Hempfield

It was in this mood of exuberant amusement, combined with challenge to Anthy, that he wrote his absurd report (which was never printed) of the effect of the publication of the poems upon Hempfield, and read it aloud one evening with great dramatic effect – keeping one eye on Anthy where she sat, half in shadow, at her desk.

"Poets," wrote Nort, "were seen congratulating or commiserating one another upon the public streets, whole families were electrified by discovering that they had a poet in their midst without knowing it, wives were revealed to husbands and husbands to wives, and even the little children of Hempfield began to lisp in measures."

There was much more in the same strain, indicating that Nort was still laughing at us, instead of with us. But Anthy sat there in the shadow, very still, and said nothing. When in repose Anthy's face seemed often to take on a cast of sadness, especially about the eyes, of that sadness and sweetness which so often go with strength and nobility of spirit. She was very beautiful that night, I thought.

I did not know as well then as I came to know afterward, what a struggle she was facing to save the Star, what she had sacrificed to keep green the memory of her father and to cherish the old Captain. And she had a love for Hempfield and Hempfield folk that Nort could not have guessed. Life might be a huge joke to Nort, who had never, up to this time, in all his life, had to fight or suffer for anything – but Anthy, Anthy was already meeting the great adventure.

But there was another and a deeper Nort, which few people at that time had ever seen. This was the Nort who had fled impulsively from New York, and this was the Nort who now strode out along the country roads toward Hawleyville, his head hot with great thoughts. This was the Nort who was tasting the sweets of editorship, who had more than half begun to believe what he had told Anthy, on the spur of the moment, when he walked home with her. Why not a wonderful new country journalism? Why not a paper right in Hempfield which, by virtue of its profound thought, its matchless wit, its charming humour, its saving sympathy, its superb handling of great topics, its – its – Why not? And why not Norton Carr, editor?

"Matchless" was the adjective that Nort had in his mind at the moment, and he imagined a typical comment in the New York Times:

"We quote this week from the Hempfield Star, that matchless exponent of rural thought in America, edited by Mr. Norton Carr – " etc., etc.

This would naturally be copied in the Literary Digest and made the subject of an editorial in Life.

This was the Nort who walked the country roads, neither seeing the stars above nor feeling the clods beneath, but living in a fairer land than this is, the perfect spring weather of the soul of youth. It was thus that Nort lived his deeper life, as the hero of his own hot imaginings.

And this, too, was the Nort who returned to Hempfield – without any conscious intention on his part, for how can one think of two things at once – by the road which led past Anthy's home. He did not stop, he scarcely looked around, and yet he had an intense and vivid undersense of a dim light in one of the upper windows of the dark house.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH GREAT PLANS ARE EVOLVED, AND THERE IS A SURPRISING EVENT

Since we had come to know the Star, Sunday afternoons were important occasions for Harriet and me. Nort was the first to visit us – soon after he came to Hempfield – but the old Captain and Anthy were not many Sundays behind him. They usually drove out with one of Joe Crane's horses (charged against advertising in the Star), and on such occasions the Captain was very grand in his long coat and wide hat – and gloves. He always greeted Harriet with chivalrous formality, inquired after her health, and usually had some bit of old-fashioned gallantry to offer her, which always bothered her just a little, especially if she happened at the moment to catch my eye. I had great trouble getting Fergus to come at all; but having once lured him out, Harriet's gingerbread soon finished him.

At first there was an amusing struggle between Harriet and Fergus, in which, of course, that Scotchman came off second best – and never knew that he was beaten! You see, Fergus is never entirely happy unless he can tip back in his chair, until you are certain he is going over backward and smash the door of the china closet. Also, he smokes the worst tobacco in the world. On the occasion of his second visit he went prowling around the room for a straight-back chair to sit in, but Harriet shooed him irresistibly toward an effeminate rocker, where he could gratify his instinct for tipping back, and not endanger the family china.

During the week that followed Harriet made a scientific study of the drafts in our living-room (that is, I think she did), and on the next Sunday she not only shooed Fergus into a rocker, but that rocker was so placed near the window that the tobacco smoke was drawn straight out of the room. After that, she made Fergus so comfortable within and without – especially within – that he thought her a very wonderful woman. As she is.

