found the words he wanted, Miss Graham spoke again.
"I had not the slightest idea of being sarcastic, for, of course, it
goes without saying that your story is better than mine; but since you
choose to take it in that way, I am willing to leave the whole matter to
Mr. Lane. He is at least the only person who has read both manuscripts."
"Really," Mr. Lane said, thus pushed into a corner, "I am extremely
sorry to find myself placed in so trying a situation. There are points
in which each story excels, and the best result would undoubtedly be
attained by welding them together."
"If that could be done," said Miss Graham, thoughtfully.
"Now, in Mr. Gray's version," he continued, "the heroine is more
attractive and real."
"That," I interpolated, trying to cover the awkwardness I felt by
a jest, "is the first time in all my literary experience that the
character I thought best in a story I'd written has seemed so to the
editorial mind."
The dark eyes of my neighbor gave me a bright, brief glance, but whether
of sympathy with my statement or of contempt for the feebleness of my
attempts at being jocose, I could not determine.
"While Miss Graham," went on the editorial comment, "has decidedly the
advantage in her hero."
Miss Graham flushed slightly, but offered no remark in reply to this
opinion beyond a smile which seemed one of frank pleasure. We sat in
silence a moment, a not unnatural hesitancy preventing my making a
proposition which had presented itself to my mind.
"If it will not seem impertinent to Miss Graham," I ventured at length,
"I would propose that we really do try the experiment of collaboration
on this story. I have never worked with anybody, but I promise to be
tractable; and the thing had so odd a beginning that it is a pity to
thwart the evident intention of destiny that we shall both have a hand
in it."
To this proposition the lady at first returned a decided and even
peremptory negative; but my persuasions, seconded by those of Mr. Lane,
who was partly curious and partly anxious to escape from the necessity
of arbitrating in the matter, in the end induced her to alter her
decision.
The result of the interview was that when we left the office of the
"Dark Red" Miss Graham had my manuscript and I hers, and that an
appointment had been made for my calling upon her with a view to an
interchange of comments and criticisms.
Upon the appointed evening I presented myself at the home of Miss
Graham, and almost without the usual conventionalities concerning
the weather we proceeded to discuss the stories. We began with great
outward suavity and courtesy the exchange of compliments, which were so
obviously formal and perfunctory that in a moment more we looked into
each other's faces and burst into laughter which if hardly polite was
at least genuine.
"Come," I said, "now the ice is broken and we can say what we really
think; and I must be pardoned for saying that that hero of yours, whom
Mr. Lane praised, is the most insufferable cad I've encountered this
many a day. He can't be set off against that lovely girl in my story.
Why, the truth is, Miss Graham, I meant her to be what I fancied you
might be. She's the ideal I built up from seeing you in the cars."
"I must say," Miss Graham retorted with spirit, "that if you meant that
pert heroine of yours for _me_, I am anything but complimented."
"It is a pity, then, that you didn't intend your hero for me, and we
should have been more than quits."
She blushed so vividly that a sudden light burst upon me.
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "he does have my eyes and beard; but you
didn't see me. It isn't possible--"
"But it is," interrupted she, desperately. "With a mirror in the end of
the car directly before me all the way from New York, do you suppose
I could help seeing you! I'm sure you kept your eyes on me steadily
enough to give me a good excuse."
I whistled rudely; whereat she looked offended, and we went on from one
thing to another until we had got up a very respectable quarrel indeed.
There is nothing more conducive to a thoroughly good understanding
between persons of opposite sex than a genuine quarrel; and having
reached the point where there was no alternative but to separate in
anger or to apologize, we chose the latter course, and having mutually
humbled ourselves, after that got on capitally.
"It is my deliberate conviction," she observed, when we at length got
upon a footing sufficiently familiar for jesting, "that this story
is really mine, and that you purloined it from me by some mysterious
clairvoyance."
"That may be," I admitted. "I once guessed that a man was a bartender by
the way he stirred his coffee at the steamer table, and that got me a
very pretty reputation as a seer for a day or two; and very likely the
truth is that I was all the time a mind-reader without knowing it."
