A Book o' Nine Tales Part 29

"Is her heroine named May?" I interrupted in astonishment; "why, then, she must have seen my copy; or," I added, a new thought striking me, "she must have got the name in the same way I did. I took the t.i.tle of the story and the name of the heroine from a line of Swinburne, and--"

"And," interrupted the editor in turn, catching up the ma.n.u.script before him, "so did she."

And he showed me, written at the head of the page:--

"If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May."

"Well," I remarked, with a not unnatural mingling of philosophy and annoyance, "it is all of a piece with my theory that ideas are in the air, and belong, like wild geese, to whoever catches them first; but it is vexatious, when I captured a fancy that particularly pleased me, to find that some woman or other has been smart enough to get salt on its tail-feathers before I did."

Mr. Lane smiled at my desperate air, and at that moment his little office-boy, whom I particularly detest because of the catlike stillness and suddenness of his movements, silently produced first himself and then a card.

"'Agnes Graham,'" read Mr. Lane. "Here is your rival to speak for herself. I hope you don't mind seeing her?"

"Oh, by no means," I replied rather ungraciously. "Let us see what she is like, and what she will have to say about this puzzle."

The name was not wholly new to me, as I had seen it signed to various magazine articles, concerning which at this moment I had only the most vague and general idea. I was sitting with my back to the door, and in rising I still kept my face half turned away from the lady who entered, but I saw the reflection of her face in a mirror opposite without any sense of recognition. As she advanced a step or two, however, and half pa.s.sed me, I knew her. The delicate ear, the fine sweep of the neck, the knot of golden brown hair, were all familiar. It was the lady who had sat before me in the cars from New York on that April day.

As she turned in recognition of Mr. Lane's introduction, a faint flush seemed to show that she too recognized me, although I was unable to understand how she should know me, since she certainly had not turned her head once in the entire journey. I set it down to pure feminine intuition, not having wholly freed myself from that masculine superst.i.tion which regards woman's instinct as a sort of supernatural clairvoyance.

My sensations on discovering her ident.i.ty were not wholly unlike those of a man who inadvertently touches a charged Leyden jar.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "what a psychological conundrum, or whatever you choose to call it. The whole matter is as plain to me now as daylight."

"Well?" Mr. Lane asked, while Miss Graham regarded me with an air which seemed to question whether my insanity were of a dangerous type.

"Pardon me, Miss Graham, if I cross-question you a little," I went on, becoming somewhat excited. "You came from New York on the morning train on Wednesday, the fifteenth--no, the sixteenth of last April, did you not?"

"Yes," she answered, her color again a trifle heightened, but her appearance being rather that of perplexity than of self-consciousness.

"And on the way you read Swinburne till you came to the line,

'If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May,'

and it occurred to you what a capital name for a story 'April's Lady'

would be?"

"Yes," she repeated; and then, with a yet more puzzled air, she turned to Mr. Lane to ask, "Is this mind-reading?"

"I'm sure I don't know," returned he. "Mr. Gray can best tell what it is."

"And the rest of the way to Boston," I continued, ignoring the interruption, "you were elaborating your story. You took the heroine's name from the same line, and had a pun at the climax about the hero's becoming 'lord of May.'"

"No," Miss Graham retorted, beginning to enter into the spirit of the situation. "I deny the pun, although I acknowledge the rest. The pun I didn't even think of."

"Well, you see I haven't read your ma.n.u.script, but I own I fell so low that I put in the pun myself. At least the old gentleman with a scar on his cheek, who sat in the corner of the car, gave you hints for--"

"The uncle," broke in Miss Graham, with a gleeful laugh at the remembrance of the oddity of the old gentleman's appearance. "But how in the world did you know?"

"Oh, he did me. We evidently had the same mental experience; which proves, I suppose, that we are literary Corsican brothers or something of the sort."

"But the great question to be settled is," Mr. Lane observed, bringing in, after some further talk, the editorial consideration, "whose story this really is."

