XIV.

During the week that passed before Maxwell heard from the manager

concerning his play, he did another letter for the _Abstract_, and, with

a journalistic acquaintance enlarged through certain Boston men who had

found places on New York papers, familiarized himself with New York ways

and means of getting news. He visited what is called the Coast, a series

of points where the latest intelligence grows in hotel bars and lobbies

of a favorable exposure, and is nurtured by clerks and barkeepers

skilled in its culture, and by inveterate gossips of their acquaintance;

but he found this sort of stuff generally telegraphed on by the

Associated Press before he reached it, and he preferred to make his

letter a lively comment on events, rather than a report of them. The

editor of the _Abstract_ seemed to prefer this, too. He wrote Maxwell

some excellent criticism, and invited him to appeal to the better rather

than the worse curiosity of his readers, to remember that this was the

principle of the _Abstract_ in its home conduct. Maxwell showed the

letter to his wife, and she approved of it all so heartily that she

would have liked to answer it herself. "Of course, Brice," she said,

"it's _you_ he wants, more than your news. Any wretched reporter could

give him that, but you are the one man in the world who can give him

your mind about it."

"Why not say universe?" returned Maxwell, but though he mocked her he

was glad to believe she was right, and he was proud of her faith in him.

In another way this was put to proof more than once during the week, for

Louise seemed fated to meet Mrs. Harley on the common stairs now when

she went out or came in. It was very strange that after living with her

a whole month in the house and not seeing her, she should now be seeing

her so much. Mostly she was alone, but sometimes she was with an elderly

woman, whom Louise decided at one time to be her mother, and at another

time to be a professional companion. The first time she met them

together she was sure that Mrs. Harley indicated her to the chaperon,

and that she remembered her from Magnolia, but she never looked at

Louise, any more than Louise looked at her, after that.

She wondered if Maxwell ever met her, but she was ashamed to ask him,

and he did not mention her. Only once when they were together did they

happen to encounter her, and then he said, quite simply, "I think she's

certainly an actress. That public look of the eyes is unmistakable.

Emotional parts, I should say."

Louise forced herself to suggest, "You might get her to let you do a

play for her."

"I doubt if I could do anything unwholesome enough for her."

At last the summons they were expecting from Grayson came, just after

they had made up their minds to wait another week for it.

Louise had taken the letter from the maid, and she handed it to Maxwell

with a gasp at sight of the Argosy theatre address printed in the corner

of the envelope. "I know it's a refusal."

"If you think that will make it an acceptance," he had the hardihood to

answer, "it won't. I've tried that sort of thing too often;" and he tore

open the letter.

It was neither a refusal nor an acceptance, and their hopes soared

again, hers visibly, his secretly, to find it a friendly confession that

the manager had not found time to read the play until the night before,

and a request that Maxwell would drop in any day between twelve and one,

which was rather a leisure time with him, and talk it over.

"Don't lose an instant, dear!" she adjured him.

"It's only nine o'clock," he answered, "and I shall have to lose several

instants."

"That is so," she lamented; and then they began to canvas the probable

intention of the manager's note. She held out passionately to the end

for the most encouraging interpretation of it, but she did not feel that

it would have any malign effect upon the fact for him to say, "Oh, it's

just a way of letting me down easy," and it clearly gave him great heart

to say so.

When he went off to meet his fate, she watched him, trembling, from the

window; as she saw him mounting the elevated steps, she wondered at his

courage; she had given him all her own.

The manager met him with "Ah, I'm glad you came soon. These things fade

out of one's mind so, and I really want to talk about your play. I've

been very much interested in it."

Maxwell could only bow his head and murmur something about being very

glad, very, very glad, with a stupid iteration.

"I suppose you know, as well as I do, that it's two plays, and that it's

only half as good as if it were one."

The manager wheeled around from his table, and looked keenly at the

author, who contrived to say, "I think I know what you mean."

"You've got the making of the prettiest kind of little comedy in it, and

you've got the making of a very strong tragedy. But I don't think your

oil and water mix, exactly," said Grayson.

"You think the interest of the love-business will detract from the

interest of the homicide's fate?"

"And vice versa. Excuse me for asking something that I can very well

understand your not wanting to tell till I had read your play. Isn't

this the piece Godolphin has been trying out West?"

"Yes, it is," said Maxwell. "I thought it might prejudice you against

it, if--"

"Oh, that's all right. Why have you taken it from him?"

Maxwell felt that he could make up for his want of earlier frankness

now. "I didn't take it from him; he gave it back to me."

