Hempfield

A MAN TO HELP FERGUS

It was really a moment of vast potentialities when Nort turned down the street toward the town instead of up toward the railroad station and the open road. For down the street was the way to the printing-office and the old Captain and Anthy and Fergus and me, and all the things, big and little, I am about to relate. I tremble sometimes when I think how narrowly this story escaped not coming into existence at all.

It was upon this brief but historic journey that Ed Smith met Nort, and like any true newspaper man with a "nose for news," stopped to pass the time of day with the singular stranger. It took him not quite two seconds to "size up" Nort. It was easy for Ed to "size up" people, for he had just two classifications: those people whom he could use, and those who could use him. His problem of life thus became quite simple: it consisted in shifting as many as possible of those of the second classification into the first.

"If you would not be done by a man, do him first," was one of Ed's treasured Ben Franklinisms.

Nort was rather mistily in search of "something to do." Well, what could he do? It took some groping in his mind to discover any accomplishment whatever that was convertible into money, especially in a small town like Hempfield. Finally he said he knew "something about machinery" – he did not specify automobiles – and by some wild chance mentioned the fact that he had once worked in a newspaper office (two months – and was dreadfully tired of it).

Now, Ed Smith was as sharp as any lightning known in our part of the world, and there being nothing he loved better than a "bold stroke" in which he could "close a deal" and do it "on the spot," it took him not above five minutes to offer Nort a trial in the office of the Star at wages which approximated nothing at all. If he could "make good," etc., etc., why, there were great opportunities, etc., etc. It was not the first time that Ed had dealt with tramp printers! And Nort, still low in his mind and quite prepared for anything, agreed to come.

Your sharp, shrewd man can deal profitably with the ninety-nine men who walk or run or burrow or climb, especially if they happen to look seedy, but he is never quite prepared for the hundredth man who can fly. That is, it sometimes happens that a man who has been comfortably ensconced in the pigeonhole labelled, "To Be Done," is suddenly – and by some hocus-pocus which your sharp one can never quite comprehend, and considers unfair – is suddenly discovered to have disappeared, evaporated, to have escaped classification. I throw in this observation at this point for what it may be worth, and not because I have anything against Ed Smith. We may think a woodpecker's bill to be entirely too long for beauty, but it is fine for the woodpecker. Moreover, I cannot forget that without Ed Smith the Hempfield Star would never have seen Nort.

How well I remember my first sight of the "man to help Fergus!" It was about two days, I think, after his arrival, and at a time when the Star was twinkling in the most extraordinary and energetic fashion. You could almost hear it twinkle. As I came into the office Anthy and Fergus were busy at their cases, the old Captain at his desk, Ed Smith in shirtsleeves was making up a new advertisement, and Dick, the canary, swinging in the window. But what was that strange object in the corner on the floor?

Why, Nort, sprawled full length, with his head almost touching the gasoline engine! He had parts of it pretty well distributed around him on the floor, and as nearly as I could make out, was trying to get his nose into the boiler, or barrel, or whatever the insides of a gasoline engine are called. Also he was whistling, as he loved to do, in a low monotone, apparently enjoying himself. Presently he glanced up at me.

"Ever study the anatomy of a gasoline engine?" he asked.

"Never," said I.

"Interesting study," said he.

"I know something about the anatomy of cows and pigs and hens," I said, "but I suppose a gasoline engine is somewhat different."

"Somewhat," said he.

He tinkered away industriously for a moment, and when I continued to stand there watching him, he inquired solemnly:

"A hen has no spark coil, has it?"

"No," I said, just as solemnly, "but neither can a gasoline engine cackle."

I shall never forget the sight of Nort as he slowly rose to a sitting position and looked me over – especially the smile of him and the gleam in his eyes. There was a dab of oil on his nose and smudges on his chin, but he took me in.

So this was the person who had appeared without a hat on our highly respectable streets, and got his shame heralded in the paper! I felt like saying to him:

"Well, you're a cheerful reprobate, I must say!"

You see, we are nearly all of us shocked by the cheerfulness of the wicked. We feel that those whom we have set aside as reprobates, or sinful spectacles, should by good right draw long faces and be appropriately miserable; and we never become quite accustomed to our own surprise at finding them happy or contented.

