Steve had never seen before, and the boy felt somehow that his good
friend had become a stranger as they walked back to the boys'
dormitory for the night. Next morning, too, something had come between
them, and when Mr. Polk said he would leave that day instead of
staying several days, as he had intended, Steve could make no reply.
Before Mr. Polk left, however, in giving final instructions to his
charge, the old kindly manner returned, and as he said, "I hope you
will like it here, son," the boy replied with his old freedom:
"I knows I'm a-goin' to like it, and that thar Miss Grace Trowbridge
is the nicest one of 'em all. She used ter live in New York City, the
president said, whar you used ter live. Didn't you nuver know her
thar?" he asked innocently, not yet comprehending in the least city
conditions.
Mr. Polk set his lips grimly and answered sternly: "Yes," as he
mounted a mule to ride back the forty miles to the nearest railroad
station.
What was the matter again? The boy did not know, and he felt as
though a sudden chill had come upon him. But a moment later Mr. Polk
looked down at him kindly, reached over, pressed his hand, and said:
"Be a good boy," as he rode away on the ambling mule.
So Steve began his school life. He went into the second reader class,
his opportunities at the Follets' having put him beyond the beginners.
In his class were children of all ages and mature men and women, who
were just getting their first opportunity to learn. Steve was bright
and quick, had a good mind, and made rapid progress.
With the superior social advantages which he had found along the way
from Hollow Hut to the school, the boy became a great ally of the
teachers in the battle for nightgowns, combs, and brushes for the hair
and teeth, also for white shirts, collars and neckties on Sunday,
which most of the boys thought "plum foolishness anyways."
"Here, fellows," Steve would say when he found them turning in at
night with soiled feet, coats and trousers, "this ain't the way ter
git ter be president." He organized a company of "regulators" in the
boys' dormitory, and when any fellows turned in with soiled feet,
coats and trousers, Steve's shrill whistle summoned the army and a
lively pillow fight ensued which was hard on the pillows but always
brought victory for nightgowns. And when a boy refused to brush his
hair in the morning the regulators invariably caught him, and the
penalty was a thorough brushing down of his rebellious locks by at
least twenty-five sturdy young arms. Under such methods the cause of
nightgowns and brushes was made to thrive.
There was another cause which was more difficult, but which enlisted
all Steve's best endeavour. Mountain children are apt to know the
taste of liquor from babyhood, but Steve had never liked it and
neither had his mother. Occasionally parents, especially fathers, when
they visited the school would bring the children bottles of
"moonshine" to hide and drink from as they pleased, and the teachers
found Steve a great helper, though his corps of "regulators" could not
always be relied upon.
In the midst of his interesting, new surroundings Steve's mind often
went back to the rock where Tige lay and to the grave of his "mammy."
How pleased she would be, he thought again and again,--maybe she
was--that he was where he could "larn things."
He soon began to write letters to Mr. Polk, and a steady improvement
was noted all winter in these letters. There was always a great deal
in them about Miss Grace, for she seemed to make him her special
charge and the two were great friends. She loved to walk in the woods
and talk with Steve, hearing him tell many interesting things which he
had learned from intimate association with birds and animals.
Sometimes she would take his hand at the top of a hill and together
they would race down, laughing and breathless to the bottom. After
such a run, one day, they halted by the bank of a stream beneath one
of the grand old beeches for which Kentucky is famous.
"Oh, Steve," she exclaimed enthusiastically, "what a beautiful old
beech this is. How symmetrical its giant trunk, how perfect its
development of each branch and twig, while it pushes up into the sky
higher than all its fellows, gets more sunshine than all the rest, has
the prettiest growth of ferns and violets at its base,--and I just
know the birds and squirrels love it best!"
Miss Grace had a bubbling, contagious enthusiasm, and Steve followed
her expressive gestures as she pointed out each detail of perfection
with answering admiration.
"Steve!" She turned suddenly and bent her eyes upon him with still
more radiant emphasis. "I want you to be just such a grand specimen of
a man! Big and strong and well developed,--pushing up into the sky
further than all the rest about you, getting more sunshine than any
one else--making little plants to grow and blossom all about you and
drawing to you the sweetest and best in life!"
He smiled back into her shining eyes, somewhat bewildered, but with an
earnest:
"I shore will try, Miss Grace, but I don't know just what you mean."
"I mean I want you to study hard, to develop every power of mind and
body you have, and then,--give your life for the uplift of the
children of the mountains."
She did not press him for a promise, nor linger upon the subject, but
the first dim outline of that mystic height of the boy's vision had
been traced.
