PLOTS AND THINGS.
I have a plot:—A man and a girl in a boarding house in Duesseldorf were rather sweet on each other. It might have become love and a marriage, since they were the only Americans there, were both to stay all summer, and both attractive.
The romance began well, they even got so far that one day he held her hand and leaned forward, gazing deeply into her eyes.
Just then the Frau Professorin who kept thepensionstepped suddenly into the parlor, saw them, and retreated precipitately.
Here was a catastrophe. Her reputation according to German ideas, gone. “Ein junges Maedchen sich se zu eenehmen—abschenlich!” Nothing but an engagement could excuse the holding of the hand of a junges Maedchen by a man.
They looked at each other and laughed, ruefully. Then they agreed to become engaged, temporarily: what in Virginia is known as “just engaged,” in contradistinction to “engaged to be married.”
For a time it was good fun. He was more devoted than ever; and they even thought of making it permanent. But you know how people act in Germany. Every time he came into the parlor, whoever was sittingbeside her, jumped up, and he had to go over and sit beside her. Then he had to make pretty speeches to her while all the other boarders, with German tact, stopped talking and listened.
The man and the girl carried out their roles well, though they drew the line at having their picture taken with their arms around each other. This was a great disappointment to the other boarders. Neither the man nor the girl was able to talk to any one in the house except about the girl and the man. It got to be boresome after a while.
When at last they left Duesseldorf, the joy with which they flew asunder was something to see. There my plot and the romance end. Of course there were to be chaperones and scenery.
I was confessor; my cousin or Miss Hart was sinner (each has confessed on the other); the story is about this:—
He stood opposite her in the waltz quadrille. He did not know her, but thought what a pretty girl that was in the pink dress, and wondered if I knew her. (I was in one of the side couples.)
At “Ladies half change,” he reached out his hand with eagerness and she gave hers without reluctance. When they stood in their places again, he continued to hold hers, instead of dropping it as he might.(This may have been absent-mindedness.) Presently she turned to him, smiling, and glanced down at their hands. He smiled, too. Then she withdrew her hand, but without apparent offense.
Just then the order came, “Forward and back.” He reached out his hand for hers, saying,sotto voce, “You see, you might as well have let me keep it.”
This was all the preliminary skirmishing. The question of veracity comes next.
After the dance my cousin came to me.
“Who was that pretty girl opposite me?” He said.
“What girl?” I asked.
“The one in pink: who was to your right: and danced with the man in the wilted collar.”
“Ah! That was Miss Hart. Nice girl.”
“Yes,” assented my cousin. “She squeezed my hand the second time we met in the grand right and left. I wish you’d introduce me to her.”
The next dance happened to be the second extra, which I had with Miss Hart. We had not gone half way around the room when she said:
“Why didn’t you introduce your cousin to me? He squeezed my hand in the last quadrille.”
Of course it’s a simple matter of tact. I have my own opinion, but prefer to allow the sentimental reader to judge for himself. I have known MissHart a long time and she never has squeezed my—however I don’t suppose that really bears on the point.
Here is another plot, but unfortunately it belongs to a friend of mine, so that I cannot use it.
If is half past four in Paris—stories of this class are always put in Paris—and the hero, who is also the villain, goes into a church. He stops at one of the chapels and looks in. A woman is there, but the light is dim and he cannot at first be sure that it is she whom he seeks, women’s backs being all somewhat alike.
She is kneeling, and she has been crying, though the hero cannot see that. He speaks to her and thanks her for giving him this opportunity of seeing her, and is going to take her hand; but she interrupts him and tells him that it is all a terrible mistake, that she cares for him to be sure, but that it is in a platonic way as a brother, that she truly loves her husband, and is sorry for all that has happened.
The hero who is also a villain listens with half a smile: he has seen women repent before, and it adds zest to the chase. His manner warms and he makes love admirably.
The heroine is nice—so the person who made this plot told me—and the hero is horrid. His hair is alittle thin on the top of his head, and his boots are carefully polished, and he is a little fat. He is always polite to a pretty woman, but his politeness is something of an insult.
It is because the heroine is really nice, I suppose, that she at last persuades him that she does love her husband and not him. Then he goes away, and she, sinking down on thepriedieu, listens to the click of his polished heels on the marble floor of the church. She sees at her feet the flowers which he had worn in his button-hole, and she picks them up and kisses them passionately. She is going to hide them in her bosom: but then being really nice she lays them before the figure of the Virgin, with a little prayer and then goes away.
As for the hero who is also the villain, he is piqued that it should be she that has stopped loving first; but is perhaps as well, he reflects, for she was beginning to bore him.
He looks at his watch and jumps into a cab. The horse goes fast, for the hero has an engagement at half-past five o’clock with Therese and has offered the cabman fifty centimespour-boireif he will get to her house on time.
I have another plot, but I do not expect ever to doanything with it. It is about the Man in the Iron Mask. Somebody is to be handling the iron mask—it is kept, I think, in the Invalides at Paris—when upon pressing a certain knob a hidden recess is to be revealed, constructed with marvelous ingenuity (as they always are you know) wherein is to be a paper telling all about the man in the iron mask.
There is nothing very original so far; but as I recollect this plot—I thought of it four years ago—the denouement was very striking. Unfortunately I have forgotten it.
Kenneth Brown.