As for Harriet and me, these Sunday gatherings – which often included the Scotch preacher, or our neighbour Horace, or, rarely, the Starkweathers – these visits were delightful beyond comparison. By Saturday night there was not a speck of dust in the house that was visible to the naked eye, and by three o'clock Sunday (if there was no one in to dinner) Harriet and I began an unacknowledged contest to see which of us would be the first to catch sight of the visitors coming up the town road or across the fields. We both pretended we weren't looking – but we were.

It was on the Sunday afternoon following the publication of the poetry, just after I had come in from the barn, that I saw Nort coming down the lane which skirts the edge of the wood. He had a stick in his hand with which he struck at the foliage of the hazel brush or decapitated a milkweed.

"There's Nort!" I exclaimed.

It was miraculous to see Harriet twitch off her apron and, with two or three deft pats, arrange her hair.

When Nort saw us, for we couldn't help going outside to meet him, he raised one hand, shouting:

"Hello, there, David!"

I remember thinking what a boy he looked. Not large, not very strong, but with a lithe swinging step and an odd tilt of the head, a little backward, as though he were looking up for the joy of it. I felt my heart rising and warming at the very sight of him.

"Well, Miss Grayson," said he, coming up the steps, "have you decided yet whether you and David are most indebted to the Macintoshes or the Scribners?"

There was laughter in his eyes as he shook Harriet's hand, and I could see the faint flush in her cheeks and the little positive nod of the head she had when she was most pleased, and didn't want it to appear too plainly. Nort had long ago discovered her undying passion for her ancestors, and already knew the complete record of that Macintosh who was an officer in the Colonial army, and who, if one were to judge by Harriet's account, was the origin of all the good traits of the Grayson family.

When Harriet is especially pleased with any one, particularly if he is a man, she thinks at once that he must be hungry; and no sooner were the greetings well over than she escaped to the kitchen.

Nort at once put on a portentous look of solemn concern, his face changing so quickly that it was almost comical.

"David," said he, "here we are right up to another issue, and no ideas."

He spoke as though he were the sole proprietor of the Star.

"Well," I said, "a little thing like that never yet prevented a newspaper from appearing regularly."

"No," he laughed, "but think of the perfectly grand opportunity that is going to waste. Ed Smith away for another week!"

"We enjoyed printing the poetry, didn't we?"

"Didn't we!" he responded. "I thought last Wednesday night that it was pretty nearly the biggest and most interesting work in the world to edit a country newspaper."

"And you told Anthy."

He glanced around at me quickly.

"She told you?"

"No," I said, "but I knew."

"Yes, I told her," he said.

He paused and looked off across our quiet hills; the autumn air was cool and sweet.

"I wonder – " he began, but he did not tell me what it was that he wondered.

Presently his thoughts returned sharply to the Star.

"What would you put in the paper, anyhow, David?" he asked.

"Hempfield," said I.

His eyes kindled.

"I get you," he said eagerly. "It's exactly what I say. The very spirit of the town, the soul of the country – make the paper fairly throb with it."

He was off! It was the first time I had seen Nort in his serious mood – and he could be dreadfully serious, as serious as only youth knows how to be.

"Truth!" he exclaimed fiercely. "We don't print the truth in the Star. The most interesting and important things about Hempfield never get into the paper at all. I tell you, David, we never even touch the actual facts about Hempfield. We just fiddle around the outsides of things: 'John Smith came to town on Saturday with his blooded colt. Fine colt, John!' Bah! Think of it – when there is a whole world of real events to write about. Why, David, there are more wonderful and tragic and amusing things right here in this small town than ever I saw in all my life. When we printed the poems last week, we just scratched the surface of the real life of Hempfield."

