Chapter 5

“Oh—as for that—that’s all right,” said I. “Parker had suggested the walk, and a girl really does like to stave off a proposal as long as she can when she knows it is sure to come. Furthermore, it gives you a chance to describe the hat, and so make up for a few of the words you lost when she refused to discuss ball-dresses with Mrs. Willard.”

“I never thought of that; but don’t you think I worked up to the proposal skilfully?” asked Harley.

“Very,” said I. “But you’re dreadfully hard on Parker. It would have been better to have had the butler fire him out, head over heels. He could have thrashed the butler for doing that, but with your heroine his hands were tied.”

“Go on and read,” said Harley.)

“She must have known what I was driving at,” Parker reflected, as he awaited her return. “Possibly she loves me in spite of this frigid behavior. This may be her method of concealing it; but if it is, I must confess it’s a case of

‘Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But—why did you kick me down-stairs?’

Certainly, knowing, as she now must, what my feelings are, her being willing to go for a walk on the cliffs, or anywhere, is a favorable sign.

(“Parker merely echoed my own hope in that remark,” said Harley. “If I could get them engaged, I was satisfied to do it in any way that might be pleasing to her.”)

A moment later Marguerite appeared, arrayed for the walk. Parker rose as she entered and picked up his gloves.

“You are a perfect picture this morning,” said he.

“I’m ready,” she said, shortly, ignoring the compliment. “Where are we scheduled to walk?—or are we to have something to say about it ourselves?”

Parker looked at her with a wondering smile. The aptness of the remark did not strike him. However, he was equal to the occasion.

“You don’t believe in free will, then?” he asked.

(“It was the only intelligent remark he could make, under the circumstances, you see,” explained Harley.

“He was a clever fellow,” said I, and resumed reading.)

“I believe in a great many things we are supposed to do without,” said Marguerite, sharply.

They had reached the street, and in silence walked along Bellevue Avenue.

[Picture: The walk on the cliff]

“There are a great many things,” vouchsafed Parker, as they turned out of the avenue to the cliffs, “that men are supposed not to do without—”

“Yes,” said Marguerite, sharply—“vices.”

“I did not refer to them,” laughed Parker. “In fact, Miss Andrews, the heart of man is supposed to be incomplete until he has lost it, and has succeeded in getting another for his very—”

“Are you an admirer of Max Nordau?” interposed Marguerite, quickly.

(“Whatever led you to put that in?” I asked.

“Go on, and you’ll see,” said Harley. “I didn’t put it in. It’s what she said. I’m not responsible.”)

“I don’t know anything about Max Nordau,” said Parker, somewhat surprised at this sudden turn of the conversation.

“Are you familiar with Schopenhauer?” she asked.

(“It was awfully rough on the poor fellow,” said Harley, “but I couldn’t help him. I’d forced him in so far that I couldn’t get him out. His answer floored me as completely as anything that Miss Andrews ever did.”)

“Schopenhauer?” said Parker, nonplussed. “Oh yes,” he added, an idea dawning on his mind. “That is to say, moderately familiar—though, as a matter of fact, I’m not at all musical.”

Miss Andrews laughed immoderately, in which Parker, thinking that he had possibly said something witty, although he did not know what it was, joined. In a moment the laughter subsided, and for a few minutes the two walked on in silence. Finally Parker spoke, resignedly.

“Miss Andrews,” he said, “perhaps you have noticed—perhaps not—that you have strongly interested me.”

“Yes,” she said, turning upon him desperately. “I have noticed it, and that is why I have on two separate occasions tried to keep you from saying so.”

“And why should I not tell you that I love—” began Parker.

