The Maxwells went to New York early in October, and took a little
furnished flat for the winter on the West Side, between two streets
among the Eighties. It was in a new apartment-house, rather fine on the
outside, and its balconies leaned caressingly towards the tracks of the
Elevated Road, whose trains steamed back and forth under them night and
day. At first they thought it rather noisy, but their young nerves were
strong, and they soon ceased to take note of the uproar, even when the
windows were open.
The weather was charming, as the weather of the New York October is apt
to be. The month proved much milder than September had been at Magnolia.
They were not very far from Central Park, and they went for whole
afternoons into it. They came to have such a sense of ownership in one
of the seats in the Ramble, that they felt aggrieved when they found
anybody had taken it, and they resented other people's intimacy with
the squirrels, which Louise always took a pocketful of nuts to feed; the
squirrels got a habit of climbing into her lap for them. Sometimes
Maxwell hired a boat and rowed her lazily about on the lake, while he
mused and she talked. Sometimes, to be very lavish, they took places in
the public carriage which plied on the drives of the Park, and went up
to the tennis-grounds beyond the reservoirs, and watched the players, or
the art-students sketching the autumn scenery there. They began to know,
without acquaintance, certain attached or semi-attached couples; and no
doubt they passed with these for lovers themselves, though they felt a
vast superiority to them in virtue of their married experience; they
looked upon them, though the people were sometimes their elders, as very
young things, who were in the right way, but were as yet deplorably
ignorant how happy they were going to be. They almost always walked back
from these drives, and it was not so far but they could walk over to the
North River for the sunset before their dinner, which they had late when
they did that, and earlier when they did not do it. Dinner was rather a
matter of caprice with them. Sometimes they dined at a French or Italian
_table d'hôte_; sometimes they foraged for it before they came in from
their sunset, or their afternoon in the park. When dinner consisted
mainly of a steak or chops, with one of the delicious salads their
avenue abounded in, and some improvisation of potatoes, and coffee
afterward, it was very easy to get it up in half an hour. They kept one
maid, who called herself a Sweden's girl, and Louise cooked some of the
things herself. She did not cook them so well as the maid, but Maxwell
never knew what he was eating, and he thought it all alike good.
In their simple circumstances, Louise never missed the affluence that
had flattered her whole life in her father's house. It seemed to her as
if she had not lived before her marriage--as if she had always lived as
she did now. She made the most of her house-keeping, but there was not a
great deal of that, at the most. She knew some New York people, but it
was too early yet for them to be back to town, and, besides, she doubted
if she should let them know where she was; for society afflicted
Maxwell, and she could not care for it unless he did. She did not wish
to do anything as yet, or be anything apart from him; she was timid
about going into the street without him. She wished to be always with
him, and always talking to him; but it soon came to his imploring her
not to talk when she was in the room where he was writing; and he often
came to the table so distraught that the meal might have passed without
a word but for her.
He valued her all she could possibly have desired in relation to his
work, and he showed her how absolutely he rested upon her sympathy, if
not her judgment, in it. He submitted everything to her, and forbore,
and changed, and amended, and wrote and rewrote at her will; or when he
revolted, and wrote on in defiance of her, he was apt to tear the work
up. He destroyed a good deal of good literature in this way, and more
than once it happened that she had tacitly changed her mind and was of
his way of thinking when it was too late. In view of such a chance she
made him promise that he would always show her what he had written, even
when he had written wholly against her taste and wish. He was not to let
his pride keep him from doing this, though, as a general thing, she took
a good deal of pride in his pride, having none herself, as she believed.
Whether she had or not, she was very wilful, and rather prepotent; but
she never bore malice, as the phrase is, when she got the worst of
anything, though she might have been quite to blame. She had in all
things a high ideal of conduct, which she expected her husband to live
up to when she was the prey of adverse circumstances. At other times
she did her share of the common endeavor.
All through the month of October he worked at the new play, and from
time to time they heard from the old play, which Godolphin was still
giving, here and there, in the West. He had not made any reply to
Maxwell's letter of regret that he could not come to the rehearsals at
Chicago, but he sent the notices marked in the newspapers, at the
various points where he played, and the Maxwells contented themselves as
they could with these proofs of an unbroken amity. They expected
something more direct and explicit from him when he should get to
Chicago, where his engagement was to begin the first week in November.
In the meantime the kind of life they were living had not that stressful
unreality for Louise that it had for Maxwell on the economic side. For
the first time his regular and serious habits of work did not mean the
earning of money, but only the chance of earning money. Ever since he
had begun the world for himself, and he had begun it very early, there
had been some income from his industry; however little it was, it was
certain; the salary was there for him at the end of the week when he
went to the cashier's desk. His mother and he had both done so well and
so wisely in their several ways of taking care of themselves, that
Maxwell had not only been able to live on his earnings, but he had been
able to save out of them the thousand dollars which Louise bragged of to
her father, and it was this store which they were now consuming, not
rapidly, indeed, but steadily, and with no immediate return in money to
repair the waste. The fact kept Maxwell wakeful at night sometimes, and
by day he shuddered inwardly at the shrinkage of his savings, so much
swifter than their growth, though he was generously abetted by Louise in
using them with frugality. She could always have had money from her
father, but this was something that Maxwell would not look forward to.
