A Rebellious Heroine | Page 7

Andrews--the heroine. Balderstone was to write a book,
which for a time should so fascinate Miss Andrews that she would be
blind to the desirability of Osborne as a husband-elect; a book full of
the weird and thrilling, dealing with theosophy and spiritualism, and all
other "Tommyrotisms," as Harley called them, all of which, of course,
was to be the making and the undoing of Balderstone; for equally of
course, in the end, he would become crazed by the use of opium--the
inevitable end of writers of that stamp. Osborne would rescue
Marguerite from his fatal influence, and the last chapter would end with
Marguerite lying pale and wan upon her sick-bed, recovering from the
mental prostration which the influence over hers of a mind like
Balderstone's was sure to produce, holding Osborne's hand in hers, and
"smiling a sweet recognition at the lover to whose virtues she had so
long been blind." Osborne would murmur, "At last!" and the book
would close with a "first kiss," followed closely by six or eight pages of
advertisements of other publications of Messrs. Herring, Beemer, &
Chadwick. I mention the latter to show how thoroughly realistic Harley
was. He thought out his books so truly and so fully before he sat down
to write them that he seemed to see each written, printed, made and
bound before him, a concrete thing from cover to cover.
Besides Osborne and Balderstone and Miss Andrews--of whom I shall
at this time not speak at length, since the balance of this little narrative
is to be devoted to the setting forth of her peculiarities and
charms--there were a number of minor characters, not so necessary to
the story perhaps as they might have been, but interesting enough in
their way, and very well calculated to provide the material needed for
the filling out of the required number of pages. Furthermore, they
completed the picture.
"I don't want to put in three vivid figures, and leave the reader to
imagine that the rest of the world has been wiped out of existence," said
Harley, as he talked it over with me. "That is not art. There should be
three types of character in every book--the positive, the average, and
the negative. In that way you grade your story off into the rest of the
world, and your reader feels that while he may never have met the
positive characters, he has met the average or the negative, or both, and
is therefore by one of these links connected with the others, and that
gives him a personal interest in the story; and it's the reader's personal

interest that the writer is after."
So Miss Andrews was provided with a very conventional aunt--the kind
of woman you meet with everywhere; most frequently in church
squabbles and hotel parlors, however. Mrs. Corwin was this lady's
name, and she was to enact the role of chaperon to Miss Andrews. With
Mrs. Corwin, by force of circumstances, came a pair of twin children,
like those in the Heavenly Twins, only more real, and not so Sarah
Grandiose in their manners and wit.
These persons Harley booked for the steamship New York, sailing from
New York City for Southampton on the third day of July, 1895. The
action was to open at that time, and Marguerite Andrews was to meet
Horace Balderstone on that vessel on the evening of the second day out,
with which incident the interest of Harley's story was to begin. But
Harley had counted without his heroine. The rest of his cast were safely
stowed away on ship-board and ready for action at the appointed hour,
but the heroine MISSED THE STEAMER BY THREE MINUTES,
AND IT WAS ALL HARLEY'S OWN FAULT.

CHAPTER II
: A PRELIMINARY TRIAL

"I'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool To shake the head, relent,
and sigh, and yield." - "Merchant of Venice."
The extraordinary failure of Miss Andrews, cast for a star role in Stuart
Harley's tale of Love and Villany, to appear upon the stage selected by
the author for her debut, 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