Part 12

And upon this impulse I fell to pondering, when suddenly, as if by magic, a tale presented itself all complete in my mind. My mental action appeared to me more like that of remembering than of creating, so real and so complete was the pretty history. The self-willed, volatile damsel whose fortunes it concerned seemed one whom I had known, and whom I might meet again some day. In my mind she assumed, it is true, an outward semblance similar to that of the lady before me, upon whose back I fixed my regards in an absorbed stare, which should have disturbed her could looks make themselves felt. She did not move, however, and as she did not turn the leaf of her book, I fancied she might have fallen into a reverie as deep as my own. I had not been able fully to see her face, although a lucky turn had given me a glimpse of a profile full of character and beauty, and which made me desire to behold more. I did not, however, trouble myself about the exact details of my heroine's features, since every story-teller has a stock of choice personal charms with which to endow his fictitious children, but continued to gloat over my little romance; and so vividly was the tale of "April's Lady" impressed upon my mind that although some weeks elapsed before I found time to put it upon paper, I had not the slightest difficulty in recalling even its most trifling incidents.

Almost the whole of my journey was taken up in turning the story over in my mind, and when we drew into the Boston station, and my neighbor closed her volume to begin the collection of her numerous feminine possessions, I had half a mind to lean forward and thank her for having given me, although unconsciously, so good a story.

It did seem to me, even after I had sent my manuscript off and the dreadful moment came when one realizes that it is too late to make changes and consequently thinks of plenty of things he wishes to alter, that "April's Lady" was the best work I had ever done. I had let a month or two pass between its first writing and the final revision, and I was pretty well satisfied that I had produced a really capital story. I fondly hoped Mr. Lane, the editor of the "Dark Red," would be moved by its excellence to give me further orders; and the eagerness with which I one morning tore open an envelope upon which I recognized his handwriting, may be easily enough imagined, at least by members of the literary guild. My impatience gave place to profound astonishment as I read the following note:--

OFFICE DARK RED MAGAZINE, BOSTON, September 27.

MY DEAR MR. GRAY,--Can you drop into my office to-morrow about noon? By some odd coincidence I received a story very similar to your "April's Lady," and bearing the same title, several days earlier, and should like to talk with you about it.

Very truly yours, J. Q. LANE.

I was utterly confounded. I racked my brains to discover who could possibly have stolen my story, and even suspected the small black girl who dusted my rooms, although the sooty little morsel did not know one letter from another. The first draft of the story had lain in my desk for some time, it was true, yet that any literary burglar should have forced an entrance and then contented himself with copying this seemed, upon the whole, scarcely probable. I ransacked my memory for some old tale which I might unconsciously have plagiarized, but I could think of nothing; and, moreover, I reflected that the coincidence of names certainly could not be accounted for in this way, even did I recall the germ of my plot.

I presented myself at the office of the "Dark Red" at the hour appointed with a clear conscience, it is true, but with positively no suggestion whatever to offer in regard to the method by which a copy of my story could have reached the editor in advance of my own manuscript.

Mr. Lane received me with the conventionally cordial manner which is as much a part of editorial duties as is the use of the blue pencil, and without much delay came to the business of the call.

"There is something very singular about this affair," he said, laying out my manuscript, and beside it another which I could see was written in a running feminine hand. "If the stories were a little more alike, I should be sure one was copied from the other; as it is, it is inconceivable that they have not at least a common origin. Where did you get your idea?"

"Why, so far as I know," I replied in perplexity, "I evolved it from my inner consciousness; but the germ may have been the unconscious recollection of some incident or floating idea. I've tried to discover where I did get the fancy, but without a glimmer of success. Who sent you the other version?"

"A lady of whose integrity I am as sure as I am of yours. That's the odd part of it. Besides, you are both of you too clever to plagiarize, even if you weren't too honest. The mere similarity of theme isn't so strange; that happens often enough; but that the title of the stories should be identical, and that in each the heroine should be named May--"

"Is her heroine named May?" I interrupted in astonishment; "why, then, she must have seen my copy; or," I added, a new thought striking me, "she must have got the name in the same way I did. I took the title of the story and the name of the heroine from a line of Swinburne, and--"

"And," interrupted the editor in turn, catching up the manuscript before him, "so did she."

And he showed me, written at the head of the page:--

"If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May."