She smiled good-naturedly--more good-naturedly, indeed, than the jest
deserved; and from that moment our acquaintance got on famously. The
story was far from advancing as rapidly, however. A very brief time
sufficed to reduce both versions of "April's Lady" to hopeless
confusion, but to build from the fragments a new and improved copy was
a labor of much magnitude. Circumstances moreover, conspired to hinder
our work. It was necessary that we verify our impressions of material we
had used, and to do this we were obliged to attend the theatre together,
to read together various poems, and together to hear a good deal of
music. A little ingenuity, and a common inclination to prolong these
investigations, effected so great a lengthening out that it was several
months before we could even pretend to be ready to begin serious work
upon the story; and even then we were far from agreeing in a number of
important particulars.
"Agnes," I remarked, one February evening, when we were on our way home
from a concert to which we had boldly gone without even a pretence that
it was in the remotest way connected with our literary project, "I fear
we are becoming demoralized, and it seems to me the only hope of our
ever completing 'April's Lady' is to put everything else aside for the
time being and give our minds to it. I can get my work arranged, and you
can finish those articles for 'The Quill' by the middle of March. Then,
we can be quietly married and go to some nice old-fashioned place--say
St. Augustine--for a couple of months and get this _magnum opus_ on
paper at last."
"As to being married," returned she sedately, "have you considered that
we could not possibly make a living, since we should inevitably be
always writing the same things?"
"Why, that is my chief reason," I retorted, "for proposing it. Think how
awkward it is going to be if either of us marries somebody else, and
then we write the same things. It is a good deal better to have our
interests in common if our inventive faculty is to be so."
"There is something in what you say," Agnes assented; "and it would be
especially awkward for you, since the invention is in my head."
"Then we will consider it all arranged."
"Oh, no, George; by no means. I couldn't think of it for a minute!"
Whether she did think of it for a minute is a point which may be left
for the settling of those versed in the ways of the feminine mind;
certain it is that the programme was carried out--except in one trifling
particular. We were quietly married, we did go to St. Augustine, but as
for doing anything with the story, that was quite another thing. We did
not finish it then, and we have not finished it yet, and I have ceased
to have any very firm confidence that we ever shall finish it; although,
whenever arises one of those financial crises which are so painfully
frequent in the family of a literary man, and we sit down to consider
possible resources, one or the other of us is sure sooner or later to
observe:--
"And then there is 'April's Lady,' you know."
Interlude Eighth.
A CUBAN MORNING.
A CUBAN MORNING.
[_Scene, the shady piazza of the hotel at Marianao, Cuba. Time, nine
o'clock on a hot March morning. Miss Peltonville and Arthur Chester
tête-à-tête._]
_She._ Why did you follow us to Cuba?
_He._ I have already told you that I thought you were in Florida.
_She._ Yes? And so you came to Marianao, where nobody comes at this time
of year, in order that you might be perfectly safe from an encounter, I
suppose.
_He._ Oh, I--that is; precisely.
_She._ I had a letter from Annie Cleaves yesterday.
_He._ Had you?
_She._ Yes; and she said you told her that you were coming to Cuba to
find me.
_He._ Oh, that's nothing. It isn't to be supposed I told her the truth.
_She._ Do you speak the truth so seldom, then? Is there no dependence to
be put on what you say?
_He._ None whatever; otherwise I should be continually hampered by the
necessity of conforming my actions to my words. You can see yourself how
inconvenient that would be.
_She._ For one who has had so little practice, very likely; but then you
would find it a novel experience, I have no doubt.
_He._ Ah, you have given me an idea. I'll try it when all other
novelties in life are exhausted.
_She._ Don't put it off too long, or from the force of habit you may
find it impossible.
_He._ You underrate my adaptability.
_She._ Meanwhile I wish to know why you came.
_He._ Since you are here yourself, you might be supposed to regard the
place as sufficiently interesting to attract the traveller.
_She._ Then you decline to tell me?
_He._ Oh, no; I came because you amuse me.
_She._ Thank you for nothing.
_He._ And consequently I am in love with you, as I did myself the honor
to mention before you left New York.
_She._ Am I to understand that amusement is your idea of love?
_He._ Love certainly must be something that does not bore one.
_She._ But it seems a somewhat limited view to take.
