A Rebellious Heroine

“There is no Grand Canal at Interlaken,” said Mrs. Corwin, sagely; for she had been an omnivorous reader of Baedeker since she had learned the part she was to play in Harley’s book, and was therefore well up in geography.

“No; but there’s the Jungfrau.  Osborne can push Balderstone down the side of an Alp and kill him,” returned Miss Andrews, viciously.

“Why, Marguerite!  How can you talk so?  Mr. Harley doesn’t wish to have Balderstone killed,” cried Mrs. Corwin, aghast.  “If Osborne killed Balderstone he’d be a murderer, and they’d execute him.”

“Which is exactly what I want,” said Miss Andrews, firmly.  “If he lives, it pleases the omnipotent Mr. Harley that I shall marry him, and I positively—Well, just you wait and see.”

There was silence for some minutes.

“Then I suppose you will decline to go abroad altogether?” asked Mrs. Corwin after a while; “and Mr. Harley will be forced to get some one else; and I—I shall be deprived of a pleasant tour—because I’m only to be one of the party because I’m your aunt.”

Mrs. Corwin’s lip quivered a little as she spoke.  She had anticipated much pleasure from her trip.

“No, I shall not decline to go,” Miss Andrews replied.  “I expect to go, but it is entirely on your account.  I must say, however, that Stuart Harley will find out, to his sorrow, that I am not a doll, to be worked with a string.  I shall give him a scare at the outset which will show him that I know the rights of a heroine, and that he must respect them.  For instance, he cannot ignore my comfort.  Do you suppose that because his story is to open with my beautiful self on board that ship, I’m to be there without his making any effort to get me there?  Not I!  You and the children and Osborne and Balderstone may go down any way you please.  You may go on the elevated railroad or on foot.  You may go on the horse-cars, or you may go on the luggage-van.  It is immaterial to me what you do; but when it comes to myself, Stuart Harley must provide a carriage, or I miss the boat.  I don’t wish to involve you in this.  You want to go, and are willing to go in his way, which simply means turning up at the right moment, with no trouble to him.  From your point of view it is all right.  You are anxious to go abroad, and are grateful to Mr. Harley for letting you go.  For me, however, he must do differently.  I have no particular desire to leave America, and if I go at all it is as a favor to him, and he must act accordingly.  It is a case of carriage or no heroine.  If I’m left behind, you and the rest can go along without me.  I shall do very well, and it will be Mr. Harley’s own fault.  It may hurt his story somewhat, but that is no concern of mine.”

“I suppose the reason why he doesn’t send a carriage is that that part of your life doesn’t appear in his story,” explained Mrs. Corwin.

“That doesn’t affect the point that he ought to send one,” said Marguerite.  “He needn’t write up the episode of the ride to the pier unless he wants to, but the fact remains that it’s his duty to see me safely on board from my home, and that he shall do, or I fail him at the moment he needs me.  If he is selfish enough to overlook the matter, he must suffer the consequences.”

All of which, I think, was very reasonable.  No heroine likes to feel that she is called into being merely to provide copy for the person who is narrating her story; and to be impressed with the idea that the moment she is off the stage she must shift entirely for herself is too humiliating to be compatible with true heroism.

