Hempfield Part 23

"'Well, Cap'n Doane,' said he, 'that battery must be taken--at any cost.

May I depend on you?'

"'General,' said I, 'I will do my duty,' and I wheeled on my horse and rode to the front of my troop.

"'Forward--_March!_ Draw--_Sabres!_ Gallop----_Charge!_----'"

By this time the old Captain was on his feet, cane in hand for a sabre, the wonderful light of a by-gone conflict s.h.i.+ning in his eyes. I could see him charging down the hill with his clattering troop; hear the clash of arms and the roll of musketry; see the flags flying and the men falling--dust and smoke and heat--the cry of wounded horses.... They took the battery.

Well, when he finished his story that evening there was a pause, and then I saw Anthy suddenly lean forward, her hands clasped hard and her face glowing.

"Such stories as that," she said, "ought not to be lost, Uncle Newt.

They are _good_ for people. The coming generation doesn't know what its fathers suffered and struggled for--or what the country owes to them----" And then, wistfully: "I wish those stories might never be lost."

Instantly Nort sprung from his chair, for great ideas when they arrived seemed to p.r.i.c.k him physically as well as mentally.

"Say," he almost shouted, "I have it! Let's have the Cap'n write the story of his life--and, by Jiminy, publish it in the _Star_. Everybody knows the Cap'n--they'd eat it up."

It was Nort's genius that he could see, instantly, the greater possibilities of things, and his suggestion quite carried us away. We all began to talk at once:

"Print the Captain's picture, a big one on the first page. A story every week. Why, he _knew_ James G. Blaine----"

Anthy leaned back in her chair, her eyes like stars, looked at Nort, and looked at him.

When we went out that night the old Captain threw a big arm over Nort's shoulder. The tears were running quite unheeded down the old fellow's face.

"Nort, my boy," he said, "I love you like a son."

He was happier that night than he had been before in years.

The next morning Nort appeared at the office with a tremendous announcement, headed: _Captain Doane's Story of His Life_, which would, on a conservative estimate, have filled an entire page of the _Star_.

And the old Captain, who need never have taken off his hat to d.i.c.kens or Dumas where copiousness was concerned, began to write--enormously. The dear old fellow, looking back into his own past, discovered anew a hero after his own heart, and as the incidents jumped at him out of his memory, he could scarcely put them down fast enough. He filled reams of yellow copy paper.

With the first article we published a three-column half-tone portrait of the Captain, his head turned a little to one side to show the full lift of his brow, and one hand thrust carelessly and yet artfully into the bosom of his long coat. Oh, very wonderful! The first article, headed,

EARLY MEMORIES OF HEMPFIELD

was really excellent, after Anthy had cut out two thirds of the old Captain's copy--which no other one of us would have dared to do.

Well, in an old town, in an old country, where the memories of many people reached far back, where many had known Captain Doane all their lives, this article instantly found sympathetic readers, and began to be talked about. We felt it at once in the demand for papers. Later came the stories of early political affairs in Hempfield and, indeed, in New England, and stories of the war which were really thrilling. Other headings were: "_How I Met General McClellan_" and "_Reminiscences of James G. Blaine_."

These not only awakened local interest, but they began to be clipped and quoted in outside newspapers, even in Boston and New York. A reporter was sent down from Boston to "write up" the old Captain. It was quite a triumph. The Captain began to have visitors, old friends and old citizens, as he had never had before. They became almost a nuisance in the office. But the Captain was in his element: he thrived on it; his eye brightened; he walked, if possible, still more erect. His very mood, indeed, for his fighting blood was up, gave us some difficult problems.

Nearly every week he would pause in the course of his narrative to smite the Democratic party, to cry "Fudge" at flying machines, or to visit his scorn upon the "initiative, referendum and recall." And one week he cut loose grandly upon woman suffrage, after he had first expressed his chivalric admiration for the "gentle s.e.x" and quoted Sir Walter Scott:

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please," etc., etc.

Nort brought me the copy, laughing.

"I asked the Captain," he said, "if he thought Anthy was uncertain, coy, and hard to please."

"What did he say?"

"He waved me aside. 'Oh, Anthy!' he said, as if she did not count at all. You know how the Captain lays down the eternal laws of life and then lets all his personal friends break 'em!... What would you do about the pa.s.sage, anyway?"

"Why print it," I said. "It's the old Captain himself."

