Hempfield Part 14

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH GREAT PLANS ARE EVOLVED, AND THERE IS A SURPRISING EVENT

Since we had come to know the _Star_, Sunday afternoons were important occasions for Harriet and me. Nort was the first to visit us--soon after he came to Hempfield--but the old Captain and Anthy were not many Sundays behind him. They usually drove out with one of Joe Crane's horses (charged against advertising in the _Star_), and on such occasions the Captain was very grand in his long coat and wide hat--and gloves. He always greeted Harriet with chivalrous formality, inquired after her health, and usually had some bit of old-fas.h.i.+oned gallantry to offer her, which always bothered her just a little, especially if she happened at the moment to catch my eye. I had great trouble getting Fergus to come at all; but having once lured him out, Harriet's gingerbread soon finished him.

At first there was an amusing struggle between Harriet and Fergus, in which, of course, that Scotchman came off second best--and never knew that he was beaten! You see, Fergus is never entirely happy unless he can tip back in his chair, until you are certain he is going over backward and smash the door of the china closet. Also, he smokes the worst tobacco in the world. On the occasion of his second visit he went prowling around the room for a straight-back chair to sit in, but Harriet shooed him irresistibly toward an effeminate rocker, where he could gratify his instinct for tipping back, and not endanger the family china.

During the week that followed Harriet made a scientific study of the drafts in our living-room (that is, I think she did), and on the next Sunday she not only shooed Fergus into a rocker, but that rocker was so placed near the window that the tobacco smoke was drawn straight out of the room. After that, she made Fergus so comfortable within and without--especially within--that he thought her a very wonderful woman.

As she is.

As for Harriet and me, these Sunday gatherings--which often included the Scotch preacher, or our neighbour Horace, or, rarely, the Starkweathers--these visits were delightful beyond comparison. By Sat.u.r.day night there was not a speck of dust in the house that was visible to the naked eye, and by three o'clock Sunday (if there was no one in to dinner) Harriet and I began an unacknowledged contest to see which of us would be the first to catch sight of the visitors coming up the town road or across the fields. We both pretended we weren't looking--but we were.

It was on the Sunday afternoon following the publication of the poetry, just after I had come in from the barn, that I saw Nort coming down the lane which skirts the edge of the wood. He had a stick in his hand with which he struck at the foliage of the hazel brush or decapitated a milkweed.

"There's Nort!" I exclaimed.

It was miraculous to see Harriet twitch off her ap.r.o.n and, with two or three deft pats, arrange her hair.

When Nort saw us, for we couldn't help going outside to meet him, he raised one hand, shouting:

"h.e.l.lo, there, David!"

I remember thinking what a boy he looked. Not large, not very strong, but with a lithe swinging step and an odd tilt of the head, a little backward, as though he were looking up for the joy of it. I felt my heart rising and warming at the very sight of him.

"Well, Miss Grayson," said he, coming up the steps, "have you decided yet whether you and David are most indebted to the Macintoshes or the Scribners?"

There was laughter in his eyes as he shook Harriet's hand, and I could see the faint flush in her cheeks and the little positive nod of the head she had when she was most pleased, and didn't want it to appear too plainly. Nort had long ago discovered her undying pa.s.sion for her ancestors, and already knew the complete record of that Macintosh who was an officer in the Colonial army, and who, if one were to judge by Harriet's account, was the origin of all the good traits of the Grayson family.

When Harriet is especially pleased with any one, particularly if he is a man, she thinks at once that he must be hungry; and no sooner were the greetings well over than she escaped to the kitchen.

Nort at once put on a portentous look of solemn concern, his face changing so quickly that it was almost comical.

"David," said he, "here we are right up to another issue, and no ideas."

He spoke as though he were the sole proprietor of the _Star_.

"Well," I said, "a little thing like that never yet prevented a newspaper from appearing regularly."

"No," he laughed, "but think of the perfectly grand opportunity that is going to waste. Ed Smith away for another week!"

"We enjoyed printing the poetry, didn't we?"

"Didn't we!" he responded. "I thought last Wednesday night that it was pretty nearly the biggest and most interesting work in the world to edit a country newspaper."

"And you told Anthy."

He glanced around at me quickly.

"She told you?"

"No," I said, "but I knew."

"Yes, I told her," he said.

He paused and looked off across our quiet hills; the autumn air was cool and sweet.

"I wonder----" he began, but he did not tell me what it was that he wondered.

Presently his thoughts returned sharply to the _Star_.

"What would you put in the paper, anyhow, David?" he asked.

"Hempfield," said I.

His eyes kindled.

"I get you," he said eagerly. "It's exactly what I say. The very spirit of the town, the soul of the country--make the paper fairly throb with it."

He was off! It was the first time I had seen Nort in his serious mood--and he could be dreadfully serious, as serious as only youth knows how to be.

"Truth!" he exclaimed fiercely. "We don't print the truth in the _Star_.

The most interesting and important things about Hempfield never get into the paper at all. I tell you, David, we never even touch the actual facts about Hempfield. We just fiddle around the outsides of things: 'John Smith came to town on Sat.u.r.day with his blooded colt. Fine colt, John!' Bah! Think of it--when there is a whole world of real events to write about. Why, David, there are more wonderful and tragic and amusing things right here in this small town than ever I saw in all my life.

When we printed the poems last week, we just scratched the surface of the real life of Hempfield."

Nort had jumped up, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and was tramping up and down the room, shaking his mane like a young lion. I confess that, for a moment, I was tempted to laugh at him--and then suddenly I did not care at all to laugh. Something in the wild youth of him, the bold thoughts, stirred me to the depths. The magic of youth, waving its flag upon the Hill Formidable! The fresh runner catching up the torch that has fallen from the slack hand of age! I have had my dreams, too, Nort. I dreamed once----

I dreamed once of seeing the very truth of things. As I worked alone here in my fields, with the great world all open and beautiful around me, I said to myself, "I will be simple, I will not dodge or prevaricate or excuse; I will see the whole of life." I confess now with some sadness (and humour, too) that I have not mastered the wonders of this earth, nor seen the truth of it.... I heard a catbird singing in the bush, a friend stopped me by the roadside, there was a star in the far heavens---- And when I looked up I was old, and Truth was vanis.h.i.+ng behind the hill.

Something of all this I had in my thoughts as Nort talked to me; and it came to me, wistfully, that perhaps this burning youth might really have in him the genius to see the truth of things more clearly than I could, and tell it better than I could.

"Yes," I said, "if one could only see this Hempfield of ours as it really is, all the poetry of it, all the pa.s.sion of it, all the dullness and mediocrity, all the tragedy of failure, all that is in the hearts and souls of these common people--what a thing it would be! How it would stir the world!"

I must have said it with my whole soul, as I felt it. I suppose I should not have added fuel to the fire of that youth, I suppose I should have been calm and old and practical.

For a moment Nort sat perfectly silent. Then I felt the trembling, eager pressure of his hand on my arm. He leaned over toward me.

"David," he said, "you understand things."

There was that in his voice that I had never heard before. Usually he had a half-humorous, yes, flippant, way with him, but there was something here that touched bottom.

I don't know quite why it is, but after I have been serious about so long, I have an irresistible desire to laugh. I find I can't remain in a rarified atmosphere too long.

"Nort," I said suddenly, "you haven't been seeing any terrible truths about Hempfield, have you?"

The change in his face was startling. He looked like a boy caught in the jam closet--the colour suddenly flooding his cheeks.

"Where is it?" I asked. "Trot it out."