Upon another walk which they took together Steve asked Miss Grace how
she happened to come from her home way up in New York down to Kentucky
to teach mountain boys and girls, and she was silent a moment, a look
which he could not fathom coming over her bright face. At last she
said, "I was very foolish; I threw away happiness. Then I heard of
this work and came here that I might redeem my life by making it
useful."
There was something about this boy of the mountains that made the
telling of the simple truth the natural thing; but startled at even so
vague a revealing of her bruised heart, she turned the talk quickly to
other things.
IX
A STARTLING APPEARANCE
In the spring following came a great day for the mountain school when
some friends and benefactors were coming. Great preparations were
made. The school about three hundred strong fronted the main hall, and
there was great waving of small and large handkerchiefs in a genuine
salute as the visiting party drove up.
When the company had scattered a little after the greeting, Steve
suddenly felt an arm about him and turning, found Mr. Polk smiling
down upon him. The boy was overjoyed and could only cling to his hand,
speechless for a moment. Mr. Polk had met the visiting party on the
train, among whom was the lady who had told him of the school, and she
would take no refusal,--he must go with them.
* * * * *
It was a beautiful day for Steve and in his boyish talk about his life
and school he often spoke of Miss Grace, but each time came that grim
setting of Mr. Polk's lips and the boy soon instinctively dropped her
name. The day was destined to be full of events, some in honour of the
visitors and some that were totally unexpected.
The speech of welcome from the school was made by Stephen Langly. Miss
Grace had told him to say in his own words whatever was in his heart
to say. So the boy stepped out from the gathered school, mounted a
little platform and stood before the assembled crowd unabashed, for
the mountaineer knows no embarrassment, while in simple good English
he thanked the generous friends and teachers for what they were doing
for mountain boys and girls. As he stood there well dressed, erect,
manly, he bore little resemblance to the forlorn boy who had crept
away from his cabin home at Hollow Hut a year before.
As the crowd dispersed a little after the speech-making, in which
several took part, Mr. Polk and Steve walked away together and passed
a group of teachers and students of which the visiting lady of Mr.
Polk's acquaintance was the centre.
"Come here, Mr. Polk, please, and bring Steve to see me," she called.
Miss Grace Trowbridge was one of the group and Mr. Polk halted
reluctantly, but finally joined them.
Before a word could be exchanged a tall, lank, grim mountaineer
slouched forward and laid a horny hand upon Steve's shoulder. The
startled boy looked up to see his father standing beside him!
The Kentucky mountain product, unlike any other so-called shiftless
man in the world, may idle his days away with pipe and drink, but let
a wrong, real or fancied, be done him or his and in his thirst for
vengeance he is transformed. His energy, his perseverance, his
intelligence, his fury become colossal. So, Jim Langly, convinced
after months of waiting and brooding that his boy had been enticed
away by the giver of the watch, had set out with a grim purpose of
finding boy and man which had been undaunted by any obstacle. With
slow but persistent effort he had traced the child over mountain and
valley, often losing all clue, but never relaxing till at last he had
reached Mr. Follet and learned that the boy was in school. From thence
he easily made his way to the school of Mr. Polk's selection, and,
arriving by strange providence upon a gala day, had found the two
objects of his search at the same moment.
"I've found ye at last," he said grimly, "an' when I set eyes on the
man whut give ye that watch and tolled my boy away from his home, I'll
shoot him down lack a dog!"
Mr. Polk quietly walked out and said, "I am your man, Mr. Langly."
"You," the enraged mountaineer yelled, and jerking a pistol from his
trousers pocket, he lifted and would have cocked it, but quick as a
deer Grace Trowbridge had stepped in front of Mr. Polk, protecting him
with her body, while Steve threw himself on his father and screamed
shrilly, dropping into the speech of the mountains:
"No, oh, pappy, pappy, don't shoot him! He nuver got me ter leave
home; I went myself, and I'll go back with yer and stay all my life!"
Frantically the boy clung to his father, pleading pitifully, while
Grace Trowbridge with all her strength pushed Mr. Polk back among a
quickly gathering crowd. Others joined her, and in the excitement of
the moment, both she and Mr. Polk were hurried into safety within one
of the school buildings and the door locked upon them.
The town constable was on the ground, for his services were quite
likely to be needed in any public gathering, and before Jim Langly
realized what was happening, being wholly unfamiliar with the ways of
law and order, his pistol had been wrenched from his hand (something
unheard of in mountain ethics), and he was hurried from the scene like
an infuriated lion made captive.