There could be no real anxiety for them in the situation, but for
Maxwell there was care. He might be going to get a great deal out of the
play he was now writing, but as yet it was in no form to show to a
manager or an actor; and he might be going to get a great deal out of
his old play, but so far Godolphin had made no sign that he remembered
one of the most essential of the obligations which seemed all to rest so
lightly upon him. Maxwell hated to remind him of it, and in the end he
was very glad that he never did, or that he had not betrayed the
slightest misgiving of his good faith.
One morning near the end of the month, when he was lower in his spirits
than usual from this cause, there came a letter from the editor of the
Boston _Abstract_ asking him if he could not write a weekly letter from
New York for his old newspaper. It was a temptation, and Maxwell found
it a hardship that his wife should have gone out just then to do the
marketing for the day; she considered this the duty of a wife, and she
fulfilled it often enough to keep her sense of it alive, but she much
preferred to forage with him in the afternoon; that was poetry, she
said, and the other was prose. He would have liked to talk the
proposition over with her; to realize the compliment while it was fresh,
to grumble at it a little, and to be supported in his notion that it
would be bad business just then for him to undertake a task that might
draw him away from his play too much; to do the latter well would take a
great deal of time. Yet he did not feel quite that he ought to refuse
it, in view of the uncertainties of the future, and it might even be
useful to hold the position aside from the money it would bring him; the
New York correspondent of the Boston _Abstract_ might have a claim upon
the attention of the managers which a wholly unaccredited playwright
could not urge; there was no question of their favor with Maxwell; he
would disdain to have that, even if he could get it, except by the
excellence, or at least the availability of his work.
Louise did not come in until much later than usual, and then she came in
looking very excited. "Well, my dear," she began to call out to him as
soon as the door was opened for her, "I have seen that woman again!"
"What woman?" he asked.
"You know. That smouldering-eyed thing in the bathing-dress." She added,
in answer to his stupefied gaze: "I don't mean that she was in the
bathing-dress still, but her eyes were smouldering away just as they
were that day on the beach at Magnolia."
"Oh!" said Maxwell, indifferently. "Where did you see her?"
"On the avenue, and I know she lives in the neighborhood somewhere,
because she was shopping here on the avenue, and I could have easily
followed her home if she had not taken the Elevated for down town."
"Why didn't you take it, too? It might have been a long way round, but
it would have been certain. I've been wanting you here badly. Just tell
me what you think of that."
He gave her the editor's letter, and she hastily ran it through. "I
wouldn't think of it for a moment," she said. "Were there any letters
for me?"
"It isn't a thing to be dismissed without reflection," he began.
"I thought you wanted to devote yourself entirely to the drama?"
"Of course."
"And you've always said there was nothing so killing to creative work as
any sort of journalism."
"This wouldn't take more than a day or two each week, and twenty-five
dollars a letter would be convenient while we are waiting for our cards
to turn up."
"Oh, very well! If you are so fickle as all that, _I_ don't know what to
say to you." She put the letter down on the table before him, and went
out of the room.
He tried to write, but with the hurt of what he felt her unkindness he
could not, and after a certain time he feigned an errand into their
room, where she had shut herself from him, and found her lying down.
"Are you sick?" he asked, coldly.
"Not at all," she answered. "I suppose one may lie down without being
sick, as you call it. I should say ill, myself."
"I'm so glad you're not sick that I don't care what you call it."
He was going out, when she spoke again: "I didn't know you cared
particularly, you are always so much taken up with your work. I suppose,
if you wrote those letters for the _Abstract_, you need never think of
me at all, whether I was ill or well."
"You would take care to remind me of your existence from time to time, I
dare say. You haven't the habit of suffering in silence a great deal."
"You would like it better, of course, if I had."
"A great deal better, my dear. But I didn't know that you regarded my
work as self-indulgence altogether. I have flattered myself now and then
that I was doing it for you, too."
"Oh yes, very likely. But if you had never seen me you would be doing it
all the same."
"I'm afraid so. I seem to have been made that way. I'm sorry you don't
approve. I supposed you did once."
"Oh, I do approve--highly." He left her, and she heard him getting his
hat and stick in the little hallway, as if he were going out of doors.
She called to him, "What I wonder is how a man so self-centred that he
can't look at his wife for days together, can tell whether another
woman's eyes are smouldering or not."
Maxwell paused, with his hand on the knob, as if he were going to make
some retort, but, perhaps because he could think of none, he went out
without speaking.
He stayed away all the forenoon, walking down the river along the
squalid waterside avenues; he found them in sympathy with the squalor in
himself which always followed a squabble with his wife. At the end of
one of the westward streets he found himself on a pier flanked by vast
flotillas of canal-boats. As he passed one of these he heard the sound
of furious bickering within, and while he halted a man burst from the
gangway and sprang ashore, followed by the threats and curses of a
woman, who put her head out of the hatch to launch them after him.
