Hempfield

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.