The Story of a Play

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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 tenderness 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 breakfast
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; 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
indifferent 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 inspirations 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 hurried 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 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 parting glance before dropping it when she was arrested by an
advertisement which made her start:

WANTED.--A drama for prominent star; light comic and emotional:
star part must embody situations for the display of intense
effects. Address L. STERNE, this office.

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 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 messenger-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 involve 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 his advertisement in the Theatrical Register of
November 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 ransacked 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 herself
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 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 could hardly be silent. He was gloomy and
dispirited, and he confessed that his pleasant experience with Grayson
had not been repeated with the other managers. 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 advertisement 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 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 tenderly 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 seemed 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 an American play; others that it was un-American in its pessimistic
spirit; some found it too literary; others, 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 condemned 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, 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. She
promised herself that she would do everything that was right by the
creature; and perhaps she repaired to her presence in rather
overwhelming virtue. If this was so, Mrs. Harley showed herself equal to
the demand upon her, and was overwhelming 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 apparently one of those women who have no use for persons 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
themselves 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 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 forgiven;
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 punishment 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 been taken with that wish to see
the autumn 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 _isn't_ Commonwealth 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.

"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 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 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 paws 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 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, my
dear, and not let them imagine anything."

"How, anything?" he asked, listlessly.

"Oh, nothing. About your play not going perfectly. I didn't think it
necessary to go into particulars 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. Hilary made occasion to speak
to Maxwell of his letters 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 cordially 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. "Ricker's always been very good, but he has very
little influence on the _Abstract_. 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 reasons," said Maxwell,
with a laugh.

Louise could hardly wait till she had parted from her father and mother
before she began on her husband: "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 meanness 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 mother, 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
having 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 declined 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 talking over the life she
used to lead in Boston, and the life so many people were leading there
still, made her 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 intelligence of a world that Maxwell never would and never could
be part of; the talk of the little amusing, unvital things that began at
once was more precious to her than the problems which the austere
imagination 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 introduced 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 prospered 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," 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 Boston person knew
anything about another Boston person, 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.

"I don't know when I've ever had a stronger impression 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 rapture. I never saw love-making on
the stage before that made me wish to be a lover--"

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