Hempfield

"Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life seemed to him hollow and existence but a burden."

Fergus read it with a deliciously humorous Scotch twist in the words, a twist impossible to represent in print. Occasionally he would pause and bark two or three times, his excuse for laughter. When he had reached the end of the passage, Nort said:

"I've got it! This is the very thing: let's put it in the Star. Where's a pencil and paper? Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Passage from 'Tom Sawyer.' Everybody in town knows that Fergus likes 'Tom Sawyer.'"

"Humph!" said Fergus, but it was evident that he was not a little pleased. Do what he would, he could not help liking Nort.

"I know something that represents Fergus still better," said Anthy.

Fergus looked across at her, and then began thumbing his pipe.

"What's that?" asked Nort.

"'The Twa Dogs.' Isn't that your favourite poem, Fergus?"

"Whur'll you find a better one?" asked Fergus, putting his pipe back in his mouth.

"That's Number Two," said the irrepressible Nort. "We'll put that in some other issue headed 'Fergus MacGregor's Favourite Poem.'"

CHAPTER XX

THE CELEBRATION

Nothing, finally, continues long in this world. At moments of high happiness and grand endeavour we are tempted to think that the world is solid happiness all the way through. But in reality the interior of the planet of life is molten and the crust terribly thin: we never know at what moment an earthquake may rend what has seemed to us the indestructible foundations of our existence.

The Star had been wonderfully successful, and Nort had been going from glory to dazzling glory, having everything his own way, and coming, I have no doubt, to think himself something of an exception to the common lot of poor human nature. He was in the first bloom of his genius (you will yet hear from Norton Carr, mark my word), and like many another ardent young man he thought the world was made for him, not he for the world. He liked people, and he knew that people liked him – and presumed upon it. And more and more he loved to toss off his glittering ideas and his wonderful plans, enjoying the bedazzlement which they aroused and ready to laugh at those who were too easily taken in. At first he was willing to sit down and work hard to bring his dreams to pass, but he had never been trained to steady effort, and unless he was forced it was irksome to him. He liked to explain his ideas and let any one else work them out, or drop them. He was like that vagabond of birds, the cuckoo, always laying eggs in the nests of other birds, knowing with a sort of sardonic humour that if they did hatch the young birds would and could be nothing but cuckoos.

As spring advanced Nort grew still more undependable. It seemed to get into his very blood. I would catch him looking out of the open window of our office into the mass of lilac leaves, or lifting his chin to take in a full breath of the good outdoors, and when he whistled, and he was often whistling, the low monotonous note had a curious lift and stir in it. He was frequently moody, and when he did burst out it was almost never to Anthy. He seemed actually to avoid Anthy, and yet without any set purpose of doing so. And of all of us he liked best to talk with Fergus, who treated him very much as a she-bear treats her cub, with evidences of burly affection which usually left claw marks.

I could see that all this was getting to be very distressing to Anthy. Perhaps she felt that the pace the Star was setting was far too great to keep; perhaps she felt that too much rested upon the uncertain quantity which was Nort – and perhaps, down deep, she had begun to have a more than ordinary interest in Nort. She was not one of those women who are quickly awakened, and she was absorbed in her enterprise, and, besides, to all outward appearances, Nort was a mere tramp printer and her own employee.

One bright forenoon in April, one of those utterly perfect spring days in which April appears in the coquettish garb of June, I saw Nort suddenly start up from his work, seize his coat, and shoot out of the door. In the afternoon, as I was going homeward along the lanes and across the fields, I came upon him in a grove of young maple trees. He was lying flat on his back in the leaves, all flecked with sunshine, his arms opened wide, one leg lifted high over the other. He was looking up into the green wonder of the vegetation. Such a look of sheer pagan joy of life I have rarely seen on a human face. When he saw me he sprang to his feet.

"Isn't it wonderful – all of it?" he said. "Why, David, I could write poetry, if I knew how!"

"Or paint pictures – or carve statues, or compose music," I put in.

"Anything is possible on a day like this!"

"Except printing a country newspaper."

He laughed ruefully, threw back his head impatiently and utterly refused to discuss that subject.

I took the rascal home with me, to Harriet's delight, and he followed me around afterward, while I did my chores.

The next morning, just as he was starting for town, he began telling Harriet how much he had enjoyed coming to see us – so many times during the past months.

"I wish," he said, "there was some way of showing you and David how much I appreciate it."

Here he stopped abruptly and his eyes began to glow.

"I have it. A great idea! You're in it, Miss Grayson!"

Harriet stood watching his slight active figure until it quite disappeared beyond the hill. Then she came in, looking absent-minded, a very rare expression for her, and I even thought I heard her sigh softly.

"What's the matter, Harriet?"

"That boy! That perfectly irresponsible boy! He needs some one to look after him."

Nort's idea was not long in bearing fruit. Harriet found the letter in the mail box addressed to both of us in Nort's handwriting. She brought it in, tearing it open curiously.

"I can't conceive– addressed to both of us."

She finally opened it and produced a card neatly printed with these words:

Fergus MacGregor

and

Norton Carr

request the pleasure of

your company at dinner

Friday evening, April twenty-third,

at the office of

The Hempfield Star

to meet

Tom, Dick, and Old Harry

r. s. v. p

"What in the world!" exclaimed Harriet.

It was as much of a surprise to Anthy and the old Captain as it was to us. As for Ed Smith, he had so far lost his breath trying to keep up with Nort that he no longer had the capacity for being surprised at anything.

I cannot attempt an adequate description of that evening's celebration. Though we did not know it at the time it brought us to the very climax and crisis of that period of our lives. It was the glorious end of an epoch in the history of the Star of Hempfield.

Nort and Fergus had cleaned out the back room of the shop, and a table was set up in the middle of it with just chairs enough for our own company, including one stool upon which Tom, the cat, was intermittently induced to sit by Nort. Dick's cage was hung from the ceiling over the table, where for a time he seemed quite alive to the importance of the occasion, but soon went off to sleep on his perch with his head drawn down among his yellow feathers.

The meal itself came mostly by the hands of Joe Miller, coloured, of the Hempfield House, who smiled broadly during the entire evening, but the pièce de resistance, the crowning glory of the evening, was an enormous steak which Nort and Fergus, with much discussion and more perspiration, and not a few smudges and scratches, broiled over the coals in our office stove. I may say that in the effort to produce these coals the office was heated all the afternoon to such a temperature that it drove us all out. I shall not forget the sight of Nort coming in at the door carrying the triumphant steak, still in the broiler, with Fergus crouching and dodging along beside him, holding a part of an old press fly under it to catch any drippings. I remember the look on his glowing face and the smile he wore! He let the steak slide out of the broiler, to Harriet's horror, upon the huge hotel platter.

"There!" he exclaimed.