Louise came home in high spirits. The world seemed to have begun to move
again. It was full of all sorts of gay hopes, or at least she was, and
she was impatient to impart them to Maxwell. Now she decided that her
great office in his life must be to cheer him up, to supply that spring
of joyousness which was so lacking in him, and which he never could do
any sort of work without. She meant to make him go into society with
her. It would do him good, and he would shine. He could talk as well as
Mr. Ray, and if he would let himself go, he could be as charming.
She rushed in to speak with him, and was vexed to find a strange man
sitting in the parlor alone. The stranger rose at her onset, and then,
when she confusedly retreated, he sank into his chair again. She had
seen him black against the window, and had not made out any feature or
expression of his face.
The maid explained that it was a gentleman who had called to see Mr.
Maxwell earlier in the day, and the last time had asked if he might sit
down and wait for him. He had been waiting only a few minutes.
"But who is he?" demanded Louise, with a provisional indignation in case
it should be a liberty on some unauthorized person's part. "Didn't he
give you a card?"
He had given the girl a card, and she now gave it to Mrs. Maxwell. It
bore the name Mr. Lawrence Sterne, which Louise read with much the same
emotion as if it had been Mr. William Shakespeare. She suspected what
her husband would have called a fake of some sort, and she felt a little
afraid. She did not like the notion of the man's sitting there in her
parlor while she had nobody with her but the girl. He might be all
right, and he might even be a gentleman, but the dark bulk which had
risen up against the window and stood holding a hat in its hand was not
somehow a gentlemanly bulk, the hat was not definitively a gentleman's
hat, and the baldness which had shone against the light was not exactly
what you would have called a gentleman's baldness. Clearly, however, the
only thing to do was to treat the event as one of entire fitness till it
proved itself otherwise, and Louise returned to the parlor with an air
of lady-*like inquiry, expressed in her look and movement; if this
effect was not wholly unmixed with patronage, it still was kind.
"I am sorry," she said, "that my husband is out, and I am sorry to say
that I don't know just when he will be at home." She stood and the man
had risen again, with his portly frame and his invisible face between
her and the light again. "If I could be of any use in giving him a
message--" She stopped; it was really sending the man out of the house,
and she could not do that; it was not decent. She added, "Or if you
don't mind waiting a few minutes longer--"
She sat down, but the man did not. He said: "I can't wait any longer
just now; but if Mr. Maxwell would like to see me, I am at the Coleman
House." She looked at him as if she did not understand, and he went on:
"If he doesn't recall my name he'll remember answering my advertisement,
some weeks ago in the _Theatrical Register_, for a play."
"Oh yes!" said Louise. This was the actor whom she had written to on
behalf of Maxwell. With electrical suddenness and distinctness she now
recalled the name, L. Sterne, along with all the rest, though the card
of Mr. Lawrence Sterne had not stirred her sleeping consciousness. She
had always meant to tell Maxwell what she had done, but she was always
waiting for something to come of it, and when nothing came of it, she
did not tell; she had been so disgusted at the mere notion of answering
the man's advertisement. Now, here was the man himself, and he had to be
answered, and that would probably be worse than answering his
advertisement. "I remember," she said, provisionally, but with the
resolution to speak exactly the truth; "I wrote to you _for_ Mr.
Maxwell," which did not satisfy her as the truth ought to have done.
"Well, then, I wish you would please tell him that I didn't reply to his
letter because it kept following me from place to place, and I only got
it at the _Register_ office this morning."
"I will tell Mr. Maxwell," said Louise.
"I should be glad to see his play, if he still has it to dispose of.
From what Mr. Grayson has told me of it, I think it might--I think I
should like to see it. It might suit the--the party I am acting for," he
added, letting himself go.
"Then you are not the--the--star?"
"I am the manager for the star."
"Oh," said Louise, with relief. The fact seemed to put another
complexion on the affair. A distaste which she had formed for Mr. Sterne
personally began to cede to other feelings. If he was manager for the
star, he must be like other managers, such as Maxwell was willing to
deal with, and if he knew Mr. Grayson he must be all right. "I will
tell Mr. Maxwell," she said, with no provisionality this time.
Mr. Sterne prepared to go, so far as buttoning his overcoat and making
some paces towards the door gave token of his intention. Louise followed
him with a politeness which was almost gratitude to him for reinstating
her in her own esteem. He seemed to have atmospheric intelligence of her
better will towards him, for he said, as if it were something she might
feel an interest in: "If I can get a play that will suit, I shall take
the road with a combination immediately after New Year's. I don't know
whether you have ever seen the lady I want the play for."
