It was Miss Havisham and not Godolphin who appeared to the public as
having ended the combination their managers had formed. The interviewing
on both sides continued until the interest of the quarrel was lost in
that of the first presentation of the play, when the impression that
Miss Havisham had been ill-used was effaced by the impression made by
Miss Pettrell in the part of Salome. Her performance was not only
successful in the delicacy and refinement which her friends expected of
her, but she brought to the work a vivid yet purely feminine force which
took them by surprise and made the public her own. No one in the house
could have felt, as the Maxwells felt, a certain quality in it which it
would be extremely difficult to characterize without overstating it.
Perhaps Louise felt this more even than her husband, for when she
appealed to him, he would scarcely confess to a sense of it; but from
time to time in the stronger passages she was aware of an echo, to the
ear and to the eye, of a more passionate personality than Miss
Pettrell's. Had Godolphin profited by his knowledge of Miss Havisham's
creation, and had he imparted to Miss Pettrell, who never saw it, hints
of it which she used in her own creation of the part? If he had, just
what was the measure and the nature of his sin? Louise tormented herself
with this question, while a sense of the fact went as often as it came,
and left her in a final doubt of it. What was certain was that if
Godolphin had really committed this crime, of which he might have been
quite unconsciously guilty, Miss Pettrell was wholly innocent of it;
and, indeed, the effect she made might very well have been imagined by
herself, and only have borne this teasing resemblance by pure accident.
Godolphin was justly punished if he were culpable, and he suffered an
eclipse in any case which could not have been greater from Miss
Havisham. There were recalls for the chief actors at every fall of the
curtain, and at the end of the third act, in which Godolphin had really
been magnificent, there began to be cries of "Author! Author!" and a
messenger appeared in the box where the Maxwells sat and begged the
author, in Godolphin's name, to come behind at once. The next thing that
Louise knew the actor was leading her husband on the stage and they
were both bowing to the house, which shouted at them and had them back
once and twice and still shouted, but now with a certain confusion of
voices in its demand, which continued till the author came on a fourth
time, led by the actor as before, and himself leading the heroine of his
piece. Then the storm of applause left no doubt that the will of the
house had been rightly interpreted.
Louise sat still, with the tears blurring the sight before her. They
were not only proud and happy tears, but they were tears of humble
gratitude that it was Miss Pettrell, and not Mrs. Harley, whom her
husband was leading on to share his triumph. She did not think her own
desert was great; but she could not tax herself with any wrong that she
had not at least tried to repair; she felt that what she had escaped she
could not have suffered, and that Heaven was merciful to her weakness,
if not just to her merit. Perhaps this was why she was so humble and so
grateful.
There arose in her a vague fear as to what Godolphin might do in the
case of a Salome who was certainly no more subordinated to his Haxard
than Miss Havisham's, or what new demands he might not make upon the
author; but Maxwell came back to her with a message from the actor,
which he wished conveyed with his congratulations upon the success of
the piece. This was to tell her of his engagement to Miss Pettrell,
which had suddenly taken place that day, and which he thought there
could be no moment so fit to impart to her as that of their common
triumph.
Louise herself went behind at the end of the piece, and made herself
acceptable to both the artists in her cordial good wishes. Neither of
them resented the arch intention with which she said to Godolphin, "I
suppose you won't mind such a beautiful Salome as Miss Pettrell has
given us, now that it's to be all in the family."
Miss Pettrell answered for him with as complete an intelligence: "Oh, I
shall know how to subdue her to his Haxard, if she ever threatens the
peace of the domestic hearth."
That Salome has never done so in any serious measure Maxwell argues from
the fact that, though the Godolphins have now been playing his piece
together for a whole year since their marriage, they have not yet been
divorced.