“Good-bye,proud world,I’m going home.Thou art not my friend,and I’m not thine.”—Emerson.
“Good-bye,proud world,I’m going home.Thou art not my friend,and I’m not thine.”
—Emerson.
Ithinkthe reader will possibly gain a better idea of what happened at the Howlett dance, at which Count Bonetti was to have been presented to Miss Andrews, if I forego the pleasure of writing this chapter myself, and produce instead the chapter of Stuart Harley’s ill-fated book which was to have dealt with that most interesting incident. Having relinquished all hope of ever getting thatparticular story into shape without a change of heroine, and being unwilling to go to that extreme, Mr. Harley has very kindly placed his manuscript at my disposal.
“Use it as you will, my dear fellow,” he said, when I asked him for it. “I can’t do anything with it myself, and it is merely occupying space in my pigeon-holes for which I can find better use. It may need a certain amount of revision—in fact, it is sure to, for it is unconscionably long, and, thanks to the persistent failure of Miss Andrews to do as I thought she would, may frequently seem incoherent. For your own sake revise it, for the readers of your book won’t believe that you are telling a true story anyhow; they will say that you wrote this chapter and attributed it tome, and you will find yourself held responsible for its shortcomings. I have inserted a few notes here and there which will give you an idea of what I suffered as I wrote on and found her growing daily less and less tractable, with occasionally an indication of the point of divergence between her actual behavior and that which I expected of her.”
To a fellow-workman in literary fields this chapter is of pathetic interest, though it may not so appear to the reader who knows little of the difficulties of authorship. I can hardly read it myself without a feeling of most intense pity for poor Harley. I can imagine the sleepless nights which followed the shattering of his hopes as to what his story might be by the recalcitrant attitude of the young woman he had honoredso highly by selecting her for his heroine. I can almost feel the bitter sense of disappointment, which must have burned to the very depths of his soul, when he finally realized how completely overturned were all his plans, and I cannot forego calling attention to the constancy to his creed of Stuart Harley, in sacrificing his opportunity rather than his principles, as shown by his resolute determination not to force Miss Andrews to do his bidding, even though it required merely the dipping of his pen into the ink and the resolution to do so.
I cannot blame her, however. Granting to Harley the right to a creed, Miss Andrews, too, it must be admitted, was entitled to have views as to how she ought to behave under given circumstances,and if she found her notions running counter to his, it was only proper that she should act according to the dictates of her own heart, or mind, or whatever else it may be that a woman reasons with, rather than according to his wishes.
As to all questions of this kind, however, as between the two, the reader must judge, and one document in evidence is Harley’s chapter, which ran in this wise:
A MEETING“Stop beating,heart,and in a moment calmThe question answer—is this,then,my fate?”—Perkins’s“Odes.”
A MEETING
“Stop beating,heart,and in a moment calmThe question answer—is this,then,my fate?”
—Perkins’s“Odes.”
As the correspondents of the New York papers had surmised, invitations for the Howlett ball were issued on the 12th. It is not surprising that the correspondentsin this instance should be guilty of that rare crime among society reporters, accuracy, for their information was derived from a perfectly reliable source, Mrs. Howlett’s butler, in whose hands the addressing of the envelopes had been placed—a man of imposing presence, and of great value to the professional snappers-up of unconsidered trifles of social gossip in the pay of the Sunday newspapers, with many of whom he was on terms of closest intimacy. Of course Mrs. Howlett was not aware that her household contained a personage of great journalistic importance, any more than her neighbor, Mrs. Floyd-Hopkins, was aware that it was her maid who had furnished theWeekly Journal of Societywith the vivid account of the scandalous behavior, at her last dinner,of Major Pompoly, who had to be forcibly ejected from the Floyd-Hopkins domicile by the husband of Mrs. Jernigan Smith—a social morsel which attracted much attention several years ago. Every effort was made to hush that matter up, and the guests all swore eternal secrecy; but theWeekly Journal of Societyhad it, and, strangely enough, had it right, in its next issue; but the maid was never suspected, even though she did appear to be possessed of more ample means than usual for some time after. Mrs. Floyd-Hopkins preferred to suspect one of her guests, and, on the whole, was not sorry that the matter had got abroad, for everybody talked about it, and through the episode her dinner became one of the historic banquets of the season.
The Willards, who were by this time comfortably settled at “The Needles,” their cottage on the cliff, it is hardly necessary to state, were among those invited, and with their cards was included one for Marguerite. Added to the card was a personal note from Mrs. Howlett to Miss Andrews, expressing the especial hope that she would not fail them, all of which was very gratifying to the young girl.
“See what I’ve got,” she cried, gleefully, running into Mrs. Willard’s “den” at the head of the beautiful oaken stairs.
(Note.—At this point in Harley’s manuscript there is evidence of indecision on the author’s part. His heroine had begun to bother him a trifle. He had written a half-dozen lines descriptive ofMiss Andrews’s emotions at receiving a special note of invitation, subsequently erasing them. The word “gleefully” had been scratched out, and then restored in place of “scornfully,” which had at first been substituted for it. It was plain that Harley was not quite certain as to how much a woman of Miss Andrews’s type would care for a special attention of this nature, even if she cared for it at all. As a matter of fact, the word chosen should have been “dubiously,” and neither “gleefully” nor “scornfully”; for the real truth was that there was no reason why Mrs. Howlett should so honor Marguerite, and the girl at once began to wonder if it were not an extra precaution of Harley’s to assure her presence at the ball for the benefit of himself and his publishers.The author finally wrote it as I have given it above, however, and Miss Andrews received her special invitation “gleefully”—according to Harley. He perceives her doubt, however, without comprehending it; for after describing Mrs. Willard’s reading of the note, he goes on.)
“That is very nice of Mrs. Howlett,” said Mrs. Willard, handing Marguerite back her note. “It is a special honor, my dear, by which you should feel highly flattered. She doesn’t often do things like that.”
“I should think not,” said Marguerite. “I am a perfect stranger to her, and that she should do it at all strikes me as being most extraordinary. It doesn’t seem sincere, and I can’t help thinking that some extraneous circumstancehas been brought to bear upon her to force her to do it.”
(Note.—Stuart Harley has commented upon this as follows: “As I read this over I must admit that Miss Andrews was right. Why I had Mrs. Howlett do such a thing I don’t know, unless it was that my own admiration for my heroine led me to believe that some more than usual attention was her due. In my own behalf I will say that I should in all probability have eliminated or corrected this false note when I came to the revision of my proofs.” The chapter then proceeds.)
