Twice during the rehearsal Maxwell came to Louise and asked her if she
were not tired and would not like to go home; he offered to go out and
put her on a car. But both times she made him the same answer: she was
not tired, and would not go away on any account; the second time she
said, with a certain meaning in her look and voice, that she thought she
could stand it if he could. At the end she went up and made her
compliments to Mrs. Harley. "You must enjoy realizing your ideal of a
character so perfectly," she began.
"Yes? Did you feel that about it?" the actress returned. "It _is_ a
satisfaction. But if one has a strong conception of a part, I don't see
how one can help rendering it strongly. And this Salome, she takes hold
of me so powerfully. Her passion and her will, that won't stop at
anything, seem to pierce through and through me. You can feel that she
wouldn't mind killing a man or two to carry her point."
"That is certainly what _you_ make one feel about her. And you make her
very living, very actual."
"You are very good," said Mrs. Harley. "I am so glad you liked it. I was
dreadfully afraid you wouldn't like it."
"Oh, I couldn't imagine your being afraid of anything," said Louise,
lightly. Her smile was one which the other woman might have known how to
interpret rightly, but her husband alone among men could feel its
peculiar quality. Godolphin beamed with apparent satisfaction in it.
"Wasn't Salome magnificent?" he said; and he magnanimously turned to the
actress. "You will make everybody forget Haxard. You made _me_ forget
him."
"_I_ didn't forget him though," said Mrs. Harley. "I was trying all the
time to play up to him--and to Mrs. Maxwell."
The actor laughed his deep, mellow, hollow laugh, which was a fine work
of art in itself, and said: "Mrs. Maxwell, you must let me present the
other _dramatis personæ_ to you," and he introduced the whole cast of
the play, one after another. Each said something of the Salome, how
grand it was, how impassioned, how powerful. Maxwell stood by,
listening, with his eyes on his wife's face, trying to read her thought.
They were silent most of the way home, and she only talked of
indifferent things. When the door of their apartment shut them in with
themselves alone, she broke out: "Horrible, horrible, horrible! Well,
the play is ruined, ruined! We might as well die; or _I_ might! I
suppose _you_ really liked it!"
Maxwell turned white with anger. "I didn't try to make her _think_ I
did, anyway. But I knew how you really felt, and I don't believe you
deceived her very much, either. All the same I was ashamed to see you
try."
"Don't talk to me--don't speak! She knew from every syllable I uttered
that I perfectly loathed it, and I know that she tried to make it as
hateful to me all the way through as she could. She played it _at_ me,
and she knew it _was_ me. It was as if she kept saying all the time,
'How do you like my translation of your Boston girl into Alabama, or
Mississippi, or Arkansas, or wherever I came from? This is the way you
would have acted, if you were _me_!' Yes, that is the hideous part of
it. Her nature has _come off_ on the character, and I shall never see,
or hear, or think, or dream Salome, after this, without having Yolande
Havisham before me. She's spoiled the sweetest thing in my life. She's
made me hate myself; she's made me hate _you_! Will you go out somewhere
and get your lunch? I don't want anything myself, and just now I can't
bear to look at you. Oh, you're not to blame, that I know of, if that's
what you mean. Only go!"
"I can go out for lunch, certainly," said Maxwell "Perhaps you would
rather I stayed out for dinner, too?"
"Don't be cruel, dearest. I am trying to control myself--"
"I shouldn't have thought it. You're not succeeding."
"No, not so well as you, if you hated this woman's Salome as much as I
did. If it's always been as bad as it was to-day you've controlled
yourself wonderfully well never to give me any hint of it, or prepare me
for it in the least."
"How could I prepare you? You would have come to it with your own
prepossessions, no matter what I said."
"Was that why you said nothing?"
"You would have hated it if she had played it with angelic perfection,
because you hated her."
"Perhaps you think she really did play it with angelic perfection! Well,
you needn't come back to dinner."
Louise passed into their room, to lay off her hat and sack.
"I will not come back at all, if you prefer," Maxwell called after her.
"I have no preferences in the matter," she mocked back.