A Rebellious Heroine

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Bangs John Kendrick. A Rebellious Heroine

I. STUART HARLEY: REALIST

II. A PRELIMINARY TRIAL

III. THE RECONSTRUCTION BEGINS

IV. A CHAPTER FROM HARLEY, WITH NOTES

V. AN EXPERIMENT

VI. ANOTHER CHAPTER FROM HARLEY

VII. A BREACH OF FAITH

VIII. HARLEY RETURNS TO THE FRAY

IX. A SUMMONS NORTH

X. BY WAY OF EPILOGUE

Отрывок из книги

The extraordinary failure of Miss Andrews, cast for a star rôle in Stuart Harley’s tale of Love and Villany, to appear upon the stage selected by the author for her débût, 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 young author, she intended that he should not ignore the proprieties, even if in a sense the proprieties to which she referred did antedate the period at which his story was to open.  She was willing to appear, but it seemed to her that Stuart Harley ought to see to it that she was escorted to the scene of action with the ceremony due to one of her position.

“What does he take me for?” she asked of Mrs. Corwin, indignantly, on the eve of her departure.  “Am I a mere marionette, to obey his slightest behest, and at a moment’s notice?  Am I to dance when Stuart Harley pulls the string?”

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“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.

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