111XSTEVE DEVELOPS A MIND OF HIS OWN
In the autumn Mr. Polk’s happy plans materialized. There was a wedding in a handsome New York City home, and Steve Langly arrived the day before for the festivities. At the ceremony he and Anita Trowbridge, the little sister of Miss Grace, were the attendants. They came in first, Steve dressed as a page in a velvet suit which went well with his clear, dark complexion, and little Nita, as she was called, tripped beside him in delicate pink as a fairy flower girl. They stood on either side of a beautiful fox-skin rug with a history, upon which the bride and groom, slowly following, took their places to repeat the sacred vows which bound them for life.
Steve and Nita, as the only children, spent the evening together, roaming about the house, Steve finding new interests everywhere. He looked around at the rich furnishings and beautiful floral decorations with appreciative eyes, seeming not at all out of place in such surroundings. A feeling of awkwardness and timidity might have possessed so poor a boy reared anywhere else, but mountain-born as he112was, he accepted man’s magnificence with the same tranquil spirit that he did the shimmering silver of a mountain sunrise or the gorgeous colour-triumph of its sunset. But he did not understand Nita. She tried her most grown-up ways upon him, chatting after the manner of a little society belle, and while she was so pretty that he loved to look at her as he would have looked at a beautiful flower, he did not know what to say to her. Having talked of many things, and being an ardent little lover of pretty clothes, taken in with appreciative eyes the handsome costumes of the guests, she sighed at last and said:
“Oh, I just love to go down Broadway, don’t you, and see all the handsome gowns on people as they pass, and look in at the store windows!”
“I don’t know; I nuver was there,” he answered with a touch of his mountain speech, and then she laughed a silvery, childish laugh and said:
“You funny mountain boy,” in a natural, frank way that made Steve smile back and feel more at ease.
After this they got on well as a couple of children, while Nita often exclaimed, “You funny mountain boy.”
Mr. and Mrs. Polk called him their boy with a new sense of parentage after their marriage, and wanted to make him legally their son, but when it was proposed113that he be known in the future as Stephen Polk, he looked far off into space a moment, and then as though his spirit had winged its way back into the wilderness of its birth, he dropped into the old manner of speech and said:
“I thank yer, but I was born Langly, an’ I think I ought ter die Langly.”
They said no more, and soon decided to send him back to the mountain school for his preparatory work at least, largely because Mrs. Polk was strongly convinced this was best for the boy; so, during the next six years, he spent the school terms in the mountains and his vacations in the north with his foster-parents. The last two summers he took work in a city university with special courses in geology and mining engineering, for Mr. Polk, knowing the rich treasures stored in the Kentucky mountains, had brilliant plans for Steve’s future, dreaming of a time when the boy should be able to link these treasures with northern capital.
Mrs. Polk’s dreams were of another sort altogether. She never lost interest in the cause of education in these same Kentucky mountains, and many were the talks she and Steve had about the progress being made there and the needs constantly developing. Engrossed in business, as Mr. Polk came more and more to be, he took no note of his wife’s indirect influence,114while she did not realize that she was interfering with plans of his.
As Steve grew to young manhood Mr. Polk asked him as often as studies would permit in summer to go down to the office. He liked to give the boy a taste of the financial whirl, and it was intensely interesting and exciting to Steve. He felt something of the same tremor of wonder and delight over the inner whirl of gigantic machinery moving railroad systems which stirred him when he felt the first rush of a passing railroad train, and there was a certain eager desire to be a part of it all.
It was upon his sixth vacation visit that Mr. Polk turned to him one day at the office as the boy’s eyes glistened with interest and said:
“I shall want you at my elbow in a few years now. I shall be too old after a while to do all the things waiting to be done, and you remember your promise to climb that mountain of success for me whose heights I never shall be able to reach.”
But the youth of nineteen suddenly looked afar as the boy of thirteen had done when it was proposed that he change the old name of Langly, and a vision of rugged mountains and deep valleys which again spread out before him were tracked by eager bared feet of poorly clad children hurrying towards the few schools which here and there dotted the wilderness.115He was silent, for a definite conflict had begun in his soul.
Mr. Polk noticed the silence, and with a restless energy which was growing upon him, said to his wife that evening when they were alone:
“Look here, Grace, I am uncertain about Steve. That boy’s unfathomable. Here I have been counting upon his going into business, and I know business appeals to him for I can see it in his eye, and yet when I spoke to him definitely to-day he just looked off into space,” he ended in disgust.
