Hempfield Part 8

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----

[Ill.u.s.tration: I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, had begun to be interested in Nort]

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 inst.i.tutions, and he was a little angry all the time at being carried along by Nort's enthusiasm, for he was const.i.tutionally 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 b.u.mps 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 bos.h.!.+"

"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-gla.s.s.

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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.

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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 cuc.u.mber, Anthy, cool as a cuc.u.mber."

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.