The story of a play; a novel

il^^fVi^

THE STOKY OF A PLAY

B IRovel

•BY

w*

^d/^ho

WELLS

author of " the landlord at lion s head
"an open-eyed conspiracy" etc.

.*i3l-

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1 898

PS

aoab

1998

W. D. HOWELLS'S WORKS.

IN CLOTH BINDING.

AN OPEN-EYED CONSPIRACY.

$1 00.

THE LANDLORD AT LION'S
HEAD. $1 75.

STOPS OF VARIOUS QUILLS.
Illustrated by Howard Pylb.

$2 50.

IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERI-
ENCES. $1 50.

A PARTING AND A MEETING.
Illustrated. $1 00.

THE DAY OF THEIR WED-
DING. Illustrated. $1 25.

MY LITERARY PASSIONS.
$1 50.

A TRAVELER FROM ALTRU-
RIA. $1 50.

THE COAST OF BOHEMIA. Il-
lustrated. $1 50.

THE WORLD OF CHANCE.
$1 60.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY.
$1 60.

AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. |1 00.

THE SHADOW OF A DREAM.

$1 00.

ANNIE KILBURN. $1 50.
APRIL HOPES. $1 60.
CRITICISM AND FICTION. With
Portrait. $1 00.

A BOY'S TOWN. Ul'd. fl 25.

A HAZARD OF NEW FORT-
UNES. 2 Vols., $2 00.

MODERN ITALIAN POETS.
With Portraits. $2 00.

CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY, and
Other Stories. Illustrated. $1 25.

THE MOUSE-TRAP, and Other
Farces. Illustrated. $1 00.

MY YEAR IN A LOG -CABIN,
Illustrated. 50 cents.

A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN.
Illustrated. 50 cents.

FARCES: Five o'clock Tea.— The
Mouse-Trap. — A Likely Story. —
The Unexpected Guests. — Even-
ing Dress. — A Letter of Introduc-
tion.—The Albany Depot.— The
Garroters. Ill'd. 50 cents each.

NEW YORK AND LONDON :
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1898, by W. D. How«lls.

Eltelrolyped hy J. A. HowelU <fe Co., Jefferson, Ohio.

THE STOEY OF A PLAY.
> I-

The young actor who thought he saw his part in
Maxwell's play had so far made his way upward on
the Pacific Coast that he felt justified in taking the
road with a combination of his own. He met the
author at a dinner of the Papyrus Club in Boston,
where they were introduced with a facile flourish of
praise from the journalist who brought them together,
as the very men who were looking for each other, and
who ought to be able to give the American public a
real American drama. The actor, who believed he
had an ideal of this drama, professed an immediate
interest in the kind of thing Maxwell told him he was
trying to do, and asked him to come the next day, if
he did not mind its being Sunday, and talk the play
over with him.

He was at breakfast when Maxwell came, at about
the hour people were getting home from church, and
he asked the author to join him. But Maxwell had
A

2 TfiE STORY OF A PLAY.

already breakfasted, and he hid his impatience of the
actor's politeness as well as he could, and began at
the first moment possible : " The idea of my play is
biblical ; we're still a very biblical people." He had
thought of the fact in seeing so many worshippers
swarming out of the churches.

" That is true," said the actor.

" It's the old idea of the wages of sin. I should
like to call it that."

" The name has been used, hasn't it ? "

" I shouldn't mind ; for I want to get a new effect
from the old notion, and it would be all the stronger
from familiar association with the name. I want to
show that the wages of sin is more sinning, which is
the very body of death."

"Well?"

" Well, I take a successful man at the acme of his
success, and study him in a succession of scenes that
bring out the fact of his prosperity in a way to strike
the imagination of the audience, even the groundlings ;
and, of course, I have to deal with success of the most
appreciable sort — a material success that is gross and
palpable. I have to use a large canvas, as big as
Shakespeare's, in fact, and I put in a great many fig-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 3

*' That's right," said the actor. " You want to keep
the stage full, with people coming and going."

" There's a lot of coming and going, and a lot of
incidents, to keep the spectator interested, and on the
lookout for what's to happen next. The whole of the
first act is working up to something that I've wanted
to see put on the stage for a good while, or ever since
I've thought of writing for the stage, and that is a
large dinner, one of the public kind."

" Capital ! " said the actor.

" I've seen a good deal of that sort of thing as a
reporter ; you know they put us at a table off to one
side, and we see the whole thing, a great deal better
than the diners themselves do. It's a banquet, given
by a certain number of my man's friends, in honor of
his fiftieth birthday, and you see the men gathering
in the hotel parlor — well, you can imagine it in almost
any hotel — and Haxard is in the foreground. Haxard
is the hero's name, you know."

" It's a good name," the actor mused aloud. " It
has a strong sound." •

"Do you like it? Well, Haxard," Maxwell con-
tinued, " is there in the foreground, from the first
moment the curtain rises, receiving his friends, and
shaking hands right and left, and joking and laughing

4 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

with everybody — a very small joke makes a very large
laugh on occasions like that, and I shall try to give
some notion of the comparative size of the joke and
the laugh — and receiving congratulations, that give a
notion of what the dinner is for, and the kind of man
he is, and how universally respected and all that, till
everybody has come ; and then the doors between the
parlor and the dining-room are rolled back, and every
man goes out with his own wife, or his sister, or his
cousin, or his aunt, if he hasn't got a wife ; I saw
them do that once, at a big commercial dinner I re-
ported."

'' Ah, I was afraid it was to be exclusively a man's
dinner ! " the actor interrupted.

" Oh, no," Maxwell answered, with a shade of vex-
ation. " That wouldn't do. You couldn't have a
scene, or, at least, not a whole act, without women.
Of course I understand that. Even if you could keep
the attention of the audience without them, through
the importance of the intrigue, still you would have
to have them for the sake of the stage-picture. The
drama is literature that makes a double appeal; it ap-
peals to the sense as well as the intellect, and the
stage is half the time merely a picture-frame. I had
to think that out pretty early."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 5

The actor nodded. " You couldn't too soon."
" It wouldn't do to have nothing but a crowd of
black coats and white shirt-fronts on the stage through
a whole act. You want color, and a lot of it, and you
can only get it, in our day, with the women's cos-
tumes. Besides, they give movement and life. After
the dinner begins they're supposed to sparkle all
through. I've imagined the table set down the depth
of the stage, with Haxard and the nominal host at
the head, fronting the audience, and the people talk-
ing back and forth on each side, and I let the ladies
do most of the talking, of course. I mean to have
the dinner served through all the courses, and the
waiters coming and going ; the events will have to be
hurried, and the eating merely sketched, at times ; but
I should keep the thing in pretty perfect form, till it
came to the speaking. I shall have to cut that a good
deal, but I think I can give a pretty fair notion of how
they butter the object of their hospitality on such oc-
casions ; I've seen it and heard it done often enough.
I think, perhaps, I shall have the dinner an act by
itself. There are only four acts in the play now, and
I'll have to make five. I want to give Haxard's speech
as fully as possible, for that's what I study the man
in, and make my confidences to the audience about

6 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

him. I shall make him butter himself, but all with
the utmost humility, and brag of everything that he
disclaims the merit of."

The actor rose and reached across the table for the
sugar. " That's a capital notion. That's new. That
would make a hit — the speech would."

" Do you think so 1 " returned the author. " /
thought so. I believe that in the hands of a good
actor the speech could be made tremendously telling.
I wouldn't have a word to give away his character,
his nature, except the words of his own mouth, but I
would have them do it so effectually that when he
gets through the audience will be fairly ' onto him,'
don't you know."

" Magnificent ! " said the actor, pouring himself
some more cocoa.

Maxwell continued: "In the third act — for I see
that I shall have to make it the third now — the scene
will be in Haxard's library, after he gets home from
the complimentary dinner, at midnight, and he finds a
man waiting for him there — a man that the butler
tells him has called several times, and was so anxious
to see him that Mrs. Haxard has given orders to let
him wait. Oh, I ought to go back a little, and ex-
plain— "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 7

" Yes, do ! " The actor stirred his cocoa with
mounting interest. " Yes, don't leave anything out."

*' I merely meant to say that in the talk in the
scene, or the act, before the dinner — I shall have two
acts, but with no wait between them ; just let down
the curtain and raise it again — it will come out that
Haxard is not a Bostonian by birth, but has come
here since the war from the Southwest, where he
went, from Maine, to grow up with the country, and
is understood to have been a sort of quiescent Union
man there ; it's thought to be rather a fine thing the
way he's taken on Boston, and shown so much local
patriotism and public spirit and philanthropy, in the
way he's brought himself forward here. People don't
know a great deal about his past, but it's understood
to have been very creditable. I shall have to recast
that part a little, and lengthen the delay before he
comes on, and let the guests, or the hosts — for they're
giving him the dinner — have time to talk about him,
and free their minds in honor of him behind his back,
before they begin to his face."

" Never bring your principal character on at once,"
the actor interjected.

" No," Maxwell consented. " I see that wouldn't
have done." He went on : " Well, as soon as Haxard

8 THE STOYR OF A PLAY.

turns up the light in his library, the man rises from
the lounge where he has been sitting, and Haxard sees
who it is. He sees that it is a man whom he used to
be in partnership with in Texas, where they were en-
gaged in some very shady transactions. They get
caught in one of them — I haven't decided yet just
what sort of transaction it was, and I shall have to
look that point up ; I'll get some law-student to help
me — and Haxard, who wasn't Haxard then, pulls out
and leaves his partner to suffer the penalty. Haxard
comes North, and after trying it in various places, he
settles here, and marries, and starts in business and
prospers on, while the other fellow takes their joint
punishment in the penitentiary. By the way, it just
occurs to me ! I think I'll have it that Haxard has
killed a man, a man whom he has injured ; he doesn't
mean to kill him, but he has to ; and this fellow is
knowing to the homicide, but has been prevented
from getting onto Haxard's trail by the consequences
of his own misdemeanors ; that will probably be the
best way out. Of course it all has to transpire, all
these facts, in the course of the dialogue which the
two men have with each other in Haxard's library,
after a good deal of fighting away from the inevitable
identification on Haxard's part. After the first few

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 9

preliminary words with the butler at the door before
he goes in to find the other man — his name is Green-
shaw — "

" That's a good name, too,"* said the actor.

" Yes, isn't it? It has a sort of probable sound, and
yet it's a made-up name. Well, I was going to say — "

" And I'm glad you have it a homicide that Haxard
is guilty of, instead of a business crime of some sort.
That sort of crime never tells with an audience," the
actor observed.

" No," said Maxwell. " Homicide is decidedly
better. It's more melodramatic, and I don't like that,
but it will be more appreciable, as a real sin, to most
of the audience ; we steal and cheat so much, and we
kill comparatively so little in the North. Well, I was
going to say that I shall have this whole act to con-
sist entirely of the passage between the two men. I
shall let it begin with a kind of shiver creeping over
the spectator, when he recognizes the relation between
them, and I hope I shall be able to make it end with
a shudder, for Haxard must see from the first mo-
ment, and he must let the audience see at last, that
the only way for him to save himself from his old
crime is to commit a new one. He must kill the man
who saw him kill a man."

10 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" That's good," the actor thoughtfully murmured,
as if tasting a pleasant morsel to try its flavor. " Ex-
cellent."

Maxwell laughed for pleasure, and went on : " He
arranges to meet the man again at a certain time and
place, and that is the last of Greenshaw. He leaves
the house alone ; and the body of an unknown man is
found floating up and down with the tide under the
Long Bridge. There are no marks of violence ; he
must have fallen off the bridge in the dark, and been
drowned; it could very easily happen. Well, then
comes the most difficult part of the whole thing ; I
have got to connect the casualty with Haxard in the
most unmistakable way, unmistakable to the audience,
that is ; and I have got to have it brought home to
him in a supreme moment of his life. I don't want
to have him feel remorse for it ; that isn't the modern
theory of the criminal ; but I do want him to be anx-
ious to hide his connection with it, and to escape the
consequences. I don't know but I shall try another
dinner-scene, though I am afraid it would be a risk."

The actor said, "I don't know. It might be the
very thing. The audience likes a recurrence to a dis-
tinctive feature. It's like going back to an effective
strain in music."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 11

" Yes," Maxwell resumed, " slightly varied. I
might have a private dinner this time ; perhaps a
dinner that Haxard himself is giving. Towards the
end the talk might turn on the case of the unknown
man, and the guests might discuss it philosophically
together ; Haxard would combat the notion of a mur-
der, and even of a suicide; he would contend for an
accident, pure and simple. All the fellows would take
a turn at the theory, but the summing-up opinion I
shall leave to a legal mind, perhaps the man who had
made the great complimentary speech at the public
dinner to Haxard in the first act. I should have him
warm to his work, and lay it down to Haxard in good
round fashion, against his theory of accident. He
could prove to the satisfaction of everybody that the
man who was last seen with the drowned man — or
was supposed to have been seen with him — according
to some very sketchy evidence at the inquest, which
never amounted to anything — was the man who push-
ed him off the bridge. He could gradually work up
his case, and end the argument with a semi-jocular,
semi-serious appeal to Haxard himself, like, * Why,
suppose it was your own case,' and so forth, and so
forth, and so forth, and then suddenly stop at some-
thing he notices queer in Haxard, who is trying to get

12 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

to his feet. The rest applaud : ' That's right ! Hax-
ard has the floor,' and so on, and then Haxard slips
back into his chair, and his head falls forward — I
don't like death-scenes on the stage. They're usually
failures. But if this was managed simply, I think it
would be effective."

The actor left the table and began to walk about
the room. " I shall want that play. I can see my
part in Haxard. I know just how I could make up
for him. And the play is so native, so American,'
that it will go like wildfire."

The author heard these words with a swelling heart.
He did not speak, for he could not. He sat still,
watching the actor as he paced to and fro, histrionic-
ally rapt in his representation of an actor who had
just taken a piece from a young dramatist. " If you
can realize that part as you've sketched it to me," he
said, finally, " I will play it exclusively, as Jefferson
does Rip Van Winkle. There are immense capabili-
ties in the piece. Yes, sir ; that thing will run for
years ! "

*' Of course," Maxwell found voice to say, " there
is one great defect in it, from the conventional point
of view." The actor stopped and looked at him.
" There's no love-business."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 13

" We must have that. But you can easily bring it
in."

" By the head and shoulders, yes. But I hate love-
making on the stage, almost as much as I do dying.
I never see a pair of lovers beyond the footlights
without wanting to kill them." The actor remained
looking at him over his folded arms, and Maxwell con-
tinued, with something like a personal rancor against
love-making, while he gave a little, bitter laugh, " I
might have it somehow that Haxard had killed a pair
of stage-lovers, and this was what Greenshaw had
seen him do. But that would have been justifiable
homicide."

The actor's gaze darkened into a frowning stare, as
if he did not quite make out this kind of fooling.
" All the world loves a lover," he said, tentatively.

" I don't believe it does," said Maxwell, " except as
it's stupid, and loves anything that makes it laugh.
It loves a comic lover, and in the same way it loves a
droll drunkard or an amusing madman."

" We shall have .to have some sort of love-busi-
ness," the actor returned, with an effect of leaving the
right interpretation of Maxwell's peculiar humor for
some other time. " The public wants it. No play
would go without it. You can have it subordinate if

14 THE STORY OF A l^LAY.

you like, but you have got to have it. How old did
you say Haxard was ? "

" About fifty. Too old for a lover, unless you could
make him in love with some one else's wife, as he has
one of his own already. But that wouldn't do."

The actor looked as if he did not know why it
would not do, but he said, " He could have a daugh-
ter."

" Yes, and his daughter could have a lover. I had
thought of something of that kind, and of bringing in
their ill-fated passion as an element of the tragedy.
We could have his disgrace break their hearts, and
kill two birds with one stone, and avenge a long-suf-
fering race of playwrights upon stage-lovers."

The actor laughed like a man of small humor, mel-
lowly, but hollowly. " No, no ! We must have the
love-affair end happily. You can manage that some-
how. Have you got the play roughed out at all ? "

" Not in manuscript. I've only got it roughed out
in my mind."

" Well, I want that play. That's settled. I can't
do anything with it this winter, but I should like to
open with it next fall. Do you think you could have
it ready by the end of July ? "

II.

They sat down and began to talk times and terms.
They parted with a perfect understanding, and Max-
well was almost as much deceived as the actor him-
self. He went home full of gay hopes to begin work
on the play at once, and to realize the character of
Haxard with the personality of the actor in his eye.
He heard nothing from him till the following spring,
when the actor wrote with all the ardor of their part-
ing moment, to say that he was coming East for the
summer, and meant to settle down in the region of
Boston somewhere, so that they could meet constantly
and make the play what they both wanted. He said
nothing to account for his long silence, and he seemed
so little aware of it that Maxwell might very well
have taken it for a simple fidelity to the understand-
ing between them, too unconscious to protest itself.
He answered discreetly, and said that he expected to
pass the summer on the coast somewhere, but was not

15

16 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

yet quite certain where he should be ; that he had not
forgotten their interview, and should still be glad to
let him have the play if he fancied it. Between this
time and the time when the actor appeared in person,
he sent Maxwell several short notes, and two or three
telegrams, sufficiently relevant but not very necessary,
and when his engagement ended in the West, a fort-
night after Maxwell was married, he telegraphed again
and then came through without a stop from Denver,
where the combination broke up, to Manchester-by-
the-Sea. He joined the little colony of actors which
summers there, and began to play tennis and golf, and
to fish and to sail, almost without a moment's delay.
He was not very fond of any of these things, and in
fact he was fond only of one thing in the world, which
was the stage ; but he had a theory that they were
recreation, and that if he went in for them he was
building himself up for the season, which began early
in September ; he had appropriate costumes for all of
them, and no one dressed the part more perfectly in
tennis or golf or sailing or fishing. He believed that
he ought to read up in the summer, too, and he had
the very best of the recent books, in fiction and criti-
cism, and the new drama. He had all of the transla-
tions of Ibsen, and several of Maeterlinck's plays in

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 17

French ; he read a good deal in his books, and he lent
them about in the hotel even more. Among the ladies
there he had the repute of a very modern intellect, and
of a person you w^ould never take for an actor, from
his tastes. What his tastes would have been if you
had taken him for an actor, they could not have said,
perhaps, but probably something vicious, and he had
not a vice. He did not smoke, and he did not so
much as drink tea or coffee ; he had cocoa for break-
fast, and at lunch a glass of milk, with water at din-
ner. He had a tint like the rose, and when he smiled
or laughed, which was often, from a constitutional
amiability and a perfect digestion, his teeth showed
white and regular, and an innocent dimple punctured
either cheek. His name was Godolphin,. for he had
instinctively felt that in choosing a name he might as
well take a handsome one while he was about it, and
that if he became Godolphin there was no reason why
he should not become Launcelot, too. He did not
put on these splendors from any foible, but from a
professional sense of their value in the bills ; and he
was not personally characterized by them. As Laun-
celot Godolphin he was simpler than he would have
been with a simpler name, and it was his ideal to be
modest in everything that personally belonged to him.
B

18 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

He studied an unprofessional walk, and a very collo-
quial tone in speaking. He was of course clean-
shaven, but during the summer he let his mustache
grow, though he was aware that he looked better
without it. He was tall, and he carried himself with
the vigor of his perfect health ; but on the stage he
looked less than his real size, like a perfectly propor-
tioned edifice.

Godolphin wanted the Maxwells to come to his
hotel in Manchester, but there were several reasons for
their not doing this ; the one Maxwell alleged was that
they could not afford it. They had settled for the
summer, when they got home after their brief wedding
journey, at a much cheaper house in Magnolia, and
the actor and the author were then only three miles
apart, which Mrs. Maxwell thought was quite near
enough. " As it is," she said, " I'm only afraid he'll
be with you every moment with his suggestions, and
won't let you have any chance to work out your own
conceptions."

Godolphin had not failed to notify the public
through the press that Mr. Brice Maxwell had severed
his connection with the Boston Abstract, for the pur-
pose of devoting himself to a new play for Mr. Laun-
celot Godolphin, and he thought it would have been

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 19

an effective touch if it could have been truthfully
reported that Mr. Godolphin and Mr. Maxwell might
be seen almost any day swinging over the roads to-
gether in the neighborhood of Manchester, blind and
deaf to all the passing, in their discussion of the play,
which they might almost be said to be collaborating.
But failing Maxwell's consent to anything of the sort,
Godolphin did the swinging over the roads himself, so
far as the roads lay between Manchester and Magnolia.
He began by coming in the forenoon, when he broke
Maxwell up fearfully, but he was retarded by a wan-
ing of his own ideal in the matter, and finally got to
arriving at that hour in the afternoon when Maxwell
could be found revising his morning's work, or lying
at his wife's feet on the rocks, and now and then
irrelevantly bringing up a knotty point in the charac-
ter or action for her criticism. For these excursions
Godolphin had equipped himself with a gray corduroy
sack and knickerbockers, and a stick which he cut
from the alder thicket ; he wore russet shoes of ample
tread, and very thick-ribbed stockings, which became
his stalwart calves.

Nothing could be handsomer than the whole effect
he made in this costume, and his honest face was a
pleasure to look at, though its intelligence was of a

So THE STORY OF A PLAY.

kind so wholly different from the intelligence of Max-
well's face, that Mrs. Maxwell always had a struggle
with herself before she could allow that it was intelli-
gence at all. He was very polite to her ; he always
brought her flowers, and he opened doors, and put
down windows, and leaped to his feet for every im-
aginable occasion of hers, in a way that Maxwell never
did, and somehow a way that the polite men of her
world did not, either. She had to school herself to
believe him a gentleman, and she would not accept a
certain vivid cleanliness he had as at all aristocratic ;
she said it was too fresh, and he ought to have carried
a warning placard of " Paint." She found that Go-
dolphin had one great and constant merit : he believed
in Maxwell's genius as devoutly as she did herself.
This did not prevent him from coming every day with
proposals for changes in the play, more or less struc-
tural. At one time he wished the action laid in some
other country and epoch, so as to bring in more cos-
tume and give the carpenter something to do ; he
feared that the severity of the mise en scene would ruin
the piece. At another time he wanted lines taken
out of the speeches of the inferior characters and put
into his own, to fatten the part, as he explained. At
other times he wished to have paraphrases of passages

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 21

that he had brought down the house with in other
plays written into this ; or scenes transposed, so that
he would make a more effective entrance here or there.
There was no end to his inventions for spoiling the
simplicity and truthfulness of Maxwell's piece, which
he yet respected for the virtues in it, and hoped the
greatest things from.

One afternoon he arrived with a scheme for a very
up-to-date scene in the last act ; have it a supper in-
stead of a dinner, and then have a skirt-dancer intro-
duced, as society people had been having Carmencita.
"When Haxard dies, you know," he explained, "it
would be tremendously effective to have the woman
catch him in her arms, and she would be a splendid
piece of color in the picture, with Haxard's head lying
in her lap, as the curtain comes down with a run."

At this suggestion Mrs. Maxwell was too indignant
to speak ; her husband merely said, with his cold
smile, " Yes ; but I don't see what it would have to
do with the rest of the play."

" You could have it," said Godolphin, " that he was
married to a Mexican during his Texas episode, and
this girl was their daughter." Maxwell still smiled,
and Godolphin deferred to his wife : " But perhaps
Mrs. Maxwell would object to the skirt-dance ? "

22 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Oh, no," she answered, ironically, " I shouldn't
mind having it, with Carmencita in society for a prec-
edent. But," she added, " the incident seems so out
of keeping with the action and the temperament of
the play, and everything. If I were to see such a
thing on the stage, merely as an impartial spectator, I
should feel insulted."

Godolphin flushed. " I don't see where the insult
would come in. You mightn't like it, but it would be
like anything else in a play that you were not person-
ally concerned in."

" No, excuse me, Mr. Godolphin. I think the audi-
ence is as much concerned in the play as the actor or
the author, and if either of these fails in the ideal, or
does a bit of clap-trap when they have wrought the
audience up in expectation of something noble, then
they insult the audience — or all the better part of it."

" The better part of the audience never fills the
house," said the actor.

" Very well. I hope my husband will never write
for the worse part."

" And I hope I shall never play to it," Godolphin
returned, and he looked hurt at the insinuation of her
words.

" It isn't a question of all that," Maxwell interposed,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 23

with a worried glance at his wife. " Mr. Godolphin
has merely suggested something that can be taken
into the general account ; we needn't decide it now.
By the way," he said to the actor, " have you thought
over that point about changing Haxard's crime, or the
quality ofvit? I think it had better not be an inten-
tional murder; that would kill the audience's sympa-
thy with him from the start, don't you think ? We
had better have it what they call a rencontre down
there, where two gentlemen propose to kill each other
on sight. Greenshaw's hold on him would be that he
was the only witness of the fight, and that he could
testify to a wilful murder if he chose. Haxard's real
crime must be the killing of Greenshaw."

" Yes," said Godolphin, and he entered into the
discussion of the effect this point would have with the
play. Mrs. Maxwell was too much vexed to forgive
him for making the suggestion which he had already
dropped, and she left the room for fear she should
not be able to govern herself at the sight of her hus-
band condescending to temporize with him. She
thought that Maxwell's willingness to temporize, even
when it involved no insincerity, was a defect in his
character; she had always thought that, and it was
one of the things that she meant to guard him against

24 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

with all the strength of her zeal for his better self.
When Godolphin was gone at last, she lost no time in
coming back to Maxwell, where he sat with the man-
uscript of his play before him, apparently lost in some
tangle of it. She told him abruptly that she did not
understand how, if he respected himself, if he re-
spected his own genius, he could consider such an
idea as Godolphin's skirt-dance for an instant.

" Did I consider it ? " he asked.

" You made him think so."

" Well," returned Maxwell, and at her reproachful
look he added, " Godolphin never thought I was con-
sidering it. He has too much sense, and he would be
astonished and disgusted if I took him in earnest and
did what he wanted. A lot of actors get round him
over there, and they fill him up with all sorts of stage
notions, and what he wants of me is that I shall empty
him of them and yet not put him to shame about
them. But if you keep on in that way you took with
him he'll throw me over."

" Well, let him ! " cried Mrs. Maxwell. " There
are twenty other actors who would jump at the chance
to get such a play."

"Don't you believe it, my dear. Actors don't
jump at plays, and Godolphin is the one man for me.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 25

He's young, and has the friendly regard from the
public that a young artist has, and yet he isn't iden-
tified with any part in particular, and he will throw
all his force into creating this, as he calls it."

" I can't bear to have him use that word, Brice.
You created it."

" The word doesn't matter. It's merely a technical
phrase. I shouldn't know where to turn if he gave it
up."

"Pshaw! You could go to a manager."

" Thank you ; I prefer an actor. Now, Louise, you
must not be so abrupt with Godolphin when he comes
out with those things."

" I can't help it, dearest. They are insulting to
you, and insulting to common-sense. It's a kindness
to let him know how they would strike the public. I
don't pretend to be more than the average public."

" He doesn't feel it a kindness the way you put it."

" Then you don't like me to be sincere with him !
Perhaps you don't like me to be sincere with you
about your play ? " ^

" Be as sincere with me as you like. But this — this
is a matter of business, and I'd rather you wouldn't."

" Rather I wouldn't say anything at all ? " demanded
Louise,

26 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" I didn't say so, and you know I didn't ; but if
you can't get on without ruffling Godolphin, why,
perhaps — "

" Very well, then, I'll leave the room the next time
he comes. That will be perfectly simple ; and it will
be perfectly simple to do as most other people would
— not concern myself with the play in any way from
this out. I dare say you would prefer that, too, though
I didn't quite expect it to come to that before our
honeymoon was out."

" Oh, now, my dear ! "

" You know it's so. But I can do it ! I might
have expected it from a man who was so perfectly
self-centred and absorbed. But I was such a fool — "
Her tears came and her words stopped.

Maxwell leaned forward with his thin face between
his hands. This made him miserable, personally, but
he was not so miserable but his artistic consciousness
could take note of the situation as a very good one,
and one that might be used effectively on the stage.
He analyzed it perfectly in that unhappy moment.
She was jealous of his work, which she had tolerated
only while she could share it, and if she could not
share it, while some other was suffered to do so, it
would be cruel for her. But he knew that he could

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 27

not offer any open concession now without making
bad worse, and he must wait till the right time for it
came. He had so far divined her, without formulat-
ing her, that he knew she would be humiliated by
anything immediate or explicit, but would later accept
a tacit repentance from him ; and he instinctively
forebore.

III.

For the present in her resentment of his willing-
ness to abase his genius before Godolphin, or even to
hold it in abeyance, Mrs. Maxwell would not walk to
supper with her husband in the usual way, touching
his shoulder with hers from time to time, and making
herself seem a little lower in stature by taking the
downward slope of the path leading from their cottage
to the hotel. But the necessity of appearing before
the people at their table on as perfect terms with him
as ever had the effect that conduct often has on feel-'
ing, and she took his arm in going back to their cot-
tage, and leaned tenderly upon him.

Their cottage was one of the farthest from the
hotel, and the smallest and quietest. , In fact there
was yet no one in it but themselves, and they dwelt
there in an image of home, with the sole use of the
veranda and the parlor, where Maxwell had his manu-
scripts spread about on the table as if he owned the

28

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 29

place. A chambermaid came over from the hotel in
the morning to put the cottage in order, and then they
could be quite alone there for the rest of the day.

" Shall I light the lamp for you, Brice ? " his wife
asked, as they mounted the veranda steps.

" No," he said, " let us sit out here," and they took
the arm-chairs that stood on the porch, and swung to
and fro in silence for a little while. The sea came
and went among the rocks below, marking its course
in the deepening twilight with a white rope of foam,
and raving huskily to itself, with now and then the
long plunge of some heavier surge against the bowl-
ders, and a hoarse shout. The Portland boat swam
by in the offing, a glitter of irregular lights, and the
lamps on the different points of the Cape blinked as
they revolved in their towers. " This is the kind of
thing you can get only in a novel," said Maxwell,
musingly. ''You couldn't possibly give the feeling
of it in a play."

" Couldn't you give the feeling of the people look-
ing at it ? " suggested his wife, and she put out her
hand to lay it on his.

"Yes, you could do that," he assented, with pleas-
ure in her notion ; " and that would be better. I sup-
pose that is what would be aimed at in a description

80 THE STORY OF A PLAY

of the scene, whicli would be tiresome if it didn't give
the feeling of the spectator."

" And Godolphin would say that if you let the car-
penter have something to do he would give the scene
itself, and you could have the effect of it at first
hand."

Maxwell laughed. " I wonder how much they
believe in those contrivances of the carpenter them-
selves. They have really so little to do with the dra-
matic intention; but they have been multiplied so
since the stage began to make the plays that the act-
ors are always wanting them in. I believe the time
will come when the dramatist will avoid the occasion
or the pretext for them."

" That will be after Godolphin's time," said Mrs.
Maxwell.

"Well, I don't know," returned Maxwell. "If
Godolphin should happen to imagine doing without
them he would go all lengths."

" Or if you imagined it and let him suppose he
had. He never imagines anything of himself."

" No, he doesn't. And yet how perfectly he grasps
the notion of the thing when it is done I It is very
different from literature, acting is. And yet literature
is only the representation of life."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 31

" Well, acting is the representation of life at sec-
ond-hand, then, and it ought to be willing to subordi-
nate itself. What I can't bear in Godolphin is his
setting himself up to be your artistic equal. He is no
more an artist than the canvas is that the artist paints
a picture on."

Maxwell laughed. "Don't tell him so; he won't
like it."

" I will tell him so some day, whether he likes it
or not."

" No, you mustn't ; for it isn't true. He's just as
much an artist in his way as I am in mine, and, so far
as the public is concerned, he has given more proofs."

" Oh, his public ! "

" It won't do to despise any public, even the thea-
tre-going public." Maxwell added the last words
with a faint sigh.

" It's always second-rate," said his wife, passion-
ately. " Third-rate, fourth-rate ! Godolphin was
quite right about that. I wish you were writing a
novel, Brice, instead of a play. Then you would be
really addressing refined people."

" It kills me to have you say that, Louise."

" Well, I won't. But don't you see, then, that you
must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if

32 THE STOKY OF A PLAY.

you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-
going public, or create a new one ? That is why I
can't endure to have you even seem to give way to
Godolphin." . .

"You must stand it so long as I only seem to do
it. He's far more manageable than I expected him to
be. It's quite pathetic how docile he is, bow per-
fectly ductile! But it won't do to browbeat him
when he comes over here a little out of shape. He's
a curious creature," Maxwell went on with a relish in
Godolphin, as material, which his wife suffered with
difficulty. " I wonder if he could ever be got into a
play. If he could he would like nothing better than
to play himself, and he would do it to perfection ; only
it would be a comic part, and Godolphin's mind is for
the serious drama." Maxwell laughed. " All his ar-
tistic instincts are in solution, and it needs something
like a chemical agent to precipitate them, or to give
them any positive character. He's like a woman ! "

" Thank you," said Mrs. Maxwell.

" Oh, I mean all sorts of good things by that. He
has the sensitiveness of a woman."

" Is that a good thing ? Then I suppose he was so
piqued by what I said about his skirt-dance that he
will renounce you."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 33

" Oh, I don't believe he will. I managed to smooth
him up after you went out."

Mrs. Maxwell sighed. " Yes, you are very patient,
and if you are patient, you are good. You are better
than I am."

" I don't see the sequence exactly," said Maxwell.

They were both silent, and she seemed to have
followed his devious thought in the same muse, for
when he spoke again she did not reproach him with
an equal inconsequence. " I don't know whether I
could write a novel, and, besides, I think the drama
is the supreme literary form. It stands on its own
feet. It doesn't have to be pushed along, or pulled
along, as the novel does."

" Yes, of course, it's grand. That's the reason I
can't bear to have you do anything unworthy of it."

" I know, Louise," he said, tenderly, and then again
they did not speak for a little while.

He emerged from their silence, at a point apparently
very remote, with a sigh. " If I could only know just
what the feelings of a murderer really were for five
minutes, I could out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in that
play. But I shall have to trust to the fall of man, and
the general depravity of human nature, I suppose.
After all, there's the potentiality of every kind of man
C

36 THE STOBY OF A PLAY.

over, and be married and out of the way, for one thing
because she knew that Maxwell could never be assim-
ilated to her circumstance, and she should have no
rest till she was assimilated to his. When it came to
the dinners and lunches, which the Hilary kinship
and friendship made in honor of her engagement, she
found that Maxwell actually thought she could make
excuse of his work to go without him, and she had to
be painfully explicit before she could persuade him
that this would not do at all. He was not timid about
meeting her friends, as he might very well have been ;
but, in comparison with his work, he apparently held
them of little moment, and at last he yielded to her
wishes rather than her reasons. He made no pretence
of liking those people, but he gave them no more
offence than might have been expected. Among the
Hilary cousins there were several clever women, who
enjoyed the quality of Maxwell's somewhat cold, sar-
castic humor, and there were several men who recog-
nized his ability, though none of them liked him any
better than he liked them. He had a way of regard-
ing them all at first as of no interest, and then, if
something kindled his imagination from them, of
showing a sudden technical curiosity, which made the
ladies, at least, feel as if he were dealing with them

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 37

as so much material. They professed to think that it
was only a question of time when they should all re-
appear in dramatic form, unless Louise should detect
them in the manuscript before they were put upon the
stage and forbid his using them. If it were to be
done before marriage they were not sure that she
would do it, or could do it, for it was plain to be seen
that she was perfectly infatuated with him. The
faults they found in him were those of manner mostly,
and they perceived that these were such as passion
might forgive to his other qualities. There were
some who said that they envied her for being so much
in love with him, but these were not many ; and some
did not find him good-looking, or see what could have
taken her with him.

