Hempfield

David Grayson

Hempfield: A Novel

CHAPTER I

I DISCOVER THE PRINTING-OFFICE

For years my sister Harriet and I confined our relationships with the neighbouring town of Hempfield to the Biblical "yea, yea" and "nay, nay," not knowing how much we missed, and used its friendly people as one might use an inanimate plough or an insensate rolling-pin, as mere implements or adjuncts in the provision of food or clothing for our needs.

It came only gradually alive for us. As the years passed the utilitarian stranger with whom we traded became an acquaintance, and the acquaintance a friend. Here and there a man or a woman stepped out of the background, as it were, of a dim picture, and became a living being. One of the first was the old gunsmith of whom I have already written. Another was Doctor North – though he really lived outside the town – whom we came to know late in his career. He was one of the great unknown men of this country; he lives yet in many lives, a sort of immortality which comes only to those who have learned the greatest art of all arts, the art of life. The Scotch preacher, whom we have loved as we love few human beings, was also in reality a part of the town, though we always felt that he belonged to our own particular neighbourhood. He was ever a friend to all men, town or country.

It has always been something of a mystery to me, when I think of it, how I happened for so long to miss knowing more about old Captain Doane, and MacGregor, that roseate Scotchman. It is easier to understand why I never knew Anthy, for she was much away from Hempfield in the years just after I came here; and as for Norton Carr and Ed Smith, they did not come until some time afterward.

I shall later celebrate Nort's arrival in Hempfield – and may petition the selectmen to set up a monument upon the spot of this precious soil where he first set a shaky foot.

I lived before I knew Anthy and Nort and MacGregor and the old Captain, but sometimes I wonder how I lived. When we let new friends into our lives we become permanently enlarged, and marvel that we could ever have lived in a smaller world.

So I came to know Hempfield, and all those stories – humorous, tragic, exciting, bitter, sorrowful – which thrive so lustily in every small town. As we treasure finally those books which are not, after all, concerned with clapping finite conclusions to infinite events, but are content to be beautiful as they go (as truth is beautiful), so I love the living stories of Hempfield, nor care deeply whether they are at Chapter I, or in the midst of the climax, or whether they are tapering toward a Gothic-lettered "Finis." Only I have never once come across any Hempfield story that can be said to have reached a final page. Every Hempfield story I know has been like a stone dropped in the puddle of life, with ripples that grow ever wider with the years. And I esteem it the best thing in my life that I have had a part in some of those stories: that a few people, perhaps, are different, as I am different, because I passed that way.

How well I remember the evening when my eye was first caught by the twinkle of that luminary, the Hempfield Star, with which afterward I was to become so intimately acquainted. It came to me like a fresh breeze on a sultry day, or a new man in the town road. It was a paragraph in the editorial page, headed with a single word printed in robust black type:

FUDGE

At that time I had been "taking in" the Star (as they say here) for only a few weeks, and had seen little in it that made it appear different from any other weekly newspaper. I am ashamed to say that I had entertained a good-humoured tolerance, mingled with contempt, for country newspapers. They seemed to me the apotheosis of the little, the palladium of the uninteresting. It did not occur to me that anything possessed of such tenacity of life as the country newspaper must have a real meaning and perform a genuine function in our civilization. In this roaring age of efficiency we do not long support any institution that does not set its claws deep into our common life – and hang on.

I began to take the Star as a sort of concession, arguing with myself that it would at least give me the weekly price of eggs and potatoes; and, besides, Harriet always wants to know regularly where the Ladies' Literary Society is to hold its meetings.

You cannot imagine my surprise and interest then, when I came abruptly upon that explosive, black-typed "Fudge" in the middle of the Star. I have always had a fondness for the word. It is like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy library, and any man who can say "Fudge" in a big, round voice has something in him. He's got views and a personality, even though the views may be crooked and the personality prickly.