“What shall we wear?” mused Mrs. Willard, as Marguerite folded Mrs. Howlett’s note and replaced it in its envelope.
“I must positively decline to discussthat question. It is of no public interest,” snapped Marguerite, her face flushing angrily. “My clothing is my own business, and no one’s else.” She paused a moment, and then, in an apologetic tone, she added, “I’d be perfectly willing to talk with you about it generally, my dear Dorothy, but not now.”
Mrs. Willard looked at the girl in surprise.
(Note.—Stuart Harley has written this in the margin: “Here you have one of the situations which finally compelled me to relinquish this story. You know yourself how hard it is to make 30,000 words out of a slight situation, and at the same time stick to probability. I had an idea, in mapping out this chapter, that I could make three or four interesting pages—interesting to the girls, mindyou—out of a discussion of what they should wear at the Howlett dance. It was a perfectly natural subject for discussion at the time and under the circumstances. It would have been a good thing in the book, too, for it might have conveyed a few wholesome hints in the line of good taste in dress which would have made my story of some value. Women are always writing to the papers, asking, ‘What shall I wear here?’ and ‘What shall I wear there?’ The ideas of two women like Mrs. Willard and Marguerite Andrews would have been certain to be interesting, elevating, and exceedingly useful to such people, but the moment I attempted to involve them in that discussion Miss Andrews declined utterly to speak, and I was cut out of some six or seven hundred quiteimportant words. I had supposed all women alike in that matter, but I find I was mistaken; one, at least, won’t discuss clothes—but I don’t wonder that Mrs. Willard looked up in surprise. I put that in just to please myself, for of course the whole incident would have had to be cut out when the manuscript went to the type-setter.” The chapter takes a new lead here, as follows:)
Mrs. Willard was punctiliously prompt in sending the acceptances of herself and Mr. Willard to Mrs. Howlett, and at the same time Marguerite’s acceptance was despatched, although she was at first disposed to send her regrets. She was only moderately fond of those inconsequent pleasures which make the life social. She was a good dancer, but a more excellent talker, and she preferredtalking to dancing; but the inanity of what are known as stair talks at dances oppressed her; nor did she look forward with any degree of pleasure to what we might term conservatory confidences, which in these luxurious days have become so large a factor in terpsichorean diversions, for Marguerite was of a practical nature. She had once chilled the heart of a young poet by calling Venice malarious (Harley little realized when he wrote this how he would have suffered had he carried out his original intention and transplanted Marguerite to the City of the Sea!), and a conservatory to her was a thing for mid-day, and not for midnight. She was therefore not particularly anxious to spend an evening—which began at an aggravatingly late hour instead of at areasonable time, thanks to a social custom which has its foundation in nothing short of absolute insanity—in the pursuit of nothing of greater value than dancing, stair talks, and conservatory confidences; but Mrs. Willard soon persuaded her that she ought to go, and go she did.
It was a beautiful night, that of the 22dof July. Newport was at her best. The morning had been oppressively warm, but along about three in the afternoon a series of short and sharp electrical storms came, and as quickly went, cooling the heated city, and freshening up the air until it was as clear as crystal, and refreshing as a draught of cold spring-water.
At the Howlett mansion on Bellevue Avenue all was in readiness for the event. The caterer’s wagons had arrived withtheir dainty contents, and had gone, and now the Hungarian band was sending forth over the cool night air those beautiful and weird waves of melody which entrance the most unwilling ear. About the broad and spacious grounds festooned lights hung from tree to tree; here and there little rose-scented bowers fortête-à-têtetalks were set; from within, streaming through the windows in regal beauty, came the lights of the vast ballroom, the reception-rooms, and the beautifully designed dining-hall—lately added by young Morris Black, the architect, to Mrs. Howlett’s already perfect house.
On the ballroom floor are some ten or twenty couples gracefully waltzing to the strains of Sullivan, and in the midst of these we see Marguerite Andrewsthreading her way across the room with some difficulty, attended by Mr. and Mrs. Willard. They have just arrived. As Marguerite walks across the hall she attracts every one. There is that about her which commands attention. At the instant of her entrance Count Bonetti is on thequi Vive.
“Py Chove!” he cries, as he leans gracefully against the doorway opening into the conservatory. “Zare, my dear friend, zat iss my idea of ze truly peautiful woman. Vat iss her name?”
“That is Miss Andrews of New York, Count,” the person addressed replies. “She is up here with the Willards.”
“I musd meed her,” says the Count, his eye following Marguerite as she walks up to Mrs. Howlett and is greeted effusively by that lady.
Marguerite is pale, and appears anxious. Even to the author the ways of the women in his works are inscrutable; so upon this occasion. She is pale, but I cannot say why. Can it be that she has an intuitive knowledge that to-night may decide her whole future life? Who can tell? Woman’s intuitions are great, and there be those who say they are unerringly true. One by one, with the exception of Count Bonetti, the young men among Mrs. Howlett’s guests are presented—Bonetti prefers to await a more favorable opportunity—and to all Marguerite appears to be the beautiful woman she is. Hers is an instant success. A new beauty has dawned upon the Newport horizon.
Let us describe her as she stands.
(Note.—There is a blank space lefthere. At first I thought it was because Harley wished to reflect a little before drawing a picture of so superb a woman as he seemed to think her, and go on to the conclusion of the chapter, the main incidents being hot in his mind, and the purely descriptive matters more easily left to calmer moments. He informs me, however, that such was not the case. “When I came to describe her as she stood,” he said, “she had disappeared, and I had to search all over the house before I finally found her in the conservatory. So I changed the chapter to read thus:”)
After a half-hour of dancing and holding court—for Marguerite’s triumph was truly that of a queen, it was so complete—Miss Andrews turned to Mr. Willard and took his arm.
“Let us go into the conservatory,” she said, in a whisper. “I have heard so much about Mrs. Howlett’s orchids, I should like to see them.”
Willard, seeing that she was tired and slightly bored by the incessant chatter of those about her, escorted her out through the broad door into the conservatory. As she passed from the ballroom the dark eyes of Count Bonetti flashed upon her, but she heeded them not, moving on into the floral bower in apparently serene unconsciousness of that person’s presence. Here Willard got her a chair.
“Will you have an ice?” he asked, as she seated herself beneath one of the lofty palms.
“Yes,” she answered, simply. “I can wait here alone if you will get it.”
“The dark eyes of Count Bonetti flashed”
Willard passed out, and soon returned with the ice; but as he came through the doorway Bonetti stopped him and whispered something in his ear.
“Certainly, Count, right away,” Willard answered. “Come along.”
