Hempfield

"All Together Now! Boost Hempfield!"

I can scarcely describe how I was affected by these changes; but I should have realized that any man bold enough to hitch his wagon to a star must prepare himself for a swift course through the skies, and not take it amiss if he collides occasionally with the heavenly bodies.

I think it was secretly amusing to Harriet during the weeks that followed my first great visit to the printing-office to watch the eagerness with which I awaited the postman on the publication days of the Star. I even went out sometimes to meet him, and took the paper from his hand. I have been a devoted reader of books these many years, but I think I have never read anything with sharper interest than I now began to read the Star. I picked out the various items, editorials, reading notices, and the like, and said to myself: "That's the old Captain's pungent pen," or "Anthy must have written that," or "I warrant the Scotchman, Fergus, had a finger in that pie." As I read the editorials I could fairly see the old Captain at his littered desk, the cat rubbing against his leg, the canary singing in the cage above him, and his head bent low as he wrote. And I was disturbed beyond measure by the signs of an unknown hand at work upon the Star.

"I thought, David, you did not care for country newspapers," said my sister.

She wore that comfortably superior smile which becomes her so well. The fact is, she is superior.

"Well," said I, "you may talk all you like about Browning and Carlyle – "

"I have not," said my sister, "referred to Browning or Carlyle."

"You may talk all you like" – I disdained her pointed interruption – "but for downright human nature here in the country, give me the Hempfield Star."

Once during these weeks I paid a short obligatory visit to the printing-office, and gave Anthy the name of my uncle in California and got the envelopes that had been printed for me. I also took in a number of paragraphs relating to affairs in our neighbourhood, and told Anthy (only I did not call her Anthy then) that if agreeable I would contribute occasionally to the Star. She seemed exceedingly grateful, and I liked her better than ever.

I also had a characteristic exchange with Fergus, in which, as usual, I came off worsted. In those troublous days Fergus was the toiling Atlas upon whose wiry shoulders rested the full weight of that heavenly body. He set most of the type, distributed it again, made up the forms, inked the rollers, printed the paper (for the most part), did all the job work which Hempfield afforded, and smoked the worst pipe in America.

When I told him that I was going to write regularly for the Star and showed him the paragraphs I had brought in (I suspect they were rather long) this was his remark:

"Oh, Lord, more writers!"

It was on this occasion, too, that I really made the acquaintance of the Captain. He was in the best of spirits. He told me how he had beaten the rebels at Antietam. I enjoyed it all very much, and decided that for the time being I would suspend judgment on the pipe incident.

One day I reached the point where I could stand it no longer. So I hitched up the mare and drove to town. All the way along the road I tried to imagine what had taken place in the printing-office.

I thought with a sinking heart that the paper might have been sold, and that my new friends would go away. I thought that Anthy might be carrying out some new and vigorous plan of reconstruction, only somehow I could not feel Anthy's hand in the changes I had seen.

It was all very vivid to me; I had, indeed, a feeling, that afterward became familiar enough, that the Star was a living being, struggling, hoping, suffering, like one of us. In truth, it was just that.

No sooner had I turned in at the gate than I perceived that some mysterious and revolutionary force had really been at work. The gate itself had acquired two hinges where one had been quite sufficient before, and inside the office – what a change was there! It was not so much in actual rearrangement, though the editorial desk looked barren and windswept; it was rather in the general atmosphere of the place. Even Tom, the cat, showed it: when I came in at the door he went out through the window. He was scared! No more would he curl himself contentedly to sleep in editorial chairs; no more make his bed in the office wastebasket. Though it was still early in the morning, Fergus was not reading "Tom Sawyer." No, Fergus was hard at work, and didn't even look around when I came in.

Anthy was there, too, in her long crisp gingham apron, which I always thought so well became her. She had just put down her composing stick, and was standing quite silent, with a curious air of absorption (which I did not then understand), before the dingy portrait of Lincoln on the wall just over the cases. On her desk, not far away, a book lay open. I saw it later: it was Rand's "Modern Classical Philosophers." It represented Anthy's last struggling effort to keep on with her college work. In spite of all the difficulties and distractions of the printing-office, she had never quite given up the hope that some day she might be able to go back and graduate. It had been her fondest desire, the deepest purpose of her heart.

