Steve

“ Steve stood looking at the augmenter. He leaned over it, and his own thought beat back at him powerfully. "Go back, go back, or you will never escape! You will be another robot, with flesh like rock, and never again will the hot blood rush through your veins, never again...." But all at once he saw behind his own thought, and heard something deeper in his own mind, saying, "Go back, she is waiting for you. The garden is waiting, the little house, the fields, the tiny barn, the tidy rooms, and her sweet perfection to serve you forever." ”

“ STEVE. ‘I must say I don’t see that.’
AMY, gratefully, ‘Thank you, Mr. Rollo.’
COLONEL. ‘Go to your room.’
She has to go, but not till she has given her mother a kiss that is a challenge to the world. Then to the bewilderment of Steve two human frames are rocked with laughter.
ALICE. ‘Oh, Robert, look at him. He thinks I worship him.’
COLONEL. ‘Steve, you colossal puppy.’
STEVE. ‘Eh—what—why?’
ALICE. ‘Steve, tell Robert about my voice being softer to you than to other men; tell him, Steve, about your eyes.’
The unhappy youth gropes mentally and physically. ”

“ Suddenly Steve saw it and sat up straight, his heart doing flip-flops. He could hear his voice and his augmented thought shouting together—"There's no man! You're alone here!"
Her smile was heavenly, something like music that touched him inside.
"Now you know," she said, and held up the tiny garment she had just completed. "It's for our first one."
Steve leaned back, his worriment smoothing out into a strange beautiful prevision of their life, going on and on here.... He couldn't seem to get excited about Earth any longer. ”

“ Steve was by no means a paragon of goodness at all times—no boy ever is. He loved mischief as much as any other boy. We do not believe in the perfect hero. Every boy and man, as well as girl and woman, has his or her faults. Steve’s greatest fault was a keen sense of the ludicrous, which often led him into mischief; besides he loved mischief for its own sweet sake. He, one night, nearly had to sleep in the lock-up through his mischievous pranks. He and a companion, thinking it a pity not to make the best use of a fine moonlight night, proceeded to prepare for a game of snake. ”

“ STEVE, severely, ‘Have you forgotten already how I told you a true lady would answer?’
RICHARDSON. ‘I minds, but it makes me that shy.’ She has, however, a try at it. ‘Do smoke, Mr. Rollo, I loves the smell of it.’
Steve lights his pipe; no real villain smokes a pipe.
STEVE. ‘Smoking is a blessed companion to a lonely devil like myself.’
RICHARDSON. ‘Yes, sir.’ Sharply, ‘Would you say devil to a real lady, sir?’
Steve, it may be hoped, is properly confused, but here the little idyll of the chop is brought to a close by the tinkle of a bell. Richardson springs to attention. ”

“ How odd it will seem to you to see Steve again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The artists' colony in New York raves over her."
"Does it?" he said drily.
"Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and animation—like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the sheer joy of living. ”

“ Steve was his confidant, as he was Steve’s, and Steve agreed that this was the thing to do.
Alas! for masculine wisdom! The way of a serpent on a rock is not harder than that of a maid with a man. An opportunity presented itself one afternoon in which everything appeared so propitious that Jacquelin felt as though the time were made for his occasion. He and Blair had been to ride. ”

“ Steve had gone. Only he and Ruth and the child were left.
The child—the White Hope—he was the real hero of the story, the real principal of the drama of their three lives. He was the link that bound them together, the force that worked for coherence and against chaos. He stood between them, his hands in theirs; and while he did so there could be no parting of the ways. His grip was light, but as strong as steel. Time would bring troubles, moods, misunderstandings, for they were both human ”

“ He would wait the most frenzied charge as still as if carved in stone, till the last possible moment, then the great haunches would sink, and with a bound and a rush he would avoid the sweeping horns and whirl round and lay Steve cleverly alongside at just the right distance for the long whip to get in its work. The lightest touch on the rein would bring him round in his own length as if spun on a pivot; the slightest pressure of the knees would send him hurling forward from an easy canter into his hardest gallop. ”

“ He stopped to stare at his handful of men, rearing their heads to listen, too. Steve had been all winter alone with the puzzle of his own inferiority which he could never understand. And a minute later, when he had reached out to help to the ground a little blue clad figure with fur at throat and wrists, she drew the be-furred edge of her skirt about her ankles and laughingly refused his assistance, and jumped to the ground unaided. She was far too excited to know what she was doing; she hardly saw him at all in that first moment, but the act spelled much to him. ”

“ Steve knew and understood this, but he knew that he had done no one an injustice. He had worked hard, and if his employers considered that he was entitled to promotion that was his own good fortune.
"One seldom gets anything in this world unless he works for it and earns it," was the lad's wise conclusion on this particular morning, as his keen eyes caught a disgruntled look on the face of more than one man working under him. ”

“ Miss Grace had a bubbling, contagious enthusiasm, and Steve followed her expressive gestures as she pointed out each detail of perfection with answering admiration.
“Steve!” She turned suddenly and bent her eyes upon him with still more radiant emphasis. “I want you to be just such a grand specimen of a man! Big and strong and well developed,––pushing up into the sky further than all the rest about you, getting more sunshine than any one else––making little 97 plants to grow and blossom all about you and drawing to you the sweetest and best in 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 112 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. ”

“ Steve was sitting in a big arm-chair before his table; over the arm of the chair was flung the red shawl. On the table lay an open book and the silver bangles in it, as if some one had just thrown them off. At sound of entering footsteps Steve sprang up, with an angry oath, and hastily closing the book threw it and the bangles into the chair from which he had risen, then crowded the shawl down upon them into as small a compass as possible. ”

