Hempfield

I laugh yet when I think of the first few moments of the operation of Nort's invention. We had all been a good deal excited about it, Ed not exactly with approval, although it was a good "ad" for the Star– but the old Captain was quite beside himself.

"How are you getting along, Nort?" he began inquiring early in the afternoon of the great day.

He had been particular at first to speak to Nort as "Carr," indicating purely formal relationship, but in the enthusiasm of putting up the fan he soon dropped into the familiar "Nort."

"Fine, Cap'n, we'll have her running now in no time."

"Good!"

"We'll cool your head yet, Cap'n."

"I'm waiting, Nort."

When Nort finally gave the word, the old Captain drew his lame-legged chair squarely under the fan, sat himself down in it, and stretching out luxuriously, leaned his beautiful old head a little back. I saw the Grand Army button on his coat.

"Whir!" went the fan. The Captain's white hair began to flutter. He sat a moment in ecstatic silence, closing and opening his eyes, and taking a deep breath or two. Then he said:

"Cool as a cucumber, Anthy, cool as a cucumber."

Fergus barked away down inside somewhere, his excuse for a laugh.

"Now, Anthy," said the Captain, "this was to be your surprise."

So he had Anthy sit down in the chair.

"Fine, isn't it?" said he, "regular breeze from Labrador. Greenland's icy mountains."

"Fine!" responded Anthy.

As Anthy sat there, the fan stirring her light hair, a smile on her lips, I saw Nort looking at her in a curious, amused, puzzled way, as though he had just seen her for the first time and couldn't quite account for her. I myself thought she looked a little sad around the eyes: it came to me, indeed, suddenly, what a fine, strong face she had. She sat with her chin slightly lifted, her hands in her lap, an odd, still way she sometimes had. Since I first met Anthy, that day in the office of the Star, I had come to like her better and better. And somehow, deep down inside, I didn't quite like Nort's look.

"We can show 'em a thing or two, eh, Nort?" the Captain was saying.

"We can, Cap'n."

After that, no matter what happened, the Captain swore by Nort. He was a loyal old fellow, and whatever your views might be, whatever you may have done, even though you had sunk to the depths of being a Democrat, if he once came to love you, nothing else mattered. I have sometimes thought that the old Captain really had a deeper influence upon Nort during the weeks that followed than any of us imagined.

This incident of the fan marked the apogee of the first stage of Nort's career in the office of the Star. It was the era of Nort the subdued; and preceded the era of Nort the obstreperous.

CHAPTER VII

PHAËTON DRIVES THE CHARIOT OF THE "STAR"

I find myself loitering unaccountably over every memory of those days in the office of the Star. Not a week passed that I did not make two or three or more trips from my farm to Hempfield, sometimes tramping by the short cut across the fields and through the lanes, sometimes driving my old mare in the town road, and always with the problems of Anthy and Nort uppermost in my mind. Sometimes when I could get away, and sometimes when I couldn't (Harriet smiling discreetly), I went up in the daytime to lend a hand in the office (especially on press days), and often in the evening I went for a talk with Nort or Anthy or the old Captain, or else for a good comfortable silence with Fergus while he sat tipped back in his chair on the little porch of the office, and smoked a pipe or so – and the daylight slowly went out, the moist evening odours rose up from the garden, and the noises in the street quieted down.

As I have said, the incident of the fan marked the end of the era of Nort the subdued. From that time onward, for a time, it was Nort the ascendant – yes, Nort the obstreperous! As I look back upon it now I have an amusing vision of one after another of us hanging desperately to the coat tails of our Phaëton to prevent him from driving the chariot of the Star quite to destruction.

It was this way with Nort. He had begun to recover from the remorse and discouragement which had brought him to Hempfield. If he had been in the city he would probably have felt so thoroughly restored and so virtuous that he would have sought out his old companions and plunged with renewed zest into the old life of excitement. But being in the quiet of the country he had to find some outlet for his high spirits, some food for his curious, lively, inventive mind. What a fascinator he was in those days, anyway! I think he put his spell upon all of us, even to a certain extent upon Ed Smith at first. To me, in particular, who have grown perhaps too reflective, too introspective, with the years of quietude on my farm, he seemed incredibly alive, so that I was never tired of watching him. He was like the boy I had been, or dreamed I had been, and could never be again.

