“I’ll promise anything,” I said, meekly.
“Don’t ever try anything of the sort again,” he went on, gravely. “If you had succeeded in writing that story, and subjected her to all that horror, I should never have spoken to you again. As it is, I realize that what you did was out of the kindness of your heart, prompted by a desire to be of service to me, and I’m just as much obliged as I can be, only I don’t want any assistance.”
“Until you ask me to, Stuart,” I replied, “I’ll never write another line about her; but you’d better keep very mum about her yourself, or get her copyrighted. The way she upset that horse on Osborne, completely obliterating him, and at the same time getting out of the way of that little simian Count, in spite of all I could do to place her under obligations to both of them, was what the ancients would have called a caution. She has made a slave of me forever, and I venture to predict that if you don’t hurry up and get her into a book, somebody else will; and whoever does will make a name for himself alongside of which that of Smith will sink into oblivion.”
“Count on me for that,” said he. “‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ and I don’t intend to stop climbing just because I fear a few more falls.”
VI
ANOTHER CHAPTER FROM HARLEY
“Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll have her,—but I will not keep her long.”—“Richard III.”
There was no doubt about it that Harley, true to his purpose, was making a good fight to conquer without compulsion, and appreciated as much as I the necessity of reducing his heroine to concrete form as speedily as possible, lest some other should prove more successful, and so deprive him of the laurels for which he had worked so hard and suffered so much. In his favor was his disposition. He was a man of great determination, and once he set about doing something he was not an easy man to turn aside, and now that, for the first time in his life, he found himself baffled at every point, and by a heroine of no very great literary importance, he became more determined than ever.
“I’ll conquer yet,” he said to me, a week or so later; but the weariness with which he spoke made me fear that victory was afar off.
“I’ve no doubt of it—ultimately,” I answered, to encourage him; “but don’t you think you’ll stand a better chance if you let her rest for a while, and then steal in upon her unawares, and catch her little romance as it flies? She is apparently nerved up against you now, and the more conscious she is of your efforts to put her on paper, the more she will rebel. In fact, her rebelliousness will become more and more a matter of whim than of principle, unless you let up on her for a little while. Half of her opposition now strikes me as obstinacy, and the more you try to break her spirit, even though you do it gently, the more stubborn will she become. Put this book aside for a few weeks anyhow. Why not tackle something else? You’d do better work, too, after a little variety.”
“This must be finished by September 1st, that’s why not,” said Stuart. “I’ve promised Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick to send them the completed manuscript by that time. Besides, no heroine of mine shall ever say that she swerved me from doing what I have set about doing. It is now or never with Marguerite Andrews.”