He sketched the history of his relation to the actor, and the manager

said, with smiling relish, "Just like him, just like Godolphin." Then

he added, "I'll tell you, and you mustn't take it amiss. Godolphin may

not know just why he gave the piece up, and he probably thinks it's

something altogether different, but you may depend upon it the trouble

was your trying to ride two horses in it. Didn't you feel that it was a

mistake yourself?"

"I felt it so strongly at one time that I decided to develop the

love-business into a play by itself and let the other go for some other

time. My wife and I talked it over. We even discussed it with Godolphin.

He wanted to do Atland. But we all backed out simultaneously, and went

back to the play as it stood."

"Godolphin saw he couldn't make enough of Atland," said the manager, as

if he were saying it to himself. "Well, you may be sure he feels now

that the character which most appeals to the public in the play is

Salome."

"He felt that before."

"And he was right. Now, I will tell you what you have got to do. You

have either got to separate the love-business from the rest of the play

and develop it into a comedy by itself--"

"That would mean a great deal of work, and I am rather sick of the whole

thing."

"Or," the manager went on without minding Maxwell, "you have got to cut

the part of Salome, and subordinate it entirely to Haxard"--Maxwell made

a movement of impatience and refusal, and the manager finished--"or else

you have got to treat it frankly as the leading part in the piece, and

get it into the hands of some leading actress."

"Do you mean," the author asked, "that you--or any manager--would take

it if that were done?"

Grayson looked a little unhappy. "No, that isn't what I mean, exactly. I

mean that as it stands, no manager would risk it, and that as soon as an

actor had read it, he would see, as Godolphin must have seen from the

start, that Haxard was a subordinate part. What you want to do is to get

it in the hands of some woman who wants to star, and would take the road

with it." The manager expatiated at some length on the point, and then

he stopped, and sat silent, as if he had done with the subject.

Maxwell perceived that the time had come for him to get up and go away.

"I'm greatly obliged to you for all your kindness, Mr. Grayson, and I

won't abuse your patience any further. You've been awfully good to me,

and--" He faltered, in a dejection which he could not control. Against

all reason, he had hoped that the manager would have taken his piece

just as it stood, and apparently he would not have taken it in any

event.

"You mustn't speak of that," said the manager. "I wish you would let me

see anything else you do. There's a great deal that's good in this

piece, and I believe that a woman who would make it her battle-horse

could make it go."

Maxwell asked, with melancholy scorn, "But you don't happen to know any

leading lady who is looking round for a battle-horse?"

The manager seemed trying to think. "Yes, I do. You wouldn't like her

altogether, and I don't say she would be the ideal Salome, but she would

be, in her way, effective; and I know that she wants very much to get a

play. She hasn't been doing anything for a year or two but getting

married and divorced, but she made a very good start. She used to call

herself Yolande Havisham; I don't suppose it was her name; and she had a

good deal of success in the West; I don't think she's ever appeared in

New York. I believe she was of quite a good Southern family; the

Southerners all are; and I hear she has money."

"Godolphin mentioned a Southern girl for the part," said Maxwell. "I

wonder if--"

"Very likely it's the same one. She does emotional leads. She and

Godolphin played together in California, I believe. I was trying to

think of her married name--or her unmarried name--"

Some one knocked at the door, and the young man put his head in, with

what Maxwell fancied a preconcerted effect, and gave the manager a card.

He said, "All right; bring him round," and he added to Maxwell, "Shall I

send your play--"

"No, no, I will take it," and Maxwell carried it away with a heavier

heart than he had even when he got it back from Godolphin. He did not

know how to begin again, and he had to go home and take counsel with his

wife as to the next step.

He could not bear to tell her of his disappointment, and it was harder

still to tell her of the kind of hope the manager had held out to him.

He revolved a compromise in his mind, and when they sat down together he

did not mean to conceal anything, but only to postpone something; he did

not clearly know why. He told her the alternatives the manager had

suggested, and she agreed with him they were all impossible.

"Besides," she said, "he doesn't promise to take the play, even if you

do everything to a 't.' Did he ask you to lunch again?"

"No, that seemed altogether a thing of the past."

"Well, let us have ours, and then we can go into the Park, and forget

all about it for a while, and perhaps something new will suggest

itself."

That was what they did, but nothing new suggested itself. They came home

fretted with their futile talk. There seemed nothing for Maxwell to do

but to begin the next day with some other manager.

They found a note from Grayson waiting Maxwell. "Well, you open it," he

said, listlessly, to his wife, and in fact he felt himself at that

moment physically unable to cope with the task, and he dreaded any

fluctuation of emotion that would follow, even if it were a joyous one.

"What does this mean, Brice?" demanded his wife, with a terrible

provisionality in her tone, as she stretched out the letter to him, and

stood before him where he lounged in the cushioned window-seat.

