University of Virginia Library

3. III.

A WEEK from that day my arrangements were complete. The magazine for November was in type. Of the reading matter Digby had furnished me with one short story, an essay, a couple of sonnets, and some contributions to the amusing column. My editorials, too, he had revised and lightened in style and effect. I felt so grateful to Digby that I urged him to come down to the office and be introduced to his (for that month at least) collaborateurs. But he laughed gayly and declined.

"No, no, Cibber. These fellows are professionals. I am only an amateur. Never took pen in hand before to indite more than a few notes. I preach always impromptu. No, no; they'd treat me as the barnyard fowls would a wild bird if it came to peck at their corn."

Which reminded me delicately enough that I had made no provision for paying Digby. I gave him a check (Craik had left some blanks signed for me to fill up) for what I afterward discovered was double the usual rate of payment. But you could not have the wild bird's song at the same rate as barnyard cluckings.

"But you must let me at least introduce you to Craik when he returns," I urged.

Digby nodded with an indifferent good humor. Evidently he rated the literary guild low. "Come down at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon," I said after a pause. "The office will be vacant then, and there is a little domestic drama which I wish you to witness. Miss Fleming has promised to come."

On hearing that, he consented eagerly. I had told Susy the story of poor little Mrs. Whyte, and she was sanguine as to the sequel.

"Thee may be quite certain she is 'Hetty,'" she said, her fair face in a heat. "But thee must be cautious—cautious. Do not tell the old doctor of the chance that she is found. Ask him to bring me down to look at thy new office, and let him meet her by accident."

So it was arranged; Susy making cunning provision for herself as a spectator. The bell rang for dinner just as I finished my colloquy with Digby, and the ladies passed us through the wide hall, appearing, in its bright light and dark walnut walls, like a flock of delicately plumaged birds fluttering from light into shadow. Digby hurried forward to offer his arm to Susy. She was dressed in some pearl-colored gauzy stuff, with the transparent Quaker lawn over her white neck, and the fair hair crept out over it in curly rings. She looked beyond me into the

darkness eagerly, and then passed on with sudden discontent in her face. Could it have been Hugh Blake she hoped to see? He had often accompanied me home to dinner before he ceased coming to the house altogether. Was it possible that she had had the sense, and real refinement of feeling enough to prefer Hugh to the man on whose arm she leaned? What woman would rank the homely, dull clerk with Digby? He glanced up at me as he went down the stairs, and waved his hand significantly, as though he read my thoughts. I never had seen a more brilliant, triumphant figure.

Hugh Blake met me when I entered the office. "A day later with the November number, and you would have had to abdicate before your reign was begun," he said. "Craik is back again. Wife taken sick at Chicago, so they were forced to give up the Pacific trip."

"Sorry for his wife. But the November number cannot be altered now. Plates are cast." I was very well satisfied that they were cast. My work had been capitally done, I fancied. Boggs, an intolerable incubus, had been dislodged, and a connection made for the magazine with Digby, who was, in my opinion, a most valuable acquisition.

Craik came in a moment after with the mild young clerk, bustling, eager as usual, but, I saw, a little uneasy.

"Gone to the foundry, eh? I thought I'd look it over. But no matter. No doubt it will be the most capital number yet issued. A thousand thanks, Cibber, for your aid!"

I told him of Doctor Sturgeon and the hope for the poor little Whyte woman.

Craik was interested in a moment. "I know her a hard-working creature, with her poor little champion, Bobby. Boggs has kept her in work. By the way, where is my factotum?"

"Boggs? Oh, I discharged Boggs."

"Dis—charged Boggs!" Craik's face grew red, then he laughed. "No matter, I can bring him back. You might as well have discharged the subscribers, Cibber. However, here comes your heroine," as Mrs. Whyte with Bobby entered. She was agitated, I saw, and opened and shut her satchel without any purpose. The poor creature had fancied, it appeared, that I proposed to give her more work. Beyond work she had no idea of good fortune.

The next moment Hugh started forward to the door, his sallow face kindling into such life as no one could have believed possible for it, and brought in Susy, sweet and pink as an arbutus blossom, in her grave Quaker dress. Behind her a few steps followed the old doctor, staring and stumbling gawkily around. Susy, after a word to me, hurried up to Mrs. Whyte, to be near her if good fortune came to her. "She looked," Susy said afterward, "too weak to bear even happiness."

"Well, here we are, Mr. Cibber," said the old man. "We had a curiosity to see the place where the thunder is made. But it is not at all—what!" He stopped short in front of the little woman in black, who for the last two minutes had been crying quietly to herself, twisting her thin, freckled hands together over the handle of her satchel.

"Quiet, Bobby! Quiet, dear!" she said over and over again.

The old man put his hand on her shoulder—took it off hastily. "I beg pardon, ma'am. But you looked for a minute so like a friend I lost—my niece, Hetty— Good God! are you Hetty?"

"Yes, Uncle John," crying so hard that we all felt like crying with her, but laughed instead, while the old doctor hugged her and hugged Bobby, and then hugged them both together. "Why, how you've changed, child!" lifting her face up by the chin, and turning to us as if to explain why his rosebud of a girl was a cadaverous, middle-aged woman. "You've had hard furrows to hoe, Hetty. But it's all over now."

The woman, as usual, was the one to regain her self-control. "You must excuse us, sir," she said to Craik, who stood smiling red and benign down on them. "I have not seen my uncle for many years, and he thinks they have not been easy years."

"Think? I know what they've been! It is all owing to that scoundrel—"

But the little woman laid her hand on his arm, still turning to Craik with a certain dignity. "My husband, Colonel Whyte, was unfortunate—"

The situation was embarrassing, and I for one was glad that the door was flung open just then, and Digby, gallant and bold, and gayly dressed, entered.

"Why, Cibber, you roost as high as the bald eagle, whose flight—" He stopped, startled apparently at the crowd of faces about him.

"Mr. Craik," I said, "this is Mr. Digby, to whom I and the November number of the 'Northern Light' are largely indebted."

"Mr. Cibber," said Craik, drawing himself up, with his hands still clasped behind him, "this is Mr. Cheney, with whom I and the 'Northern Light' have had dealings before."

"By George!" cried the mild-eyed clerk. "Cheney, indeed! With red whiskers and wig it would be Hodson!"

But at that dramatic moment—"It is my husband, Uncle John!" cried Hetty, running to Digby and throwing her arms about him, defiant as a hen ruffling up her feathers for fight.

The old doctor stepped forward, trembling with rage from his wig to his shoes. "It is no Cheney, nor Hodson. It is that scoundrel Jem Whyte."

"Her husband!" said Susy, with white lips. Digby's first movement was to push the little woman from him gently but decidedly. "You had better go to Uncle John, Hester, my dear, and you, too, Bob, my boy. He's a better standby than your worthless dog of a father. As for you, gentlemen," smiling and with a sweeping bow, which included us all, "when you have determined whether Jem Whyte is Cheney, Hodson, or Digby, you can decide in which rôle he best played his part."

With an air of gracious condescension he left us.

"He has won the game," said Craik laughing.

Hugh Blake escorted Susy home that evening.

"When Blake is able to marry, that will be a match, I suspect?" Craik asked of me.

"Yes; and when he has married her he will find Susy has one of the snuggest fortunes in the Quaker City," I said. "But that is her secret, not mine."