Maxwell showed himself ignorant of the observ-
ances in every way, and if Louise had not rather loved
him the more for what he made her suffer because of
them, she must certainly have given him up at times.
He had never, to her thinking, known how to put a
note properly on paper ; his letters were perfectly fas-
cinating, but they lacked a final charm in being often
written on one side of half -sheets, and numbered in
the upper right-hand corner, like printer's copy. She
had to tell him that he must bring his mother to call

38 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

upon her; and then he was so long doing it that
Louise imagined a timidity in his mother which he
was too proud to own, and made her own mother go
with her to see Mrs. Maxwell in the house which she
partly let out in lodgings on a very modest street. It
really did not matter about any of those things though,
and she and Maxwell's mother got on very well after
the first plunge, though the country doctor's widow
was distinctly a country person, with the narrow so-
cial horizons of a villager whose knowledge of the
city was confined to the compass of her courageous
ventures in it.

To her own mother Louise feigned to see nothing
repulsive in the humility of these. She had been
rather fastidiously worldly, she had been even aggress-
ively worldly, in her preference for a luxurious and
tasteful setting, and her mother now found it hard to
bear her contented acceptance of the pervading com-
monness of things at Mrs. Maxwell's. Either her
senses were holden by her fondness for Maxwell, or
else she was trying to hoodwink her mother by an
effect of indifference; but Mrs. Hilary herself was
certainly not obtuse to that commonness. If she did
not rub it into Louise, which would have done no
good, she did rub it into Louise's father, though that

THE STOKY OF A PLAY. 39

could hardly have been said to do any good either.
Her report of the whole affair made him writhe, but
when she had made him writhe enough she began to
admit some extenuating circumstances. If Mrs. Max-
well was a country person, she was not foolish. She
did not chant, in a vain attempt to be genteel' in her
speech; she did not expand unduly under Mrs. Hil-
ary's graciousness, and she did not resent it. In fact,
the graciousness had been very skilfully managed,
and Mrs. Maxwell had not been allowed to feel that
there was any condescension to her. She got on with
Louise very well ; if Mrs. Maxwell had any overween-
ing pride in her son, she kept it as wholly to herself
as any overweening pride she might have had in her
son's choice.

Mrs. Hilary did not like her daughter's choice, but
she had at last reached such resignation concerning it
as the friends of a hopeless invalid may feel when the
worst comes. She had tried to stop the affair when
there was some hope or some use in trying, and now
she determined to make the best of it. The worst
was that Maxwell was undoubtedly of different origin
and breeding, and he would always, in society, sub-
ject Louise to a consciousness of his difference if he
did nothing more. But when you had said this, you

38 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

upon her; and then he was so long doing it that
Louise imagined a timidity in his mother which he
was too proud to own, and made her own mother go
with her to see Mrs. Maxwell in the house which she
partly let out in lodgings on a very modest street. It
really did not matter about any of those things though,
and she and Maxwell's mother got on very well after
the first plunge, though the country doctor's widow
was distinctly a country person, with the narrow so-
cial horizons of a villager whose knowledge of the
city was confined to the compass of her courageous
ventures in it.

To her own mother Louise feigned to see nothing
repulsive in the humility of these. She had been
rather fastidiously worldly, she had been even aggress-
ively worldly, in her preference for a luxurious and
tasteful setting, and her mother now found it hard to
bear her contented acceptance of the pervading com-
monness of things at Mrs. Maxwell's. Either her
senses were holden by her fondness for Maxwell, or
else she was trying to hoodwink her mother by an
effect of indifference; but Mrs. Hilary herself was
certainly not obtuse to that commonness. If she did
not rub it into Louise, which would have done no
good, she did rub it into Louise's father, though that

THE STOKY OF A PLAY. 39

could hardly have been said to do any good either.
Her report of the whole affair made him writhe, but
when she had made him writhe enough she began to
admit some extenuating circumstances. If Mrs. Max-
well was a country person, she was not foolish. She
did not chant, in a vain attempt to be genteel in her
speech; she did not expand unduly under Mrs. Hil-
ary's graciousness, and she did not resent it. In fact,
the graciousness had been very skilfully managed,
and Mrs. Maxwell had not been allowed to feel that
there was any condescension to her. She got on with
Louise very well ; if Mrs. Maxwell had any overween-
ing pride in her son, she kept it as wholly to herself
as any overweening pride she might have had in her
son's choice.

Mrs. Hilary did not like her daughter's choice, but
she had at last reached such resignation concerning it
as the friends of a hopeless invalid may feel when the
worst comes. She had tried to stop the affair when
there was some hope or some use in trying, and now
she determined to make the best of it. The worst
was that Maxwell was undoubtedly of different origin
and breeding, and he would always, in society, sub-
ject Louise to a consciousness of his difference if he
did nothing more. But when you had said this, you

40 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

seemed to have said all there was to say against him.
The more the Hilarys learned about the young fellow
the more reason they had to respect him. His life, on
its level, was blameless. Every one who knew him
spoke well of him, and those who knew him best
spoke enthusiastically ; he had believers in his talent
and in his. character. In a society so barometrical as
ours, even in a city where it was the least barometri-
cal, the obstacles to the acceptance of Maxwell were
mainly subjective. They were formed not so pauch
of what people would say as of what Mrs. Hilary felt
they had a right to say, and, in view of the necessi-
ties of the case, she found herself realizing that if
they did not say anything to her it would be much
as if they had not said anything at all. She dealt
with the fact before her frankly, and in the duties
which it laid upon her she began to like Maxwell be-
fore Hilary did. Not that Hilary disliked him, but
there was something in the young fellow taking his
daughter away from him, in that cool matter-of-fact
way, as if it were quite in the course of nature that
he should, instead of being abashed and overwhelmed
by his good fortune, which left Hilary with a misgiv-
ing lest he might realize it less and less as time went
on.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 41

Hilary had no definite ambition for her in marriage,
but his vague dreams for her were not of a young
man who meant to leave off being a newspaper writer
to become a writer of plays. He instinctively wished
her to be of his own order of things; and it had
pleased him when he heard from his wife's report that
Louise had seen the folly of her fancy for the young
journalist whom a series of accidents had involved
with their lives, and had decided to give him up.
When the girl decided again, more tacitly, that she
could not give him up, Hilary submitted, as he would
have submitted to anything she wished. To his sim-
ple idolatry of her she was too good for anything on
earth, and if he were to lose her, he found that after
all he had no great choice in the matter. As soon as
her marriage appeared inevitable, he agreed with his
wife that their daughter must never have any unhap-
piness of their making ; and they let her reverse with-
out a word the purpose of going to spend the winter
abroad which they had formed at her wish when she
renounced Maxwell.

All this was still recent in point of time, and though
marriage had remanded it to an infinite distance ap-
parently with the young people, it had not yet taken
away the importance or the charm of the facts and

42 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

the feelings that had seemed the whole of life before
marriage. When Louise turned from her retrospect
she went in through the window that opened on the
veranda and stood beside her husband, where he sat
with his manuscript before him, frowning at it in the
lamplight that made her blink a little after the dark
outside. She put her hand on his head, and carried
it down his cheek over his mouth, so that he might
kiss its palm.

" Going to work much longer, little man ? " she
asked, and she kissed the top of his head in her turn.
It always amused her to find how smooth and soft his
hair was. He flung his pen away and threw himself
back in his chair. " Oh, it's that infernal love busi-
ness ! " he said.

She sat down and let her hands fall on her lap.
" Why, what makes it so hard ? "

" Oh, I don't know. But it seems as if I were
fighting it, as the actors say, all the way. It doesn't
go of itself at all. It's forced, from the beginning."

" Why do you have it in, then ? '*

" I have to have it in. It has to be in every pict-
ure of life, as it has to be in every life. Godolphin
is perfectly right. I talked with him about leaving it
out to-day, but I had to acknowledge that it wouldn't

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 43

do. In fact, I was the first to suggest that there must
be some sort of love business when I first talked the
play over with him. But I wish there hadn't. It makes
me sick every time I touch it. The confounded fools
don't know what to do with their love."

"They might get married with it," Louise sug-
gested.

" I don't believe they have sense enough to think
of that," said her husband. " The curse of their ori-
gin is on them, I suppose. I tried to imagine them
when I was only fit to imagine a man hating a woman
with all his might."

Louise laughed out her secure delight. "If the
public could only know why your lovers were such
feeble folk it would make the fortune of the play."

Maxwell laughed, too. " Yes, fancy Pinney getting
hold of a fact like that and working it up with all his
native delicacy in the Sunday edition of the Events ! "

Pinney was a reporter of Maxwell's acquaintance,
who stood to Louise for all that was most terrible in
journalistic enterprise. " Don't ! " she shrieked.

Maxwell went on. " He would have both our por-
traits in, and your father's and mother's, and my
mother's ; and your house on Commonwealth Avenue,
and our meek mansion on Pinckney Street. He would

44 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

make it a work of art, Pinney would, and he would
believe that we were all secretly gratified with it, no
matter how we pretended to writhe under it." He
laughed and laughed, and then suddenly he stopped
and was very grave.

" I know what you're thinking of now," said his
wife.

" What ? "

" Whether you couldn't use our affair in the play ? "

" You're a witch ! Yes, I was ! I was thinking it
wouldn't do."

" Stuff ! It will do, and you must use it. Who
would ever know it ? And I shall not care how blackly
you show me up. I deserve it. If 1 was the cause
of your hating love so much that you failed with
your lovers on the old lines, I certainly ought to be
willing to be the means of your succeeding on lines
that had never been tried before."

" Generous girl ! " He bent over — he had not to
bend far — and kissed her. Then he rose excitedly
and began to walk the floor, with his hands in his
pockets, and his head dropped forward. He broke
into speech : " I could disguise it so that nobody
would ever dream of it. I'll just take a hint from
ourselves. How would it do to have had the girl

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 45

actually reject him ? It never came to that with us ;
and instead of his being a howling outside swell that
was rather condescending to her, suppose I have him
some sort of subordinate in her father's business ? It
doesn't matter much what ; it's easy to arrange such a
detail. She could be in love with him all the time,
without even knowing it herself, or, at least, not
knowing it when he offers himself ; and she could al-
ways be vaguely hoping or expecting that he would
come to time again."

" That's what I did," said his wife, " and you hadn't
offered yourself either."

Maxwell stopped, with an air of discomfiture and
disappointment. " You wouldn't like me to use that
point, then ? "

" What a simpleton ! Of course I should ! I
shouldn't care if all the world knew it."

*' Ah, well, we won't give it to Pinney, anyway ;
but I really think it could be done without involving
our own facts. I should naturally work farther and
farther away from them when the thing got to spin-
ning. Just take a little color from them now and
then. I might have him hating her all the way
through, or, supposing he hated her, and yet doing
all sorts of nice little things, and noble big things for

4:6 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

her, till it came out about lier father's crime, and
then — " He stopped again with a certain air of dis-
taste.

" That would be rather romantic, wouldn't it ? " his
wife asked.

" That was what I was thinking," he answered.
" It would be confoundedly romantic."

" Well, I'll tell you," said Louise ; "you could have
them squabbling all the way through, and doing hate-
ful things to one another."

" That would give it the cast of comedy."

"Well?"

" And that wouldn't do either."

" Not if it led up to the pathos and prettiness of
their reconciliation in the end ? Shakespeare mixes
the comic and the tragic all through ! "

" Oh yes, I know that — "

" And it would be very effective to leave the im-
pression of their happiness with the audience, so that
they might have strength to get on their rubbers and
wraps after the tremendous ordeal of your Haxard
death-scene."

"Godolphin wouldn't stand that. He wants the
gloom of Haxard's death to remain in unrelieved ink-
iness at the end. He wants the people to go away

THE STORY OF A PLAT. 47

thinking of Godolphin, and how well he did the last
gasp. He wouldn't stand any love business there.
He would rather not have any in the play."

" Very well, if you're going to be a slave to Godol-
phin—"

" I'm not going to be a slave to Godolphin, and if
I can see my way to make the right use of such a
passage at the close I'll do it even if it kills the play
or Godolphin."

" Now you're shouting," said Louise. She liked to
use a bit of slang when it was perfectly safe — as in
very good company, or among those she loved; at
other times she scrupulously shunned it.

"But I can do it somehow," Maxwell mused aloud.
" Now I have the right idea, I can make it take any
shape or color I want. It's magnificent ! "

" And who thought of it ? " she demanded.

*' Who ? Why, / thought of it myself."

" Oh, you little wretch ! " she cried, in utter fond-
ness, and she ran at him and drove him into a corner.
" Now, say that again and I'll tickle you."

" No, no, no ! " he laughed, and he fought away
the pokes and thrusts she was aiming at him. " We
both thought of it together. It was mind transfer-
ence ! "

48 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

She dropped her hands with an instant interest in
the psychological phenomena. " Wasn't it strange ?
Or, no, it wasn't, either! If our lives are so united
in everything, the wonder is that we don't think more
things and say more things together. But now I
want you to own, Brice, that I was the first to speak
about your using our situation ! "

" Yes, you were, and I was the first to think of it.
But that's perfectly natural. You always speak of
things before you think, and I always think of things
before I speak."

" Well, I don't care," said Louise, by no means
displeased with the formulation. " I shall always say
it was perfectly miraculous. And I want you to give
me credit for letting you have the idea after you had
thought of it."

" Yes, there's nothing mean about you, Louise, as
Pinney would say. By Jove, I'll bring Pinney in !
I'll have Pinney interview Haxard concerning Green-
shaw's disappearance."

" Very well, then, if you bring Pinney in, you will
leave me out," said Louise. " I won't be in the same
play with Pinney."

" Well, I won't bring Pinney in, then," said Max-
well. " I prefer you to Pinney — in a play. But I

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 49

have got to have in an interviewer. It will be splen-
did on the stage, and I'll be the first to have him."
He went and sat down at his table.

" You're not going to work any more to-night ! "
his wife protested.

"No, just jot down a note or two, to clinch that
idea of ours in the right shape." He dashed oS a
few lines with pencil in his play at several points,
and then he said : " There ! I guess I shall get some
bones into those two flabby idiots to-morrow. I see
just how I can do it." He looked up and met his
wife's adoring eyes.

" You're wonderful, Brice ! " she said.

" Well, don't tell me so," he returned, " or it might
spoil me. Now I wouldn't tell you how good you
were, on any account."

" Oh yes, do, dearest ! " she entreated, and a mist
came into her eyes. *' I don't think you praise me
enough."

" How much ought I to praise you ? "

" You ought to say that you think I'll never be a
hinderance to you."

" Let me see," he said, and he pretended to reflect.
" How would it do to say that if I ever come to any-
thing worth while, it'll be because you made me ? "
D

50 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Oh, Brice ! But would it be true ? " She drop-
ped on her knees at his side.

" Well, I don't know. Let's hope it would," and
with these words he laughed again and put his arms
round her. Presently she felt his arm relax, and she
knew that he had ceased to think about her and was
thinking about his play again.

She pulled away, and " Well ? " she asked.

He laughed at being found out so instantly. " That
was a mighty good thing your father said when you
went to tell him of our engagement."

" It was very good. But if you think I'm going to
let you use that you're very much mistaken. No,
Brice ! Don't you touch papa. He wouldn't like it ;
he wouldn't understand it. Why, what a perfect cor-
morant you are ! "

They laughed over his voracity, and he promised it
should be held in check as to the point which he had
thought for a moment might be worked so effectively
into the play.

The next morning Louise said to her husband : " I
can see, Brice, that you are full of the notion of
changing that love business, and if I stay round I
shall simply bother. I'm going down to lunch with
papa and mamma, and get back here in the after-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 51

noon, just in time to madden Godolphin with my med-
dling."

She caught the first train after breakfast, and in
fifteen minutes she was at Beverly Farms. She walked
over to her father's cottage, where she found him
smoking his cigar on the veranda.

He was alone ; he said her mother had gone to
Boston for the day ; and he asked : " Did you walk
from the station ? Why didn't you come back in the
carriage ? It had just been there with your mother."

" I didn't see it. Besides, I might not have taken
it if I had. As the wife of a struggling young play-
wright, I should have probably thought it unbecoming
to drive. But the struggle is practically over, you'll
be happy to know."

"What? Has he given it up?" asked her father.

" Given it up ! He's just got a new light on his
love business ! "

" I thought his love business had gone pretty well
with him," said Hilary, with a lingering grudge in his
humor.

" This is another love business ! " Louise exclaimed.
"The love business in the play. Brice has always
been so disgusted with it that he hasn't known what
to do. But last night we thought it out together, and

52 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

I've left him this morniDg getting his hero and heroine
to stand on their legs without being held up. Do you
want to know about it ? "

" I think I can get on without," said Hilary.

Louise laughed joyously. " Well, you wouldn't
understand what a triumph it was if I told you. I
suppose, papa, you've no idea how Philistine you are.
But you're nothing to mamma ! "

" I dare say," said Hilary, sulkily. But she looked
at him with eyes beaming with gayety, and he could
see that she was happy, and he was glad at heart.
" When does Maxwell expect to have his play done ? "
he relented so far as to ask.

" Why, it's done now, and has been for a month,
in one sense, and it isn't done at all in another. He
has to keep working it over, and he has to keep fight-
ing Godolphin's inspirations. He comes over from
Manchester with a fresh lot every afternoon."

" I dare say Maxwell will be able to hold his own,"
said Hilary, but not so much proudly as dolefully.

She knew he was braving it out about the theatre,
and that secretly he thought it undignified, and even
disreputable, to be connected with it, or to be in such
close relations with an actor as Maxwell seemed to be
with this fellow who talked of taking his play. Hilary

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 53

could go back very easily to the time, in Boston when
the theatres were not allowed open on Saturday night,
lest they should profane the approaching Sabbath, and
when you would no more have seen an actor in society
than an elephant. He had not yet got used to meet-
ing them, and he always felt his difference, though he
considered himself a very liberal man, and was fond
of the theatre — from the front.

He asked now, " What sort of chap is he, really ? "
meaning Godolphin, and Louise did her best to reas-
sure him. She told him Godolphin was young and
enthusiastic ; and he had an ideal of the drama ; and he
believed in Brice ; and he had been two seasons with
Booth and Barrett ; and now he had made his way on
the Pacific Coast, and wanted a play that he could
take the road with. She parroted those phrases,
which made her father's flesh creep, and she laughed
when she saw it creeping, for sympathy ; her own had
crept first.

" Well," he said, at last, " he won't expect you and
Maxwell to take the road too with it ? "

" Oh no, we shall only be with him in New York.
He won't put the play on there first ; they usually try
a new play in the country."

" Oh, do they ? " said Hilary, with a sense that his

54 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

daughter's knowledge of the fact was disgraceful to
her.

" Yes. Shall I tell you what they call that ? Try-
ing it on a dog ! " she shrieked, and Hilary had to
laugh, too. " It's dreadful," she went on. " Then,
if it doesn't kill the dog, Godolphin will bring it to
New York, and put it on for a run — a week or a
month — as long as his money holds out. If he be-
lieves in it, he'll fight it." Her father looked at her
for explanation, and she said, with a gleeful percep-
tion of his suffering, " He'll keep it on if he has to
play to paper every night. That is, to free tickets."

" Oh ! " said Hilary. " And are you to be there
the whole time with him ? "

" Why, not necessarily. But Brice will have to be
there for the rehearsals ; and if we are going to live
in New York — "

Hilary sighed. " I wish Maxwell was going on with
his newspaper work; I might be of use to him in that
line, if he were looking forward to an interest in a
newspaper; but I couldn't buy him a theatre, you
know."

Louise laughed. " He wouldn't let you buy him
anything, papa ; Brice is awfully proud. Now, I'll
tell you, if you want to know, just how we expect to

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 55

manage in New York ; Brice and I have been talking
it all over ; and it's all going to be done on that thou-
sand dollars he saved up from his newspaper work,
and we're not going to touch a cent of my money till
that is gone. Don't you call that pretty business-
like ? "

" Very," said Hilary, and he listened with apparent
acquiescence to the details of a life which he divined
that Maxwell had planned from his own simple expe-
rience. He did not like the notion of it for his
daughter, but he could not help himself, and it was a
consolation to see that she was in love with it.

She went back from it to the play itself, and told
her father that now Maxwell had got the greatest love
business for it that there ever was. She would not
explain just what it was, she said, because her father
would ^et a wrong notion of it if she did. " But I
have a great mind to tell you something else," she
said, *' if you think you can behave sensibly about it,
papa. Do you suppose you can ? "

Hilary said he would try, and she went on : " It's
part of the happiness of having got hold of the right
kind of love business now, and I don't know but it
unconsciously suggested it to both of us, for we both
thought of the right thing at the same time ; but in the

56 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

beginning you couldn't have told it from a quarrel."
Her father started, and Louise began to laugh. " Yes,
we had quite a little tiff, just like real married people,
about my satirizing one of Godolphin's inspirations
to his face, and wounding his feelings. Brice is so
cautious and so gingerly with him ; and he was vexed
with me, and told me he wished I wouldn't do it ; and
that vexed me, and I said I wouldn't have anything to
do with his play after this ; and I didn't speak to him
again till after supper. I said he was self-centred,
and he is. He's always thinking about his play and
its chances ; and I suppose I would rather have had
him think more about me now and then. But I've
discovered a way now, and I believe it will serve the
same purpose. I'm going to enter so fully into his
work that I shall be part of it ; and when he is think-
ing of that he will be thinking of me without know-
ing it. Now, you wouldn't say there was anything in
that to cry about, would you ? and yet you see I'm at
it!" and with this she suddenly dropped her face on
her father's shoulder.

Hilary groaned in his despair of being able to im-
agine an injury sufficiently atrocious to inflict on
Maxwell for having brought this grief upon his girl.
At the sound of his groan, as if she perfectly inter-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 57

preted his meaning in it, she broke from a sob into a
laugh. " Will you never," she said, dashing away the
tears, " learn to let me cry, simply because I am a
goose, papa, and a goose must weep without reason,
because she feels like it ? I won't have you thinking
that I am not the happiest person in the world ; and
I was, even when I was suffering so because I had to
punish Brice for telling me I had done wrong. And
if you think I'm not, I will never tell you anything
more, for I see you can't be trusted. Will you ? "

He said no to her rather complicated question, and
he was glad to believe that she was really as happy as
she declared, for if he could not have believed it, he
would have had to fume away an intolerable deal of
exasperation. This always made him very hot and
uncomfortable, and he shrank from it, but he would
have done it if it had been necessary. As it was, he
got back to his newspaper again with a sufficiently
light heart, when Louise gave him a final kiss, and
went indoors and put herself in authority for the day,
and ordered what she liked for luncheon. The maids
were delighted to have her, and she had a welcome
from them all, which was full of worship for her as a
bride whose honeymoon was not yet over.

She went away before her mother got home, and

58 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

she made her father own, before she left him, that he
had never had such a lovely day since he could re-
member. He wanted to drive over to Magnolia with
her ; but she accused him of wanting to go so that he
could spy round a little, and satisfy himself of the
misery of her married life ; and then he would not in-
sist.

Louise kept wondering, the whole way back, how
Maxwell had managed the recasting of the love-bus-
iness, and she wished she had stayed with him, so
that he could have appealed to her at any moment on
the points that must have come up all the time. She
ought to have coached him more fully about it, and
told him the woman's side of such a situation, as
he never could have imagined how many advances a
woman can make with a man in such an affair and
the man never find it out. She had not made any
advances herself when she wished to get him back,
but she had wanted to make them ; and she knew he
would not have noticed it if she had done the boldest
sort of things to encourage him, to let him know that
she liked him; he was so simple, in his straightfor-
ward egotism, beside her sinuous unselfishness.

She began to think how she was always contriving
little sacrifices to his vanity, his modesty, and he was

59

60 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

always accepting them with a serene ignorance of the
fact that they were offered ; and at this she strayed
off on a little by-way in her revery, and thought how
it was his mind, always, that charmed her ; it was no
ignoble fondness she felt ; no poor, grovelling pleasure
in his good looks, though she had always seen that in
a refined sort he had a great deal of manly beauty.
But she had held her soul aloof from all that, and
could truly say that what she adored in him was the
beauty of his talent, which he seemed no more con-
scious of than of his dreamy eyes, the scornful sweet-
ness of his mouth, the purity of his forehead, his
sensitive nostrils, his pretty, ineffective little chin.
She had studied her own looks with reference to his,
and was glad to own them in no wise comparable,
though she knew she was more graceful, and she could
not help seeing that she was a little taller ; she kept this
fact from herself as much as possible. Her features
were not regular, like his, but she could perceive that
they had charm in their irregularity ; she could only
wonder whether he thought that line going under her
chin, and suggesting a future double chin in the little
fold it made, was so very ugly. He seemed never to
have thought of her looks, and if he cared for her, it
was for some other reason, just as she cared for him.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 61

She did not know what the reason could be, but per-
haps it was her sympathy, her appreciation, her cheer-
fulness ; Louise believed that she had at least these
small merits.

The thought of them brought her back to the play
again, and to the love-business, and she wondered how
she could have failed to tell him, when they were
talking about what should bring the lovers together,
after their prefatory quarrel, that simply willing it
would do it. She knew that after she began to wish
Maxwell back, she was in such a frenzy that she be-
lieved her volition brought him back ; and now she
really believed that you could hypnotize fate in some
such way, and that your longings would fulfil them-
selves if they were intense enough. If he could not
use that idea in this play, then he ought to use it in
some other, something psychological, symbolistic,
Maeterlinckish.

She was full of it when she dismounted from the
barge at the hotel and hurried over to their cottage,
and she was intolerably disappointed when she did
not find him at work in the parlor.

" Brice ! Brice ! " she shouted, in the security of
having the whole cottage to herself. She got no an-
swer, and ran up to their room, overhead. He was

62 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

not there, either, and now it seemed but too probable
that he had profited by her absence to go out for a
walk alone, after his writing, and fallen from the
rocks, and been killed — he was so absent-minded.
She offered a vow to Heaven that if he were restored
to her she would never leave him again, even for a
half-day, as long as either of them lived. In reward
for this she saw him coming from the direction of the
beach, where nothing worse could have befallen him
than a chill from the water, if the wind was off shore
and he had been taking a bath.

She had not put off her hat yet, and she went out
to meet him ; she could not kiss him at once, if she
went to meet him, but she could wait till she got back
to the cottage, and then kiss him. It would be a trial
to wait, but it would be a trial to wait for him to
come in, and he might stroll off somewhere else, un-
less she went to him. As they approached each other
she studied his face for some sign of satisfaction with
his morning's work. It lighted up at sight of her,
but there remained an inner dark in it to her eye.

" What is the matter ? " she asked, as she put her
hand through his arm, and hung forward upon it so
that she could look up into his face. " How did you
get on with the love-business? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 63

" Oh, I think I've got that all right," he answered,
with a certain reservation. " I've merely blocked it
out, of course."

" So that you can show it to Godolphin ? "

" I guess so."

" I see that you're not sure of it. We must go
over it before he comes. He hasn't been here yet ? "

" Not yet."

" Why are you so quiet, Brice ? Is anything the
matter ? You look tired."

" I'm not particularly tired."

" Then you are worried. What is it ? "

" Oh, you would have to know, sooner or later."
He took a letter from his pocket and gave it to her.
" It came just after I had finished my morning's
work."

Bhe pulled it out of the envelope and read :

" Manchester-by-the-Sea, Friday.
" Dear Sir : I beg leave to relinquish any claim
that you may feel I have established to the play you
have in hand. As it now stands, I do not see my
part in it, and I can imagine why you should be re-
luctant to make further changes in it, in order to meet
my requirements.

64 THE STORY OF A TLAY.

" If I can be of any service to you in placing the
piece, I shall be glad to have you make use of me.
" Yours truly,

" Launcelot Godolphin."

" You blame me ! " she said, after a blinding mo-
ment, in which the letter darkened before her eyes,
and she tottered in her walk. She gave it back to
him as she spoke.

" What a passion you have for blaming ! " he an-
swered, coldly. " If I fixed the blame on you it
wouldn't help."

" No," Louise meekly assented, and they walked
along towards their cottage. They hardly spoke again
before they reached it and went in. Then she asked,
" Did you expect anything like this from the way he
parted with you yesterday ? "

Maxwell gave a bitter laugh. " From the way we
parted yesterday I was expecting him early this after-
noon, with the world in the palm of his hand, to lay it
at my feet. He all but fell upon my neck when he left
me. I suppose his not actually doing it was an actor's
intimation that we were to see each other no more."

" I wish you had nothing to do with actors ! " said
Louise.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 65

" They appear to have nothing to do with me,"
said Maxwell. " It comes to the same thing."

They reached the cottage, and sat down in the little
parlor where she had left him so hopefully at work in
the morning, where they had talked his play over so
jubilantly the night before.

" What are you going to do ? " she asked, after an
abysmal interval.

" Nothing. What is there to do ? "

" You have a right to an explanation ; you ought to
demand it."

" I don't need any explanation. The case is per-
fectly clear. Godolphin doesn't want my play. That
is all."

" Oh, Brice ! " she lamented. " I am so dreadfully
sorry, and I know it was my fault. Why don't you
let me write to him, and explain — "

Maxwell shook his head. " He doesn't want' any
explanation. He doesn't want the play, even. We
must make up our minds to that, and let him go.
Now we can try it with your managers."

Louise felt keenly the unkindness of his calling
them her managers, but she was glad to have him un-
kind to her ; deep within her Unitarianism she had
the Puritan joy in suffering for a sin ; her treatment
E

66 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

of Godolphin*s suggestion of a skirt-dance, while very
righteous in itself, was a sin against her husband's
interest, and she would rather he were unkind to her
than not. The sooner she was punished for it and
done with it, the better ; in her unscientific conception
of life, the consequences of a sin ended with its pun-
ishment. If Maxwell had upbraided her with the bit-
terness she merited, it would have been to her as if it
were all right again with Godolphin. His failure to
do so left the injury unrepaired, and she would have
to do something. " I suppose you don't care to let
me see what you've written to-day ? "

" No, not now," said Maxwell, in a tone that said,
" I haven't the heart for it."

They sat awbile without speaking, and then she
ventured, " Brice, I have an idea, but I don't know
what you will think of it. Why not take Godolphin's
letter on the face of it, and say that you are very sorry
he must give up the play, and that you will be greatly
obliged to him if he can suggest some other actor ?
That would be frank, at least."

Maxwell broke into a laugh that had some joy in it.
" Do you think so ? It isn't my idea of frankness
exactly."

" No, of course not. You always say what you

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 67

mean, and you don't change. That is what is so
beautiful in you. You can't understand a nature that
is one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow."

" Oh, I think I can," said Maxwell, with a satirical
glance.

" Brice ! " she softly murmured ; and then she said,
" Well, I don't care. He is just like a woman."

" You didn't like my saying so last night."

" That was a different thing. At any rate, it's I
that say so now, and I want you to write that to him.
It will bring him back flying. Will you ? "

" I'll think about it," said Maxwell ; *' I'm not sure
that I want Godolphin back, or not at once. It's a
great relief to be rid of him, in a certain way, though
a manager might be worse slavery. Still, I think I
would like to try a manager. I have never shown
this play to one, and I know the Odeon people in
Boston, and, perhaps — ''

" You are saying that to comfort me."

" I wouldn't comfort you for worlds, my dear. I
am saying this to distress you. But since I have
worked that love-business over, it seems to me much
less a one-part play, and if I could get a manager to
take a fancy to it I could have my own way with it
much better ; at least, he wouldn't want me to take all

68 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

the good things out of the other characters' mouths
and stuff them into Haxard's."

" Do you really think so ? "

" I really thought so before I got Godolphin's let-
ter. That made him seem the one and only man for
me."

" Yes," Louise assented, with a sad intelligence.

Maxwell seemed to have got some strength from
confronting his calamity. At any rate, he said, almost
cheerfully, " I'll read you what I wrote this morning,"
and she had to let him, though she felt that it was
taking her at a moment when her wish to console him
was so great that she would not be able to criticise
him. But she found that he had done it so well
there was no need of criticism.

"You are wonderful, Brice ! " she said, in a trans-
port of adoration, which she indulged as simply his
due. " You are miraculous ! Well, this is the great-
est triumph yet, even of your genius. How you have
seized the whole idea ! And so subtly, so delicately !
And so completely disguised ! The girl acts just as
a girl would have acted. How could you know it ? "

" Perhaps I've seen it," he suggested, demurely.

" No, no, you didn't see it ! That is the amusing
part of it. You were as blind as a bat all the time,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 69

and you never had the least suspicion ; you've told
me so."

" Well, then, I've seen it retrospectively."

" Perhaps that way. But I don't believe you've
seen it at all. You've divined it ; and that's where
your genius is worth all the experience in the world.
The girl is twice as good as the man, and you never
experienced a girl's feelings or motives. You divined
them. It's pure inspiration. It's the prophet in
you ! "

" You'll be stoning me next," said Maxwell. " I
don't think the man is so very bad, even if I didn't
divine him."

" Yes, for a poor creature of experience and knowl-
edge, he will do very well. But he doesn't compare
with the girl."

" I hadn't so good a model."

She hugged him for saying that. " You pay the
prettiest compliments in the world, even if you don't
pick up handkerchiefs."

Their joy in the triumph of his art was unalloyed
by the hope of anything outside of it, of any sort of
honor or profit from it, though they could not keep
the thought of these out very long.

" Yes," she said, after one of the delicious silences

70 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

that divided their moments of exaltation. " There
won't be any trouble about getting your play taken,
nowy

After supper they strolled down for the sunset and
twilight on the rocks. There, as the dusk deepened;
she put her wrap over his shoulders as well as her
own, and pulled it together in front of them both. " I
am not going to have you taking cold, now, when you
need all your health for your work more than ever.
That love-business seems to me perfect just as it is,
but 1 know you won't be satisfied till you have put
the very last touch on it."

" Yes, I see all sorts of things I can do to it.
Louise ! "

"Well, what?"

" Don't you see that the love-business is the play
now ? I have got to throw away all the sin -interest,
all the Haxard situation, or keep them together as
they are, and write a new play altogether, with the
light, semi-comic motive of the love-business for the
motive of the whole. It's out of tone with Haxard's
tragedy, and it can't be brought into keeping with it.
The sin-interest will kill the love-business, or the love-
business will kill the sin-interest. Don't you see ? "

*' Why, of course ! You must make this light affair

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 71

now, and when it's opened the way for you with the
public you can bring out the old play," she assented,
and it instantly became the old play in both their
rainds; it became almost the superannuated play.
They talked it over in this new aspect, and then they
went back to the cottage, to look at the new play as it
shadowed itself forth in the sketch Maxwell had made.
He read the sketch to her again, and they saw how it
could be easily expanded to three or four acts, and
made to fill the stage and the evening.

" And it will be the most original thing that ever
was ! " she exulted.

