A Rebellious Heroine, John Kendrick Bangs [literature books to read TXT] 📗

to do wholly with things bookish.

"Who sat for this, Stuart?" called out the Professor, tapping the frontispiece of the magazine.

"Who sat for what?" replied Stuart, looking up.

"This picture," said the Professor.

"It's a picture of a finely intellectual-looking person with your name under it, Harley," put in the Doctor.

"Oh--that," said Harley. "It does flatter me a bit."

"So does the article with it," said Kelly. "Says you are a great man--man with an idea, and all that. Is that true, or is it just plain libel? Have you an idea?"

Harley laughed good-naturedly. "I had one once, but it's lost," he said. "As to that picture, they're bringing out a book for me," he added, modestly. "Good ad., you know."

"When you are through with that, Professor," I put in, "let me have it, will you? I want to see what it says about Harley."

"It's a first-rate screed," replied the Professor, handing over the publication. "It hits Harley right on the head."

"I don't know as that's pleasant," said Harley.

"What I mean, my dear boy," said the Professor, "is that it does you justice."

And it really did do Harley justice, although, as he had suggested, it was written largely to advertise the forthcoming work. It spoke nicely of Harley's previous efforts, and judiciously, as it seemed to me. He had not got to the top of the ladder yet, but he was getting there by a slow, steady development, and largely because he was a man with a fixed idea as to what literature ought to be.

"Mr. Harley has seen clearly from the outset what it was that he wished to accomplish and how to accomplish it," the writer observed. "He has swerved neither to the right nor to the left, but has progressed undeviatingly along the lines he has mapped out for himself, and keeping constantly in mind the principles which seemed to him at the beginning of his career to be right. It has been this persistent and consistent adherence to principle that has gained for Mr. Harley his hearing, and which is constantly rendering more certain and permanent his position in the world literary. Others may be led hither and yon by the fads and follies of the scatter-brained, but Realism will ever have one steadfast champion in Stuart Harley."

"Read that," I said, tossing the journal across the table.

He read it, and blushed to the roots of his ears.

"This is no time to desert the flag, Harley," said I, as he read. "Stick to your colors, and let her stick to hers. You'd better be careful how you force your heroine."

"Ha, ha!" he laughed. "I should think so, and for more reasons than one. I never really intended to do horrible things with her, my boy. Trust me, if I do lead her, to lead her gently. My persuasion will be suggestive rather than mandatory."

"And that hero--from the Brooklyn dry-goods shop?" I asked, with a smile.

"I'd like to see him so much as--tell her the price of anything," cried Harley. "A man like that has no business to live in the same hemisphere with a woman like Marguerite Andrews. When I threatened her with him I was conversing through a large and elegant though wholly invisible hat."

I breathed more freely. She was still sacred and safe in his hands. Shortly after, dinner over, we left the table, and went to the theatre, where we saw what the programme called the "latest London realistic success," in which three of the four acts of an intensely exciting melodrama depended upon a woman's not seeing a large navy revolver, which lay on the table directly before her eyes in the first. The play was full of blood and replete with thunder, and we truly enjoyed it, only Harley would not talk much between the acts. He was unusually moody. After the play was over his tongue loosened, however, and we went to the Players for a supper, and there he burst forth into speech.

"If Marguerite Andrews had been the heroine of that play she'd have seen that gun, and the audience would have had to go home inside of ten minutes," he said. Later on he burst out with, "If my Miss Andrews had been the heroine of that play, the man who falls over the precipice in the second act would have been alive at this moment." And finally he demanded: "Do you suppose a heroine like Marguerite Andrews would have overlooked the comma on the postal card that woman read in the third act, and so made the fourth act possible? Not she. She's a woman with a mind. And yet they call that the latest London realistic success! Realistic! These Londoners do not seem to understand their own language. If that play was realism, what sort of a nightmare do you suppose a romantic drama would be?"

"Well, maybe London women in real life haven't any minds," I said, growing rather weary of the subject. I admired Miss Andrews myself, but there were other things I could talk about--"like lemonade and elephants," as the small boy said. "Let it go at that. It was an interesting play, and that's all plays ought to be. Realism in plays is not to be encouraged. A man goes to the theatre to be amused and entertained, not to be reminded of home discomforts."

