Part 20 (1/2)
”We've simply got to cut down expenses. I hired Carr when I thought we needed a cheap man to help Fergus--and now I've let him go.”
For a moment Anthy stood silent, and just a little rigid, I thought. But it was only for a moment.
”We were going to have Uncle's editorial, weren't we? Mr. Carr can see it later.”
She was now in complete command. She got the Captain down into his chair and put the ma.n.u.script in his hand. He cleared his throat, threw back his head, pleased in spite of himself.
”It was a hard duty, but here it is,” he said, and began reading in a resonant voice:
”We have hesitated long and considered deeply before expressing the views of the _Star_ upon the recent sad apostasy of Theodore Roosevelt.
We loved him like a son. We gloried in him as in an older brother. We followed that bright figure (in a manner of speaking) when he fought on the b.l.o.o.d.y slopes of San Juan, we were with him when he marched homeward in his hour of triumph to the plaudits of a grateful nation----”
The Captain narrated vividly how the _Star_ had stood staunchly with that peerless leader through every campaign. And then his voice changed suddenly, he drew a deep breath.
”But we are with him no longer. We know him now no more----”
He mourned him as a son gone astray, as a follower after vain G.o.ds. I remember just how Nort looked when he read this part of the editorial some time afterward, glancing up quickly. ”Isn't it great! Doesn't it make you think of old King David: 'Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!'”
But the editorial was not all mournful. It closed with a triumphant note. There was no present call to be discouraged about the nation or the Grand Old Party. Leaders might come and go, but the party of Lincoln, the party of Grant, the party of Garfield, with undiminished l.u.s.tre, would march ever onward to victory.
”The _Star_,” he writes, ”will remain faithful to its allegiance. The _Star_ is old-line Republican, Cooper Union Republican--the unchanging Republicanism of the great-souled McKinley and of Theodore Roosevelt--before his apostasy.”
It was wonderful! No editorial ever published in the Hempfield _Star_ or, so far as I could learn, in any paper in the county, was ever as widely copied throughout the country as this one--copied, indeed, by some editors who did not know or love the old Captain as we did.
After such a stormy morning it was wonderful to see how quickly the troubled atmosphere of the _Star_ began to clear. Four rather sheepish-looking men began to work with a complete show of absorption, while Anthy acted as though nothing had happened.
But there was one thing still on her mind. When I started for home, toward noon, she followed me out on the little porch.
”David,” she said, ”I want to speak to you.”
She hesitated.
”I want you to find Norton Carr.”
She laid her hand on my arm. ”He hasn't been quite fairly treated.”
She smiled, and looked at me wistfully. ”We've got to keep the _Star_ going somehow, haven't we?”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XIV
WE BEGIN THE SUBJUGATION OF NORT
Here is a curious and interesting thing often to be noted by any man who looks around him, that we human creatures are all made up into uneven and restless bundles--family bundles, church bundles, political-party bundles, and a thousand amusing kinds of business bundles. It will also be observed that a very large part of us, nearly all of us who are old and most of us who are women, are struggling as hard as ever we can (and without a bit of humour) to hold our small bundles together, while others are struggling with equal ferocity to burst out of their bundles and make new ones. And so on endlessly!
If you see any one particular specimen in any one particular bundle who is making himself obnoxious by wriggling and squirming and twisting with an utter disregard for the sensibilities of the bundle-binders, you may conclude that he is affected by the most mysterious influence, or power, or malady--whatever you care to call it--with which we small human beings have to grapple. I mean that he is growing. When you come to think of it, the most incalculable power in the life of men is the power of growth. If you could tell when any given human being was through growing, you could tell what to do with him; but you never can. Some men are ripe at twenty-five, and some are still adding power and knowledge at eighty. It is not inheritance, nor environment, nor wealth, nor position, that measures the difference between human beings, but rather the mysterious faculty of continued growth which resides within them. It is growth that causes the tragedies of this world--and the comedies--and the sheer beauty of life. Here are a husband and wife bound together in the commonest of bundles: one stops growing, the other keeps on growing; consult almost any play, novel, poem, newspaper, or scandalous gossip, for the results. Consider the restless bundle of nations called Europe, one of which recently began to grow tremendously, began to squirm about in the bundle, began to demand room and air. What an almighty pother this has caused! What an altogether serious business for the bundle-binders!