" I don't think there's been anything exactly like it
before," he allowed.

From time to time they spoke to each other in the
night, and she asked if he were asleep, and he if she
were asleep, and then they began to talk of the play
again. Towards morning they drowsed a little, but at
their time of life the loss of a night's sleep means
nothing, and they rose as glad as they had lain down.

" I'll tell you, Brice," she said, the first thing, " you
must have it that they have been engaged, and you
can call the play ' The Second Chapter,' or something
more alliterative. Don't you think that would be a
good name ? "

72 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" It would make the fortune of any play," lie an-
swered, " let alone a play of such merit as this."

"Well, then, sha'n't you always say that I did
something towards it ? "

" I shall say you did everything towards it. You
originated the idea, and named it, and I simply acted
as your amanuensis, as it were, and wrote it out mostly
from your dictation. It shall go on the bills, ' The
Second Chapter,' a demi-semi-serious comedy by Mrs.
Louise Hilary Maxwell — in letters half a foot high —
and by B. Maxwell — in very small lower case, that
can't be read without the aid of a microscope."

" Oh, Brice ! If you make him talk that way to
her, it will be perfectly killing."

" I dare say the audience will find it so."

They were so late at breakfast, and sat there so
long talking, for Maxwell said he did not feel like go-
ing to work quite so promptly as usual, that it was
quite ten o'clock when they came out of the dining-
room, and then they stayed awhile gossiping with
people on the piazza of the hotel before they went
back to their cottage. When they came round the
corner in sight of it they saw the figure of a man
pacing back and forth on the veranda, with his head
dropped forward, and swinging a stick thoughtfully

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 78

behind him. Louise pulled Maxwell convulsively to
a halt, for the man was Godolphin.

" What do you suppose it means ? " she gasped.

" I suppose he will tell us," said Maxwell, dryly.
" Don't stop and stare at him. He has got eyes all
over him, and he's clothed with self-consciousness as
with a garment, and I don't choose to let him think
that his being here is the least important or surpris-
ing."

" No, of course not. That would be ridiculous,"
and she would have liked to pause for a moment's
worship of her husband's sense, which appeared to
her almost as great as his genius. But it seemed to
her an inordinately long time before they reached the
cottage-gate, and Godolphin came half-way down the
walk to meet them.

He bowed seriously to her, and then said, with dig-
nity, to her husband, "Mr. Maxwell, I feel that I owe
you an apology — or an explanation, rather — for the
abrupt note I sent you yesterday. I wish to assure
you that I had no feeling in the matter, and that I am
quite sincere m my offer of my services."

" Why, you're very good, Mr. Godolphin," said
Maxwell. *' I knew that I could fully rely on your
kind offer. Won't you come in ? " He offered the

74 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

actor his hand, and they moved together towards the
cottage ; Louise had at once gone before, but not so
far as to be out of hearing. •

" Why, thank you, I will sit down a moment. I
found the walk over rather fatiguing. It's going to
be a hot day." He passed his handkerchief across
his forehead, and insisted upon placing a chair for
Mrs. Maxwell before he could be made to sit down,
though she said that she was going indoors, and would
not sit. " You understand, of course, Mr. Maxwell,
that I should still like to have your play, if it could
be made what I want? "

Maxwell would not meet his wife's eye in answer-
ing. " Oh, yes ; the only question with me is, whether
I can make it what you want. That has been the
trouble all along. I know that the love-business in
the play, as it stood, was inadequate. But yesterday,
just before I got your note, I had been working it
over in a perfectly new shape. I wish, if you have a
quarter of an hour to throw away, you'd let me show
you what I've written. Perhaps you can advise me."

" Why, I shall be delighted to be of any sort of
use, Mr. Maxwell," said Godolphin, with softened
state ; and he threw himself back in his chair with an
air of eager readiness.

THB STORY OF A PLAY. 75

" I will get your manuscript, Brice," said Louise,
at a motion her husband made to rise. She ran in
and brought it out, and theti went away again. She
wished to remain somewhere within ear-shot, but,
upon the whole, she decided against it, and went up-
stairs, where she kept herself from eavesdropping by
talking with the chambermaid, who had come over
from the hotel.

V.

Louise did not come down till she heard Godolphin
walking away on the plank. She said to herself that
she had shipwrecked her husband once by putting in
her oar, and she was not going to do it again. When
the actor's footfalls died out in the distance she de-
scended to the parlor, where she found Maxwell over
his manuscript at the table.

She had to call to him, " Well ? " before he seemed
aware of her presence.

Even then he did not look round, but he said,
" Godolphin wants to play Atland."

"The lover?"

" Yes. He thinks he sees his part in it."

" And do you ? "

" How do I know ? "

" Well, I am glad I let him get safely away before
I came back, for I certainly couldn't have held in
when he proposed that, if I had been here. I don't

76

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 77

understand you, Brice ! Why do you have anything
more to do with him ? Why do you let him touch
the new play ? Was he ever of the least use with the
old one?"

Maxwell lay back in his chair with a laugh. " Not the
least in the world." The realization of the fact amused
him more and more. " I was just thinking how every-
thing he ever got me to do to it," he looked down at
the manuscript, "was false and wrong. They talk
about a knowledge of the stage as if the stage were a
difficult science, instead of a very simple piece of
mechanism whose limitations and possibilities any one
can seize at a glance. All that their knowledge of it
comes to is clap-trap, pure and simple. They brag of
its resources, and tell you the carpenter can do any-
thing you want nowadays, but if you attempt anything
outside of their tradition they are frightened. They
think that their exits and their entrances are great
matters, and that they must come on with such a
speech, and go off with such another ; but it is not of
the least consequence how they come or go if they
have something interesting to say or do."

" Why don't you say these things to Godolphin ? '

" I do, and worse. He admits their truth with a

candor and an intelligence that are dismaying. He

78 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

has a perfect conception of Atland's part, and he prob-
ably will play it in a way to set your teeth on edge."

" Why do you let him ? Why don't you keep your
play and offer it to a manager or some actor who will
know how to do it ? " demanded Louise, with sorrow-
ful submission.

" Godolphin will know how to do it, even if he isn't
able to. And, besides, I should be a fool to fling him
away for any sort of promising uncertainty."

" He was willing to fling you away ! "

" Yes, but I'm not so important to him as he is to
me. He's the best I can do for the present. It's a
compromise all the way through — a cursed spite from
beginning to end. Your own words don't represent
your ideas, and the more conscience you put into the
work the further you get from what you thought it
would be. Then comes the actor with the infernal
chemistry of his personality. He imagines the thing
perfectly, not as you imagined it, but as you wrote it,
and then he is no more able to play it as he imagined
it than you were to write it as you imagined it. What
the public finally gets is something three times re-
moved from the truth that was first in the dramatist's
mind. But I'm very lucky to have Godolphin back
again."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 79

" I hope you're not going to let him see that you
think so."

" Oh, no ! I'm going to keep him in a suppliant
attitude throughout, and I'm going to let you come in
and tame his spirit, if he — kicks."

"Don't be vulgar, Brice," said Louise, and she
laughed rather forlornly. " I don't see how you have
the heart to joke, if you think it's so bad as you say."

" I haven't. I'm joking without any heart." He
stood up. " Let us go and take a bath."

She glanced at him with a swift inventory of his
fagged looks, and said, " Indeed, you shall not take a
bath this morning. You couldn't react against it.
You won't, will you ? "

" No, I'll only lie on the sand, if you can pick me
out a good warm spot, and watch you."

" I shall not bathe, either."

" Well, then, I'll watch the other women." He put
out his hand and took hers.

She felt his touch very cold. " You are excited I
can see. I wish — "

" What ? That I was not an intending dramatist ? "

"That you didn't have such excitements in your
life. They will kill you."

" They are all that will keep me alive."

80 THE STORY OF A FLAY.

They went down to the beach, and walked back and
forth on its curve several times before they dropped
in the sand at a discreet distance from several groups
of hotel acquaintance. People were coming and go-
ing from the line of bath-houses that backed upon the
low sand-bank behind them, with its tufts of coarse
silvery-green grasses. The Maxwells bowed to some
of the ladies who tripped gayly past them in their airy
costumes to the surf, or came up from it sobered and
shivering. Four or five young fellows, with sun-
blackened arms and legs, were passing ball near them.
A pony-carriage drove by on the wet sand ; a horse-
man on a crop-tailed roan thumped after it at a hard
trot. Dogs ran barking vaguely about, and children
with wooden shovels screamed at their play. Far off
shimmered the sea, of one pale blue with the sky.
The rocks were black at either end of the beach; a
line of sail-boats and dories swung across its crescent
beyond the bathers, who bobbed up and down in the
surf, or showed a head here and there outside of it.

" What a singular spectacle," said Maxwell. " The
casting off of the conventional in sea-bathing always
seems to me like the effect of those dreams where we
appear in society insufficiently dressed, and wonder
whether we can make it go."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 81

" Yes, isn't it ? " His wife tried to cover all the
propositions with one loosely fitting assent.

" I'm surprised," Maxwell went on, " that some
realistic wretch hasn't put this sort of thing on the
stage. It would be tremendously effective ; if he made
it realistic enough it would be attacked by the press
as improper and would fill the house. Couldn't we
work a sea-bathing scene into the ' Second Chapter' ?
It would make the fortune of the play, and it would
give Godolphin a chance to show his noble frame in
something like the majesty of nature. Godolphin
would like nothing better. We could have Atland
rescue Salome, and Godolphin could flop round among
the canvas breakers for ten minutes, and come on for
a recall with the heroine, both dripping real water all
over the stage."

" Don't be disgusting, Brice," said his wife, absent-
ly. She had her head half turned from him, watching
a lady who had just come out of her bath-house and
was passing very near them on her way to the water.
Maxwell felt the inattention in his wife's tone and
looked up.

The bather returned their joint gaze steadily from
eyes that seemed, as Maxwell said, to smoulder under
their long lashes, and to question her effect upon them
F

82 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

in a way that he was some time finding a phrase for.
He was tormented to make out whether she were a
large person or not ; without her draperies he could
not tell. But she moved with splendid freedom, and
her beauty expressed a maturity of experience beyond
her years; she looked young, and yet she looked as
if she had been taking care of herself a good while.
She was certainly very handsome, Louise owned to
herself, as the lady quickened her pace, and finally
ran down to the water and plunged into a breaker
that rolled in at the right moment in uncommon vol-
ume.

" Well ? " she asked her husband, whose eyes had
gone with hers.

" We ought to have clapped."

" Do you think she is an actress ? "

" I don't know. I never saw her before. She
seemed to turn the sunshine into lime-light as she
passed. Why ! that's rather pretty, isn't it ? And
it's a verse. I wonder what it is about these people.
The best of them have nothing of the stage in them —
at least, the men haven't. I'm not sure, though, that
the women haven't. There are lots of women off the
stage who are actresses, but they don't seem so.
They're personal; this one was impersonal. She

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 83

didn't seem to regard me as a man ; she regarded me
as a house. Did you feel that ? "

"Yes, that was it, I suppose. But she regarded
you more than she did me, I think."

" Why, of course. You were only a matinee."

They sat half an hour longer in the sand, and then
he complained that the wdnd blew all the warmth out
of him as fast as the sun shone it into him. She felt
his hand next her and found it still cold ; after a
glance round she furtively felt his forehead.

" You're still thinking," she sighed. " Come ! We
must go back."

" Yes. That girl won't be out of the water for half
an hour yet ; and we couldn't wait to see her clothed
and in her right mind afterwards."

" What makes you think she's a girl ? " asked his
wife, as they moved slowly off.

He did not seem to have heard her question. He
said, " I don't believe I can make the new play go,
Louise ; I haven't the strength for it. There's too
much good stuff in Haxard ; I can't throw away what
I've done on it."

" That is just what I was thinking, Brice ! It would
be too bad to lose that. The love-business as you've
remodeled it is all very well. But it is light; it's

84 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

comedy ; and Haxard is such splendid tragedy. I
want you to make your first impression in that. You
can do comedy afterwards; but if you did comedy
first, the public would never think your tragedy was
serious."

" Yes, there's a law in that. A clown mustn't
prophesy. If a prophet chooses to joke, now and
then, all well and good. I couldn't begin now and
expand that love-business into a whole play. It must
remain an episode, and Godolphin must take it or
leave it. Of course he'll want Atland emaciated to
fatten Haxard, as he calls it. But Atland doesn't
amount to much, as it is, and I don't believe I could
make him ; it's essentially a passive part ; Salome
must make the chief effect in that business, and I
think I'll have her a little more serious, too. It' U be
more in keeping with the rest."

" I don't see why she shouldn't be serious. There's
nothing ignoble in what she does."

" No. It can be very impassioned."

Louise thought of the smouldering eyes of that
woman, and she wondered if they were what suggest-
ed something very impassioned to Maxwell ; but with
all the frankness between them, she did not ask him.

On their way to the cottage they saw one of the

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 85

hotel bell-boys coming out. " Just left a telegram in
there for you," he called, as he came towards them.

Louise began, " Oh, dear, I hope there's nothing
the matter with papa ! Or your mother."

She ran forward, and Maxwell followed sit his usual
pace, so that she had time to go inside and come out
with the despatch before he mounted the veranda
steps.

" You open it ! " she entreated, piteously, holding
it towards him.

He pulled it impatiently open, and glanced at the
signature. " It's from Godolphin ;" and he read,
"Don't destroy old play. Keep new love-business
for episode. Will come over this afternoon." Max-
well smiled. " More mind transference."

Louise laughed in hysterical relief. " Now you
can make him do just what you want."

VI.

Maxwell, now, at least, knew that he had got his
play going in the right direction again. He felt a
fresh pleasure in returning to the old lines after his
excursion in the region of comedy, and he worked
upon them with fresh energy. He rehabilitated the
love-business as he and his wife had newly imagined
it, and, to disguise the originals the more effectively,
he made the girl, whom he had provisionally called
Salome, more like himself than Louise in certain su-
perficial qualities, though in an essential nobleness and
singleness, which consisted with a great deal of fem-
inine sinuosity and subtlety, she remained a portrait
of Louise. He was doubtful whether the mingling of
characteristics would not end in unreality, but she was
sure it would not; she said he was so much like a
woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself
that Salome would be all the truer for being like him ;
or, at any rate, she would be finer, and more ideal.

86

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 87

She said that it was nonsense, the way people regarded
women as altogether different from men ; she believed
they were very much alike ; a girl was as much the
daughter of her father as of her mother ; she alleged
herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often a
great deal more her father's daughter, and she argued
that if Maxwell made Salome quite in his own spirit-
ual image, no one would dream of criticising her as
unwomanly. Then he asked if he need only make
Atland in her spiritual image to have him the manli-
est sort of fellow. She said that was not what she
meant, and, in any case, a man could have feminine
traits, and be all the nicer for them, but, if a woman
had masculine traits, she would be disgusting. At
the same time, if you drew a man from a woman, he
would be ridiculous.

" Then you want me to model Atland on myself,
too," said Maxwell.

She thought a moment. " Yes, I do. If Salome
is to be taken mostly from me, I couldn't bear to have
him like anybody but you. It would be indelicate."

" Well, now, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to
stand it," said Maxwell. " I am going to make At-
land like Pinney."

But she would not be turned from the serious as-

88 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

pect of the affair by his joking. She asked, " Do you
think it would intensify the situation if he were not
equal to her? If the spectator could be made to see
that she was throwing herself away on him, after all ? "

" Wouldn't that leave the spectator a little too in-
consolable? You don't want the love-business to
double the tragedy, you want to have it relieved, don't
you?"

" Yes, that is true. You must make him worth all
the sacrifice. I couldn't stand it if he wasn't."

Maxwell frowned, as he always did when he became
earnest, and said with a little sigh, " He must be pas-
sive, negative, as I said ; you must simply feel that he
is good^ and that she will be safe with him, after the
worst has happened to her father. And I must keep
the interest of the love-business light, without letting
it become farcical. I must get charm, all I can, into
her character. You won't mind my getting the charm
all from you ? "

" Oh, Brice, what sweet things you say to me ! I
wish everybody could know how divine you are."

" The women would all be making love to me, and
I should hate that. One is quite enough."

" Am I quite enough ? " she entreated.

" You have been up to the present time."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 89

" And do you think I shall always be ? " She slid
from her chair to her knees on the floor beside him,
where he sat at his desk, and put her arms round him.

He did not seem to know it. " Look here, Louise,
I have got to connect this love-business with the main
action of the play, somehow. It won't do simply to
have it an episode. How would it do to have Atland
know all the time that Haxard has killed Greenshaw,
and be keeping it from Salome, while she is betraying
her love for him ? "

" Wouldn't that be rather tawdry ? " Louise let
her arms slip down to her side, and looked up at him,
as she knelt.

" Yes, it would," he owned.

He looked very unhappy about it, and she rose to her
feet, as if to give it more serious attention. " Brice,
I want your play to be thoroughly honest and true
from beginning to end, and not to have any sort of
catchpenny effectivism in it. You have planned it so
nobly that I can't bear to have you lower the standard
the least bit; and I think the honest and true way is
to let the love-business be a pleasant fact in the case,
as it might very well be. Those things do keep going
on in life alongside of the greatest misery, the great-
est unhappiness."

90 THE STORY OT A PLAY.

" Well," said Maxwell, " I guess you are right about
the love-business. I'll treat it frankly for what it is,
a fact in the ease. That will be the right way, and
that will be the strong way. It will be like life. I
don't know that you are bound to relate things strictly
to each other in art, any more than they are related
in life. There are all sorts of incidents and interests
playing round every great event that seem to have no
more relation to it than the rings of Saturn have to
Saturn. They form the atmosphere of it. If I can
let Haxard's wretchedness be seen at last through the
atmosphere of his daughter's happiness ! ''

"Yes," she said, " that will be quite enough." She
knew that they had talked up to the moment when he
could best begin to work, and now left him to himself.

Within a week he got the rehabilitated love-busi-
ness in place, and the play ready to show to Godol-
phin again. He had managed to hold the actor off in
the meantime, but now he returned in full force, with
suggestions and misgivings which had first to be
cleared away before he could give a clear mind to
what Maxwell had done. Then Maxwell could see
that he was somehow disappointed, for he began to
talk as if there were no understanding between them
for his taking the play. He praised it warmly, but

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 91

he said that it would be hard to find a woman to do
the part of Salome.

" That is the principal part in the piece now, you
know," he added.

" I don't see how," Maxwell protested. " It seems
to me that her character throws Haxard's into greater
relief than before, and gives it more prominence."

*' You've made the love-business too strong, I think.
I supposed you would have something light and grace-
ful to occupy the house in the suspense between the
points in Haxard's case. If I were to do him, I
should be afraid that people would come back from
Salome to him with more or less of an effort. I don't
say they would, but that's the way it strikes me now ;
perhaps some one else would look at it quite differ-
ently."

"Then, as it is, you don't want it?"

" I don't say that. But it seems to me that Salome
is the principal figure now. I think that's a mistake."

*' If it's a fact, it's a mistake. I don't want to have
it so," said Maxwell, and he made such effort as he
could to swallow his disgust.

Godolphin asked, after a while, " In that last scene
between her and her father, and in fact in all the
scenes between them, couldn't you give more of the

92 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

strong speeches to him ? She's a great creation now,
but isn't she too great for Atland ? "

" I've kept Atland under, purposely, because the
part is necessarily a negative one, and because I didn't
want him to compete with Haxard at all."

" Yes, that is all right ; but as it is, she competes
with Haxard."

After Godolphin had gone, Louise came 4own, and
found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript.
He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said,
" Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he
really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him
on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she
will take all the attention from him."

Louise appeared to reflect. " Well, isn't there
something in that ? "

" Good heavens ! I should think you were going
to play Haxard, too ! "

" No ; but of course you can't have twp characters
of equal importance in your play. Some one has to be
first, and Godolphin doesn't want an actress taking
all the honors away from him."

" Then why did you pretend to like the way I had
done it," Maxwell demanded, angrily, " if you think
she will take the honors from him ? "

THE STOllY OF A PLAY. 93

" I didn't say that I did. All that I want is t|iat
you should ask yourself whether she would or not."

" Are you jealous of her ? "

" Now, my dear, if you are going to be unreason-
able, I will not talk with you."

Nothing maddened Maxwell so much as to have his
wife take this tone with him,, when he had followed
her up through the sinuosities that always began with
her after a certain point. Short of that she was as
frank and candid as a man, and he understood her,
but beyond that the eternal womanly began, and he
could make nothing of her. She evaded, and came
and went, and returned upon her course, and all with
as good a conscience, apparently, as if she were
meeting him fairly and squarely on the question they
started with. Sometimes he doubted if she really
knew that she was behaving insincerely, or whether,
if she knew it, she could help doing it. He believed
her to be a more truthful nature than himself, and it
was insufferable for her to be less so, and then accuse
him of illogicality. •

" I have no wish to talk," he said, smothering his
rage, and taking up a page of manuscript.

" Of course," she went on, as if there had been no
break in their good feeling, " I know what a goose

94 ' THE STORY OF A PLAY.

Godolphin is, and I don't wonder you're vexed with
him, but you know very well that I have nothing but
the good of the play in view as a work of art, and I
should say that if you couldn't keep Salome from ri-
valling Haxard in the interest of the spectator, you
had better go back to the idea' of making two plays
of it. I think that the ' Second Chapter ' would be a
very good thing to begin with."

" Why, good heavens ! you said just the contrary
when we decided to drop it."

" Yes, but that was when I thought you would be
able to subdue Salome."

" There never was any question of subduing Salome ;
it was a question of subduing Atland ! "

" It's the same thing; keeping the love-business in
the background."

" I give it up ! " Maxwell flung down his manu-
script in sign of doing so. " The whole thing is a
mess, and you seem to delight in tormenting me about
it. How am I to give the love-business charm, and
yet keep it in»the background ? "

" 1 should think you could."

" How ? "

" Well, I was afraid you would give Salome too
much prominence."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 95

" Didn't you know whether I had done so or not ?
You knew what I had done before Godolphin came!"

" If Godolphin thinks she is too prominent, you
ought to trust his instinct."

Maxwell would not answer her. He went out, and
she saw him strolling down the path to the rocks.
She took the manuscript and began to read it over.

He did not come back, and when she was ready to
go to supper she had to go down to the rocks for
him. His angry fit seemed to have passed, but he
looked abjectly sad, and her heart ached at sight of
him. She said, cheerfully, " I have been reading that
love-business over again, Brice, and I don't find it so
far out as I was afraid it was. Salome is a little too
prononcee, but you can easily mend that. She is a
delightful character, and you have given her charm —
too much charm. I don't believe there's a truer
woman in the whole range of the drama. She is per-
fect, and that is why I think you can afford to keep
her back a little in the passages with Haxard. Of
course, Godolphin wants to shine there. You needn't
give him her speeches, but you can put them some-
where else, in some of the scenes with Atland; it
won't make any difference how much she outshines
him, poor fellow."

96 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

He would not be entreated at once, but after letting
her talk on to much the same effect for awhile, he
said, " 1 will see what can be done with it. At pres-
ent I am sick of the whole thing."

" Yes, just drop it for the present," she said. " I'm
hungry, aren't you ? "

" 1 didn't know it was time."

She was very tender with him, walking up to the
hotel, and all that evening she kept him amused, so
that he would not want to look at his manuscript.
She used him, as a wife is apt to use her husband
when he is fretted and not very well, as if he were
her little boy, and she did this so sweetly that Max-
well could not resent it.

The next morning she let him go to his play again,
and work all the morning. He ended about noon, and
told her he had done what she wanted done to the
love-business, he thought, but he would not show it
to her, for he said he was tired of it, and would have
to go over it with Godolphin, at any rate, when he
came in the afternoon. They went to the beach, but
the person with the smouldering eyes failed to appear,
and in fact they did not see her again at Magnolia,
and they decided that she must have been passing a
few days at one of the other hotels, and gone away.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 97

Godolphin arrived in the sunniest good-humor, as
if he had never had any thought of relinquishing the
play, and he professed himself delighted with the
changes Maxwell had made in the love-business. He
said the character of Salome had the true proportion
to all the rest now ; and Maxwell understood that he
would not be jealous of the actress who played the
part, or feel her a dangerous rival in the public favor.
He approved of the transposition of the speeches that
Maxwell had made, or at least he no longer openly
coveted them for Haxard.

What was more important to Maxwell was that
Louise seemed finally contented with the part, too,
and said that now, no matter what Godolphin wanted,
she would never let it be touched again. " I am glad
you have got that * impassioned ' rubbish out. I nev-
er thought that was in character with Salome."

The artistic consciousness of Maxwell, which caught
all the fine reluctances and all the delicate feminine
preferences of his wife, was like a subtle web woven
around him, and took everything, without his willing
it, from within him as well as from without, and held
it inexorably for future use. He knew the source of
the impassioned rubbish which had displeased his
wife ; and he had felt while he was employing it that
G

98 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

he was working in a commoner material than the rest
of Salome's character ; but he had experimented with
it in the hope that she might not notice it. The fact
that she had instantly noticed it, and had generalized
the dislike which she only betrayed at last, after she
had punished him sufficiently, remained in the meshes
of the net he wore about his mind, as something of
value, which he could employ to exquisite effect if he
could once find a scheme fit for it.

In the meantime it would be hard to say whether
Godolphin continued more a sorrow or a joy to Max-
well, who was by no means always of the same mind
about him. He told his wife sometimes, when she
was pitying him, that it was a good discipline for him
to work with such a man, for it taught him a great
deal about himself, if it did not teach him much else.
He said that it tamed his overweening pride to find
that there was artistic ability employing itself with
literature which was so unlike literary ability. Godol-
phin conceived perfectly of the literary intention in
the fine passages of the play, and enjoyed their beauty,
but he did not value them any more than the poorest
and crudest verbiage that promised him a point. In
fact. Maxwell found that in two or three places the
actor was making a wholly wrong version of his words,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 99

and maturing in his mind an effect from his error that
he was rather loath to give up, though when he was
instructed as to their true meaning, he saw how he
could get a better effect out of it. He had an excel-
lent intelligence, but this was employed so entirely in
the study of impression that significance was often a
secondary matter with him. He had not much humor-,
and Maxwell doubted if he felt it much in others, but
he told a funny story admirably, and did character-
stuff, as he called it, with the subtlest sense ; he had
begun in sketches of the variety type. Sometimes
Maxwell thought him very well versed in the history
and theory of the drama; but there were other times
when his ignorance seemed almost creative in that
direction. He had apparently no feeling for values;
he would want a good effect used, without regard to
the havoc it made of the whole picture, though doubt-
less if it could have been realized to him, he would
have abhorred it as thoroughly as Maxwell himself.
He would come over from Manchester one day with a
notion for the play so bad that it almost made Max-
well shed tears ; and the next with something so good
that Maxwell marvelled at it ; but Godolphin seemed
to value the one no more than the other. He was a
creature of moods the most extreme ; his faith in Max-

100 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

well was as profound as his abysmal distrust of him ;
and his frank and open nature was full of suspicion.
He was like a child in the simplicity of his selfishness,
as far as his art was concerned, but in all matters
aside from it he was chaotically generous. His form-
lessness was sometimes almost distracting; he pre-
sented himself to the author's imagination as mere
human material, waiting to be moulded in this shape
or that. From day to day, from week to week, Max-
well lived in a superficial uncertainty whether Godol-
phin had really taken his play, or would ever produce
it ; yet at the bottom of his heart he confided in the
promises which the actor lavished upon him in both
the written and the spoken word. They had an agree-
ment carefully drawn up as to all the business between
them, but he knew that Godolphin would not be held
by any clause of it that he wished to break ; he did
not believe that Godolphin understood what it bound
him to, either when he signed it or afterward ; but he
was sure that he would do not only what was right,
but what was noble, if he could be taken at the right
moment. Upon the whole, he liked him ; in a curious
sort, he respected and honored him ; and he defended
him against Mrs. Maxwell when she said Godolphin
was wearing her husband's life out, and that if he

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 101

made the play as greatly successful as " Hamlet," or
the "Trip to Chinatown," he would not be worth
what it cost them both in time and temper.

They lost a good deal of time and temper with the
play, which was almost a conjugal affair with them,
and the struggle to keep up a show of gay leisure be-
fore the summering world up and down the coast told
upon Mrs. Maxwell's nerves. She did not mind the
people in the hotel so much ; they were very nice, but
she did not know many of them, and she could not
care for them as she did for her friends who came up
from Beverly Farms and over from Manchester. She
hated to call Maxwell from his work at such times,
not only because she pitied him, but because he came
to help her receive her friends with such an air of
gloomy absence and open reluctance ; and she had
hated still worse to say he was busy with his play, the
play he was writing for Mr. Godolphin. Her friends
were apparently unable to imagine anyone writing a
play so seriously, and they were unable to imagine
Mr. Godolphin at all, for they had never heard of him ;
the splendor of his unknown name took them more
than anything else. As for getting Maxwell to return
their visits with her, when men had come with the
ladies who called upon her, she could only manage it

102 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

if he was so fagged with working at his play that he
was too weak to resist her will, and even then he had
to he torn from it almost by main force. He behaved
so badly in the discharge of some of these duties to
society, and was, to her eye at least, so bored and
worried by them that she found it hard to forgive him,
and made him suffer for it on the way home till she
relented at the sight of his thin face, the face that she
loved, that she had thought the world well lost for.
After the third or fourth time she made him go with
her she gave it up and went alone, though she was
aware that it might look as if they were not on good
terms. She only obliged him after that to go with
her to her father's, where she would not allow any
shadow of suspicion to fall upon their happiness, and
where his absent-mindedness would be accounted for.
Her mother seemed to understand it better than her
father, who, she could see, sometimes inwardly re-
sented it as neglect. She also exacted of Maxwell
that he should not sit silent through a whole meal at
the hotel, and that, if he did not or could not talk, he
should keep looking at her, and smiling and nodding,
now and then. If he would remember to do this she
would do all the talking herself. Sometimes he did
not remember, and then she trod on his foot in vain.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 103

The droll side of the case often presented itself for
her relief, and, after all, she knew beforehand that
this was the manner of man she was marrying, and
she was glad to marry him. She was happier than
she had ever dreamed of being. She was one of those
women who live so largely in their sympathies that if
these were employed she had no thought of herself,
and not to have any thought of one's self is to be
blessed. Maxwell had no thought of anything but his
work, and that made his bliss ; if she could have no
thought but of him in his work, she could feel herself
in Heaven with him.

VII.

July and August went by, and it was time for Go-
dolphin to take the road again. By this time Max-
well's play was in as perfect form as it could be until
it was tried upon the stage and then overhauled for
repairs. Godolphin had decided to try it first in
Toronto, where he was going to open, and then to
give it in the West as often as he could. If it did as
well as he expected he would bring it on for a run in
New York about the middle of December. He would
want Maxwell at the rehearsals there, but for the pres-
ent he said he preferred to stage-manage it himself ;
they had talked it up so fully that he had all the
author's intentions in mind.

He came over from Manchester the day before his
vacation ended to take leave of the Maxwells. He
was in great spirits with the play, but he confessed to
a misgiving in regard to the lady whom he had se-
cured for the part of Salome. He said there was only
one woman he ever saw fit to do that part, but when

104

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 105

he named the actress the Maxwells had to say they
had never heard of her before. " She is a Southerner.
She is very well known in the West," Godolphin said.

Louise asked if she had ever played in Boston, and
when he said she had not, Louise said " Oh ! "

Maxwell trembled, but Godolphin seemed to find
nothing latent in his wife's offensive tone, and after a
little further talk they all parted on the friendliest
terms. The Maxwells did not hear from him for a
fortnight, though he was to have tried the play in
Toronto at least a week earlier. Then there came a
telegram from Midland :

" Tried play here last night. Went like wildfire.
Will write. Godolphin.

The message meant success, and the Maxwells
walked the air. The production of the piece was
mentioned in the Associated Press despatches to the
Boston papers, and though Mrs. Maxwell studied these
in vain for some verbal corroboration of Godolphin's
jubilant message, she did not lose faith in it, nor allow
her husband to do so. In fact, while they waited for
Godolphin's promised letter, they made use of their
leisure to count the chickens which had begun to
hatch. The actor had agreed to pay the author at the

106 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

rate of five dollars an act for each performance of tlie
play, and as it was five acts long a simple feat of
arithmetic showed that the nightly gain from it would
be twenty -five dollars, and that if it ran every night
and two afternoons, for matinees, the weekly return
from it would be two hundred dollars. Besides this,
Godolphin had once said, in a moment of high content
with the piece, that if it went as he expected it to go
he would pay Maxwell over and above this twenty-five
dollars a performance five per cent, of the net receipts
whenever these passed one thousand dollars. His
promise had not been put in writing, and Maxwell had
said at the time that he should be satisfied with his
five dollars an act, but he had told his wife of it, and
they had both agreed that Godolphin would keep it.
They now took it into the account in summing up
their gains, and Mrs. Maxwell thought it reasonable to
figure at least twenty-five dollars more from it for
each time the play was given ; but as this brought the
weekly sum up to four hundred dollars, she so far
yielded to her husband as to scale the total at three
hundred dollars, though she said it was absurd to put
it at any such figure. She refused, at any rate, to
estimate their earnings from the season at less than
fifteen thousand dollars. It was useless for Maxwell

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 107

to urge that Godolphin had other pieces in his reper-
tory, things that had made his reputation, and that he
would naturally want to give sometimes. She asked
him whether Godolphin himself had not voluntarily
said that if the piece went as he expected he would
play nothing else as long as he lived, like Jefferson
with Rip Van Winkle ; and here, she said, it had al-
ready, by his own showing, gone at once like wildfire.
When Maxwell pleaded that they did not know what
wildfire meant she declared that it meant an overwhelm-
ing house and unbridled rapture in the audience ; it
meant an instant and lasting triumph for the play.
She began to praise Godolphin, or, at least, to own
herself mistaken in some of her decrials of him. She
could not be kept from bubbling over to two or three
ladies at the hotel, where it was quickly known what
an immense success the first performance of Maxwell's
play had been. He was put to shame by several ask-
ing him when they were to have it in Boston, but his
wife had no embarrassment in answering that it would
probably be kept the whole winter in New York, and
not come to Boston till some time in the early spring.
She was resolved, now, that he should drive over to
Beverly Farms with her, and tell her father and mother
about the success of the play. She had instantly tel-

108 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

egraphed them on getting Godolphin's despatch, and
she began to call out to her father as soon as she got
inside the house, and saw him coming down the stairs
in the hall, " Now, what do you say, papa ? Isn't
it glorious ? Didn't I tell you it would be the great-
est success? Did you ever hear anything like it?
Where's mamma ? If she shouldn't be at home, I
don't know what I shall do ! "

" She's here," said her father, arriving at the foot
of the stairs, where Louise embraced him, and then
let him shake hands with her husband. " She's dress-
ing. We were just going over to see you."

" Well, you've been pretty deliberate about it !
Here it's after lunch, and I telegraphed you at ten
o'clock." She went on to bully her father more and
more, and to flourish Maxwell's triumph in his face.
" We're going to have three hundred dollars a week
from it at the very least, and fifteen thousand dollars
for the season. What do you think of that ? Isn't
that pretty good, for two people that had nothing in
the world yesterday ? What do you say now^ papa ? "

There were all sorts of lurking taunts, demands, re-
proaches, in these words, which both the men felt,
but they smiled across her, and made as if they were
superior to her simple exultation.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 109

" I should say you had written the play yourself,
Louise," said her father.