_He._ Oh, it is only one way out of many; I assure you I have quantities
of ideas upon the subject, all founded upon experience. I loved Lottie
Greenwell because she made a glorious champagne cup. Indeed, for ten
days I positively adored her, until one night she put in too much
curaçoa, and I realized how uncertain a foundation my passion had. Then
there was Elsie Manning. My passion for her was roused entirely by her
divine waltzing, but I realized that it isn't good form for a man to
waltz with his wife, and I stood a much better chance if she married
some other man. After that came Kate Turner; she writes so fascinating a
letter that I lost my heart every time I saw her handwriting on the back
of an envelope, although perhaps that feeling you would call only a
fancy, since nobody would think of marrying on a virtue that is sure to
end with the wedding. A wife never writes to her husband about anything
but the servants and the payment of her milliner's bills; so my
flirtation with her wouldn't really count as a love affair.
_She._ You excel in nice metaphysical distinctions.
_He._ Then there was Miss French. I loved her because she snubbed
me,--just as I loved Nora Delaney for her riding, and Annie Cleaves for
her music.
_She._ And now you love me, I am to understand, as suited to the
position of court jester to your Royal Highness.
_He._ One must have some sort of a reason for being in love.
_She._ But one needn't be in love.
_He._ Oh, yes; life is very dull otherwise; and besides, I have always
thought it very stupid to marry without having been in love a dozen
times at least. One is apt to lose his head otherwise; and how can he
judge of the value of his passion without having had a good deal of
experience?
_She._ So you advertise yourself as a marrying man?
_He._ Every bachelor is a marrying man. It is only a question of finding
a convenient wife.
_She._ Like a convenient house, I suppose.
_He._ Exactly.
_She._ I wonder any woman ever consents to marry a man.
_He._ They know their own sex too well to be willing to marry a woman.
_She._ But men are such selfish creatures!
_He._ You are amazingly pretty when you toss your head that way. It is
worth coming from New York to see.
_She._ It is well you think so; otherwise you might consider your voyage
a waste of time.
_He._ What, with the certainty of your consenting to marry me?
_She._ I like your assurance! Why should I marry you?
_He._ I supposed that with your sex the fact of my amazing attachment
would be a sufficient reason.
_She._ Your knowledge of our sex is then remarkably limited. Apparently,
whether I happen to love you is of no particular consequence.
_He._ Oh, love is said to beget love.
_She._ But you love me, you say, because I amuse you. Now you don't
amuse me in the least, and as I do not know just how to cultivate
a passion simply on the rather doubtful ground of your affection,
especially with the chance of its being transient, there really seems
to be very little chance of reciprocity.
_He._ Do you know what a tremendously hot day it is?
_She._ I don't see the connection, and I am sure I am cool enough.
_He._ But you make it very hot for me! How picturesque that ragged
fellow over there looks, riding on the top of his high saddle.
_She._ With a string of mules tied to his horse's tail. I am fond of the
mules, their bells are so musical.
_He._ And their bray.
_She._ And the muleteers sing such weird songs. I hear them going by
about four o'clock in the morning, on their way to the Havana market,
and the effect is most fascinating.
_He._ I should have expected you to be fond of the mules.
_She._ Why?
_He._ A fellow feeling is said to have a softening effect, and the
mule's strongest characteristic is--
_She._ Consistency!
_He._ And as I was about to remark, we are apt to value others most for
the virtues we do not ourselves possess.
_She._ You are sufficiently rude.
_He._ There is always danger that honesty will be thought rude.
_She._ Really, you begin to amuse me. Please go on; I would like to try
falling in love on the amusement plan; it must be very droll.
_He._ Oh, bother the amusement! Like the young ladies in novels, I would
be loved for myself alone.
_She._ I fear that would be more difficult than the other way. What have
you ever done to make me admire you?
_He._ Perhaps nothing. Admiration presupposes the capability of
appreciation.
_She._ Ah! What have you done, then, worthy of admiration?
_He._ I have managed to find you at Marianao, and bring about a
tête-à-tête before I have been here fifteen hours.
_She._ Wonderful man! And of all that, what comes?
_He._ That I ask you to marry me. That is certainly something.
_She._ Yes; it isn't much, and you have done it before. But as you say,
it is certainly something.
_He._ You are always flattering! Really, one wouldn't have expected you
to be light now, when it is my deepest affections and all that sort of
touching thing with which you are trifling.
_She._ You are a humbug!
_He._ Of course; so are you; so is everybody. Civilization is merely the
apotheosis of humbug.
_She._ My friend, that trick of striving after epigram is fast making
you as bad as a confirmed punster.