Mrs. Polk laughed. “Well, you know, I have never been an enthusiast over money-making, and I don’t believe Steve ever will be,––though he may.”
“Why, look here,” her husband said impatiently, “if he gets a good knowledge of geology and mining engineering, as I mean he shall, he can locate and open up some good mines in those Kentucky mountains which will make us all rich.”
“Oh,” laughed Mrs. Polk again, “that doesn’t stir me a bit. But when I think of every little yearning child of the mountains well shod, with a clean kerchief in its pocket, and trudging away to school frosty mornings, then I begin to thrill.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Polk with impatient energy; “but money will help bring that to pass.”
“Yes, but it isn’t money alone that is necessary.116They need an apostle of education, one of their very own who shall go among them opening their eyes to the world of knowledge and opportunity.”
“And you would like our Steve to be that apostle, as you call him, I suppose.” Looking at her intently a moment, he softened and added, “Well, you are a dear, unworldly woman.” Then in sudden justification of himself, he went on: “I am willing he should be an apostle too, but one with money, so he can bring things to pass.”
And he said no more to his wife, neither did he trouble Steve in the least with definite propositions for the future, but in the late summer of that year he remarked in a matter-of-fact way:
“Well, Steve, it must be college now for the next two years at least.”
Whereupon Steve looked very sober and finally said: “Mr. Polk, you have been so good to me I cannot even talk about it. I do want to go to college more than I can express, but great, strapping fellow that I am, I ought not to accept your generosity any longer.”
“Now, son,” said Mr. Polk, with the tenderness he had given the little boy years before, “I want to do for you as I would for my own.”
Steve said huskily, “I appreciate it deeply, but you117know I couldn’t give up my name, and it is just as hard for me to give up my independence. If I go to college at your expense it must be with the distinct understanding that I am to repay every penny spent for me. Forgive me,” he added with a smile, “I suppose it is my mountain blood that makes me want to be free.”
Mr. Polk, looking at the strong young face, knew that he must yield, and so the money was advanced for Steve’s college expenses with the understanding that it was a loan.
The two college years were busy and profitable ones for Steve. He was fond of study and the regular courses of the school led him into new lines of interest while he still pursued his specialties of geology and mining engineering. The companionship of young men and women of inherited culture and opportunity of the best type was broadening and a fine means of general culture for him. Among the young women with whom he was thrown there developed no special interest for him, though he often wondered why. He, however, came to smile as he questioned his own heart or was questioned by chums, while he said, “We of mountain blood are slow, you know,” and he failed to note how certain memories of soft yellow curls above a little white pinafore were so sacred that he never mentioned them.
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He matured greatly in the two years, and at twenty-one was broad-shouldered from college athletics, six feet two in height, and his abundant dark hair with a suggestion of curl at the ends crowned a fine, clean-cut, somewhat slender face which in repose was serious, but possessed of a hidden smile which had formed the habit of flashing out suddenly, transforming his face with a peculiar radiance.
For the Christmas holidays of his last year at college he went home to the Polks as usual and one evening sat at the opera beside Nita Trowbridge in a little family party which included her. During all his comings and goings of the school years he had seen Nita with almost the familiarity of a brother. She was the child of middle age, petted and spoiled and much of a society butterfly as she developed into young ladyhood, though a very lovable one. Mr. and Mrs. Polk were greatly attached to her, and though it had not been hinted at, Steve knew that Mr. Polk would like nothing better than that they should marry when he was established in business. How Mrs. Polk would feel about it he was not so sure. Perhaps she doubted their congeniality of tastes.
As Nita sat beside him on this evening she watched Steve’s rapt enjoyment of Wagner’s beautiful, weird melodies. Between acts she said:
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“How intensely you enjoy music!”
“Yes,” he returned, throwing off the spell with an effort, “I do.” And then with a reminiscent flash the smile broke over his face. “I remember well where I heard the first music of my life. It was when I was twelve years old, and from a mountain fellow who had had no training. But he simply made the banjo talk, as the darkeys would say, and reproduced with skillful touch and thrilling voice a fox hunt which fairly set me crazy.
“Then the next,” he went on, “was at a church, just a little later, and never will I forget how the deep-toned organ stirred my soul to the very depths.” There was a quiet solemnity upon him as he said this which Nita did not break for a moment. Then she said:
“How barren the mountains must be! You will never want to go there again, will you?”