" No," answered her husband, *' Godolphin wrote
the play ; or I've no doubt he's telling the reporters
so by this time."

Louise would not mind them. "Well, I don't
care ! I want papa to acknowledge that I was right,
for once. Anybody could believe in Brice's genius,
but I believed in his star, and I always knew that he
would get on, and I was all for his giving up his news-
paper work, and devoting himself to the drama; and
now the way is open to him, and all he has got to do
is to keep on writing."

" Come now, Louise," said her husband.

" Well," her father interposed, " I'm glad of your
luck, Maxwell. It isn't in my line, exactly, but I
don't believe I could be any happier, if it were. After
all, it's doing something to elevate the stage. I wish
someone would take hold of the pulpit."

Maxwell shrugged. " I'm not strong enough for
that, quite. And I can't say that I had any conscious
intention to elevate the stage with my play."

" But you had it unconsciously, Brice," said Lou-
ise, " and it can't help having a good effect on life,
too."

110 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" It will teach people to be careful how they mur-
der people," Maxwell assented.

" Well, it's a great chance," said Hilary, with the
will to steer a middle course between Maxwell's mod-
esty and Louise's overweening pride. " There really
isn't anything that people talk about more. They
discuss plays as they used to discuss sermons. If
you've done a good play, you've done a good thing."

His wife hastened to make answer for him. " He's
done a great play, and there are no ifs or ans about
it." She went on to celebrate Maxwell's achievement
till he was quite out of countenance, for he knew that
she was doing it mainly to rub his greatness into her
father, and he had so much of the old grudge left
that he would not suffer himself to care whether Hil-
ary thought him great or not. It was a relief when
Mrs. Hilary came in. Louise became less defiant in
her joy then, or else the effect of it was lost in Mrs.
Hilary's assumption of an entire expectedness in the
event. Her world was indeed so remote from the
world of art that she could value success in it only as
it related itself to her family, and it seemed altogether
natural to her that her daughter's husband should take
its honors. She was by no means a stupid woman ;
for a woman born and married to wealth, with all the

THE STORY OF A PLAY. Ill

advantages that go with it, she was uncommonly in-
telligent ; but she could not help looking upon aesthetic
honors of any sort as in questionable taste. She
would have preferred position in a son-in-law to any
distinction appreciable to the general, but wanting
that it was fit he should be distinguished in the way
he chose. In her feeling it went far to redeem the
drama that it should be related to the Hilarys by mar-
riage, and if she had put her feeling into words, which
always oversay the feelings, they would have been to
the effect that the drama had behaved very well in-
deed, and deserved praise. This is what Mrs. Hilary's
instinct would have said, but, of course, her reason
would have said something quite different, and it was
her reason that spoke to Maxwell, and expressed a
pleasure in his success that was very gratifying to him.
He got on with her better than with Hilary, partly
because she was a woman and he was a man, and
partly because, though she had opposed his marriage
with Louise more steadily than her husband, there
had been no open offence between them. He did not
easily forgive a hurt to his pride, and Hilary, with all
his good will since, and his quick repentance at the
time, had never made it quite right with Maxwell for
treating him rudely once, when he came to him so

112 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

helplessly in the line of his newspaper work. They
were always civil to each other, and they would always
be what is called good friends ; they had even an air
of mutual understanding, as regarded Louise and her
/exuberances. Still, she was so like her father in these,
and so unlike her mother, that it is probable the un-
derstanding between Hilary and Maxwell concerning
her was only the understanding of men, and that Max-
well was really more in sympathy with Mrs. Hilary,
even about Louise, even about the world. He might
have liked it as much as she, if he had been as much
of it, and he thought so well of it as a world that he
meant to conquer one of the chief places in it. In
the meantime he would have been very willing to re-
venge himself upon it, to satirize it, to hurt it, to
humble it — but for his own pleasure, not the world's
good.

Hilary wanted the young people to stay the after-
noon, and have dinner, but his wife perceived that
they wished to be left alone in their exultation, and
she would not let him keep them beyond a decent
moment, or share too much in their joy. With only
that telegram from Godolphin they could not be def-
inite about anything but their future, which Louise, at
least, beheld all rose color. Just what size or shape

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 113

their good fortune had already taken they did not
know, and could not, till they got the letter Godolphin
had promised, and she was in haste to go back to
Magnolia for that, though it could not arrive before
the next morning at the earliest. She urged that he
might have written before telegraphing, or when he
came from the theatre after the play was given. She
was not satisfied with the reception of her news, and
she said so to Maxwell, as soon as they started home.

" What did you want ? " he retorted, in a certain
vexation. " They were as cordial as they could be."

" Cordial is not enough. You can't expect anything
like uproar from mamma, but she took it too much as
a matter of course, and I did suppose papa would be
a little more riotous."

" If you are going to be as exacting as that with
people," Maxwell returned, " you are going to disap-
point yourself frightfully ; and if you insist, you will
make them hate you. People can't share your happi-
ness any more than they can share your misery ; it's
as much as they can do to manage their own."

" But I did think my own father and mother might
have entered into it a little more," she grieved.
" Well, you are right, Brice, and I will try to hold in
after this. It wasn't for myself I cared."
H

114 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

*' I know," said Maxwell, so appreciatively ttati she
felt all her loss made up to her, and shrunk closer to
him in the l>uggy he was driving with a lax, absent-
minded rein. " But I think a little less Fourth of
July on my account would be better."

" Yes, you are wise, and I shall not say another
word about it to anybody ; just treat it as a common
every-day event."

He laughed at what was so far from her possibil-
ities, and began to tell her of the scheme for still an-
other play that had occurred to him while they were
talking with her father. She was interested in the
scheme, but more interested in the involuntary work-
ings of his genius, and she celebrated that till he had
to beg her to stop, for she made him ashamed of him-
self even in the solitude of the woodland stretches
they were passing through. Then he said, as if it
were part of the same strain of thought, " You have
to lose a lot of things in writing a play. Now, for
instance, that beautiful green light there in the
woods." He pointed to a depth of the boscage where
it had almost an emerald quality, it was so vivid, so
intense. " If I were writing a story about two lovers "
in such a light, and how it bathed their figures and
illumined their faces, I could make the reader feel it

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 115

just as I did. I could make them see it. But if I
were putting them in a play, I should have to trust
the carpenter and the scene-painter for the effect ; and
you know what broken reeds they are."

" Yes," she sighed, " and some day I hope you will
write novels. But now you've made such a success
with this play that you must do some others, and
when you've got two or three going steadily you can
afford to take up a novel. It would be wicked to turn
your back on the opportunity you've won."

He silently assented and said, "I shall be all the
the better novelist for waiting a year or two."

VIII.

There was no letter from Godolphin in the morn-
ing, but in the course of the forenoon there came a
newspaper addressed in his handwriting, and later
several others. They were Midland papers, and they
had each, heavily outlined in ink, a notice of the ap-
pearance of Mr. Launcelot Godolphin in a new play
written expressly for him by a young Boston littera-
teur. Mr. Godolphin believed the author to be des-
tined to make his mark high in the dramatic world, he
said in the course of a long interview in the paper
which came first, an evening edition preceeding the
production of the piece, and plainly meant to give the
public the right perspective. He had entered into a
generous expression of his own feelings concerning it,
and had given Maxwell full credit for the lofty con-
ception of an American drama, modern in spirit, and
broad in purpose. He modestly reserved to himself
such praise as might be due for the hints his life-long

116

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 117

knowledge of the stage had enabled him to offer the
dramatist. He told how they had spent the summer
near each other on the north shore of Massachusetts,
and had met almost daily; and the reporter got a
picturesque bit out of their first meeting at the actor's
hotel, in Boston, the winter before, ^hen the drama-
tist came to lay the scheme of the play before Godol-
phin, and Godolphin made up his mind before he had
heard him half through, that he should want the piece.
He had permitted himself a personal sketch of Max-
well, which lost none of its original advantages in the
diction of the reporter, and which represented him as
young, slight in figure, with a refined and delicate
face, bearing the stamp of intellectual force ; a jour-
nalist from the time he left school, and one of the
best exponents of the formative influences of the press
in the training of its votaries. From time to time it
was hard for Maxwell to make out whose words the
interview was couched in, but he acquitted Godolphin
of the worst, and he certainly did not accuse him of
the flowery terms giving his patriotic reasons for not
producing the piece first in Toronto as he had meant
to do. It appeared that, upon second thoughts, he
had reserved this purely American drama for the open-
ing night of his engagement in one of the most dis-

118 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

tinctively American cities, after having had it in daily
rehearsal ever since the season began.

" I should think they had Pinney out there," said
Maxwell, as he and his wife looked over the interview,
with their cheeks together.

" Not at all ! " «he retorted. " It isn't the least like
Pinney," and he was amazed to find that she really
liked the stuff. She said that she was glad, now, that
she understood why Godolphin had not opened with
the play in Toronto, as he had promised, and she
thoroughly agreed with him that it ought first to be
given on our own soil. She was dashed for a moment
when Maxwell made her reflect that they were proba-
bly the losers of four or five hundred dollars by the
delay; then she said she did not care, that it was
worth the money. She did not find the personal ac-
count of Maxwell offensive, though she contended that
it did not do him full justice, and she cut out the in-
terview and pasted it in a book, where she was going
to keep all the notices of his play and every printed
fact concerning it. He told her she would have to
help herself out with some of the fables, if she ex-
pected to fill her book, and she said she did not care
for that, either, and probably it was just such things
as this interview that drew attention to the play, and

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 119

must have made it go like wildfire that first night in
Midland. Maxwell owned that it was but too likely,
and then he waited hungrily for further word of his
play, while she expected the next mail in cheerful
faith.

It brought them four or five morning papers, and it
seemed from these that a play might have gone like
wildfire, and yet not been seen by a very large number
of people. The papers agreed in a sense of the grace-
ful compliment paid their city by Mr. Godolphin, who
was always a favorite there, in producing his new
piece at one of their theatres, and confiding it at once
to the judgment of a cultivated audience, instead of
trying it first in a subordinate place, and bringing it
on with a factitious reputation worked up from all
sorts of unknown sources. They agreed, too, that his
acting had never been better ; that it had great smooth-
ness, and that it rose at times into passion, and was
full of his peculiar force. His company was well
chosen, and his support had an even excellence which
reflected great credit upon the young star, who might
be supposed, if he had followed an unwise tradition,
to be willing to shine at the expense of his surround-
ings. His rendition of the role of Haxard was mag-
nificent in one journal, grand in another, superb in a

120 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

third, rich, full and satisfying in a fourth, subtle and
conscientious in a fifth. Beyond this, the critics
ceased to be so much of one mind. They were, by a
casting vote, adverse to the leading lady, whom the
majority decided an inadequate Salome, without those
great qualities which the author had evidently meant
to redeem a certain coquettish lightness in her ; the
minority held that she had grasped the role with in-
telligence, and expressed with artistic force a very re-
fined intention in it. The minority hinted that Salome
was really the great part in the piece, and that in her
womanly endeavor to win back the lover whom she
had not at first prized at his true worth, while her
heart was wrung by sympathy with her unhappy fa-
ther in the mystery brooding over him, she was a far
more interesting figure than the less complex Haxard ;
and they intimated that Godolphin had an easier task
in his portrayal. They all touched more or less upon
the conduct of the subordinate actors in their parts,
and the Maxwells, in every case, had to wade through
their opinions of the playing before they got to their
opinions of the play, which was the only vital matter
concerned.

Louise would have liked to read them, as she had
read the first, with her arm across Maxwell's shoulder,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 121

and, as it were, with the same eye and the same mind,
but Maxwell betrayed an uneasiness under the experi-
ment which made her ask : " Don't you like to have
me put my arm round you, Brice ? "

"Yes, yes," he answered, impatiently, " I like to
have you put your arm around me on all proper occa-
sions; but — it isn't favorable to collected thought."

" Why, /think it is, " she protested with pathos, and
a burlesque of her pathos. " I never think half so well
as when I have my arm around you. Then it seems
as if I thought with your mind. I feel so judicial."

" Perhaps I feel too emotional, under the same con-
ditions, and think with your mind. At any rate, I
can't stand it ; and we can't both sit in the same chair
either. Now, you take one of the papers and go
round to the other side of the table. I want to have
all my faculties for the appreciation of this noble crit-
icism ; it's going to be full of instruction."

He made her laugh, and she feigned a pout in
obeying him ; but, nevertheless, in her heart she felt
herself postponed to the interest that was always first
in him, and always before his love.

" And don't talk," he urged, *' or keep calling out,
or reading passages ahead. I want to get all the sense
there doesn't seem to be in this thing."

122 THE STOKY OF A PLAY.

In fact the critics had found themselves confronted
with a task which is always confusing to criticism, in
the necessity of valuing a work of art so novel in ma-
terial that it seems to refuse the application of criter-
ions. As he followed their struggles in the endeavor
to judge his work by such canons of art as were known
to them, instead of taking it frankly upon the plane
of nature and of truth, where he had tried to put it,
and blaming or praising him as he had failed or suc-
ceeded in this, he was more and more bowed down
within himself before the generous courage of Godol-
phin in rising to an appreciation of his intention. He
now perceived that he was a man of far more uncom-
mon intelligence than he had imagined him, and that
in taking his play Godolphin had shown a zeal for the
drama which was not likely to find a response in crit-
icism, whatever its fate with the public might be.
The critics frankly owned that in spite of its defects
the piece had a cordial reception from the audience ;
that the principal actors were recalled again and again,
and they reported that Godolphin had spoken both
for the author and himself in acknowledging the ap-.
plause, and had disclaimed all credit for their joint
success. This made Maxwell ashamed of the suspic-
ion he had harbored that Godolphin would give the

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 123

impression of a joint authorship, at the least. He
felt that he had judged the man narrowly and inade-
quately, and he decided that as soon as he heard from
him, he would write and make due reparation for the
tacit wrong he had done him.

Upon the whole he had some reason to be content
with the first fortune of his work, whatever its final
fate might be. To be sure, if the audience which re-
ceived it was enthusiastic, it was confessedly small,
and it had got no more than a foothold in the public
favor. It must remain for further trial to prove it a
failure or a success. His eye wandered to the column
of advertised amusements for the pleasure of seeing
the play announced there for the rest of the week.
There was a full list of the pieces for the time of Go-
dolphin's stay ; but it seemed that neither at night nor
at morning was Maxwell's play to be repeated. The
paper dropped from his hand.

" What is the matter ? " his wife asked, looking up
from her own paper. " This poor man is the greatest
possible goose. He doesn't seem to know what he is
talking about, even when he praises you. But of
course he has to write merely from a first impression.
Do you want to change papers ? "

Maxwell mechanically picked his up, and gave it to

124 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

her. *' The worst of it is," he said, with the sardonic
smile he had left over from an unhappier time of life,
" that he won't have an opportunity to revise his first
impression."

" What do you mean ? "

He tald her, but she could not believe him till she
had verified the fact by looking at the advertisements
in all the papers.

Then she asked: "What in the world does he
mean ? "

" Not to give it there any more, apparently. He
hasn't entered upon the perpetual performance of the
piece. But if he isn't like Jefferson, perhaps he's
like Rip; he don't count this time. Well, I might
have known it ! Why did I ever trust one of that
race ? " He began to walk up and down the room,
and to fling out, one after another, the expressions of
his scorn and his self -scorn. " They have no idea of
what good faith is, except as something that brings
down the house when they register a noble vow. But
I don't blame him ; I blame myself. What an ass,
what an idiot, I was ! Why, he could have told me
not to believe in his promises ; he is a perfectly hon-
est man, and would have done it, if I had appealed to
him. He didn't expect me to believe in them, and

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 125

from the wary way I talked, I don't suppose he
thought I did. He hadn't the measure of my folly ;
I hadn't, myself ! "

" Now, Brice ! " his wife called out to him, severely,
" I won't have you going on in that way. When I
denounced Godolphin you wouldn't listen to me ; and
when I begged and besought you to give him up, you
always said he was t'he only man in the world for you,
till I got to believing it, and I believe it now. Why,
dearest," she added, in a softer tone, " don't you see
that he probably had his programme arranged all be-
forehand, and couldn't change it, just because your
play happened to be a hit ? I'm sure he paid you a
great compliment by giving it the first night. Now,
you must just wait till you hear from him, and you
may be sure he will have a good reason for not repeat-
ing it there."

" Oh, Godolphin would never lack for a good rea-
son. And I can tell you what his reason in this case
will be : that the thing was practically a failure, and
that he would have lost money if he had kept it on."

" Is that what is worrying you ? I don't believe it
was a failure. I think from all that the papers say,
and the worst that they say, the piece was a distinct
success. It was a great success with nice people, you

126 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

can see that for yourself, and it will be a popular suc-
cess, too ; I know it will, as soon as it gets a chance.
But you may be sure that Godolphin has some scheme
about it, and that if he doesn't give it again in Mid-
land, it's because he wants to make people curious
about it, and hold it in reserve, or something like that.
At any rate, I think you ought to wait for his letter
before you denounce him."

Maxwell laughed again at these specious arguments,
but he could not refuse to be comforted by them, and
he had really nothing to do but to wait for Godolphin's
letter. It did not come the next mail, and then his
wife and he collated his dispatch with the newspaper
notices, and tried to make up a judicial opinion from
their combined testimony concerning the fate of the
play with the audience. Their scrutiny of the tele-
gram developed the fact that it must have been sent
the night of the performance, and while Godolphin
was still warm from his recalls and from the congrat-
ulations of his friends ; it could not have reached them
so soon as it did in the morning if it had been sent
to the office then ; it was not a night message, but it
had probably lain in the office over night. In this
view it was not such valuable testimony to the success
of the play as it had seemed before. But a second

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 127

and a third reading of the notices made them seem
friendlier than at first. The Maxwells now perceived
that they had first read them in the fever of their joy
from Godolphin's telegram, and that their tempered
approval had struck cold upon them because they were
so overheated. They were really very favorable, after
all, and they witnessed to an interest in the play which
could not be ignored. Very likely the interest in it
was partly from the fact that Godolphin had given it,
but apart from this it was evident that the play had
established a claim of its own. The mail, which did
not bring a letter from Godolphin, brought another
copy of that evening paper which had printed the an-
ticipatory interview with him, and this had a long and
careful consideration of the play in its editorial col-
umns, apparently written by a lover of the drama, as
well as a lover of the theatre. Very little regard was
paid to the performance, but a great deal to the play,
which was skilfully analyzed, and praised and blamed
in the right places. The writer did not attempt to
forecast its fate, but he said that whatever its fate
with the public might be, here, at least, was a step in
the direction of the drama dealing with facts of Amer-
ican life — simply, vigorously, and honestly. It had
faults of construction, but the faults were not the

128 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

faults of weakness. They were rather the effects of a
young talent addressing itself to the management of
material too rich, too abundant for the scene, and al-
lowing itself to touch the borders of melodrama in its
will to enforce some tragic points of the intrigue.
But it was not mawkish and it was not romantic. In
its highest reaches it made you think, by its stern and
unflinching fidelity to the implications, of Ibsen ; but
it was not too much to say that it had a charm often
wanting to that master. It was full of the real Amer-
ican humor ; it made its jokes, as Americans did, in
the very face of the most disastrous possibilities ; and
in the love-passages it was delicious. The whole epi-
sode of the love between Haxard's daughter, Salome,
and Atland was simply the sweetest and freshest bit
of nature in the modern drama. It daringly portrayed
a woman in circumstances where it was the convention
to ignore that she ever was placed, and it lent a grace
of delicate comedy to the somber ensemble of the
piece, without lowering the dignity of the action or
detracting from the sympathy the spectator felt for the
daughter of the homicide ; it rather heightened this.

Louise read the criticism aloud, and then she and
Maxwell looked at each other. It took their breath
away ; but Louise got her breath first. " Who in the

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 129

world would have dreamed that there was any one
who could write such a criticism, out there ? "

Maxwell took the paper, and ran the article over
again. Then he said, " If the thing did nothing more
than get itself appreciated in that way, I should feel
that it had done enough. I wonder who the fellow
is ! Could it be a woman ? "

There was, in fact, a feminine fineness in the touch,
here and there, that might well suggest a woman, but
they finally decided against the theory: Louise said
that a woman writer would not have the honesty to
own that the part Salome played in getting back her
lover was true to life, though every woman who saw
it would know that it was. She examined the wrap-
per of the newspaper, and made sure that it was ad-
dressed in Godolphin's hand, and she said that if he
did not speak of the article in his letter, Maxwell must
write out to the newspaper and ask who had done it.

Godolphin's letter came at last, with many excuses
for his delay. He said he had expected the newspa-
per notices to speak for him, and he seemed to think
that they had all been altogether favorable to the play.
It was not very consoling to have him add that he
now believed the piece would have run the whole week
in Midland, if he had kept it on ; but he had arranged
I

130 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

merely to give it a trial, and Maxwell would under-
stand how impossible it was to vary a programme
which had once been made out. One thing was cer-
tain, however: the piece was an assured success, and
a success of the most flattering and brilliant kind, and
Godolphin would give it a permanent place in his
repertoire. There was no talk of his playing nothing
else, and there was no talk of putting the piece on for
a run, when he opened in New York. He said he
had sent Maxwell a paper containing a criticism in the
editorial columns, which would serve to show him how
great an interest the piece had excited in Midland,
though he believed the article was not written by one
of the regular force, but was contributed from the out-
side by a young fellow who had been described to
Godolphin as a sort of Ibsen crank. At the close, he
spoke of certain weaknesses which the piece had de-
veloped in the performance, and casually mentioned
that he would revise it at these points as he found the
time ; it appeared to him that it needed overhauling,
particularly in the love episode ; there was too much
of that, and the interest during an entire act centred
so entirely upon Salome that, as he had foreseen, the
r61e of Haxard suffered.

IX.

The Maxwells stared at each other in dismay when
they had finished this letter, which Louise had opened,
but which they had read together, she looking over
his shoulder. All interest in the authorship of the
article of the Ibsen crank, all interest in Godolphin's
apparent forgetfulness of his solemn promises to give
the rest of his natural life to the performance of the
piece, was lost in amaze at the fact that he was going
to revise it to please himself, and to fashion Maxwell's
careful work over in his own ideal of the figure he
should make in it to the public. The thought of this
was so petrifying that even Louise could not at once
find words for it, and they were both silent, as people
sometimes are, when a calamity has befallen them, in
the hope that if they do not speak it will turn out a
miserable dream.

" Well, Brice," she said at last, ** you certainly

never expected this!''''

131

132 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" No," he answered with a ghastly laugh ; " this
passes ray most sanguine expectations, even of Godol-
phin. Good Heaven ! Fancy the botch he will make
of it!"

" You mustn't let him touch it. You must demand
it back, peremptorily. You must telegraph ! "

" What a mania you have for telegraphing," he re-
torted. ''A special delivery postage-stamp will serve
every purpose. He isn't likely to do the piece again
for a week, at the earliest." He thought for awhile,
and then he said : " In a week he'll have a chance to
change his mind so often, that perhaps he won't revise
and overhaul it, after all."

" But he mustn't think that you would suffer it for
an instant," his wife insisted. " It's an indignity that
you should not submit to ; it's an outrage ! "

" Very likely," Maxwell admitted, and he began to
walk the floor, with his head fallen, and his fingers
clutched together behind him. The sight of his mute
anguish wrought upon his wife and goaded her to
more and more utterance.

" It's an insult to your genius, Brice, dear, and you
must resent it. I am sure I have been as humble
about the whole affair as any one could be, and I
should be the last person to wish you to do anything

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 133

rash. I bore with Godolphin's suggestions, and I let
him worry you to death with his plans for spoiling
your play, but I certainly didn't dream of anything so
high-handed as his undertaking to work it over him-
self, or I should have insisted on your breaking with
him long ago. How patient you have been through
it all ! You've shown so much forbearance, and so
much wisdom, and so much delicacy in dealing with
his preposterous ideas, and then, to have it all thrown
away ! It's too bad ! "

Maxwell kept walking back and forth, and Louise
began again at a new point.

" I was willing to have it remain simply a succes
(Vestime^ as far as Midland was concerned, though I
think you were treated abominably in that, for he cer-
tainly gave you reason to suppose that he would do it
every night there. He says himself that it would
have run the whole week ; and you can see from that
article how it was growing in public favor all the time.
What has become of his promise to play nothing else,
I should like to know ? And he's only played it once,
and now he proposes to revise it himself ! "

Still Maxwell walked on and she continued :

" I don't know what I shall say to my family. They
can never understand such a thing, never ! Papa

134 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

couldn't conceive of giving a promise and not keeping
it, much less giving a promise just for the pleasure of
breaking it. What shall I tell them, Brice ? I can't
bear to say that Godolphin is going to make your play
over, unless I can say at the same time that you've
absolutely forbidden him to do so. That's why J
wanted you to telegraph. I wanted to say you had
telegraphed."

Maxwell stopped in his walk and gazed at her, but
she could feel that he did not see her, and she
said :

" I don't know that it's actually necessary for me to
say anything at present. I can show them the notices,
or that article alone. It's worth all the rest put to-
gether, and then we can wait, and see if we hear any-
thing more from Godolphin. But now I don't want
you to lose any more time. You must write to him
at once, and absolutely forbid him to touch your play.
Will you?"

Her husband returned from his wanderings of mind
and body, and as he dropped upon the lounge at her
side, he said, gently, " No, I don't think I'll write at
all, Louise."

" Not write at all ! Then you're going to let him
tamper with that beautiful work of yours ? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 135

" I'm going to wait till I hear from him again. Go-
dolphin is a good fellow — "

"Oh!"

" And he won't be guilty of doing me injustice.
Besides," and here Maxwell broke oif with a laugh
that had some gayety in it, " he couldn't. Godolphin
is a fine actor, and he's going to be a great one, but
his gifts are not in the line of literature."

" I should think not ! "

" He couldn't change the piece any more than if he
couldn't read or write. And if he could, when it came
to touching it, I don't believe he would, because the
fact would remind him that it wasn't fair. He has to
realize things in the objective way before he can real-
ize them at all. That's the stage. If they can have
an operator climbing a real telegraph-pole to tap the
wire and telegraph the girl he loves that he is dead,
so that she can marry his rich rival and go to Europe
and cultivate her gift for sculpture, they feel that they
have got real life."

Louise would not be amused, or laugh with her hus-
band at this. " Then what in the world does Godol-
phin mean ? " she demanded.

" Why, being interpreted out of actor's parlance,
he means that he wishes he could talk the play over

136 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

with me again and be persuaded that he is wrong
about it."

" I must say," Louise remarked, after a moment for
mastering the philosophy of this, "that you take it
very strangely, Brice."

" I've thought it out," said Maxwell.

" And what are you going to do ? "

" I am going to wait the turn of events. My faith
in Godolphin is unshaken — such as it is."

" And what is going to be our attitude in regard to
it?"

" Attitude ? With whom ? "

"With our friends. Suppose they ask us about
the play, and how it is getting along. And my fam-
ily?"

" I don't think it will be necessary to take any atti-
tude. They can think what they like. Let them
wait the turn of events, too. If we can stand it, they
can."

*' No, Brice," said his wife. " That won't do. We
might be silently patient ourselves, but if we left them
to believe that it was all going well, we should be
living a lie."

" What an extraordinary idea! "

" I've told papa and mamma — we've both told them.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 137

though I did the talking, you can say — that the play
was a splendid success, and Godolphin was going to
give it seven or eight times a week ; and now if it's a
failure — "

" It isn't a failure ! " Maxwell retorted, as if hurt by
the notion.

" No matter ! If he's only going to play it once a
fortnight or so, and is going to tinker it up to suit
himself without saying by-your-leave to you, I say
we're occupying a false position, and that's what I
mean by living a lie."

Maxwell looked at her in that bewilderment which
he was beginning to feel at the contradictions of her
character. She sometimes told outright little fibs
which astonished him ; society fibs she did not mind
at all ; but when it came to people's erroneously infer-
ring this or that from her actions, she had a yearning
for the explicit truth that nothing else could appease.
He, on the contrary, was indifferent to what people
thought, if he had not openly misled them. Let them
think this, or let them think that ; it was altogether
their affair, and he did not hold himself responsible ;
but he was ill at ease with any conventional lie on his
conscience. He hated to have his wife say to people,
as he sometimes overheard her saying, that he was

138 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

out, when she knew he had run upstairs with his writ-
ing to escape them ; she contended that it was no
harm, since it deceived nobody.

Now he said, " Aren't you rather unnecessarily com-
plex ? " .

" No, I'm not. And I shall tell papa as soon as I
see him just how the case stands. Why, it would be
dreadful if we let him believe it was all going well,
and perhaps tell others that it was, and we knew all
the time that it wasn't. He would hate that, and he
wouldn't like us for letting him."

" Hadn't you better give the thing a chance to go
right ? There hasn't been time yet."

" No, dearest, I feel that since I've bragged so to
papa, I ought to eat humble-pie before him as soon
as possible."

" Yes. Why should you make me eat it, too ? "

" I can't help that ; I would if I could. But, un-
fortunately, we are one."

" And you seem to be the one. Suppose I should
ask you not to eat humble-pie before your father ? "

" Then, of course, I should do as you asked. But
I hope you won't."

Maxwell did not say anything, and she went on,
tenderly, entreatingly, " And I hope you'll never allow

i

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 139

me to deceive myself about anything you do. I
should resent it a great deal more than if you had
positively deceived me. Will you promise me, if
anything sad or bad happens, that you don't want me
to know because it will make me unhappy or disagree-
able, you'll tell me at once ? "

" It won't be necessary. You'll find it out."

" No, do be serious, dearest. / am very serious.
Will you?"

" What is the use of asking such a thing as that ?
It seems to me that I've invited you to a full share of
the shame and sorrow that Godolphin has brought
upon me."

" Yes, you have," said Louise, thoughtfully. " And
you may be sure that I appreciate it. Don't you like
to have me share it ? "

" Well, I don't know. I might like to get at it first
myself."

" Ah, you didn't like my opening Godolphin's letter
when it came ! "

" I shouldn't mind, now, if you would answer it."

" I shall be only too glad to answer it, if you will
let me answer it as it deserves."

" That needs reflection."

X.

The weather grew rough early in September, and
all at once, all in a moment, as it were, the pretty
watering-place lost its air of summer gayety. The
sky had an inner gray in its blue ; the sea looked cold.
A few hardy bathers braved it out on select days in
the surf, but they were purple and red when they ran
up to the bath-houses, and they came out wrinkled,
and hurried to their hotels, where there began to be a
smell of steam-heat and a snapping of radiators in the
halls. The barges went away laden to the stations,
and came back empty, except at night, when they
brought over the few and fewer husbands whose wives
were staying down simply because they hated to go
up and begin the social life of the winter. The peo-
ple who had thronged the grassy-bordered paths of
the village dwindled in number ; the riding and driv-
ing on the roads was less and less; the native life
showed itself more in the sparsity of the sojourners.

140

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 141

The sweet fern in the open fields, and the brakes and
blackberry-vines among the bowlders, were blighted
with the cold wind ; even the sea-weed swaying at the
foot of the rocks seemed to feel a sharper chill than
that of the brine. A storm came, and strewed the
beach with kelp, and blew over half the bath-houses ;
and then the hardiest lingerer ceased to talk of stay-
ing through October. There began to be rumors at
the Maxwells' hotel that it would close before the
month was out ; some ladies pressed the landlord for
the truth, and he confessed that he expected to shut
the house by the 2 5th. This spread dismay ; but cer-
tain of the boarders said they would go to the other
hotels, which were to keep open till October. The
dependent cottages had been mostly emptied before ;
those who remained in them, if they did not go away,
came into the hotel. The Maxwells themselves did
this at last, for the sake of the warmth and the human
companionship around the blazing hearth-fires in the
parlors. They got a room with a stove in it, so that
he con Id write ; and there was a pensive, fleeting cozi-
ness in it all, with the shrinking numbers in the vast
dining-room grouped at two or three tables for dinner,
and then gathered in the light of the evening lamps
over the evening papers. In these conditions there

142 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

came, if not friendship, an intensification of acquaint-
ance, such as is imaginable of a company of cultured
castaways. Ladies who were not quite socially certain
of one another in town gossiped fearlessly together ;
there was whist among the men ; more than once it
happened that a young girl played or sang by request,
and not, as so often happens where a hotel is full,
against the general desire. It came once to a wish
that Mr. Maxwell would read something from his play ;
but no one had the courage to ask him. In society
he was rather severe with women, and his wife was
not sorry for that; she made herself all the more ap-
proachable because of it. But she discouraged the
hope of anything like reading from him ; she even
feigned that he might not like to do it without con-
sulting Mr. Godolphin, and if she did not live a lie
concerning the status of his play, she did not scruple
to tell one, now and then.

That is, she would say it was going beyond their
expectations, and this was not so fabulous as it might
seem, for their expectations were not so high as they
had been, and Godolphin was really playing the piece
once or twice a week. They heard no more from him
by letter, for Maxwell had decided that it would be
better not to answer his missive from Midland ; but he

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 143

was pretty faithful in sending the newspaper notices
whenever he played, and so they knew that he had
not abandoned it. They did not know whether he had
carried out his threat of overhauling it ; and Maxwell
chose to remain in ignorance of the fact till Godolphin
himself should speak again. Unless he demanded
the play back he was really helpless, and he was not
ready to do that, for he hoped that when the actor
brought it on to New York he could talk with him
about it, and come to some understanding. He had
not his wife's belief in the perfection of the piece ; it
might very well have proved weak in places, and after
his first indignation at the notion of Godolphin's re-
vising it, he was willing to do what he could to meet
his wishes. He did not so much care what shape it
had in these remote theatres of the West ; the real
test was New York, and there it should appear only
as he wished.

It was a comfort to his wife when he took this stand,
and she vowed him to keep it ; she would have made
him go down on his knees and hold up his right hand,
which was her notion of the way an oath was taken in
court, but she did not think he would do it, and he
might refuse to seal any vow at all if she urged it.

In the meanwhile she was not without other conso-

144 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

lations. At her insistence he wrote to the newspaper
which had printed the Ibsen crank's article on the
play, and said how much pleasure it had given him,
and begged his thanks to the author. They got a
very pretty letter back from him, adding some praises
of the piece which he said he had kept out of print
because he did not want to seem too gushing about
it ; and he ventured some wary censures of the acting,
which he said he had preferred not to criticise openly,
since the drama was far more important to him than
the theatre. He believed that Mr. Godolphin had a
perfect conception of the part of Haxard, and a thor-
ough respect for the piece, but his training had been
altogether in the romantic school ; he was working out
of it, but he was not able at once to simplify himself.
This was in fact the fault of the whole company. The
girl who did Salome had moments of charming reality,
but she too suffered from her tradition, and the rest
went from bad to worse. He thought that they would
all do better as they familiarized themselves with the
piece, and he deeply regretted that Mr. Godolphin had
been able to give it only once in Midland.

