The Story of a Play Part 24

"_We?_" repeated Maxwell.

"Yes. What we want for Salome is sweetness and delicacy and refinement; for she has to do rather a bold thing, and yet keep herself a lady."

"Well, it may be too late to talk of Miss Pettrell now," said Maxwell.

"Your favorite G.o.dolphin parted enemies with her."

"Oh, stage enemies! Mr. Grayson can get her, and he must."

"I'll tell him what your orders are," said Maxwell.

The next day he saw the manager, but nothing had been done, and the affair seemed to be hanging fire again. In the evening, while he was talking it over with his wife in a discouragement which they could not shake off, a messenger came to him with a letter from the Argosy Theatre, which he tore nervously open.

"What is it, dear?" asked his wife, tenderly. "Another disappointment?"

"Not exactly," he returned, with a husky voice, and after a moment of faltering he gave her the letter. It was from Grayson, and it was to the effect that he had seen Sterne, and that Sterne had agreed to a proposition he had made him, to take Maxwell's play on the road, if it succeeded, and in view of this had agreed to let Yolande Havisham take the part of Salome.

G.o.dolphin was going to get all his old company together as far as possible, with the exception of Miss Pettrell, and there was to be little or no delay, because the actors had mostly got back to New York, and were ready to renew their engagements. That no time might be lost, Grayson asked Maxwell to come the next morning and read the piece to such of them as he could get together in the Argosy greenroom, and give them his sense of it.

Louise handed him back the letter, and said, with dangerous calm: "You might save still more time by going down to Mrs. Harley's apartment and reading it to her at once." Maxwell was miserably silent, and she pursued: "May I ask whether you knew they were going to try to get her?"

"No," said Maxwell.

"Was there anything said about her?"

"Yes, there was, last night. But both Grayson and G.o.dolphin regarded it as impossible to get her."

"Why didn't you tell me that they would like to get her?"

"You knew it, already. And I thought, as they both had given up the hope of getting her, I wouldn't mention the subject. It's always been a very disagreeable one."

"Yes." Louise sat quiet, and then she said: "What a long misery your play has been to me!"

"You haven't helped make it any great joy to me," said Maxwell, bitterly.

She began to weep, silently, and he stood looking down at her in utter wretchedness. "Well," he said at last, "what shall I do about it?"

Louise wiped her tears, and cleared up cold, as we say of the weather.

She rose, as if to leave the room, and said, haughtily: "You shall do as you think best for yourself. You must let them have the play, and let them choose whom they think best for the part. But you can't expect me to come to see it."

"Then that unsays all the rest. If you don't come to see it, I sha'n't, and I shall not let them have the piece. That is all. Louise," he entreated, after these first desperate words, "_can't_ we grapple with this infernal nightmare, so as to get it into the light, somehow, and see what it really is? How can it matter to you who plays the part? Why do you care whether Miss Pettrell or Mrs. Harley does it?"

"Why do you ask such a thing as that?" she returned, in the same hard frost. "You know where the idea of the character came from, and why it was sacred to me. Or perhaps you forget!"

"No, I don't forget. But try--can't you try?--to specify just why you object to Mrs. Harley?"

"You have your theory. You said I was jealous of her."

"I didn't mean it. I never believed that."

"Then I can't explain. If you don't understand, after all that's been said, what is the use of talking? I'm tired of it!"

She went into her room, and he sank into the chair before his desk and sat there, thinking. When she came back, after a while, he did not look round at her, and she spoke to the back of his head. "Should you have any objection to my going home for a few days?"

"No," he returned.

"I know papa would like to have me, and I think you would be less hampered in what you will have to do now if I'm not here."

"You're very considerate. But if that's what you are going for, you might as well stay. I'm not going to do anything whatever."

"Now, you mustn't talk foolishly, Brice," she said, with an air of superior virtue mixed with a hint of martyrdom. "I won't have you doing anything rash or boyish. You will go on and let them have your play just the same as if I didn't exist." She somewhat marred the effect of her self-devotion by adding: "And I shall go on just as if _it_ didn't exist." He said nothing, and she continued: "You couldn't expect me to take any interest in it after this, could you? Because, though I am ready to make any sort of sacrifice for you, I think any one, I don't care who it was, would say that was a little _too_ much. Don't you think so yourself?"

"You are always right. I think that."

"Don't be silly. I am trying to do the best I can, and you have no right to make it hard for me."

Maxwell wheeled round in his chair: "Then I wish you wouldn't make your best so confoundedly disagreeable."

"Oh!" she twitted. "I see that you have made up your mind to let them have the play, after all."

"Yes, I have," he answered, savagely.

"Perhaps you meant to do it all along?"

"Perhaps I did."

"Very well, then," said Louise. "Would you mind coming to the train with me on your way down town to-morrow?"

"Not at all."

XXII.

In the morning neither of them recurred to what Louise had said of her going home for a few days. She had apparently made no preparation for the journey; but if she was better than her words in this, he was quite as bad as his in going down town after breakfast to let Grayson have the play, no matter whom he should get to do Salome. He did not reiterate his purpose, but she knew from the sullen leave, or no-leave, which he took of her, that it was fixed.

When he was gone she had what seemed to her the very worst quarter of an hour she had ever known; but when he came back in the afternoon, looking haggard but savage, her ordeal had long been over. She asked him quietly if they had come to any definite conclusion about the play, and he answered, with harsh aggression, yes, that Mrs. Harley had agreed to take the part of Salome; G.o.dolphin's old company had been mostly got together, and they were to have the first rehearsal the next morning.

"Should you like me to come some time?" asked Louise.

"I should like you very much to come," said Maxwell, soberly, but with a latent doubt of her meaning, which she perceived.

"I have been thinking," she said, "whether you would like me to call on Mrs. Harley this evening with you?"

"What for?" he demanded, suspiciously.

"Well, I don't know. I thought it might be appropriate."