Part 25 (1/2)

Maxwell thought a moment. ”I don't think it would be expected. After all, it isn't a personal thing,” he said, with a relenting in his defiance.

”No,” said Louise.

They got through the evening without further question.

They had always had some sort of explicit making-up before, even when they had only had a tacit falling out, but this time Louise thought there had better be none of that. They were to rehea.r.s.e the play every day that week, and Maxwell said he must be at the theatre the next morning at eleven. He could not make out to his wife's satisfaction that he was of much use, but he did not try to convince her. He only said that they referred things to him now and then, and that generally he did not seem to know much about them. She saw that his aesthetic honesty kept him from pretending to more than this, and she believed he ought to have greater credit than he claimed.

Four or five days later she went with him to a rehearsal. By this time they had got so well forward with their work at the theatre that Maxwell said it would now be in appreciable shape; but still he warned her not to expect too much. He never could tell her just what she wanted to know about Mrs. Harley; all he could say was that her Salome was not ideal, though it had strong qualities; and he did not try to keep her from thinking it offensive; that would only have made bad worse.

It had been snowing overnight, and there was a bright glare of suns.h.i.+ne on the drifts, which rendered the theatre doubly dark when they stepped into it from the street. It was a dramatic event for Louise to enter by the stage-door, and to find Maxwell recognized by the old man in charge as having authority to do so; and she made as much of the strange interior as the obscurity and her preoccupation would allow. There was that immediate bareness and roughness which seems the first characteristic of the theatre behind the scenes, where the theatre is one of the simplest and frankest of workshops, in which certain effects are prepared to be felt before the footlights. Nothing of the glamour of the front is possible; there is a hard air of business in everything; and the work that goes to the making of a play shows itself the severest toil. Figures now came and went in the twilight beyond the reach of the gas in the door-keeper's booth, but rapidly as if bent upon definite errands, and with nothing of that loitering gayety which is the imagined temperament of the stage.

Louise and Maxwell were to see Grayson first in his private office, and while their names were taken in, the old door-keeper gave them seats on the Mourners' Bench, a hard wooden settee in the corridor, which he said was the place where actors wanting an engagement waited till the manager sent word that he could see them. The manager did not make the author and his wife wait, but came for them himself, and led the way back to his room. When he gave them seats there, Maxwell had the pleasure of seeing that Louise made an excellent impression with the magnate, of whom he had never quite lost the awe we feel for the master of our fortunes, whoever he is. He perceived that her inalienable worldly splendor added to his own consequence, and that his wife's air of _grande dame_ was not lost upon a man who could at least enjoy it artistically. Grayson was very polite to her, and said hopefuller things about the play than he had yet said to Maxwell, though he had always been civil about its merits. He had a number of papers before him, and he asked Louise if she had noticed their friendliness. She said, yes, she had seen some of those things, but she had supposed they were authorized, and she did not know how much to value them.

Grayson laughed and confessed that he did not practice any concealments with the press when it was a question of getting something to the public notice. ”Of course,” he said, ”we don't want the piece to come in on rubbers.”

”What do you mean?” she demanded, with an ignorant joy in the phrase.

”That's what we call it when a thing hasn't been sufficiently heralded, or heralded at all. We have got to look after that part of it, you know.”

”Of course, I am not complaining, though I think all that's dreadful.”

The manager a.s.sented partly. Then he said: ”There's something curious about it. You may put up the whole affair yourself, and yet in what's said you can tell whether there's a real good will that comes from the writers themselves or not.”

”And you mean that there is this mystical kindness for Mr. Maxwell's play in the prophecies that all read so much alike to me?”

”Yes, I do,” said the manager, laughing. ”They like him because he's new and young, and is making his way single-handed.”

”Well,” said Louise, ”those seem good grounds for preference to me, too;” and she thought how nearly they had been her own grounds for liking Maxwell.

Grayson went with them to the stage and found her the best place to sit and see the rehearsal. He made some one get chairs, and he sat with her chatting while men in high hats and overcoats and women in bonnets and fur-edged b.u.t.terfly-capes came in one after another. G.o.dolphin arrived among the first, with an ulster which came down to where his pantaloons were turned up above his overshoes. He caught sight of Louise, and approached her with outstretched hand, and Grayson gave up his chair to the actor. G.o.dolphin was very cordial, deferentially cordial, with a delicate vein of reminiscent comradery running through his manner. She spoke to him of having at last got his ideal for Salome, and he said, with a slight sigh and a sort of melancholy absence: ”Yes, Miss Havisham will do it magnificently.” Then he asked, with a look of latent significance:

”Have you ever seen her?”

Louise laughed for as darkling a reason. ”Only in real life. You know we live just over and under each other.”

”Ah, true. But I meant, on the stage. She's a great artist. You know she's the one I wanted for Salome from the start.”

”Then you ought to be very happy in getting her at last.”

”She will do everything for the play,” sighed G.o.dolphin. ”She'll make up for all my shortcomings.”

”You won't persuade us that you have any shortcomings, Mr. G.o.dolphin,”

said Louise. ”You are Haxard, and Haxard is the play. You can't think, Mr. G.o.dolphin, how deeply grateful we both are to you for your confidence in my husband's work, your sacrifices--”

”You overpay me a thousand times for everything, Mrs. Maxwell,” said the actor. ”Any one might have been proud and happy to do all I've done, and more, for such a play. I've never changed my opinion for a moment that it was _the_ American drama. And now if Miss Havisham only turns out to be the Salome we want!”

”If?” returned Louise, and she felt a wild joy in the word. ”Why, I thought there could be no earthly doubt about it.”

”Oh, there isn't. We are all united on that point, I believe, Maxwell?”