At this Mrs, Maxwell's wounds inwardly bled afresh,
and she came little short of bedewing the kind letter
with her tears. She made Maxwell answer it at once,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 145

and she would not let him deprecate the writer's wor-
ship of him as the first American dramatist to attempt
something in the spirit of the great modern masters
abroad. She contended that it would be as false to
refuse this tribute as to accept one that was not due
him, and there could be no doubt but it was fully and
richly merited. The critic wrote again in response to
Maxwell, and they exchanged three or four letters.

What was even more to Louise was the admirable
behavior of her father when she went to eat humble-
pie before him. He laughed at the notion of Godol-
phin's meddling with the play, and scolded her for
not taking her husband's view of the case, which he
found entirely reasonable, and the only reasonable
view of it. He argued that Godolphin simply chose
to assert in that way a claim to joint authorship, which
he had all along probably believed he had, and he ap-
proved of Maxwell's letting him have his head in the
matter, so far as the West was concerned. If he at-
tempted to give it with any alterations of his own in
the East, there would be time enough to stop him.
Louise seized the occasion to confirm herself in her
faith that her father admired Maxwell's genius as much
as she did herself ; and she tried to remember just the
words he used in praising it, so that she could repeat
J

146 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

them to Maxwell. She also committed to memory
his declaration that the very fact of Godolphin's play-
ing the piece every now and then was proof positive
that he would be very reluctant to part with it, if it
came to that. This seemed to her very important,
and she could hardly put up with Maxwell's sardonic
doubt of it.

Before they left Magnolia there came a letter from
Godolphin himself, wholly different in tone from his
earlier letter. He said nothing now of overhauling
the piece, which he felt was gradually making its way.
He was playing it at various one-night stands in the
Northwest, preparatory to bringing it to Chicago and
putting it on for a week, and he asked if Maxwell
could not come out and see it there. He believed
they were all gradually getting down to it, and the
author's presence at the rehearsals would be invalu-
able. He felt more and more that they had a fortune
in it, and it only needed careful working to realize a
bonanza. He renewed his promises, in view of its
success so far, to play it exclusively if the triumph
could be clinched by a week's run in such a place as
Chicago. He wrote from Grand Rapids, and asked
Maxwell to reply to him at Oshkosh.

" Tell him you'll come, of course," said his wife.

I

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 147

Maxwell shook his head. " He doesn't mean this
any more than he meant to revise the thing himself.
He probably finds that he can't do that, and wants me
to do it. But if I did it he might take it off after
the first night in Chicago if the notices were unfavor-
able."

" But they won't be," she argued. " I know they
won't."

" I should simply break him up from the form he's
got into, if I went to the rehearsals. He must keep
on doing it in his own way till he comes to New
York."

" But think of the effect it will have in New York
if you should happen to make it go in Chicago."

" It won't have the slightest effect. When he
brings it East, it will have to make its way just as if
it had never been played anywhere before."

A bright thought occurred to Louise. " Then tell
him that if he will bring it on to Boston you will
superintend all the rehearsals. And I will go with
you to them."

Maxwell only laughed at this. " Boston wouldn't
serve any better than Chicago, as far as New York is
concerned. We shall have to build a success from
the ground up there, if we get one. It might run a

148 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

whole winter in Boston, and then we should probably
begin with half a house in New York, or a third. The
only advantage of trying it anywhere before, is that
the actors will be warm in their parts. Besides, do
you suppose Godolphin could get a theatre in Bos-
ton out of the order of his engagement there next
spring ? "

" Why not ? "

" Simply because every night at every house is
taken six months beforehand."

" Who would ever have dreamt," said Louise, rue-
fully, " that simply writing a play would involve any
one in all these exasperating business details."

" Nobody can get free of business," Maxwell re-
turned.

" Then I will tell you," she brightened up to say.
" Why not sell him the piece outright, and wash your
hands of it ? "

" Because he wouldn't buy it outright, and if I
washed my hands of it he could do what he pleased
with it. If he couldn't tinker it up himself he could
hire some one else to do it, and that would be worse
yet."

" Well, then, the only thing for us to do is to go
on to New York, and wait there till Godolphin comes.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 149

I suppose papa and mamraa would like to have us stay
through October with them in Boston, but I don't see
much sense in that, and I don't choose to have the air
of living on them. I want to present an unbroken
front of independence from the beginning, as far as
inquiring friends are concerned ; and in New York we
shall be so lost to sight that nobody will know how
we are living. You can work at your new play while
we're waiting, and we can feel that the onset in the
battle of life has sounded."

Maxwell laughed, as she meant him, at the mock
heroics of her phrase, and she pulled off his hat, and
rubbed his hair round on his skull in exultation at hav-
ing arrived at some clear understanding. " I wouldn't
have hair like silk," she jeered.

" And I wouldn't have hair like corn-silk," he re-
turned. " At least not on my own head."

" Yes, it is coarse. And it's yours quite as much
as mine," she said, thoughtfully. " We do belong to
each other utterly, don't we ? I never thought of it
in that light before. And now our life has gone into
your work, already ! I can't tell you, Brice, how
sweet it is to think of that love-business being our
own ! I shall be so proud of it on the stage ! But
as long as we live no one but ourselves must know

150 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

anything about it. Do you suppose they will ? " she
asked, in sudden dismay.

He smiled. " Should you care ? "

She reflected a moment. " No ! " she shouted,
boldly. " What difference ? "

" Godolphin would pay any sum for the privilege
of using the fact as an advertisement. If he could
put it into Pinney's hands, and give him carte blanche,
to work in all the romance he liked — "

" Brice ! " she shrieked.

" Well, we needn't give it away, and if we don't,
nobody else will."

"No, and we must always keep it sacredly secret.
Promise me one thing ! "

" Twenty ! "

" That you will let me hold your hand all through
the first performance of that part. Will you ? "

" Why, we shall be set up like two brazen images
in a box for all the first-nighters to stare at and the
society reporters to describe. What would society
journalism say to your holding my hand throughout
the tender passages? It would be onto something
personal in them in an instant."

" No ; now I will show you how we will do." They
were sitting in a nook of the rocks, in the pallor of

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 151

the late September sunshine, with their backs against
a warm bowlder. " Now give me your hand."

" Why, you've got hold of it already."

" Oh yes, so I have ! Well, I'll just grasp it in
mine firmly, and let them both rest on your knee, so;
and fling the edge of whatever I'm wearing on my
shoulders over them, or my mantle, if it's hanging on
the back of the chair, so " — she flung the edge of her
shawl over their clasped hands to illustrate — " and
nobody will suspect the least thing. Suppose the sea
was the audience — a sea of faces you know ; would
any one dream down there that I was squeezing your
hand at all the important moments, or you squeezing
mine ? "

" I hope they wouldn't think me capable of doing
anything so indelicate as squeezing a lady's hand,"
said Maxwell. " I don't know what they might think
of you, though, if there was any such elaborate display ,
of concealment as you've got up here."

" Oh, this is merely rehearsing. Of course, I shall
be more adroit, more careless, when I really come to
it. But what I mean is that when we first see it to-
gether, the love-business, I shall want to feel that you
are feeling every instant just as I do. Will you ? "

" I don't see any great objection to that. We shall

152 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

both be feeling very anxious about the play, if that's
what you mean."

" That's what I mean in one sense," Louise allowed.
" Sha'n't you be very anxious to see how they have
imagined Salome and Atland ? "

" Not so anxious as about how Godolphin has ' cre-
ated' Haxard."

" I care nothing about that. But if the woman who
does me is vulgar, or underbred, or the least bit coarse,
and doesn't keep the character just as sweet and deli-
cate as you imagined it, I don't know what I shall do
to her."

" Nothing violent, I hope," Maxwell suggested lan-
guidly.

" I am not so sure," said Louise. " It's a dread-
fully intimate affair with me, and if I didn't like it I
should hiss, anyway."

Maxwell laughed long and loud. " What a delight-
ful thing that would be for society journalism. ' At
one point the wife of the author was apparently un-
able to control her emotions, and she was heard to
express her disapprobation by a prolonged sibilation.
All eyes were turned upon the box where she sat with
her husband, their hands clasped under the edge of
her mantle.' No, you mustn't hiss, my dear ; but if

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 153

you find Salome getting too much for you you can
throw a dynamite bomb at the young woman who is
doing her. I dare say we shall want to blow up the
whole theatre before the play is over."

" Oh, I don't believe we shall. I know the piece
will go splendidly if the love-business is well done.
But you can understand, can't you, just how I feel
about Salome ? "

" 1 think I can, and I am perfectly sure that you
will be bitterly disappointed in her, no matter how
she's done, unless you do her yourself."

" I wish I could ! "

" Then the other people might be disappointed."

XI.

The Maxwells went to New York early in October,
and took a little furnished flat for the winter on the
West Side, between two streets among the Eighties.
It was in a new apartment-house, rather fine on the
outside, and its balconies leaned caressingly towards
the tracks of the Elevated Road, whose trains steamed
back and forth under them night and day. At first
they thought it rather noisy, but their young nerves
were strong, and they soon ceased to take note of the
uproar, even when the windows were open.

The weather was charming, as the weather of the
New York October is apt to be. The month proved
much milder than September had been at Magnolia.
They were not very far from Central Park, and they
went for whole afternoons into it. They came to have
such a sense of ownership in one of the seats in the
Ramble, that they felt aggrieved when they found
anybody had taken it, and they resented other people's

154

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 155

intimacy with the squirrels, which Louise always took
a pocketful of nuts to feed ; the squirrels got a habit
of climbing into her lap for them. Sometimes Max-
well hired a boat and rowed her lazily about on the
lake, while he mused and she talked. Sometimes, to
be very lavish, they took places in the public carriage
which plied on the drives of the Park, and went up
to the tennis-grounds beyond the reservoirs, and
watched the players, or the art-students sketching the
autumn scenery there. They began to know, without
acquaintance, certain attached or semi-attached cou-
ples ; and no doubt they passed with these for lovers
themselves, though they felt a vast superiority to them
in virtue of their married experience ; they looked
upon them, though the people were sometimes their
elders, as very young things, who were in the right
way, but were as yet deplorably ignorant how happy
they were going to be. They almost always walked
back from these drives, and it was not so far but they
could walk over to the North River for the sunset
before their dinner, which they had late when they
did that, and earlier when they did not do it. Dinner
was rather a matter of caprice with them. Sometimes
they dined at a French or Italian table d'hote ; some-
times they foraged for it before they came in from

/

156 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

their sunset, or their afternoon in the park. When din-
ner consisted mainly of a steak or chops, with one of
the delicious salads their avenue abounded in, and
some improvisation of potatoes, and coffee afterward,
it was very easy to get it up in half an hour. They
kept one maid, who called herself a Sweden's girl, and
Louise cooked some of the things herself. She did
not cook them so well as the maid, but Maxwell never
knew what he was eating, and he thought it all alike
good.

In their simple circumstances, Louise never missed
the affluence that had flattered her whole life in her
father's house. It seemed to her as if she had not
lived before her marriage — as if she had always lived
as she did now. She made the most of her house-
keeping, but there was not a great deal of that, at the
most. She knew some New York people, but it was
too early yet for them to be back to town, and, besides,
she doubted if she should let them know where she
was ; for society afflicted Maxwell, and she could not
care for it unless he did. She did not wish to do
anything as yet, or be anything apart from him ; she
was timid about going into the street without him.
She wished to be always with him, and always talking
to him ; but it soon came to his imploring her not to

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 157

talk when she was in the room where he was writing ;
and he often came to the table so distraught that the
meal might have passed without a word but for her.

He valued her all she could possibly have desired
in relation to his work, and he showed her how abso-
lutely he rested upon her sympathy, if not her judg-
ment, in it. He submitted everything to her, and
forbore, and changed, and amended, and wrote and
rewrote at her will ; or when he revolted, and wrote
on in defiance of her, he was apt to tear the work up.
He destroyed a good deal of good literature in this
way, and more than once it happened that she had
tacitly changed her mind and was of his way of think-
ing when it was too late. In view of such a chance
she made him promise that he would always show her
what he had written, even when he had written wholly
against her taste and wish. He was not to let his
pride keep him from doing this, though, as a general
thing, she took a good deal of pride in his pride, hav-
ing none herself, as she believed. Whether she had
or not, she was very wilful, and rather prepotent ; but
she never bore malice, as the phrase is, when she got
the worst of anything, though she might have been
quite to blame. She had in all things a high ideal of
conduct, which she expected her husband to live up to

158 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

when she was the prey of adverse circumstances. At
other times she did her share of the common endeavor.
All through the month of October he worked at the
new play, and from time to time they heard from the
old play, which Godolphin was still giving, here and
there, in the West. He had not made any reply to
Maxwell's letter of regret that he could not come to
the rehearsals at Chicago, but he sent the notices
marked in the newspapers, at the various points where
he played, and the Maxwells contented themselves as
they could with these proofs of an unbroken amity.
They expected something more direct and explicit
from him when he should get to Chicago, where his
engagement was to begin the first week in November.
In the meantime the kind of life they were living had
not that stressful unreality for Louise that it had for
Maxwell on the economic side. For the first time his
regular and serious habits of work did not mean the
earning of money, but only the chance of earning
money. Ever since he had begun the world for him-
self, and he had begun it very early, there had been
some income from his industry ; however little it was,
it was certain ; the salary was there for him at the end
of the week when he went to the cashier's desk. His
mother and he had both done so well and so wisely

THE 8TOKY OF A PLAY. 159

in their several ways of taking care of themselves,
that Maxwell had not only been able to live on his
earnings, but he had been able to save out of them
the thousand dollars which Louise bragged of to her
father, and it was this store which they were now con-
suming, not rapidly, indeed, but steadily, and with no
immediate return in money to repair the waste. The
fact kept Maxwell wakeful at night sometimes, and
by day he shuddered inwardly at the shrinkage of his
savings, so much swifter than their growth, though he
was generously abetted by Louise in using them with
frugality. She could always have had money from
her father, but this was something that Maxwell would
not look forward to. There could be no real anxiety
for them in the situation, but for Maxwell there was
care. He might be going to get a great deal out of
the play he was now writing, but as yet it was in no
form to show to a manager or an actor ; and he might
be going to get a great deal out of his old play, but so
far Godolphin had made no sign that he remembered
one of the most essential of the obligations which
seemed all to rest so lightly upon him. Maxwell
hated to remind him of it, and in the end he was very
glad that he never did, or that he had not betrayed
the slightest misgiving of his good faith.

160 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

One morning near the end of the month, when he
was lower in his spirits than usual from this cause,
there came a letter from the editor of the Boston Ab-
stract asking him if he could not write a weekly letter
from New York for his old newspaper. It was a
temptation, and Maxwell found it a hardship that
his wife should have gone out just then to do the
marketing for the day ; she considered this the duty
of a wife, and she ^ fulfilled it often enough to keep
her sense of it alive, but she much preferred to forage
with him in the afternoon ; that was poetry, she said,
and the other was prose. He would have liked to talk
the proposition over with her ; to realize the compli-
ment while it was fresh, to grumble at it a little, and
to be supported in his notion that it would be bad
business just then for him to undertake a task that
might draw him away from his play too much ; to do
the latter well w^ould take a great deal of time. Yet
he did not feel quite that he ought to refuse it, in
view of the uncertainties of the future, and it might
even be useful to hold the position aside from the
money it would bring him ; the New York correspond-
ent of the Boston Abstract might have a claim upon
the attention of the managers which a wholly unaccred-
ited playwright could not urge ; there was no question

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 161

of their favor with Maxwell ; he would disdain to have
that, even if he could get it, except by the excellence,
or at least the availability of his work.

Louise did not come in until much later than usual,
and then she came in looking very excited. " Well,
my dear," she began to call out to him as soon as the
door was opened for her, " I have seen that woman
again ! "

" What woman ? " he asked.

" You know. That smouldering-eyed thing in the
bathing-dress." She added, in answer to his stupefied
gaze : " I don't mean that she was in the bathing-dress
still, but her eyes were smouldering away just as they
were that day on the beach at Magnolia."

" Oh ! " said Maxwell, indifferently. " Where did
you see her ? "

" On the avenue, and I know she lives in the neigh-
borhood somewhere, because she was shopping here
on the avenue, and I could have easily followed her
home if she had not taken the Elevated for down
town."

"Why didn't you take it, too? It might have
been a long way round, but it would have been cer-
tain. I've been wanting you here badly. Just tell
me what you think of that."
K

162 THE STORY OF A PLAY,

He gave her the editor's letter, and she hastily ran
it through. " I wouldn't think of it for a moment,"
she said. *' Were there any letters for me ? "

" It isn't a thing to be dismissed without reflection,"
he began.

" I thought you wanted to devote yourself entirely
to the drama ? "

" Of course."

" And you've always said there was nothing so kill-
ing to creative work as any sort of journalism."

" This wouldn't take more than a day or two each
week, and twenty-tive dollars a letter would be con-
venient while we are waiting for our cards to turn up."

" Oh, very well ! If you are so fickle as all that, /
don't know what to say to you." She put the letter
down on the table before him, and went out of the
room.

He tried to write, but with the hurt of what he felt
her unkindness he could not, and after a certain time
he feigned an errand into their room, where she had
shut herself from him, and found her lying down.
,* Are you sick ? " he asked, coldly.

" Not at all," she answered. " I suppose one may
lie down without being sick, as you call it. I should
say ill, myself."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 163

" I'm SO glad you're not sick that I don't care what
you call it."

He was going out, when she spoke again : " I didn't
know you cared particularly, you are always so much
taken up with your work. I suppose, if you wrote
those letters for the Abstract, you need never think of
me at all, whether I was ill or well."

" You would take care to remind me of your exist-
ence from time to time, I dare say. You haven't the
habit of suffering in silence a great deal."

"You would like it better, of course, if I had."

" A great deal better, my dear. But I didn't know
that you regarded my work as self-indulgence alto-
gether. I have flattered myself now and then that I
was doing it for you, too."

" Oh yes, very likely. But if you had never seen
me you would be doing it all the same."

" I'm afraid so. I seem to have been made that
way. I'm sorry you don't approve. I supposed you
did once."

** Oh, I do approve — highly." He left her, and she
heard him getting his hat and stick in the little hall-
way, as if he were going out of doors. She called to
him, " What I wonder is how a man so self-centred
that he can't look at his wife for days together, can

164 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

tell whether another woman's eyes are smouldering or
not."

Maxwell paused, with his hand on the knob, as if
he were going to make some retort, but, perhaps be-
cause he could think of none, he went out without
speaking.

He stayed away all the forenoon, walking down the
river along the squalid waterside avenues ; he found
them in sympathy with the squalor in himself which
always followed a squabble with his wife. At the
end of one of the westward streets he found himself
on a pier flanked by vast flotillas of canal-boats. As
he passed one of these he heard the sound of furious
bickering within, and while he halted a man burst
from the gangway and sprang ashore, followed by the
threats and curses of a woman, who put her head out
of the hatch to launch them after him.

The incident turned Maxwell faint; he perceived
that the case of this unhappy man, who tried to walk
out of earshot with dignity, was his own in quality, if
not in quantity. He felt the shame of their human
identity, and he reached home with his teeth set in a
hard resolve to bear and forbear in all things there-
after, rather than share ever again in misery like that,
which dishonored his wife even more than it dishon-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 165

ored him. At the same time he was glad of a thought
the whole affair suggested to him, and he wondered
whether he could get a play out of it. This was
the notion of showing the evil eventuation of good.
Their tiffs came out of their love for each other, and »
no other quarrels could have the bitterness that these
got from the very innermost sweetness of life. It
would be hard to show this dramatically, but if it
could be done the success would be worth all the toil
it would cost.

At his door he realized with a pang that he could
not submit the notion to his wife now, and perhaps
never. But the door was pulled open before he could
turn his latch-key in the lock, and Louise threw her
arms rouad his neck.

" Oh, dearest, guess ! " she commanded between her
kisses.

" Guess what ? " he asked, walking her into the
parlor with his arms round her. She kept her hands
behind her when he released her, and they stood con-
fronted.

" What should yon consider the best news — or not
news exactly ; the best thing — in the world ? "

" Why, I don't know. Has the play been a great
success in Chicago ? "

166 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Better than that ! " she shouted, and she brought
an open letter from behind her, and flourished it be-
fore him, while she went on breathlessly : " It's from
Godolphin, and of course I opened it at once, for I
thought if there was anything worrying in it, I had
better find it out while you were gone, and prepare
you for it. He's sent you a check for $300 — twelve
performances of the play — and he's written you the
sweetest letter in the world, and 1 take back every-
thing I ever said against him ! Here, shall I read it ?
Or, no, you'll want to read it yourself. Now, sit
down at your desk, and I'll put it before you, with
the check on top ! "

She pushed him into his chair, and he obediently
read the check first, and then took up the letter. It
was dated at Chicago, and was written with a certain
histrionic consciousness, as if Godolphin enjoyed the
pose of a rising young actor paying over to the author
his share of the profits of their joint enterprise in
their play. There was a list of the dates and places
of the performances, which Maxwell noted were chiefly
matinees ; and he argued a distrust of the piece from
this fact, which Godolphin did not otherwise betray.
He said that the play constantly grew upon him, and
that with such revision as they should be able to give

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 167

it together when he reached New York, they would
have one of the greatest plays of the modern stage.
He had found that wherever he gave it the better
part of his audience was best pleased with it, and he
felt sure that when he put it on for a run the houses
would grow up to it in every way. He was going to
test it for a week in Chicago ; there was no reference
to his wish that Maxwell should have been present at
the rehearsals there ; but otherwise Godolphin's letter
was as candid as it was cordial.

Maxwell read it with a silent joy which seemed to
please his wife as well as if he had joined her in riot-
ing over it. She had kept the lunch warm for him,
and now she brought it in from the kitchen herself
and set it before him, talking all the time.

" Well, now we can regard it as an accomplished
fact, and I shall not allow you to feel any anxiety
about it from this time forward. I consider that Go-
dolphin has done his whole duty by it. He has kept
the spirit of his promises if he hasn't the letter, and
from this time forward I am going to trust him im-
plicitly, and I'm going to make you. No more ques-
tion of Godolphin in this family ! Don't you long to
know how it goes in Chicago? But I don't really
care, for, as you say, that won't have the slightest

168 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

influence in New York ; and I know it will go here,
anyway. Yes, I consider it, from this time on, an
assured success. And isn't it delightful that, as Go-
dolphin says, it's such a favorite with refined people ? "
She went on a good while to this effect, but when she
had talked herself out. Maxwell had still said so little
that she asked, " What is it, Brice ? "

" Do you think we deserve it ? " he returned, seri-
ously.

" For squabbling so ? Why, I suppose I was tired
and overwrought, or I shouldn't have done it."

" And I hadn't even that excuse," said Maxwell.

"Oh, yes you had," she retorted. " I provoked
you. And if any one was to blame, I was. Do you
mind it so much ? "

" Yes, it tears my heart. And it makes me feel so
low and mean."

" Oh, how good you are ! " she began, but he stop-
ped her.

" Don't ! I'm not good ; and I don't deserve suc-
cess. I don't feel as if this belonged to me. I ought
to send Godolphin's check back, in common honesty,
common decency." He told of the quarrel he had
witnessed on the canal-boat, and she loved him for his
simple-hearted humility ; but she said there was noth-*

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 169

ing parallel in the cases, and she would not let him
think so ; that it was morbid, and showed he had been
overworking.

" And now," she went on, " you must write to Mr.
Ricker at once and thank him, and tell him you can't
do the letters for him. Will you ? "

" I'll see."

" You must. I want you to reserve your whole
strength for the drama. That's your true vocation,
and it would be a sin for you to turn to the right or
left." He continued silent, and she went on : " Are
you still thinking about our scrap this morning ?
Well, then, I'll promise never to begin it again. Will
that do ? "

" Oh, I don't know that you began it. And I
wasn't thinking — I was thinking of an idea for a play
— the eventuation of good in evil — love evolving in
hate."

" That will be grand, if you can work it out. And
now you see, don't you, that there is some use in
squabbling, even?"

"I suppose nothing is lost," said Maxwell. He
took out his pocket-book, and folded Godolphin's
check into it.

XII.

A WEEK later there came another letter from Godol-
phin. It was very civil, and in its general text it did
not bear out the promise of severity in its change of
address to Dear Sir^ from the Dear Mr. Maxwell of
the earlier date.

It conveyed, in as kindly terms as could have been
asked, a fact which no terms could have flattered into
acceptability.

Godolphin wrote, after trying the play two nights
and a matinee in Chicago, to tell the author that he
had withdrawn it because its failure had not been a
failure in the usual sense but had been a grievous col-
lapse, which left him no hopes that it would revive
in the public favor if it were kept on. Maxwell would
be able to judge, he said, from the newspapers he
sent, of the view the critics had taken of the piece;
but this would not have mattered at all if it had not
been the view of the public, too. He said he would

170

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 171

not pain Maxwell by repeating the opinions which he
had borne the brunt of alone ; but they were such as
to satisfy him fully and finally that he had been
mistaken in supposing there was a part for him in the
piece. He begged to return it to Maxwell, and he
ventured to send his prompt-book with the original
manuscript, which might facilitate his getting the play
into other hands.

The parcel was brought in by express while they
were sitting in the dismay caused by the letter, and
took from them the hope that Godolphin might have
written from a mood and changed his mind before
sending back the piece. Neither of them had the
nerve to open the parcel, which lay upon Maxwell's
desk, very much sealed and tied and labelled, diffusing
a faint smell of horses, as express packages mostly do,
through the room.

Maxwell found strength, if not heart, to speak first.
" I suppose I am to blame for not going to Chicago
for the rehearsals." Louise said she did not see what
that could have done to keep the play from failing,
and he answered that it might have kept Godolphin
f^om losing courage. " You see, he says he had to
take the brunt of public opinion alone. He was sore
about that."

172 THE STORY OF A PLAY

*' Oh, well, if lie is so weak as that, and would have
had to be bolstered up all along, you are well rid of
him."

" I am certainly rid of him," Maxwell partially as-
sented, and they both lapsed into silence again. Even
Louise could not talk. They were as if stunned by
the blow that had fallen on them, as all such blows
fall, when it was least expected, and it seemed to the
victims as if they were least able to bear it. In fact,
it was a cruel reverse from the happiness they had
enjoyed since Godolphin's check came, and although
Maxwell had said that they must not count upon any-
thing from him, except from hour to hour, his words
conveyed a doubt that he felt no more than Louise.
Now his gloomy wisdom was justified by a perfidy
which she could paint in no colors that seemed black
enough. Perhaps the want of these was what kept
her mute at first ; even when she began to talk she
could only express her disdain by urging her husband
to send back Godolphin's check to him. " We want
nothing more to do with such a man. If he felt no
obligation to keep faith with you, it's the same as if
he had sent that money out of charity."

"Yes, I have thought of that," said Maxwell.
" But I guess I shall keep the money. He may regard

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 173

the whole transaction as child's play; but I don't,
and I never did. I worked very hard on the piece,
and at the rates for space- work, merely, I earned his
money and a great deal more. If I can ever do any-
thing with it, I shall be only too glad to give him his
three hundred dollars again."

She could see that he had already gathered spirit
for new endeavor with the play, and her heart yearned
upon him in pride and fondness. *' Oh, you dear !
What do you intend to do next ? "

" I shall try the managers."

" Brice ! " she cried in utter admiration.

He rose and said, as he took up the express pack-
age, and gave Godolphin's letter a contemptuous push
with his hand, " You can gather up this spilt milk.
Put it away somewhere; I don't want to see it or
think of it again." He cut open the package, and
found the prompt-book, which he laid aside, while he
looked to see if his own copy of the play were all
there.

" You are going to begin at once ? " gasped Louise.

" This instant," he said. " It will be slow enough
work at the best, and we mustn't lose time. I shall
probably have to go the rounds of all the managers,
but I am not going to stop till I have gone the rounds.

174 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

I shall begin with the highest, and I sha'n't stop till
I reach the lowest."

" But when ? How ? You haven't thought it out."

"Yes, I have. I have been thinking it out ever
since I got the play into Godolphin's hands. I haven't
been at peace about him since that day when he re-
nounced me in Magnolia, and certainly till we got his
check there has been nothing in his performance to
restore my confidence. Come, now, Louise, you
mustn't stop nie, dear," he said, for she was begin-
ning to cling about him. " I shall be back for lunch,
and then we can talk over what I have begun to do.
If I began to talk of it before, I should lose all heart
for it. Kiss me good luck ! "

She kissed him enough for all the luck in the world,
and then he got himself out of her arms while she
still hardly knew what to make of it all. He was half-
way down the house-stairs, when her eye fell on the
prompt-book. She caught it up and ran out upon the
landing, and screamed down after him, " Brice,
Brice ! You've forgotten something."

He came flying back, breathless, and she held the
book out to him. " Oh, I don't want that," he panted.
" It would damage the play with a manager to know
that Godolphin had rejected it."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 175

" But do you think it would be quite right — quite
frank — to let him take it without telling him ? "

" It will be right to show it him without telling him.
It will be time enough to tell him if he likes it."

" That is true," she assented, and then she kissed
him again and let him go ; he stood a step below her,
and she had to stoop a good deal; but she went in
doors, looking up to him as if he were a whole flight
of steps above her, and saying to herself that he had
always been so good and wise that she must now sim-
ply trust him in everything.

Louise still had it on her conscience to offer Max-
well reparation for the wrong she thought she had
done him when she had once decided that he was too
self-seeking and self-centred, and had potentially re-
jected him on that ground. The first thing she did
after they became engaged was to confess the wrong,
and give him a chance to cast her off if he wished ;
but this never seemed quite reparation enough, perhaps
because he laughed and said that she was perfectly
right about him, and must take him with those faults
or not at all. She now entered upon a long, delight-
ful review of his behavior ever since that moment, and
she found that, although he was certainly as self-cen-
tred as she had ever thought or he had owned himself

176 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

to be, self-seeking lie was not, in any mean or greedy
sense. She perceived that his self-seeking, now, at
least, was as much for her sake as his own, and that it
was really after all not self-seeking, but the helpless
pursuit of aims which he was born into the world to
achieve. She had seen that he did not stoop to achieve
them, but had as haughty a disdain of any but the
highest means as she could have wished him to have,
and much haugl;itier than she could have had in his
place. If he forgot her in them, he forgot himself
quite as much, and they were equal before his ambition.
In fact, this seemed to her even more her charge than
his, and if he did not succeed as with his genius he
had a right to succeed, it would be constructively her
fault, and at any rate she should hold herself to blame
for it; there would be some satisfaction in that. She
thought with tender pathos how hard he worked, and
was at his writing all day long, except when she made
him go out with her, and was then often so fagged
that he could scarcely speak. She was proud of his
almost killing himself at it, but she must study more
and more not to let him kill himself, and must do
everything that was humanly possible to keep up his
spirits when he met with a reverse.

She accused herself with shame of having done

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 177

nothing for him in the present emergency, but rather
flung upon him the burden of her own disappoint-
ment. She thought how valiantly he had risen up
under it, and had not lost one moment in vain repin-
ing ; how instantly he had collected himself for a new
effort, and taken his measures with a wise prevision
that omitted no detail. In view of all this, she per-
emptorily forbade herself to be uneasy at the little
reticence he was practising with regard to Godolphin's
having rejected his play ; and imagined the splendor
he could put on with the manager after he had ac-
cepted it, in telling him its history, and releasing him,
if he would, from his agreement. She imagined the
manager generously saying this made no difference
whatever, though he appreciated Mr. Maxwell's can-
dor in the matter, and should be all the happier to
make a success of it because Godolphin had failed
with it.

But she returned from this flight into the future,
and her husband's part in it, to the present and her
own first duty in regard to him ; and it appeared to
her that this was to look carefully after his health in
the strain put upon it, and to nourish him for the
struggle before him. It was to be not with one man-
ager only, but many managers, probably, and possibly
L

178 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

with all the managers in New York. That was what
he had said it would be before he gave up, and she
remembered how flushed and excited he looked when
he said it, and though she did not believe he would
get back for lunch — the manager might ask him to
read his play to him, so that he could get just the
author's notion — she tried to think out the very most
nourishing lunch she could for him. Oysters were in
season, and they were very nourishing, but they had
already had them for breakfast, and beefsteak was
very good, but he hated it. Perhaps chops would do,
or, better still, mushrooms on toast, only they were
not in the market at that time of year. She dismissed
a stewed squab, and questioned a sweetbread, and
wondered if there were not some kind of game. In
the end she decided to leave it to the provision man,
and she lost no time after she reached her decision in
going out to consult him. He was a bland, soothing
German, and it was a pleasure to talk with him, be-
cause he brought her married name into every sen-
tence, and said, "No, Mrs. Maxwell;" "Yes, Mrs.
Maxwell ; " "I send it right in, Mrs. Maxwell." She
went over his whole list of provisions with him, and
let him persuade her that a small fillet was the best
she could offer a person whose frame needed nourish-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 179

ing, while at the same time his appetite needed coax-
ing. She allowed him to add a can of mushrooms, as
the right thing to go with it, and some salad ; and
then while he put the order up she stood reproaching
herself for it, since it formed no fit lunch, and was
both expensive and commonplace.

She was roused from her daze, when she was going
to countermand the whole stupid order by the man's
saying : " What can I do for you this morning, Mrs.
Harley ? " and she turned round to find at her elbow
the smouldering-eyed woman of the bathing-beach.
She lifted her heavy lids and gave Louise a dull glance,
which she let a sudden recognition burn through for
a moment and then quenched. But in that moment
the two women sealed a dislike that had been merely
potential before. Their look said for each that the
other was by nature, tradition, and aspiration what-
ever was most detestable in their sex.

Mrs. Harley, whoever she was, under a name that
Louise electrically decided to be fictitious, seemed un-
able to find her voice at first in their mutual defiance,
and she made a pretence of letting her strange eyes
rove about the shop before she answered. Her
presence was so repugnant to Louise that she turned
abruptly and hurried out of the place without return-

180 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

ing the good-morning which the German sent after
her with the usual addition of her name. She resented
it now, for if it was not tantamount to an introduction
to that creature, it was making her known to her, and
Louise wished to have no closer acquaintance with her
than their common humanity involved. It seemed
too odious to have been again made aware that they
were inhabitants of the same planet, and the anger
that heaved within her went out in a wild flash of re-
sentment towards her husband for having forever fixed
that woman in her consciousness with a phrase. If
it had not been for that, she would not have thought
twice of her when they first saw her, and she would
not have known her when they met again, and at the
worst would merely have been harassed with a vague
resemblance which would never have been verified.

She had climbed the stairs to their apartment on
the fourth floor, when she felt the need to see more,
know more, of this hateful being so strong upon her,
that she stopped with her latchkey in her door and
went down again. She did not formulate her inten-
tion, but she meant to hurry back to the provision
store, with the pretext of changing her order, and fol-
low the woman wherever she went, until she found
out where she lived ; and she did not feel, as a man

THE STORY OF A PLAT. 181

would, the disgrace of dogging her steps in that way
so much as she felt a fatal dread of her. If she
should be gone by the time Louise got back to the
shop, she would ask the provision man about her, and
find out in that way. She stayed a little while to
rehearse the terms of her inquiry, and while she lin-
gered the woman herself came round the corner of
the avenue and mounted the steps where Louise stood
and, with an air of custom, went on upstairs to the
second floor, where Louise heard her putting a latch-
key into the door, which then closed after her.

XIII.