Bonetti needed no second bidding, but followed Willard closely, and soon stood expectant before Marguerite.
“Miss Andrews,” said Willard, “may I have the pleasure of presenting Count Bonetti?”
The Count’s head nearly collided with his toes in the bow that he made.
“Mr. Willard,” returned Miss Andrews, coldly, ignoring the Count, “feeling as I do that Count Bonetti is merely a bogus Count with acquisitive instincts, brought here, like myself, for literary purposes of which I cannot approve, Imust reply to your question that you may not have that pleasure.”
With which remark (concludes Stuart Harley) Miss Marguerite Andrews swept proudly from the room, ordered her carriage, and went home, thereby utterly ruining the second story of her life that I had undertaken to write. But I shall make one more effort.
“And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor.He that knows better how to tame a shrew,Now let him speak;’tis charity to show.”—“Taming of the Shrew.”
“And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor.He that knows better how to tame a shrew,Now let him speak;’tis charity to show.”
—“Taming of the Shrew.”
“Whatwould have happened if she had behaved differently, Stuart?” I asked, after I had read the pages he had so kindly placed at my disposal.
“Oh, nothing in particular to which she could reasonably object,” returned Harley. “The incidents of a truly realistic novel are rarely objectionable, except to people of a captious nature. Iintended to have Bonetti dance attendance upon Miss Andrews for the balance of the season, that’s all, hoping thereby to present a good picture of life at Newport in July and part of August. About the middle of August I was going to transport the whole cast to Bar Harbor, for variety’s sake. That would have been another opportunity to get a good deal of the American summer atmosphere into the book. I wish I could afford the kind of summer I contemplated giving her.”
“You didn’t intend that she should fall in love with Bonetti?” I asked.
“Not to any serious extent,” said Harley, deprecatingly. “Even if she had a little, she’d have come out of it all right as soon as the hero turned up, and she had a chance to see the differencebetween a manly man of her own country and a little titled fortune hunter from the land of macaroni. Bonetti wasn’t to be a bad fellow at all. He was merely an Italian, which he couldn’t help, being born so, and therefore, as she said, of an acquisitive nature. There is no villany in that, however—that is, no reprehensible villany. He was after a rich marriage because he was fond of a life of ease. She’d have found him amusing, at any rate.”
“But he was bogus!” I suggested.
“Not at all,” said Harley, impatiently. “That’s what vexes me more than anything else. She made a very bad mistake there. As a Count, Bonetti was quite as real as his financial necessities.”
“It was a beastly awkward situation,that conservatory scene,” said I. “Especially for Willard. The Count might have challenged him. What became of the Count when it was over?”
“I don’t know,” said Harley. “I left him to get out of his predicament as best he could. Possibly he did challenge Willard. I haven’t taken the trouble to find out. If, as I think, however, he’s a living person, he’ll extricate himself from his difficulty all right; if he’s not, and I have unwittingly allowed myself to conjure him up in my fancy, there’s no great harm done. If he’s nothing more than a marionette, let him fall on the floor, and stay there until I find some imaginative writer who will take him off my hands—you, for instance. You can have Bonetti for a Christmas present, with my compliments.I’m through with him; but as for Miss Andrews, she has been so confoundedly elusive that she has aroused my deepest interest, and I couldn’t give her up if I wanted to. I never encountered a heroine like her in all my life before, and the one object of my future career will be to catch her finally in the meshes of a romance. Romance will come into her life some time. She is not at all of an unsentimental nature—only fractious—new-womanish, perhaps; but none the less lovable, and Cupid will have a shot at her when she least expects it; and when it does come, I’ll be on hand to report the attempted assassination for the delectation of the Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick public.”
“I should think you would try a little persuasion, just for larks,” I suggested.
“You forget I am a realist,” he replied, as he went out.
Now I sincerely admired Stuart Harley, and I wished to the bottom of my heart to help him if I could. It seemed to me that, however admirable Miss Andrews had shown herself to be generally as a woman, she had been an altogether unsatisfactory person in the rôle of a heroine. I respected her scruples about marrying men she did not care for, and, as I have already said, no one could deny her the right to her own convictions; but it seemed to me that in the Bonetti incident she might and truly ought to have acted differently when the time came for the presentation. There is no doubt in my mind that her little speech to Willard, in which she stated that the Count was afraud and might not be presented, was a deliberately planned rebuff, and therefore not in any sense excusable. She could have avoided it by telling Willard before leaving home that she did not care to meet the Count. To make a scene at Mrs. Howlett’s was not a thing which a sober-minded, self-contained woman would have done; it was bad form to behave so rudely to one of Mrs. Howlett’s guests, and was so inconsiderate of Willard and unreasonable in other ways that I blamed her unreservedly.
“She deserves to be punished,” I thought to myself, as Harley went dejectedly out of the room. “And there is no kind of punishment for a woman like that so galling to her soul as to find herself in the hands of a relentless despotwho forces her this way and that, according to his whim. I’d like to play Petrucio to her Katherine for five minutes. She’d soon find out that I’m not a realist bound by a creed to which I must adhere. Whatever I choose to do I can do without violating my conscientious scruples, because I haven’t any conscientious scruples in literature. And, by Jove, I’ll do it! I’ll take Miss Marguerite Andrews in hand myself this very afternoon, and I’ll put her through a course of training that will make her rue the day she ever trifled with Stuart Harley—and when he takes her up again she’ll be as meek as Moses.”
Strong in my belief that I could bring the young woman to terms, I went to my desk and tried my hand at a story, with Miss Andrews as its heroine, and Iwas not particular about being realistic either. Neither did I go off into any trances in search of heroes and villains. I did what Harley could not do. I brought theNew Yorkback to port that very day, and despatched Robert Osborne, the despised lover of the first tale, to Newport.
“She shall have him whether she likes him or not,” said I, gritting my teeth determinedly; “and she won’t know whether she loves him or Count Bonetti best; and she’ll promise to marry both of them; and she shall go to Venice in August, despite her uncompromising refusal to do so for Harley; and she shall meet Balderstone there, and, no matter what her opinion of him or of his literary work, she shall be fascinated by the story I’ll have him write, and under thespell of that fascination she shall promise to marry him also; whereupon the Willards will turn up and take her to Heidelberg, where I’ll have her meet the hero she couldn’t wait for at the Howlett dance, the despised Professor, and she shall promise to be his wife likewise; and finally I’ll put her on board a steamer at Southampton, bound for New York, with Mrs. Corwin and the twins; and the second day out, when she is feeling her very worst, all four of her fiancés will turn up at the same time beside her chair. Then I shall leave her to get out of her trouble the best way she can. I imagine, after she has had a taste of my literary regimen, she’ll quite fall in love with the Harley method, and behave herself as a heroine should.”
