BACK TO NEW RIVER VALLEY
The hour which followed remained always in Tommy’s memory as some tremendous nightmare. He remembered going to the gymnasium, removing his football suit mechanically, taking a bath and rub-down, and getting into his other clothes. Then he made his way to his room, and Sexton, Reeves, and Blake came up and tried to tell him—each in his own way—how sorry they were, and to give him such of comfort as they could.
“Why, the fellows are all broken up,” said Reeves. “We were going to have a big celebration to-night, but that’s all off. There isn’t one of us feels like celebrating.”
“How could we?” added Blake. “It was Remington won the game. But it’s the first time in the history of Lawrenceville that we didn’t have a blow-out after whipping the .”
“Maybe it’s not so bad,” said Sexton, with an attempt at cheerfulness. “He’ll be coming back before long,—as soon as his father gets well, you know,—and we’ll have the celebration then.”
But Tommy heard little of all this. His thoughts were far away. He saw again the narrow valley, which seemed to shut out all the joy and warm, life of the outside world; the rows of squalid cabins, grimy with the dust of the mines; the , , men, day after day far within the of the earth, away from the pure air and the bright sunshine, able to earn but a bare , even by unceasing ; and a shiver ran through him at the thought that it was to this he was returning. An hour ago the old existence had seemed so far away, there had been so much to live for, the path before him had seemed so bright; and here it was closing in upon him like a great black thundercloud which there was no .
Presently the head-master himself came in and told Tommy to pack up such clothing as he might need, and he would be driven over to Trenton at once to catch the six-o’clock train, which would get him to Wentworth early the next morning. The packing was soon done, and he went down to the buggy which was waiting. As he came out from the dormitory, he saw a sight which first made him stare in , and then brought a swift rush of tears to his eyes. The boys—all of them, first, second, third, and fourth year alike—were lined up along the path, and as he passed them, each gave him a handclasp. Some even ventured upon a word of sympathy, awkwardly and shyly said, but none the less genuine. Tommy quite broke down before he reached the end of the line, and the tears were streaming down his face unrestrained as he clambered into the buggy. As the horse turned into the road, he glanced back and saw the fellows still there looking after him. In after days, when he thought of those first months at Lawrenceville, this parting scene was dearest of all to him.
It was only when he was in the train speeding southward, with no one to watch him or speak to him, that he dared put the future plainly before him. It was evident that if his father was killed, or so seriously injured that he could not go to work again in the mines, some arrangement must be made to provide for his mother and brother. He knew too well how little chance there was that his father had been able to save anything. Something, then, would have to be done at once. But what? He shrank from the answer that first occurred to him. He turned his face from it, and set his brain to work to find another way. But he was soon stumbling blindly among the intricacies of his own thoughts, and finally fell into a troubled sleep. But on the instant his eyes closed, as it seemed to him, some disturbing and terrible vision would dance before him and startle him awake again.
At Washington he had a half-hour wait, and looked for Jim, the train-caller who had befriended him before, but he saw nothing of him, for that official worked only in the daytime. Yet he no longer felt ignorant and dependent. The crowd—which even at midnight the station at Washington—did not astonish him as it had before. He knew, somehow, that he was quite a different boy from the one who had made this same journey only three short months before. He felt quite able to look out for himself. But as he was clambering up the steps to his train, a cheery voice greeted him.
“Why, hello, youngster!” it said. “Going back home again?”
Tommy looked up and recognized his old friend the conductor.
“Yes, sir; back home,” he answered with a queer lump in his throat.
The conductor saw how his face had changed. It seemed older and thinner, and the eyes were darker.
“Something wrong, eh?” he said . “Well, I’ll look you up after a while, and we’ll talk it all over.”
Tommy made his way into the coach, hardly knowing whether to be glad or sorry at this meeting. He was for a friend to talk to, and yet he was ashamed of the he might have to make. Could it be possible, he asked himself, that he no longer loved his father and his mother—that he was to make a sacrifice for them as they had done for him? But then, the sacrifice asked of him would be so much the greater. It was nothing to sacrifice the body, but to sacrifice the brain as well—that was another thing. His breast had never been torn by such a battle as was waging there now.
The conductor did not forget his promise. So soon as he had attended to his other duties, he dropped into the seat beside Tommy.
“Now, what is it?” he asked. “Tell me; it’ll do you good. Get into some trouble at school?”
Tommy shook his head.
“No,” he said, “it’s not that. Father was hurt in the mines—and maybe—won’t—get well.”
The conductor took the boy’s hands in both his ample ones and patted them softly.
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “It’ll turn out all right. These accidents always look worse at first than they are. You’ll soon be coming back again over this same road.”
Tommy felt that he must speak—the weight was too heavy for him to bear alone.
“I’m afraid I’ll never come back,” he said brokenly. “There’s nobody now but me to make a living. You’ve never worked in the mines. You don’t know what it is.”
The other looked down at him quickly, and in an instant understood. For a moment he sat silent, considering his words.
“It seems hard,” he said at last. “It always seems hard when we have to give up something we’ve been counting on. But maybe, after all, we don’t have to give it up; and even when we do, something better almost always comes in place of it. It seems, somehow, that nobody in this world is given more than he can bear. I’ve felt, often, just as you feel now; but when I’m particularly blue, I get out a book called ‘Poor Boys who Became Famous’; and when I read what a tough time most of them had, I come to think I’m pretty well off, after all. Ever read it?”
“No,” answered Tommy; “I never read it.”
“Wait till I get it for you. It’ll give you something to think about, anyway”; and the good-natured official, who had not yet lost the enthusiasms of his boyhood, hurried away to get the book.
Five minutes later Tommy had forgotten all about his own troubles. The first page of the book had opened another life to him, whose struggles made his own seem petty and unimportant. It was of George Peabody he was reading: born at Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1795, his parents so poor they could afford him little ; at the age of eleven sent out into the world to earn a living; for four years a clerk in a little grocery, giving every penny of his to his mother; his father dying and leaving him to support the family; his well-nigh hopeless search for employment, his finding of a situation, his , energy, honesty—until, at last, he had built up for himself a business. And then the great acts of which marked his later years: three hundred thousand dollars for the Peabody Institute at his native town, where a free library and a free course of lectures were to be maintained, in order that other poor boys might be helped to an education; one million dollars for an academy of music and an art-gallery at Baltimore; three millions for the purpose of building comfortable homes for the poor of London; three millions more for the education of the negroes, who had just been freed from slavery ............