TOMMY ROAMS IN AN ENCHANTED LAND
And what delights they were, when once he found time to taste of
them! He was kept busy at his studies until school closed, as it did
one Friday in early June, and that afternoon he said good-by to his
teacher and saw her whisked away eastward to the home she loved. He
went from the station to the mine with heavy heart, and labored
there with his father until evening came. He did not open his books
that night, for he was just beginning to realize all that his
teacher had been to him and how he had come to rely upon her for
encouragement and help. All day Saturday he worked in the mine with
his father. But Sunday dawned clear and bright, and as soon as he
had eaten his breakfast, he climbed high up on the hillside to his
favorite nook, with only “Lorna Doone” for company. There, in a
grassy spot, he lay down and opened the book before him.
He read it stumblingly and haltingly; as his teacher had foreseen,
many of the words were quite beyond him; but it was written in
English so pure, so clear, so simple, that little of importance
escaped him. And what a world of enchantment it opened to him!—the
wide moorlands of Exmoor, the narrow Doone valley, the water-slide,
the great London road. And what people, too!—the lawless Doones,
Captain, Counselor, Carver, who, for all their villainy, had
something attractive about them, Lorna, and great John Ridd. Of
course he did not see the full beauty of the book, but its magic he
caught some glimpses of, and it bore him quite away from the
eventless valley of New River to that other valley where the Doones
reigned in all their insolence and pride, and kept Lorna prisoner to
be a bride to Carver.
Hunger warned him of the dinner-hour, but he begrudged the time it
took to go down to the house, swallow his food, and get back again
to his place on the hillside. The afternoon passed almost before he
knew it, and the lengthening shadows warned him that evening was at
hand. Still he read on, glancing up only now and then to mark how
the light was fading, and when it failed altogether it left John
just in the midst of his adventures in London. Tommy lay for a long
time looking down the valley and thinking over what he had read, and
at last, with a sigh, picked up the book and started homeward.
What need to detail further? All summer long he walked in a land of
enchantment, whether with John Ridd on Exmoor, with David
Copperfield in London, with Richard Lion-heart in Sherwood Forest,
or with Henry Esmond at Castlewood. As he went onward he grew
stronger in his reading, and so found the way less difficult, and at
last acquired such proficiency that he would read portions of his
books aloud to his wondering parents and to Johnny.
Mr. Bayliss found them sitting so one Sunday afternoon, and paused
at the porch to listen. Tommy was reading of that last desperate
struggle between John Ridd and Carver Doone:
“The black bog had him by the feet; the sucking of the
ground drew on him like the thirsty lips of death. In
our fury, we had heeded neither wet nor dry, nor thought
of earth beneath us. I myself might scarcely leap, with
the last spring of o’erlabored legs, from the engulfing
grave of slime. He fell back with his swarthy breast
(from which my gripe had rent all clothing) like a
hummock of bog-oak standing out the quagmire; and then
he tossed his arms to heaven, and they were black to the
elbow, and the glare of his eyes was ghastly. I could
only gaze and pant, for my strength was no more than an
infant’s, from the fury and the horror. Scarcely could I
turn away, while, joint by joint, he sank from sight.”
For an instant there was silence. Then, with a sigh, Tommy’s father
relaxed his attitude of strained attention and dropped back in his
chair.
“Jee-rusalem!” he said at last. “Ter think of it! Th’ bog swallered
him up. Good fer him! He ort t’ got worse ’n thet fer killin’
Lorna.”
Tommy smiled to himself, in his superior knowledge.
“That ain’t all,” he said. “There’s another chapter.”
“Another chapter!” cried his father. “Maybe Lorna ain’t dead, then.
It’ll tell about her funeral, anyway. Go on, Tommy.”
And as Tommy turned to the book again, Mr. Bayliss stole away down
the path, convinced that this was not the time to make his presence
known. On his homeward way he pondered deeply the scene he had just
witnessed. Its significance moved him strongly, for he saw a ray of
hope ahead for the success of his ministry among this people. Five
years before, when he was a senior at the Princeton Theological
Seminary, he had chanced upon an open letter in a mission magazine
which stated that for miles and miles along this valley there was
not a single minister nor church, and that hundreds of people, from
year-end to year-end, never heard the Word of God. He had decided
that this should be his field of labor, and so soon as he had been
ordained he had journeyed to Wentworth. At first he had held
services in an old cabin; gradually he succeeded in interesting
charitable people in his work, and finally secured enough money to
build a small church, and to purchase and consecrate a piece of
ground behind it for a burying-place.