Maxwell went to a manager whom lie had once
met in Boston, where they had been apparently ac-
ceptable to each other in a long talk they had about
the drama. The manager showed himself a shrewd
and rather remorseless man of business in all that he
said of the theatre, but he spoke as generously and
reverently of the drama as Maxwell felt, and they
parted with a laughing promise to do something for
it yet. In fact, if it had not been for the chances
that threw him into Godolphin's hand afterwards, he
would have gone to this manager with his play in the
first place, and he went to him now, as soon as he was
out of Godolphin's hands, not merely because he was
the only manager he knew in the city, but because he
believed in him as much as his rather sceptical temper
permitted him to believe in any one, and because he
believed he would give him at least an intelligent
audience.

The man in the box-office, where he stood in the

182

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 183

glow of an electric light at midday, recovered himself
from the disappointment he suffered when Maxwell
asked for the manager instead of a seat for the night's
performance. He owned that the manager was in his
room, but said he was very much engaged, and he
was hardly moved from this conviction by Maxwell's
urgence that he should send in his card ; perhaps
something in Maxwell's tone and face as of authority
prevailed with him ; perhaps it was the title of the
Boston Abstract^ which Maxwell wrote under his name,
to recall himself better to the manager's memory.
The answer was a good while getting back ; people
came in and bought tickets and went away, while
Maxwell hung about the vestibule of the theatre and
studied the bill of the play which formed its present
attraction, but at last the man in the box-office put
his face sidewise to the semi-circular opening above
the glass-framed plan of seats and, after he had iden-
tified Maxwell, said, " Mr. Grayson would like to see
you." At the same time the swinging doors of the
theatre opened, and a young man came out, to whom
the other added, indicating Maxwell, "This is the
gentleman ; " and the young man held the door open
for him to pass in, and then went swiftly before him
into the theatre, and led the way around the orchestra

184 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

circle to a little door that opened in the wall beside
one of the boxes. There was a rehearsal going on
in the glare of some grouped incandescent bulbs on
the stage, and people moving about in top hats and
bonnets and other every-day outside gear, which Max-
well lost sight of in his progress through the wings
and past a rough brick wall before he arrived at an-
other door down some winding stairs in the depths of
the building. His guide knocked at it, and when an
answering voice said, " Come in ! " he left Maxwell to
go in alone. The manager had risen from his chair
at his table, and stood, holding out his hand, with a
smile of kindly enough welcome. He said, " I've just
made you out, Mr. Maxwell. Do you come as a
friendly interviewer, or as a deadly dramatist ! "

'' As both or as neither, whichever you like," said
Maxwell, and he gladly took the manager's hand, and
then took the chair which he cleared of some prompt-
books for him to sit down in.

" I hadn't forgotten the pleasant talk I had with
you in Boston, you see," the manager began again,
" but I had forgotten whom I had it with."

" I can't say I had even done that," Maxwell an-
swered, and this seemed to please the manager.

" Well, that counts you one," he said. " You no-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 185

ticed that we have put on ' Engaged ? ' We've made
a failure of the piece we began with ; it's several pieces
now. Couldn't you do something like ' Engaged ? ' "

" I wish I could ! But I'm afraid Gilbert is the
only man living who can do anything like 'Engaged.'
My hand is too heavy for that kind."

" Well, the heavy hand is not so bad if it hits hard
enough," said the manager, who had a face of lively
intelligence and an air of wary kindliness. He looked
fifty, but this was partly the effect of overwork.
There was something of the Jew, something of the
Irishman, in his visage ; but he was neither ; he was
a Yankee, from Maine, with a Boston training in his
business. " What have you got ? " he asked, for
Maxwell's play was evident.

" Something I've been at work on for a year, more
or less." Maxwell sketched the plot of his play, and
the manager seemed interested.

" Rather Ibsenish, isn't it ? " he suggested at the end.

The time had passed with Maxwell when he wished
to have this said of his play, not because he did not
admire Ibsen, but because he preferred the recognition
of the original quality of his work. " I don't know
that it is, very. Perhaps — if one didn't like it."

" Oh, I don't know that I should dislike it for its

186 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

Ibsen ism. The time of that sort of thing may be
coming. You never can be sure, in this business,
when the time of anything is coming. I've always
thought that a naturalized Ibsenism wouldn't be so
bad for our stage. You don't want to be quite so
bleak, you know, as the real Norwegian Ibsen."

" I've tried not to be very bleak, because I thought
it wasn't in the scheme," said Maxwell.

" I don't understand that it ends well ? "

" Unless you consider the implicated marriage of
the young people a good ending. Haxard himself, of
course, is past all surgery. But the thing isn't pessi-
mistic, as I understand, for its doctrine is that harm
comes only from doing wrong."

The manager laughed. " Oh, the average public
would consider that very pessimistic. They want no
harm to come even from doing wrong. They want
the drama to get round it, somehow. If you could
show that Divine Providence forgets wrong-doing al-
together in certain cases, you would make the fortune
of your piece. Come, why couldn't you try something
of that kind ? It would be the greatest comfort to all
the sinners in front, for every last man of them — or
woman — would think she was the one who was going
to get away."

THE STORY O^ A ^LAY. 187

"I might come up to that, later," said Maxwell,
willing to take the humorous view of the matter, if it
would please the manager and smooth the way for the
consideration of his work; but, more obscurely, he
was impatient, and sorry to have found him in so
philosophical a mood.

The manager was like the man of any other trade ;
he liked to talk of his business, and this morning he
talked of it a long time, and to an effect that Maxwell
must have found useful if he had not been so bent
upon getting to his manuscript that he had no mind
for generalities. At last the manager said, abruptly,
"You want me to read your play? "

*' Very much," Maxwell answered, and he promptly
put the packet he had brought into the manager's ex-
tended hand.

He not only took it, but he untied it, and even
glanced at the first few pages. " All right," he said,
" I'll read it, and let you hear from me as soon as I
can. Your address — oh, it's on the wrapper, here,
^y-thc-way, why shouldn't you lunch with me ? We'll
go over to the Players' Club."

Maxwell flushed with eager joy ; then he faltered.

" I should like to do it immensely. But I'm afraid
— I'm afraid Mrs. Maxwell will be waiting for me."

188 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

"Oh, all right; some other time," answered the
manager ; and then Maxwell was vexed that he had
offered any excuse, for he thought it would have been
very pleasant and perhaps useful for him to lunch at
the Players'. But the manager did not urge him.
He only said, as he led the way to the stage-door, " I
didn't know there was a Mrs. Maxwell."

"She's happened since we met," said Maxwell,
blushing with fond pride. "We're such a small fam-
ily that we like to get together at lunch," he added.

" Oh, yes, I can understand that stage of it," said
the manager. " By-the-way, are you still connected
with the Abstract ? I noticed the name on your card."

" Not quite in the old way. But," and with the
words a purpose formed itself in Maxwell's mind,
" they've asked me to write their New York letter."

" Well, drop in now and then. I may have some-
thing for you." The manager shook hands with him
cordially, and Maxwell opened the door and found
himself in the street.

He was so little conscious of the transit homeward
that he seemed to find himself the next moment with
Louise in their little parlor. He remembered after-
wards that there was something strange in her manner
towards him at first, but, before he could feel pres-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 189

ently cognizant of it, this wore off in the interest of
what he had to tell.

" The sum of it all," he ended his account of the
interview with the manager, " is that he's taken the
thing to read, and that he's to let me hear from him
when he's read it. When that will be nobody knows,
and I should be the last to ask. But he seemed in-
terested in my sketch of it, and he had an intelligence
about it that was consoling. And it was a great com-
fort, after Godolphin, and Godolphin's pyrotechnics,
to have him take it in a hard, business way. He
made no sort of promises, and he held out no sort of
hopes; he didn't commit himself in any sort of way,
and he can't break his word, for he hasn't given it. I
wish, now, that I had never let Godolphin have the
play back after he first renounced it; I should have
saved a great deal of time and wear and tear of feel-
ings. Yes, if I had taken your advice then — "

At this generous tribute to her wisdom, all that was
reluctant ceased from Louise's manner and behavior
She put her arm around his neck and protested.
" No, no ! I can't let you say that, Brice ! You
were right about that, as you are about everything
If you hadn't had this experience with Godolphin, you
wouldn't have known how to appreciate Mr. Grayson's

190 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

reception of you, and you might have been unreason-
able. I can see now that it's all been for the best,
and that we needed just this discipline to prepare us
for prosperity. But I guess Godolphin will wish,
when he hears that Mr. Grayson has taken your piece,
and is going to bring it out at the Argosy, here — "

" Oh, good heavens ! Do give those poor chickens
a chance to get out of the shell this time, my dear ! "

"Well, I know it vexes. you, and I know it's silly;
but still I feel sure that Mr. Grayson will take it. You
don't mind that, do you ? "

" Not if you don't say it. I want you to realize
that the chances are altogether against it. He was
civil, because I think he rather liked me personally — "

" Of course he did ! "

" Oh ! "

" Well, never mind. Personally — "

" And I don't suppose it did me any harm with him
to suppose that I still had a newspaper connection. I
put Boston Abstract on my card — for purposes of iden-
tification, as the editors say — because I was writing
for it when I met him in Boston."

" Oh, well, as long as you're not writing for it now,
I don't care. I want you to devote yourself entirely
to the drama, Brice."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 191

" Yes, that's all very well. But I think I shall do
Kicker's letters for him this winter at least. I was
thinking of it on the way down. It'll be work, but
it'll be money, too, and if I have something coming
in^I sha'n't feel as if I were ruined every time my
play gets back from a manager."

" Mr. Grayson will take it ! "

"Now, Louise, if you say that, you will simply
drive me to despair, for I shall know how you will
feel when he, doesn't — "

" No, I shall not feel so ; and you will see. But if
you don't let me hope for you — "

" You know I can't stand hoping. The only safe
way is to look for the worst, and if anything better
happens it is so much pure gain. If we hadn't been
so eager to pin our faith to Godolphin — "

" How much better off should we have been ?
What have we lost by it ? " she challenged him.

He. broke off with a laugh. "We have lost the
pins. Well, hope away ! But, remember, you take
the whole responsibility." Maxwell pulled out his
watch. " Isn't lunch nearly ready ? This prosperity
is making me hungry, and it seems about a year since
breakfast."

" I'll see what's keeping it," said Louise, and she

192 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

ran out to the kitchen with a sudden fear in her heart.
She knew that she had meant to countermand her
order for the fillet and mushrooms, and she thought
that she had forgotten to order anything else for
lunch. She found the cook just serving it up, because
such a dish as that took more time than an ordinary
lunch, and the things had come late. Louise said,
Yes, she understood that; and went back to Maxwell,
whom she found walking up and down the room in a
famine very uncommon for him. She felt the moth-
erly joy a woman has in being able to appease the
hunger of the man she loves, and now she was glad
that she had not postponed the fillet till dinner as she
had thought of doing. Everything was turning out
so entirely for the best that she was beginning to
experience some revival of an ancestral faith in Provi-
dence in a heart individually agnostic, and she was
piously happy when Maxwell said at sight of the
lunch, " Isn't this rather prophetic ? If it isn't that,
it's telepathic. I sha'n't regret now that I didn't go
with Grayson to lunch at the Players' Club."

" Did he ask you to do that ? "

Maxwell nodded with his mouth full.

A sudden misgiving smote her. " Oh, Brice, you
ought to have gone ! Why didn't you go ? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 193

" It must have been a deep subconsciousness of the
fillet and mushrooms. Or perhaps I didn't quite like
to think of your lunching alone."

" Oh, you dear, faithful little soul ! " she cried.
The tears came into her eyes, and she ran round the
table to kiss him several times on the top of his head.

He kept on eating as well as he could, and when
she got back to her place, " Of course, it would have
been a good thing for me to go to the Players'," he
teased, "for it would have pleased Grayson, and I
should probably have met some other actors and man-
agers there, and made interest with them provisionally
for my play, if he shouldn't happen to want it."

" Oh, I know it," she moaned. " You have ruined
yourself for me. I'm not worth it. No, I'm not !
Now, I want you to promise, dearest, that you'll never
mind me again, but lunch or dine, or breakfast, or sup
whenever anybody asks you ? "

" 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 yoii 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,
M

194 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 sus-
picion 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."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 195

" Very likely, but I hope she won't feel obliged to
call because we're connected with the profession."

Some time afterwards Louise was stitching at a cen-
tre-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 Godolphin had returned the play ? "

" No, I didn't. That wasn't necessary at this stage
of the proceedings."

"No."

XIV.

During the week that passed before Maxwell heard
from the manager concerning his play, he did another
letter for the Abstract, and, with a journalistic ac-
quaintance 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 nur-
tured 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 Associated Press before he reached it, and he pre-
ferred to make his letter a lively comment on events,
rather than a report of them. The editor of the Ab-
stract 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 read-
ers, to remember that this was the principle of the

196

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 197

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
uut 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 com-
panion. The first time she met them together she
was sure that Mrs. Harley indicated her to the chap-
eron, and that she remembered her from Magnolia,
> at she never looked at Louise, any more than Louise
looked at her, after that. ^

She wondered if Maxwell ever met her, but she was

198 THE STOKY OF A PLAY.

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 Ar-
gosy theatre address printed in the corner of the en-
velope. " 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,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 199

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 passionately 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.

200 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" 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
Godolphin 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

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 201

him, just like Godolphin." Then he added, " I'll tell
you, and you mustn't take it amiss. Godolphin may
not know just why he gave the piece up, and he prob-
ably 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 1
talked it over. We even discussed it with Godolphin.
He wanted to do Atland. But we all backed out si-
multaneously, and went back to the play as it stood."

" Godolphin saw he couldn't make enough of At-
land," said the manager, as if he were saying it to
himself. " Well, you may be sure he feels now that
the character which most appeals to the public in the
play is Salome."

" He felt that before."

"And he was right. Now, I will tell you what
you have got to do. You have either got to separate
the love-business from the rest of the play and develop
it into a comedy by itself — "

" That would mean a great deal of work, and I am
rather sick of the whole thing."

202 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Or," the manager went on without minding Max-
well, " you have got to cut the part of Salome, and
subordinate it entirely to Haxard " — Maxwell made a
movement of impatience and refusal, and the manager
finished — " or else you have got to treat it frankly as
the leading part in the piece, and get it into the hands
of some leading actress."

" Do you mean," the author asked, " that you — or
any manager — would take it if that were done ? "

Grayson looked a little unhappy. " No, that isn't
what I mean, exactly. I mean that as it stands, no
manager would risk it, and that as soon as an actor
had read it, he would see, as Godolphin must have
seen from the start, that Haxard was a subordinate
part. What you want to do is to get it in the hands
of some woman who wants to star, and would take the
road with it." The manager expatiated at some length
on the point, and then he stopped, and sat silent, as
if he had done with the subject.

Maxwell perceived that the time had come for him
to get up and go away.

" Pm greatly obliged to you for all your kindness,
Mr. Grayson, and I won't abuse your patience any
further. You've been awfully good to me, and — "
He faltered, in a dejection which he could not control.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 203

Against all reason, he had hoped that the manager
would have taken his piece just as it stood, and ap-
parently he would not have taken it in any event.

" You mustn't speak of that," said the manager.
" I wish you would let me see anything else you do.
There's a great deal that's good in this piece, and I
believe that a woman who would make it her battle-
horse could make it go."

Maxwell asked, with melancholy scorn, " But you
don't happen to know any leading lady who is looking
round for a battle -horse ? "

The manager seemed trying to think. " Yes, I do.
You wouldn't like her altogether, and I don't say she
would be the ideal Salome, but she would be, in her
way, effective ; and I know that she wants very much
to get a play. She hasn't been doing anything for a
year or two but getting married and divorced, but she
made a very good start. She used to call herself Yo-
lande Havisham ; I don't suppose it was her name ;
and she had a good deal of success in the West ; 1
don't think she's ever appeared in New York. I be-
lieve she was of quite a good Southern family ; the
Southerners all are ; and I hear she has money."

" Godolphin mentioned a Southern girl for the part,"
said Maxwell. " I wonder if — "

204 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Very likely it's the same one. She does emo-
tional leads. She and Godolphin played together in
California, I believe. I was trying to think of her
married name — or her unmarried name — "

Some one knocked at the door, and the young man
put his head in, with what Maxwell fancied a precon-
certed effect, and gave the manager a card. He said,
"All right ; bring him round," and he added to Max-
well, " Shall I send your play — "

"No, no, I will take it," and Maxwell carried it
away with a heavier heart than he had even when he
got it back from Godolphin. He did not know how
to begin again, and he had to go home and take coun-
sel with his wife as to the next step.

He could not bear to tell her of his disappointment,
and it was harder still to tell her of the kind of hope
the manager had held out to him. He revolved a com-
promise in his mind, and when they sat down together
he did not mean to conceal anything, but only to post-
pone something ; he did not clearly know why. He
told her the alternatives the manager had suggested,
and she agreed with him they were all impossible.

" Besides," she said, " he doesn't promise to take
the play, even if you do everything to a * t.' Did he
ask you to lunch again ? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 205

" No, that seemed altogether a thing of the past."

" Well, let us have ours, and then we can go into
the Park, and forget all about it for a while, and per-
haps something new will suggest itself."

That was what they did, but nothing new suggested
itself. They came home fretted with their futile talk.
There seemed nothing for Maxwell to do but to begin
the next day with some other manager.

They found a note from Grayson waiting Maxwell.
" Well, you open it," he said, listlessly, to his wife,
and in fact he felt himself at that moment physically
unable to cope with the task, and he dreaded any
fluctuation of emotion that would follow, even if it
were a joyous one.

" What does this mean, Brice ? " demanded his
wife, with a terrible provisionality in her tone, as she
stretched out the letter to him, and stood before him
where he lounged in the cushioned window-seat.

Grayson had written : " If you care to submit your
play to Yolande Havisham, you can easily do so. I
find that her address is the same as yours. Her name
is Harley. But I was mistaken about the divorce.
It was a death."

Maxwell lay stupidly holding the note before him.

" Will you tell me what it means ? " his wife re-

206 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

peated. " Or why you didn't tell me before, if you
meant to give your play to that creature ? "

" I don't mean to give it to her," said Maxwell,
doggedly. " I never did, for an instant. As for not
telling you that Grayson had suggested it — well, per-
haps I wished to spare myself a scene like the pres-
ent.'»

" Do you think I will believe you ? "
" I don't think you will insult me. Why shouldn't
you believe I am telling you the truth ? "

" Because — because you didn't tell me at once."
" That is nonsense, and you know it. If I wanted
to keep this from you, it was to spare you the annoy-
ance I can't help now, and because the thing was set-
tled in my mind as soon as Grayson proposed it."
" Then, why has he written to you about it ? "
" I suppose I didn't say it was settled."
" Suppose ? Don't you know whether you did ? '*
" Come, now, Louise ! I am not on the witness-
stand, and I won't be cross-questioned. You ought
to be ashamed of yourself. What is the matter with
you ? Am I to blame because a man who doesn't im-
agine your dislike of a woman that you never spoke
to suggests her taking part in a play that she probably
wouldn't look at ? You're preposterous ! Try to have

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 207

a little common-sense ! " These appeals seemed to
have a certain effect with his wife ; she looked daunt-
ed ; but Maxwell had the misfortune to add, " One
would think you were jealous of the woman."

^^ Now you are insulting me/" she cried. "But
it's a part of the vulgarity of the whole business.
Actors, authors, managers, you're all alike."

Maxwell got very pale. " Look out, Louise ! " he
warned her.

*' I wonH look out. If you had any delicacy, the
least delicacy in the world, you could imagine how a
woman who had given the most sacred feelings of her
nature to you for your selfish art would loathe to be
represented by such a creature as that, and still not
be jealous of her, as you call it ! But I am justly
punished ! I might have expected it."

The maid appeared at the door and said something,
which neither of them could make out at once, but
which proved to be the question whether Mrs. Max-
well had ordered the dinner.

" No, I will go — I was just going out for it," said
Louise. She had in fact not taken off her hat or
gloves since she came in from her walk, and she now
turned and swept out of the room without looking at
her husband. He longed to detain her, to speak some

208 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

kindly or clarifying word, to set himself right with
her, to set her right with herself ; but the rage was so
hot in his heart that he could not. She came back to
the door a moment, and looked in. " / will do my
duty."

" It's rather late," he sneered, " but if you're very
conscientious, I dare say we shall have dinner at the
usual time."

He did not leave the window-seat, and it was as if
the door had only just clashed to after her when there
came a repeated and violent ringing at the bell, so
that he jumped up himself, to answer it, without wait-
ing for the maid.

" Your wife — your wife ! " panted the bell-boy, who
stood there. " She's hurt herself, and she's fainted."

" My wife ? Where — how ? " He ran down stairs
after the boy, and in the hallway on the ground floor
he found Louise stretched upon the marble pavement,
with her head in the lap of a woman, who was chafing
her hands. He needed no look at this woman's face
to be sure that it was the woman of his wife's abhor-
rence, and he felt quite as sure that it was the actress
Yolande Havisham, from the effective drama of her
self-possession.

" Don't be frightened. Your wife turned her foot

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 209

on the steps here. I was coming into the house, and
caught her from falling. It's only a swoon." She
spoke with the pseudo-English accent of the stage,
but with a Southern slip upon the vowels here and
there. " Get some water, please."

The hall-boy came running up the back stairs with
some that he had gone to get, and the woman bade
Maxwell sprinkle his wife's face. But he said : " No
— you," and he stooped and took his wife's head into
his own hands, so that she might not come to in the
lap of Mrs. Harley; in the midst of his dismay he
reflected how much she would hate that. He could
hardly keep himself from being repellant and resentful
towards the woman. In his remorse for quarrelling
with Louise, it was the least reparation he could offer
her. Mrs. Harley, if it were she, seemed not to notice
his rudeness. She sprinkled Louise's face, and wiped
her forehead with the handkerchief she dipped in the
water ; but this did not bring her out of her faint, and
Maxwell began to think she was dead, and to feel that
he was a murderer. With a strange aesthetic vigilance
he took note of his sensations for use in revising
Haxard.

The janitor of the building had somehow arrived,
and Mrs. Harley said : " I will go for a doctor, if you
N

210 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

can get her up to your apartment ; " and she left
Louise with the two men.

The janitor, a burly Irishman, lifted her in his arms,
and carried her up the three flights of steps; Maxwell
followed, haggardly, helplessly.

On" her own bed, Louise revived, and said : " My
shoe — Oh, get it off ! "

The doctor came a few minutes later, but Mrs. Har-
ley did not appear with him as Maxwell had dreaded
she would. He decided that Mrs. Maxwell had strain-
ed, not sprained, her ankle, and he explained how the
difference was all the difference in the world, as he
bound the ankle up with a long ribbon of india-rubber,
and issued directions for care and quiet.

He left them there, and Maxwell heard him below
in parley, apparently with the actress at her door.
Louise lay with her head on her husband's arm, and
held his other hand tight in hers, while he knelt by
the bed. The bliss of repentance and mutual forgive-
ness filled both their hearts, while she told him how
she had hurt herself.

" I had got down to the last step, and I was putting
my foot to the pavement, and I thought. Now I am
going to turn my ankle. Wasn't it strange ? And I
turned it. How did you get me up-stairs ? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 211

" The janitor carried you."

" How lucky he happened to be there ! I suppose
the hall-boy kept me from falling — poor little fellow !
You must give him some money. How did you find
out about me ? "

" He ran up to tell," Maxwell said this, and then he
hesitated. " I guess you had better know all about
it. Can you bear something disagreeable, or would
you rather wait — "

" No, no, tell me now ! I can't bear to wait. What
is it?"

*' It wasn't the hall-boy that caught you. It was
that — woman."

He felt her neck and hand grow rigid, but he went
on, and told her all about it. At the end some quiet
tears came into her eyes. " Well, then, we must be
civil to her. I am glad you told me at once, Brice ! "
She pulled his head down and kissed him, and he was
glad, too.

XV.

Louise sent Maxwell down to Mrs. Harley's apart-
ment to thank her, and tell her how slight the accident
was; and while he was gone she abandoned herself
to an impassioned dramatization of her own death
from blood-poisoning, and her husband's early mar-
riage with the actress, who then appeared in all his
plays, though they were not happy together. Her
own spectre was always rising between them, and she
got some fearful joy* out of that. She counted his
absence by her heart-beats, but he came back so soon
that she was ashamed, and was afraid that he had be-
haved so as to give the woman a notion that he was
not suffered to stay longer. He explained that he had
found her gloved and bonneted to go out, and that
he had not stayed for fear of keeping her. She had
introduced him to her mother, who was civil about
Louise's accident, and they had both begged him to
let them do anything they could for her. He made

212

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 213

his observations, and when Louise, after a moment,
asked him about them, he said they affected him as
severally typifying the Old South and the New South.
They had a photograph over the mantel, thrown up
large, of an officer in Confederate uniform. Other-
wise the room had nothing personal in it ; he suspected
the apartment of having been taken furnished, like
their own. Louise asked if he should say they were
ladies, and he answered that he thought they were.

" Of course," she said, and she added, with a wide
sweep of censure : "They get engaged to four or five
men at a time, down there. Well," she sighed, " you
mustn't stay in here with me, dear. Go to your writ-
ing."

" I was thinking whether you couldn't come out and
lie on the lounge. I hate to leave you alone in here."

" No, the doctor said to be perfectly quiet. Per-
haps I can, to-morrow, if it doesn't swell up any worse."

She kept her hold of his hand, which he had laid
in hers, and he sat down beside the bed, in the chair
^he had left there. He did not speak, and after a while
she asked, " What are you thinking of ? "

" Oh, nothing. The confounded play, I suppose."

" You're disappointed at Grayson's not taking it."

"One is always a fool."

214 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Yes," said Louise, with a catching of the breath.
She gripped his hand hard, and said, as well as she
could in keeping back the tears, " Well, I will never
stand in your way, Brice. You may do anything —
anything — with it that you think best."

" I shall never do anything you don't like," he an-
swered, and he leaned over and kissed her, and at this
her passion burst in a violent sobbing, and when she
could speak she made him solemnly promise that he
would not regard her in the least, but would do what-
ever was wisest and best with the play, for otherwise
she should never be happy again.

As she could not come out to join him at dinner,
he brought a little table to the bedside, and put his
plate on it, and ate his dinner there with her. She
gave him some attractive morsels off her own plate,
which he had first insisted on bestowing upon her.
They had such a gay evening that the future bright-
ened again, and they arranged for Maxwell to take his
play down-town the next day, and not lose a moment
in trying to place it with some manager.

It all left him very wakeful, for his head began to
work upon this scheme and that. When he went to
lock the outer door for the night, the sight of his
overcoat hanging in the hall made him think of a the-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 215

atrical newspaper he had bought coming home, at a
certain corner of Broadway, where numbers of smooth-
shaven, handsome men, and women with dark eyes and
champagned hair were lounging and passing. He had
got it on the desperate chance that it might suggest
something useful to him. He now took it out of his
coat-pocket, and began to look its advertisements over
in the light of his study lamp, partly because he was
curious about it, and partly because he knew that he
should begin to revise his play otherwise, and then
he should not sleep all night.

In several pages of the paper ladies with flowery
and alliterative names and pseudonyms proclaimed
themselves in large letters, and in smaller type the
parts they were presently playing in different combina-
tions ; others gave addresses and announced that they
were At Liberty, or specified the kinds of roles they
were accustomed to fill, as Leads or Heavies, Dancing
Soubrettes and Boys ; Leads, Emotional and Juvenile ;
Heavy or Juvenile or Emotional Leads. There were
gentlemen seeking engagements who were Artistic
Whistling Soloists, Magicians, Leading Men, Leading
Heavies, Singing and Dancing Comedians, and there
were both ladies and gentlemen who were now Star-
ring in this play or that, but were open to offers later.

216 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

A teacher of stage dancing promised instruction in
skirt and serpentine dancing, as well as high kicking,
front and back, the backward bend, side practice, toe-
practice, and all novelties. Dramatic authors had
their cards among the rest, and one poor fellow, as if
he had not the heart to name himself, advertised a
play to be heard of at the office of the newspaper.
Whatever related to the theatre was there, in bizarre
solidarity, which was droll enough to Maxwell in one
way. But he hated to be mixed up with all that, and
he perceived that he must be mixed up with it more
and more, if he wrote for the theatre. Whether he
liked it or not, he was part of the thing which in its
entirety meant high-kicking and toe-practice, as well
as the expression of the most mystical passions of the
heart. There was an austerity in him which the fact
offended, and he did what he could to appease this
austerity by reflecting that it was the drama and never
the theatre that he loved ; but for the time this was
useless. He saw that if he wrote dramas he could
not hold aloof from the theatre, nor from actors and
actresses — heavies and juveniles, and emotionals and
soubrettes. He must know them, and more intimate-
ly ; and at first he must be subject to them, however
he mastered them at last ; he must flatter their oddities

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 217

and indulge their caprices. His experience with Go-
dolphin had taught him that, and his experience with
Godolphin in the construction of his play could be
nothing to what he must undergo at rehearsals and in
the effort to adapt his work to a company. He re-
minded himself that Shakespeare even must have
undergone all that. But this did not console him.
He was himself, and what another, the greatest, had
suffered would not save him. Besides, it was not the
drama merely that Maxwell loved ; it was not making
plays alone ; it was causing the life that he had known
to speak from the stage, and to teach there its serious
and important lesson. In the last analysis he was a
moralist, and more a moralist than he imagined. To
enforce, in the vividest and most palpable form, what
he had thought true, it might be worth while to endure
all the trials that he must ; but at that moment he did
not think so ; and he did not dare submit his misgiv-
ing to his wife.

They had now been six months married, and if he
had allowed himself to face the fact he must have
owned that, though they loved each other so truly,
and he had known moments of exquisite, of incredible
rapture, he had been as little happy as in any half-
year he had lived. He never formulated his wife's

218 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

character, or defined the precise relation she bore to
his life ; if he could have been challenged to do so, he
would have said that she was the whole of life to him,
and that she was the most delightful woman in the
world.

He tasted to its last sweetness the love of loving
her and of being loved by her. At the same time
there was an obscure stress upon him which he did
not trace to her at once ; a trouble in his thoughts
which, if he could have seen it clearly, he would have
recognized for a lurking anxiety concerning how she
would take the events of their life as they came.
Without realizing it, for his mind was mostly on his
work, and it was only in some dim recess of his spirit
that the struggle took place, he was perpetually striv-
ing to adjust himself to the unexpected, or rather the
unpredicable.

But when he was most afraid of her harassing un-
certainty of emotion or action he was aware of her
fixed loyalty to him ; and perhaps it was the final effect
with himself that he dreaded. Should he always be
able to bear and forbear, as he felt she would, with all
her variableness and turning ? The question did not
put itself in words, and neither did his conviction that
his relation to the theatre was doubled in difficulty

THE STORY OF A TLAY. 219

through her. But he perceived that she had no love
for the drama, and only a love for his love of it ; and
sometimes he vaguely suspected that if he had been
in business she would have been as fond of business
as she was of the drama. He never perhaps compre-
hended her ideal, and how it could include an explicit
and somewhat noisy devotion to the aims of his am-
bition, because it was his, and a patronizing reserva-
tion in regard to the ambition itself. But this was
quite possible with Louise, just as it was possible for
her to have had a humble personal joy in giving her-
self to him, while she had a distinct social sense of
the sacrifice she had made in marrying him. In her-
self she looked up to him ; as her father's and moth-
er's daughter, as the child of her circumstance, there
is no doubt she looked down upon him. But neither
of these attitudes held in their common life. Love
may or may not level ranks, but marriage unquestion-
ably does, and is the one form of absolute equality.
The Maxwells did not take themselves or each other
objectively ; they loved and hated, they made war and
made peace, without any sense of the difference or
desert that might have been apparent to the spectators.
Maxwell had never been so near the standpoint of
the impartial observer as now when he confronted the

220 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

question of what he should do, with a heart twice
burdened by the question whether his wife would not
make it hard for him to do it, whatever it was. He
thought, with dark foreboding, of the difficulties he
should have to smooth out for her if it ever came to
a production of the piece. The best thing that could
happen, perhaps, would be its rejection, final and
total, by all possible managers and actors; for she
would detest any one who took the part of Salome,
and would hold him responsible for all she should
suffer from it.

He recurred to what he had felt so strongly him-
self, and what Grayson had suggested, and thought
how he could free himself from fealty to her by cut-
ting out the whole love-business from his play. But
that would be very hard. The thing had now knitted
itself in one texture in his mind, and though he could
sever the ties that bound the parts together, it would
take from the piece the great element of charm. It
was not symmetrical as it stood, but it was not two
distinct motives ; the motives had blended, and they
really belonged to each other. He would have to in-
vent some other love-business if he cut this out, but
still it could be done. Then it suddenly flashed upon
him that there was something easier yet, and that was

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 221

to abandon the notion of getting his piece played at
all, and to turn it into a novel. He could give it nar-
rative form without much trouble, if any, beyond that
of copying it, and it would be thought a very dramatic
story. He saw instantly how he could keep and even
enhance all the charm of the love-business as it stood,
in a novel ; and in his revulsion of feeling he wished
to tell his wife. He made a movement towards the door
of her room, but he heard the even breathing of her
sleep, and he stopped and flung himself on the lounge
to think. It was such a happy solution of the whole
affair ! He need not even cease trying it with the
managers, for he could use the copy of the play that
Godolphin had returned for that, and he could use the
copy he had always kept for recasting it in narrative.
By the time that he had got his play back from the
last manager he would have his novel ready for the
first publisher. In the meantime he should be writing
his letters for the Abstract, and not consuming all his
little savings.
" The relief from the stress upon him was delicious.
He lay at rest and heard the soft breathing of his
wife from the other room, and an indescribable ten-
derness for her filled his heart. Then he heard her
voice saying, " Well, don't wake him, poor boy ! "

XVI.

Maxwell opened his eyes and found the maid
lightly escaping from the room. He perceived that
he had slept all night on the lounge, and he sent a
cheery hail into his wife's room, and then followed it
to tell her how he had thought it all out. She was as
glad as he was ; she applauded his plan to the ceiling ;
and he might not have thought of her accident if he
had not seen presently that she was eating her break-
fast in bed.

Then he asked after her ankle, and she said, " Oh,
that is perfectly well, or the same as perfectly. There's
no pain at all there to speak of, and I shall get up to
luncheon. You needn't mind me any more. If you
haven't taken your death of cold sleeping there on the
lounge — "

" I haven't."

" I want you to go down town to some manager
with your play, and get some paper, the kind I like ;

222

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 223

and then, after lunch, we'll begin turning it into a
novel, from your copy. It will be so easy for you
that you can dictate, and I'll do the writing, and we'll
work it up together. Shall you like collaborating
with me ? "

" Ah ! — "

" It will be our story, and I shall like it twice as
well as if it were a play. We shall be independent
of the theatre, that's one satisfaction ; they can take
the play, if they like, but it will be perfectly indiffer-
ent to us. I shall help you get in all those nice
touches that you said you could never get into a play,
like that green light in the woods. I know just how
we shall manage that love business, and we sha'n't
have any horror of an actress interpreting our inspira-
tions to the public. We'll play Atland and Salome
ourselves. We'll — ow ! "

She had given her foot a twist in the excitement
and she fell back on the pillow rather faint. But she
instantly recovered herself with a laugh, and she hur-
ried him away to his breakfast, and then away with
his play. He would rather have stayed and begun
turning it into a story at once. But she would not
let him ; she said it would be a loss of time, and she
should fret a good deal more to have him there with

224 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

her, than to have him away, for she should know he
was just staying to cheer her up.

