Part 16 (1/2)

Well, Nort had a breathless audience! This time he was in deadly earnest. His sketch was not long, but it was as vivid a picture of the torment of domestic unhappiness as ever I have seen in such brief compa.s.s. Moreover, it had the very pa.s.sion, the cut and thrust of the truth of things.

No sooner had he finished reading than Harriet leaned forward and asked in a half whisper, all ablaze with shocked interest.

”Who is it? Is it the Newtons?”

It was Nort's turn to look surprised.

”Why, no,” said he. ”I don't know the Newtons at all.”

”But you must have had some one in mind.”

”No,” said Nort; ”it's just a description of how married people quarrel.”

”But it's exactly what the Newtons do,” said Harriet.

Here the old Captain broke in.

”Why,” said he, ”if we printed a thing like that we'd lose all the advertising of Newton's store. We'd lose the whole Newton family, and their cousins, the Maxwells, and _their_ connections, the Mecklins.

Why----”

”But it's true, it's true!” Nort burst in. ”And every one of you was more interested in it, I could see that, than in anything we ever put in the _Star_--since I've been here.”

With that Nort suddenly jumped up, as though some important thought had just occurred to him, and rushed out of the room.

”Well, I never!” exclaimed Harriet.

I succeeded in catching him in the hallway.

”Hempfield would not see these things as Miss Grayson does,” he said.

”Nort,” said I, ”Harriet _is_ Hempfield.”

He paused just a moment.

”I think Anthy--Miss Doane--will understand,” he said.

With that he rushed out in the dark. He made the distance to town, I think, in record time. It was well past nine o'clock when he arrived at the common, and the town was silent with a silence that broods over it only on Sunday nights. He went past the printing-office without looking around. It was in the neighbourhood of a quarter to ten when he arrived at Anthy's gate. An odd time for a call at Hempfield, you say! It was, indeed.

But there was a light in the window. Nort went up the steps and rang the bell. He had never before felt quite as he did at that moment.

Anthy herself opened the door. Nort stepped in quickly and, for a moment, was unable to say a word. Anthy retreated a step or two.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I tell you, Miss Doane,” said Nort explosively, ”the only way to make a success of the _Star_ is to publish the truth about Hempfield----”]

”I tell you, Miss Doane,” said Nort explosively, ”the only way to make a success of the _Star_ is to publish the truth about Hempfield----”

At that moment Nort happened to glance through the wide door of the library. It was a comfortable, old-fas.h.i.+oned room, and the evening being a little cool a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth. In a low chair under the light, seeming perfectly at home, sat Ed Smith.