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TOMMY REMINGTON’S BATTLE
[Illustration: “‘D’ Y’ KNOW WHAT THIS IS?’ JABEZ SMITH ASKED, HOLDING
OUT THE STRIP OF PAPER.”]
St. Nicholas Books
TOMMY REMINGTON’S BATTLE
BURTON EGBERT STEVENSON
New York · The Century Co · Mcmii
Copyright, 1901, by
Burton Egbert Stevenson
Copyright, 1902, by
The Century Co.
Published October, 1902
The Devinne Press
“WHEN THE FIGHT BEGINS WITHIN HIMSELF,
A MAN’S WORTH SOMETHING.”
BROWNING’S “MEN AND WOMEN”
CONTENTS
I. Tommy Remington Finds a Circus Poster
II. The First Shot of the Battle
III. The Dawning of a New Day
IV. Tommy Roams in an Enchanted Land
V. Jabez Smith Makes a Business Proposition
VI. Miss Andrews Accepts an Invitation
VII. The Good World!
VIII. Good-by to New River Valley
IX. A Glimpse of a New World
X. An Effort in Self-denial
XI. A Glimpse of Princeton
XII. Joy and Sorrow
XIII. Back To New River Valley
XIV. A Boy’s Battle
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“D’ y’ know what this is?” Jabez Smith asked, holding out
the strip of paper
She turned quickly and saw standing there one of the boys
She hurried forward toward him, her face alight with pleasure
He picked out the letters he knew, to make certain he had
not forgotten them
Often, as he bent over his books, he would catch the tinkle
of a banjo or a strain of college song
Then the full-back was upon him
Up on the mountain-side Tommy was indeed fighting the
battle of his life
TOMMY REMINGTON’S BATTLE
CHAPTER I
TOMMY REMINGTON FINDS A CIRCUS POSTER
Lessons were ended for the day, and an unwonted noise and bustle
filled the little school-house as the children caught up their books
and hats, eager to breathe again the fresh air with the keen scent
of the woods in it, to revel in the bright sunshine bathing hill and
valley.
“Good-by, Miss Bessie.”
“Good-by, dear.”
Three or four of the girls had lingered for the parting greeting,
and then they, too, hurried away, while Miss Andrews stood in the
school-house door and looked after the little figures as they
tripped down the narrow path toward the group of coal-grimed houses
which made the town of Wentworth, and she sighed unconsciously as
they passed from sight behind an ugly pile of slack. It was not a
pretty scene, this part along the river which man had made, with its
crazy coal-tipples, its rows of dirty little cabins, its lines of
coke-ovens, and the grime of coal-dust over everything.
How different was that part of nature’s handiwork which had been
left unmarred! Mountain after mountain, clothed in green to the very
summit, towered up from the narrow valley where New River picked its
difficult way along, over great boulders and past beetling cliffs.
How many centuries had it taken the little stream to cut for itself
this pathway through the very heart of the Alleghanies! With what
exhaustless patience had it gone about the task, washing away a bit
of earth here, undermining a great rock there, banking up yonder
behind some mountain wall which it could not get around, until it
overtopped it and began the work of eating it away—so had it labored
on, never wearying, never resting, never growing discouraged,
seeking always the easiest way around the mountain-foot, but when no
such way could be found, attacking the great wall before it with
undaunted courage, singing at its work and splashing brightly in the
sunshine—until at last it had conquered, as such perseverance always
must, and springing clear of the hills, dashed joyously away across
the level plains which would lead it to the sea.
And all this labor had not been in vain, for nature’s work had
rendered man’s much easier when the time came to build a railroad
over these mountains in order that the great wealth of coal and iron
and other minerals which lay buried under them might be brought
forth and so become of value to the world. The engineers who were
sent forward to find a way for the road soon saw that the New River
valley had been placed there, as it were, by Providence, for this
very purpose, and when the road was built, it did not attempt to go
straight forward, as railroads always like to do, but crept
patiently along the river’s edge, following every winding, until the
mountains were left behind. And the great men who built the road
were very thankful for this little stream’s assistance.
It was not at the mountains nor at the river that Bessie Andrews
looked, but at the grimy cabins of the miners, scattered along the
hillside, and she thought with a sigh how little successful she had
been in winning the hearts of their occupants. She had come from
Richmond in a flush of happiness at her good fortune in getting the
school, and determined to make a success of it, but she found it
“uphill work” indeed.