Now it so happened that in his meditations upon that opening chapter the scene of which was to be placed on board of the New York, Stuart realized that his story of Miss Andrews’s character had indeed been too superficial.  He found that out at the moment he sat down to describe her arrival at the pier, as it would be in all likelihood.  What would she say the moment she—the moment she what?—the moment she “emerged from the perilous stream of vehicles which crowd West Street from morning until night,” or the moment “she stepped out of the cab as it drew up at the foot of the gangway”?  That was the point.  How would she arrive—on foot or in a cab?  Which way would she come, and at what time must she start from home?  Should she come alone, or should Mrs. Corwin and the twins come with her?—or would a woman of her stamp not be likely to have an intimate friend to accompany her to the steamer?  Stuart was a rapid thinker, and as he pondered over these problems it did not take him long to reach the conclusion that a cab was necessary for Miss Andrews; and that Mrs. Corwin and the twins, with Osborne and Balderstone, might get aboard in their own way.  He also decided that it would be an excellent plan to have Marguerite’s old school friend Mrs. Willard accompany her to the steamer.  By an equally rapid bit of thought he concluded that if the cab started from the Andrews apartment at Fifty-ninth Street and Central Park at 9.30 A.M., the trip to the pier could easily be made in an hour, which would be in ample time, since the sailing hour of the New York was eleven.  Unfortunately Harley, in his hurry, forgot two or three incidents of departures generally, especially departures of women, which he should not have overlooked.  It was careless of him to forget that a woman about to travel abroad wants to make herself as stunning as she possibly can on the day of departure, so that the impression she will make at the start shall be strong enough to carry her through the dowdy stage which comes, as Marguerite had intimated, on the second and third days at sea; and to expect a woman like Marguerite Andrews, who really had no responsibilities to call her up at an early hour, to be ready at 9.30 sharp, was a fatal error, unless he provided his cab with an unusually fast horse, or a pair of horses, both of which Harley neglected to do.  Miss Andrews was twenty minutes late at starting the first time, and just a half-hour behind schedule time when, having rushed back to her rooms for her gloves, which in the excitement of the moment she had forgotten, she started finally for the ship.  Even then all would have been well had the unfortunate author not overlooked one other vital point.  Instead of sending the cab straight down Fifth Avenue, to Broadway, to Barclay Street, he sent it down Sixth, and thence through Greenwich Village, emerging at West Street at its junction with Christopher, and then the inevitable happened.

The cab was blocked!

“I had no idea it was so far,” said Marguerite, looking out of the cab window at the crowded and dirty thoroughfare.

“It’s a good mile farther yet,” replied Mrs. Willard.  “I shall have just that much more of your society.”

“It looks to me,” said Marguerite, with a short laugh, as the cab came suddenly to a halt—“it looks to me as if you were likely to have more than that of it; for we are in an apparently inextricable, immovable mixture of trucks, horse-cars, and incompetent policemen, and nothing short of a miracle will get us a mile farther along in twenty minutes.”

“I do believe you are right,” said Mrs. Willard, looking at her watch anxiously.  “What will you do if you miss the steamer?”

“Escape a horrid fate,” laughed Marguerite, gayly.

“Poor Mr. Harley—why, it will upset his whole story,” said Mrs. Willard.

“And save his reputation,” said Marguerite.  “It wouldn’t have been real, that story,” she added.  “In the first place, Balderstone couldn’t write a story that would fascinate me; he could never acquire a baleful influence over me; and, finally, I never should marry Robert Osborne under any circumstances.  He’s not at all the style of man I admire.  I’m willing to go along and let Mr. Harley try to work it out his way, but he will give it up as a bad idea before long—if I catch the steamer; and if I don’t, then he’ll have to modify the story.  That modified, I’m willing to be his heroine.”

“But your aunt and the twins—they must be aboard by this time.  They will be worried to death about you,” suggested Mrs. Willard.

“For a few moments—but Aunt Emma wanted to go, and she and the rest of them will have a good time, I’ve no doubt,” replied Miss Andrews, calmly; and here Stuart Harley’s heroine actually chuckled.  “And maybe Mr. Harley can make a match between Aunt Emma and Osborne, which will suit the publishers and please the American girl,” she said, gleefully.  “I almost hope we do miss it.”

And miss it they did, as I have already told you, by three minutes.  As the cab entered the broad pier, the great steamer moved slowly but surely out into the stream, and Mrs. Willard and Mr. Harley’s heroine were just in time to see Mrs. Corwin wildly waving her parasol at the captain on the bridge, beseeching him in agonized tones to go back just for a moment, while two separate and distinct twins, one male and one female, peered over the rail, weeping bitterly.  Incidentally mention may be made of two young men, Balderstone and Osborne, who sat chatting gayly together in the smoking-room.

“Well, Osborne,” said one, lighting his cigar, “she didn’t arrive.”

“No,” smiled the other.  “Fact is, Balderstone, I’m glad of it.  She’s too snippy for me, and I’m afraid I should have quarrelled with you about her in a half-hearted, unconvincing manner.”

“I’m afraid I’d have been the same,” rejoined Balderstone; “for, between us, there’s a pretty little brunette from Chicago up on deck, and Marguerite Andrews would have got little attention from me while she was about, unless Harley violently outraged my feelings and his own convictions.”

And so the New York sailed out to sea, and Marguerite Andrews watched her from the pier until she had faded from view.

As for Stuart Harley, the author, he sat in his study, wringing his hands and cursing his carelessness.