Breathless and spent, Grace Trowbridge found herself looking into the
face of her old lover when the door was locked upon them. She stood an
instant like a frightened bird driven to cover, her eyes gazing into
his, anxiety, relief, tragic intensity born of but one emotion in her
white quivering face,--and then the warm blood surged up with
returning realization of the years of estrangement between them, and
she wheeled for instant flight.
But the door was locked, and baffled she faced him again, crying, "Oh,
Sam, let me out!"
For answer he caught her in his arms and said, "Let you out, and away
from me? Never! I shall hold you fast instead. I love you, love
you, love you," he cried vehemently, "and what is more, you love
me!" He crushed her to him and the tense, spent figure relaxed in
his arms while love in full tide swept over them, after six weary
years of longing and restraint. Their separation had followed a
misunderstanding which now did not even seem to need explanation.
"Sam," she cried at last, moving energetically away from him, "I can
never give up these blessed mountain children. You'll have to adopt
every one of them if you take me!"
"All right," he said happily, "just as many of them as you please."
Instantly both remembered Steve.
"Oh, Sam, where is Steve? Do you suppose his father has carried him
off, and that we will never see him again?" she exclaimed in distress,
and a few moments later, when release came to them, their first
anxious inquiry was for the boy.
No one had seen or thought of him in the excitement, and when the
story of Jim Langly's arrest had been told them, they searched the
grounds and buildings in great anxiety before they finally found Steve
in his room.
When Mr. Polk opened the door the boy stood before him dressed in a
little ragged shirt and old pair of trousers he had worn for hunting
and with bared feet. The hopeless expression of the lost was in his
face.
"I can't keep my promise to you, Mr. Polk," he said brokenly. "I can't
ever climb that mountain fer yer, but it is better fer me ter die on
the way than fer you to be killed." Correct speech had no part in such
despair.
Mr. Polk drew the boy to him while Miss Grace stood without, her lips
tremulous and eyes full of tears. After a silent moment Mr. Polk led
the boy outside and put him in her arms.
"Do you think we are going to give you up?" Mr. Polk said, striding up
and down the hall. "Not by a long shot," he went on with energy, and a
conviction for which he could not at the moment see any tangible
foundation. "This is all going to be fixed up,--just leave everything
to Miss Grace and me."
The boy shook his head. "Ye don't know pappy," he said sadly.
"I may not," returned Mr. Polk cheerfully, "but I know Grace
Trowbridge, and I am going to trust her to keep you here. Do just as
she says, son, and everything will come right."
He left them to talk with the president of the school. They discussed
what should be done with Jim Langly. Mr. Polk greatly regretted the
man's arrest, but was compelled to admit it could not have been
avoided. He begged, however, that prosecution of the case be delayed
until every effort could be made to make Langly see that only good was
intended for his son.
"Of course I must relinquish all claim to the boy," he said sadly,
"but we must by some means win the father's consent that Steve remain
here,--that is the important thing."
So it was decided that Mr. Polk should leave, as his presence could
only infuriate the man, and the president gladly promised to do
everything in his power to win the father.
For a week Jim Langly remained in the lock-up of the town. He had
wrenched his back severely in the struggle with his captors; then,
like a caged lion indeed, he had beaten the walls of his prison all
night without food or drink, and being a man of indolent habits, he
collapsed utterly next morning. The gaunt, haggard face with deep
hollows beneath the eyes, the giant figure lying helpless upon a rude
couch of the lock-up touched deeply the heart of Grace Trowbridge when
she went in to see him. In his blind fury he had not noticed her
especially the day before; and when, without saying a word, she
stepped lightly across the room and reaching through the iron bars
closed a rude shutter to screen the glare of the morning sun from his
eyes, then gently adjusted a pillow beneath his head and fed him a cup
of hot broth, he accepted it all like a wild, sick animal which in its
helplessness has lost all animosity to man.
During the day she tended him unobtrusively, but with infinite
kindness, and next morning she found him better, but still willing to
accept her care. He even watched her with a far-away interest as one
would something unknown and yet strangely pleasing. By the third
morning she talked to him a bit as she smoothed his pillow, and smiled
as he ate her toast with relish.
At last he said with an effort, "Whar's Steve?"
"He is here," she said gladly, "just waiting outside the door for you
to ask for him. He has been there every day," she added softly.
Then she stepped to the door and motioned for Steve. The boy came in,
still dressed in mountain fashion, for no amount of persuasion could
induce him to again put on the better clothes. This evidently met the
father's approval, for a look of bitter expectancy which had come into
his face faded at once as he saw the old trousers and bare feet.
"Set down," he commanded feebly, but not unkindly, though he had
nothing more to say.