When he was gone she sent for whatever papers
the maid could find in the parlor, so that she need not
think of him in the amusement she would get out of
them. Among the rest was that dramatic newspaper
which caught her eye first, with the effigy of a very
dramatized young woman whose portrait filled the
whole first page. Louise abhorred her, but with a
novel sense of security in the fact that Maxwell's play
was going so soon to be turned into a story ; and she
felt personally aloof from all the people who had
dragged him down with a sense of complicity in their
professional cards. She found them neither so droll
nor so painful as he had, but she was very willing to
turn from them, and she was giving the paper a part-
ing glance before dropping it when she was arrested
by an advertisement which made her start :

WANTED.— A drama for prominent etar ; light comio and
emotional ; star part must embody situations for the display of
intense effects. Address L. Sterke, this oflQce.

A series of effects as intense as the advertiser could
have desired in a drama followed one another in the
mind of Louise. She now wildly reproached herself
that she had, however unwittingly, sent her husband
out of reach for four or five hours, when his whole

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 225

future might depend upon his instantly answering this
notice. Whether he had already seen the notice and
rashly decided to ignore it, or had not seen it, he
might involve himself with some manager irretrievably
before he could be got at with a demand which seemed
specifically framed to describe his play. She was in
despair that there was no means of sending a messen-
ger-boy after him with any chance of finding him.
The light comic reliefs which the advertiser would
have wished to give the dark phases of her mood were
suggested by her reckless energy in whirling herself
into her dressing-gown, and hopping out to Maxwell's
desk in the other room, where she dashed off a note
in reply to the advertisement in her husband's name,
and then checked herself with the reflection that she
had no right to sign his name : even in such a cause
she must not do anything wrong. Something must
be done, however, right or wrong, and she decided
that a very formal note in the third person would in-
volve the least moral trespass. She fixed upon these
terms, after several experiments, almost weeping at the
time they cost her, when every moment was precious;

Mr. Brice Maxwell writes to Mr, L. Sterne and
begs to inform him that he has a play which he believes
will meet the requirements of Mr. Sterne, as stated in

0

226 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

his advertisement in the Theatrical Register of No-
vember the tenth. Mr. Maxwell asks the favor of an
interview with Mr. Sterne at any time and place that
Mr. Sterne may appoint.

It seemed to her that this violated no law of man
or God, or if it did the exigency was such that the
action could be forgiven, if not justified. She ran-
sacked Maxwell's desk for a special delivery stamp,
and sent the letter out beyond recall ; and then it
occurred to her that its opening terms were too much
those of a lady addressing a seamstress ; but after a
good deal of anguish on this point she comforted her-
self with the hope that a man would not know the
form, or at least would not suspect another man of
using it offensively.

She passed the time till Maxwell came back, in
doubt whether to tell him what she had done. There
was no reason why she should not, except that he
might have seen the advertisement and decided not to
answer it for some reason ; but in that case it might
be said that he ought to have spoken to her about it.
She told him everything at once, but there were many
things that he did not tell her till long afterwards ; it
would be a good thing to let him realize how that
felt ; besides, it would be a pleasure to keep it and let

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 227

it burst upon him, if that L. Sterne, whoever he was,
asked to see the play. In any case, it would not be
a great while that she need keep from him what she
had done, but at sight of him when he came in she
eould hardly be silent. He was gloomy and dispirited,
and he confessed that his pleasant experience with
Grayson had not been repeated with the other mana-
gers. They had all been civil enough, and he had
seen three or four of them, but only one had consented
to let him even leave his play with him ; the others
said that it would be useless for them to look at it.

She could not forbear showing him the advertise-
ment she had answered as they sat at lunch ; but he
glanced at it with disdain, and said there must be
some sort of fake in it ; if it was some irresponsible
fellow getting up a combination he would not scruple
to use the ideas of any manuscript submitted to him
and work them over to suit himself. Louise could
not speak. All heart went out of her ; she wanted to
cry, and she did not tell what she had done.
__ Neither of them ate much. He asked her if she
was ready to begin on the story with him ; she said,
" Oh yes ; " and she hobbled off into the other room.
Then he seemed to remember her hurt for the first
time ; he had been so full of his failure with the play

228 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

before. He asked her how she was, and she said
much better ; and then he stretched himself on the
lounge and tried to dictate, and she took her place at
his desk and tried to write. But she either ran ahead
of him and prompted him, which vexed him, or she
lagged so far behind that he lost the thread of what
he was saying and became angry. At last she put her
head down on the paper and blotted it with her tears.
At that he said, " Oh, you'd better go back to bed,"
and then, though he spoke harshly, he lifted her ten-
derly and half carried her to her room.

XVII.

They did not try working the play into a story
again together. Maxwell kept doggedly at it, though
he said it was of no use ; the thing had taken the
dramatic form with inexorable fixity as it first came
from his mind ; it could be changed, of course, but it
could only be changed for the worse, artistically. If
he could sell it as a story, the work would not be lost ;
he would gain the skill that came from doing, in any
event, and it would keep him alive under the ill-luck
that now seemed to have set in.

None of the managers wanted his play. Some of
them sejemed to want it less than others ; some wanted
it less immediately than others ; some did not want it
after reading ; some refused it without reading it ;
some had their arrangements made for an indefinite
time, others in the present uncertain state of affairs
could not make any arrangements ; some said it was

229

230 THE STOKY OP A PLAY.

an American play ; others that it was un-American in
its pessimistic spirit ; some found it too literary ; oth-
ers, lacking in imagination. They were nearly all so
kind that at first Maxwell was guilty of the folly of
trying to persuade them against the reasons they gave ;
when he realized that these reasons were also excuses,
he set his teeth and accepted them in silence.

For a number of days Louise suffered in momentary
expectation of a reply from L. Sterne. She thought
it would come by district messenger the day she wrote ;
and for several days afterwards she had the letters
brought to her first, so that she could read them, and
not disturb Maxwell with them at his work, if it were
not necessary. He willingly agreed to that ; he saw
that it helped to pass the irksome time for her. She
did not mean to conceal any answer she should have
from L. Sterne, but she meant when the answer came
to prepare her husband for it in such sort that he
would understand her motive, and though he con-
demned it, would easily forgive her. But the days
went and no letter from L. Sterne came, and after a
season of lively indignation at his rudeness, Louise
began to forget him a little, though she still kept her
surveillance of the mail.

It was always on her conscience, in the meantime,

THE STORY OF A PLAT. 231

to give some of the first moments of her recovery to
going with Maxwell and thanking Mrs. Harley for the
kindness she had shown her in her accident. She was
the more strenuous in this intention because the duty
was so distasteful, and she insisted upon Maxwell's
company, though he argued that he had already done
enough himself in thanking her preserver, because she
wished to punish a certain reluctance of her own in
having him go. ^he promised herself that she would
do everything that was right by the creature ; and
perhaps she repaired to her presence in rather over-
whelming virtue. If this was so, Mrs. Harley showed
herself equal to the demand upon her, and was over-
whelming in her kind. She not only made nothing of
what she had done for Louise, but she made nothing
of Louise, and contrived with a few well-directed
strokes to give her distinctly the sense of being a chit,
a thing Louise was not at all used to. She was ap-
parently one of those women who have no use for per-
sons of their own sex ; but few women, even of that
^sort, could have so promptly relegated Louise to the
outside of their interest, or so frankly devoted them-
selves to Maxwell. The impartial spectator might
easily have imagined that it was his ankle which had
been strained, and that Louise was at best an intrusive

232 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

sympathizer. Sometimes Mrs. Harley did not hear
what she said ; at other times, if she began a response
to her, she ended it in a question to him ; even when
she talked to Louise, her eyes were smouldering upon
Maxwell. If this had all or any of it been helpless or
ignorant rudeness, it could have been borne and for-
given ; but Louise was aware of intention, of perfect
intelligence in it ; she was sensible of being even more
disliked than disliking, and of finally being put to
flight with a patronizing benevolence for her complete
recovery that was intolerable. What was worse was
that, while the woman had been so offensive, she could
not wholly rid herself of the feeling that her punish-
ment was in a measure merited, though it was not
justice that had dealt with her.

" Well, that is over," said Maxwell, when they were
again by themselves.

"Yes, forever," sighed Louise, and for once she
was not let have the last word.

" I hope you'll remember that I didn't want to go."

At least, they had not misunderstood each other
about Mrs. Harley.

Towards the end of the month, Louise's father and
mother came on from Boston. They professed that
they had beeii taken with that wish to see the autumn

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 233

exhibition at the National Academy which sometimes
affects Bostonians, and that their visit had nothing to
do with the little hurt that Louise wrote them of when
she was quite well of it. They drove over from their
hotel the morning they arrived, and she did not know
anything of their coming till she heard their voices at
the door ; her father's voice was rather husky from
the climb to her apartment.

The apartment was looking somewhat frouzy, for
the Maxwells breakfasted late, and the house-maid
had not had time to put it in order. Louise saw it
through her father's and mother's eyes with the glance
they gave it, and found the rooms ridiculously little,
and furnished with cheap Fourteenth Street things;
but she bragged all the more noisily of it on that
account, and made her mother look out of the window
for the pretty view they had from their corner room.
Mrs. Hilary pulled her head back from the prospect
of the railroad-ridden avenue with silent horror, and
Louise burst into a wild laugh. " Well, it isnU Com-
-jDonwealth Avenue, mamma ; I don't pretend that, you
know."

" Where's Maxwell ? " asked Hilary, still puffing
from the lounge he had sunk upon as soon as he got
into the room.

234 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Oh, he's down town interviewing a manager about
his play."

" I thought that fellow out West had his play. Or
is this a new one ? "

" No," said Louise, very slowly and thoughtfully,
" Brice has taken back his play from Mr. Godolphin."
This was true ; he had taken it back in a sense. She
added, as much to herself as to her father, " But he
has got a new play — that he's working at."

" I hope he hasn't been rash with Godolphin ;
though I always had an idea that it would have been
better for him to deal with a manager. It seems more
business-like."

" Oh, much," said Louise.

After a little while they were more at home with
each other ; she began to feel herself more their child,
and less Maxwell's wife ; the barriers of reluctance
against him, which she always knew were up with
them, fell away from between them and herself. But
her father said they had come to get her and Maxwell
to lunch with them at their hotel, and then Louise
felt herself on her husband's side of the fence again.
She said no, they must stay with her ; that she was
sure Brice would be back for lunch ; and she wanted to
show them her house-keeping. Mrs. Hilary cast her

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 235

eye about the room at the word, as if she had seen
quite enough of it already, and this made Louise laugh
again. She was no better in person than the room
was, and she felt her mother's tacit censure apply to
her slatternly dressing-gown.

" I know what you're thinking, mamma. But I
got the habit of it when I had my strained ankle."

" Oh, I'm sure it must be very comfortable," Mrs.
Hilary said, of the dressing-gown. "Is it entirely
well now?" she added, of the ankle; and she and
Hilary both looked at Louise in a way that would
have convinced her that their final anxiety concerning
it had brought them to New York, if she had not
guessed it already. " The doctor," and by this she
meant their old family doctor, as if he were the only
one, " said you couldn't be too careful."

" Well, I haven't been careful," said Louise, gayly ;
" but I'm quite well, and you can go back at once, if
that's all, mamma."

Hilary laughed with her. " You haven't changed
much, Louise."

Her mother said, in another sense, "I think you
look a little pulled down," and that made her and her
father laugh again. She got to playing with him,
and poking him, and kissing him, in the way she had

236 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

with him when she was a girl ; it was not so very long
ago.

Her mother bore with this for awhile, and then she
rose to go.

" You're not going to stay ! " Louise protested.

" Not to-day, my dear. I've got some shopping to
do before lunch."

" Well," said Louise, " I didn't suppose you would
stay the first time, such swells as you and papa. But
I shall insist upon your coming to-morrow when you've
recovered a little from the blow this home of virtuous
poverty has given you, and I've had a chance to dust
and prepare for you. And I'll tell you what, mamma ;
Brice and I will come to dinner with you to-night,
and we won't take any refusal. We'll be with you
at seven. How will that do, papa ? "

" That will do," said Hilary, with his arm round
her waist, and they kissed each other to clinch the
bargain.

" And don't you two old things go away and put
your frosty pows together and say Brice and I are not
happy. We do quarrel like cats and dogs every now
and then, but the rest of the time we're the happiest
couple in the universe, and an example to parents."

Hilary would have manifestly liked to stay and

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 237

have her go on with her nonsense, but his wife took
him away.

When Maxwell came in she was so full of their
visit that she did not ask him what luck he had with
his play, but told him at once they were going to dine
with her father and mother. " And I want you to
brace up, ray dear, and not let them imagine any-
thing."

" How, anything ? " he asked, listlessly.

" Oh, nothing. About your play not going per-
fectly. I didn't think it necessary to go into particu-
lars with them, and you needn't. Just pass it over
lightly if they ask you anything about it. But they
won't."

Maxwell did not look so happy as he might at the
prospect of dining with his wife's father and mother,
but he did not say anything disagreeable, and after
an instant of silent resentment Louise did not say
anything disagreeable either. In fact, she devoted
herself to avoiding any displeasures with him, and
she arrived with him at the Hilarys' hotel on perfectly
good terms, and, as far as he was concerned, in rather
good spirits.

Upon the whole, they had a very good time. Hil-
ary made occasion to speak to Maxwell of his letters

238 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

to the Abstract, and told him they were considered by
far the best letters of the kind published anywhere,
which meant anywhere in Boston.

" You do that sort of thing so well, newspaper
writing," he continued, with a slyness that was not
lost upon Louise, though Maxwell was ignorant of his
drift, " that I wonder you don't sometimes want to
take it up again."

" It's well enough," said Maxwell, who was gratified
by his praise.

" By the way," said Hilary, " I met your friend,
Mr. Ricker, the other day, and he spoke most cord-
ially about you. I fancy he would be very glad to
have you back."

" In the old way ? I would rather be excused."

" No, from what he said, I thought he would like
your writing in the editorial page."

Maxwell looked pleased. " Bicker's always been
very good, but he has very little influence on the Ab-
stract. He has no money interest in the paper."

Hilary said, with the greatest artfulness, " I wonder
he doesn't buy in. I hear it can be done."

" Not by Ricker, for the best of all possible rea-
sons," said Maxwell, with a laugh.

Louise could hardly wait till she had parted from

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 239

her father and mother before she began on her hus-
band : " You goose ! Didn't you see that papa was
hinting at buying you a, share in the Abstract ? "

" He was very modest about it, then ; I didn't see
anything of the kind."

" Oh, do you think you are the only modest man ?
Papa is very modest, and he wouldn't make you an
offer outright, unless he saw that you would like it.
But I know that was what he was coming to, and if
you'll let me — "

A sentiment of a reluctance rather than a refusal
was what made itself perceptible from his arm to hers,
as they hurried along the street together, and Louise
would not press the question till he spoke again.

He did not speak till they were in the train on their
way home. Then he said, " I shouldn't care to have
a money interest in a newspaper. It would tie me up
to it, and load me down with cares I should hate. It
wouldn't be my real life."

" Yes," said his wife, but when they got into their
little apartment she cast an eye, opened to its mean-
ness and narrowness, over the common belongings, and
wondered if he would ask himself whether this was
her real life. But she did not speak, though she was
apt to speak out most things that she thought.

XVIII.

Some people began to call, old friends of her moth-
er, whose visit to New York seemed to have betrayed
to them the fact of Louise's presence for the first
time, and some friends of her own, who had married,
and come to New York to live, and who said they
had just got back to town long enough to learn that
she was there. These all reproached her for not hav-
ing let them know sooner where she was, and they all
more or less followed up their reproaches with the
invitations which she dreaded because of Maxwell's
aversion for them. But she submitted them to him,
and submitted to his refusal to go with her, and de-
clined them. In her heart she thought he was rather
ungracious, but she did not say so, though in two or
three cases of people whom she liked she coaxed him
a little to go with her. Meeting her mother and talk-
ing over the life she used to lead in Boston, and the
life so many people were leading there still, made her

240

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 241

a little hungry for society ; she would have liked well
enough to find herself at a dinner again, and she
would have felt a little dancing after the dinner no
hardship ; but she remembered the promise she had
made herself not to tease Maxwell about such things.
So she merely coaxed him, and he so far relented as to
ask her why she could not go without him, and that
hurt her, and she said she never would go without him.
All the same, when there came an invitation for lunch,
from a particularly nice friend of her girlhood, she
hesitated and was lost. She had expected, somehow,
that it was going to be a very little lunch, but she
found it a very large one, in the number of people, and
after the stress of accounting for her husband's failure
to come with her, she was not sorry to have it so.
She inhaled with joy the atmosphere of the flower-
scented rooms ; her eye dwelt with delight on their
luxurious and tasteful appointments, the belongings
of her former life, which seemed to emerge in them
from the past and claim her again ; the women in
their chic New York costumes and their miracles of
early winter hats hailed her a long-lost sister by every
graceful movement and cultivated tone; the correctly
tailored and agreeably mannered men had polite intel-
ligence of a world that Maxwell never would and
P

242 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

never could be part of ; the talk of the little amusing,
un vital things that began at once was more precious
to her than the problems which the austere imagina-
tion of her husband dealt with ; it suddenly fatigued
her to think how hard she had tried to sympathize
with his interest in them. Her heart leaped at sight
of the long, rose-heaped table, with its glitter of glass
and silver, and the solemn perfection of the serving-
men ; a spectacle not important in itself was dear to
her from association with gayeties, which now, for a
wicked moment, seemed to her better than love.

There were all sorts of people : artists and actors,
as well as people of fashion. Her friend had given
her some society notable to go out with, but she had
appointed for the chair next her, on the other hand, a
young man in a pretty pointed beard, whom she in-
troduced across from the head of the table as soon as
she could civilly take the notable to herself. Louise
did not catch his name, and it seemed presently that
he had not heard hers, but their acquaintance pros-
pered without this knowledge. He made some little
jokes, which she promptly responded to, and they
talked awhile as if they were both New-Yorkers, till
she said, at some remark of his, " But I am not a
New-Yorker," and then he said, " Well, neither am I,"

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 243

and offered to tell her what he was if she would tell
him what she was.

" Oh, I'm from Boston, of course," she answered,
but then, instead of saying where he was from, he
broke out:

" Now I will fulfil my vow ! "

" Your vow ? What is your vow ? "

" To ask the first Boston person I met if that Bos-
ton person knew anything about another Boston per-
son, who wrote a most remarkable play I saw in the
fall out at home."

" A play? " said Louise, with a total loss of interest
in the gentleman's city or country.

" Yes, by a Boston man named Maxwell — "

Louise stared at him, and if their acquaintance had
been a little older, she might have asked him to come
off. As it was she could not speak, and she let him
go on.

" 1 don't know when I've ever had a stronger im-
pression in the theatre than I had from that play.
Perfectly modern, and perfectly American." He
briefly sketched it. " It was like a terrible experience
on the tragic side, and on the other side it was a rapt-
ure. I never saw love-making on the stage before
that made me wish to be a lover — "

244 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

A fire-red flew over Louise's face, and she said,
almost snubbingly, as if he had made some unwarrant-
able advance : " I think I had better not let you go
on. It was my husband who wrote that play. I am
Mrs. Maxwell."

" Mrs. Maxwell ! You are Mrs. Maxwell ? " he
gasped, and she could not doubt the honesty of his
amaze.

His confusion was so charming that she instantly
relented. " Of course I should like to have you go
on all day as you've begun, but there's no telling
what exceptions you might be going to make later.
Where did you see my husband's play ? "

" In Midland—"

" What ! You are not — you can't be — Mr. Ray ? "

" I am — I can," he returned, gleefully, and now Lou-
ise impulsively gave him her hand under the table-cloth.

The mancEuvre caught the eye of the hostess. " A
bet ? " she asked.

" Better," cried Louise, not knowing her pun, " a
thousand times," and she turned without further ex-
planation to the gentleman : *' When I tell Mr. Max-
well of this he will suffer as he ought, and that's say-
ing a great deal, for not coming with me to-day. To
think of it's being you / "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 245

" Ah, bnt to think of it's being he ! You acquit me
of the poor taste of putting up a job ? "

" Oh, of anything you want to be acquitted of !
What crime would you prefer ? There are whole del-
uges of mercy for you. But now go on, and tell me
everything you thought about the play." i

" I'd rather you'd tell me what you know about the
playwright."

" Everything, of course, and nothing." She added
the last words from a sudden, poignant conviction.
" Isn't that the way with the wives of you men of
genius ? "

" Am I a man of genius ? "

" You're literary."

" Oh, literary, yes. But I'm not married."

"You're determined to get out of it, somehow.
Tell me about Midland. It has filled such a space in
our imao^ination ! You can't think what a comfort
and stay you have been to us ! But why in Midland ?
Is it a large place ? "

-'" Would it take such a very big one to hold me ?
It's the place I brought myself up in, and it's very
good to me, and so I live there. I don't think it has
any vast intellectual or aesthetic interests, but there
are very nice people there, very cultivated, some of

246 THE STORY O^ A PLAY.

them, and very well read. After all, you don't need
a great many people ; three or four will do."

" And have you always lived there ? "

" I lived a year or so in New York, and I manage
to get on here some time every winter. The rest of
the year Midland is quite enough for me. It's gay at
times ; there's a good deal going on ; and I can write
there as well as anywhere, and better than in New
York. Then, you know, in a small way I'm a prophet
in my own country, perhaps because I was away from
it for awhile. It's very pretty. But it's very base of
you to make me talk about myself when I'm so anx-
ious to hear about Mr. Maxwell."

" And do you spend all your time writing Ibsen
criticisms of Ibsen plays ? " Louise pursued against
his protest.

" I do some other kind of writing.'*

"As—"

" Oh, no ! I'm not here to interview myself."

" Oh, but you ought. I know you've written some-
thing— some novel. Your name was so familiar from
the first." Mr. Ray laughed and shook his head in
mockery of her cheap device. " You mustn't be vexed
because I'm so vague about it. I'm very ignorant."

"You said you were from Boston."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 247

" But there are Bostons and Bostons. The Boston
that I belonged to never hears of American books till
they are forgotten ! "

" Ah, how famous I must be there ! "

" I see you are determined to be bad. But I re-
member now ; it was a play. Haven't you written a
play ? " He held up three fingers. " I knew it ! What
was it ? "

" My plays," said the young fellow, with a mock of
superiority, " have never been played. I've been told
that they are above the heads of an audience. It's a
great consolation. But now, really, about Mr. Max-
well's. When is it to be given here ? I hoped very
much that I might happen on the very time."

Louise hesitated a moment, and then she said:
" You know he has taken it back from Godolphin."
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 ? "

248 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Well," said Louise, with rather a painful smile,
" nobody has it at present. We're trying to stir up
strife for it among managers."

" What play is that ? " asked her friend, the host-
ess, and all that end of the table became attentive, as
any fashionable 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 Ameri-
can 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-sacri-
fice. " 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

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 249

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

250 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 shine. 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 con-
fusedly 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.

251

252 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 pro-
visional 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 emo-
tion 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 nobody 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 win-
dow and stood holding a hat in its hand was not
somehow a gentlemanly bulk, the hat was not defin-
itively 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,

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 253

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.

" I am sorry," she said, " that my husband is out, and
I am sorry to say that I don't know just when he will
be at home." She stood and the man had risen again,
with his portly frame and his invisible face between
her and the light again. " If I could be of any use
in giving him a message — " She stopped ; it was
really sending the man out of the house, and she could
not do that ; it was not decent. She added, " Or if
you don't mind waiting a few minutes longer — "

She sat down, but the man did not. He said : " I
can't wait any longer just now ; but if Mr. Maxwell
would like to see me, I am at the Coleman House."
She looked at him as if she did not understand, and
he went on : " If he doesn't recall my name he'll re-
member answering my advertisement, some weeks ago
in the Theatrical Register, for a play."

" Oh yes ! " said Louise. This was the actor whom
she had written to on behalf of Maxwell. With elec-
trical suddenness and distinctness she now recalled
the name, L. Sterne, along with all the rest, though
the card of Mr. Lawrence Sterne had not stirred her

254 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

sleeping consciousness. She liad always meant to tell
Maxwell what she had done, but she was always wait-
ing for something to come of it, and when nothing
came of it, she did not tell ; she had been so disgusted
at the mere notion of answering the man's advertise-
ment. Now, here was the man himself, and he had
to be answered, and that would probably be worse than
answering his advertisement. *' I remember," she
said, provisionally, but with the resolution to speak
exactly the truth; " I wrote to you for Mr. Maxwell,"
which did not satisfy her as the truth ought to have
done.

" Well, then, I wish you would please tell him that
I didn't reply to his letter because it kept following
me from place to place, and I only got it at the Heff-
ister office this morning."

" I will tell Mr. Maxwell," said Louise.

" I should be glad to see his play, if he still has it
to dispose of. From what Mr. Grayson has told me
of it, I think it might — I think I should like to see it.
It might suit the — the party I am acting for," he
added, letting himself go.

" Then you are not the — the — star ? "

" I am the manager for the star."

" Oh," said Louise, with relief. The fact seemed

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 255

to put another complexion on the affair. A distaste
which she had formed for Mr. Sterne personally be-
gan to cede to other feelings. If he was manager for
the star, he must be like other managers, such as Max-
well was willing to deal with, and if he knew Mr.
Grayson he must be all right. " I will tell Mr. Max-
well," she said, with no provisionality this time.

Mr. Sterne prepared to go, so far as buttoning his
overcoat and making some paces towards the door
gave token of his intention. Louise followed him
with a politeness which was almost gratitude to him
for reinstating her in her own esteem. He seemed
to have atmospheric intelligence of her better will
towards him, for he said, as if it were something she
might feel an interest in : "If I can get a play that
will suit, I shall take the road with a combination im-
mediately after New Year's. I don't know whether
you have ever seen the lady I want the play for."

" The lady? " gasped Louise.

" She isn't very well-known in the East yet, but she
will be. She wants a play of her own. As I under-
stand Mr. Grayson, there is a part in Mr. Maxwell's
play that would fit her to a T, or could be fitted to
her ; these things always need some little adaptation."
Mr. Sterne's manner became easier and easier. '* Cu-

256 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

rious thing about it is that you are next door — or next
floor — neighbors, here. Mrs. Harley."

" We — we have met her," said Louise in a hollow
murmur.

" Well, you can't have any idea what Yolande Hav-
isham is from Mrs. Harley. I shall be at the Coleman
the whole evening, if Mr. Maxwell would like to call.
Well, good-morning," said Mr. Sterne, and he got
himself away before Louise could tell him that Max-
well would never give his play to a woman ; before
she could say that it was already as good as accepted
by another manager ; before she could declare that if
no manager ever wanted it, still, as far as Mrs. Harley
was concerned, with her smouldering eyes, it would
always be in negotiation ; before she could form or
express any utter and final refusal and denial of his
abominable hopes.

It remained for her either to walk quietly down to
the North River and drown herself or to wait her hus-
band's return and tell him everything and throw her-
self on his mercy, implore him, adjure him, not to
give that woman his play ; and then to go into a de-
cline that would soon rid him of the clog and hinder-
ance she had always been to him. It flashed through
her turmoil of emotion that it was already dark, in

I

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 257

spite of Mr. Sterne's good-morning at parting, and that
some one might speak to her on the way to the river ;
and then she thought how Maxwell would laugh when
she told him the fear of being spoken to had kept her
from suicide ; and she sat waiting for him to come
with such an inward haggardness that she was aston-
ished, at sight of herself in the glass, to find that she
was looking very much as usual. Maxwell certainly
noticed no difference when he came in and flung him-
self wearily on the lounge, and made no attempt to
break the silence of their meeting ; they had kissed, of
course, but had not spoken.

She was by no means sure what she was going to
do ; she had hoped there would be some leading on
his part that would make it easy for her to do right,
whatever the right was, but her heart sank at sight of
him. He looked defeated and harassed. But there was
no^lelp for it. She must speak, and speak unaided ;
the only question was whether she had better speak
before dinner or after. She decided to speak after
dinner, and then all at once she was saying : " Brice,
I have brought something dreadful on myself."

" At the lunch ? " he asked, wearily, and she saw
that he thought she had been making some silly speech
/ she was ashamed of.

Q

258 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Oh, if it had only been at the lunch ! " she cried.
" No, it was here — here in this very room."

" /don't know what's the matter with you, Louise,"
he said, lying back and shutting his eyes.

" Then I must tell you ! " And she came out with
the whole story, which she had to repeat in parts be-
fore he could understand it. When he did understand
that she had answered an advertisement in the Regis-
ter^ in his name, he opened his eyes and sat up.

"Well?" he said.

" Well, don't you see how wrong and wicked that
was?"

" I've heard of worse things."

" Oh, don't say so, dearest ! It was living a lie,
don't you see. And I've been living a lie ever since,
and now I'm justly punished for not telling you long
ago."

She told him of the visit she had just had, and who
the man was, and whom he wanted the play for ; and
now a strange thing happened with her. She did not
beseech him not to give his play to that woman ; on
the contrary she said : " And now, Brice, I want you
to let her have it. I know she will play Salome mag-
nificently, and that will make the fortune of the piece,
and it will give you such a name that anything you

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 259

write after this will get accepted ; and you can satisfy
your utmost ambition, and you needn't mind me — no
— or think of me at all any more than if I were the
dust of the earth ; and I am ! Will you ? "

He got up from the lounge and began to walk the
floor, as he always did when he was perplexed ; and
she let him walk up and down in silence as long as
she could bear it. At last she said : " I am in earnest,
Brice, I am indeed, and if you don't do it, if you let
me or my feelings stand in your way, in the slightest
degree, I will never forgive you. Will you go straight
down to the Coleman House, as soon as you've had
your dinner, and tell that man he can have your play
for that woman ? "

" No," said Maxwell, stopping in his walk, and
looking at her in a dazed way.

Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. " Why ? "
she choked.

" Because Godolphin is here."

*'Godo — " she began; and«he cast herself on the
lounge that Maxwell had vacated, and plunged her
face in the pillow and sobbed, " Oh, cruel, cruel,
cruel ! Oh, cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel ! "

XX.

Maxwell stood looking at his wife with the cold
disgust which hysterics are apt to inspire in men after
they have seen them more than once. " I suppose
that when you are ready you will tell me what is the
matter with you,"

"To let me suffer so, when you knew all the lime
that Godolphin was here, and you needn't give your
play to that creature at all," wailed Louise,

" How did / know you were suffering ? " he re-
torted. " And how do I know that I can do anything
with Godolphin ? "

"Oh, I know you can! " She sprang up with the
greatest energy, and ran into the bedroom to put in
order her tumbled hair ; she kept talking to him from
there. " I want you to go down and see him the in-
stant you have had dinner ; and don't let him escape
you. Tell him he can have the play on any terms.
I believe he is the only one who can make it go. He

260

I

THE STORY OF A PLAY.

261

was the first to appreciate the idea, and — Frida ! " she
called into the hall towards the kitchen, " we will have
dinner at once, now, please — he always talked so
intelligently about it ; and now if he's where you can
superintend the rehearsals, it will be the greatest suc-
cess. How in the world did you find out he was
here ? "

She came out of her room, in surprising repair,
with this question, and the rest of their talk went on
through dinner.

It appeared that Maxwell had heard of Godolphin's
presence from Grayson, whom he met in the street,
and who told him that Godolphin had made a com-
plete failure of his venture. His combination had
gone-to pieces at Cleveland, and his company were
straggling back to New York as they could. Godol-
phin was deeply in debt to them all, and to everybody
else ; and yet the manager spoke cordially of him, and
with no sort of disrespect, as if his insolvency were
only an affair of the moment, which he would put
right. Louise took the same view of it, and she urged
Maxwell to consider how Godolphin had promptly
paid him, and would always do so.

" Probably I got the pay of some poor devil who
needed it worse," said Maxwell.

262 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

She said, " Nonsense ! The other actors will take
care of all that. They are so good to each other,"
and she blamed Maxwell for not going to see Godol-
phin at once.

" That was what I did," he answered, " but he
wasn't at home. He was to be at home after dinner."

'* Well, that makes it all the more providential,"
said Louise ; her piety always awoke in view of favor-
able chances. " You mustn't lose any time. Better
not wait for the coffee."

*'I think I'll wait for the coffee," said Maxwell.
" It's no use going there before eight."

" No," she consented. " Where is he stopping ? "

" At the Coleman House."

" The Coleman House ? Then if that wretch should
see you ? " She meant the manager of Mrs. Harley.

" He wouldn't know me, probably," Maxwell re-
turned, scornfully. " But if you think there's any
danger of his laying hold of me, and getting the play
away before Godolphin has a chance of refusing it, I'll
go masked. I'm tired of thinking about it. What
sort of lunch did you have ? "

" I had the best time in the world. You ought to
have come with me, Brice. I shall make you, the next
one. Oh, and guess who was there ! Mr. Ray ! "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 263

" Our Mr. Ray ? " Maxwell breathlessly demanded.

"There is no other, and he's the sweetest little dear
in the world. He isn't so big as you are, even, and
he's such a merry spirit; he hasn't the bulk your
gloom gives you. I want you to be like him, Brice.
I don't see why you shouldn't go into society, too."

" If I'd gone into society to-day, I should have
missed seeing Grayson, and shouldn't have known Go-
dolphin was in town."

" Well, that is true, of course. But if you get
your play into Godolphin's hands, you'll have to show
yourself a little, so that nice people will be interested
in it. You ought to have heard Mr. Ray celebrate it.
He piped up before the whole table."

Lonise remembered what Ray said very well, and
she repeated it to a profound joy in Maxwell. It
gave him an exquisite pleasure, and it flattered him to
believe that, as the hostess had said in response, they,
the nice people, must see it, though he had his opinion
of nice people, apart from their usefulness in seeing
his play. To reward his wife for it all, he rose as
soon as he had drunk his coffee, and went out to put
on his hat and coat. She went with him, and saw
that he put them on properly, and did not go off with
half his coat-collar turned up. After he got his hat

264 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

on, she took it off to see whether his cow-lick was
worse than usual.

" Why, good heavens ! Godolphin's seen me be-
fore, and besides, I'm not going to propose marriage
to him," he protested.

" Oh, it's much more serious than that ! " she
sighed. " Anybody would take you, dear, but it's
your play we want him to take — or take back."

When Maxwell reached the hotel, he did not find
Godolphin there. He came back twice ; then, as some-
thing in his manner seemed to give Maxwell authority,
the clerk volunteered to say that he thought he might
find the actor at the Players' Club. In this hope
he walked across to Gramercy Park. Godolphin had
been dining there, and when he got Maxwell's name,
he came half way down the stairs to meet him. He
put his arm round him to return to the library.