I sat down all aglow with the idea ofbeing able to tame Harley’s heroine and place her in a mood more suited for his purposes. The more I thought of how his failures were weighing on his mind, the more viciously ready was I to play the tyrant with Marguerite, and—well, I might as well confess it at once, with all my righteous indignation against her, I could not do it. Five times I started, and as many times did I destroy what I wrote. On the sixth trial I did haul theNew Yorkrelentlessly back into port, never for an instant considering the inconvenience of the passengers, or the protests of the officers, crew, or postal authorities. This done, I seized upon the unfortunate Osborne, spirited his luggage through the Custom-house, and sent the ship to sea again. That part was easy. I have written a great dealfor the comic papers, and acrobatic nonsense of that sort comes almost without an effort on my part. With equal ease I got Osborne to Newport—how, I do not recollect. It is just possible that I took him through from New York without a train, by the mere say-so of my pen. At any rate, I got him there, and I fully intended to have him meet Miss Andrews at a dance at the Ocean House the day after his arrival. I even progressed so far as to get up the dance. I described the room, the decorations, and the band. I had Osborne dressed and waiting, with Bonetti also dressed and waiting on the other side of the room, Scylla and Charybdis all over again, but by no possibility could I force Miss Andrews to appear. Why it was, I do not pretend to be able to say—shemay have known that Bonetti was there, she may have realized that I was trying to force Osborne upon her; but whatever it was that enabled her to do so, she resisted me successfully—or my pen did; for that situation upon which I had based the opening scene of my story of compulsion I found beyond my ability to depict; and as Harley had done before me, so was I now forced to do—to change my plan.
“I’ll have her run away with!” I cried, growing vicious in my wrath; “and both Bonetti and Osborne shall place her under eternal obligations by rushing out to stop the horse, one from either side of the street. She’ll have to meet Bonetti then,” I added, with a chuckle.
And I tried that plan. As docile as a lamb she entered the phaeton, whichI conjured up out of my ink-pot, and like a veteran Jehu did she seize the reins. I could not help admiring her as I wrote of it—she was so like a goddess; but I did not relent. Run away with she must be, and run away with she was. But again did this extraordinary woman assert herself to my discomfiture; for the moment she saw Bonetti rushing out to rescue her from the east, she jerked the left rein so violently that the horse swerved to one side, toppled over on Osborne, who had sprung gallantly to the rescue from the west; and Bonetti, missing his aim as the horse turned, fell all in a heap in the roadway two yards back of the phaeton. Miss Andrews was not hurt, but my story was, for she had not even observed the unhappy Osborne; and as for Bonetti, hecut so ridiculous a figure that, Italian though he was, even he seemed aware of it, and he shrank dejectedly out of sight. Again had this supernaturally elusive heroine upset the plans of one who had essayed to embalm her virtues in a literary mould. I could not bring her into contact with either of my heroes.
I threw my pen down in disgust, slammed to the cover of my ink-well, and for two hours paced madly through the maze-like walks of the Central Park, angry and depressed; and from that moment until I undertook the narration of this pathetic story I gave Harley’s heroine up as unavailable material for my purposes. She was worse, if anything, in imaginative work than in realism, because she absolutely defied the imagination,while the realist she would be glad to help so long as his realism was kept in strict accord with her ideas of what the real really was.
It was some days before I saw Harley again, and I thought he looked tired and anxious—so anxious, indeed, that I was afraid he might possibly be in financial straits, for I knew that for three weeks he had not turned out any of his usual pot-boilers, having been too busy trying to write the story for Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick. It happened, oddly enough, that I had two or three uncashed checks in my pocket; so, feeling like a millionaire, I broached the subject to him.
“What’s the matter, old fellow?” I said. “You seem in a blue funk. Has the mint stopped? If it has, commandme. I’m overburdened with checks this week.”
“Not at all; thanks just the same,” he said, wearily. “My Tiffin royalties came in Wednesday, and I’m all right for a while, anyhow.”
“What’s up, then, Stuart?” I asked. “You look worried. I’ve just offered to share my prosperity with you, you might share your grief with me. Lend me a peck of trouble overnight, will you?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much,” he said. “It’s that rebellious heroine of mine. She’s weighing on my mind, that’s all. She’s very real to me, that woman; and, by Jove! I’ve been as jealous as a lover for two days over a fancy that came into my head. You’ll laugh when I tell you, but I’ve been half afraid somebody elsewould take her up and—well, treat her badly. There is something that tells me that she has been forced into some brutal situation by somebody, somewhere, within the past two or three days. I believe I’d want to kill a man who did that.”
I didn’t laugh at him. I was the man who was in a fair way to get killed for “doing that,” and I thought laughter would be a little bit misplaced; but I am not a coward, and I didn’t flinch. I confessed. I tried to ease his mind by telling him what I had attempted to do.
“It was a mistake,” he said, shortly, when I had finished. “And you must promise me one thing,” he added, very seriously.
“I’ll promise anything,” I said, meekly.
“Don’t ever try anything of the sort again,” he went on, gravely. “If you had succeeded in writing that story, and subjected her to all that horror, I should never have spoken to you again. As it is, I realize that what you did was out of the kindness of your heart, prompted by a desire to be of service to me, and I’m just as much obliged as I can be, only I don’t want any assistance.”
“Until you ask me to, Stuart,” I replied, “I’ll never write another line about her; but you’d better keep very mum about her yourself, or get her copyrighted. The way she upset that horse on Osborne, completely obliterating him, and at the same time getting out of the way of that little simian Count, in spite of all I could do to place her under obligations to both of them, was what theancients would have called a caution. She has made a slave of me forever, and I venture to predict that if you don’t hurry up and get her into a book, somebody else will; and whoever does will make a name for himself alongside of which that of Smith will sink into oblivion.”
“Count on me for that,” said he. “‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ and I don’t intend to stop climbing just because I fear a few more falls.”
“Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?Was ever woman in this humour won?I’ll have her,—but I will not keep her long.”—“Richard III.”
“Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?Was ever woman in this humour won?I’ll have her,—but I will not keep her long.”
—“Richard III.”
Therewas no doubt about it that Harley, true to his purpose, was making a good fight to conquer without compulsion, and appreciated as much as I the necessity of reducing his heroine to concrete form as speedily as possible, lest some other should prove more successful, and so deprive him of the laurels for which he had worked so hard and suffered so much. In his favor was hisdisposition. He was a man of great determination, and once he set about doing something he was not an easy man to turn aside, and now that, for the first time in his life, he found himself baffled at every point, and by a heroine of no very great literary importance, he became more determined than ever.