“Because it is hopeless,” retorted Marguerite. “I am perfectly well aware, Mr. Parker, what we are down for, and I suppose I cannot blame you for your persistence. Perhaps you don’t know any better; perhaps you do know better, but are willing to give yourself over unreservedly into the hands of another; perhaps you are being forced and cannot help yourself. It is just possible that you are a professional hero, and feel under obligations to your employer to follow out his wishes to the letter. However it may be, you have twice essayed to come to the point, and I have twice tried to turn you aside. Now it is time to speak truthfully. I admire and like you very much, but I have a will of my own, am nobody’s puppet, and if Stuart Harley never writes another book in his life, he shall not marry me to a man I do not love; and, frankly, I do not love you. I do not know if you are aware of the fact, but it is true nevertheless that you are the third _fiancé_ he has tried to thrust upon me since July 3d. Like the others, if you insist upon blindly following his will, and propose marriage to me, you shall go by the board. I have warned you, and you can now do as you please. You were saying—?”

“That I love you with all my soul,” said Parker, grimly.

(“He didn’t really love her then, you know,” said Harley. “He’d been cured of that in five minutes. But I was resolved that he should say it, and he did. That’s how he came to say it grimly. He did it just as a soldier rushes up to the cannon’s mouth. He added, also:”)

“Will you be my wife?”

“Most certainly not,” said Marguerite, turning on her heel, and leaving the young man to finish his walk alone.

(“And then,” said Harley, with a chuckle, “Parker’s manhood would assert itself in spite of all I could do. He made an answer, which I wrote down.”

“I see,” said I, “but you’ve scratched it out. What was that line?”

“‘“Thank the Lord!” said Parker to himself, as Miss Andrews disappeared around the corner,’” said Stuart Harley. “That’s what I wrote, and I flatter myself on the realism of it, for that’s just what any self-respecting hero would have said under the circumstances.”

A silence came over us.

“Do you wonder I’ve given it up,” asked Stuart, after a while.

“Yes,” said I, “I do. Such opposition would nerve me up to a battle royal. I wouldn’t give it up until I’d returned from Barnegat, if I were you,” I added, anxious to have him renew his efforts; for an idea had just flashed across my mind, which, although it involved a breach of faith on my part, I nevertheless believed to be good and justifiable, since it might relieve Stuart Harley of his embarrassment.

“Very well,” I rejoiced to hear him say. “I won’t give it up until then, but I haven’t much hope after that last chapter.”

So Harley went to Barnegat, after destroying his letter to Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, whilst I put my breach of faith into operation.)

VII A BREACH OF FAITH

“_Having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath_, _Study to break it_, _and not to break my troth_.”

—“Love’s Labor’s Lost.”

WHEN I assured Harley that I should keep my hands off his heroine until he requested me to do otherwise, after my fruitless attempt to discipline her into a less refractory mood, I fully intended to keep my promise. She was his, as far as she possessed any value as literary material, and he had as clear a right to her exclusive use as if she had been copyrighted in his name—at least so far as his friends were concerned he had. Others might make use of her for literary purposes with a clear conscience if they chose to do so, but the hand of a friend must be stayed. Furthermore, my own experience with the young woman had not been successful enough to lead me to believe that I could conquer where Harley had been vanquished. Physical force I had found to be unavailing. She was too cunning to stumble into any of the pitfalls that with all my imagination I could conjure up to embarrass her; but something had to be done, and I now resolved upon a course of moral suasion, and wholly for Harley’s sake. The man was actually suffering because she had so persistently defied him, and his discomfiture was all the more deplorable because it meant little short of the ruin of his life and ambitions. The problem had to be solved or his career was at an end. Harley never could do two things at once. The task he had in hand always absorbed his whole being until he was able to write the word finis on the last page of his manuscript, and until the finis to this elusive book he was now struggling with was written, I knew that he would write no other. His pot-boilers he could do, of course, and so earn a living, but pot-boilers destroy rather than make reputations, and Harley was too young a man to rest upon past achievements; neither had he done such vastly superior work that his fame could withstand much diminution by the continuous production of ephemera. It was therefore in the hope of saving him that I broke faith with him and temporarily stole his heroine. I did not dream of using her at all, as you might think, as a heroine of my own, but rather as an interesting person with ideas as to the duty of heroines—a sort of Past Grand Mistress of the Art of Heroinism—who was worth interviewing for the daily press. I flatter myself it was a good idea, worthy almost of a genius, though I am perfectly well aware that I am not a genius. I am merely a man of exceptional talent. I have talent enough for a genius, but no taste for the unconventional, and by just so much do I fall short of the realization of the hopes of my friends and fears of my enemies. There are stories I have in mind that are worthy of the most exalted French masters, for instance, and when I have the time to be careful, which I rarely do, I can write with the polished grace of a De Maupassant or a James, but I shall never write them, because I value my social position too highly to put my name to anything which it would never do to publish outside of Paris. I do not care to prove my genius at the cost of the respect of my neighbors—all of which, however, is foreign to my story, and is put in here merely because I have observed that readers are very much interested in their favorite authors, and like to know as much about them as they can.