As she glanced quickly around at me I surprised on her face a curious look. How shall I describe it? – a look of exaltation, and of anxiety, too, I thought. But it passed like a flash, and she gave me a smile of friendly recognition, and stepped toward me with the frank and outright way she had. It gave me a curious deep thrill, not, I think, because she was a woman, a girl, and so very good to look upon, but because I suddenly saw her, the very spirit of her, as a fine, brave human being, fighting one of the hard and bitter fights of our common life. I do not pretend to know very much about women in general, and I think perhaps there is some truth in one of Nort's remarks, made long afterward:

"David's idea of generalizing about women," said that young upstart, "is to talk about Anthy without mentioning her name."

Is yours any different, Nort? – or yours?

Yes, I think it is true; and this I know because I know Anthy, that, however beautiful and charming a woman may be, as a woman, that which finally rings all the bells in the chambers of the souls of men are those qualities which are above and beyond womanly charm, which are universal and human: as that she is brave, or simple, or noble in spirit.

That Anthy was deeply troubled on that summer morning I saw plainly when the Captain came, in the keen glance she gave him. He, too, seemed somehow changed, so unlike himself as to be almost gloomy. He gave me a sepulchral, "Good morning, sir," and sat down at his desk without even lighting his pipe.

Something tremendous, I could feel, was taking place there in the printing-office, and I said to Anthy – we had been talking about the paragraphs I brought in:

"What's been happening to the Star since I was here before?"

"You've discovered it, too!" she said with a whimsical smile. "Well, we're just now in process of being modernized." At this I heard Fergus snort behind me.

"Bein' busted, you mean," said he.

Fergus, besides being temperamentally unable to contain his opinions, had been so long the prop of the mechanical fortunes of the Star that he was a privileged character.

"I knew something was the matter," I said. "As I was coming in I felt like saying, 'Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishmun.'"

"Plain Yankee this time," said Fergus.

"Now, Fergus!" exclaimed Anthy severely. "You see," she continued, "we positively had to do something. The paper has been going downhill ever since my father's death. Father knew how to make it pay, even with half the families in town taking the cheap city dailies. But times are changing, and we've got to modernize or perish."

While she spoke with conviction, her words lacked enthusiasm, and they had, moreover, a certain cut-and-dried sound. "Times are changing. Modernize or perish!"

Anthy did not know it, of course, but she was living at the psychological moment in our history when the whole country was turning for salvation to that finished product, that perfect flower, of our institutions, the Practical Business Man. Was a city sick, or a church declining in its membership, or a college suffering from slow starvation, or a newspaper down with neurasthenia, why, call in a Practical Business Man. Let him administer up-to-date remedies; let him hustle, push, advertise.

It was thus, as an example of what the historian loves to call "remote causes," that Mr. Ed Smith came to Hempfield and the Star. He was a graduate of small-town journalism in its most progressive guises, and if any one was ever entitled to the degree of P. B. M. cum laude, it was Ed Smith.

He had come at Anthy's call – after having made certain eminently sound and satisfying financial arrangements. When it came finally to the issue, Anthy had seen that the only alternative to the extinction of the Star was some desperate and drastic remedy. And Ed Smith was that desperate and drastic remedy.

"I felt," she said to me, "that I must do everything I could to keep the Star alive. My father devoted all his life to it, and then, there was Uncle Newt – how could Uncle Newt live without a newspaper?"

I did not know until long afterward what the sacrifice had meant to Anthy. It meant not only a surrender of all her immediate hopes of completing her college work, but she was compelled to risk everything she had. First, she had borrowed all the money she could raise on the old home, and with this she paid off the accumulated debts of the Star. With the remainder, which Ed Smith spoke of as Working Capital, she plunged into the unknown and venturesome seas of modernized journalism.