But in matters of religion, as in matters of education, he had found
the people strangely apathetic. They came to him to be married, and
sent for him sometimes in sickness; it was he who committed their
bodies to the grave: but marriages and deaths aside, he had small
part in their lives. He had thought sometimes that the reason of
failure must be some fault in himself, and had his moments of
discouragement, as all men have; but the scene he had just witnessed
gave him a clue to one cause of failure. He saw that some degree of
education must come before there could be deep and genuine spiritual
awakening. He had realized the truth of this more than once in his
ministry, but most deeply shortly after his arrival, when he had
undertaken to distribute some Bibles among the squalid cabins on the
hillside.
“We-uns don’t need no Bible,” said the woman in the first house he
entered.
“Do not need one?” he echoed. “Why? Have you one in the house
already?”
“No, we ain’t got none. What could we-uns do with one?”
“Do with it? Read it, of course.”
“But we can’t read,” said the woman, sullenly. “They ain’t no chance
t’ learn. It’s work, work, from sun-up t’ dark.”
Mr. Bayliss stood for a moment nonplussed.
“Not read!” he repeated at last. “But, surely, some of the miners or
their families can read.”
The woman shook her head.
“Not many,” she said. “How kin we?” she continued, more fiercely.
“What chance d’ we hev? We ain’t knowed nothin’ but work all our
lives. A man don’t stop t’ learn t’ read when he needs bread t’
eat.”
She paused to look darkly at her visitor. He was so moved with pity
and distress that he could find no answer. Perhaps she read his
thought in his eyes, for she grew more gentle.
“Thet’s one reason we-uns don’t come down t’ them meetin’s o’
yourn,” she went on. “By th’ time Sunday comes, we’re too tired t’
care fer anything but rest. And then,” she added defiantly, “most of
us has got so we don’t care, noway.”
Mr. Bayliss went back to his study with his Bibles still under his
arm. He felt that he was just beginning to understand the problem
which confronted him, and he had sought vainly for a solution to it.
Since the miners could not read, he had visited such of them as
would permit him and had read to them, but they had received him for
the most part with indifference. He had labored patiently, though
sometimes despairingly. And now, of a sudden, after these years, he
saw a glimmering of light. It was only a miner’s boy reading to his
parents—a little thing, perhaps, yet even little things sometimes
lead to great ones. And the minister determined to do all he could
for that boy, that he might serve as a guide to others.
He found he could do much. He helped the boy over difficult places
in his books, gave him a dictionary that he might find out for
himself the meaning of the words, and taught him how to use it.
Gradually, as he came to know him better, the project, which at
first had been very vague, began to take shape in his mind. Why
should not this boy become a helper to his own people? Who could
understand them and minister to them as one who had sprung from
among them? But of this he said nothing to any one, only pondered it
more and more.
* * * * *
It was quite a different Tommy from the one she had known that Miss
Andrews found awaiting her when she returned in September to open
her school again. His eyes had a new light in them. It was as if a
wide, dreary landscape had been suddenly touched and glorified by
the sun. On his face, now, glowed the sunlight of intelligence and
understanding—a light which deep acquaintance with the books Tommy
had been reading will bring to any face. She had a talk with him the
very first day.
“And you liked the books?” she asked.
His sparkling eyes gave answer.
“Which hero did you like the best?”
“Oh, John Ridd,” he cried. “John Ridd best of all. He was so big, so
strong, so brave, so—”
He paused, at loss for a word.
“So steadfast,” she said, helping him, “so honest, so good, so true.
Yes, I think I like him best, too—better than David or Ivanhoe or
Henry Esmond. And now, Tommy,” she continued, more seriously, “I
want you to do something for me—something I am sure you can do, and
which will help me very much.”
“Oh, if I could!” he cried, with bright face.
“I am sure you can. How many children do you suppose there are in
that row of houses where you live?”
He stopped for a moment to compute them.
“About twenty-five,” he said at last.
“And how many of them come to school?”
“None of them but me.”
“Don’t you think they ought to come? Aren’t you glad that you came?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Tommy.
“Well, I have tried to get them to come, and failed,” she said.
“Perhaps I didn’t know the right way to approach them. Now I want
you to try. I believe you will know better how to reach them than I
did. You may fail, too, but at least you can try.”