“Barren!” he exclaimed in return. “I wish I were an artist in word painting and I would make mountain peak after mountain peak glow with rhododendron and laurel, fill the valleys with silver sunrise-mist to glorify their verdure for you, and then call out all the fur and feathered folk and troops of mountain children from their forest homes. You would not think it a barren country,” he concluded with smiling eloquence.
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“Perhaps not,” she said slowly, “but to think of no good music, no pleasures, no,––anything that makes up our delightful living here,” she ended.
“That is true,” he responded gravely, adding almost to himself, “but it must be carried to them through work and sacrifice by somebody.”
Then becoming conscious the next instant of the brilliant scene about him his smile flashed over his face again and he turned to her with:
“By the way, did you see an account in the papers of the wreckage of a car load of millinery in the Kentucky mountains a few days ago?”
“No, I did not,” she smiled back.
“Well, there was a railroad wreck somewhere up there and a whole car load of millinery was sent out upon the four winds of heaven. Big hats and little, such as women know all about and men can’t even talk of, with all sorts of gorgeous flower trimmings, feathers and ribbons were scattered through the woods, and they say barefooted mountain women flocked from every direction and decked themselves in the latest styles of head-gear.”
Both laughed over the picture and Steve added:
“I suppose it would only need a procession of fashionable gowns parading the mountains to transform our women, while the sight of swallow-tails and silk hats might do as much for the men, for like the121rest of the world we take up the superficial with ease, but”––sobering again––“to give our people a glimpse into the knowledge contained in books, to waken us to life’s highest harmonies and open our eyes to nature’s beautiful hidden colours, is going to take a long time, and as I said, somebody must work and sacrifice for it.”
He searched the beautiful face beside him for sympathetic understanding, but she only looked at him with wide eyes as the frivolous little girl had done years before, not comprehending, while she wanted to say again, this time a little wistfully, “You funny mountain boy.”
No conception of life translated into labour and sacrifice for others, such as he had begun to battle with, had ever come within her range of thought, and the starting of the music again was welcome to them both.
At the end of two years Steve was graduated, having been thoroughly prepared upon entering college, and when he returned to his foster-parents at the close of school they were greatly pleased with their boy. On the second night after his arrival Mr. Polk sat with him after dinner and smoked in great satisfaction. But it was of short duration. Steve had had a letter from his alma mater, the Kentucky mountain school, asking him to return as a teacher there the next year, putting forth strongly the need and opportunity122for good. He had waited to talk the matter over with Mr. and Mrs. Polk before deciding, though it was pretty well settled in his own mind. He handed the letter to Mr. Polk.
“Of course you will not go,” said Mr. Polk, with decision, as soon as he had finished it. “There is an opening for you in the office and I am anxious for you to take hold at once.”
Steve looked afar again, as he had twice before when his fate was about to be settled for him, and Mr. Polk stirred impatiently. But the younger man turned at once, this time with that sudden smile upon his face, and said ingratiatingly:
“Mr. Polk, I am afraid I haven’t any head for business,––I love books far better. I feel a premonition that I shall be stupid in business.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Polk, with quick irritation. “I don’t believe it. You have never been stupid about anything.”
“I do not know,” Steve replied, serious again. “I have not been tried, I admit, and I must confess that business had a certain fascination for me as I have watched things stir in your office.”
“Of course, of course,” broke in Mr. Polk. “I have seen it in your face.”
“But–––” said Steve as promptly, and with a compelling earnestness in his voice that made the123older man hold himself in restraint. “Mr. Polk, I must tell you something before we go any further in this matter. My barren boyhood has never faded from my mind. I cannot put it from me. I live it again in the thought of every little child hidden away in the mountains in ignorance and squalor.
“There may be little ones of my own blood in the Hollow Hut home,” he added, and his voice dropped into a deep intensity which held them both motionless for a moment; then, for relief, breaking it again with that smile, he said: “I suppose it is the survival of our feudal mountain blood in me which makes me ready to go back to fight, bleed and die for my own.”
“It is simply a Quixotic idea you have gotten into your head that you should go back to the mountains and spend your life trying to help your people,” Mr. Polk replied emphatically.
“I don’t deny you may be right,” said Steve patiently, “but I got the idea fixed when I was a boy there at school having privileges which were denied so many, and you know one is very impressionable in early youth, and I confess that though for many pleasant reasons I have wanted to shake it off, I have been unable to do so.”
This roused Mr. Polk to instant combat. He rose and strode the floor.
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Mrs. Polk stood in the doorway an instant just then, but wisely and noiselessly slipped away.
