Some people began to call, old friends of her mother, whose visit to New
York seemed to have betrayed to them the fact of Louise's presence for
the first time, and some friends of her own, who had married, and come
to New York to live, and who said they had just got back to town long
enough to learn that she was there. These all reproached her for not
having let them know sooner where she was, and they all more or less
followed up their reproaches with the invitations which she dreaded
because of Maxwell's aversion for them. But she submitted them to him,
and submitted to his refusal to go with her, and declined them. In her
heart she thought he was rather ungracious, but she did not say so,
though in two or three cases of people whom she liked she coaxed him a
little to go with her. Meeting her mother and talking over the life she
used to lead in Boston, and the life so many people were leading there
still, made her a little hungry for society; she would have liked well
enough to find herself at a dinner again, and she would have felt a
little dancing after the dinner no hardship; but she remembered the
promise she had made herself not to tease Maxwell about such things. So
she merely coaxed him, and he so far relented as to ask her why she
could not go without him, and that hurt her, and she said she never
would go without him. All the same, when there came an invitation for
lunch, from a particularly nice friend of her girlhood, she hesitated
and was lost. She had expected, somehow, that it was going to be a very
little lunch, but she found it a very large one, in the number of
people, and after the stress of accounting for her husband's failure to
come with her, she was not sorry to have it so. She inhaled with joy the
atmosphere of the flower-scented rooms; her eye dwelt with delight on
their luxurious and tasteful appointments, the belongings of her former
life, which seemed to emerge in them from the past and claim her again;
the women in their _chic_ New York costumes and their miracles of early
winter hats hailed her a long-lost sister by every graceful movement and
cultivated tone; the correctly tailored and agreeably mannered men had
polite intelligence of a world that Maxwell never would and never could
be part of; the talk of the little amusing, unvital things that began at
once was more precious to her than the problems which the austere
imagination of her husband dealt with; it suddenly fatigued her to think
how hard she had tried to sympathize with his interest in them. Her
heart leaped at sight of the long, rose-heaped table, with its glitter
of glass and silver, and the solemn perfection of the serving-men; a
spectacle not important in itself was dear to her from association with
gayeties, which now, for a wicked moment, seemed to her better than
love.
There were all sorts of people: artists and actors, as well as people of
fashion. Her friend had given her some society notable to go out with,
but she had appointed for the chair next her, on the other hand, a young
man in a pretty pointed beard, whom she introduced across from the head
of the table as soon as she could civilly take the notable to herself.
Louise did not catch his name, and it seemed presently that he had not
heard hers, but their acquaintance prospered without this knowledge. He
made some little jokes, which she promptly responded to, and they talked
awhile as if they were both New-Yorkers, till she said, at some remark
of his, "But I am not a New-Yorker," and then he said, "Well, neither am
I," and offered to tell her what he was if she would tell him what she
was.
"Oh, I'm from Boston, of course," she answered, but then, instead of
saying where he was from, he broke out:
"Now I will fulfil my vow!"
"Your vow? What is your vow?"
"To ask the first Boston person I met if that Boston person knew
anything about another Boston person, who wrote a most remarkable play I
saw in the fall out at home."
"A play?" said Louise, with a total loss of interest in the gentleman's
city or country.
"Yes, by a Boston man named Maxwell--"
Louise stared at him, and if their acquaintance had been a little older,
she might have asked him to come off. As it was she could not speak, and
she let him go on.
"I don't know when I've ever had a stronger impression in the theatre
than I had from that play. Perfectly modern, and perfectly American." He
briefly sketched it. "It was like a terrible experience on the tragic
side, and on the other side it was a rapture. I never saw love-making on
the stage before that made me wish to be a lover--"
A fire-red flew over Louise's face, and she said, almost snubbingly, as
if he had made some unwarrantable advance: "I think I had better not let
you go on. It was my husband who wrote that play. I am Mrs. Maxwell."
"Mrs. Maxwell! You are Mrs. Maxwell?" he gasped, and she could not doubt
the honesty of his amaze.
His confusion was so charming that she instantly relented. "Of course I
should like to have you go on all day as you've begun, but there's no
telling what exceptions you might be going to make later. Where did you
see my husband's play?"
"In Midland--"
"What! You are not--you can't be--Mr. Ray?"
"I am--I can," he returned, gleefully, and now Louise impulsively gave
him her hand under the table-cloth.