There happened to be no one else there, and he
made Maxwell sit down in an arm-chair fronting his
own, and give an account of himself since they parted.
He asked after Mrs. Maxwell's health, and as far as
Maxwell could make out he was sincere in the quest.
He did not stop till he had asked, with the most win-
ning and radiant smile, " And the play, what have
you done with the play ? "

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 265

He was so buoyant that Maxwell could not be heavy
about it, and he answered as gayly : " Oh, I fancy I
have been waiting for you to come on and take it."

Godolphin did not become serious, but he became
if possible more sincere. " Do you really think I
could do anything with it ? "

" If you can't nobody can."

"Why, that is very good of you, very good indeed,
Maxwell. Do you know, I have been thinking about
that play. You see, the trouble was with the Salome.
The girl I had for the part was a thoroughly nice girl,
but she hadn't the weight for it. She did the comic
touches charmingly, but when it came to the tragedy
she wasn't there. I never had any doubt that I could
create the part of Haxard. It's a noble part. It's the
greatest role on the modern stage. It went magnifi-
cently in Chicago — with the best people. You saw
what the critics said of it ? "

"No; you didn't send me the Chicago papers."
Maxwell did not say that all this was wholly different
from what Godolphin had written him when he re-
nounced the play. Yet he felt that Godolphin was
honest then and was honest now. It was another
point of view ; that was all.

" Ah, I thought I sent them. There was some ad-

266 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

verse criticism of the play as a whole, but there was
only one opinion of Haxard. And you haven't done
anything with the piece yet ? "

" No, nothing."

"And you think I could do Haxard? You still
have faith in me ? "

" As much faith as I ever had," said Maxwell ; and
Godolphin found nothing ambiguous in a thing cer-
tainly susceptible of two interpretations.

"That is very good of you, Maxwell; very good."
He lifted his fine head and gazed absently a moment
at the wall before him. "Well, then I will tell you
what I will do, Mr. Maxwell ; I will take the play."

"You will!"

" Yes; that is if you think I can do the part."

" Why, of course ! "

" And if — if there could be some changes — very
slight changes — made in the part of Salome. It needs
subduing." Godolphin said this as if he had never
suggested anything of the kind before ; as if the no-
tion were newly evolved from his experience.

" I will do what I can, Mr. Godolphin," Maxwell
promised, while he knitted his brows in perplexity
"But I do think that the very strength of Salome
gives relief to Haxard — gives him greater importance."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 267

" It may be so, dramatically. But theatrically, it
detracts from him. Haxard must be the central figure
in the eye of the audience from first to last."

Maxwell mused for a moment of discouragement.
They were always coming back to that; very likely
Godolphin was right ; but Maxwell did not know just
how to subdue the character of Salome so as to make
her less interesting. " Do you think that was what
gave you bad houses in Chicago — the double interest,
or the weakened interest in Haxard ? "

" I think so," said Godolphin.

" Were the houses bad — comparatively ? "

Godolphin took a little note-book out of his breast-
pocket. " Here are my dates. I opened the first
night, the tenth of November, with Haxard, but we
papered the house thoroughly, and we made a good
show to the public and the press. There were four
hundred and fifty dollars in it. The next night there
were three hundred ; the next night, two eighty ;
Wednesday matinee, less than two hundred. That
night we put on ' Virginius,' and played to eight hun-
dred dollars ; Thursday night, with the * Lady of
Lyons,' we had eleven hundred ; Friday night, we
gave thp ' Lady ' to twelve hundred ; Saturday after-
noon with the same piece, we took in eleven hundred

268 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

and fifty ; Saturday night, with ' Ingomar,' we had fif-
teen hundred dollars in the house, and a hundred
people standing." Maxwell listened with a drooping
head ; he was bitterly mortified. " But it was too
late then," said Godolphin, with a sigh, as he shut his
book.

" Do you mean," demanded Maxwell, " that my
piece had crippled you so that — that — "

" I didn't say that, Mr. Maxwell. I never meant to
let you see the figures. But you asked me."

" Oh, you're quite right," said Maxwell. He
thought how he had blamed the actor, in his impa-
tience with him, for not playing his piece oftener —
and called him fool and thought him knave for not
doing it all the time, as Godolphin had so lavishly
promised to do. He caught at a straw to save himself
from sinking with shame. " But the houses, were
they so bad everywhere ? "

Godolphin checked himself in a movement to take
out his note-book again ; Maxwell had given him such
an imploring glance. " They were pretty poor every-
where. ,^ But it's been a bad season with a good many
people^^'i^fff ^(i?i>iiU

" N^d^ il6|'*' cried Mferwell. " You did very well
witli We cither plays, Godolphin. Why do you want

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 269

to touch the thing again ? It's been ruinous to you so
far. Give it up ! Come ! I can't let you have it ! "

Godolphin laughed, and all his beautiful white
teeth shone. .There was a rich, wholesome red in his
smoothly shaven cheeks ; he was a real pleasure to the
eye. " I believe it would go better in New York.
I'm not afraid to try it. You mustn't take away my
last chance of retrieving the season. Hair of the dog,
you know. Have you seen Grayson lately ? "

" Yes, I saw him this afternoon. It was he that
told me you were in town."

" Ah, yes."

" And Godolphin, I've got it on my conscience, if
you do take the play, to tell you that I offered it to
Grayson, and he refused it. I think you ought to
know that; it's only fair; and for the matter of that,
it's been kicking round all the theatres in New
York."

" Dear boy ! " said Godolphin, caressingly, and with
a smile that was like a benediction, " that doesn't
make the least difference."

" Well, I wished you to know," said Maxwell, with
a great load off his mind.

"Yes, I understand that. Will you drink any-
thing, or smoke anything ? Or — I forgot ! I hate all

270 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

that, too. But you'll join me in a cup of tea down-
stairs ? " They descended to the smoking-room below,
and Godolphin ordered the tea, and went on talking
with a gay irrelevance till it came. Then he said, as
he poured out the two cups of it : " The fact is, Gray-
son is going in with me, if I do your piece." This
was news to Maxwell, and yet he was somehow not
surprised at it. "I dare say he told you ? "

" No, he didn't give me any hint of it. He simply
told me that you were in town, and where you
were."

" Ah, that was like Grayson. Queer fish."

" But I'm mighty glad to know it. You can make
it go, together, if any power on earth can do it ; and
if it fails," Maxwell added, " I shall have the satisfac-
tion of ruining some one else this time."

" Well, Grayson has made nearly as bad a mess of
it as I have, this season," said Godolphin. " He's
got to take off that thing he has going now, and it's
a question of what he shall put on. It will be an ex-
periment with Haxard, but I believe it will be a suc-
cessful experiment. I have every confidence in that
play." Godolphin looked up, his lips set convincingly,
and with the air of a man who had stood unfalteringly
by his opinion from the first. " Now, if you will ex-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 271

cuse me, I will tell you what I think ought to be done
to it."

"By all means," said Maxwell; "I shall be glad to
do anything you wish, or that I can."

Godolphiti poured out a cloudy volume of suggest-
ion, with nothing clear in it but the belief that the
part of Haxard ought to be fattened. He recurred to
all the structural impossibilities that he had ever de-
sired, and there was hardly a point in the piece that
he did not want changed. At the end he said : " But
all these things are of no consequence, comparatively
speaking. What we need is a woman who can take
the part of Salome, and play it with all the feminine
charm that you've given it, and yet keep it strictly in
the background, or thoroughly subordinated to the
interest of Haxard."

For all that Godolphin seemed to have learned from
his experience with the play. Maxwell might well have
thought they were still talking of it at Magnolia. It
was a great relief to his prepossessions in the form of
conclusions to have Grayson appear, with the air of
looking for some one, and of finding the object of his
search in Godolphin. He said he was glad to see
Maxwell, too, and they went on talking of the play.
From the talk of the other two Maxwell perceived that

272 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

the purpose of doing his play had already gone far
with them ; but they still spoke of it as something that
would be very good if the interest could be unified in
it. Suddenly the manager broke out : " Look here,
Godolphin ! I have an idea ! Why not frankly ac-
cept the inevitable ! I don't believe Mr. Maxwell can
make the play different from what it is, structurally,
and I don't believe the character of Salome can be
subdued or subordinated. Then why not play Salome
as strongly as possible, and trust to her strength to
enhance Haxard's effect, instead of weakening it ? "

Godolphin smiled towards Maxwell : " That was
your idea."

" Yes," said Maxwell, and he kept himself from
fallmg on Grayson's neck for joy.

" It might do," the actor assented with smiling
eagerness and tolerant superiority. " But whom could
you get for such a Salome as that ? "

" Well, there's only one woman for it," said Gray-
son.

" Yolande Havisham ? "

The name made Maxwell's heart stop. He started
forward to say that Mrs. Harley could not have the
part, when the manager said : " And we couldn't get
her. Sterne has engaged her to star in his combina-

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 273

tion. By the way, he was looking for you to-day,
Mr. Maxwell."

" I missed him," answered Maxwell, with immense
relief. " But I should not have let him have the piece
while I had the slightest hope of your taking it."

Neither the manager nor the actor was perhaps
greatly moved by his generous preference, though
they both politely professed to be so. They went on
to canvass the qualities and reputations of all the other
actresses attainable, and always came back to Yolande
Havisham, who was unattainable; Sterne would never
give heriip in the world, even if she were willing to
give up the chance he was offering her. But she was
the one woman who could do Salome.

They decided that they must try to get Miss Pet-
trell, who had played the part with Godolphin, and
who had done it with refinement, if not with any
great force. When they had talked to this conclusion,
Grayson proposed getting something to eat, and the
others refused, but they went into the dining-room
with him, where he showed Maxwell the tankards of
the members hanging on the walls over their tables —
Booth's tankard, Salvini's, Irving's, Jefferson's. He
was surprised that Maxwell was not a member of the
Players, and said that he must be ; it was the only
R

274 ^ THE STORY OF A PLAY.

club for him, if he was going to write for the stage.
He came out with them and pointed out several art-
ists whose fame Maxwell knew, and half a dozen liter-
ary men, among them certain playwrights ; they were
all smoking, and the place was blue with the fumes
of their cigars. The actors were coming in from the
theatres for supper, and Maxwell found himself with
his friends in a group with a charming old comedian
who was telling brief, vivid little stories, and sketch-
ing character, with illustrations from his delightful
art. He was not swagger, like some of the younger
men who stood about with their bell-crowned hats on,
before they went into supper; and two or three other
elderly actors who sat round him and took their turn
in the anecdote and mimicry looked, with their
smooth-shaven faces, like old-fashioned ministers.
Godolphin, who was like a youthful priest, began to
tell stories, too ; and he told very good ones admirably,
but without appearing to feel their quality, though he
laughed loudly at them with the rest.

When Maxwell refused every one's wish to have him
eat or drink something, and said good-night, Grayson
had already gone in to his supper, and Godolphin rose
and smiled so fondly upon him that Maxwell felt as if
the actor had blessed him. But he was less sure than

THE STOKY OF A PLAY. 275

in the beginning of the evening that the play was
again in Godolphin's hands ; and he had to confirm
himself from his wife's acceptance of the facts in the
belief that it was really so.

XXI.

Louise asked Maxwell, as soon as they had estab-
lished their joint faith, whom Godolphin was going to
get to play Salome, and he said that Grayson would
like to re-engage Miss Pettrel], though he had a the-
ory that the piece would be strengthened, and the
effect of Haxard enhanced, if they could have a more
powerful Salome.

" Mr. Ray told me at lunch," said Louise, impar-
tially but with an air of relief, " that in all the love-
making she was delightful ; but when it came to the
tragedy, she wasn't there."

" Grayson seemed to think that if she could be
properly rehearsed, she could be brought up to it,"
Maxwell interposed.

" Mr. Ray said she was certainly very refined, and
her Salome was always a lady. And that is the essen-
tial thing," Louise added, decisively. " I don't at all
agree with Mr. Grayson about having Salome played
so powerfully. I think Mr. Godolphin is right."

276

THE STORY OF A PLAY. '277

" For Heaven's sake don't tell him so ! " said Max-
well. " We have had trouble enough to get him un-
der."

" Indeed, I shall tell him so ! I think he ought to
know how we feel."

" 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 Godolphin 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

278 THE STORY OF A PLAT.

after a moment of faltering lie 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 proposi-
tion 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.

Godolphin 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 Godolphin regarded it as impossible to get her."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 279

" 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 disa-
greeable 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, " canH we grapple with this in-
fernal nightmare, so as to get it into the light, some-
how, and see what it really is ? How can it matter to

280 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 re-
turned, 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

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 281

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 some-
what 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 ex-
pect 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 disa-
greeable."

" 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 ? "

282 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" 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.

I

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 reit-
erate 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 hag-
gard 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 ; Godolphin s old company

283

284 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 Max-
well, 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 ap-
propriate."

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 rehearse the play every
day that week, and Maxwell said he must be at the
theatre the next morning at eleven. He could not

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 285

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 re-
hearsal. 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 sunshine 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 recog-
nized by the old man in charge as having authority to
do so ; and she made as much of the strange interior

286 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

as the obscurity and her preoccupation would allow.
There was that immediate bareness and roughness
which seems the first characteristic of the theatre be-
hind the scenes, where the theatre is one of the sim-
plest and frankest of workshops, in which certain
effects are prepared to be felt before the foot-lights.
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 twi-
light 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 engage-
ment 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

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 287

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 hopef uller 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 author-
ized, 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 ig-
norant 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
aJl that's dreadful."

288 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

The manager assented 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 kind-
ness 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 Max-
well.

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 butterfly-capes came in one
after another. Godolphin arrived among the first,
with an ulster which came down to where his panta-
loons 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.

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 289

Godolpliin was very cordial, deferentially cordial,
with a delicate vein of reminiscent comradery running
through his manner. 8he 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 Go-
dolphin. " She'll make up for all my shortcomings."

" You won't persuade us that you have any short-
comings, Mr. Godolphin," said Louise. " You are
Haxard, and Haxard is the play. You can't think,
Mr. Godolphin, 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,
S

290 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

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 ? "

Maxwell shrugged. "I confide in you and Mr.
Grayson."

Godolphin looked at his watch. " It's eleven now,
and she isn't here yet. I would rather not have be-
gun without her, but I think we had better not delay
any longer." He excused himself to Louise, and went
and sat down with his hat on at a small table, lit with
a single electric bulb, dropping like a luminous spider
by a thread from the dark above. Other electric bulbs
were grouped before reflectors on either side of the
stage, and these shone on the actors before Godol-
phin. Back in the depths of the stage, some scene-
painters and carpenters were at work on large strips
of canvas lying unrolled upon the floor or stretched

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 291

upon light wooden frames. Across Godolphin's head
the dim hollow of the auditorium showed, pierced by
long bars of sunlight full of dancing motes, which
slanted across its gloom from the gallery windows.
Women in long aprons were sweeping the floors and
pounding the seats, and a smell of dust from their
labors mixed with the smell of paint and glue and
escaping gas which pervaded the atmosphere of the
stage.

Godolphin made Maxwell come and sit with him at
the table; he opened his prompt-book and directed
the rehearsal to begin. The people were mostly well
up in their parts, and the work went smoothly, except
for now and then an impatience in Godolphin which
did not seem to come from what was going forward.

He showed himself a thorough master of his trade
in its more mechanical details, and there were signal
instances of his intelligence in the higher things of it
which might well have put Mrs. Maxwell to shame for
her many hasty judgments of the actor. He was al-
together more of a man, more of a mind, than she had
supposed, even when she supposed the best of him.
She perceived that Godolphin grasped the whole
meaning of her husband's work, and interpreted its
intentions with perfect accuracy, not only in his own

292 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

part of Haxard, but in all the other persons, and he
corrected the playing of each of the roles as the re-
hearsal went on. She saw how he had really formed
the other actors upon himself. They repeated his
tones, his attitudes, his mannerisms, in their several
ways. His touch could be felt all through the per-
formance, and his limitations characterized it. He
was very gentle and forbearing with their mistakes,
but he was absolute master all the same. If some one
erred, Godolphin left his place and went and showed
how the thing should be said and done. He carefully
addressed the men by their surnames, with the Mr.
always ; the women were all Dear to him, according
to a convention of the theatre. He said, " No, dear,"
and " Yes, dear," and he was as caressingly deferen-
tial to each of them as he was formally deferential to
the men ; he required the same final obedience of them,
and it was not always so easy to make them obey. In
non-essentials he yielded at times, as when one of the
ladies had overdone a point, and he demurred. " But
I always got a laugh on that, Mr. Godolphin," she
protested. " Oh, well, my dear, hang on to your
laugh, then." However he meant to do Haxard him-
self, his voice was for simplicity and reality in others.
" Is that the way you would do it, is that the way you

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 293

would say it, if it were you .^ " he stopped one of the
men in a bit of rant.

Even of Maxwell he exacted as clear a vision of his
own work as he exacted of its interpreters. He asked
the author his notion of points in dress and person
among the different characters, which he had hitherto
only generalized in his mind, and which he was gladly
wiUing, when they were brought home to him, to
leave altogether to Godolphin's judgment.

The rehearsal had gone well on towards the end of
the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget.
From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch
and lean towards her husband to say something. An
actor who was going through a piece of business per-
ceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and
stopped. Just then Mrs. Harley came in.

Godolphin rose and advanced towards her with the
prompt-book shut on his thumb. " You are late, Miss
Havisham."

" Yes," she answered, haughtily, as if in resentment
of his tone. She added in concession, " Unavoidably.
But Salome doesn't come on till the end of the act."

" I think it best for the whole company to be pres-
ent from the beginning," said Godolphin.

" I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Harley.

294 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

" Where are we ? " she asked, and then she caught
sight of Louise, and came up to her. " How do you
do, Mrs. Maxwell ? I don't know whether I'm glad to
see vou or not. I believe I'm rather afraid to have
you see my Salome ; I've an idea you are going to be
very severe with her."

" I am sure no severity will be needed. You'll see
me nodding approval all the way through," Louise
returned.

" I have always thought, somehow, that you had
the part especially under your protection. I feel that
I'm a very bold woman to attempt it."

In spite of her will to say " Yes, a very bold woman
indeed ! " Louise answered : " Then I shall admire
your courage, as well as your art."

She was aware of Godolphin fretting at the colloquy
he could not interrupt, and of Mrs. Harley prolonging
it wilfully. " I know you are sincere, and I am going
to make you tell me everything you object to in me
when it's over. Will you ? "

" Of course," Louise answered, gayly ; and now
Mrs. Harley turned to Godolphin again : " H here were
you 2 "

XXIII.

Twice during the rehearsal Maxwell came to Louise
and asked her if she were not tired and would not
like to go home ; he offered to go out and put her on
a car. But both times she made him the same an-
swer: she was not tired, and would not go away on
any account ; the second time she said, with a certain
meaning in her look and voice, that she thought she
could stand it if he could. At the end she went up
and made her compliments to Mrs. Harley. " You
must enjoy realizing your ideal of a character so per-
fectly," she began.

" Yes ? Did you feel that about it ? " the actress
returned. " It is a satisfaction. But if one has a
strong conception of a part, I don't see how one can
help rendering it strongly. And this Salome, she
takes hold of me so powerfully. Her passion and her
will, that won't stop at anything, seem to pierce
through and through me. You can feel that she

295

296 THE STOKY OF A PLAY.

wouldn't mind killing a man or two to carry her
point."

" That is certainly what you make one feel about
her. And you make her very living, very actual."

" You are very good," said Mrs. Harley. " I am
so glad you liked it. I was dreadfully afraid you
wouldn't like it."

" Oh, I couldn't imagine your being afraid of any-
thing," said Louise, lightly. Her smile was one which
the other woman might have known how to interpret
rightly, but her husband alone among men could feel
its peculiar quality. Godolphin beamed with appar-
ent satisfaction in it.

" Wasn't Salome magnificent ? " he said ; and he
magnanimously turned to the actress. "You will
make everybody forget Haxard. You made me for-
get him."

" / didn't forget him though," said Mrs. Harley.
" I was trying all the time to play up to him — and to
Mrs. Maxwell."

The actor laughed his deep, mellow, hollow laugh,
which was a fine work of art in itself, and said : " Mrs.
Maxwell, you must let me present the other dramatis
personce to you," and he introduced the whole cast of
the play, one after another. Each said something of

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 297

the Salome, how grand it was, how impassioned, how
powerful. Maxwell stood by, listening, with his eyes
on his wife's face, trying to read her thought.

They were silent most of the way home, and she
only talked of indifferent things. When the door of
their apartment shut them in with themselves alone,
she broke out : " Horrible, horrible, horrible ! Well,
the play is ruined, ruined ! We might as well die ; or
/ might ! I suppose you really liked it ! "

Maxwell turned white with anger. " I didn't try
to make her think I did, anyway. But I knew how
you really felt, and I don't believe you deceived her
very much, either. All the same I was ashamed to
see you try."

■" Don't talk to me — don't speak ! She knew from
every syllable I uttered that I perfectly loathed it, and
I know that she tried to make it as hateful to me all
the way through as she could. She played it at me,
and she knew it was me. It was as if she kept say-
ing all the time, ' How do you like my translation of
your Boston girl into Alabama, or Mississippi, or Ar-
kansas, or wherever I came from? This is the way
you would have acted, if you were me ! ' Yes, that
is the hideous part of it. Her nature has come off on
the character, and I shall never see, or hear, or think,

298 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

or dream Salome, after this, without having Yolande
Havisham before me. She's spoiled the sweetest
thing in my life. She's made me hate myself; she's
made me hate you ! Will you go out somewhere and
get your lunch ? I don't want anything myself, and
just now I can't bear to look at you. Oh, you're not
to blame, that I know of, if that's what you mean.
Only go ! "

" I can go out for lunch, certainly," said Maxwell.
" Perhaps you would rather I stayed out for dinner,
too?"

" Don't be cruel, dearest. I am trying to control
myself — "

" I shouldn't have thought it. You're not succeed-
ing."

" No, not so well as you, if you hated this woman's
Salome as much as I did. If it's always been as bad
as it was to-day you've controlled yourself wonderfully
well never to give me any hint of it, or prepare me
for it in the least."

" How could I prepare you ? You would have
come to it with your own prepossessions, no matter
what I said."

"Was that why you said nothing?"

" You would have hated it if she had played it with
angelic perfection, because you hated her."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 299

" Perhaps you think she really did play it with an-
gelic perfection! Well, you needn't come back to
dinner."

Louise passed into their room, to lay off her hat

and sack.

" I will not come back at all, if you prefer," Max-
well called after her.

" I have no preferences in the matter," she mocked
back.

XXIV.

Maxwell and Louise had torn at each other's hearts
till they were bleeding, and he wished to come back
at once and she wished him to come, that they might
hurt themselves still more savagely; but when this
desire passed, they longed to meet and bind up one
another's wounds. This better feeling brought them
together before night-fall, when Maxwell returned, and
Louise, at the sound of his latch-key in the door, ran
to let him in.

" Mr. Godolphin is here," she said, in a loud, cheery
voice, and he divined that he owed something of his
eager welcome to her wish to keep him from resuming
the quarrel unwittingly. " He has just come to talk
over the rehearsal with you, and I wouldn't let him
go. I was sure you would be back soon."

She put her finger to her lip, with whatever warn-
ing intention, and followed her husband into the pres-

300

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 301

ence of the actor, and almost into his arms, so raptur-
ous was the meeting between them.

" Well," cried Godolphin, " I couldn't help looking
in a moment to talk with you and Mrs. Maxwell about
our Salome. I feel that she will make the fortune of
the piece — of any piece. Doesn't Miss Ilavisham's
rendition grow upon you ? It's magnificent. It's on
the grand scale. It's immense. The more I think
about it, the more I'm impressed with it. She'll carry
the house by storm. I've never seen anything like
it ; and I'm glad to find that Mrs. Maxwell feels just
as I do about it." Maxwell looked at his wife, who
returned his glance with a guiltless eye. " I was
afraid she might feel the loss of things that certainly
are lost in it. I don't say that Miss Havisham's Sa-
ome, superb as it is, is your Salome — or Mrs. Maxa-
well's. I've always fancied that Mrs. Maxwell had a
great deal to do with that character, and — I don't
know why — I've always thought of her when I've
thought of it; but at the same time it's a splendid
Salome. She makes it Southern, almost tropical. It
isn't the Boston Salome. You may say that it is
wanting in delicacy and the nice shades ; but it's full
of passion ; there's nothing caviare to the general in it.
The average audience will understand just what the

302 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

girl that Miss Havisliam gives is after, and she gives
her so abundantly that there's no more doubt of the
why than there is of the how. Sometimes I used to
think the house couldn't follow Miss Pettrell in her
subtle touches, but the house, to the topmost tier of
the gallery, will get Miss Havisham's intention."

Godolphin was standing while he said all this, and
Maxwell now asked : " Won't you sit down ? "

The actor had his overcoat on his arm, and his hat
in .one hand. He tapped at his boot with the um-
brella he held in the other. " No, I don't believe I
will, thank you. The fact is, I just dropped in a
moment to reassure you if you had misgivings about
the Salome, and to give you my point of view."

Maxwell did not say anything ; he looked at Louise
again, and it seemed to her that he meant her to
speak. She said, " Oh, we understood that we
couldn't have all kinds of a Salome in one creation of
the part; and I'm sure no one can see Mrs. Harley
in it without feeling her intensity."

" She's a force," said Godolphin. " And if, as we
all decided," he continued, to Maxwell, "when we
talked it over with Grayson, that a powerful Salome
would heighten the effect of Haxard, she is going to
make the success of the piece."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 303

" You are going to make the success of the piece ! "
cried Louise.

" Ah, I sha'n't care if they forget me altogether,"
said the actor ; " I shall forget myself." He laughed
his mellow, hollow laugh, and gave his hand to Louise
and then to Maxwell. " I'm so glad you feel as you
do about it, and I don't wish you to lose your faith
in our Salome for a moment. You've quite confirmed
mine." He wrung the hands of each with a fervor
of gratitude that left them with a disquiet which their
eyes expressed to each other when he was gone.

" What does it mean ? " asked Louise.

Maxwell shook his head. " It's beyond me."

" Brice," she appealed, after a moment, " do you
think I had been saying anything to set him against
her?"

" No," he returned, instantly. " Why should I
suspect you of anything so base ?"

Her throat was full, but she made out to say, " No,
you are too generous, too good for such a thing ; " and
now she went on to eat humble-pie with a self-devo-
tion which few women could practise. " I know that
if I don't like having her I have no one but myself to
thank for it. If I had never written to that miserable
Mr. Sterne, or answered his advertisement, he would

304 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

never have heard of your play, and nothing that has
happened would have happened."

"No, you don't know that at all," said Maxwell;
and it seemed to her that she must sink to her knees
under his magnanimity. " The thing might have hap-
pened in a dozen different ways."

" No matter. T am to blame for it when it did
happen ; and now you will never hear another word
from me. Would you like me to swear it ? "

" That would be rather unpleasant," said Maxwell.

They both felt a great physical fatigue, and they
neither had the wish to prolong the evening after
dinner. Maxwell was going to lock the door of the
apartment at nine o'clock, and then go to bed, when
there came a ring at it. He opened it, and stood
confronted with Grayson, looking very hot and excited.

" Can I come in a moment ? " the manager asked.
" 'Are you alone ? Can I speak with you ? "

" There's no one here but Mrs. Maxwell," said her
husband, and he led the way into the parlor.

" And if you don't like," Louise confessed to have
overheard him, " you needn't speak before her even."

" No, no," said the manager, " don't go ! We may
want your wisdom. We certainly want all the wisdom
we can get on the question. It's about Godolphin."

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 305

" Godolphin ? " they both echoed.

" Yes. He's given up the piece."

The manager drew out a letter, which he handed to
Maxwell, and which Louise read with her husband,
over his shoulder. It was addressed to Grayson, and
began very formally.

"DeaeSir: '

" I wish to resign to you all claim I may have to a joint inter-
est in Mr. Maxwell's piece, and to withdraw from the com-
pany formed for its representation. I feel that my part in it
has been made secondary to another, and I have finally decid-
ed to relinquish it altogether. I trust that you will be able to
supply my place, and I offer you my best wishes for the suc-
cess of your enterprise.

Yours very truly,

L. Godolphin."

The Maxwells did not look at each other; they
both looked at the manager, and neither spoke.

" You see," said the manager, putting the letter
back in its envelope, "it's Miss Havisham. I saw
some signs of what was coming at the rehearsals, but
I didn't think it would take such peremptory shape.'

" Why, but he was here only a few hours ago,
praising her to the skies," said Louise ; and she hoped
that she was keeping secret the guilty joy she felt ;
but probably it was not unknown to her husband.

" Oh, of course," said Grayson, with a laugh, " that
T

806 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

was Godolphin's way. He may have felt all that he
said ; or he may have been trying to find out what
Mr. Maxwell thought, and whether he could count
upon him in a move against her."

" We said nothing," cried Louise, and she blessed
heaven that she could truly say so, " which could pos-
sibly be distorted into that."

" I didn't suppose you had," said the manager.
" But now we have got to act. We have got to do
one of two things, and Godolphin knows it; we have
got to let Miss Havisham go, or we have got to let
him go. For my part I would much rather let him
go. She is a finer artist every way, and she is more
important to the success of the piece. But it would
be more difiicult to replace him than it would be to
replace her, and he knows it. We could get Miss
Pettrell at once for Salome, and we should have to
look about for a Haxard. Still, I am disposed to drop
Godolphin, if Mr. Maxwell feels as I do."

He looked at Maxwell ; but Louise lowered her
eyes, and would not influence her husband by so much
as a glance. It seemed to her that he was a long
time answering.

" I am satisfied with Godolphin's Haxard much bet-
ter than I am with Miss Havisham's Salome, strong

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 307

as it is. On the artistic side alone, I should prefer
to keep Godolphin and let her go, if it could be done
justly. Then, I know that Godolphin has made sac-
rifices and borne losses on account of the play, and I
think that he has a right to a share in its success, if it
has a chance of succeeding. He's jealous of Miss
Havisham, of course ; I could see that from the first
minute ; but he's earned the first place, and I'm not
surprised he wants to keep it. I shouldn't like to lose
it if I were he. I should say that we ought to make
any concession he asks in that way."

" Very well," said Grayson. " He will ask to have
our agreement with Mrs. Harley broken ; and we can
say that we were compelled to break it. I feel as you
do, that he has some right on his side. She's a dev-
ilish provoking woman — excuse me, Mrs. Maxwell ! —
and I've seen her trying to take the centre from Go-
dolphin ever since the rehearsals began ; but I don't
like to be driven by him ; still, there are worse things
than being driven. In any case we have to accept the
inevitable, and it's only a question of which inevitable
we accept. Good-night. I will see Godolphin at
once. Good-night, Mrs. Maxwell. We shall expect
you to do what you can in consoling your fair neigh-
bor and reconciling her to the inevitable." Louise

308 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

did not know whether this was ironical or not, and
she did not at all like the laugh from Maxwell which
greeted the suggestion.

"/ shall have to reconcile Sterne, and I don't be-
lieve that will be half so easy."

The manager's words were gloomy, but there was
an imaginable relief in his tone and a final cheerful-
ness in his manner. He left the Maxwells to a cer-
tain embarrassment in each other's presence. Louise
was the first to break the silence that weighed upon
them both.

" Brice, did you decide that way to please me ? "

" I am not such a fool," said Maxwell.

" Because," she said, " if you did, you did very
wrong, and I don't believe any good could come of
it."

Yet she did not seem altogether averse to the risks
involved ; and in fact she could not justly accuse her-
self of what had happened, however devoutly she had
wished for such a consummation.

XXV.

It was Miss Havisliam and not Godolphin who ap-
peared to the public as having ended the combination
their managers had formed. The interviewing on
both sides continued until the interest of the quarrel
was lost in that of the first presentation of the play,
when the impression that Miss Havisham had been
ill-used was effaced by the impression made by Miss
Pettrell in the part of Salome. Her performance was
not only successful in the delicacy and refinement
which her friends expected of her, but she brought to
the work a vivid yet purely feminine force which took
them by surprise and made the public her own. No
one in the house could have felt, as the Maxwells felt,
a certain quality in it which it would be extremely
difficult to characterize without overstating it. Per-
haps Louise felt this more even than her husband, for
when she appealed to him, he would scarcely confess
to a sense of it; but from time to time in the stronger

309

310 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

passages she was aware of an eclio, to the ear and to
the eye, of a more passionate personality than Miss
Pettrell's. Had Godolphin profited by his knowledge
of Miss Havisham's creation, and had he imparted to
Miss Pettrell, who never saw it, hints of it which she
used in her own creation of the part ? If he had, just
what was the measure and the nature of his sin ?
Louise tormented herself with this question, while a
sense of the fact went as often as it came, and left
her in a final doubt of it. What was certain was that
if Godolphin had really committed this crime, of which
he might have been quite unconsciously guilty, Miss
Pettrell was wholly innocent of it ; and, indeed, the
effect she made might very well have been imagined by
herself, and only have borne this teasing resemblance
by pure accident. Godolphin was justly punished if he
were culpable, and he suffered an eclipse in any case
which could not have been greater from Miss Havish-
am. There were recalls for the chief actors at every
fall of the curtain, and at the end of the third act, in
which Godolphin had really been magnificent, there
began to be cries of " Author ! Author ! " and a mes-
senger appeared in the box where the Maxwells sat
and begged the author, in Godolphin's name, to come
behind at once. The next thing that Louise knew the

THE STORY OF A PLAY. 311

actor was leading her husband on the stage and they
were both bowing to the house, which shouted at
them and had them back once and twice and still
shouted, but now with a certain confusion of voices in
its demand, which continued till the author came on
a fourth time, led by the actor as before, and himself
leading the heroine of his piece. Then the storm of
applause left no doubt that the will of the house had
been rightly interpreted.

Louise sat still, with the tears blurring the sight
before her. They were not only proud and happy
tears, but they were tears of humble gratitude that it
was Miss Pettrell, and not Mrs. Harley, whom her
husband was leading on to share his triumph. She
did not think her own desert was great ; but she could
not tax herself with any wrong that she had not at
least tried to repair ; she felt that what she had es-
caped she could not have suffered, and that Heaven
was merciful to her weakness, if not just to her merit.
Perhaps this was why she was so humble and so
grateful.

There arose in her a vague fear as to what Godol-
phin might do in the case of a Salome who was cer-
tainly no more subordinated to his Haxard than Miss
Havisham's, or what new demands he might not make

312 THE STORY OF A PLAY.

upon the author ; but Maxwell came back to her with
a message from the actor, which he wished conveyed
with his congratulations upon the success of the piece.
This was to tell her of his engagement to Miss Pet-
trell, which had suddenly taken place that day, and
which he thought there could be no moment so fit to
impart to her as that of their common triumph.

Louise herself went behind at the end of the piece,
and made herself acceptable to both the artists in her
cordial good wishes. Neither of them resented the
arch intention with which she said to Godolphin, " I
suppose you won't mind such a beautiful Salome as
Miss Pettrell has given us, now that it's to be all in
the family."

Miss Pettrell answered for him with as complete an
intelligence : " Oh, I shall know how to subdue her to
his Haxard, if she ever threatens the peace of the do-
mestic hearth."

That Salome has never done so in any serious meas-
ure Maxwell argues from the fact that, though the
Godolphins have now been playing his piece together
for a whole year since their marriage, they have not
yet been divorced.

THE END.

PS

2025
S76
1898

Howells, William Dean
The story of a play

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