Part 21 (1/2)

Louise hesitated a moment, and then she said: ”You know he has taken it back from G.o.dolphin.” It was not so hard to say this as it was at first, but it still required resolution.

”Oh, I'm so glad!” said Mr. Ray. ”I never thought he appreciated it. He was so anxious to make his part all in all that he would have been willing to damage the rest of it irretrievably. I could see, from the way he talked of it, that he was mortally jealous of Salome; and the girl who did that did it very sweetly and prettily. Who has got the play now?”

”Well,” said Louise, with rather a painful smile, ”n.o.body has it at present. We're trying to stir up strife for it among managers.”

”What play is that?” asked her friend, the hostess, and all that end of the table became attentive, as any fas.h.i.+onable company will at the mention of a play; books may be more or less out of the range of society, but plays never at all.

”My husband's,” said Louise, meekly.

”Why, does _your_ husband write _plays_?” cried the lady.

”What did you think he did?” returned Louise, resentfully; she did not in the least know what her friend's husband did, and he was no more there to speak for himself than her own.

”He's written a very _great_ play,” Mr. Ray spoke up with generous courage; ”the very greatest American play I have seen. I don't say ever written, for I've written some myself that I haven't seen yet,” he added, and every one laughed at his bit of self-sacrifice. ”But Mr.

Maxwell's play is just such a play as I would have written if I could--large, and serious, and charming.”

He went on about it finely, and Louise's heart swelled with pride. She wished Maxwell could have been there, but if he had been, of course Mr.

Ray would not have spoken so freely.

The hostess asked him where he had seen it, and he said in Midland.

Then she said, ”We must all go,” and she had the effect of rising to do so, but it was only to leave the men to their tobacco.

Louise laid hold of her in the drawing-room: ”Who is he? What is he?”

”A little dear, isn't he?”

”Yes, of course. But what has he done?”

”Why, he wrote a novel--I forget the name, but I have it somewhere. It made a great sensation. But surely _you_ must know what it was?”

”No, no,” Louise lamented. ”I am ashamed to say I don't.”

When the men joined the ladies, she lingered long enough to thank Mr.

Ray, and try to make him tell her the name of his novel. She at least made him promise to let them know the next time he was in New York, and she believed all he said of his regret that he was going home that night. He sent many sweet messages to Maxwell, whom he wanted to talk with about his play, and tell him all he had thought about it. He felt sure that some manager would take it and bring it out in New York, and again he exulted that it was out of the actor's hands. A manager might not have an artistic interest in it; an actor could only have a personal interest in it.

XIX.

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 s.h.i.+ne. 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 n.o.body 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.