Hempfield

After such a stormy morning it was wonderful to see how quickly the troubled atmosphere of the Star began to clear. Four rather sheepish-looking men began to work with a complete show of absorption, while Anthy acted as though nothing had happened.

But there was one thing still on her mind. When I started for home, toward noon, she followed me out on the little porch.

"David," she said, "I want to speak to you."

She hesitated.

"I want you to find Norton Carr."

She laid her hand on my arm. "He hasn't been quite fairly treated."

She smiled, and looked at me wistfully. "We've got to keep the Star going somehow, haven't we?"

CHAPTER XIV

WE BEGIN THE SUBJUGATION OF NORT

Here is a curious and interesting thing often to be noted by any man who looks around him, that we human creatures are all made up into uneven and restless bundles – family bundles, church bundles, political-party bundles, and a thousand amusing kinds of business bundles. It will also be observed that a very large part of us, nearly all of us who are old and most of us who are women, are struggling as hard as ever we can (and without a bit of humour) to hold our small bundles together, while others are struggling with equal ferocity to burst out of their bundles and make new ones. And so on endlessly!

If you see any one particular specimen in any one particular bundle who is making himself obnoxious by wriggling and squirming and twisting with an utter disregard for the sensibilities of the bundle-binders, you may conclude that he is affected by the most mysterious influence, or power, or malady – whatever you care to call it – with which we small human beings have to grapple. I mean that he is growing. When you come to think of it, the most incalculable power in the life of men is the power of growth. If you could tell when any given human being was through growing, you could tell what to do with him; but you never can. Some men are ripe at twenty-five, and some are still adding power and knowledge at eighty. It is not inheritance, nor environment, nor wealth, nor position, that measures the difference between human beings, but rather the mysterious faculty of continued growth which resides within them. It is growth that causes the tragedies of this world – and the comedies – and the sheer beauty of life. Here are a husband and wife bound together in the commonest of bundles: one stops growing, the other keeps on growing; consult almost any play, novel, poem, newspaper, or scandalous gossip, for the results. Consider the restless bundle of nations called Europe, one of which recently began to grow tremendously, began to squirm about in the bundle, began to demand room and air. What an almighty pother this has caused! What an altogether serious business for the bundle-binders!

These observations may seem to lead entirely around the celebrated barn of Robin Hood, but if you follow them patiently you will find that they bring you back at last (by way of Europe) to the dilapidated door of the quiet old printing-office of the Star of Hempfield. If you venture inside you will discover, besides a cat and a canary, one of the most interesting bundles of human beings I know anything about.

And one specimen in this bundle, as you may already suspect, has developed a prodigious power of squirming and wriggling, and otherwise making the bundle-binders of the Star uncomfortable. I refer to Norton Carr.

The world, of course, is in a secret conspiracy against youth and growth. Any man who dares to be young, or to grow, or to be original, must expect to have the world set upon him and pound him unmercifully – and if that doesn't finish him off, then the world clings desperately to his coat tails, resolved that if it cannot stop him entirely it will at least go along with him and make travelling as difficult as possible. This latter process is what a friend of mine illuminatively calls the "drag of mediocrity."

But this punching and pounding is mostly good for youth and originality – good if it doesn't kill – for it proves the strength of youth, tests faith and enthusiasm, and measures surely the power of originality. And as for the provoking drag upon their coat tails, youth and originality should reflect that this is the only way by which mediocrity ever gets ahead!

As I look back upon the history of the Star it seems to me it is a record of Nort's wild plunges within our bundle, and our equally wild efforts to keep him disciplined. I say "our" efforts, but I would, of course, except Ed Smith. Ed had a narrow vision of what that bundle called the Star should be. He wanted it no larger than he was, so that he could dominate it comfortably, and when Nort became obstreperous, he simply cut the familiar cord which bound Nort into the bundle: to wit, his wages. Ed had the very common idea that the only really important relationships between human beings are determined by monetary payments, which can be put on or put off at will. But the fact is that we are bound together in a thousand ways not set down in the books on scientific management. For example, if that rascal of a Norton Carr had not been so interesting to us all, had not so worked his way into the hearts of us, I should never have gone hurrying after him (at Anthy's suggestion) on that November day. And it might – who knows – have been better in dollars and cents for the Star, if I had not hurried. No, as an old friend of mine in Hempfield, Howieson, the shoemaker (a wise man), often remarks: "They say business is business. Well, I say business ain't business if it's all business." Business grows not as it eliminates talent or youth, however prickly or irritating to work with, but by making itself big enough to use all kinds of human beings.