She had not gone to these lengths, however, without the advice of old Judge Fendall of Hempfield, one of her father's close friends, and a man I have long admired at a distance, a fine, sound old gentleman, with a vast respect for business and business men. Besides this, Anthy had known Ed for several years; he had called on her father, had, indeed, called on her.

It was bitter business for the old Captain to find himself, after so many glorious years, fallen upon such evil days. I have always been amused by the thought of the first meeting between Ed Smith and the Captain, as reported afterward by Fergus (with grim joy).

"Do you know," Ed asked the Captain, "the motto that I'd print on that door?"

The Captain didn't.

"Push," said he dramatically; "that's my motto."

I can see the old Captain drawing himself up to his full stature (he was about once and a half Ed's size).

"Well, sir," said he, "we need no such sign on our door. Our door has stood wide open to our friends, sir, for thirty years."

When the old Captain began to be excessively polite, and to address a man as "sir," he who was wise sought shelter. It was the old Antietam spirit boiling within him. But Ed Smith blithely pursued his way, full of confidence in himself and in the god he worshipped, and it was one of Anthy's real triumphs, in those days of excursions and alarms, that she was able both to pacify the Captain and keep Fergus down.

Ed came in that morning while I was in the printing-office, a cheerful, quick-stepping, bold-eyed young fellow with a small neat moustache, his hat slightly tilted back, and a toothbrush in his vest pocket.

"You are the man," he said to me briskly, "that writes the stuff about the Corwin neighbourhood."

I acknowledged that I was.

"Good stuff," said he, "good stuff! Give us more of it. And can't you drum up a few new subs out there for us? Those farmers around you ought to be able to come up with the ready cash."

To save my life I couldn't help being interested in him. It is one of the absurd contrarieties of human nature that no sooner do we decide that a man is not to be tolerated, that he is a villain, than we begin to grow tremendously interested in him. We want to see how he works. And the more deeply we get interested, the more we begin to see how human he is, in what a lot of ways he is exactly like us, or like some of the friends we love best – and usually we wind up by liking him, too.

It was so with Ed Smith. He let into my life a breath of fresh air, and of new and curious points of view. I think he felt my interest, too, and as I now look back upon it, I count his friendship as one of the things that helped to bind me more closely and intimately to the Star. While he was not at all sensitive, still he had already begun to feel that the glorious progress he had planned for the Star (and for himself) might not be as easy to secure as he had anticipated. He wanted friends in the office, friends of those he desired to be friendly with, especially Anthy. Besides, I was helping fill his columns without expense!

I had a good lively talk with him that morning. Before I had known him fifteen minutes he had expressed his opinion that the old Captain was a "back number" and a "dodo," and that Fergus was a good fellow, but a "grouch." He confided in me that it was his principle, "when in Rome to do what the Romans do," but I wasn't certain whether this consisted, in his case, of being a dodo or a grouch. He was full of wise saws and modern instances, a regular Ben Franklin for wisdom in the art of getting ahead.

"When the cash is going around," said he, "I don't see why I shouldn't have a piece of it. Do you?"

He told me circumstantially all the reasons why he had come to Hempfield.

"I could have made a lot more money at Atterbury or Harlan Centre; they were both after me; but, confidentially, I couldn't resist the lady."

Well, Ed was wonderfully full of business. "Rustling" was a favourite word of his, and he exemplified it. He rustled. He got in several new advertisements, he published paid reading notices in the local column, a thing never before done on the Star. He persuaded the railroad company to print its time tables (at "our regular rates"), with the insinuation that if they didn't he'd … and he formed a daring plan for organizing a Board of Trade in Hempfield to boost the town and thus secure both news and advertising for the Star. Oh, he made things lively!

Some men, looking out upon life, get its poetic implications, others see its moral significance, and here and there a man will see beauty in everything; but to Ed all views of life dissolved, like a moving picture, into dollars.