“That’s all right to want to help your own, but the practical way to do it is with money,” he said vehemently.
“I am not entirely sure,” returned Steve slowly. “I confess I may be mistaken––but I have thought and thought over this ever since you first proposed two years ago that I should go into business with you, and though, as I have said, I am still uncertain, I believe I ought to go there and work for my people. It will be ten years at least before I can do much in a monetary way, but I can begin teaching at once. Besides,” he hurried on before Mr. Polk could speak, “people there need indoctrination,––inoculating so to speak, with the idea of education as much as they need money, and no one can do this so well as one of their own. Thanks to you, the best friend any boy ever had,” he went on, his voice breaking a little, “I have had advantages which have fallen to the lot of few mountain boys, and I feel that my responsibility is tremendous.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Polk, “but I do not agree with you as to the best way of meeting it. However,” he ended hotly, “I see you are like most young men of to-day whatever their obligations, you do not wish advice.”
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Steve was deeply hurt. “Mr. Polk,” he said, “I would rather give my right arm than have anything come between us. If it were a matter of personal ambition, I would yield at once to your good judgment, but––please understand,––let me make this clear,––I am not sure that going myself to work among my people is the best way, but I simply feel it should be tried first. If I should remain here a while, I know I would never go there, and if I find that I am wrong in going, at the end of two years I will gladly return to you for business.”
“If you go, Steve Langly, contrary to my advice and better judgment, you go for good,” said Mr. Polk sternly, pausing in his striding and emphasizing with a stamp of his foot.
Mr. Polk with his gentleness had always had a hot-headed, unreasonable side to his nature. It was seldom in evidence, but it had shown itself years before in his break with his sweetheart and it was showing itself again with the boy whom he loved most devotedly.
Steve bowed his head in silent, dignified acceptance. Following a forceful law of human nature this unreasonable resistance (as he saw it) was fixing him very firmly in his own resolution. But the thought of all the older man had been to him rushed upon him again with softening effect, and he said sadly at last:
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“I do not know how to make you understand, Mr. Polk,––but this need to go back to my own and try to help them is something inborn.”
“I am afraid it is,” said Mr. Polk curtly. “It is the mountain shiftlessness in you.”
Steve rose with flashing eyes and heaving breast, but remembering again, he controlled himself, and sat down. His voice was cool and crisp, however, as he said a moment later:
“I have no intention of forgetting my debt to you, Mr. Polk, and you have a right to know what are my prospects for paying it.” He named his salary, which was very meagre, and then added, “But my wants will be few,––and I have found that my pen promises to be a pretty good earning implement.” This he added with reluctance, for he had not meant to tell it. “I shall pay you as soon as possible,” he ended.
“Just as you please,” said Mr. Polk again curtly, and strode this time out of the room for the night.
Steve soon followed, going to his room with a sense of desolation that was akin to the desolation of his boyhood in the wilderness. He felt that he must leave New York at once, for he could not stay longer with self-respect under the roof which had been home to him for so many years. What “little mother,” as he had come to call Mrs. Polk, would127say he did not know, but his heart warmed when he thought of her, and comforted at last by the feeling that she at least would not misunderstand him, he fell asleep towards morning. And in his fitful dreaming her sweet face was strangely crowned with soft yellow curls and she wore a little white pinafore!
The next day Steve had a long talk with Mrs. Polk. She had heard of the trouble from Mr. Polk, and had done all in her power to bring about a change in his state of mind. Failing utterly and knowing his tenacity when an idea was once fixed, she could not encourage Steve with the hope of any immediate change. Neither could she urge the young man to abandon his purpose, for she felt that he alone must decide his future, and though in her heart she approved his course, so deeply was she grieved over the alienation between him and Mr. Polk that she held it in restraint. She knew that she had helped to shape his determination, and woman-like was fearful now she had made a mistake.
When Steve said that he must go, she did not try to keep him, but her eyes were brimming with tears when he tenderly kissed her good-bye, as he had always been in the habit of doing, and she pressed a roll of money in his hand, whispering, “It is my own.”
“No, no, little mother,” he said with determined128good cheer, “I do not need it. I was very economical the last few weeks at school, for I had forebodings of trouble; then,––I earned some money writing little stories for boys, the past year.”
Scarcely noticing the last remark she hesitated a moment, wanting to insist that he take it, and yet reluctant. Then she held him by the shoulders with her slender hands, and said earnestly:
“If you ever need, you will let me know, will you not?”
