A Rebellious Heroine | Page 6

with it something of value to him in
his work.
So it was upon this May morning. For an hour or two Harley lay
quiescent, apparently gazing out of his flat window over the
uninspiring chimney-pots of the City of New York, at the equally
uninspiring Long Island station on the far side of the East River. It was
well for him that his eye was able to see, and yet not see: forgetfulness
of those smoking chimney-pots, the red-zincked roofs, the flapping
under-clothing of the poorer than he, hung out to dry on the tenement
tops, was essential to the construction of such a story as Messrs.
Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick had in mind; and Harley successfully
forgot them, and, coming back to consciousness, brought with him the
dramatis personae of his story--and, taken as a whole, they were an
interesting lot. The hero was like most of those gentlemen who live
their little lives in the novels of the day, only Harley had modified his
accomplishments in certain directions. Robert Osborne--such was his
name--was not the sort of man to do impossible things for his heroine.
He was not reckless. He was not a D'Artagnan lifted from the time of
Louis the Fourteenth to the dull, prosaic days of President Faure. He
was not even a Frenchman, but an essentially American American, who
desires to know, before he does anything, why he does it, and what are
his chances of success. I am not sure that if he had happened to see her
struggling in the ocean he would have jumped in to rescue the young
woman to whom his hand was plighted--I do not speak of his heart, for
I am not Harley, and I do not know whether or not Harley intended that
Osborne should be afflicted with so inconvenient an organ--I am not
sure, I say, that if he had seen his best-beloved struggling in the ocean
Osborne would have jumped in to rescue her without first stopping to
remove such of his garments as might impede his progress back to land
again. In short, he was not one of those impetuous heroes that we read

about so often and see so seldom; but, taken altogether, he was
sufficiently attractive to please the American girl who might be
expected to read Harley's book; for that was one of the stipulations of
Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick when they made their verbal
agreement with Harley.
"Make it go with the girls, Harley," Mr. Chadwick had said. "Men
haven't time to read anything but the newspapers in this country. Hit
the girls, and your fortune is made."
Harley didn't exactly see how his fortune was going to be made on the
best terms of Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, even if he hit the
girls with all the force of a battering-ram, but he promised to keep the
idea in mind, and remained in his trance a trifle longer than might
otherwise have been necessary, endeavoring to select the
unquestionably correct hero for his story, and Osborne was the result.
Osborne was moderately witty. His repartee smacked somewhat of the
refined comic paper--that is to say, it was smart and cynical, and not
always suited to the picture; but it wasn't vulgar or dull, and his
personal appearance was calculated to arouse the liveliest interest. He
was clean shaven and clean cut. He looked more like a modern ideal of
infallible genius than Byron, and had probably played football and the
banjo in college--Harley did not go back that far with him--all of which,
it must be admitted, was pretty well calculated to assure the fulfilment
of Harley's promise that the man should please the American girl. Of
course the story was provided with a villain also, but he was a villain of
a mild type. Mild villany was an essential part of Harley's literary creed,
and this particular person was not conceived in heresy. His name was to
have been Horace Balderstone, and with him Harley intended to
introduce a lively satire on the employment, by certain contemporary
writers, of the supernatural to produce dramatic effects. Balderstone
was of course to be the rival of Osborne. In this respect Harley was
commonplace; to his mind the villain always had to be the rival of the
hero, just as in opera the tenor is always virtuous at heart if not
otherwise, and the baritone a scoundrel, which in real life is not an
invariable rule by any means. Indeed, there have been many instances
in real life where the villain and the hero have been on excellent terms,
and to the great benefit of the hero too. But in this case Balderstone
was to follow in the rut, and become the rival of Osborne for the hand

of Marguerite