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 that he must respect them. For instance, he cannot ignore my comfort. Do you suppose that because his story is to open with my beautiful self on board that ship, I’m to be there without his making any effort to get me there? Not I! You and the children and Osborne and Balderstone may go down any way you please. You may go on the elevated railroad or on foot. You may go on the horse-cars, or you may go on the luggage-van. It is immaterial to me what you do; but when it comes to myself, Stuart Harley must provide a carriage, or I miss the boat. I don’t wish to involve you in this. You want to go, and are willing to go in his way, which simply means turning up at the right moment, with no trouble to him. From your point of view it is all right. You are anxious to go abroad, and are grateful to Mr. Harley for letting you go. For me, however, he must do differently. I have no particular desire to leave America, and if I go at all it is as a favor to him, and he must act accordingly. It is a case of carriage or no heroine. If I’m left behind, you and the rest can go along without me. I shall do very well, and it will be Mr. Harley’s own fault. It may hurt his story somewhat, but that is no concern of mine.”
“I suppose the reason why he doesn’t send a carriage is that that part of your life doesn’t appear in his story,” explained Mrs. Corwin.
“That doesn’t affect the point that he ought to send one,” said Marguerite. “He needn’t write up the episode of the ride to the pier unless he wants to, but the fact remains that it’s his duty to see me safely on board from my home, and that he shall do, or I fail him at the moment he needs me. If he is selfish enough to overlook the matter, he must suffer the consequences.”
All of which, I think, was very reasonable. No heroine likes to feel that she is called into being merely to provide copy for the person who is narrating her story; and to be impressed with the idea that the moment she is off the stage she must shift entirely for herself is too humiliating to be compatible with true heroism.
Now it so happened that in his meditations upon that opening chapter the scene of which was to be placed on board of the New York, Stuart realized that his story of Miss Andrews’s character had indeed been too superficial. He found that out at the moment he sat down to describe her arrival at the pier, as it would be in all likelihood. What would she say the moment she—the moment she what?—the moment she “emerged from the perilous stream of vehicles which crowd West Street from morning until night,” or the moment “she stepped out of the cab as it drew up at the foot of the gangway”? That was the point. How would she arrive—on foot or in a cab? Which way would she come, and at what time must she start from home? Should she come alone, or should Mrs. Corwin and the twins come with her?—or would a woman of her stamp not be likely to have an intimate friend to accompany her to the steamer? Stuart was a rapid thinker, and as he pondered over these problems it did not take him long to reach the conclusion that a cab was necessary for Miss Andrews; and that Mrs. Corwin and the twins, with Osborne and Balderstone, might get aboard in their own way. He also decided that it would be an excellent plan to have Marguerite’s old school friend Mrs. Willard accompany her to the steamer. By an equally rapid bit of thought he concluded that if the cab started from the Andrews apartment at Fifty-ninth Street and Central Park at 9.30 A.M., the trip to the pier could easily be made in an hour, which would be in ample time, since the sailing hour of the New York was eleven. Unfortunately Harley, in his hurry, forgot two or three incidents of departures generally, especially departures of women, which he should not have overlooked. It was careless of him to forget that a woman about to travel abroad wants to make herself as stunning as she possibly can on the day of departure, so that the impression she will make at the start shall be strong enough to carry her through the dowdy stage which comes, as Marguerite had intimated, on the second and third days at sea; and to expect a woman like Marguerite Andrews, who really had no responsibilities to call her up at an early hour, to be ready at 9.30 sharp, was a fatal error, unless he provided his cab with an unusually fast horse, or a pair of horses, both of which Harley neglected to do. Miss Andrews was twenty minutes late at starting the first time, and just a half-hour behind schedule time when, having rushed back to her rooms for her gloves, which in the excitement of the moment she had forgotten, she started finally for the ship. Even then all would have been well had the unfortunate author not overlooked one other vital point. Instead of sending the cab straight down Fifth Avenue, to Broadway, to Barclay Street, he sent it down Sixth, and thence through Greenwich Village, emerging at West Street at its junction with Christopher, and then the inevitable happened.
The cab was blocked!
“I had no idea it was so far,” said Marguerite, looking out of the cab window at the crowded and dirty thoroughfare.
“It’s a good mile farther yet,” replied Mrs. Willard. “I shall have just that much more of your society.”
“It looks to me,” said Marguerite, with a short laugh, as the cab came suddenly to a halt—“it looks to me as if you were likely to have more than that of it; for we are in an apparently inextricable, immovable mixture of trucks, horse-cars, and incompetent policemen, and nothing short of a miracle will get us a mile farther along in twenty minutes.”
“I do believe you are right,” said Mrs. Willard, looking at her watch anxiously. “What will you do if you miss the steamer?”
“Escape a horrid fate,” laughed Marguerite, gayly.
“Poor Mr. Harley—why, it will upset his whole story,” said Mrs. Willard.
“And save his reputation,” said Marguerite. “It wouldn’t have been real, that story,” she added. “In the first place, Balderstone couldn’t write a story that would fascinate me; he could never acquire a baleful influence over me; and, finally, I never should marry Robert Osborne under any circumstances. He’s not at all the style of man I admire. I’m willing to go along and let Mr. Harley try to work it out his way, but he will give it up as a bad idea before long—if I catch the steamer; and if I don’t, then he’ll have to modify the story. That modified, I’m willing to be his heroine.”
“But your aunt and the twins—they must be aboard by this time. They will be worried to death about you,” suggested Mrs. Willard.
“For a few moments—but Aunt Emma wanted to go, and she and the rest of them will have a good time, I’ve no doubt,” replied Miss Andrews, calmly; and here Stuart Harley’s heroine actually chuckled. “And maybe Mr. Harley can make a match between Aunt Emma and Osborne, which will suit the publishers and please the American girl,” she said, gleefully. “I almost hope we do miss it.”
And miss it they did, as I have already told you, by three minutes. As the cab