"Well," I remarked, with a not unnatural mingling of philosophy and annoyance, "it is all of a piece with my theory that ideas are in the air, and belong, like wild geese, to whoever catches them first; but it is vexatious, when I captured a fancy that particularly pleased me, to find that some woman or other has been smart enough to get salt on its tail-feathers before I did."

Mr. Lane smiled at my desperate air, and at that moment his little office-boy, whom I particularly detest because of the catlike stillness and suddenness of his movements, silently produced first himself and then a card.

"'Agnes Graham,'" read Mr. Lane. "Here is your rival to speak for herself. I hope you don't mind seeing her?"

"Oh, by no means," I replied rather ungraciously. "Let us see what she is like, and what she will have to say about this puzzle."

The name was not wholly new to me, as I had seen it signed to various magazine articles, concerning which at this moment I had only the most vague and general idea. I was sitting with my back to the door, and in rising I still kept my face half turned away from the lady who entered, but I saw the reflection of her face in a mirror opposite without any sense of recognition. As she advanced a step or two, however, and half passed me, I knew her. The delicate ear, the fine sweep of the neck, the knot of golden brown hair, were all familiar. It was the lady who had sat before me in the cars from New York on that April day.

As she turned in recognition of Mr. Lane's introduction, a faint flush seemed to show that she too recognized me, although I was unable to understand how she should know me, since she certainly had not turned her head once in the entire journey. I set it down to pure feminine intuition, not having wholly freed myself from that masculine superstition which regards woman's instinct as a sort of supernatural clairvoyance.

My sensations on discovering her identity were not wholly unlike those of a man who inadvertently touches a charged Leyden jar.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "what a psychological conundrum, or whatever you choose to call it. The whole matter is as plain to me now as daylight."

"Well?" Mr. Lane asked, while Miss Graham regarded me with an air which seemed to question whether my insanity were of a dangerous type.

"Pardon me, Miss Graham, if I cross-question you a little," I went on, becoming somewhat excited. "You came from New York on the morning train on Wednesday, the fifteenth--no, the sixteenth of last April, did you not?"

"Yes," she answered, her color again a trifle heightened, but her appearance being rather that of perplexity than of self-consciousness.

"And on the way you read Swinburne till you came to the line,

'If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May,'

and it occurred to you what a capital name for a story 'April's Lady' would be?"

"Yes," she repeated; and then, with a yet more puzzled air, she turned to Mr. Lane to ask, "Is this mind-reading?"

"I'm sure I don't know," returned he. "Mr. Gray can best tell what it is."

"And the rest of the way to Boston," I continued, ignoring the interruption, "you were elaborating your story. You took the heroine's name from the same line, and had a pun at the climax about the hero's becoming 'lord of May.'"

"No," Miss Graham retorted, beginning to enter into the spirit of the situation. "I deny the pun, although I acknowledge the rest. The pun I didn't even think of."

"Well, you see I haven't read your manuscript, but I own I fell so low that I put in the pun myself. At least the old gentleman with a scar on his cheek, who sat in the corner of the car, gave you hints for--"

"The uncle," broke in Miss Graham, with a gleeful laugh at the remembrance of the oddity of the old gentleman's appearance. "But how in the world did you know?"

"Oh, he did me. We evidently had the same mental experience; which proves, I suppose, that we are literary Corsican brothers or something of the sort."

"But the great question to be settled is," Mr. Lane observed, bringing in, after some further talk, the editorial consideration, "whose story this really is."

"Miss Graham's, by all means," I said instantly. "Hers was first in the field, and if I hadn't impertinently looked over her shoulder, I shouldn't have had any share in it whatever."

Miss Graham laughed, showing a delicious dimple, and Mr. Lane, who evidently had no desire to settle the question under discussion, looked inquiringly at her for a response to my words.

"You are very generous, Mr. Gray," she answered; "but in the first place my story has never been accepted for the 'Dark Red,' and in the second, as the stories really ought to stand on their merits, I shall certainly not venture to put mine into competition with yours, but prefer to pocket my manuscript and retire."

"I fear," was my reply, "that I discover rather a tendency to sarcasm in what you say than any true humility. Of course the first point is one for Mr. Lane to settle."

The editor cleared his throat with some embarrassment, but before he 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.