Nort had jumped up, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and was tramping up and down the room, shaking his mane like a young lion. I confess that, for a moment, I was tempted to laugh at him – and then suddenly I did not care at all to laugh. Something in the wild youth of him, the bold thoughts, stirred me to the depths. The magic of youth, waving its flag upon the Hill Formidable! The fresh runner catching up the torch that has fallen from the slack hand of age! I have had my dreams, too, Nort. I dreamed once —

I dreamed once of seeing the very truth of things. As I worked alone here in my fields, with the great world all open and beautiful around me, I said to myself, "I will be simple, I will not dodge or prevaricate or excuse; I will see the whole of life." I confess now with some sadness (and humour, too) that I have not mastered the wonders of this earth, nor seen the truth of it… I heard a catbird singing in the bush, a friend stopped me by the roadside, there was a star in the far heavens – And when I looked up I was old, and Truth was vanishing behind the hill.

Something of all this I had in my thoughts as Nort talked to me; and it came to me, wistfully, that perhaps this burning youth might really have in him the genius to see the truth of things more clearly than I could, and tell it better than I could.

"Yes," I said, "if one could only see this Hempfield of ours as it really is, all the poetry of it, all the passion of it, all the dullness and mediocrity, all the tragedy of failure, all that is in the hearts and souls of these common people – what a thing it would be! How it would stir the world!"

I must have said it with my whole soul, as I felt it. I suppose I should not have added fuel to the fire of that youth, I suppose I should have been calm and old and practical.

For a moment Nort sat perfectly silent. Then I felt the trembling, eager pressure of his hand on my arm. He leaned over toward me.

"David," he said, "you understand things."

There was that in his voice that I had never heard before. Usually he had a half-humorous, yes, flippant, way with him, but there was something here that touched bottom.

I don't know quite why it is, but after I have been serious about so long, I have an irresistible desire to laugh. I find I can't remain in a rarified atmosphere too long.

"Nort," I said suddenly, "you haven't been seeing any terrible truths about Hempfield, have you?"

The change in his face was startling. He looked like a boy caught in the jam closet – the colour suddenly flooding his cheeks.

"Where is it?" I asked. "Trot it out."

"How did you know?" asked that extraordinary young man.

I laughed.

"Nort," I said, "you aren't the only man in this world who is trying to write – and is ashamed of himself because he can't."

With a smile which I can only characterize as sheepish, Nort drew from his breast pocket a packet of paper. He was all eagerness again, and was for reading me his production on the spot; but just at this moment we saw the old Captain driving up to the gate alone. Where was Anthy? A little later Fergus came, and for some time Harriet filled the whole house with the pleasant noises and bustle of hospitality, which she knows best how to do.

"Captain," I said as soon as ever I could get in a word, "Nort has brought a manuscript with him to read to us."

At that the Captain instinctively lifted one hand to his breast.

"The Captain has one, too," I said.

"A mere editorial," responded the Captain with dignity.

"Where's yours, Fergus?" I asked.

Fergus took his pipe out, barked once or twice deep down inside, and put it back again, which, interpreted, meant that Fergus was amused.

At this point Harriet broke in.

"Before you do anything else," said she, "I want you all to come out and have a bite to eat."

That's the way with Harriet. Just at the moment when you've set your scenery, staged your play, and the curtain is about to go up, she appears with – gingerbread – and stampedes the entire company. Why, you couldn't have kept Fergus —

Harriet had put on her choicest tablecloth and the precious napkins left her by our great-aunt Dorcas, and the old thin glass dishes that came from Grandmother Scribner, which are never used except upon high occasions. It was Sunday night and, as Harriet explained, we never have any supper on Sunday night. There was thick yellow gingerbread, with just a hint in it (not a bit too much and not too little) of the delectable molasses of which it was made, and perfect apple sauce from the earliest Red Astrakhans, cooked so that the rosy quarters looked plump, with sugary crystals sparkling upon them, and thin glass tumblers (of Grandmother Scribner's set) full of sweet milk, yellow and almost foamy at the top.

There are perfect moments in this life!

Nort was in the wildest spirits, the rebound from his unusual mood of seriousness. Nothing escaped him – neither the napkins, nor the spoons, nor the thin old glass, nor the perfect gingerbread, nor the marvellous apple sauce, nor the glow in Harriet's face. She knew that Nort would see it all! Harriet is never so beautiful as when she sits at the head of her own table, her moment of supreme artistry.