Stuart looked at me reproachfully, ordered a fresh cigar, and suggested turning in for the night. I walked home with him and tried to get him interested in a farce I was at work on, but it was of no use. He had become a monomaniac, and his monomania was his rebellious heroine. Finally I blurted out:

"Well, for Heaven's sake, Stuart, get the woman caged, will you? For, candidly, I'd like to talk about something else, and until Marguerite Andrews is disposed of I don't believe you'll be able to."

"I'll have half the work done by this time to-morrow night," said he. "I've got ten thousand words of it in my mind now."

"I'll bet you there are only two words down in your mind," said I.

"What are they?" he asked.

"Marguerite and Andrews," said I.

Stuart laughed. "They're the only ones I'm sure of," said he. And then we parted.

But he was right about what he would have accomplished by that time the next night; for before sundown he had half the story written, and, what is more, the chapters had come as easily as any writing he ever did. For docility, Marguerite was a perfect wonder. Not only did she follow out his wishes; she often anticipated them, and in certain parts gave him a lead in a new direction, which, Stuart said, gave the story a hundred per cent. more character.

In short, Marguerite Andrews was keeping her promise to me nobly. The only thing I regretted about it, now that all seemed plain sailing, was its effect on Stuart. Her amiability was proving a great attraction to his susceptible soul, and I was beginning to fear that Stuart was slowly but surely falling in love with his rebellious heroine, which would never do, unless she were really real, on which point I was most uncertain.

"It would be a terrible thing," said I confidentially to myself, "if Stuart Harley were to fall in love with a creation of his own realism."



CHAPTER IX: A SUMMONS NORTH

"PORTIA. A quarrel, ho, already? What's the matter? "GRATIANO. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring." - "Merchant of Venice."


The events just narrated took place on the 15th of August, and as Harley's time to fulfil his contract with Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick was growing very short--two weeks is short shrift for an author with a book to write for waiting presses, even with a willing and helpful cast of characters--so I resolved not to intrude upon him until he himself should summon me. I knew myself, from bitter experience, how unwelcome the most welcome of one's friends can be at busy hours, having had many a beautiful sketch absolutely ruined by the untimely intrusion of those who wished me well, so I resolutely kept myself away from his den, although I was burning with curiosity to know how he was getting on.

On occasions my curiosity would get the better of my judgment, and I would endeavor, with the aid of my own muses, to hold a moment's chat with Miss Andrews; but she eluded me. I couldn't find her at all-- as, indeed, how should I, since Harley had not taken me into his confidence as to his intentions in the new story? He might have laid the scene of it in Singapore, for aught I knew, and, wander where I would in my fancy, I was utterly unable to discover her whereabouts, until one evening a very weird thing happened--a thing so weird that I have been pinching myself with great assiduity ever since in order to reassure myself of my own existence. I had come home from a hard day's editorial work, had dined alone and comfortably, and was stretched out at full length upon the low divan that stands at the end of my workshop--the delight of my weary bones and the envy of my friends, who have never been able to find anywhere another exactly like it. My cigar was between my lips, and above my head, rising in a curling cloud to the ceiling, was a mass of smoke. I am sure I was not dreaming, although how else to account for it I do not know. What happened, to put it briefly, was my sudden transportation to a little mountain hotel not far from Lake George, where I found myself sitting and talking to the woman I had so futilely sought.

"How do you do?" said she, pleasantly, as I materialized at her side.

"I am as well as a person can be," I replied, rubbing my eyes in confusion, "who suddenly finds himself two hundred and fifty miles away from the spot where, a half-hour before, he had lain down to rest."

Miss Andrews laughed. "You see how it is yourself," she said.

"See how what is myself?" I queried.

"To be the puppet of a person who--writes," she answered.

"And have I become that?" I asked.

"You have," she smiled. "That's why you are here."

The idea made me nervous, and I pinched my arm to see whether I was there or not. The result was not altogether reassuring. I never felt the pinch, and, try as I would, I couldn't make myself feel it.

"Excuse me," I said, "for deviating a moment from the matter in hand, but have you a hat-pin?"

"No," she answered; "but I have a brooch, if that will serve your purpose. What do you want it for?"

"I wish to run it into my arm for a moment," I explained.

"It won't help you any," she answered, smiling divinely. "I must have a word with you; all the hat-pins in the world shall not prevent me, now that you are here."

"Well, wait a minute, I beg of you," I implored. "You intimated a moment