My plan, to take up the thread of my narrative once more, was, briefly, to write an interview between myself, as a representative of a newspaper syndicate, and Miss Marguerite Andrews, the “Well-Known Heroine.” It has been quite common of late years to interview the models of well-known artists, so that it did not require too great a stretch of the imagination to make my scheme a reasonable one. It must be remembered, too, that I had no intention of using this interview for my own aggrandizement. I planned it solely in the interests of my friend, hoping that I might secure from Miss Andrews some unguarded admission that might operate against her own principles, as Harley and I knew them, and that, that secured, I might induce her to follow meekly his schedule until he could bring his story to a reasonable conclusion. Failing in this, I was going to try and discover what style of man it was she admired most, what might be her ideas of the romance in which she would most like to figure, and all that, so that I could give Harley a few points which would enable him so to construct his romance that his heroine would walk through it as easily and as docilely as one could wish. Finally, all other things failing, I was going to throw Harley on her generosity, call attention to the fact that she was ruining him by her stubborn behavior, and ask her to submit to a little temporary inconvenience for his sake.

As I have already said, so must I repeat, there was genius in the idea, but I was forced to relinquish certain features of it, as will be seen shortly. I took up my pen, and with three bold strokes thereof transported myself to Newport, and going directly to the Willard Cottage, I rang the bell. Miss Andrews was still elusive. With all the resources of imagination at hand, and with not an obstacle in my way that I could not clear at a bound, she still held me at bay. She was not at home—had, in fact, departed two days previously for the White Mountains. Fortunately, however, the butler knew her address, and, without bothering about trains, luggage, or aught else, in one brief paragraph I landed myself at the Profile House, where she was spending a week with Mr. and Mrs. Rushton of Brooklyn. This change of location caused me to modify my first idea, to its advantage. I saw, when I thought the matter over, that, on the whole, the interview, as an interview for a newspaper syndicate, was likely to be nipped in the bud, since the moment I declared myself a reporter for a set of newspapers, and stated the object of my call, she would probably dismiss me with the statement that she was not a professional heroine, that her views were of no interest to the public, and that, not having the pleasure of my acquaintance, she must beg to be excused. I wonder I didn’t think of this at the outset. I surely knew Harley’s heroine well enough to have foreseen this possibility. I realized it, however, the moment I dropped myself into the great homelike office of the Profile House. Miss Andrews walked through the office to the dining-room as I registered, and as I turned to gaze upon her as she passed majestically on, it flashed across my mind that it would be far better to appear before her as a fellow-guest, and find out what I wanted and tell her why I had come in that guise, rather than introduce myself as one of those young men who earn their daily bread by poking their noses into other people’s business.

Had this course been based upon any thing more solid than a pure bit of imagination, I should have found it difficult to accommodate myself so easily to circumstances. If it had been Harley instead of myself, it would have been impossible, for Harley would never have stooped to provide himself with a trunk containing fresh linen and evening-dress clothes and patent-leather pumps by a stroke of his pen. This I did, however, and that evening, having created another guest, who knew me of old and who also was acquainted with Miss Andrews, just as I had created my excellent wardrobe, I was presented.