“I’ll conquer yet,” he said to me, a week or so later; but the weariness with which he spoke made me fear that victory was afar off.
“I’ve no doubt of it—ultimately,” I answered, to encourage him; “but don’t you think you’ll stand a better chance if you let her rest for a while, and then steal in upon her unawares, and catch her little romance as it flies? She is apparently nerved up against you now, and the more conscious she is of yourefforts to put her on paper, the more she will rebel. In fact, her rebelliousness will become more and more a matter of whim than of principle, unless you let up on her for a little while. Half of her opposition now strikes me as obstinacy, and the more you try to break her spirit, even though you do it gently, the more stubborn will she become. Put this book aside for a few weeks anyhow. Why not tackle something else? You’d do better work, too, after a little variety.”
“This must be finished by September 1st, that’s why not,” said Stuart. “I’ve promised Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick to send them the completed manuscript by that time. Besides, no heroine of mine shall ever say that she swerved me from doing what I have setabout doing. It is now or never with Marguerite Andrews.”
So I left him at his desk, and for a week was busy with my own affairs. Late the following Friday night I dropped in at Harley’s rooms to see how matters were progressing. As I entered I saw him at his desk, his back turned towards me, silhouetted in the lamp-light, scratching away furiously with his pen.
“Ah!” I thought, as my eye took in the picture, “it goes at last. I guess I won’t disturb his train of thought.”
And I tried to steal softly out, for he had not observed my entrance. As luck would have it, I stepped upon the sill of the door as I passed out, and it creaked.
“Hello!” cried Harley, wheeling about in his chair, startled by the sound.“Oh! It’s you, is it?” he added, as he recognized me. “What are you up to? Come back here. I want to see you.”
His manner was cheerful, but I could see that the cheerfulness was assumed. The color had completely left his cheeks, and great rings under his eyes betokened weariness of spirit.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” said I, returning. “You seem to have your pen on a clear track, with full steam up.”
“I had,” he said, quietly. “I was just finishing up that Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick business.”
“Aha!” I cried, grasping his hand and shaking it. “I congratulate you. Success at last, eh?”
“Well, I’ve got something done—and that’s it,” he said, and he tossed the letterblock upon which he had been writing across the table to me. “Read that, and tell me what you think of it.”
I read it over carefully. It was a letter to Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, in which Stuart asked to be relieved of the commission he had undertaken:
“I find myself utterly unable to complete the work in the stipulated time,” he wrote, “for reasons entirely beyond my control. Nor can I at this writing say with any degree of certainty when I shall be able to finish the story. I have made constant and conscientious effort to carry out my agreement with you, but fruitlessly, and I beg that you will relieve me of the obligation intowhich I entered at the signing of our contract. Of course I could send you something long enough to cover the required space—words come easy enough for that—but the result would be unsatisfactory to you and injurious to me were I to do so. Please let me hear from you, releasing me from the obligation, at your earliest convenience, as I am about to leave town for a fortnight’s rest. Regretting my inability to serve you at this time, and hoping soon to be able to avail myself of your very kind offer, I beg to remain,“Yours faithfully,“Stuart Harley.”
“I find myself utterly unable to complete the work in the stipulated time,” he wrote, “for reasons entirely beyond my control. Nor can I at this writing say with any degree of certainty when I shall be able to finish the story. I have made constant and conscientious effort to carry out my agreement with you, but fruitlessly, and I beg that you will relieve me of the obligation intowhich I entered at the signing of our contract. Of course I could send you something long enough to cover the required space—words come easy enough for that—but the result would be unsatisfactory to you and injurious to me were I to do so. Please let me hear from you, releasing me from the obligation, at your earliest convenience, as I am about to leave town for a fortnight’s rest. Regretting my inability to serve you at this time, and hoping soon to be able to avail myself of your very kind offer, I beg to remain,
“Yours faithfully,“Stuart Harley.”
“Oh!” said I. “You’ve finished it, then, by—”
“By giving it up,” said he, sadly.“It’s the strangest thing that ever happened to me, but that girl is impossible. I take up my pen intending to say that she did this, and before I know it she does that. I cannot control my story at all, nor can I perceive in what given direction she will go. If I could, I could arrange myscenarioto suit, but as it is, I cannot go on. It may come later, but it won’t come now, and I’m going to give her up, and go down to Barnegat to fish for ten days. I hate to give the book up, though,” he added, tapping the table with his pen-holder reflectively. “Chadwick’s an awfully good fellow, and his firm is one of the best in the country, liberal and all that, and here at my first opportunity to get on their list, I’m completely floored. It’s beastly hard luck, I think.”
“Don’t be floored,” said I. “Take my advice and tackle something else. Write some other book.”
“That’s the devil of it!” he replied, angrily pounding the table with his fist. “I can’t. I’ve tried, and I can’t. My mind is full of that woman. If I don’t get rid of her I’m ruined—I’ll have to get a position as a salesman somewhere, or starve, for until she is caught between good stiff board covers I can’t write another line.”
“Oh, you take too serious a view of it, Stuart,” I ventured. “You’re mad and tired now. I don’t blame you, of course, but you mustn’t be rash. Don’t send that letter yet. Wait until you’ve had the week at Barnegat—you’ll feel better then. You can write the book in ten days after your return; or if youstill find you can’t do it, it will be time enough to withdraw then.”
“What hope is there after that?” he cried, tossing a bundle of manuscript into my lap. “Just read that, and tell me what’s the use. I’d mapped out a meeting between Marguerite Andrews and a certain Mr. Arthur Parker, a fellow with wealth, position, brains, good looks—in short, everything a girl could ask for, and that’s what came of it.”
I spread the pages out upon the table before me and read:
“I have not seenSo likely an ambassador of love.”—“Merchant of Venice.”
“I have not seenSo likely an ambassador of love.”
—“Merchant of Venice.”
Parker mounted the steps lightly and rang the bell. Marguerite’s kindnessof the night before, which was in marked contrast to her coolness at the MacFarland dance, had led him to believe that he was not wholly without interest to her, and her invitation that he should call upon her had given him a sincere pleasure; in fact, he wondered that he should be so pleased over so trivial a circumstance.
“I’m afraid I’ve lost my heart again,” he said to himself. “That is, again if I ever lost it before,” he added.
And his mind reverted to a little episode at Bar Harbor the summer before, and he was not sorry to feel that that wound was cured—though, as a matter of fact, it had never amounted to more than a scratch.
