lacked a healthful development, the other had blossomed into a very beautiful young girl, who would have gladdened any parent’s heart. She was neither tall nor short, but beautifully proportioned. Her head, with its wealth of sunny, wavy hair, was carried in the same stately manner which had always been so marked a characteristic in her father, and gave to her a rather dignified and reserved air for her years. The big brown eyes looked you squarely in the face, although latterly they had a slightly distrustful expression. Hurry home, Clayton Reeve, before it becomes habitual. The nose was straight and sensitive, and the mouth the saving grace of the face, for nothing could alter its soft, beautiful curves, and the lips continued to smile as they had done in early childhood, when there was cause for smiles only. The mother’s finger seemed to rest there, all invisible to others, and curve the corners upward, as though in apology for the hardened expression gradually creeping over the rest of the face.
It is difficult to understand how a parent can leave a child wholly to the care of strangers for so long a period as Mr. Reeve left Toinette, but one thing after another led him further and further from home, first to Southern Europe, then across the Mediterranean into wilder, newer scenes, where nations were striving mightily. Then, just as he began to think that ere long his own land would welcome him, news reached him of trouble in a land still nearer the rising sun, and his firm needed their interests in that far land carefully guarded. So thither he journeyed. But at last all was adjusted, and, with a heart beating high with hope, he started for his own dear land and dearer daughter.
It must be confessed that he had many conflicting emotions as the great ship plowed its way across the broad Pacific, and ample time in which to indulge them. Many were the mental pictures he drew of the girl there awaiting him, and would have felt no little surprise, as well as indignation, could he have known that she was left in ignorance of the date of his arrival. But Miss Carter had reasons of her own for concealing it, and had merely told Toinette that her father was contemplating a return to the States during the coming year. It seemed rather a cold message to the girl whose all he was, for she had written to him repeatedly, and poured out in her letters all the suppressed warmth of her nature, yet never had his replies touched upon the subject of her loneliness and intense desire to see him, but had always assured her that he was delighted to know that she was happy and fond of her teachers. And Toinette had not quite reached the age of wisdom which caused her to suspect why he gave so little heed to such information, although it would not have required a much longer residence at the Misses Carter’s to enlighten her. Happily, before the revelation was made she was beyond further chicanery.