At first Fergus, that thrifty Scotch soul, was inclined to look with favour upon these new activities, for they promised well for the future prosperity of the Star; but this friendly tolerance was blasted as the result of a curious incident. Fergus had lived for several years in the back part of the printing-office. It was a small but comfortable room which had once been the kitchen of the house. In the course of his ravening excursions, seeking what he might devour, Ed Smith presently fell upon Fergus's room. Ed never could understand the enduring solidity of ancient institutions. Now Fergus's room, I am prone to admit, was not all that might have been desired, Fergus being a bachelor; but he was proud of it, and swept it out once a month, as he said, whether it needed it or not. Ed's innocent suggestion, therefore, of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront. He did not complain to Anthy, though he told me, and from that moment he began a silent, obstinate opposition to everything that Ed was, or thought, or did.

If it had not been for Anthy, Ed would indeed have had a hard time of it. But Anthy managed it, and in those days, hard as they were, she was finding herself, becoming a woman.

"Fergus," she said, "we're going to stand behind Ed Smith. We've got to work it out. It's our last chance, Fergus."

So Fergus stuck grimly to the cases, actually doing more work than he had done before in years; Tom, the cat, sat warily on the window sill, ready at a moment's notice to dive to safety; the old Captain was gloomy, and wrote fierce editorials on the Democratic party and on all "new-fangled notions" (especially flying machines and woman suffrage). His ironies about the "initiative, referendum, and recall" were particularly vitriolic during this period of his career. Anthy was the only cheerful person in the office.

It was some time in August, in the midst of these stirring events, when the Star was deporting itself in such an unprecedented manner, that the Captain one day brought in what was destined to be one of the most famous news items, if not the most famous, ever published in the Star.

I was there at the time, and I can testify that he came in quite unconcernedly, though there was an evident look of disapproval upon his countenance. It was thus with the Captain, that nothing was news unless it stirred him to an opinion. An earthquake might have shaken down the Hempfield townhall or tipped over the Congregational Church, but the Captain might not have thought of putting the news in the paper unless it had occurred to him that the selectmen should have been on hand to prevent the earthquake, upon which he would have had a glorious article, not on the earthquake, but on the failure of a free American commonwealth, in this enlightened twentieth century, to secure efficiency in the conduct of the simplest of its public affairs.

But truly historic events get themselves reported even through the densest mediums. I saw the Captain with my own eyes as he wrote:

What has become of the officer of the law in Hempfield? A strange young man was seen coming down Main Street yesterday afternoon in a condition which made him a sad example for the lads of Hempfield, many of whom were following him. Is this an orderly and law-abiding town or is it not?

I may say in passing that the Captain's inquiry: "What has become of the officer of the law in Hempfield?" was purely rhetorical. The Captain knew perfectly well where Steve Lewis was at that critical moment, for he had looked over the fence of Steve's yard as he passed, and saw that officer of the law, in a large blue apron, helping his wife hang out the week's washing. But how could one put that in the Star?

Such was the exact wording of that historic item. By some chance it did not meet the eagle eye of Ed Smith until the completely printed paper, still moist from the press, was placed in his hands. Then his eye fell upon it.

"Who wrote this item about a strange young man?" he asked.

"I think the Captain got it," said Anthy.

"Well!" exclaimed Ed, "that must be the very chap I have just hired to help Fergus."

He paused a moment, reflectively.

"I got him dirt cheap, too," said he.

And this was the way in which Norton Carr was plunged into the whirl of life at Hempfield.

CHAPTER V

NORT

I love Norton Carr very much, as he well knows, but if I am to tell a truthful story I may as well admit, first as last, that Nort was never quite sure how it was that he got off, or was put off, at Hempfield. In making this admission, however, I do not for a moment accept all the absurd stories which are afloat regarding Nort's arrival in Hempfield.

