His desperate need of help opened the door to me.
"My wife" ... he began, but the state of the room accounted for that, as he perceived, taking it in afresh through my eyes. Mrs. McDermott was lying on the sofa in the coma of exhaustion. She lifted her face to me for a moment, swollen with crying, and then let herself go again into that pit in which a woman sinks an impossible situation. She was really faint, poor thing, and, if I judged by the state of the house, had had no luncheon. I took all that in at a glance, but it was none of my business.
"Is it her heart?" I wanted to know of her husband as I bent over her. He caught up the suggestion eagerly.
"Yes, her heart ... she is very weak." He did whatever I suggested on that explanation. I would have proposed putting her to bed if I had not feared that that would involve more revelations of the family disorder than I was willing to tax him with.
We got her out of her faintness presently and found her a safety valve in pitying her poor children with that sloppy sort of maternal affection which is not inconsistent with a good deal of neglect. I wasn't working for anything but to save Jerry—I came to call him that before many weeks—from the embarrassment of what I was sure had been a family fracas which threatened at every moment to break out again. I suggested tea, for I was satisfied that both of them wanted food, and while I was making toast before the sitting-room fire, Mrs. McDermott managed to get herself and the children into some sort of order. I could see then how pretty she had been in a large-eyed, short-lipped way, and how charming in her youth had been the inconsequence which as the mistress of a family made her a sloven. Not to seem to notice too much the superficial air of being prepared for company which she managed to give the children by washing their faces surreptitiously, I explained to Mr. McDermott that I had come about the part of Mrs. Brandis.
"Oh, you'll do," he assented heartily. "You'll do just as you are. Mrs. Brandis is a widow you know ... that is, the Mrs. Brandis that I created——"
"Just as you conceived it of course," I insisted, "I should want to play it that way."
"The trouble is that Moresco isn't satisfied so easily; he wants me to make changes in the part."
"Well ..." I was prepared to make concessions.
"I'm afraid he has somebody in mind ..."