In short, I began to be interested in that reprobate, in spite of myself. I had come to town intending to have a talk with Anthy and the old Captain (who was at this moment at work at his desk), but instead I squatted down on the floor near Nort, and while he tinkered and puttered and whistled, we kept up a running conversation which we both found highly diverting.

If there is one thing I enjoy more than another it is to crack open a hard fellow-mortal, take him apart, as Nort was taking apart his engine, and see what it is that makes him go round. But in Nort, that morning, I found more than a match. We parried and fenced, advanced and retreated, but beyond a firm conclusion on my part that he was no ordinary tramp printer and, indeed, no ordinary human being, he kept me completely mystified, and, as I could plainly see, enjoyed doing it, too. He told me, long afterward, that he thought me that morning an "odd one."

I deny, however, that I was carried away on the spot; I was interested, but I was now too deeply concerned for my friends on the Star to accept him entirely. Even after he brought in his first contribution to our columns, especially the one that began, "There is a man in this town who quarrels regularly with his wife," I was still doubtful about him – but I must not get ahead of my story.

Well, it was wonderful the way Nort went through the office of the Star. As I think of it now, I am reminded of the description of a remarkable plant called the lantana, which I read about recently in an interesting book on the Hawaiian Islands. It was brought in, a humble and lowly shrub, to help ornament a garden in those delectable isles. Finding the climate highly agreeable and its customary enemies absent, it escaped from the garden, and in a wild spirit of vagabondage spread out along the sunny roads and mountainsides, until it has overrun all the islands; and from being an insignificant shrub, it now grows to the size of a small tree. Most painful to relate, however, the once admired shrub has become a veritable pest, and the people of the islands are using their ingenuity in seeking a way to destroy it.

Now, that is very much the early history of Nort in the office of the Star. At first, of course, he was way down in the depths, both in his own estimation and in ours – a man to tinker the engine, run the job presses, sweep the floors, and do the thousand and one other useful but menial things to help Fergus. Moreover, he was on his good behaviour and more than ordinarily subdued. It required a reasonable amount of good honest depression in those days to make Nort tolerable. He was like a high-spirited horse that has to be driven hard for a dozen miles before it is any pleasure to hold the reins. If we had known then – but we knew nothing.

There are two ways by which men advance in this world – one is by doing, the other by being. We Americans, these many years, have been cultivating and stimulating the doers. We have made the doers our heroes, and have, therefore, had no poetry, no art, no music, no personality, and, I was going to say, no religion. Doing leads the way to riches, power, reputation, and if it occasionally lands a man in the penitentiary, still we feel that there is something grand about it, and reflect that the same process also leads to the Senate or the White House or a palace on Fifth Avenue. Ed Smith was a doer, but Nort was only a be-er. And Nort didn't even try to be: he just was. And we planted him, a humble shrub, in the garden of our lives, and in no time at all the vagabond had spread to the sunny uplands of our hearts. And then —

I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, (at that time, anyway), had begun to be interested in Nort, much as I was. It was not that Nort tried to court our favour by working hard, being sober, appearing willing, in order to get ahead; that would have been Ed Smith's way; but Nort had never in all his short life thought of getting ahead. Of whom was he to get ahead? And why should he get ahead?

The fact is that Nort, caught in the rebound from a life that had become temporarily intolerable, found the quietude of Hempfield soothing to him; and the life of the printing-office was so different as to be momentarily amusing to his royal highness. We were a new toy – that's what we were: the rag baby for which the pampered child of wealth temporarily discards her French dolls.

It was a fortunate thing that Ed started Nort at once on the task of overhauling the gasoline engine, for it was one of the things that he had always loved to do. When he had finished the engine, he must clean up and repair the belts and pulley that operated the press, and this led him naturally to the press itself, an ancient Hoe model with heavy springs below that operated the running table. By this time he had begun really to wake up, and as he worked, hummed like a hive of bees. He called the press "Old Harry," and gave it such a cleaning up as it had not had since the early days of Anthy's father. All this seemed to amuse him very much, for he imagined things with his fingers. It also amused us, he was so tremendously interested and so personal about it all. He was forever calling in Fergus, never Ed Smith, with such remarks as these:

"How does she look now, Fergus? Will she stand for a little stiffer spring, you think? She's a good one, eh, Fergus, for her age?" And so on, and so on.