“I _will_ try,” he said, and that evening he visited all the cabins
in the row, one after another. What arts he used was never
known—what subtleties of flattery and promise. He met with much
discouragement; for instance, he could get none of the men to
consent to send to school any of the boys who were old enough to
help them in the mines. But when he started to school next morning,
six small children accompanied him, among them his brother Johnny.
And what a welcome the teacher gave him! She seemed unable to speak
for a moment, and her eyes gleamed queerly, but when she did speak,
it was with words that sent a curious warmth to his heart.
That half-dozen children was only the first instalment to come from
the cabins. Tommy, prizing above everything his teacher’s gratitude,
kept resolutely at work, and soon the benches at the schoolroom
began to assume quite a different appearance from that they had had
at the opening of school; and one day when Jabez Smith came down to
look the school over, he declared that it would soon be necessary to
put in some new forms.
“And you were gittin’ discouraged,” he said, half jestingly, to Miss
Andrews. “Didn’t I tell you t’ stick to it an’ you’d win?”
“Oh, but it wasn’t I who won!” she cried. And in a few words she
told him the story of Tommy’s missionary work, and of his connection
with the school.
“Which is th’ boy?” he asked quickly, when the story was finished,
and she pointed out Tommy where he sat bending over his book.
Mr. Smith looked at him for some moments without speaking.
“There must be somethin’ in th’ boy, Miss Bessie,” he said at last.
“We must do somethin’ fer him. When you’re ready, let me know. Mebbe
I kin help.” And he went out hastily, before she could answer him.
But the words sang through her brain. “Do something for him”—of
course they must do something for him; but what? The question did
not long remain unanswered.
It was when she met Mr. Bayliss one Sunday in a walk along the
river, and related to him the success of Tommy’s efforts, that he
broached the project he had been developing.
“The boy must be given a chance,” he said. “I believe he could do a
great work among these people—greater, surely, than I have been able
to do.” And he sighed as he thought of his years of effort and of
the empty seats which confronted him at every service. “See how he
has helped you. Now he must help me.”
“But how?” she asked. And old Jabez Smith’s promise again recurred
to her.
“I haven’t thought it out fully, but in outline it is something like
this. We will teach him here all that we can teach. Then we’ll send
him to the preparatory school at Lawrenceville for the final
touches. Then he will enter Princeton, and—if his bent lies as I
believe it does—the seminary. Think what he could do, coming back
here equipped as such a course would equip him, and having, too, a
perfect understanding of the peculiar people he is to work among!
Why, I tell you, it would almost work a miracle from one end of this
valley to the other.” And he paused to contemplate for a moment this
golden-hued picture which his words had conjured up.
His companion caught the glow of his enthusiasm.
“It would,” she cried; “it would! But can he take such a polish? Is
he strong enough? Is it not too late?”
“I believe he is strong enough. I believe it is not too late. The
only trouble,” he added reflectively, “will be about the cost.”
“The cost?”
“Yes. There will be no question of that after he gets to Princeton,
for I can easily get him a scholarship, and there are many ways in
which a student can earn money enough to pay his other expenses. But
at Lawrenceville it is different.”
Miss Andrews looked up at him with dancing eyes.
“About what will the expense at Lawrenceville be?” she asked.
He paused a moment to consider.
“Say three hundred dollars a year. I think I can arrange for it not
to cost more than that, if I can get him one of the Foundation
Scholarships, as I am certain I can.”
“And the course?”
“Is four years—but we may be able to cut it down to three. Let us
count on three.”
“Nine hundred dollars,” she said, half to herself. Then of a sudden,
“Mr. Bayliss, I believe I can provide the money.”
“You!” he cried in astonishment.
“Oh, not I myself,” she laughed. “One of my friends. I will talk it
over with him.”
He looked at her, still more astonished.
“Talk it over?” he repeated. “Do you mean to say that we have a
philanthropist in our midst?”
She nodded.
“But I shall not tell you his name,” she said, her eyes alight. “Not
just yet, at any rate. Let us get on to other particulars. I see
another rock ahead in the person of his father. Do you think he will
consent?”
“I had thought of that,” answered the minister, slowly. “That will
be another great difficulty. But I believe he will consent if we go
about it carefully. He is beginning to take a certain pride in the
boy,—so is the mother,—and I shall appeal to that. It is worth
trying.”
“Yes, it is worth trying,” she repeated, “and we will try.”
Tommy, who lay in his favorite spot high up on the mountain, reading
for the tenth time of John Ridd’s fight for Lorna, saw them walking
together along the river path. He watched them pacing slowly back
and forth, deep in converse, but he had no thought that they were
planning his life for him.