The evening passed pleasantly enough, and I found Harley’s heroine to be all that he had told me and a great deal more besides. In fact, so greatly did I enjoy her society that I intentionally prolonged the evening to about three times its normal length—which was a very inartistic bit of exaggeration, I admit; but then I don’t pretend to be a realist, and when I sit down to write I can make my evenings as long or as short as I choose. I will say, however, that, long as my evening was, I made it go through its whole length without having recourse to such copy-making subterfuges as the description of doorknobs and chairs; and except for its unholy length, it was not at all lacking in realism. Miss Andrews fascinated me and seemed to find me rather good company, and I found myself suggesting that as the next day was Sunday she take me for a walk. From what I knew of Harley’s experience with her, I judged she’d be more likely to go if I asked her to take me instead of offering to take her. It was a subtle distinction, but with some women subtle distinctions are chasms which men must not try to overleap too vaingloriously, lest disaster overtake them. My bit of subtlety worked like a charm. Miss Andrews graciously accepted my suggestion, and I retired to my couch feeling certain that during that walk to Bald Mountain, or around the Lake, or down to the Farm, or wherever else she might choose to take me, I could do much to help poor Stuart out of the predicament into which his luckless choice of Miss Andrews as his heroine had plunged him. And I wasn’t far wrong, as the event transpired, although the manner in which it worked out was not exactly according to my schedule.

I dismissed the night with a few paragraphs; the morning, with its divine service in the parlor, went quickly and impressively; for it _is_ an impressive sight to see gathered beneath those towering cliffs a hundred or more of pleasure and health seekers of different creeds worshipping heartily and simply together, as accordantly as though they knew no differences and all men were possessed of one common religion—it was too impressive, indeed, for my pen, which has been largely given over to matters of less moment, and I did not venture to touch upon it, passing hastily over to the afternoon, when Miss Andrews appeared, ready for the stroll.

I gazed at her admiringly for a moment, and then I began:

“Is that the costume you wore”—I was going to say, “when you rejected Parker?” but I fortunately caught my error in time to pass it off—“at Newport?” I finished, with a half gasp at the narrowness of my escape; for, it must be remembered, I was supposed as yet to know nothing of that episode.

“How do you know what I wore at Newport?” she asked, quickly—so quickly that I almost feared she had found me out, after all.

“Why—ah—I read about you somewhere,” I stammered. “Some newspaper correspondent drew a picture of the scene on the promenade in the afternoon, and—ah—he had you down.”

“Oh!” she replied, arching her eyebrows; “that was it, was it? And do you waste your valuable time reading the vulgar effusions of the society reporter?”

Wasn’t I glad that I had not come as a man with a nose to project into the affairs of others—as a newspaper reporter!

“No, indeed,” I rejoined, “not generally; but I happened to see this particular item, and read it and remembered it. After all,” I added, as we came to the sylvan path that leads to the Lake—“after all, one might as well read that sort of stuff as most of the novels of the present day. The vulgar reporter may be ignorant or a boor, and all that is reprehensible in his methods, but he writes about real flesh and blood people; and, what is worse, he generally approximates the truth concerning them in his writing, which is more than can be said of the so-called realistic novel writers of the day. I haven’t read a novel in three years in which it has seemed to me that the heroine, for instance, was anything more than a marionette, with no will of her own, and ready to do at any time any foolish thing the author wanted her to do.”

Again those eyes of Miss Andrews rested on me in a manner which gave me considerable apprehension. Then she laughed, and I was at ease again.

“You are very amusing,” she said, quietly. “The most amusing of them all.”

The remark nettled me, and I quickly retorted:

“Then I have not lived in vain.”

“You do really live, then, eh?” she asked, half chaffingly, gazing at me out of the corners of her eyes in a fashion which utterly disarmed me.