The two stayed with him through the day, and gradually Grace, with
consummate tact, made conversation which included the three, though
Langly took little part. Then she read a stirring story which
compelled his attention and interest even though he had never heard
anything read aloud before. It was the first time in the mountaineer's
long life that he had ever been unable to rise from his bed and go his
way and the helplessness had softened his spirit like the touch of a
fairy's wand. As he listened to the sweet, cultured voice of the woman
while she read and saw Steve with quickened intelligence following
every word, he realized for the first time that the world held strange
things in which he had no part, but for which his boy was ready.
At last Miss Grace turned to Steve and said in the most natural
manner, "My throat is getting tired; won't you read a little for us?"
The boy looked at his father in quick alarm, but the gaunt face
betrayed nothing, and the reading went on in Steve's boyish voice.
Several days passed during which Miss Grace and Steve had been
constantly with the prisoner, then his injured back was sufficiently
restored to permit of his being raised in bed to a sitting posture,
and Miss Grace felt it was time she tried to win his consent to
Steve's remaining at school. With woman's intuition she divined the
best method of approach. Steve was not there and she told with simple
pathos of the boy's love for his mother. Jim Langly had loved his wife
with all the mountain man's lack of expression, but the natural
portrayal of the boy's affection did not displease him. The old self
in fact seemed to pass out with that day of terrible fury and the
softer spirit which had taken its place seemed to linger. She went on
to tell how the boy's mother had longed for him to have a chance to
learn, and that only a few minutes before her death she had made him
promise to go where he could learn.
"It was this," she ended, "which made Steve leave home and not the man
who sent the watch."
Jim Langly lay silent a long while after hearing this, and then he
said:
"I was agin that in her alive, I reckon I won't be agin her dead."
After a little he inquired with resentment in his voice, "How come
that man whut give him the watch ter be with him here?"
"The boy happened to find the man," she said, "and the man was good to
him when he needed a friend. But we will get Steve to tell us all
about it," she ended brightly, as Steve came just then to the door.
And with a glad heart the boy told all his story from the day he left
Hollow Hut till his father's appearance a few days before.
The president of the school then visited Langly, told of the boy's
progress and begged earnestly that he be allowed to stay. Nothing was
said as to how the boy's expenses were to be met, and since Jim Langly
knew as little as a child about the cost of such things, he asked no
questions. When strong enough at last Langly walked out a free man,
the president having withdrawn all charges against him, and after
looking about the buildings with strange interest he started back to
Hollow Hut, with no good-bye for his boy after the manner of the
mountains, but with an understanding that when school closed Steve
should return to his old home for the summer.
It was some two months later when Mr. Polk carried out this promise
which had been made the father, by taking the boy back to the woods
where they had first met. He expected to camp there for a few days'
fishing, and to arrange for Steve's safe return to the school in the
fall, as happy plans of his own for the autumn would probably prevent
his coming in person.
When Steve left Mr. Polk he swung off down the well-remembered
mountainside with strange joy in his heart. He had felt a new kinship
for his father growing upon him since he could remain at school in the
freedom of parental consent, and shy thought had come of reading aloud
sometimes in the old Hollow Hut cabin from the pile of books under his
arms while his father smoked and listened, as he had in the beautiful
days when Miss Grace had tended him.
But a few hours later he came slowly back up the same path with a
stricken look on his face.
"Pappy's dead, too," he said brokenly, when Mr. Polk stepped forward
in surprise and alarm to meet him.
The boy sat down upon a log, dropping his books in a heap beside him,
and his bent shoulders shook with sobs.
Mr. Polk comforted him with silent tenderness for a time, then
gradually drew out the story of Jim Langly's short illness of a week
from a virulent fever and his burial two days before.
Together they went again next day to the cabin. Mirandy had married a
few weeks previous and she and her husband were beginning family life
anew in the old place. She had been stirred somewhat by the events of
the year, and looked with interest upon Mr. Polk and Steve, the latter
showing plainly to her the touch of new surroundings, and when Mr.
Polk told her he wanted to take the boy for his own and educate him,
she said with a touch of bitterness:
"Tek him erlong; he won't nuver know nothin' here."
So the two who had seemed bound from the first by close ties went away
together, Steve to spend the summer at the school, where a few were
always accommodated during the vacation, and Mr. Polk to wind up his
business affairs in the South preparatory to a return to New York. He
had formerly been associated with an uncle having large railroad
interests in the East, who had often urged his return. He now proposed
to do so, taking advantage of opportunities still open to him. These
had been thrown away upon the breaking of his engagement with Grace
Trowbridge, six years before, to take a position with a southern
railroad and wander restlessly among new scenes.
X
STEVE 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 he
was, 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 proposed that 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."