I recall yet the strange thrill I had when I left the printing-office that day to search for Nort. It had given me an indescribable pleasure to have Anthy ask me to help (her "we" lingered long in my thoughts – lingers still), and I had, moreover, the feeling that it depended somewhat on me to help bind together the now fiercely antagonistic elements of the Star.

It may appear absurd to some who think that only those things are great which are big and noisy, that anything so apparently unimportant should stir a man as these events stirred me; but the longer I live the more doubtful I am of the distinction between the times and the things upon which the world places the tags "Important" and "Unimportant."

As I set forth I remember how very beautiful the streets of Hempfield looked to me.

"Have you seen Norton Carr?" I asked here, and, "Have you seen Norton Carr?" I asked there – tracing him from lair to lair, and friend to friend, and thus found myself tramping out along the lower road that leads toward the west and the river. He had sent a telegram, I found in the course of my inquiry, which added a dash of mystery to my quest and stirred in me a curious sense of anxiety.

The very feeling of that dull day, etched deep in my memory by the acid of emotion, comes vividly back to me. There had been no snow, and the fields were brown and bare – dead trees, dead hedges of hazel and cherry, crows flying heavily overhead with melancholy cries, and upon the hills beyond the river dull clouds hanging like widows' weeds: a brooding day.

At every turn I looked for Nort and, thus looking, came to the bridge. It was the same spot, the same bridge, where, some years before, the Scotch preacher and I, driving late one evening, looked anxiously for the girl Anna. I can see her yet, wading there in the dark water, her skirts all floating about her, hugging her child to her breast and crying piteously, "I don't dare, oh, I don't dare, but I must, I must!" Of all that I have told elsewhere.

I stopped a moment and looked down into the water where it reflected the dark mood of the day, and then turned along the road that runs between the alders of the river edge and the beeches and oaks of the hill. It was the way Nort and I had taken more than once, talking great talk. I thought I might find him there.

And there, indeed, I did find him – and know how some old chivalric knight must have felt when at last he overtook the quarry which was to be the guerdon of his lady.

"I shall take him back a captive," I said to myself.

Nort was sitting under a beech tree, looking out upon the cold river. A veritable picture of desolation! He was whistling in a low monotone, a way he had. Poor Nort! Life had opened the door of ambition for him, just a crack, and he had caught glimpses of the glory within, only to have the door slammed in his face. If he had walked upon cerulean heights on Sunday he was grovelling in the depths on Monday. It was all as plain to me as I approached him as if it had been written in a book.

"Hello, Nort," said I.

He started from his place and looked around at me.

"Hello, David," said he carelessly. "What brings you here?"

"You do," said I.

"I do!"

"Yes, I'm about to take you back to Hempfield. The Star finds difficulty in twinkling without you."

I told him what Anthy had said, and of what I felt to be a new effort to control the policies of the Star. But Nort slowly shook his head.

"No, David. This is the end. I have finished with Hempfield."

I wish I could convey the air of resigned determination that was in his words; also the cynicism. Pooh! If Hempfield didn't want him, Hempfield could go hang. He was at the age when he thought he could get away from life. He had not learned that the only way to get on with life is not to get out of it, but to get into it.

He told me that he had wired for money to go home; he drew his brows down in a hard scowl and stared out over the river.

"I've stopped fooling with life," said he tragically.

I could have laughed at him, and yet, somehow, I loved him. It was a great moment in his life. I sat down by him under the beech.

"I'm going to be free," said Nort. "I'm going to do things yet in this world."

"Free of what, Nort?" I asked.

"Ed Smith – for one thing."

"Have you thought that wherever you go you will be meeting Ed Smiths?"

He did not reply.

"I'm sorry," I said, "that you've surrendered."

"Surrendered?" He winced as though I had cut him.

"Yes, surrendered. Haven't you sent for money? Haven't you given up? Aren't you trying to run away?"

Nort jumped from his place.

"No!" he shouted. "Ed Smith discharged me. I would rather cut off my right hand than work in the same county with him again."

"So you have balked at the first hurdle – and are going to run away!"

I have thought often since then of that perilous moment, of how much in Nort's future life turned upon it.