“I certainly will, dearest little mother in the world,” he said, his own eyes glistening with tears.
There was a formal leave-taking with Mr. Polk at the office, and then he went his way back to the mountains of his birth.
129XIEXPERIENCE
As the train carrying Steve southward reached a point where rugged peaks began pushing majestically up into the distant firmament he felt again the old thrill of the mountaineer’s love of the mountains, while his trained eye noted with keen pleasure new details of line and colour. Then, when the railroad trip was over and he neared the end of the forty-mile wagon ride, bringing the little tower surmounting “The Hall” of his alma mater in sight once more, his face lit up with tender joy, for the old place had meant more to him than schools do to the average boy. Sweeping his eye back over a landscape where purple heights were tipped with sunset gold in the distance, giant beeches held aloft their summer leafage in the valleys and mountain flower-favourites bloomed in glorious June profusion everywhere, he inwardly exclaimed, with sudden reverence:
“That is God’s part, the fashioning of this beautiful setting,” and then turning again to the group of school buildings, “and this is man’s,––the bringing of humanity into harmony with the perfection of His handiwork.”
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He had been unable to throw off entirely the depression which had followed the rupture with Mr. Polk, and deeply stirred emotionally as he had been in parting with Mrs. Polk, it required this spiritual interpretation of school life to restore his equilibrium.
But the battle involved in the step he had taken was by no means fought in that one flash of high conception. Being a wholesome, normal fellow with an ordinary amount of selfish desire for comfort (though he had seemed to follow a Quixotic idea into the wilderness), he found himself at once missing the luxuries of life to which he had become accustomed. All through the summer he travelled about on horseback,––sometimes on foot,––stopping often at little squalid cabins, and often also at meagre homes where housewives wrung his heart with their pathetic effort to be thrifty and cleanly on almost nothing, and everywhere he tried to inoculate the people with the idea of education. On the whole his experience proved more of a hardship than he had believed possible with his early mountain bringing up. He discovered that he had a decided liking for individual towels, and was quite capable of annoyance when obliged to bathe his face in a family tin wash-pan,––or temporarily idle skillet where wash-pans were unknown,––while his predilection for a bath tub with hot and cold water on tap had become more fixed than he had suspected.
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“Have I already grown too fastidious to be helpful to my own people?” he asked himself in disgust. Then he squared his shoulders and set his lips in fresh determination. But, a moment later, with that sudden smile upon his face, he also resolved to compromise a bit with hardship. He stopped at the first wayside store and invested in towels which he learned to wash and dry at convenient times. This gave him pleasant independence, and since his bedroom had always been fixed in the open,––for from the first he could not bring himself to sleep in crowded rooms where whole families took their rest,––he could make his morning toilet without offense to his hosts, while a soapy plunge in some mountain stream became a luxury he would not readily forego. And always, whatever the hardship, there was the compensation of barefooted boys and girls held spellbound, and often fathers and mothers as well, while he unfolded the wonders of a world which lay beyond the mountain’s rim, and always he had the advantage of being able to assure them that he, too, was mountain bred.
So, with contending against many things distasteful on one side, and exhilaration while little hands clung to his as his had clung to Mr. Polk’s that long ago day in the heights about Hollow Hut, the summer passed and he began his work as teacher.
He had long known that he would enjoy teaching,132and took up his duties with keen interest. Fortunately for him he had little conceit or pedantry, which would have been a fatal handicap for him as teacher among his own people, simple-hearted though they were. He organized his work with straightforward earnestness and quiet ability and things usually moved smoothly in his class room. But many old difficulties in the life of the school with which he had seen the teachers battling when he was a pupil promptly presented themselves afresh to test the tact, skill and wisdom of the young teacher. Some boys still came to school with well-developed taste for tobacco and liquor which parents still indulged, and passing mountaineers often good-naturedly fostered. Having helped to battle with these things as a boy he knew somewhat how to handle them. But another matter of which he took little note in his student days, but which had nevertheless always been a difficult problem, was love-making in the school. He was sorely puzzled how to wisely handle this.
“Little mother,” he wrote Mrs. Polk, “my chief difficulty is laughable in a sense, but from another point of view it is really a stupendous problem! One old mountaineer said to me last summer, ‘Them schools is the courtin’est places in the world.’ I begin to think he was right, and it is not always the superficial flirting and love-making which is a part of133your coeducational schools,––a thing simply trivial and naughty,––but often tragic passion instead, quite in harmony with the title of Dryden’s play, ‘All for Love, or the World Well Lost’!