“I’ll have to modify the whole story now,” he said, impatiently, “since it is out of my power to bring the New York back into port, with my hero, villain, chaperon, and twins; but whenever or wherever the new story may be laid, Marguerite Andrews shall be the heroine—she interests me.  Meantime let Mrs. Willard chaperon her.”

And closing his manuscript book with a bang, Harley lit a cigarette, put on his hat, and went to the club.

III

THE RECONSTRUCTION BEGINS

“Then gently scan your brother man,   Still gentler sister woman;Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,   To step aside is human.”—Burns.

When, a few days later, Harley came to the reconstruction of his story, he began to appreciate the fact that what had seemed at first to be his misfortune was, on the whole, a matter for congratulation; and as he thought over the people he had sent to sea, he came to rejoice that Marguerite was not one of the party.

“Osborne wasn’t her sort, after all,” he mused to himself that night over his coffee.  “He hadn’t much mind.  I’m afraid I banked too much on his good looks, and too little upon what I might call her independence; for of all the heroines I ever had, she is the most sufficient unto herself.  Had she gone along I’m half afraid I couldn’t have got rid of Balderstone so easily either, for he’s a determined devil as I see him; and his intellectual qualities were so vastly superior to those of Osborne that by mere contrast they would most certainly have appealed to her strongly.  The baleful influence might have affected her seriously, and Osborne was never the man to overcome it, and strict realism would have forced her into an undesirable marriage.  Yes, I’m glad it turned out the way it did; she’s too good for either of them.  I couldn’t have done the tale as I intended without a certain amount of compulsion, which would never have worked out well.  She’d have been miserable with Osborne for a husband anyhow, even if he did succeed in outwitting Balderstone.”

Then Harley went into a trance for a moment.  From this he emerged almost immediately with a laugh.  The travellers on the sea had come to his mind.

“Poor Mrs. Corwin,” he said, “she’s awfully upset.  I shall have to give her some diversion.  Let’s see, what shall it be?  She’s a widow, young and fascinating.  H’m—not a bad foundation for a romance.  There must be a man on the ship who’d like her; but, hang it all! there are those twins.  Not much romance for her with those twins along, unless the man’s a fool; and she’s too fine a woman for a fool.  Men don’t fall in love with whole families that way.  Now if they had only been left on the pier with Miss Andrews, it would have worked up well.  Mrs. Corwin could have fascinated some fellow-traveller, won his heart, accepted him at Southampton, and told him about the twins afterwards.  As a test of his affection that would be a strong situation; but with the twins along, making the remarks they are likely to make, and all that—no, there is no hope for Mrs. Corwin, except in a juvenile story—something like ‘Two Twins in a Boat, not to Mention the Widow,’ or something of that sort.  Poor woman!  I’ll let her rest in peace, for the present.  She’ll enjoy her trip, anyhow; and as for Osborne and Balderstone, I’ll let them fight it out for that dark-eyed little woman from Chicago I saw on board, and when the best man wins I’ll put the whole thing into a short story.”

Then began a new quest for characters to go with Marguerite Andrews.

“She must have a chaperon, to begin with,” thought Harley.  “That is indispensable.  Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick regard themselves as conservators of public morals, in their ‘Blue and Silver Series,’ so a girl unmarried and without a chaperon would never do for this book.  If they were to publish it in their ‘Yellow Prism Series’ I could fling all such considerations to the winds, for there they cater to stronger palates, palates cultivated by French literary cooks, and morals need not be considered, provided the story is well told and likely to sell; but this is for the other series, and a chaperon is a sine qua non.  Marguerite doesn’t need one half as much as the girls in the ‘Yellow Prism’ books, but she’s got to have one just the same, or the American girl will not read about her: and who is better than Dorothy Willard, who has charge of her now?”

Harley slapped his knee with delight.

“How fortunate I’d provided her!” he said.  “I’ve got my start already, and without having to think very hard over it either.”

The trance began again, and lasted several hours, during which time Kelly and the Professor stole softly into Harley’s rooms, and, perceiving his condition, respected it.

“He’s either asleep or imagining,” said the Professor, in a whisper.

“He can’t imagine,” returned the Doctor.  “Call it—realizing.  Whatever it is he’s up to, we mustn’t interfere.  There isn’t any use waking him anyhow.  I know where he keeps his cigars.  Let’s sit down and have a smoke.”