A moment later the door opened,and Parker entered, inquiring for Miss Andrews as he did so.
“I do not know, but I will see if Miss Andrews is at home,” said the butler, ushering him into the parlor. That imposing individual knew quite well that Miss Andrews was at home, but he also knew that it was not his place to say so until the young lady had personally assured him of the facts in so far as they related to this particular caller. All went well for Parker, however. Miss Andrews consented to be at home to him, and five minutes later she entered the drawing room where Parker was seated.
“How do you do?” she said, frigidly, ignoring his outstretched hand.
(“Think of that, will you?” interposed Harley. “He’d come to propose, andwas to leave engaged, and she insists upon opening upon him frigidly, ignoring his outstretched hand.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Why did you let her do it?” I asked.
“I could no more have changed it than I could fly,” returned Stuart. “She ought never to have been at home if she was going to behave that way. I couldn’t foresee the incident, and before I knew it that’s the way it happened. But I thought I could fix it up later, so I went on. Read along, and see what I got let into next.”
I proceeded to read as follows:)
“You see,” said Parker, with an admiring glance at her eyes, in spite of the fact that the coolness of her reception rather abashed him—“you see, I have not delayed very long in coming.”
“So I perceive,” returned Marguerite, with a bored manner. “That’s what I said to Mrs. Willard as I came down. You don’t allow your friends much leeway, Mr. Parker. It doesn’t seem more than five minutes since we were together at the card party.”
(“That’s cordial, eh?” said Harley, as I read. “Nice sort of talk for a heroine to a hero. Makes it easy for me, eh?”
“I must say if you manage to get a proposal in now you’re a genius,” said I.
“Oh—as for that, I got reckless when I saw how things were going,” returned Harley. “I lost my temper, and took it out of poor Parker. He proposes, as you will see when you come to it; but it isn’t realism—it’s compulsion. I simply forced him into it—poor devil. But go on and read for yourself.”
I did so, as follows:)
This was hardly the treatment Parker had expected at the hands of one who had been undeniably gracious to him at the card-table the night before. He had received the notice that she was to be his partner at the tables with misgivings, on his arrival at Mrs. Stoughton’s, because his recollection of her behavior towards him at the MacFarland dance had led him to believe that he was personally distasteful to her; but as the evening at cards progressed he felt instinctively drawn towards her, and her vivacity of manner, cleverness at repartee, and extreme amiability towards himself had completely won his heart, which victory their little tête-à-tête during supper had confirmed. But here, this morning, was reversion to her first attitude.What could it mean? Why should she treat him so?
(“I couldn’t answer that question to save my life,” said Stuart. “That is, not then, but I found out later. I put it in, however, and let Parker draw his own conclusions. I’d have helped him out if I could, but I couldn’t. Go on and see for yourself.”
I resumed.)
Parker could not solve the problem, but it pleased him to believe that something over which he had no control had gone wrong that morning, and that this had disturbed her equanimity, and that he was merely the victim of circumstances; and somehow or other it pleased him also to think that he could be the victim of her circumstances, so he stood his ground.
“It is a beautiful day,” he began, after a pause.
“Is it?” she asked, indifferently.
(“Frightfully snubbish,” said I, appalled at the lengths to which Miss Andrews was going.
“Dreadfully,” sighed Harley. “And so unlike her, too.”)
“Yes,” said Parker, “so very beautiful that it seemed a pity that you and I should stay indoors, with plenty of walks to be taken and—”
Marguerite interrupted him with a sarcastic laugh.
“With so much pity and so many walks, Mr. Parker, why don’t you take a few of them!” she said.
(“Good Lord!” said I. “This is the worst act of rebellion yet. She seems beside herself.”
“Read on!” said Harley, in sepulchral tones.)
This was Parker’s opportunity. “I am not fond of walking, Miss Andrews,” he said; and then he added, quickly, “that is, alone—I don’t like anything alone. Living alone, like walking alone, is—”
“Let’s go walking,” said Marguerite, shortly, as she rose up from her chair. “I’ll be down in two minutes. I only need to put my hat on.”
Parker acquiesced, and Miss Andrews walked majestically out of the parlor and went up-stairs.
“Confound it!” muttered Parker, as she left him. “A minute more, and I’d have known my fate.”
(“You see,” said Harley, “I’d made up my mind that that proposal should takeplace in that chapter, and I thought I’d worked right up to it, in spite of all Miss Andrews’s disagreeable remarks when, pop—off she goes to put on her hat.”
“Oh—as for that—that’s all right,” said I. “Parker had suggested the walk, and a girl really does like to stave off a proposal as long as she can when she knows it is sure to come. Furthermore, it gives you a chance to describe the hat, and so make up for a few of the words you lost when she refused to discuss ball-dresses with Mrs. Willard.”
“I never thought of that; but don’t you think I worked up to the proposal skilfully?” asked Harley.
“Very,” said I. “But you’re dreadfully hard on Parker. It would have beenbetter to have had the butler fire him out, head over heels. He could have thrashed the butler for doing that, but with your heroine his hands were tied.”
“Go on and read,” said Harley.)
“She must have known what I was driving at,” Parker reflected, as he awaited her return. “Possibly she loves me in spite of this frigid behavior. This may be her method of concealing it; but if it is, I must confess it’s a case of
‘Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,But—why did you kick me down-stairs?’
Certainly, knowing, as she now must, what my feelings are, her being willing to go for a walk on the cliffs, or anywhere, is a favorable sign.
(“Parker merely echoed my ownhope in that remark,” said Harley. “If I could get them engaged, I was satisfied to do it in any way that might be pleasing to her.”)
A moment later Marguerite appeared, arrayed for the walk. Parker rose as she entered and picked up his gloves.
“You are a perfect picture this morning,” said he.
“I’m ready,” she said, shortly, ignoring the compliment. “Where are we scheduled to walk?—or are we to have something to say about it ourselves?”
Parker looked at her with a wondering smile. The aptness of the remark did not strike him. However, he was equal to the occasion.
“You don’t believe in free will, then?” he asked.
(“It was the only intelligent remarkhe could make, under the circumstances, you see,” explained Harley.
“He was a clever fellow,” said I, and resumed reading.)
“I believe in a great many things we are supposed to do without,” said Marguerite, sharply.
They had reached the street, and in silence walked along Bellevue Avenue.
The walk on the cliff
“There are a great many things,” vouchsafed Parker, as they turned out of the avenue to the cliffs, “that men are supposed not to do without—”
“Yes,” said Marguerite, sharply—“vices.”