“Really, these children of the woods hear the call to mate as naturally as the birds in the trees, and knowing nothing of Fifth Avenue brown stone fronts or cozy cottages at Newport, they want to leave school, gather twigs and build their nests at once. And sometimes one feels as guilty in breaking up such prospective nests as when molesting a pair of birds!
“Am I getting to be something of a sentimentalist? Well, I assure you I am not going to let it grow upon me. I bear sternly in mind that, like the first pair of human beings in the Garden of Eden, they have really eaten of the tree of knowledge and know some things which they ought not to know,––having some secrets from the rest of mankind which are not at all good for them,––while the things they need to know for higher, better living are so numerous, that I ruthlessly break the tenderest hearts, and insist on study and discipline; for nothing but education, mental, moral and spiritual, will ever bring the greatest people in the world, the people of the Kentucky mountains, into their just inheritance! You see how completely identified I am again when I indulge in Kentucky134brag,––which is not so different after all from the brag of other sections, and I promise not to let this grow upon me either, for work and not brag is before me, as you know. I want you to see, however, that I continue to feel the mountaineer is worth working for.
“But to return to the love-making. Tragedy and comedy are in evidence enough to lure me into the field of romance, but the practical hindrances to daily school work are too absorbing for great indulgence of my pen. Ardent swains pay open court to their sweethearts, promenading halls and grounds together and even pressing suit in the class room! While frequently the crowning difficulty in the whole matter is the pleased approval of parents! Early marriage, you know, is most common in the mountains, girls of twelve and thirteen often taking up the duties of wives and the great desire of parents for their daughters is usually to get them early married off.
“But,––I suspect this is all familiar to you,” he reminded himself, “and still I must tell it to you,––and let you laugh over a recent experience I have had with a pair of lovers.
“You may be sure that I have lectured most earnestly and scientifically upon the evils of tobacco and liquor for the young, and also have set forth as tactfully and convincingly as I know how the fact that a135school is not the place for lover-like attentions, beseeching them to give themselves wholly to the business of acquiring knowledge while they are here, with all the eloquence of which I am capable. But, in spite of this, as I was leaving my recitation room at the close of school a few days ago I noticed a girl, Alice Tomby, lingering with Joe Mott, one of her admirers, and stepping outside I found another admirer of hers standing beneath a near-by tree, with clenched fist and blazing eyes.
“I knew that a typical mountain tragedy was quite possible and stopping casually a moment to look at my watch, I turned and went back to find the girl and her beau in a most lover-like attitude.
“I threw my shoulders out to their broadest, and walked with all the dignity I could summon to my desk where I stood before them a moment in silence. Their sheepish faces were a study for the cartoonist, and I wanted to laugh more than I can tell you, but I finally said gravely:
“‘Miss Tomby and Mr. Mott’ (the use of the last name with Mr. or Miss, which is unusual in the mountains, is always most impressive), ‘you are guilty of breaking a rule of the school. You must remain and write twenty times each the sentence I shall put upon the board.’
“Then an old song came suddenly into my mind136and I wrote without quiver of lash or hint of smile the silly lines:
“‘Frog went courting, he did ride,Sword and pistol by his side.’
“‘That!’ said the fellow, looking startled, while the girl hung her head.
“‘Yes, that,’ I replied in perfect seriousness. And the two wrote the lines under my most calm, most dignified eye till they were thoroughly disgusted with themselves and one another. When at last they went out, the girl tossed her head and ignored both her crestfallen and her jealous lover. With books under her arm she went alone straightway to the boarding hall.
“The story of the discomfited lovers is spreading in the school, and the quotation of ‘Frog went courting, he did ride,’ hilariously given is quenching the ardour of many an amorous swain. Possibly a little wholesome humour may after all be more helpful than stern enforcement of rules, and you know if there is one thing more than another we mountain folks lack, it is a sense of humour! So, even on general principles, it will do no harm to cultivate it.
“However, with all this cruel separation of tender hearts perhaps I am in a fair way to become a cynical old bachelor instead of a sentimentalist.”
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He was determined to write cheerfully, for he knew that she constantly grieved over the alienation between Mr. Polk and himself, so his letters usually held bright accounts of his work, though sometimes he let her have a glimpse of the struggle which went on in his heart.
