Chapter VI: Another Chapter from Harley - Page 2

"What are you up to? Come back here. I want to see you."

His manner was cheerful, but I could see that the cheerfulness was assumed. The color had completely left his cheeks, and great rings under his eyes betokened weariness of spirit.

"I didn't want to disturb you," said I, returning. "You seem to have your pen on a clear track, with full steam up."

"I had," he said, quietly. "I was just finishing up that Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick business."

"Aha!" I cried, grasping his hand and shaking it. "I congratulate you. Success at last, eh?"

"Well, I've got something done--and that's it," he said, and he tossed the letter block upon which he had been writing across the table to me. "Read that, and tell me what you think of it."

I read it over carefully. It was a letter to Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick, in which Stuart asked to be relieved of the commission he had undertaken:

"I find myself utterly unable to complete the work in the stipulated time," he wrote, "for reasons entirely beyond my control. Nor can I at this writing say with any degree of certainty when I shall be able to finish the story. I have made constant and conscientious effort to carry out my agreement with you, but fruitlessly, and I beg that you will relieve me of the obligation into which I entered at the signing of our contract. Of course I could send you something long enough to cover the required space--words come easy enough for that-- but the result would be unsatisfactory to you and injurious to me were I to do so. Please let me hear from you, releasing me from the obligation, at your earliest convenience, as I am about to leave town for a fortnight's rest. Regretting my inability to serve you at this time, and hoping soon to be able to avail myself of your very kind offer, I beg to remain,

"Yours faithfully,
"STUART HARLEY."

"Oh!" said I. "You've finished it, then, by--"

"By giving it up," said he, sadly.

"It's the strangest thing that ever happened to me, but that girl is impossible. I take up my pen intending to say that she did this, and before I know it she does that. I cannot control my story at all, nor can I perceive in what given direction she will go. If I could, I could arrange my scenario to suit, but as it is, I cannot go on. It may come later, but it won't come now, and I'm going to give her up, and go down to Barnegat to fish for ten days. I hate to give the book up, though," he added, tapping the table with his pen-holder reflectively. "Chadwick's an awfully good fellow, and his firm is one of the best in the country, liberal and all that, and here at my first opportunity to get on their list, I'm completely floored. It's beastly hard luck, I think."