“_Stop beating_, _heart_, _and in a moment calm_
_The 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 correspondents in 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 the _Weekly Journal of Society_
with 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 the
_Weekly Journal of Society_ had 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 of Miss 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
circumstance has 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 discuss that 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, mind you—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
quite important 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 preferred talking 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 a reasonable 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 22_d_ of 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 with their 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
for _tête-à-tête_ talks 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
Andrews threading 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
the _qui 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 left here. 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.”
[Picture: “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, I must 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.
V
AN EXPERIMENT
“_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.”
“WHAT would 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. I intended 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 difference between 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 a fraud 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 despot who 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 I was 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 the _New York_ back 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 the spell 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 of being 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 the _New York_ relentlessly
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 deal for 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—she may 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,
which I 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, he cut 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, command me. 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 else would 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 the ancients 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.”
VI
ANOTHER CHAPTER FROM HARLEY
“_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.”
THERE was 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 his disposition. 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 your efforts 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 set about 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
letter block 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 into which 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 my _scenario_ to 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 you still 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.”