Her story was that of so many other Southern girls coming of
families old and one time wealthy, but ruined by the Civil War. The
father, who had gone forth to battle in the strength of his young
manhood, left his right arm on the bloody field at Gettysburg, and
came home, at last, to find himself quite ruined. He could get no
laborers to cultivate his fields, rank with the weeds of four years’
neglect; his stock had been seized by one or other of the armies,
for both had fought back and forth across his land, with a necessity
of need that knew no law; his people had been freed, and, excepting
two or three of the older house-servants who had grown gray in the
family’s service, had drifted away no one knew whither. For three
years he struggled to bring order out of this desolation, but the
task was greater than his strength. So the plantation was sold for a
mere fraction of its worth before the war, and the family had moved
to Richmond, in the hope that life there would be easier. There, ten
years after the city fell before Grant’s army, Bessie Andrews was
born; and there, some twelve years later, her father died, gray
before his time, bowed down with care, so broken by his grim battle
with the world that disease found him an easy victim.
So Bessie Andrews had never known the luxury and kindliness and easy
hospitality of the old plantation life, but its influences and
traditions lived still in her blood. She was a gentlewoman, with all
a gentlewoman’s shrinking from the tragic and sordid and mean things
in life; so it was only after a struggle with herself, as well as
with her widowed mother, that she had ventured forth into the world
to attempt to add something to the scanty income left them by her
father. She had been educated with some care, at home for the most
part, so she tried to secure a position as teacher in the public
schools, deciding that it was this she was best fitted for; but
there were no vacancies. Yet the superintendent, impressed by her
earnestness, promised to keep her in mind, and one day sent for her.
“I have a letter here,” he said, “from one of the directors of a
little school near Wentworth, in the mining district. He wants me to
send him a teacher. Do you think you would care for the place?”
Miss Andrews gasped. She had not thought of leaving home. Yet she
could do even that, if need be.
“I think I should be very glad to have the place,” she said. “Do you
know anything about it, sir?”
He shook his head.
“Very little. I do not imagine the region is attractive, but the
salary is fair, and the director who has written me this letter, and
who seems to be a competent man, will board you without extra
expense. Think it over and let me know your decision to-morrow.”
There was a very tearful interview between mother and daughter that
night, but it was evident to both of them that the place must be
accepted.
“If I could only go with you,” said her mother, at last. But Bessie
silenced her with an imperative little gesture.
“Absurd!” she cried. “Do you think I would let you go with me into
that wilderness, little mother? Besides,” she added, laughing, “I
doubt very much if the director would consent to board the whole
family. My one appetite may appal him and make him repent his
bargain. And I shall not be gone very long—only until June.”
So it was settled, and the next day the superintendent formally
recommended Miss Elizabeth Andrews as the teacher for the Wentworth
school. In due time came the reply, directing her to report for duty
at once, and she arrived at her journey’s end one bright day in late
September.
She had determined from the first to make the people love her, but
she found them another race from the genial, cultured, open-hearted
Virginians who live along the James. Years of labor in the mines had
marred their brains no less than their bodies; both, shut out from
God’s pure air, and blue sky, and beautiful, green-clad world, grew
crooked and misshapen, just as everything must do that has life in
it.
She had gone to work among them with brave face but trembling heart.
There was no lack of children in the grimy cabins; it made her soul
sick to look at them. She asked that she might be permitted to teach
them. But she encountered a strange apathy. The parents looked at
her with suspicion. She was not one of them; why should she wish to
meddle? Besides, the boys must help the men; the girls must help the
women—even a very small girl can take care of a baby, and so lift
that weight from the mother’s shoulders.
“But have the children never been sent to school?” she asked.
No, they said, never. The other teachers didn’t bother them. Why
should she? The children could grow up as their parents had. They
had other things to think about besides going to school. There was
the coal to be dug.
A few of the better families sent their children, however—the
superintendent, the school directors, the mine bosses, the fire
bosses,—in the mines, every one is a “boss” who is paid a fixed
monthly wage by the company,—but Bessie Andrews found herself every
day looking over the vacant forms in the little schoolhouse and
telling herself that she had failed—that she had not reached the
people who most needed it.
More than once had she been tempted to confess her defeat, resign
the place, and return to Richmond; yet the sympathy and
encouragement of Jabez Smith, the director who had secured her
appointment, gave her strength to keep up the fight. A simple,
homely man, a justice of the peace and postmaster of Wentworth, he
had welcomed her kindly, and she had found his house a place of
refuge.
“You’ll git discouraged,” he had said to her the first day, “but
don’t you give up. Th’ people up here ain’t th’ kind you’ve been
used to, an’ it takes ’em some little time t’ git acquainted. You
jest keep at it, an’ you’ll win out in the end.”
There was another, too, who spoke words of hope and comfort—the Rev.
Robert Bayliss, minister of the little church on the hillside, who
had come, like herself, a pilgrim into this wilderness.
“You are doing finely,” he would say. “Why, look at me. I’ve been
here four years, and am almost as far from my goal as you are; but
I’m not going to give up the fight till I get every miner and every
miner’s wife into that church. As yet, I haven’t got a dozen of
them.”