He wrote once after a contest with himself over natural desire for more congenial surroundings:
“Little mother, when things seem too sordid and commonplace and barren for endurance, as I confess they have a way of doing at times, I do crave a look into your dear face. But as I am too far away to see you clearly, I remember how you came down here and worked with dauntless courage and good cheer, and I take heart again. Then several things recently have contributed to make me ashamed of faint-heartedness, and I really think I am going to develop some stronger fibre.
“The pathos of the mountain desire for ‘larnin” has come to me overwhelmingly lately. A woman came on foot forty miles over the mountains last week bringing her daughter and seven others of neighbours and friends to the school only to find there was no room for them. But so great was the mother’s distress and so appealing her sacrifice and hardship in making the trip that one of our lady teachers took the daughter into her own room rather138than see the mother disappointed. A few days later two boys came in having driven a pair of lean goats over thirty miles hitched to a rude cart, which held all the earthly possessions they could muster, the old father and mother walking behind,––all hoping to buy entrance to the school for the boys. They, too, were disappointed, for we are full to overflowing this year. Then to cap the argument for stout-heartedness on my part, I went for a stroll yesterday afternoon and came across a boy who is making one of the bravest fights for an education that I ever saw. I found him putting his shoulder to great boulders on the mountainside, rolling them down and then setting himself to break them in pieces for use in paving our little town,––for you must know that under the influence of the school it is beginning to strive for general improvement. The boy, whose father is a worthless fellow, works at rock-breaking till he earns enough to go to school a while; then, when the money is gone, he returns to work again with a pathetic patience which has stirred me deeply.
“So, mother mine, when I long for a sight of your face,––and an old-time hand-clasp from Mr. Polk, as I assure you I too often do, or when I crave the feast of books and the quiet student atmosphere of a city library, I am simply going to think on these things in the future.”
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The second summer in the mountains came on and was a repetition of the first. The school was getting more pupils than could be accommodated, it was true, but Steve felt that contact with the thought of education would help to further the general cause. Then, journeying about through the wilderness was also a means of gathering fresh material for his nature and hunting stories for boys.
There was a distinct drawing towards the Follets in his subconscious mind, the real objective of which he would scarcely admit to himself. He put from him suggestive pictures of curls and pinafores which memory and flitting dreams still flashed before him at times. He meant to go there some day for he wanted to express his gratitude for all the kindness of the past, but the time had not yet come. He must not for the present be diverted in the least from the purpose which was occupying him. He must repay Mr. Polk,––that was the thought which dominated him, and to that end he was frugally gathering all the money he could. As he had carried the fox skin through the wilderness when a boy, so now he carried the thought of that debt in his mind, and no robber in the form of pleasant indulgence should prevent him from meeting his obligation.
The second session passed, and he had learned140how to handle his difficulties with better success, while his method of teaching was more definitely marked out and he found more leisure for the use of his pen. Fresh, bright stories with the breath of the mountains in them began to find ready sale, and occasionally as his pen dipped a bit into romance it brought more than ordinary returns. Upon the tide of this success came a strong temptation: Why not go to a distinctly literary atmosphere and make a business of literature? He felt an inward assurance of making good and a longing for the work which was almost overpowering. Money for the debt must continue to accumulate very slowly when so much time must be given to the daily business of teaching, for which he was very poorly paid, and he could not know freedom until that debt was paid. In literary work, too, he could combine the cause of mountain need with his daily task with equal effectiveness in both directions, for could he not portray with great pathos the mental, spiritual and material poverty of his people? And he stifled for the moment something within him which cried, “Others might do that, but never one of our own!” Beside all this it was probable, as Mr. Polk had said, that money was more sorely needed for schools than personal service and he believed by giving himself to literary work he could earn it. He had never been141perfectly sure that giving his life to teaching and personal work among his people was the best method of helping them, so he need not feel chagrined by any inconsistency.
So great was the temptation which came to him at this crisis that he determined when the session closed to go for a visit to Mirandy’s family and from there to the Follets, with the thought that he would not like to leave the mountains without seeing them, and it would doubtless be best to go east for his literary career. In this satisfactory justification of the latter visit he allowed himself the freedom of pleasant reminiscence about the spot where life first began to really unfold for him.
“Little Nancy,” he said to himself, “why she must be nineteen now, clothed in long frocks and maidenly dignity, I suspect,––but I certainly hope she still wears the little white pinafores.” And his eyes grew misty with a tenderness which he would have classified as brotherly, had it occurred to him to question himself. Then he smiled suddenly and said, “Yes, I must go and see about those pinafores before I leave the mountains.”