And yet I did not then accept him utterly, as the loyal old Captain had done. I was not sure of him. His attitude toward life in those days, while I dislike the comparison, was similar to that of Ed Smith, though the end was different. If Ed was looking for his own aggrandizement, Nort was not the less eagerly in pursuit of his own amusement and pleasure. I had a feeling that he would play with us a while because we amused him, and when he got tired or bored – that would be the end of us. Up to that moment Nort had never really become entangled with life: life had never hurt him. Things and events were like moving pictures, which he enjoyed hotly, which amused him uproariously, or which bored him desperately.

As fate would have it – Ed Smith's fate – Nort's opportunity came in August. It was the occasion, as I remember it, of some outing of the State Editors' Association, and Ed planned to be absent for two weeks. He evidently felt that he could now entrust the destinies of the Star for a brief time to his associates. But he tore himself away with evident reluctance. How could the Star be safely left to the mercies of the old Captain (who had been its titular editor for thirty years), or to Anthy (who was merely its owner), to say nothing of such disturbing elements as Fergus and Nort and me?

A deep sigh of relief seemed to rise from the office of the Star. One fancied that Dick, the canary, chirped more cheerfully, and Fergus swore that he found Tom, the cat, sleeping in the editorial chair within three hours after Ed departed. As for the Captain, he came in thumping his cane and clearing his throat with something of his old-time energy, and even Anthy wore a different look.

I can see Nort yet leaning against the imposing stone, one leg crossed over the other, his bare inky arms folded negligently, his thick hair tumbling about on his head – and amusement darkening in his eyes. Fergus was cocked up on a stool by the cases; the Captain, who had just finished an editorial further pulverizing the fragments of William J. Bryan, was leaning back in his chair comfortably smoking his pipe; and Anthy, having slipped off her apron, was preparing to go home for supper.

"Well!" exclaimed Nort, drawing a long breath, "I never imagined it would feel so good to be orfunts."

The laugh which followed this remark was as irresistible as it was spontaneous. It expressed exactly what we all felt. I glanced at Anthy. She evidently considered it her duty to frown upon such disloyalty, but couldn't. She was laughing, too. It seemed to break the tension and bring us all close together.

It will be seen from this how Nort had been growing since he came with us, a mere vagabond, to help Fergus. He had become one of us.

"Don't see how we're ever goin' to get out a paper," remarked Fergus.

This bit of irony was lost on the old Captain.

"Fudge!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Get out a paper! We were publishing the Star in Hempfield before ever Ed Smith was born."

"I'll tell you what, Cap'n – and Miss Doane," said Nort, "we ought to get out a paper this week that will show Ed a thing or two, stir things up a bit."

I saw Anthy turn toward him with a curious live look in her eyes. Youth had spoken to youth.

"We could do it!" she said, with unexpected energy. "We could just do it."

Nort unfurled his legs and walked nervously down the office.

"What would you put in her?" asked the practical Fergus.

"Put in her!" exclaimed Nort. "What couldn't you put in her? Put some life in her, I say. Stir things up."

"I have just written an editorial on William J. Bryan," remarked the Captain with deliberation.

"My father always used to say," said Anthy, "that the little things of life are really the big things. I didn't used to think so; it used to hurt me to see him waste his life writing items about the visits of the Backuses – you know what visitors the Backuses are – and the big squashes raised by Jim Palmer, and the meetings of the Masons and the Odd Fellows; but I believe he was successful with the Star because he packed it full of just such little personal news."

"Your father," I said, "was interested in people, in everything they did. It was what he was."

"I see that now," said Anthy.

"And when you come to think of it," I said, "we are more interested in people we know than in people we don't know. We can't escape our own neighbourhoods – and most of us don't want to."

"That's all right," said Nort; "but it seems to me since I've been in this town that it is just the things that are most interesting of all that don't get into the Star. Why, there's more amusing and thrilling news about Hempfield published every day up there on the veranda of the Hempfield House than gets into the Star in a month. I could publish a paper, at least once, that would – "

"I have always said," interrupted the Captain, "that the basic human interest was politics. Politics is the life of the people. Politics – "

Fergus's face cracked open with a smile.

"We might print a few poems."