A NORMAL HERO AND HEROINE OUT OF WORK
They sat together on a bench in the Park, far enough apart to distinguish themselves from the many other pairs who were but too obviously lovers. It could not be said quite that these two were actually lovers; but there was an air of passionate provisionality over and around them, a light such as in springtime seems to enfold the tree before it takes the positive color of bud or blossom; and, with an eye for literary material that had rarely failed him, he of the Easy Chair perceived that they were a hero and heroine of a kind which he instantly felt it a great pity he should not have met oftener in fiction of late. As he looked at them he was more and more penetrated by a delicate pathos in the fact that, such as he saw them, they belonged in their fine sort to the great host of the Unemployed. No one else might have seen it, but he saw, with that inner eye of his, which compassion suffused but did not obscure, that they were out of a job, and he was not surprised when he heard the young girl fetch a muted sigh and then say: "No, they don\'t want us any more. I don\'t understand why; it is very strange; but it is perfectly certain."
"Yes, there\'s no doubt of that," the young man returned, in a despair tinged with resentment.
She was very pretty and he was handsome, and they were both tastefully dressed, with a due deference to fashion, yet with a personal qualification of the cut and color of their clothes which, if it promised more than it could fulfil in some ways, implied a modest self-respect, better than the arrogance of great social success or worldly splendor. She could have been the only daughter of a widowed father in moderate circumstances; or an orphan brought up by a careful aunt, or a duteous sister in a large family of girls, with whom she shared the shelter of a wisely ordered, if somewhat crowded, home; or she could have been a serious student of any of the various arts and sciences which girls study now in an independence compatible with true beauty of behavior. He might have been a young lawyer or doctor or business man; or a painter or architect; or a professor in some college or a minister in charge of his first parish. What struck the observer in them and pleased him was that they seemed of that finer American average which is the best, and, rightly seen, the most interesting phase of civilized life yet known.
"I sometimes think," the girl resumed, in the silence of her companion, "that I made a mistake in my origin or my early education. It\'s a great disadvantage, in fiction nowadays, for a girl to speak grammatically, as I always do, without any trace of accent or dialect. Of course, if I had been high-born or low-born in the olden times, somewhere or other, I shouldn\'t have to be looking for a place now; or if I had been unhappily married, or divorced, or merely separated from my husband, the story-writers would have had some use for me. But I have tried always to be good and nice and lady-like, and I haven\'t been in a short story for ages."
"Is it so bad as that?" the young man asked, sadly.
"Quite. If I could only have had something askew in my heredity, I know lots of authoresses who would have jumped at me. I can\'t do anything wildly adventurous in the Middle Ages or the Revolutionary period, because I\'m so afraid; but I know that in the course of modern life I\'ve always been fairly equal to emergencies, and I don\'t believe that I should fail in case of trouble, or that if it came to poverty I should be ashamed to share the deprivations that fell to my lot. I don\'t think I\'m very selfish; I would be willing to stay in town all summer if an author wanted me, and I know I could make it interesting for his readers. I could marry an English nobleman if it was really necessary, and, if I didn\'t like to live in England because I was fond of my own country, I believe I could get him to stay here half the time with me; and that would appeal to a large class. I don\'t know whether I would care to be rescued a great deal; it would depend upon what it was from. But I could stand a great deal of pain if need be, and I hope that if it came to anything like right or wrong I should act conscientiously. In society, I shouldn\'t mind any amount of dancing or dining or teaing, and I should be willing to take my part in the lighter athletics. But," she ended, as she began, with a sigh, "I\'m not wanted."
"Yes, I see what you mean," the young man said, with a thoughtful knot between his brows. "I\'m not wanted myself, at present, in the short stories; but in the last dozen or so where I had an engagement I certainly didn\'t meet you; and it is pleasant to be paired off in a story with a heroine who has the instincts and habits of a lady. Of course, a hero is only something in an author\'s fancy, and I\'ve no right to be exacting; but it does go against me to love a girl who ropes cattle, or a woman who has a past, or a husband, or something of the kind. I always do my best for the author, but I can\'t forget that I\'m a gentleman, and it\'s difficult to win a heroine when the very idea of her makes you shudder. I sometimes wonder how the authors would like it themselves if they had to do what they expect of us in that way. They\'re generally very decent fellows, good husbands and fathers, who have married lady-like girls and wouldn\'t think of associating with a shady or ignorant person."
"The authoresses are quite as inconsistent," the professional heroine rejoined. "They wouldn\'t speak to the kind of young men whom they expect a heroine to be passionately in love with. They must know how very oddly a girl feels about people who are outside of the world she\'s been brought up in. It isn\'t enough that a man should be very noble at heart and do grand things, or save your life every now and then, or be masterful and use his giant will to make you in love with him. I don\'t see why they can\'t let one have, now and then, the kind of husbands they get for themselves. For my part, I should like always to give my heart to a normal, sensible, well-bred, conscientious, agreeable man who could offer me a pleasant home—I wouldn\'t mind the suburbs; and I could work with him and work for him till I dropped—the kind of man that the real world seems to be so full of. I\'ve never had a fair chance to show what was in me; I\'ve always been plac............