_ CHAPTER 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."
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, while 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. He 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. They 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 you know 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.
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:
"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.
"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 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 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 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. _