This the intruders did, hoping that sooner or later their host would observe their presence; but Harley lay in blissful unconsciousness of their coming, and they finally grew weary of waiting.

“He must be at work on a ten-volume novel,” said the Doctor.  “Let’s go.”

And with that they departed.  Night came on, and with it darkness, but Harley never moved.  The fact was he was going through an examination of the human race to find a man good enough for Marguerite Andrews, and it speaks volumes for the interest she had suddenly inspired in his breast that it took him so long to find what he wanted.

Along about nine o’clock he gave a deep sigh and returned to earth.

“I guess I’ve got him,” he said, wearily, rubbing his forehead, which began to ache a trifle.  “I’ll model him after the Professor.  He’s a good fellow, moderately good-looking, has position, and certainly knows something, as professors go.  I doubt if he is imposing enough for the American girl generally, but he’s the best I can get in the time at my disposal.”

So the Professor was unconsciously slated for the office of hero; Mrs. Willard was cast for chaperon, and the Doctor, in spite of Harley’s previous resolve not to use him, was to be introduced for the comedy element.  The villain selected was the usual poverty-stricken foreigner with a title and a passion for wealth, which a closer study of his heroine showed Harley that Miss Andrews possessed; for on her way home from the pier she took Mrs. Willard to the Amsterdam and treated her to a luncheon which nothing short of a ten-dollar bill would pay for, after which the two went shopping, replenishing Miss Andrews’s wardrobe—most of which lay snugly stored in the hold of the New York, and momentarily getting farther and farther away from its fair owner—in the course of which tour Miss Andrews expended a sum which, had Harley possessed it, would have made it unnecessary for him to write the book he had in mind at all.

“It’s good she’s rich,” sighed Harley.  “That will make it all the easier to have her go to Newport and attract the Count.”

At the moment that Harley spoke these words to himself Mrs. Willard and Marguerite, accompanied by Mr. Willard, entered the mansion of the latter on Fifth Avenue.  They had spent the afternoon and evening at the Andrews apartment, arranging for its closing until the return of Mrs. Corwin.  Marguerite meanwhile was to be the guest of the Willards.

“Next week we’ll run up to Newport,” said Dorothy.  “The house is ready, and Bob is going for his cruise.”

Marguerite looked at her curiously for a moment.

“Did you intend to go there all along?” she asked.

“Yes—of course.  Why do you ask?” returned Mrs. Willard.

“Why, that very idea came into my mind at the moment,” replied Marguerite.  “I thought this afternoon I’d run up to Riverdale and stay with the Hallidays next week, when all of a sudden Newport came into my mind, and it has been struggling there with Riverdale for two hours—until I almost began to believe somebody was trying to compel me to go to Newport.  If it is your idea, and has been all along, I’ll go; but if Stuart Harley is trying to get me down there for literary purposes, I simply shall not do it.”

“You had better dismiss that idea from your mind at once, my dear,” said Mrs. Willard.  “Mr. Harley never compels.  No compulsion is the corner-stone of his literary structure; free will is his creed: you may count on that.  If he means to make you his heroine still, it will be at Newport if you are at Newport, at Riverdale if you happen to be at Riverdale.  Do come with me, even if he does impress you as endeavoring to force you; for at Newport I shall be your chaperon, and I should dearly love to be put in a book—with you.  Bob has asked Jack Perkins down, and Mrs. Howlett writes me that Count Bonetti, of Naples, is there, and is a really delightful fellow.  We shall have—”

“You simply confirm my fears,” interrupted Marguerite.  “You are to be Harley’s chaperon, Professor Perkins is his hero, and Count Bonetti is the villain—”

“Why, Marguerite, how you talk!” cried Mrs. Willard.  “Do you exist merely in Stuart Harley’s brain?  Do I?  Are we none of us living creatures to do as we will?  Are we nothing more than materials pigeon-holed for Mr. Harley’s future use?  Has Count Bonetti crossed the ocean just to please Mr. Harley?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” said Miss Andrews, “and I don’t care much either way, as long as I have independence of action.  I’ll go with you, Dorothy; but if it turns out, as I fear, that we are expected to act our parts in a Harley romance, that romance will receive a shock from which it will never recover.”

“Why do you object so to Mr. Harley, anyhow?  I thought you liked his books,” said Mrs. Willard.