_He._ Still, it is all true. I am a humbug in proposing to you; you, if
you reject me--
_She._ I certainly do, most emphatically and finally!
_He._ You make me the happiest of men.
_She._ You make your system of humbug far too complicated for me to
follow.
_He._ Why, this is genuine.
_She._ Anything genuine from you, I fear, is impossible.
_He._ Oh, no; I have to be genuine occasionally, for the sake of
contrast. The humbug was in asking you to marry me, and I wouldn't have
had you say yes for the world.
_She._ I never suspected you of insanity, Mr. Chester. Am I to infer
that the climate of Cuba, or the wines--
_He._ Oh, neither, I assure you. Besides, Cuba has no wines, as you
ought to know. Now, see; I'll do you the rare honor of telling you
the truth. Of course, you are at liberty to believe it or not, as you
please; and very likely you won't, because it happens to be as true as
the Gospel, revised version. Some days since, I asked Annie Cleaves to
marry me.
_She._ What particular thing had she been playing to rouse you to that
point of enthusiasm?
_He._ If my memory serves me, it was the Chopin Nocturne in G minor. She
did play extremely well, and as we happened to be in the conservatory
afterward, I improved the opportunity to propose.
_She._ Oh, very naturally!
_He._ It is a form of words that comes very readily to my lips, as
you know. Annie confessed to that very superfluous and old-fashioned
sentiment called love, which wasn't in good form, I'll admit; but in
consideration for the object of her attachment, and the fact that on
that particular evening I was in love myself, I managed to overlook it.
_She._ Very good of you, I'm sure. I hope Annie appreciated your
generosity.
_He._ Very likely she didn't. Your sex very seldom do appreciate
masculine virtues; but Annie has a far more old-fashioned and worse
vice than love. Why, the girl, in the midst of these enlightened
nineteenth-century days, actually goes to the nonsensical bother of
keeping a conscience! It must be more trouble to attend to, Agnes, than
her aunt Wheeler's seven pet poodles and three red-headed parrots.
_She._ I suppose you are right. You don't speak from experience, though,
do you?
_He._ Oh, no; I never had a conscience: as a boy, I preferred white
mice; now I have my horses, you know.
_She._ And your innumerable loves.
_He._ If such trifles are to be taken into account.
_She._ Go on about Annie.
_He._ Well, on my confessing how far I had carried my flirtation with
you-- I can't, for the life of me, tell how I happened to speak of it;
I am usually more discreet.
_She._ I should hope so.
_He._ Oh, I am, I assure you; but the loves are so numerous, while I am
but one, that they sometimes get the better of my discretion. What is
one among so many?
_She._ Oh, in this case, absolutely nothing.
_He._ Thank you again.
_She._ But to continue--
_He._ Well, to continue, Annie actually seemed to think that you had
some sort of claim upon me. Fancy!
_She._ She needn't have troubled.
_He._ Oh, of course not. Why, I have offered myself to dozens of girls,
with no more idea of marrying them than I have of becoming a howling
dervish; and more than that, I have habitually been accepted. That is
one thing about you that attracted me, do you know? There is a beautiful
novelty about being rejected.
_She._ So that is the secret of my amusing you, is it? You ought to have
explained this to Annie.
_He._ Oh, she wouldn't have understood. Like every other girl, 'twas the
personal application that she was touched by. You see she didn't know
the other girls, and she did know you; and she seems to think your no
more binding than any other person's yes. Perhaps she knows that a
woman's negative--
_She._ Really, Arthur, that's so hackneyed that if you haven't the
gallantry not to say it you ought to be ashamed to repeat anything so
stale.
_He._ Perhaps you are right; I have known you to be on very rare
occasions. However, Annie insisted that I should come, and, as she said,
"assure myself of your sentiments and of my own." Did you ever hear
anything more absurd? As if I didn't know, all the time, that you were
dying for me; and as if I--despite my mad and overpowering passion for
your lovely self, Miss Peltonville--couldn't tell as well in New York as
in Cuba whether I wanted to marry her or not.
_She._ If you were no better informed of your own sentiments than of
mine, I don't wonder she doubted your conclusions.
_He._ Oh, she didn't in the least.
_She._ At least, Annie may set her mind quite at rest, so far as I am
concerned.
_He._ Thank you so much. It is such a relief to have things settled.
_She._ What would you have done if I had accepted you?
