Hempfield

Hempfield
David Grayson

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."