“I did not refer to them,” laughed Parker. “In fact, Miss Andrews, the heart of man is supposed to be incomplete until he has lost it, and has succeeded in getting another for his very—”
“Are you an admirer of Max Nordau?” interposed Marguerite, quickly.
(“Whatever led you to put that in?” I asked.
“Go on, and you’ll see,” said Harley. “I didn’t put it in. It’s what she said. I’m not responsible.”)
“I don’t know anything about Max Nordau,” said Parker, somewhat surprised at this sudden turn of the conversation.
“Are you familiar with Schopenhauer?” she asked.
(“It was awfully rough on the poor fellow,” said Harley, “but I couldn’t help him. I’d forced him in so far that I couldn’t get him out. His answer floored me as completely as anything that Miss Andrews ever did.”)
“Schopenhauer?” said Parker, nonplussed.“Oh yes,” he added, an idea dawning on his mind. “That is to say, moderately familiar—though, as a matter of fact, I’m not at all musical.”
Miss Andrews laughed immoderately, in which Parker, thinking that he had possibly said something witty, although he did not know what it was, joined. In a moment the laughter subsided, and for a few minutes the two walked on in silence. Finally Parker spoke, resignedly.
“Miss Andrews,” he said, “perhaps you have noticed—perhaps not—that you have strongly interested me.”
“Yes,” she said, turning upon him desperately. “I have noticed it, and that is why I have on two separate occasions tried to keep you from saying so.”
“And why should I not tell you that I love—” began Parker.
“Because it is hopeless,” retorted Marguerite. “I am perfectly well aware, Mr. Parker, what we are down for, and I suppose I cannot blame you for your persistence. Perhaps you don’t know any better; perhaps you do know better, but are willing to give yourself over unreservedly into the hands of another; perhaps you are being forced and cannot help yourself. It is just possible that you are a professional hero, and feel under obligations to your employer to follow out his wishes to the letter. However it may be, you have twice essayed to come to the point, and I have twice tried to turn you aside. Now it is time to speak truthfully. I admire and like you very much, but Ihave a will of my own, am nobody’s puppet, and if Stuart Harley never writes another book in his life, he shall not marry me to a man I do not love; and, frankly, I do not love you. I do not know if you are aware of the fact, but it is true nevertheless that you are the thirdfiancéhe has tried to thrust upon me since July 3d. Like the others, if you insist upon blindly following his will, and propose marriage to me, you shall go by the board. I have warned you, and you can now do as you please. You were saying—?”
“That I love you with all my soul,” said Parker, grimly.
(“He didn’t really love her then, you know,” said Harley. “He’d been cured of that in five minutes. But I was resolvedthat he should say it, and he did. That’s how he came to say it grimly. He did it just as a soldier rushes up to the cannon’s mouth. He added, also:”)
“Will you be my wife?”
“Most certainly not,” said Marguerite, turning on her heel, and leaving the young man to finish his walk alone.
(“And then,” said Harley, with a chuckle, “Parker’s manhood would assert itself in spite of all I could do. He made an answer, which I wrote down.”
“I see,” said I, “but you’ve scratched it out. What was that line?”
“‘“Thank the Lord!” said Parker to himself, as Miss Andrews disappeared around the corner,’” said Stuart Harley. “That’s what I wrote, and I flatter myself on the realism of it, for that’sjust what any self-respecting hero would have said under the circumstances.”
A silence came over us.
“Do you wonder I’ve given it up,” asked Stuart, after a while.
“Yes,” said I, “I do. Such opposition would nerve me up to a battle royal. I wouldn’t give it up until I’d returned from Barnegat, if I were you,” I added, anxious to have him renew his efforts; for an idea had just flashed across my mind, which, although it involved a breach of faith on my part, I nevertheless believed to be good and justifiable, since it might relieve Stuart Harley of his embarrassment.
“Very well,” I rejoiced to hear him say. “I won’t give it up until then, but I haven’t much hope after that last chapter.”
So Harley went to Barnegat, after destroying his letter to Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, whilst I put my breach of faith into operation.)
“Having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,Study to break it,and not to break my troth.”—“Love’s Labor’s Lost.”
“Having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,Study to break it,and not to break my troth.”
—“Love’s Labor’s Lost.”
WhenI assured Harley that I should keep my hands off his heroine until he requested me to do otherwise, after my fruitless attempt to discipline her into a less refractory mood, I fully intended to keep my promise. She was his, as far as she possessed any value as literary material, and he had as clear a right to her exclusive use as if she had been copyrighted in his name—at least so far as his friends were concerned he had.Others might make use of her for literary purposes with a clear conscience if they chose to do so, but the hand of a friend must be stayed. Furthermore, my own experience with the young woman had not been successful enough to lead me to believe that I could conquer where Harley had been vanquished. Physical force I had found to be unavailing. She was too cunning to stumble into any of the pitfalls that with all my imagination I could conjure up to embarrass her; but something had to be done, and I now resolved upon a course of moral suasion, and wholly for Harley’s sake. The man was actually suffering because she had so persistently defied him, and his discomfiture was all the more deplorable because it meant little short of the ruin of his life andambitions. The problem had to be solved or his career was at an end. Harley never could do two things at once. The task he had in hand always absorbed his whole being until he was able to write the word finis on the last page of his manuscript, and until the finis to this elusive book he was now struggling with was written, I knew that he would write no other. His pot-boilers he could do, of course, and so earn a living, but pot-boilers destroy rather than make reputations, and Harley was too young a man to rest upon past achievements; neither had he done such vastly superior work that his fame could withstand much diminution by the continuous production of ephemera. It was therefore in the hope of saving him that I broke faith with him and temporarily stole hisheroine. I did not dream of using her at all, as you might think, as a heroine of my own, but rather as an interesting person with ideas as to the duty of heroines—a sort of Past Grand Mistress of the Art of Heroinism—who was worth interviewing for the daily press. I flatter myself it was a good idea, worthy almost of a genius, though I am perfectly well aware that I am not a genius. I am merely a man of exceptional talent. I have talent enough for a genius, but no taste for the unconventional, and by just so much do I fall short of the realization of the hopes of my friends and fears of my enemies. There are stories I have in mind that are worthy of the most exalted French masters, for instance, and when I have the time to be careful, whichI rarely do, I can write with the polished grace of a De Maupassant or a James, but I shall never write them, because I value my social position too highly to put my name to anything which it would never do to publish outside of Paris. I do not care to prove my genius at the cost of the respect of my neighbors—all of which, however, is foreign to my story, and is put in here merely because I have observed that readers are very much interested in their favorite authors, and like to know as much about them as they can.