The incident turned Maxwell faint; he perceived that the case of this
unhappy man, who tried to walk out of earshot with dignity, was his own
in quality, if not in quantity. He felt the shame of their human
identity, and he reached home with his teeth set in a hard resolve to
bear and forbear in all things thereafter, rather than share ever again
in misery like that, which dishonored his wife even more than it
dishonored him. At the same time he was glad of a thought the whole
affair suggested to him, and he wondered whether he could get a play out
of it. This was the notion of showing the evil eventuation of good.
Their tiffs came out of their love for each other, and no other quarrels
could have the bitterness that these got from the very innermost
sweetness of life. It would be hard to show this dramatically, but if it
could be done the success would be worth all the toil it would cost.
At his door he realized with a pang that he could not submit the notion
to his wife now, and perhaps never. But the door was pulled open before
he could turn his latch-key in the lock, and Louise threw her arms round
his neck.
"Oh, dearest, guess!" she commanded between her kisses.
"Guess what?" he asked, walking her into the parlor with his arms round
her. She kept her hands behind her when he released her, and they stood
confronted.
"What should you consider the best news--or not news exactly; the best
thing--in the world?"
"Why, I don't know. Has the play been a great success in Chicago?"
"Better than that!" she shouted, and she brought an open letter from
behind her, and flourished it before him, while she went on
breathlessly: "It's from Godolphin, and of course I opened it at once,
for I thought if there was anything worrying in it, I had better find it
out while you were gone, and prepare you for it. He's sent you a check
for $300--twelve performances of the play--and he's written you the
sweetest letter in the world, and I take back everything I ever said
against him! Here, shall I read it? Or, no, you'll want to read it
yourself. Now, sit down at your desk, and I'll put it before you, with
the check on top!"
She pushed him into his chair, and he obediently read the check first,
and then took up the letter. It was dated at Chicago, and was written
with a certain histrionic consciousness, as if Godolphin enjoyed the
pose of a rising young actor paying over to the author his share of the
profits of their joint enterprise in their play. There was a list of the
dates and places of the performances, which Maxwell noted were chiefly
matinées; and he argued a distrust of the piece from this fact, which
Godolphin did not otherwise betray. He said that the play constantly
grew upon him, and that with such revision as they should be able to
give it together when he reached New York, they would have one of the
greatest plays of the modern stage. He had found that wherever he gave
it the better part of his audience was best pleased with it, and he felt
sure that when he put it on for a run the houses would grow up to it in
every way. He was going to test it for a week in Chicago; there was no
reference to his wish that Maxwell should have been present at the
rehearsals there; but otherwise Godolphin's letter was as candid as it
was cordial.
Maxwell read it with a silent joy which seemed to please his wife as
well as if he had joined her in rioting over it. She had kept the lunch
warm for him, and now she brought it in from the kitchen herself and set
it before him, talking all the time.
"Well, now we can regard it as an accomplished fact, and I shall not
allow you to feel any anxiety about it from this time forward. I
consider that Godolphin has done his whole duty by it. He has kept the
spirit of his promises if he hasn't the letter, and from this time
forward I am going to trust him implicitly, and I'm going to make you.
No more question of Godolphin in _this_ family! Don't you long to know
how it goes in Chicago? But I don't really care, for, as you say, that
won't have the slightest influence in New York; and I know it will go
here, anyway. Yes, I consider it, from this time on, an assured success.
And isn't it delightful that, as Godolphin says, it's such a favorite
with refined people?" She went on a good while to this effect, but when
she had talked herself out, Maxwell had still said so little that she
asked, "What is it, Brice?"
"Do you think we deserve it?" he returned, seriously.
"For squabbling so? Why, I suppose I was tired and overwrought, or I
shouldn't have done it."
"And I hadn't even that excuse," said Maxwell.
"Oh, yes you had," she retorted. "I provoked you. And if any one was to
blame, I was. Do you mind it so much?"
"Yes, it tears my heart. And it makes me feel so low and mean."
"Oh, how good you are!" she began, but he stopped her.
"Don't! I'm not good; and I don't deserve success. I don't feel as if
this belonged to me. I ought to send Godolphin's check back, in common
honesty, common decency." He told of the quarrel he had witnessed on the
canal-boat, and she loved him for his simple-hearted humility; but she
said there was nothing parallel in the cases, and she would not let him
think so; that it was morbid, and showed he had been overworking.
"And now," she went on, "you must write to Mr. Ricker at once and thank
him, and tell him you can't do the letters for him. Will you?"
"I'll see."
"You must. I want you to reserve your whole strength for the drama.
That's your true vocation, and it would be a sin for you to turn to the
right or left." He continued silent, and she went on: "Are you still
thinking about our scrap this morning? Well, then, I'll promise never to
begin it again. Will that do?"
"Oh, I don't know that you began it. And I wasn't thinking--I was
thinking of an idea for a play--the eventuation of good in evil--love
evolving in hate."
"That will be grand, if you can work it out. And now you see, don't you,
that there is some use in squabbling, even?"
"I suppose nothing is lost," said Maxwell. He took out his pocket-book,
and folded Godolphin's check into it.