With what joy I read that paragraph – and cut it from the paper, and have it yet in my golden treasury. This is it:

FUDGE

A fellow named Wright, who lives out in Ohio, says he can fly. Mr. Wright is wrong. If the Lord had intended human beings to fly He would have grown wings on us. He made birds for the air, and fish for the sea, and men to walk on two legs. It is a common characteristic of flying-machine inventors and Democrats that they are not satisfied with the doings of the Lord, but must be turning the world topsy-turvy. Mr. Wright of Ohio should peruse the historic story of Darius Green and his flying machine. If memory serves us right Darius bumped his head, and afterward lived a sensible life. The Star would commend the example of Mr. Green to Mr. Wright – and the Democrats.

Harriet heard me laughing, and called from the other room:

"David, what are you laughing at?"

"Why, a new judge in Israel" – and I read the paragraph aloud with the keenest delight.

"But I thought Mr. Wright could fly!" said my sister doubtfully.

"Well, he can," said I, "only this writer is a Republican."

She was silent for a moment, standing there in the doorway while I watched with interest the gathering question.

"But I don't see why a Republican – if he can fly – "

"Harriet," I began rather oratorically, "this is a very interesting and amusing world we live in, and it is fortunate that we do not all believe everything we see or hear – at any rate, I'd like to meet the man who wrote that paragraph. I feel certain that he is one of the everlasting rocks of New England."

It was this amusing little incident, rather than the really serious purpose that lay back of it, that sent me at last to Hempfield. I kept thinking about the man of the paragraph as I went about my work, chuckling in the cow stable or pausing when I was putting down the hay. I imagined him an old fellow with gray chin whiskers, a pair of spectacles set low on his nose, and a frown between his eyes.

"How he does despise Democrats!" I said to myself.

And yet – our instinct for the compensatory view being irresistible – a pretty good old chap! I thought I should like him, somehow.

One early morning in May, the spring having opened with rare splendour, I hitched up the mare and drove to town. Ostensibly I was going for a few ears of seed corn, a new tooth for my cultivator, and a ham for Harriet – so is the spirit bound down to the mundane – but in reality I was looking for the man who could say "Fudge" with such bluff assurance.

It was a wonderful spring morning, and I did not in the least know as I drove the old mare in the town road, with all the familiar hills and trees about me, that I was going into a new country, fairer by far than ours, where the clouds are higher than they are here, and the grass is greener, where all the men grow taller and the women more beautiful.

I asked Nort once, long afterward, if he could remember the first impression he had when he came to Hempfield and saw the printing-office. Nort frowned, as though thinking hard, and made a characteristic reply:

"I don't rightly remember," said he, "of having any first impression, until I saw Anthy."

But I will not be hurried even to my meeting with Anthy; for I have a very vivid first impression of the printing-office as it sat like a contemplative old gentleman in its ancient and shabby garden.

First we see things with our eyes, see them flat like pictures in a book, and that isn't really sight at all. Then some day we see them with the heart, or the soul, or the spirit – I'm not certain just what it is that really sees, but it is something warm and strong and light inside of us – and that is the true sight.

I had driven the streets of Hempfield for years, and gone in at the grocery stores, made a familiar resort of the gunsmith shop, and visited the post office, but had never really seen the printing-office at all.

Like most things or people really worth knowing, the printing-office is of a retiring disposition. It is an old building, once a dwelling-house, which stands somewhat back from the street, with a quaint old garden around it. An ancient picket fence, nicked and whittled by a generation or so of boys who should have known better, guards its privacy. At the tip of the low cornice is a weatherbeaten bird house, a miniature Greek Parthenon, where the wrens built their nests. Larger and more progressive business buildings had crowded up to the street lines on both sides of it, and yet it managed to preserve somehow an air of ancient gentility. The gate sagged on its hinges, the chimney had lost a brick or two, but it sat there in its garden and watched with mild interest the hasty world go by.

I wondered, that morning, why the peculiar air of the place had never before touched me. I paused a moment, looking in at it with such a feeling of expectancy as I cannot well describe. I did not know what adventure might there befall me. At any moment I half expected to see my imagined old fellow appear on the doorstep and cry out, half ironically, half explosively:

"Fudge!" Upon which, undoubtedly, I should have disappeared into thin air.