And as she glanced askant at his firm mouth and determined chin, she
decided inwardly that this was the kind of man who always won his
battles, whether of the spirit or of the flesh.
As she stood there in the school-house door, thinking of all this
and looking out across the valley, she heard the whistle blow at the
drift-mouth, a signal that no more coal would be weighed that day;
and in a few moments she saw a line of men coming down the hillside
toward her. She waited to see them pass,—grimy, weary, perspiring,
fresh from the mine and the never-ending battle with the great veins
of coal,—and she noted sadly how many boys there were among them.
Some of them glanced at her shyly and touched their hats, but the
most went by without heeding her, the younger, the driver-boys,
laughing and jesting among themselves, the older tramping along in
the silence of utter fatigue. She watched them as they went, and
then turned slowly back into the room and picked up her hat.
[Illustration: “SHE TURNED QUICKLY AND SAW STANDING THERE ONE OF THE
BOYS.”]
“Please, ma’am—” said a timid voice at the door.
She turned quickly and saw standing there one of the boys who had
passed a moment before.
“Yes?” she questioned, encouragingly. “Come in, won’t you?”
The boy took off his cap and stepped bashfully across the threshold.
“Sit down here,” she said, and herself took the seat opposite. “Now
what can I do for you?”
He glanced up into her eyes. There was no mistaking their
kindliness, and he gathered a shade more confidence.
“Please, ma’am,” he said, “I wanted t’ ask you t’ read this bill t’
me,” and he produced from his pocket a gaudy circus poster. “They’s
been put up down at th’ deepot,” he added, in explanation, “but none
of us boys kin read ’em.”
She took the bill from him with quick sympathy.
“Of course I’ll read it to you,” she cried. And she proceeded to
recount the wonders of “Bashford’s Great and Only Menagerie and
Hippodrome” as described by the poster. Most of the high-flown
language was, of course, quite beyond the boy’s understanding, but
he sat with round eyes fixed on her face till she had finished. It
was a minute before he could speak.
“What is that thing?” he asked at last, pointing to a great,
unwieldy beast with wide-open mouth.
“That’s a hippopotamus.”
“A—a what?” he asked wonderingly.
“A hippopotamus—a river-horse.”
“A river-horse,” he repeated; and his eyes grew rounder than ever.
“A horse what lives in th’ river? But it ain’t a horse,” he added,
looking at it again to make certain. “It ain’t nothin’ like a
horse.”
“No,” said Miss Andrews, smiling, “it’s not a horse. That’s only a
name for it. See, here it is,” and she pointed to the line below the
picture. “‘The Hippopotamus, the Great African River Horse.’”
He gazed at the line a moment in silence. Then he sighed.
“I must go,” he said, and reached out his hand for the bill.
“But you haven’t told me your name yet,” she protested. “What is
your name?”
“Tommy Remington,” he answered, his shyness back upon him in an
instant.
“And your father’s a miner?”
He nodded. She looked at him a moment without speaking, rapidly
considering how she might say best what she wished to say.
“Tommy,” she began, “wouldn’t you like to learn to read all this for
yourself—all these books, all these stories,” and she waved her hand
toward the little shelf above her desk. “It is a splendid thing—to
know how to read!”
He looked at her with eyes wide opened.
“But I couldn’t!” he gasped incredulously. “None of th’ boys kin.
Why, even none of th’ men kin—none I know.”
“Oh, yes, you could!” she cried. “Any one can. The reason none of
the other boys can is because they have never tried, and the men
probably never had a good chance. Of course you can’t learn if you
don’t try. But it’s not at all difficult, when one really wants to
learn. If you’ll only come and let me teach you!”
He glanced again at her face and then out across the valley. The
shadows were deepening along the river, and above the trees upon the
mountain-side great columns of white mist circled slowly upward.
“Promise me you’ll come,” she repeated.
The boy looked back at her, and she saw the light in his eyes.
“My father—” he began, and stopped.
“I’ll see your father,” she said impetuously. “Only you must tell
him you want to come, and ask him yourself. Promise me you’ll do
that.”
There was no resisting her in her great earnestness.
“I promise,” he whispered, and stooped to pick up his cap, which had
fallen from his trembling fingers.
“If he refuses, I will see him to-morrow myself,” she said.
“Remember, you are going to learn to read and write and to do many
other things. Good night, Tommy.”
“Good night, ma’am,” he answered with uncertain voice, and hastened
away.
She watched him until the gathering darkness hid him, and then
turned back, picked up her hat again, locked the door, and hurried
down the path with singing heart. It was her first real victory—for
she was certain it would prove a victory—and she felt as the
traveler feels who, toiling wearily across a great waste of Alpine
snow and ice,—shivering, desolate,—comes suddenly upon a delicate
flower, looking up at him from the dreary way with a face of hope
and comfort.