A Rebellious Heroine. Bangs John Kendrick
PRELIMINARY TRIAL
“I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield.”
The extraordinary failure of Miss Andrews, cast for a star rôle in Stuart Harley’s tale of Love and Villany, to appear upon the stage selected by the author for her débût, must be explained. As I have already stated at the close of the preceding chapter, it was entirely Harley’s own fault. He had studied Miss Andrews too superficially to grasp thoroughly the more refined subtleties of her nature, and he found out, at a moment when it was too late to correct his error, that she was not a woman to be slighted in respect to the conventionalities of polite life, however trifling to a man of Harley’s stamp these might seem to be. She was a stickler for form; and when she was summoned to go on board of an ocean steamship there to take part in a romance for the mere aggrandizement of a young author, she intended that he should not ignore the proprieties, even if in a sense the proprieties to which she referred did antedate the period at which his story was to open. She was willing to appear, but it seemed to her that Stuart Harley ought to see to it that she was escorted to the scene of action with the ceremony due to one of her position.
“What does he take me for?” she asked of Mrs. Corwin, indignantly, on the eve of her departure. “Am I a mere marionette, to obey his slightest behest, and at a moment’s notice? Am I to dance when Stuart Harley pulls the string?”
“Not at all, my dear Marguerite,” said Mrs. Corwin, soothingly. “If he thought that, he would not have selected you for his story. I think you ought to feel highly complimented that Mr. Harley should choose you for one of his books, and for such a conspicuous part, too. Look at me; do I complain? Am I holding out for the proprieties? And yet what is my situation? I’m simply dragged in by the hair; and my poor children, instead of having a nice, noisy Fourth of July at the sea-shore, must needs be put upon a great floating caravansary, to suffer seasickness and the other discomforts of ocean travel, so as to introduce a little juvenile fun into this great work of Mr. Harley’s—and yet I bow my head meekly and go. Why? Because I feel that, inconspicuous though I shall be, nevertheless I am highly honored that Mr. Harley should select me from among many for the uses of his gifted pen.”
“You are prepared, then,” retorted Marguerite, “to place yourself unreservedly in Mr. Harley’s hands? Shall you flirt with the captain if he thinks your doing so will add to the humorous or dramatic interest of his story? Will you permit your children to make impertinent remarks to every one aboard ship; to pick up sailors’ slang and use it at the dining-table—in short, to make themselves obnoxiously clever at all times, in order that Mr. Harley’s critics may say that his book fairly scintillates with wit, and gives gratifying evidence that ‘the rising young author’ has made a deep and careful analysis of the juvenile heart?”
“Mr. Harley is too much of a gentleman, Marguerite, to place me and my children in a false or ridiculous light,” returned Mrs. Corwin, severely. “And even if he were not a gentleman, he is too true a realist to make me do anything which in the nature of things I should not do—which disposes of your entirely uncalled-for remark about the captain and myself. As for the children, Tommie would not repeat sailors’ lingo at the table under any circumstances, and Jennie will not make herself obnoxiously clever at any time, because she has been brought up too carefully to fail to respect her elders. Both she and Tommie understand themselves thoroughly; and when Mr. Harley understands them, which he cannot fail to do after a short acquaintance, he will draw them as they are; and if previous to his complete understanding of their peculiarities he introduces into his story something foreign to their natures and obnoxious to me, their mother, I have no doubt he will correct his error when he comes to read the proofs of his story and sees his mistake.”
“You have great confidence in Stuart Harley,” retorted Miss Andrews, gazing out of the window with a pensive cast of countenance.
“Haven’t you?” asked Mrs. Corwin, quickly.
“As a man, yes,” returned Marguerite. “As an author, however, I think he is open to criticism. He is not always true to the real. Look at Lord Barncastle, in his study of English manners! Barncastle, as he drew him, was nothing but a New York society man with a title, living in England. That is to say, he talked like an American, thought like one—there was no point of difference between them.”
“And why should there be?” asked Mrs. Corwin. “If a New York society man is generally a weak imitation of an English peer—and no one has ever denied that such is the case—why shouldn’t an English peer be represented as a sort of intensified New York society man?”
“Besides,” said Miss Andrews, ignoring Mrs. Corwin’s point, “I don’t care to be presented too really to the reading public, especially on board a ship. I never yet knew a woman who looked well the second day out, and if I were to be presented as I always am the second day out, I should die of mortification. My hair goes out of curl, my face is the color of an unripe peach, and if I do go up on deck it is because I am so thoroughly miserable that I do not care who sees me or what the world thinks of me. I think it is very inconsiderate of Mr. Harley to open his story on an ocean steamer; and, what is more, I don’t like the American line. Too many Americans of the brass-band type travel on it. Stuart Harley said so himself in his last book of foreign travel; but he sends me out on it just the same, and expects me to be satisfied. Perhaps he thinks I like that sort of American. If he does, he’s got more imagination than he ever showed in his books.”
“You must get to the other side in some way,” said Mrs. Corwin. “It is at Venice that the trouble with Balderstone is to come, and that Osborne topples him over into the Grand Canal, and rescues you from his baleful influence.”
“Humph!” said Marguerite, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders. “Robert Osborne! A likely sort of person to rescue me from anything! He wouldn’t have nerve enough to rescue me from a grasshopper if he were armed to the teeth. Furthermore, I shall not go to Venice in August. It’s bad enough in April—damp and hot—the home of malaria—an asylum for artistic temperaments; and insecty. No, my dear aunt, even if I overlook everything else to please Mr. Harley, he’ll have to modify the Venetian part of that story, for I am determined that no pen of his shall force me into Italy at this season. I wouldn’t go there to please Shakespeare, much less Stuart Harley. Let the affair come off at Interlaken, if it is to come off at all, which I doubt.”
“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