My plan, to take up the thread of my narrative once more, was, briefly, to write an interview between myself, as a representative of a newspaper syndicate, and Miss Marguerite Andrews, the “Well-Known Heroine.” It has beenquite common of late years to interview the models of well-known artists, so that it did not require too great a stretch of the imagination to make my scheme a reasonable one. It must be remembered, too, that I had no intention of using this interview for my own aggrandizement. I planned it solely in the interests of my friend, hoping that I might secure from Miss Andrews some unguarded admission that might operate against her own principles, as Harley and I knew them, and that, that secured, I might induce her to follow meekly his schedule until he could bring his story to a reasonable conclusion. Failing in this, I was going to try and discover what style of man it was she admired most, what might be her ideas of the romance inwhich she would most like to figure, and all that, so that I could give Harley a few points which would enable him so to construct his romance that his heroine would walk through it as easily and as docilely as one could wish. Finally, all other things failing, I was going to throw Harley on her generosity, call attention to the fact that she was ruining him by her stubborn behavior, and ask her to submit to a little temporary inconvenience for his sake.
As I have already said, so must I repeat, there was genius in the idea, but I was forced to relinquish certain features of it, as will be seen shortly. I took up my pen, and with three bold strokes thereof transported myself to Newport, and going directly to the Willard Cottage, I rang the bell. Miss Andrewswas still elusive. With all the resources of imagination at hand, and with not an obstacle in my way that I could not clear at a bound, she still held me at bay. She was not at home—had, in fact, departed two days previously for the White Mountains. Fortunately, however, the butler knew her address, and, without bothering about trains, luggage, or aught else, in one brief paragraph I landed myself at the Profile House, where she was spending a week with Mr. and Mrs. Rushton of Brooklyn. This change of location caused me to modify my first idea, to its advantage. I saw, when I thought the matter over, that, on the whole, the interview, as an interview for a newspaper syndicate, was likely to be nipped in the bud, since the moment I declared myselfa reporter for a set of newspapers, and stated the object of my call, she would probably dismiss me with the statement that she was not a professional heroine, that her views were of no interest to the public, and that, not having the pleasure of my acquaintance, she must beg to be excused. I wonder I didn’t think of this at the outset. I surely knew Harley’s heroine well enough to have foreseen this possibility. I realized it, however, the moment I dropped myself into the great homelike office of the Profile House. Miss Andrews walked through the office to the dining-room as I registered, and as I turned to gaze upon her as she passed majestically on, it flashed across my mind that it would be far better to appear before her as a fellow-guest, andfind out what I wanted and tell her why I had come in that guise, rather than introduce myself as one of those young men who earn their daily bread by poking their noses into other people’s business.
Had this course been based upon any thing more solid than a pure bit of imagination, I should have found it difficult to accommodate myself so easily to circumstances. If it had been Harley instead of myself, it would have been impossible, for Harley would never have stooped to provide himself with a trunk containing fresh linen and evening-dress clothes and patent-leather pumps by a stroke of his pen. This I did, however, and that evening, having created another guest, who knew me of old and who also was acquainted with MissAndrews, just as I had created my excellent wardrobe, I was presented.
The evening passed pleasantly enough, and I found Harley’s heroine to be all that he had told me and a great deal more besides. In fact, so greatly did I enjoy her society that I intentionally prolonged the evening to about three times its normal length—which was a very inartistic bit of exaggeration, I admit; but then I don’t pretend to be a realist, and when I sit down to write I can make my evenings as long or as short as I choose. I will say, however, that, long as my evening was, I made it go through its whole length without having recourse to such copy-making subterfuges as the description of doorknobs and chairs; and except for its unholy length, it was not at all lacking inrealism. Miss Andrews fascinated me and seemed to find me rather good company, and I found myself suggesting that as the next day was Sunday she take me for a walk. From what I knew of Harley’s experience with her, I judged she’d be more likely to go if I asked her to take me instead of offering to take her. It was a subtle distinction, but with some women subtle distinctions are chasms which men must not try to overleap too vaingloriously, lest disaster overtake them. My bit of subtlety worked like a charm. Miss Andrews graciously accepted my suggestion, and I retired to my couch feeling certain that during that walk to Bald Mountain, or around the Lake, or down to the Farm, or wherever else she might choose to take me, I could do much to helppoor Stuart out of the predicament into which his luckless choice of Miss Andrews as his heroine had plunged him. And I wasn’t far wrong, as the event transpired, although the manner in which it worked out was not exactly according to my schedule.
I dismissed the night with a few paragraphs; the morning, with its divine service in the parlor, went quickly and impressively; for itisan impressive sight to see gathered beneath those towering cliffs a hundred or more of pleasure and health seekers of different creeds worshipping heartily and simply together, as accordantly as though they knew no differences and all men were possessed of one common religion—it was too impressive, indeed, for my pen, which has been largely given over to matters ofless moment, and I did not venture to touch upon it, passing hastily over to the afternoon, when Miss Andrews appeared, ready for the stroll.
I gazed at her admiringly for a moment, and then I began:
“Is that the costume you wore”—I was going to say, “when you rejected Parker?” but I fortunately caught my error in time to pass it off—“at Newport?” I finished, with a half gasp at the narrowness of my escape; for, it must be remembered, I was supposed as yet to know nothing of that episode.
“How do you know what I wore at Newport?” she asked, quickly—so quickly that I almost feared she had found me out, after all.
“Why—ah—I read about you somewhere,” I stammered. “Some newspapercorrespondent drew a picture of the scene on the promenade in the afternoon, and—ah—he had you down.”
“Oh!” she replied, arching her eyebrows; “that was it, was it? And do you waste your valuable time reading the vulgar effusions of the society reporter?”
Wasn’t I glad that I had not come as a man with a nose to project into the affairs of others—as a newspaper reporter!
“No, indeed,” I rejoined, “not generally; but I happened to see this particular item, and read it and remembered it. After all,” I added, as we came to the sylvan path that leads to the Lake—“after all, one might as well read that sort of stuff as most of the novels of the present day. Thevulgar reporter may be ignorant or a boor, and all that is reprehensible in his methods, but he writes about real flesh and blood people; and, what is worse, he generally approximates the truth concerning them in his writing, which is more than can be said of the so-called realistic novel writers of the day. I haven’t read a novel in three years in which it has seemed to me that the heroine, for instance, was anything more than a marionette, with no will of her own, and ready to do at any time any foolish thing the author wanted her to do.”
Again those eyes of Miss Andrews rested on me in a manner which gave me considerable apprehension. Then she laughed, and I was at ease again.