A week later there came another letter from Godolphin. It was very
civil, and in its general text it did not bear out the promise of
severity in its change of address to _Dear Sir_, from the _Dear Mr.
Maxwell_ of the earlier date.
It conveyed, in as kindly terms as could have been asked, a fact which
no terms could have flattered into acceptability.
Godolphin wrote, after trying the play two nights and a matinée in
Chicago, to tell the author that he had withdrawn it because its failure
had not been a failure in the usual sense but had been a grievous
collapse, which left him no hopes that it would revive in the public
favor if it were kept on. Maxwell would be able to judge, he said, from
the newspapers he sent, of the view the critics had taken of the piece;
but this would not have mattered at all if it had not been the view of
the public, too. He said he would not pain Maxwell by repeating the
opinions which he had borne the brunt of alone; but they were such as to
satisfy him fully and finally that he had been mistaken in supposing
there was a part for him in the piece. He begged to return it to
_Maxwell_, and he ventured to send his prompt-book with the original
manuscript, which might facilitate his getting the play into other
hands.
The parcel was brought in by express while they were sitting in the
dismay caused by the letter, and took from them the hope that Godolphin
might have written from a mood and changed his mind before sending back
the piece. Neither of them had the nerve to open the parcel, which lay
upon Maxwell's desk, very much sealed and tied and labelled, diffusing a
faint smell of horses, as express packages mostly do, through the room.
Maxwell found strength, if not heart, to speak first. "I suppose I am to
blame for not going to Chicago for the rehearsals." Louise said she did
not see what that could have done to keep the play from failing, and he
answered that it might have kept Godolphin from losing courage. "You
see, he says he had to take the brunt of public opinion _alone_. He was
sore about that."
"Oh, well, if he is so weak as that, and would have had to be bolstered
up all along, you are well rid of him."
"I am certainly rid of him," Maxwell partially assented, and they both
lapsed into silence again. Even Louise could not talk. They were as if
stunned by the blow that had fallen on them, as all such blows fall,
when it was least expected, and it seemed to the victims as if they were
least able to bear it. In fact, it was a cruel reverse from the
happiness they had enjoyed since Godolphin's check came, and although
Maxwell had said that they must not count upon anything from him, except
from hour to hour, his words conveyed a doubt that he felt no more than
Louise. Now his gloomy wisdom was justified by a perfidy which she could
paint in no colors that seemed black enough. Perhaps the want of these
was what kept her mute at first; even when she began to talk she could
only express her disdain by urging her husband to send back Godolphin's
check to him. "We want nothing more to do with such a man. If he felt no
obligation to keep faith with you, it's the same as if he had sent that
money out of charity."
"Yes, I have thought of that," said Maxwell. "But I guess I shall keep
the money. He may regard the whole transaction as child's play; but I
don't, and I never did. I worked very hard on the piece, and at the
rates for space-work, merely, I earned his money and a great deal more.
If I can ever do anything with it, I shall be only too glad to give him
his three hundred dollars again."
She could see that he had already gathered spirit for new endeavor with
the play, and her heart yearned upon him in pride and fondness. "Oh, you
dear! What do you intend to do next?"
"I shall try the managers."
"Brice!" she cried in utter admiration.
He rose and said, as he took up the express package, and gave
Godolphin's letter a contemptuous push with his hand, "You can gather up
this spilt milk. Put it away somewhere; I don't want to see it or think
of it again." He cut open the package, and found the prompt-book, which
he laid aside, while he looked to see if his own copy of the play were
all there.
"You are going to begin at once?" gasped Louise.
"This instant," he said. "It will be slow enough work at the best, and
we mustn't lose time. I shall probably have to go the rounds of all the
managers, but I am not going to stop till I have gone the rounds. I
shall begin with the highest, and I sha'n't stop till I reach the
lowest."
"But when? How? You haven't thought it out."
"Yes, I have. I have been thinking it out ever since I got the play into
Godolphin's hands. I haven't been at peace about him since that day when
he renounced me in Magnolia, and certainly till we got his check there
has been nothing in his performance to restore my confidence. Come, now,
Louise, you mustn't stop me, dear," he said, for she was beginning to
cling about him. "I shall be back for lunch, and then we can talk over
what I have begun to do. If I began to talk of it before, I should lose
all heart for it. Kiss me good luck!"
She kissed him enough for all the luck in the world, and then he got
himself out of her arms while she still hardly knew what to make of it
all. He was half-way down the house-stairs, when her eye fell on the
prompt-book. She caught it up and ran out upon the landing, and screamed
down after him, "Brice, Brice! You've forgotten something."
He came flying back, breathless, and she held the book out to him. "Oh,
I don't want that," he panted, "It would damage the play with a manager
to know that Godolphin had rejected it."
"But do you think it would be quite right--quite frank--to let him take
it without telling him?"
"It will be right to show it him without telling him. It will be time
enough to tell him if he likes it."
"That is true," she assented, and then she kissed him again and let him
go; he stood a step below her, and she had to stoop a good deal; but she
went in doors, looking up to him as if he were a whole flight of steps
above her, and saying to herself that he had always been so good and
wise that she must now simply trust him in everything.