He says the first thing he remembers clearly was of standing in the street at the top of our common, looking down into Hempfield – one of the finest views in our town. The exact historic spot where he stood was nearly in front of a small shoe shop, the one now kept by Tony, the Italian. If ever the Georgia Johnson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution runs out of places upon which to plant stones, tablets, trees, flowers, cannon balls, or drinking fountains, I would respectfully suggest raising a monument in front of Tony's shop with some such inscription as this:

Here StoodNORTON CARROn the Morning of HisINVOLUNTARYArrival in Hempfield

Nort walked down the street with a number of boys behind him —three, to be exact, not a "rabble." He was seen by old Mrs. Parker, one of our most prominent journalists, who was, as usual, beating her doormat on the front porch. He was seen by Jared Sparks, who keeps the woodyard, and by Johnny McGonigal, who drives the hack; and finally he was caught by the eagle eye of the Press, in the person of Captain Doane, as I have already related, and his shame was published abroad to the world through the columns of the Star. As nearly as I can make out, for the facts regarding any given event in Hempfield often vary in adverse proportion to the square of the number of persons doing the reporting, the main indictment against Nort upon this occasion was that he appeared in town, a stranger without a hat. Without a hat!

I admit that he did stop in front of the Congregational Church; but I maintain that it is well worth any man's while to stop on a fine morning and look at our old church, with its mantle of ivy and the sparrows building their nests in the eaves. I admit also that he did make a bow, a low bow, to the spire, but I deny categorically Johnny McGonigal's absurd yarn that he said: "Good mornin', church. Shorry sheem disrespechtful." Any one who knows Nort as well as I do would not consider his making a bow to a perfectly respectable old church as anything remarkable, or accusing him of having been intoxicated, save with the wine of spring and of youth. Why, I myself have often bowed to fine old oak trees and to hilltops. I wonder why it is that when small communities jump at conclusions, they so often jump the wrong way?

And yet I don't want to blame Hempfield. You can see for yourself what it would mean – a stranger, without a hat, bowing to the spire of the Congregational Church – what it would mean in a town which has religiously voted "dry" every spring since the local-option law went into effect, which abhors saloons, which resounds with the thunders of pulpit and press against the iniquity of drink, and where, if there are three or four places where the monster may be quietly devoured, no one is supposed to know anything about them.

I do not enlarge upon this picture of Nort with any delight, and yet I have always thought that it was a great help to Nort that he should have appeared in Hempfield in the guise of a vagabond.

If we had known then that he had the right kind of a father, had come from the right kind of a college, and had already spent a good deal of money that he had not earned, I fear he would have been seriously handicapped. We should probably have looked the other way while he was bowing to the church – and considered that he was going without a hat for his health. As for putting him in the Star, we should never have dreamed of it!

I love to think of Nort, coming down our street for the first time – the green common with its wonderful tall elms on one side and the row of neat stores and offices on the other. It must be a real adventure to see Hempfield on a sunny morning with a new eye, to pass Henderson's drygoods store and catch the ginghamy whiff from the open doorway, or go by Mr. Tole's drug store and breathe in the aromatic odour of strange things that should be stoppered in glass bottles and aren't. And then the cool smell of newly watered sidewalks, and the good look of the tomatoes in their baskets, and the moist onions, and spinach, and radishes, and rhubarb in front of the shady market, and the sparrows fighting in the street – and everything quiet, and still, and home-like!

And think of coming unexpectedly (how I wish I could do it myself some day and wake up afterward to enjoy it) upon the wide doorway of John Bass's blacksmith shop, and see John himself standing there at his anvil with a hot horseshoe in his tongs. John never sings when his iron is in the fire, but the moment he gets his hand on his hammer and the iron on the horn of the anvil, then all the Baptist in him seems suddenly to effervesce, and he lifts his high and squeaky voice:

"Jeru (whack) salem (whack) the gold (whack) en (whack, whack),

"With milk (whack) and hon (whack) ey blest (whack, whack, whack)."

And what wouldn't I give to clap my eyes newly on old Mr. Kenton, standing there in front of his office, his florid face shaded by the porch roof, but the rotundity of his white waistcoat gleaming in the sunshine, his cane hooked over his arm, and himself looking benignly out upon the world of Hempfield as it flows by, ready to discuss with any one either the origin or the destiny of his neighbours.