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.
“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.