There being no sign of life, for it was still very early in the morning, I opened the gate and went in. Over the front door stretched a weatherbeaten sign bearing these words in large letters:

THE HEMPFIELD STAR

Under this name there was a line of smaller lettering, so faded that one could not easily read it from the street. But as I stood now at the doorway and looked up I could make it out – and it came to me, I cannot tell with what charm, like the far-off echo of ancient laughter:

Hitch Your Wagon to the Star

Below this legend in fresher paint, bearing indeed the evidence of repainting, for many are the vicissitudes of a country newspaper, was the name of the firm:

Doane & Doane

I went up the steps to the little porch and looked in at the doorway. I shall never forget the odour of printer's ink which came warmly to my nostrils, the never-to-be-forgotten odour of printer's ink, sweeter than the spices of Araby, more alluring than attar of roses!.. It was a long, low room, with pasted pictures on the walls, a row of dingy cases at one side, the press at the farther end, the stones near it, and a cutting machine with its arm raised aloft as though to command attention. The editor's desk in the corner was heaped so high with books and papers and magazines and pamphlets that another single one added to the pile would certainly have produced an avalanche – and ended ignominiously in the capacious wastebasket.

For all its dinginess and its picturesque disorder there was something infinitely beguiling about the room. In the front window stood a row of potted geraniums, very thrifty, and there was a yellow canary in a cage, and the editor's ancient chair (one lame leg bandaged with string) was occupied by an old fat gray cat, curled up on a cushion and comfortably asleep. A light breeze came in at one of the windows, fingered a leaf of the calendar to make sure that it was really spring again, and went out blithely at the other window.

I liked it: I liked it all.

"There is a fine woman around this shop somewhere," I said to myself, "or else a very fine man."

My vision of the daring paragrapher who could say "Fudge" with such virgin enthusiasm instantly shifted. I saw him now as something of a poet – still old, but with a pleasing beard (none of your common chin whiskers) and rarely fine eyes, a man who could care for flowers in the window and keep the cat from the canary.

At that instant my eyes were smitten with stark reality, my imagination wrecked upon the reef of fact. I saw Fergus MacGregor.

Fergus is one of those men who should always be seen for the first time: after you begin to know him, you can't rightly appreciate him.

He was sitting away back in the corner of the room, by his favourite window, tipped back in his chair, with one heel hooked over a rung, the other leg playing loose in space, sadly reading the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" which he considers the greatest book in the world – next to Robert Burns's poems.

Fergus has always been good for me. He is all facts, like roast beef, or asparagus, or a wheel in a rut. It is almost impossible to idealize Fergus: he has freckles and red hair on his hands. When Fergus first came to Hempfield, one of our good old Yankee citizens, who had never seen much of foreigners and therefore considered them all immoral, said he never had liked Frenchmen.

Whenever I am soaring aloft, as I think I am too likely to do, I have to be very firm in the wings, else the sight of Fergus MacGregor, with his red hair, his scorched face, and his angular wiry frame, will bring me straight down to earth. He brought me down the first morning I laid eyes on him. As I stood there in the printing-office, looking about me, Fergus glanced up from the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and said:

"Wull?"

I can't tell you what worlds of solid reality were packed into that single word. At once all my imaginings came tumbling about me. What, after all, had I come for? Why was I in this absurd printing-office? What wild-goose chase was I on? I should really be at home planting potatoes. Potatoes, cows, corn, cash – surely there were no other realities in life! For an instant the visions of the fields died within me, and I felt sick and weak. You will understand – if you understand.

I thought, as I stood there stupidly, that this was indeed the man who would say "Fudge!" to all the world.

I groped in a wandering mind for some adequate way of escape, and it occurred to me presently that I could order a thousand envelopes, with my name printed in the corner, and bring him to terms. No, I'd order five thousand – and utterly obliterate him!

"Wull?" said Fergus.

If it had not been for this second "Wull?" I might have gone back to my immemorial existence and never have brought my new vision to the hard test of life, never have known Anthy, never have felt the glory of a new earth.

But with that second "Wull?" which was even more devastating than the first, I felt something electric, warm, strong, stinging through me. I had a curious sense of high happiness, and before I knew it I was saying:

"After all, men do fly!"