"Miss Graham's, by all means," I said instantly. "Hers was first in the field, and if I hadn't impertinently looked over her shoulder, I shouldn't have had any share in it whatever."

Miss Graham laughed, showing a delicious dimple, and Mr. Lane, who evidently had no desire to settle the question under discussion, looked inquiringly at her for a response to my words.

"You are very generous, Mr. Gray," she answered; "but in the first place my story has never been accepted for the 'Dark Red,' and in the second, as the stories really ought to stand on their merits, I shall certainly not venture to put mine into compet.i.tion with yours, but prefer to pocket my ma.n.u.script and retire."

"I fear," was my reply, "that I discover rather a tendency to sarcasm in what you say than any true humility. Of course the first point is one for Mr. Lane to settle."

The editor cleared his throat with some embarra.s.sment, but before he found the words he wanted, Miss Graham spoke again.

"I had not the slightest idea of being sarcastic, for, of course, it goes without saying that your story is better than mine; but since you choose to take it in that way, I am willing to leave the whole matter to Mr. Lane. He is at least the only person who has read both ma.n.u.scripts."

"Really," Mr. Lane said, thus pushed into a corner, "I am extremely sorry to find myself placed in so trying a situation. There are points in which each story excels, and the best result would undoubtedly be attained by welding them together."

"If that could be done," said Miss Graham, thoughtfully.

"Now, in Mr. Gray's version," he continued, "the heroine is more attractive and real."

"That," I interpolated, trying to cover the awkwardness I felt by a jest, "is the first time in all my literary experience that the character I thought best in a story I'd written has seemed so to the editorial mind."

The dark eyes of my neighbor gave me a bright, brief glance, but whether of sympathy with my statement or of contempt for the feebleness of my attempts at being jocose, I could not determine.

"While Miss Graham," went on the editorial comment, "has decidedly the advantage in her hero."

Miss Graham flushed slightly, but offered no remark in reply to this opinion beyond a smile which seemed one of frank pleasure. We sat in silence a moment, a not unnatural hesitancy preventing my making a proposition which had presented itself to my mind.

"If it will not seem impertinent to Miss Graham," I ventured at length, "I would propose that we really do try the experiment of collaboration on this story. I have never worked with anybody, but I promise to be tractable; and the thing had so odd a beginning that it is a pity to thwart the evident intention of destiny that we shall both have a hand in it."

To this proposition the lady at first returned a decided and even peremptory negative; but my persuasions, seconded by those of Mr. Lane, who was partly curious and partly anxious to escape from the necessity of arbitrating in the matter, in the end induced her to alter her decision.

The result of the interview was that when we left the office of the "Dark Red" Miss Graham had my ma.n.u.script and I hers, and that an appointment had been made for my calling upon her with a view to an interchange of comments and criticisms.

Upon the appointed evening I presented myself at the home of Miss Graham, and almost without the usual conventionalities concerning the weather we proceeded to discuss the stories. We began with great outward suavity and courtesy the exchange of compliments, which were so obviously formal and perfunctory that in a moment more we looked into each other's faces and burst into laughter which if hardly polite was at least genuine.

"Come," I said, "now the ice is broken and we can say what we really think; and I must be pardoned for saying that that hero of yours, whom Mr. Lane praised, is the most insufferable cad I've encountered this many a day. He can't be set off against that lovely girl in my story.

Why, the truth is, Miss Graham, I meant her to be what I fancied you might be. She's the ideal I built up from seeing you in the cars."

"I must say," Miss Graham retorted with spirit, "that if you meant that pert heroine of yours for _me_, I am anything but complimented."

"It is a pity, then, that you didn't intend your hero for me, and we should have been more than quits."

She blushed so vividly that a sudden light burst upon me.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "he does have my eyes and beard; but you didn't see me. It isn't possible--"

"But it is," interrupted she, desperately. "With a mirror in the end of the car directly before me all the way from New York, do you suppose I could help seeing you! I'm sure you kept your eyes on me steadily enough to give me a good excuse."