Grayson had written: "If you care to submit your play to Yolande

Havisham, you can easily do so. I find that her address is the same as

yours. Her name is Harley. But I was mistaken about the divorce. It was

a death."

Maxwell lay stupidly holding the note before him.

"Will you tell me what it means?" his wife repeated. "Or why you didn't

tell me before, if you meant to give your play to that creature?"

"I don't mean to give it to her," said Maxwell, doggedly. "I never did,

for an instant. As for not telling you that Grayson had suggested

it--well, perhaps I wished to spare myself a scene like the present."

"Do you think I will believe you?"

"I don't think you will insult me. Why shouldn't you believe I am

telling you the truth?"

"Because--because you didn't tell me at once."

"That is nonsense, and you know it. If I wanted to keep this from you,

it was to spare you the annoyance I can't help now, and because the

thing was settled in my mind as soon as Grayson proposed it."

"Then, why has he written to you about it?"

"I suppose I didn't say it was settled."

"Suppose? Don't you _know_ whether you did?"

"Come, now, Louise! I am not on the witness-stand, and I won't be

cross-questioned. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What is the

matter with you? Am I to blame because a man who doesn't imagine your

dislike of a woman that you never spoke to suggests her taking part in a

play that she probably wouldn't look at? You're preposterous! Try to

have a little common-sense!" These appeals seemed to have a certain

effect with his wife; she looked daunted; but Maxwell had the misfortune

to add, "One would think you were jealous of the woman."

"_Now_ you are insulting _me_!" she cried. "But it's a part of the

vulgarity of the whole business. Actors, authors, managers, you're all

alike."

Maxwell got very pale. "Look out, Louise!" he warned her.

"I _won't_ look out. If you had any delicacy, the least delicacy in the

world, you could imagine how a woman who had given the most sacred

feelings of her nature to you for your selfish art would loathe to be

represented by such a creature as that, and still not be jealous of her,

as you call it! But I am justly punished! I might have expected it."

The maid appeared at the door and said something, which neither of them

could make out at once, but which proved to be the question whether Mrs.

Maxwell had ordered the dinner.

"No, I will go--I was just going out for it," said Louise. She had in

fact not taken off her hat or gloves since she came in from her walk,

and she now turned and swept out of the room without looking at her

husband. He longed to detain her, to speak some kindly or clarifying

word, to set himself right with her, to set her right with herself; but

the rage was so hot in his heart that he could not. She came back to the

door a moment, and looked in. "_I_ will do _my_ duty."

"It's rather late," he sneered, "but if you're very conscientious, I

dare say we shall have dinner at the usual time."

He did not leave the window-seat, and it was as if the door had only

just clashed to after her when there came a repeated and violent ringing

at the bell, so that he jumped up himself, to answer it, without waiting

for the maid.

"Your wife--your wife!" panted the bell-boy, who stood there. "She's

hurt herself, and she's fainted."

"My wife? Where--how?" He ran down stairs after the boy, and in the

hallway on the ground floor he found Louise stretched upon the marble

pavement, with her head in the lap of a woman, who was chafing her

hands. He needed no look at this woman's face to be sure that it was the

woman of his wife's abhorrence, and he felt quite as sure that it was

the actress Yolande Havisham, from the effective drama of her

self-possession.

"Don't be frightened. Your wife turned her foot on the steps here. I

was coming into the house, and caught her from falling. It's only a

swoon." She spoke with the pseudo-English accent of the stage, but with

a Southern slip upon the vowels here and there. "Get some water,

please."

The hall-boy came running up the back stairs with some that he had gone

to get, and the woman bade Maxwell sprinkle his wife's face. But he

said: "No--you," and he stooped and took his wife's head into his own

hands, so that she might not come to in the lap of Mrs. Harley; in the

midst of his dismay he reflected how much she would hate that. He could

hardly keep himself from being repellant and resentful towards the

woman. In his remorse for quarrelling with Louise, it was the least

reparation he could offer her. Mrs. Harley, if it were she, seemed not

to notice his rudeness. She sprinkled Louise's face, and wiped her

forehead with the handkerchief she dipped in the water; but this did not

bring her out of her faint, and Maxwell began to think she was dead, and

to feel that he was a murderer. With a strange æsthetic vigilance he

took note of his sensations for use in revising Haxard.

The janitor of the building had somehow arrived, and Mrs. Harley said:

"I will go for a doctor, if you can get her up to your apartment;" and

she left Louise with the two men.

The janitor, a burly Irishman, lifted her in his arms, and carried her

up the three flights of steps; Maxwell followed, haggardly, helplessly.