"The lady?" gasped Louise.
"She isn't very well-known in the East yet, but she will be. She wants a
play of her own. As I understand Mr. Grayson, there is a part in Mr.
Maxwell's play that would fit her to a T, or could be fitted to her;
these things always need some little adaptation." Mr. Sterne's manner
became easier and easier. "Curious thing about it is that you are next
door--or next floor--neighbors, here. Mrs. Harley."
"We--we have met her," said Louise in a hollow murmur.
"Well, you can't have any idea what Yolande Havisham is from Mrs.
Harley. I shall be at the Coleman the whole evening, if Mr. Maxwell
would like to call. Well, good-morning," said Mr. Sterne, and he got
himself away before Louise could tell him that Maxwell would never give
his play to a woman; before she could say that it was already as good as
accepted by another manager; before she could declare that if no manager
ever wanted it, still, as far as Mrs. Harley was concerned, with her
smouldering eyes, it would always be in negotiation; before she could
form or express any utter and final refusal and denial of his abominable
hopes.
It remained for her either to walk quietly down to the North River and
drown herself or to wait her husband's return and tell him everything
and throw herself on his mercy, implore him, adjure him, not to give
that woman his play; and then to go into a decline that would soon rid
him of the clog and hinderance she had always been to him. It flashed
through her turmoil of emotion that it was already dark, in spite of
Mr. Sterne's good-morning at parting, and that some one might speak to
her on the way to the river; and then she thought how Maxwell would
laugh when she told him the fear of being spoken to had kept her from
suicide; and she sat waiting for him to come with such an inward
haggardness that she was astonished, at sight of herself in the glass,
to find that she wan looking very much as usual. Maxwell certainly
noticed no difference when he came in and flung himself wearily on the
lounge, and made no attempt to break the silence of their meeting; they
had kissed, of course, but had not spoken.
She was by no means sure what she was going to do; she had hoped there
would be some leading on his part that would make it easy for her to do
right, whatever the right was, but her heart sank at sight of him. He
looked defeated and harassed. But there was no help for it. She must
speak, and speak unaided; the only question was whether she had better
speak before dinner or after. She decided to speak after dinner, and
then all at once she was saying: "Brice, I have brought something
dreadful on myself."
"At the lunch?" he asked, wearily, and she saw that he thought she had
been making some silly speech she was ashamed of.
"Oh, if it had only been at the lunch!" she cried. "No, it was
here--here in this very room."
"_I_ don't know what's the matter with you, Louise," he said, lying back
and shutting his eyes.
"Then I must tell you!" And she came out with the whole story, which she
had to repeat in parts before he could understand it. When he did
understand that she had answered an advertisement in the _Register_, in
his name, he opened his eyes and sat up.
"Well?" he said.
"Well, don't you see how wrong and wicked that was?"
"I've heard of worse things."
"Oh, don't say so, dearest! It was living a lie, don't you see. And I've
been living a lie ever since, and now I'm justly punished for not
telling you long ago."
She told him of the visit she had just had, and who the man was, and
whom he wanted the play for; and now a strange thing happened with her.
She did not beseech him not to give his play to that woman; on the
contrary she said: "And now, Brice, I want you to let her have it. I
know she will play Salome magnificently, and that will make the fortune
of the piece, and it will give you such a name that anything you write
after this will get accepted; and you can satisfy your utmost ambition,
and you needn't mind me--no--or think of me at all any more than if I
were the dust of the earth; and I am! Will you?"
He got up from the lounge and began to walk the floor, as he always did
when he was perplexed; and she let him walk up and down in silence as
long as she could bear it. At last she said: "I am in earnest, Brice, I
am indeed, and if you don't do it, if you let me or my feelings stand in
your way, in the slightest degree, I will never forgive you. Will you go
straight down to the Coleman House, as soon as you've had your dinner,
and tell that man he can have your play for that woman?"
"No," said Maxwell, stopping in his walk, and looking at her in a dazed
way.
Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. "Why?" she choked.
"Because Godolphin is here."
"Godo--" she began; and she cast herself on the lounge that Maxwell had
vacated, and plunged her face in the pillow and sobbed, "Oh, cruel,
cruel, _cruel_! Oh, _cruel_, cruel, cruel, cruel!"