Part 6 (1/2)
The Captain didn't.
”_Push_,” said he dramatically; ”that's my motto.”
I can see the old Captain drawing himself up to his full stature (he was about once and a half Ed's size).
”Well, sir,” said he, ”we need no such sign on _our_ door. Our door has stood wide open to our friends, sir, for thirty years.”
When the old Captain began to be excessively polite, and to address a man as ”sir,” he who was wise sought shelter. It was the old Antietam spirit boiling within him. But Ed Smith blithely pursued his way, full of confidence in himself and in the G.o.d he wors.h.i.+pped, and it was one of Anthy's real triumphs, in those days of excursions and alarms, that she was able both to pacify the Captain and keep Fergus down.
Ed came in that morning while I was in the printing-office, a cheerful, quick-stepping, bold-eyed young fellow with a small neat moustache, his hat slightly tilted back, and a toothbrush in his vest pocket.
”You are the man,” he said to me briskly, ”that writes the stuff about the Corwin neighbourhood.”
I acknowledged that I was.
”Good stuff,” said he, ”good stuff! Give us more of it. And can't you drum up a few new subs out there for us? Those farmers around you ought to be able to come up with the ready cash.”
To save my life I couldn't help being interested in him. It is one of the absurd contrarieties of human nature that no sooner do we decide that a man is not to be tolerated, that he is a villain, than we begin to grow tremendously interested in him. We want to see how he works. And the more deeply we get interested, the more we begin to see how human he is, in what a lot of ways he is exactly like us, or like some of the friends we love best--and usually we wind up by liking him, too.
It was so with Ed Smith. He let into my life a breath of fresh air, and of new and curious points of view. I think he felt my interest, too, and as I now look back upon it, I count his friends.h.i.+p as one of the things that helped to bind me more closely and intimately to the _Star_. While he was not at all sensitive, still he had already begun to feel that the glorious progress he had planned for the _Star_ (and for himself) might not be as easy to secure as he had antic.i.p.ated. He wanted friends in the office, friends of those he desired to be friendly with, especially Anthy. Besides, I was helping fill his columns without expense!
I had a good lively talk with him that morning. Before I had known him fifteen minutes he had expressed his opinion that the old Captain was a ”back number” and a ”dodo,” and that Fergus was a good fellow, but a ”grouch.” He confided in me that it was his principle, ”when in Rome to do what the Romans do,” but I wasn't certain whether this consisted, in his case, of being a dodo or a grouch. He was full of wise saws and modern instances, a regular Ben Franklin for wisdom in the art of getting ahead.
”When the cash is going around,” said he, ”I don't see why I shouldn't have a piece of it. Do you?”
He told me circ.u.mstantially all the reasons why he had come to Hempfield.
”I could have made a lot more money at Atterbury or Harlan Centre; they were both after me; but, confidentially, I couldn't resist the lady.”
Well, Ed _was_ wonderfully full of business. ”Rustling” was a favourite word of his, and he exemplified it. He rustled. He got in several new advertis.e.m.e.nts, he published paid reading notices in the local column, a thing never before done on the _Star_. He persuaded the railroad company to print its time tables (at ”our regular rates”), with the insinuation that if they didn't he'd ... and he formed a daring plan for organizing a Board of Trade in Hempfield to boost the town and thus secure both news and advertising for the _Star_. Oh, he made things lively!
Some men, looking out upon life, get its poetic implications, others see its moral significance, and here and there a man will see beauty in everything; but to Ed all views of life dissolved, like a moving picture, into dollars.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Ed's innocent suggestion of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront_]
At first Fergus, that thrifty Scotch soul, was inclined to look with favour upon these new activities, for they promised well for the future prosperity of the _Star_; but this friendly tolerance was blasted as the result of a curious incident. Fergus had lived for several years in the back part of the printing-office. It was a small but comfortable room which had once been the kitchen of the house. In the course of his ravening excursions, seeking what he might devour, Ed Smith presently fell upon Fergus's room. Ed never could understand the enduring solidity of ancient inst.i.tutions. Now Fergus's room, I am p.r.o.ne to admit, was not all that might have been desired, Fergus being a bachelor; but he was proud of it, and swept it out once a month, as he said, whether it needed it or not. Ed's innocent suggestion, therefore, of a house-cleaning was taken by Fergus as a deadly affront. He did not complain to Anthy, though he told _me_, and from that moment he began a silent, obstinate opposition to everything that Ed was, or thought, or did.
If it had not been for Anthy, Ed would indeed have had a hard time of it. But Anthy managed it, and in those days, hard as they were, she was finding herself, becoming a woman.
”Fergus,” she said, ”we're going to stand behind Ed Smith. We've _got_ to work it out. It's our last chance, Fergus.”
So Fergus stuck grimly to the cases, actually doing more work than he had done before in years; Tom, the cat, sat warily on the window sill, ready at a moment's notice to dive to safety; the old Captain was gloomy, and wrote fierce editorials on the Democratic party and on all ”new-fangled notions” (especially flying machines and woman suffrage).
His ironies about the ”initiative, referendum, and recall” were particularly vitriolic during this period of his career. Anthy was the only cheerful person in the office.
It was some time in August, in the midst of these stirring events, when the _Star_ was deporting itself in such an unprecedented manner, that the Captain one day brought in what was destined to be one of the most famous news items, if not _the_ most famous, ever published in the _Star_.
I was there at the time, and I can testify that he came in quite unconcernedly, though there was an evident look of disapproval upon his countenance. It was thus with the Captain, that nothing was news unless it stirred him to an opinion. An earthquake might have shaken down the Hempfield townhall or tipped over the Congregational Church, but the Captain might not have thought of putting the news in the paper unless it had occurred to him that the selectmen should have been on hand to prevent the earthquake, upon which he would have had a glorious article, not on the earthquake, but on the failure of a free American commonwealth, in this enlightened twentieth century, to secure efficiency in the conduct of the simplest of its public affairs.