The man[oe]uvre caught the eye of the hostess. "A bet?" she asked.
"Better," cried Louise, not knowing her pun, "a thousand times," and she
turned without further explanation to the gentleman: "When I tell Mr.
Maxwell of this he will suffer as he ought, and that's saying a great
deal, for not coming with me to-day. To think of it's being _you_!"
"Ah, but to think of it's being _he_! You acquit me of the poor taste of
putting up a job?"
"Oh, of anything you want to be acquitted of! What crime would you
prefer? There are whole deluges of mercy for you. But now go on, and
tell me everything you thought about the play."
"I'd rather you'd tell me what you know about the playwright."
"Everything, of course, and nothing." She added the last words from a
sudden, poignant conviction. "Isn't that the way with the wives of you
men of genius?"
"Am I a man of genius?"
"You're literary."
"Oh, literary, yes. But I'm not married."
"You're determined to get out of it, somehow. Tell me about Midland. It
has filled such a space in our imagination! You can't think what a
comfort and stay you have been to us! But why in Midland? Is it a large
place?"
"Would it take such a very big one to hold me? It's the place I brought
myself up in, and it's very good to me, and so I live there. I don't
think it has any vast intellectual or æsthetic interests, but there are
very nice people there, very cultivated, some of them, and very well
read. After all, you don't need a great many people; three or four will
do."
"And have you always lived there?"
"I lived a year or so in New York, and I manage to get on here some time
every winter. The rest of the year Midland is quite enough for me. It's
gay at times; there's a good deal going on; and I can write there as
well as anywhere, and better than in New York. Then, you know, in a
small way I'm a prophet in my own country, perhaps because I was away
from it for awhile. It's very pretty. But it's very base of you to make
me talk about myself when I'm so anxious to hear about Mr. Maxwell."
"And do you spend all your time writing Ibsen criticisms of Ibsen
plays?" Louise pursued against his protest.
"I do some other kind of writing."
"As--"
"Oh, no! I'm not here to interview myself."
"Oh, but you ought. I know you've written something--some novel. Your
name was so familiar from the first." Mr. Ray laughed and shook his head
in mockery of her cheap device. "You mustn't be vexed because I'm so
vague about it. I'm very ignorant."
"You said you were from Boston."
"But there are Bostons and Bostons. The Boston that I belonged to never
hears of American books till they are forgotten!"
"Ah, how famous I must be there!"
"I see you are determined to be bad. But I remember now; it was a play.
Haven't you written a play?" He held up three fingers. "I knew it! What
was it?"
"My plays," said the young fellow, with a mock of superiority, "have
never been played. I've been told that they are above the heads of an
audience. It's a great consolation. But now, really, about Mr.
Maxwell's. When is it to be given here? I hoped very much that I might
happen on the very time."
Louise hesitated a moment, and then she said: "You know he has taken it
back from Godolphin." It was not so hard to say this as it was at first,
but it still required resolution.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" said Mr. Ray. "I never thought he appreciated it. He
was so anxious to make his part all in all that he would have been
willing to damage the rest of it irretrievably. I could see, from the
way he talked of it, that he was mortally jealous of Salome; and the
girl who did that did it very sweetly and prettily. Who has got the play
now?"
"Well," said Louise, with rather a painful smile, "nobody has it at
present. We're trying to stir up strife for it among managers."
"What play is that?" asked her friend, the hostess, and all that end of
the table became attentive, as any fashionable company will at the
mention of a play; books may be more or less out of the range of
society, but plays never at all.
"My husband's," said Louise, meekly.
"Why, does _your_ husband write _plays_?" cried the lady.
"What did you think he did?" returned Louise, resentfully; she did not
in the least know what her friend's husband did, and he was no more
there to speak for himself than her own.
"He's written a very _great_ play," Mr. Ray spoke up with generous
courage; "the very greatest American play I have seen. I don't say ever
written, for I've written some myself that I haven't seen yet," he
added, and every one laughed at his bit of self-sacrifice. "But Mr.
Maxwell's play is just such a play as I would have written if I
could--large, and serious, and charming."
He went on about it finely, and Louise's heart swelled with pride. She
wished Maxwell could have been there, but if he had been, of course Mr.
Ray would not have spoken so freely.
The hostess asked him where he had seen it, and he said in Midland.
Then she said, "We must all go," and she had the effect of rising to do
so, but it was only to leave the men to their tobacco.