_He._ Oh, I was confident of my ability of putting the question so that
you wouldn't.
_She._ I have almost a mind to do it, even now.
_He._ Really?
_She._ Oh, don't be alarmed. There is one insuperable obstacle.
_He._ What is that?
_She._ Yourself.
_He._ Then I am quite safe. That is a permanent one.
_She._ Well, I wish Annie joy of her bargain. She is worthy of a better
fate; and since we are talking frankly, I must say that what she can see
in you I can't imagine.
_He._ These things are so strange; there is no accounting for them. Why,
I have been perfectly puzzled--do you know?--ever since I came last
night, to tell what I found in you last winter.
_She._ Since we seem to be striving to outdo each other in abuse, it is
quite in keeping for me to add, that I have no occasion to bother my
head on such a question, for I never pretended to have found anything in
you.
_He._ But then, as I said, you amused me; and one may sometimes be so
far amused that--
_She._ His amusement may even amount to astonishment, perhaps; and, by
the way, that gentleman on the gray horse, just coming between the China
laurels with papa, expects to marry me.
_He._ Fred Armstrong, by all that is unspeakable! Agnes Peltonville,
I humble myself in the dust before you; and no humiliation could be
greater than going down into Cuban dust. You are an angel; you have
removed my last fear.
_She._ Yes; and how?
_He._ I was always jealous of Fred Armstrong; he was forever dangling
about Annie. Do I understand that you are engaged?
_She._ Oh, I didn't say that I expected to marry him; but since Annie
confesses such a strong attachment to you--
_He._ Oh, I didn't say I was the object of the attachment.
[_They sit confronting each other in silence a moment, until the riders,
having dismounted, are seen approaching the piazza. Then Chester leans
forward impulsively, and speaks with a new intensity._]
_He._ Agnes!
_She._ Arthur!
_He._ Quick! Before they come! You won't send me away?
_She._ But--
_He._ No, no more nonsense; I am in dead earnest now. You know I
couldn't live without you, or I shouldn't have followed you to Cuba.
_She._ And Annie Cleaves?
_He._ Oh, if you had a letter from her yesterday, you must know she's
engaged to Bob Wainwright. Is it yes?
_She._ (_rising._) It would be a pity that you should have come so far
for nothing.
[_As he rises also he manages to catch her hand, which he clasps
joyously before the pair go forward to meet the new-comers._]
_He._ I hope you had a pleasant ride, Mr. Peltonville? I like Marianao
so well that I have concluded to remain a while.
Tale the Ninth.
DELIA GRIMWET.
DELIA GRIMWET.
To an ordinary observer, nothing could be more commonplace than Kempton,
a decrepit little apology for a village, lying on the coast of Maine.
Properly speaking, however, no sea-port can be utterly commonplace, with
its suggestion of the mystery of the sea, the ships, the sailors who
have been to far lands, the glimpses of unwritten tragedies on every
hand. But among sea-side villages Kempton was surely dull enough,
and dry enough, and lifeless enough,--as if the sea-winds had sucked
its vitality, leaving it empty and pallid and juiceless, like the
cockle-shells which bleached upon its sandy beaches.
Yet Kempton had one peculiarity which marked it as singular among all
New England towns. It had a woman to dig its graves.
Its one church stood stark and doleful upon the hill at whose foot lay
the rotting wharves; and back from the church stretched the church-yard
in which the Kempton dead took their long repose, scarcely more
monotonous than their colorless lives. The sexton, digging their last
resting-places in the ochery loam, might look far off toward the sea
where they had wrested from the grudging waters a scanty subsistence;
and the dead wives, if so be that their ears were yet sentient, might
lie at night and hear below the beat of the waves which afar had rolled
over the unmarked graves of their sailor husbands.
To and fro among the grass-grown mounds the sexton went daily, quite
unmindful of being the unique feature of Kempton by belonging to the
weaker sex. With masculine stride and coarse hands, her unkempt locks
blown by the salt winds, the woman went her way and did her work with
a steadfastness and a vigor which might have put to shame many a man
idling about the boats under the hill. She was not an old woman,--not
even middle-aged, except with the premature age of toil and sorrow; but
the weather-beaten face, the stooping shoulders, and the faded hair made
her seem old. To look at her, it was difficult to realize what her youth
could have been like, or to call up any image of sweet or gracious
maidenhood in which she could have shared.