Part 5 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
ENTER MR. ED SMITH
It is only with difficulty thus far in my narrative that I have kept Norton Carr out of it. When you come to know him you will understand why. He is inseparably bound up with every memory I have of the printing-office. The other day, when I was describing my first visit to the establishment of Doane & Doane, I kept seeing the figure of Nort bending over the gasoline engine. I kept hearing him whistle in the infectious low monotone he had, and when I spoke of the printing press I all but called it ”Old Harry” (Nort christened the ancient Hoe press, Old Harry, which every one adopted as being an appropriate name). I even half expected to have him break out in my pages with one of his absurd remarks, when I knew well enough that he had no business to be in the story at all. He hadn't come yet, and Anthy and Fergus and the old Captain were positively the only ones there.
But Nort, however impatient he may be getting, will have to wait even a little while yet, for notable events were to occur in the printing-office just before he arrived, without which, indeed, he never could have arrived at all. If it had not been for the ploughing and harrowing of Ed Smith, painful as it was to that ancient and sedate inst.i.tution, the Hempfield _Star_, there never would have been any harvest for Norton Carr, nor for me, nor for Anthy. So good may come even out of evil.
As I narrate these preliminary events, however, you will do well to keep in your thought a picture of Nort going about his pleasures--I fear, at that time, somewhat unsteadily--in the great city, not knowing in the least that chance, a.s.sisted by a troublesome organ within called a soul, was soon to deposit him in the open streets of a town he had never heard of in all his life, but which was our own familiar town of Hempfield.
The thought of Nort looking rather mistily down the common--he was standing just in front of the Congregational Church--and asking, ”What town am I in, anyhow?” lingers in my memory as one of the amusing things I have known.
Late in June I began to feel distinctly the premonitory rumblings and grumblings of the storm which was now rapidly gathering around the _Star_. It was a very clever Frenchman, I believe--though not clever enough to make me remember his name--who, upon observing certain disturbances in the farther reaches of the solar system, calculated by sheer mathematical genius that there was an enormous planet, infinitely distant from the sun, which n.o.body had yet discovered.
It was thus by certain signs of commotion in one of its issues that I recognized a portentous but undiscovered Neptune, which was plainly disturbing the course of the _Star_. A big new advertis.e.m.e.nt stared at me from the middle of the first page, and there was a certain crisp quality in some of the reading notices--from which the letters ”adv”
had been suspiciously omitted--the origin of which I could not recognize. The second week the change was even more marked. There were several smart new headings: ”Jots and t.i.ttles from Littleton,” I remember, was one of them, and even the sanct.i.ty of the editorial column had been invaded with an extraordinary production quite foreign to the Captain's pen. It was ent.i.tled:
”_All Together Now! Boost Hempfield!_”
I can scarcely describe how I was affected by these changes; but I should have realized that any man bold enough to hitch his wagon to a star must prepare himself for a swift course through the skies, and not take it amiss if he collides occasionally with the heavenly bodies.
I think it was secretly amusing to Harriet during the weeks that followed my first great visit to the printing-office to watch the eagerness with which I awaited the postman on the publication days of the _Star_. I even went out sometimes to meet him, and took the paper from his hand. I have been a devoted reader of books these many years, but I think I have never read anything with sharper interest than I now began to read the _Star_. I picked out the various items, editorials, reading notices, and the like, and said to myself: ”That's the old Captain's pungent pen,” or ”Anthy must have written that,” or ”I warrant the Scotchman, Fergus, had a finger in _that_ pie.” As I read the editorials I could fairly see the old Captain at his littered desk, the cat rubbing against his leg, the canary singing in the cage above him, and his head bent low as he wrote. And I was disturbed beyond measure by the signs of an unknown hand at work upon the _Star_.
”I thought, David, you did not care for country newspapers,” said my sister.
She wore that comfortably superior smile which becomes her so well. The fact is, she _is_ superior.
”Well,” said I, ”you may talk all you like about Browning and Carlyle----”
”I have not,” said my sister, ”referred to Browning or Carlyle.”
”You may talk all you like”--I disdained her pointed interruption--”but for downright human nature here in the country, give me the Hempfield _Star_.”
Once during these weeks I paid a short obligatory visit to the printing-office, and gave Anthy the name of my uncle in California and got the envelopes that had been printed for me. I also took in a number of paragraphs relating to affairs in our neighbourhood, and told Anthy (only I did not call her Anthy then) that if agreeable I would contribute occasionally to the _Star_. She seemed exceedingly grateful, and I liked her better than ever.
I also had a characteristic exchange with Fergus, in which, as usual, I came off worsted. In those troublous days Fergus was the toiling Atlas upon whose wiry shoulders rested the full weight of that heavenly body.
He set most of the type, distributed it again, made up the forms, inked the rollers, printed the paper (for the most part), did all the job work which Hempfield afforded, and smoked the worst pipe in America.
When I told him that I was going to write regularly for the _Star_ and showed him the paragraphs I had brought in (I suspect they _were_ rather long) this was his remark:
”Oh, Lord, more writers!”
It was on this occasion, too, that I really made the acquaintance of the Captain. He was in the best of spirits. He told me how he had beaten the rebels at Antietam. I enjoyed it all very much, and decided that for the time being I would suspend judgment on the pipe incident.
One day I reached the point where I could stand it no longer. So I hitched up the mare and drove to town. All the way along the road I tried to imagine what had taken place in the printing-office.
I thought with a sinking heart that the paper might have been sold, and that my new friends would go away. I thought that Anthy might be carrying out some new and vigorous plan of reconstruction, only somehow I could not feel Anthy's hand in the changes I had seen.
It was all very vivid to me; I had, indeed, a feeling, that afterward became familiar enough, that the _Star_ was a living being, struggling, hoping, suffering, like one of us. In truth, it was just that.
No sooner had I turned in at the gate than I perceived that some mysterious and revolutionary force had really been at work. The gate itself had acquired two hinges where one had been quite sufficient before, and inside the office--what a change was there! It was not so much in actual rearrangement, though the editorial desk looked barren and windswept; it was rather in the general atmosphere of the place.