And print it we did.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH CERTAIN DEEP MATTERS OF THE HEART ARE PRESENTED

Ed Smith and Nort must have tried Anthy terribly in these days, Nort probably far more than Ed, because he was a more complicated human being, less broken to any sort of harness, and blest (or cursed) with an amazing gift of intimacy. Like many people who live most vividly within, he never seemed to have any proper idea of the lines which separate human beings. To some conventional natures the most refined meanings attach to their "Good mornings" and "How-d'ye does," and their confidences, shut away in a close inner sanctum, like the high court of a secret society, are only to be approached ceremonially by those who have the insignia and the pa.s.sword; and where, having arrived and expecting hidden wonders and beauties, you discover only still more ceremonial. A truly conventional person cuts the same at the core as at the rind.

Nort never seemed to remember that most people one meets love to fence politely about the weather or the state of their health, but incontinently whacked them at once on their raw souls with whatever poker he might then be mending the fires of his heart. And he did it all, never crudely, but with such irrepressible and beguiling spirits, with such confidence that whatever interested him most at the moment must also interest you--as it usually did--that he was not to be resisted.

Now I do not believe that Nort at this time had any conscious idea of making love to Anthy, certainly not of falling in love with her. He was entirely too much absorbed in Nort. But he turned toward her as instinctively as a flower turns to the sun, and was a hundred times more dangerous to a girl like Anthy for being just what he was. He liked to be with her, felt comfortable with her, thought of his place in the office as her employee, when he thought of it at all, as a rather uncomfortable joke, and stepped irresistibly within the defences of her reserve, and in spite of everything remained there. He told her what he thought about newspapers, baseball, the immortality of the soul, dress clothes, and the novels of H. G. Wells, looking at her sometimes with a little wrinkle of earnestness between his eyes, but oftener with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt--yes, of deviltry--which said to her as plainly as words could have framed it: "You and I have a wonderful secret between us, haven't we?"

He was apparently oblivious to the fact that she was a woman at all, and yet away down within him, as the ocean knows of the primeval monsters hidden in its depths, he knew that Anthy was a woman: knew it with a dumb and swelling strength he himself had never fathomed; and he knew, too, with that instinctive knowledge which is the deepest of all--such is the trickiness of the human spirit--that this was the way of all ways to reach Anthy.

When I think of the Nort of those days, all the lawless possibilities of his ardent temperament, I wonder and I tremble! I wonder sometimes at the miracle by which youth _ever_ escapes destruction. And in Nort's case, as in Anthy's, it was a narrow, narrow margin, as I know better than any one else. Poor Nort!

Happy Nort! No such close confidences existed between Anthy and him as between Anthy and me. Nort knew nothing of the deep and beautiful life within which she had shown to me--and me alone--could not at that time have understood it, if he had known of it (so I think), and yet there he was, a mere boy, a stranger almost, closer to her than I was. A strange thing, life!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVIII

NORT SNIFFS

I had thought the life in the office of the _Star_ exciting enough before the explosion which resulted in the discharge of Norton Carr, as indeed it was, but it was really not to be compared with that which followed. No sooner had Nort returned than his spirits again began to soar. He felt that he now had Anthy's influence strongly behind him, and that, no matter what happened, Ed Smith could not interfere with him. Ed himself accepted the situation as gracefully as he could, and comforted himself with the reflection that Nort was, after all, receiving no more wages than before.

Nort had at least one clear characteristic that must belong to genius--he dared let himself go. He had supreme confidence in himself.

Most men when they spread their wings and sail off into the blue empyrean more than half expect to fall, but Nort never cast his eye downward nor doubted the strength of his wings.

I have only to close my eyes to see him, his whole slim, strong body suddenly stiffening, quivering under the impact of an idea--a "great idea" it always was with him--his eyes suddenly growing dark with excitement, his legs nervously bestirring themselves to carry him up and down the room, while he thrust one hand through his hair and with the other emphasized the torrent of exclamations which poured out of him. At these moments he was one of the most beautiful human beings that ever I have seen. And in the midst of his wild enthusiasms he was as likely as not, at any moment, to see some absurd or humorous angle of the subject he was talking about, and to burst suddenly into laughter, laughter at himself and at us for listening soberly to him. He never let us laugh first!

One of his early suggestions after he came back was the autobiography of the old Captain, of which I have already spoken. He knew it would be a success, as indeed it was, a very great success; but it was only one of a hundred things which Nort suggested during that winter.