"I went to church to-day," said Nort finally.

"You did!" Harriet was vastly pleased.

"Yes," smiled Nort.

This was truly a youth after her own heart.

"Nothing else to do on Sunday in Hempfield," said Nort; "and it was interesting."

He stopped and looked slowly around at me.

"The truth about the church in Hempfield, David!" he exclaimed, as though we had a secret between us.

I laughed.

"That's one thing," I said, "you can't easily tell the truth about – in Hempfield."

"Why not?" asked Harriet with astonishment. "Is there anything that should encourage one to truth-telling more than the church?"

"Read it, Nort," said I, "read it."

"Well," said Nort, again drawing forth his manuscript, "you know what the ordinary church report in the Star is like. 'The usual services were held last Sunday morning at the Congregational Church. An appreciative audience listened to an eloquent sermon by the Rev. Mr. Sargent, his text being John x, 3.' Now, I ask you if that gives you any picture of what the meeting was like? Everybody who was there knew that Mr. Sargent preached, and nobody who was absent could get anything out of such a report. So what's the use of printing it? I thought I'd write a true report of what I saw – and I'll bet it will be read in Hempfield."

The old live gleam was in Nort's eyes.

Here on my desk I have the very manuscript from which Nort read, and I give it just as it was written, as a documentary evidence of Nort's life.

The usual forenoon service was held in the Congregational Church on Sunday. Being a hot day, the Rev. Mr. Sargent wore his black alpaca coat, and preached earnestly for thirty minutes, his text being John x, 3. Miss Daisy Miller played a selection from Mozart, though the piano was unfortunately out of tune. There were in attendance fifteen women, mostly old, seven men, and four children, besides the choir. During the sermon old Mr. Johnson went to sleep and Mrs. Johnson ate four peppermints. Deacon Mitchell took up a collection of fifty-six cents, besides what was in the envelopes. Following is a complete list of those in attendance:

– and Nort solemnly read off the names.

I wish I could describe the hush which followed Nort's reading, and the horror in Harriet's face. Fergus was the first to break the tension. He seemed to be slowly strangling, and his face contrived to twist itself into the most alarming contortions. The old Captain finally observed indulgently:

"Nort will have his little joke."

"Joke!" exclaimed Nort. "Isn't every word of it true? I leave it to Miss Grayson if I haven't been absolutely accurate. And I could have said a lot more about the service that would have been equally true – and a great deal funnier."

I could see generations of Puritan ancestors marshalling themselves for the fray in Harriet's horrified countenance. I could scarcely keep from laughing.

"Yes," I began, "every word is true – "

"The piano tuner," broke in Harriet, "couldn't come last week."

"But, Nort," I continued; "you may have seen the church in Hempfield, but have you felt it?"

"Even if old Mrs. Johnson does eat peppermints – " Harriet was saying.

"Then you wouldn't put the truth in the Star?" said Nort.

I was about to reply, when the old Captain raised a commanding hand.

"The trouble is," said he with great deliberation, "that we do print the truth in the Star; but this new generation, fed upon luxury and ease, has lost its desire for the truth. We're preaching the same sound doctrine that we've preached for thirty years – but the people refuse the truth. They say to us, 'Prophesy not unto us right things. Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.' They are wandering in the wilderness. They have made unto themselves a graven image of free trade, and they are falling down and worshipping before the profane altar of what they are pleased to call the Rights of Women. Rights of Women!"

Whenever the old Captain grew most eloquent he always waxed Biblical.

Here Nort broke in again:

"Well, if you don't like that report – I wrote it more than half in fun anyway – here's another. It's the truth – I felt it, too, David – and I haven't used a single name!"

I can see him yet, sitting up there behind the table, quite rigid, reading from his manuscript:

"There is a man in this town who quarrels regularly with his wife. He quarrelled with her this morning at breakfast: said the eggs were overdone and the coffee was cold. The sun was shining in at the window, the birds were singing, and the grass was green – but he was quarrelling with his wife – "

Well, Nort had a breathless audience! This time he was in deadly earnest. His sketch was not long, but it was as vivid a picture of the torment of domestic unhappiness as ever I have seen in such brief compass. Moreover, it had the very passion, the cut and thrust of the truth of things.