Louise still had it on her conscience to offer Maxwell reparation for
the wrong she thought she had done him when she had once decided that he
was too self-seeking and self-centred, and had potentially rejected him
on that ground. The first thing she did after they became engaged was to
confess the wrong, and give him a chance to cast her off if he wished;
but this never seemed quite reparation enough, perhaps because he
laughed and said that she was perfectly right about him, and must take
him with those faults or not at all. She now entered upon a long,
delightful review of his behavior ever since that moment, and she found
that, although he was certainly as self-centred as she had ever thought
or he had owned himself to be, self-seeking he was not, in any mean or
greedy sense. She perceived that his self-seeking, now, at least, was as
much for her sake as his own, and that it was really after all not
self-seeking, but the helpless pursuit of aims which he was born into
the world to achieve. She had seen that he did not stoop to achieve
them, but had as haughty a disdain of any but the highest means as she
could have wished him to have, and much haughtier than she could have
had in his place. If he forgot her in them, he forgot himself quite as
much, and they were equal before his ambition. In fact, this seemed to
her even more her charge than his, and if he did not succeed as with his
genius he had a right to succeed, it would be constructively her fault,
and at any rate she should hold herself to blame for it; there would be
some satisfaction in that. She thought with tender pathos how hard he
worked, and was at his writing all day long, except when she made him go
out with her, and was then often so fagged that he could scarcely speak.
She was proud of his almost killing himself at it, but she must study
more and more not to let him kill himself, and must do everything that
was humanly possible to keep up his spirits when he met with a reverse.
She accused herself with shame of having done nothing for him in the
present emergency, but rather flung upon him the burden of her own
disappointment. She thought how valiantly he had risen up under it, and
had not lost one moment in vain repining; how instantly he had collected
himself for a new effort, and taken his measures with a wise prevision
that omitted no detail. In view of all this, she peremptorily forbade
herself to be uneasy at the little reticence he was practising with
regard to Godolphin's having rejected his play; and imagined the
splendor he could put on with the manager after he had accepted it, in
telling him its history, and releasing him, if he would, from his
agreement. She imagined the manager generously saying this made no
difference whatever, though he appreciated Mr. Maxwell's candor in the
matter, and should be all the happier to make a success of it because
Godolphin had failed with it.
But she returned from this flight into the future, and her husband's
part in it, to the present and her own first duty in regard to him; and
it appeared to her, that this was to look carefully after his health in
the strain put upon it, and to nourish him for the struggle before him.
It was to be not with one manager only, but many managers, probably, and
possibly with all the managers in New York. That was what he had said
it would be before he gave up, and she remembered how flushed and
excited he looked when he said it, and though she did not believe he
would get back for lunch--the manager might ask him to read his play to
him, so that he could get just the author's notion--she tried to think
out the very most nourishing lunch she could for him. Oysters were in
season, and they were very nourishing, but they had already had them for
breakfast, and beefsteak was very good, but he hated it. Perhaps chops
would do, or, better still, mushrooms on toast, only they were not in
the market at that time of year. She dismissed a stewed squab, and
questioned a sweetbread, and wondered if there were not some kind of
game. In the end she decided to leave it to the provision man, and she
lost no time after she reached her decision in going out to consult him.
He was a bland, soothing German, and it was a pleasure to talk with him,
because he brought her married name into every sentence, and said, "No,
Mrs. Maxwell;" "Yes, Mrs. Maxwell;" "I send it right in, Mrs. Maxwell."
She went over his whole list of provisions with him, and let him
persuade her that a small fillet was the best she could offer a person
whose frame needed nourishing, while at the same time his appetite
needed coaxing. She allowed him to add a can of mushrooms, as the right
thing to go with it, and some salad; and then while he put the order up
she stood reproaching herself for it, since it formed no fit lunch, and
was both expensive and commonplace.
She was roused from her daze, when she was going to countermand the
whole stupid order by the man's saying: "What can I do for you this
morning, Mrs. Harley?" and she turned round to find at her elbow the
smouldering-eyed woman of the bathing-beach. She lifted her heavy lids
and gave Louise a dull glance, which she let a sudden recognition burn
through for a moment and then quenched. But in that moment the two women
sealed a dislike that had been merely potential before. Their look said
for each that the other was by nature, tradition, and aspiration
whatever was most detestable in their sex.
Mrs. Harley, whoever she was, under a name that Louise electrically
decided to be fictitious, seemed unable to find her voice at first in
their mutual defiance, and she made a pretence of letting her strange
eyes rove about the shop before she answered. Her presence was so
repugnant to Louise that she turned abruptly and hurried out of the
place without returning the good-morning which the German sent after
her with the usual addition of her name. She resented it now, for if it
was not tantamount to an introduction to that creature, it was making
her known to her, and Louise wished to have no closer acquaintance with
her than their common humanity involved. It seemed too odious to have
been again made aware that they were inhabitants of the same planet, and
the anger that heaved within her went out in a wild flash of resentment
towards her husband for having forever fixed that woman in her
consciousness with a phrase. If it had not been for that, she would not
have thought twice of her when they first saw her, and she would not
have known her when they met again, and at the worst would merely have
been harassed with a vague resemblance which would never have been
verified.
She had climbed the stairs to their apartment on the fourth floor, when
she felt the need to see more, know more, of this hateful being so
strong upon her, that she stopped with her latch-key in her door and
went down again. She did not formulate her intention, but she meant to
hurry back to the provision store, with the pretext of changing her
order, and follow the woman wherever she went, until she found out where
she lived; and she did not feel, as a man would, the disgrace of
dogging her steps in that way so much as she felt a fatal dread of her.
If she should be gone by the time Louise got back to the shop, she would
ask the provision man about her, and find out in that way. She stayed a
little while to rehearse the terms of her inquiry, and while she
lingered the woman herself came round the corner of the avenue and
mounted the steps where Louise stood and, with an air of custom, went on
upstairs to the second floor, where Louise heard her putting a latch-key
into the door, which then closed after her.