I laugh still when I remember how Fergus MacGregor looked at me. For a long moment he said nothing as eloquently as ever I heard it said. I began to feel the humour of the situation (humour is the fellow that always waits just around the corner until the danger is past), but I said in all seriousness:

"I'm looking for the man who wrote an editorial last week headed 'Fudge.' He doesn't appear to approve of flying machines."

Fergus had not stirred by so much as the fraction of an inch. He looked at me for another instant and then paid me, if I had known it, a most surprising compliment. He smiled. His face slowly cracked open – I can express it no other way – and remained cracked for the space of two seconds, and returned to its usual condition. Fergus's smile is one of the wonders of nature.

"What ye going to do?" asked Fergus. "Thrash the editor?"

"No," said I, "convert him."

Fergus slowly shook his head.

"Ye can't," said he.

"I've already begun," said I.

Fergus looked me over for a moment, and smiled again, this time winding up with a snort or a cough, which started to be a laugh, but stopped away down somewhere inside of him.

"Ye think I wrote it?"

"Well," said I, "you look perfectly capable of it."

I was just beginning to enjoy thoroughly this give and take of conversation, which of all sports in the world is certainly the most fascinating, when I heard steps behind me and, turning half around, saw Anthy for the first time.

"There's the editor," said Fergus. "Ask her yourself."

She came down the room toward me with a quick, businesslike step. She wore a little round straw hat with a plain band. She had a sprig of lilac on her coat, and looked at me directly – like a man. She had very clear blue eyes.

I have thought of this meeting a thousand times since – in the light of all that followed – and this is literally all I saw. I was not especially impressed in any way, except perhaps with a feeling of wonder that this was the person in authority, really the editor.

I have tried to recall every instant of that meeting, and cannot remember that I thought of her either as young or as a woman. Perhaps the excitement and amusement of my talk with Fergus served to prevent a more vivid first impression. I speak of this reaction because all my life, whenever I have met a woman – I have been much alone – I have had a curious sense of being with some one a little higher or better than I am, to whom I should bow, or to whom I should present something, or with whom I should joke. With whom I should not, after all, be quite natural! I wonder if this is at all an ordinary experience with men? I wonder if any one will understand me when I say that there has always seemed to me something not quite proper in talking to a woman directly, seriously, without reservation, as to a man? But I record it here as a curious fact that I met Anthy that morning just as I would have met a man – as one human being facing another.

"I am the editor," she said crisply, but with good humour.

"Well," I said, "I'm afraid I'm on a rather unusual and unbusinesslike errand."

She did not help me.

"Last week I read an editorial in your paper which amused – interested – me very much. It was headed 'Fudge,' The writer plainly doesn't believe either in flying machines or in Democrats."

I heard Fergus bark behind me.

"He's going to thrash the writer," said Fergus.

Anthy glanced swiftly across at Fergus. It occurred to me in a flash:

"Why, she wrote it!"

The sudden thought of the chin whiskers I had fastened upon the imaginary writer was too much for me, and I laughed outright.

"Well," said I, "I shall not attempt any extreme measures until I try, at least, to convert her."

I saw now that I had said something really amusing, for Fergus barked twice behind me and Anthy broke into the liveliest laughter.

"You don't really think I wrote it?" she inquired in the roundest astonishment, with one hand on her breast.

"I should certainly be very well repaid for my visit," said I, "if I thought you did."

"Won't that amuse the Captain!" she exclaimed.

"So the Captain wrote it," I said, not knowing in the least who the Captain was. "Tell me, has he chin whiskers?"

"Why?" asked Anthy.

"Well, when I read that editorial," I said, beginning again to enjoy the give and take of the conversation, "I imagined the sort of man who must have written it: chin whiskers, spectacles low on his nose, very severe on all young things."

Anthy looked at Fergus.

"And does he by any chance" – I inquired in as serious a manner as I could command, "I mean, of course, when he is angry – kick the cat?"

At this Fergus came down with a bang on all four legs of his chair, and we all laughed together.