No sooner had he finished reading than Harriet leaned forward and asked in a half whisper, all ablaze with shocked interest.

"Who is it? Is it the Newtons?"

It was Nort's turn to look surprised.

"Why, no," said he. "I don't know the Newtons at all."

"But you must have had some one in mind."

"No," said Nort; "it's just a description of how married people quarrel."

"But it's exactly what the Newtons do," said Harriet.

Here the old Captain broke in.

"Why," said he, "if we printed a thing like that we'd lose all the advertising of Newton's store. We'd lose the whole Newton family, and their cousins, the Maxwells, and their connections, the Mecklins. Why – "

"But it's true, it's true!" Nort burst in. "And every one of you was more interested in it, I could see that, than in anything we ever put in the Star– since I've been here."

With that Nort suddenly jumped up, as though some important thought had just occurred to him, and rushed out of the room.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Harriet.

I succeeded in catching him in the hallway.

"Hempfield would not see these things as Miss Grayson does," he said.

"Nort," said I, "Harriet is Hempfield."

He paused just a moment.

"I think Anthy – Miss Doane – will understand," he said.

With that he rushed out in the dark. He made the distance to town, I think, in record time. It was well past nine o'clock when he arrived at the common, and the town was silent with a silence that broods over it only on Sunday nights. He went past the printing-office without looking around. It was in the neighbourhood of a quarter to ten when he arrived at Anthy's gate. An odd time for a call at Hempfield, you say! It was, indeed.

But there was a light in the window. Nort went up the steps and rang the bell. He had never before felt quite as he did at that moment.

Anthy herself opened the door. Nort stepped in quickly and, for a moment, was unable to say a word. Anthy retreated a step or two.

"I tell you, Miss Doane," said Nort explosively, "the only way to make a success of the Star is to publish the truth about Hempfield – "

At that moment Nort happened to glance through the wide door of the library. It was a comfortable, old-fashioned room, and the evening being a little cool a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth. In a low chair under the light, seeming perfectly at home, sat Ed Smith.

The words died on Nort's lips. He stood for a moment rigid and silent, facing Anthy. Ed had turned his head and was looking at them. No one uttered a sound.

Nort was never able afterward to account for what he did at that moment. He turned quickly, still without saying a word, rushed out of the house, ran down the steps, fell over a honeysuckle bush, picked himself up again, bumped into the gate – and found himself in the middle of the road, in the dark, bare-headed.

CHAPTER XII

THE EXPLOSION

When I was younger than I am now – not so very long ago, either! – I thought I should like to make over some of my neighbours. I thought I could improve on the processes of the Creator, who was apparently wobbly in his moral standards and weak in his discipline, for he allowed several people I knew to flourish and be joyful who by good rights ought to be smacked on their refractory pates; but now, it seems to me, I love most of all to see my friends coming every day true to themselves: Harriet illustrating herself, Horace himself. As for the old Captain, I never wanted a hair of him changed. When men act in character, though they be beggars or burglars, and do not pose or imitate, we have a kind of fondness for them.

As I look back on it now I would not even make over Ed Smith. I did not understand him as well then as I do now, but he was playing his part in the world as well as ever he knew how to play it.

Sometimes I like to think of human beings as cells in the various parts of the huge anatomy of society. In any such consideration Ed Smith would be a stomach cell, and a pretty good one. Whenever the rest of us were soaring too far aloft it was Ed's function to come stealing in upon us like the honest odour of corned beef and cabbage. It was Ed's function to see that we earned every week at least as much as we spent, a tremendous undertaking when you come to think of it.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, we are all mixed up together in this world – poets and plumbers, critics and cooks – and the more clearly we recognize it, the firmer, sounder, truer, will be our grip upon the significance of human life. Why, many a time, when I've been sitting here reading in my study, living for the moment in the rarer atmosphere of the poets, the philosophers, the prophets, I have had to get up and go out and feed the pigs. I have always thought it, somehow, good for me.