“I do; some of them,” Marguerite answered; “and I like him; but he does not understand me, and until he does he shall not put me in his stories.  I’ll rout him at every point, until he—”

Marguerite paused.  Her face flushed.  Tears came into her eyes.

“Until he what, dearest?” asked Mrs. Willard, sympathetically.

“I don’t know,” said Marguerite, with a quiver in her voice, as she rose and left the room.

“I fancy we’d better go at once, Bob,” said Mrs. Willard to her husband, later on.  “Marguerite is quite upset by the experiences of the day, and New York is fearfully hot.”

“I agree with you,” returned Willard.  “Jerrold sent word this afternoon that the boat will be ready Friday, instead of Thursday of next week; so if you’ll pack up to-morrow we can board her Friday, and go up the Sound by water instead of by rail.  It will be pleasanter for all hands.”

Which was just what Harley wanted.  The Willards were of course not conscious of the fact, though Mrs. Willard’s sympathy with Marguerite led her to suspect that such was the case; for that such was the case was what Marguerite feared.

“We are being forced, Dorothy,” she said, as she stepped on the yacht two days later.

“Well, what if we are?  It’s pleasanter going this way than by rail, isn’t it?” Mrs. Willard replied, with some impatience.  “If we owe all this to Stuart Harley, we ought to thank him for his kindness.  According to your theory he could have sent us up on a hot, dusty train, and had a collision ready for us at New London, in order to kill off a few undesirable characters and give his hero a chance to distinguish himself.  I think that even from your own point of view Mr. Harley is behaving in a very considerate fashion.”

“No doubt you think so,” returned Marguerite, spiritedly.  “But it’s different with you.  You are settled in life.  Your husband is the man of your choice; you are happy, with everything you want.  You will do nothing extraordinary in the book.  If you did do something extraordinary you would cease to be a good chaperon, and from that moment would be cast aside; but I—I am in a different position altogether.  I am a single woman, unsettled as yet, for whom this author in his infinite wisdom deems it necessary to provide a lover and husband; and in order that his narrative of how I get this person he has selected—without consulting my tastes—may interest a lot of other girls, who are expected to buy and read his book, he makes me the object of an intriguing fortune-hunter from Italy.  I am to believe he is a real nobleman, and all that; and a stupid wiseacre from the York University, who can’t dance, and who thinks of nothing but his books and his club, is to come in at the right moment and expose the Count, and all such trash as that.  I know at the outset how it all is to be.  You couldn’t deceive a sensible girl five minutes with Count Bonetti, any more than that Balderstone man, who is now making a useless trip across the Atlantic with my aunt and her twins, could have exerted a ‘baleful influence’ over me with his diluted spiritualism.  I’m not an idiot, my dear Dorothy.”

“You are a heroine, love,” returned Mrs. Willard.

“Perhaps—but I am the kind of heroine who would stop a play five minutes after the curtain had risen on the first act if the remaining four acts depended on her failing to see something that was plain to the veriest dolt in the audience,” Marguerite replied, with spirit.  “Nobody shall ever write me up save as I am.”

“Well—perhaps you are wrong this time.  Perhaps Mr. Harley isn’t going to make a book of you,” said Mrs. Willard.

“Very likely he isn’t,” said Marguerite; “but he’s trying it—I know that much.”

“And how, pray?” asked Mrs. Willard.

“That,” said Marguerite, her frown vanishing and a smile taking its place—“that is for the present my secret.  I’ll tell you some day, but not until I have baffled Mr. Harley in his ill-advised purpose of marrying me off to a man I don’t want, and wouldn’t have under any circumstances.  Even if I had caught the New York the other day his plans would have miscarried.  I’d never have married that Osborne man; I’d have snubbed Balderstone the moment he spoke to me; and if Stuart Harley had got a book out of my trip to Europe at all, it would have been a series of papers on some such topic as ‘The Spinster Abroad, or How to be Happy though Single.’  No more shall I take the part he intends me to in this Newport romance, unless he removes Count Bonetti from the scene entirely, and provides me with a different style of hero from his Professor, the original of whom, by-the-way, as I happen to know, is already married and has two children.  I went to school with his wife, and I know just how much of a hero he is.”

And so they went to Newport, and Harley’s novel opened swimmingly.  His description of the yacht was perfect; his narration of the incidents of the embarkation could not be improved upon in any way.  They were absolutely true to the life.