"Say," said Fergus, "I don't know who ye are, but ye're all right!"

And that was the way I came first to the printing-office.

CHAPTER II

I STEP BOLDLY INTO THE STORY

It is one of the provoking, but interesting, things about life that it will never stop a moment for admiration. No sooner do you pause to enjoy it, or philosophize over it, or poetize about it, than it is up and away, and the next time you glance around it is vanishing over the hill – with the wind in its garments and the sun in its hair. If you do not go on with life, it will go on without you. The only safe way, then, to follow a story, I mean a story in real life, is to get right into it yourself. How breathless, then, it becomes, how you long for – and yet fear – the next chapter, how you love the heroine and hate the villain, and never for an instant can you tell how it is all coming out!

I should be tempted to say that I arrived at the printing-office at a psychological moment if it were not for the fact, as I soon learned, that most of the moments for several months past had been equally psychological. Indeed, before I had fairly got acquainted with the printing-office, and with Fergus and Anthy, and was expecting momentarily to hear the Captain coming in, crying "Fudge," the story moved on, as majestically as if I hadn't appeared at all.

In a story or a play you can set your stage for your crises, and lead up to the entrance of your villain with appropriate literary flourishes. You can artfully let us know beforehand that it is really a villain who is about to intrude upon your paradise, and dim the voice of the canary and frighten the cat. But in real life, events and crises have a disconcerting way of backing into your narrative before ever you are ready for them, and at the most awkward and inconvenient times.

It was thus that Bucky Penrose came into the printing-office that spring morning. He was struggling with a small but weighty box filled with literature in metal. When he had got it well inside, he deposited it, not at all gently, on a stool, took off his cap, and wiped his forehead.

"Whew, it's hot this morning!" said Bucky.

Now, I dislike to speak of Bucky as a villain, for of all the people in Hempfield Bucky certainly least looks the part. He has towy hair and mild, light-blue eyes. He wears a visor cap and carries a long, flat book which he flaps open for you to sign. He is the expressman.

I could see, however, from the look in Anthy's face that Bucky was really a hardened villain. And Bucky himself seemed to know it and feel it, for it was in an apologetic voice that he said:

"The plates is a dollar this week, Miss Doane, and the insides is seven and a half, C. O. D."

Anthy's hand went to the little leather bag she carried.

"I – I didn't bring up the insides in this load. Mr. Peters said – the Captain – "

Anthy had taken a step forward, and there was a look of sudden determination in her face.

"Never mind, Bucky, about the Captain – "

"Well, I thought – "

He was thinking just what the whole of Hempfield was thinking, and dared not say. The colour came up in Anthy's cheeks, but she only lifted her chin the higher.

"Tell Mr. Peters to send up the insides at once, Bucky, at once. The money will be ready for him."

"All right, Miss Doane, all right – but I thought – "

"Don't think," growled MacGregor, who had been standing aside and saying nothing; "it ain't your calling."

Bucky turned fiercely to reply, but Anthy suddenly laid a hand on his arm.

"In the future, Bucky, don't go to the Captain at all. Come straight to me."

"'Tain't my fault," grumbled Bucky; "I got to collect."

"Certainly you have," said Anthy; "I'll pay you for the box, and you can bring the insides later. Tell Mr. Peters."

It was magnificent the way she carried it off; and when at last the villain had departed, she turned to us with a face slightly flushed, but in perfect control. I had a sudden curious lift of the heart: for there is nothing that so stirs the soul of a man as the sight of courage in a woman. If I had been interested before, I was doubly interested now. It had been one of those lightning-flash incidents which let us more deeply into the real life of men than pages of history. I felt that this printing-office was sacred ground, the scene of battle and trial and commotion.

At the same time the whole situation struck me with a sudden sense of amusement and surprise. Back somewhere in my consciousness I had always felt something of awe for the Power of the Press. A kind of institutional sanctity seemed to hedge it round about, so that it spoke with the thunder of authority – and here was the Press quite unable to pay the expressman seven dollars and a half! I think I must have entertained much the same view that Captain Doane so delights to express upon any favourable (or unfavourable) public occasion.