“ Steve bent over to grasp the intricate nothing in his hand and lay it gently in the sapphire-velvet lap.
“Good-bye, Beatrice,” he said, a trifle sadly––for the day the child discovers there are no fairies is one of sadness.
It was something of this Steve felt as he looked at his wife for the last time. How thrilled and adoring he would have one time been. Just such visions, a trifle cruder no doubt, had stirred his young soul in the bleak orphanage days––the boo’ful princess and the valiant young hero chaining the seven-headed dragon. And in America it was just bound to have come true! ”

“ The rose-coloured glasses were still attached to Steve’s naturally keen eyes. Like many persons he knew a multitude of facts but was quite ignorant concerning vital issues. He had spent his honeymoon in rapt and unreal fashion. He had realized his boyhood dream of returning to Nevada a rich and respected man with a fairy-princess sort of wife. The deadly anaesthesia of unreality which these get-rich-quick candidates of to-day indulge in at the outset of their struggle still had Steve in its clutch. ”

“ He is no Man—"
Steve's patience snapped.
"He is a Man, O priestess—even as I am a Man, and my comrades also!"
The priestess Beth fell back a pace, her eyes glazed with something akin to horror. "Thou art ... a ... Man?"
"Not only I," Steve told her, "but the very gods you worship, O puzzled one. You cannot believe? Then come!" He spoke gently. "Come with me to the Mother, Beth. You cannot doubt her. She will tell you I speak the truth. You, Jon—come with us!"
Eager to settle this matter once and for all, he led the way back into the citadel, down the corridors to the hoam of the Mother. ”

“ If Steve's face was unpleasant to look upon, the nonchalant, tiger-like poise and flex of his body was not. He had been dancing, it seemed, and had thrown off his coat, and as he talked he repeatedly rolled his blue shirt-sleeves up and down as though the motion were habitual to him. Most of the men were sitting around the room looking on and laughing at Steve's antics, and the antics of one or two others who were just drunk enough to make fools of themselves. Two or three sat on an old billiard table under the window through which John was peering. ”

“ You are a good girl, Charlotte; and as for Steve standing in the way of Julius Sandal, he will, perhaps, do that yet, and to some more purpose than sweet-hearting. I hear tell that he is very rich; but Steve is not poor,—no, not by a good deal. His grandfather and I have been saving for him more than twenty years, and Steve is one to turn his penny well and often. If you marry Steve, you will not have to study about money matters. ”

“ Steve was out in his garden drinking in the mellow stillness of an Indian summer twilight, and feeling not really happy perhaps—a man who has a home only in name can hardly be that—but rested and at peace at that particular moment, which is much more than could be asserted of his condition the next, for as he looked down the road he beheld Sarah Maria gamboling along, having in tow at the end of a rope a well-spent, perspiring darky. ”

“ When he ended, there was, for a moment, a low murmur all through the ranks, which died down, and they looked to their captain. Steve did not hesitate. In a firm, calm voice he said:
“For the first time in my life almost, I find myself unable to agree in a matter of principle with the man you have just heard. At the same time, this may be only my personal feeling, and, recognizing the force of what he has said, I wish all who may think as he does to fall out of line. The rest will remain as they are. If all shall leave, feeling as I do I shall still undertake to rescue Rupert Gray. ”

“ Steve's engagement made a great stir in the family a pleasant one this time, for nobody objected, everything seemed felicitous, and the course of true love ran very smoothly for the young couple, who promised to remove the only obstacle to their union by growing old and wise as soon as possible. If he had not been so genuinely happy, the little lover's airs would have been unbearable, for he patronized all mankind in general, his brother and elder cousins in particular. ”

“ We will at least preserve a little of the knowledge and statescraft exuded at this evening’s conversation in the sitting-room of Steve’s boarding-house. It will, at least, serve to show the tendency of public feeling during this time, when public feeling ran high.
‘Hillo, Steve! Well, I am hanged! is it yourself or your spirit I see? Well, at least, your hand feels mortal enough.’ It was Harrison who spoke, shaking Steve heartily by the hand. 203
‘Well, I am glad to see you chaps again,’ said Steve, as he shook hands all round, ‘and you too, Keith, old fellow? ”

“ But when they came into the hills and got to work on the cattle, Steve forgot everything else in the wild delight of tearing over the rough ground, heading and turning the mad rushes of the cattle, picking them out of the gullies and sending them flying headlong to join the bellowing mob. His horse was as clever a stockman as he was, and enjoyed the game to the full as much as he did himself. ”

“ We shall pass on now to more stirring times in the life of Steve, who has grown into a strong young man of twenty-seven years of age now. He has always borne in mind the dying words of his father, and has never neglected his weekly letter to his mother and sisters, or his monthly contribution towards their house-keeping at home. ”

“ Steve sat gazing steadily at the door of a room on which was written the word "President." Now and then he caught sight of a shadow within, through the ground-glass partition, and now and again the sound of voices reached him.
"Are you going to move?" demanded a voice at his side.
Steve glanced up, finding the office boy standing close to him, a threatening scowl on his face. ”

“ Viewing them now with a soul made receptive by the tender sadness of real life, Steve asked himself over and over again, Am I fulfilling the divine mission?
When he reached home his face wore a thoughtful look, and the question of the morning lay deep within his eyes as he walked into the garden and came upon Nannie's work. For a long time he stood there gazing at it. An ordinary man would have been intensely angry, and whatever good he might have felt or purposed during his walk would have taken wings. ”