"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.
"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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, 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 the rest 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 opportunity for 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 the older 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.
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."
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:
"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, would say 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 determined good 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.
XI