“Excuse me, Miss Andrews,” I answered, “but I am afraid I don’t understand you.”

“I am afraid you don’t,” she said, the smile leaving her lips. “The fact that you are here on the errand you have charged yourself with proves that.”

“I am not aware,” I said, “that I have come on any particularly ridiculous errand. May I ask you what you mean by the expression ‘most amusing of them all’? Am I one among many, and, if so, one what among many what?”

“Your errand is a good one,” she said, gravely, “and not at all ridiculous; let me assure you that I appreciate that fact. Your question I will answer by asking another: Are you here of your own volition, or has Stuart Harley created you, as he did Messrs. Osborne, Parker, and the Professor? Are you my new hero, or what?”

The question irritated me. This woman was not content with interfering seriously with my friend’s happiness: she was actually attributing me to him, casting doubts upon my existence, and placing me in the same category with herself—a mere book creature. To a man who regards himself as being the real thing, flesh and blood, and, well, eighteen-carat flesh and blood at that, to be accused of living only a figmentary existence is too much. I retorted angrily.

“If you consider me nothing more than an idea, you do not manifest your usual astuteness,” I said.

Her reply laid me flat.

“I do not consider you anything of the sort. I never so much as associated you with anything resembling an idea. I merely asked a question,” she said. “I repeat it. Do you or do you not exist? Are you a bit of the really real or a bit of Mr. Harley’s realism? In short, are you here at Profile Lake, walking and talking with me, or are you not?”

A realizing sense of my true position crept over me. In reality I was not there talking to her, but in my den in New York writing about her. I may not be a realist, but I am truthful. I could not deceive her, so I replied, hesitatingly:

“Well, Miss Andrews, I am—no, I am not here, except in spirit.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, demurely. “And do you exist somewhere, or is this a ‘situation’ calculated to delight the American girl—with pin-money to spend on Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick’s publications?”

“I do exist,” I replied, meekly; for, I must confess it, I realized more than ever that Miss Andrews was too much for me, and I heartily wished I was well out of it. “And I alone am responsible for this. Harley is off fishing at Barnegat—and do you know why?”

“I presume he has gone there to recuperate,” she said.

“Precisely,” said I.

“After his ungentlemanly, discourteous, and wholly uncalled-for interference with my comfort at Newport,” she said, her face flushing and tears coming into her eyes, “I don’t wonder he’s prostrated.”

“I do not know to what you refer,” said I.

“I refer to the episode of the runaway horse,” she said, in wrathful remembrance of the incident. “Because I refuse to follow blindly his will, he abuses his power, places me in a false and perilous situation, from which I, a defenceless woman, must rescue myself alone and unaided. It was unmanly of him—and I will pay him the compliment of saying wholly unlike him.”

I stood aghast. Poor Stuart was being blamed for my act. He must be set right at once, however unpleasant it might be for me.

“He—he didn’t do that,” I said, slowly; “it was I. I wrote that bit of nonsense; and he—well, he was mad because I did it, and said he’d like to kill any man who ill-treated you; and he made me promise never to touch upon your life again.”

“May I ask why you did that?” she asked, and I was glad to note that there was no displeasure in her voice—in fact, she seemed to cheer up wonderfully when I told her that it was I, and not Stuart, who had subjected her to the misadventure.

“Because I was angry with you,” I answered. “You were ruining my friend with your continued acts of rebellion: he was successful; now he is ruined. He thinks of you day and night—he wants you for his heroine; he wants to make you happy, but he wants you to be happy in your own way; and when he thinks he has discovered your way, he works along that line, and all of a sudden, by some act wholly unforeseen, and, if I may say so, unforeseeable, you treat him and his work with contempt, draw yourself out of it—and he has to begin again.”

“And why have you ventured to break your word to your friend?” she asked, calmly. “Surely you are touching upon my life now, in spite of your promise.”