During these days I watched Fergus with almost as much interest as I watched Nort. He seemed nonplussed. He was like a hen that has unexpectedly hatched a duckling. At one moment he seemed resentful at this uprooting of ancient and settled institutions, and he was a little angry all the time at being carried along by Nort's enthusiasm, for he was constitutionally suspicious of enthusiasm; but, on the other hand, he could not resist the constant appeals to his superior judgment. When deferred to he would drop his head a little to one side, partially close one eye, draw down the corners of his mouth, and after smoking furiously for a few puffs, would take out his pipe and remark:

"Wull, it looks to me – " etc., etc.

As he gave his opinion I could see the live gleam in Nort's eyes, and I knew that he was finding almost as much amusement in tinkering Fergus as he found in tinkering the old press. I think that Fergus liked Nort from the very first, but wild horses could not have dragged a favourable opinion of him out of Fergus. Fergus had a deeply ingrained conviction that no man should think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and lost no opportunity of reducing bumps of self-esteem, wherever discovered.

Having finished the old press, Nort's lively mind began to consider what might be done with a perfectly healthy gasoline engine sitting in the corner and wasting most of its time. He fitted up a new belt and pulley to run the two small presses and, there being at that moment quite a job of posters to run off, thrilled the office with the speed and ease with which the work could be done. All this delighted Ed Smith, for it was "something doing" – and didn't cost much: although I think he had already begun to regard it as a suspicious sign that Nort, having fully recovered his spirits, did not demand an immediate increase in wages. It was the first of several unpredictable events quite outside the range of Ed's experience.

As for the old Captain, he was stoutly opposed to it all. He called it Ed-Smithism and refused to countenance it in any way. For thirty years the Star had been a power in the councils of Westmoreland County (said the Captain). Why, then, these sensational changes? Why this rank commercialism? Why all this confusion?

"I am a reasonable person, as you know, Anthy," said the Captain; "I believe in progress. The earth moves, the suns revolve, but all this business of Ed Smith is bosh, plain, unadulterated bosh!"

"But, Uncle – " Anthy was still earnestly trying to keep peace in the office.

"Fudge!" roared the Captain, and then, seeing that he had pained Anthy, he was all contrition at once, threw one arm about her shoulders and, regaining his usual jaunty air, remarked:

"Never mind, Anthy. I am a patient man. I will await the progress of events."

He was firmly convinced that Ed Smith and all his contraptions would soon be abolished from the office of the Star.

As to Nort – the Captain did not at first see him at all. He was an Ed-Smithism, and the Captain could not get over his first sight of Nort, a spectacle in the streets of Hempfield. After the job presses began to work by power, following a suggestion which it seems the Captain had made in 1899, he apparently discovered Nort afar off, as though looking through the big end of a spy-glass.

What was our astonishment, therefore, one evening to find the old Captain and Nort engaged in a most extraordinary and secretive enterprise. By chance we saw an unusual light in the front office – Fergus's light was in the rear – and went in to investigate. A step-ladder stood in the middle of the floor. Upon this was perched the old Captain, coat off, white hair rumpled, head almost touching the ceiling, hammer in hand.

"There!" he was saying.

He had been sounding the plaster on the ceiling to find a certain stringer. Nort, just below, was gazing up with a half smile on his lips and that look of live amusement, yes, deviltry, which came too easily to his eyes.

"Found her, have you, Cap'n?" he was inquiring.

"Here she is," responded the Captain triumphantly.

And then they saw Fergus and me – the Captain looking very sheepish and Nort like a bad boy caught in the jam closet.

Just how Nort did it I never knew exactly, but those two precious partners in mischief were engaged in quite the most extraordinary innovation in the staid old office that had yet been conceived.

"Something to cool the Captain's head," was the way Nort described it. It was hot weather, doubly hot in the office of the Star, surrounded as it was by taller buildings, and the Captain especially suffered from the heat. In some way Nort had led him guilefully into the scheme of installing a fan on the ceiling of the office, and, what is more, had made the Captain believe it was his own idea. The old Captain was in reality as simple hearted as a child, and once he and Nort had agreed upon the plan, it delighted him to carry it forward secretly and "surprise Anthy," as he was always surprising her with some one or another of his extravagances. Afterward, when he referred to the great new scheme it was at first: "We had the idea," "We thought," "We worked it out." But in no time at all, it had become, "I had the idea," "I thought." And when visitors came in to see the wonderful new fan waving its majestic wooden arms over the devoted heads of the staff of the Star, you would have thought the old Captain did it all himself.