He made the visit to Hollow Hut first, and in the ease of a saddle seat he reached the old familiar wood by a much more direct trail than he had followed when a boy. He halted his pony at last by the great142boulder where Tige lay buried. The tragedy of his grief on that long-ago morning when he had touched the stiffened body of his old friend came back to him with such vividness that, in spite of “Time’s long caressing hand,” he could not “smile beholding it.” He hitched his horse close by with a sense of the old dog’s nearness and protection, for he meant to camp on that spot during his stay as he used to do when a boy. Then he went on foot down the mountainside to his old home in the hollow, little dreaming, as he passed along its rocky fastness, that a “still” was hidden there.
It was just dusk of an early June day, and cool shadows dropped their soft curtains about the old log house as he walked towards the door unannounced. He stopped a moment at the grave of his father and mother, and then followed noiselessly the little worn path to the cabin. As he drew near, he saw the fitful light of blazing pine-knots on the hearth and caught the sound of boisterous laughter. Reaching the door he stood a moment in the shadow of the outer darkness, before stepping into the light. Then,––what he saw transfixed him! White to the lips he watched a moment.
A group of men, Mirandy’s husband among them, surrounded a little fellow about six years old, who, having been made reeling drunk, was trying to walk a crack in the floor. The little victim swayed and tottered and struggled under the hilarious urging of his spectators.
“Hit’s Champ fer his pappy”
“Hit’s Champ fer his pappy”
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Steve’s first mad impulse was to snatch up the wronged child, and, if necessary, face the half-drunken men in battle. But this would be worse than useless his second sober thought told him, for there stood Mirandy looking carelessly on from the kitchen door behind. The child was doubtless hers, and the father was taking part in the revolting deed! What could he do? He knew they would brook no interference.
With hard-won self-control he stepped upon the threshold, courteously lifted his hat and bade them “Good-evening.”
Instantly the men turned and pistols clicked, for they thought him a revenue officer; but Mirandy, looking into his still boyish face which had caught the light, while his unfamiliar figure was in shadow, exclaimed:
“Don’t shoot! Hit’s Steve, my little buddie Steve!” And she stepped across the room to him in a way which showed she was capable of being stirred into action sometimes.
The men looked uncertain, but Mirandy’s husband, peering into Steve’s face a moment, said:
“Yes, that’s right, hit’s Steve Langly, though I’d144nuver knowed ye in the world,” and the other men dropped back.
The child in the centre of the room looked about with dull eyes, then dropped to the floor in a pitiful little drunken heap.
With his heart wrung to the point of agony, Steve stepped forward and stooping down lifted it tenderly to his breast. In the old home that little boy represented himself, as he used to be. When he could speak he said in a voice which trembled upon the silence:
“This is my little nephew, is it not?”
And Mirandy cried out sharply to her husband, without answering the question:
“Ye shan’t nuver do that no more,” and the men slunk out one by one, ashamed, rebuked, sobered, though they could not have told why.
Steve turned as they left and sat down, still holding the child to his breast. Then gently releasing his hold with one hand he tenderly pushed back the damp hair from the little swollen face, while Mirandy stood by, the tears dropping down her cheeks,––a thing most unusual for a mountain woman. And she said again passionately, “Champ shan’t nuver make him drunk agin.”
“What is his name?” asked Steve at last.
“Hit’s Champ fer his pappy. The bigges’ one––he’s145outdoors some’eres,––he’s named Steve,” she said in mollifying tone. “He was borned the nex’ winter atter you was here, an’ you’d been sech a likely lookin’ boy I thought I’d name him fer ye.”
“That was good ev you, Randy,” said Steve dropping tenderly into the old form of speech. “I’ll be glad ter see my namesake. Air the two all ye hev?”
“No, thar’s the baby on the bed; she’s a little gal,” Mirandy replied dully. “Then there’s two on ’em that died, when they was babies. We women allus gits chillun enough,” she said, in a whining voice peculiar to the older women of the mountains which she had already acquired.
Steve remained a month and it was the most trying time of his life. When he learned of the “still,” which he did very promptly, despair for Mirandy, her husband and the children filled his heart. Champ Brady was always under the influence of his “moonshine,” and Steve knew it was perfectly useless to try to dissuade him from making or using it. Mirandy had his own distaste for it, but she had been accustomed to the thought of its free use all her life, and how could he make her listless mind comprehend its danger for her children? Not trusting her emotion and passionate protest the day he came, he talked with her earnestly many times and made her promise to do all she could to keep the children from it.