"Well, I can"t promise all that, quite."
"I mean, when the play is at stake."
"Oh, in that case, yes."
"What in the world did you say to Mr. Grayson?"
"Very much what I have said to you: that I hated to leave you to lunch alone here."
"Oh, didn"t he think it very silly?" she entreated, fondly. "Don"t you think he"ll laugh at you for it!"
"Very likely. But he won"t like me the less for it. Men are glad of marital devotion in other men; they feel that it acts as a sort of dispensation for them."
"You oughtn"t to waste those things on me," she said, humbly. "You ought to keep them for your plays."
"Oh, they"re not wasted, exactly. I can use them over again. I can say much better things than that with a pen in my hand."
She hardly heard him. She felt a keen remorse for something she had meant to do and to say when he came home. Now she put it far from her; she thought she ought not to keep even an extinct suspicion in her heart against him, and she asked, "Brice, did you know that woman was living in this house?"
"What woman?"
Louise was ashamed to say anything about the smouldering eyes. "That woman on the bathing-beach at Magnolia--the one I met the other day."
He said, dryly: "She seems to be pursuing us. How did you find it out?"
She told him, and she added, "I think she _must_ be an actress of some sort."
"Very likely, but I hope she won"t feel obliged to call because we"re connected with the profession."
Some time afterwards Louise was st.i.tching at a centre-piece she was embroidering for the dining-table, and Maxwell was writing a letter for the _Abstract_, which he was going to send to the editor with a note telling him that if it were the sort of thing he wanted he would do the letters for them.
"After all," she breathed, "that look of the eyes may be purely physical."
"What look?" Maxwell asked, from the depths of his work.
She laughed in perfect content, and said: "Oh, nothing." But when he finished his letter, and was putting it into the envelope, she asked: "Did you tell Mr. Grayson that G.o.dolphin had returned the play?"
"No, I didn"t. That wasn"t necessary at this stage of the proceedings."
"No."
XIV.
During the week that pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sionately 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 G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.dolphin." Then he added, "I"ll tell you, and you mustn"t take it amiss. G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.dolphin.