The Story of a Play

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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 altogether 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 part of Haxard, but in all the other persons, and
he corrected the playing of each of the roles as the rehearsal 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 performance, 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 deferential 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 himself, his voice was for simplicity and reality in
others. "Is that the way you would do it, is that the way you 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 willing, 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 perceived 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 present from the
beginning," said Godolphin.

"I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Harley. "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 you 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: "_Where_ were you?"

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 answer: 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 perfectly," 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
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 anything," 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 apparent 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_ forget
him."

"_I_ 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 personae_ to you," and he introduced the whole cast of
the play, one after another. Each said something of 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 _I_ 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 saying all the time,
'How do you like my translation of your Boston girl into Alabama, or
Mississippi, or Arkansas, 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, 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 succeeding."

"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."

"Perhaps you think she really did play it with angelic 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," Maxwell 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 warning intention, and
followed her husband into the presence of the actor, and almost into
his arms, so rapturous 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 Havisham'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 Salome, superb as it is, is _your_
Salome--or Mrs. Maxwell'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 girl that
Miss Havisham 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 umbrella 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."

"_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-devotion 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 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 happened in a dozen different ways."

"No matter. I 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."

"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.

"DEAR SIR:

"I wish to resign to you all claim I may have to a joint interest
in Mr. Maxwell's piece, and to withdraw from the company formed for
its representation. I feel that my part in it has been made
secondary to another, and I have finally decided to relinquish it
altogether. I trust that you will be able to supply my place, and I
offer you my best wishes for the success 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 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 possibly 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 difficult 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 better than I am with Miss
Havisham's Salome, strong 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 sacrifices 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 devilish
provoking woman--excuse me, Mrs. Maxwell!--and I've seen her trying to
take the centre from Godolphin 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 neighbor and reconciling _her_ to the
inevitable." Louise did not know whether this was ironical or not, and
she did not at all like the laugh from Maxwell which greeted the
suggestion.

"_I_ shall have to reconcile Sterne, and I don't believe that will be
half so easy."

The manager's words were gloomy, but there was an imaginable relief in
his tone and a final cheerfulness in his manner. He left the Maxwells to
a certain 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 herself of what had happened, however
devoutly she had wished for such a consummation.

XXV.

It was Miss Havisham and not Godolphin who appeared 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.
Perhaps 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 passages she was aware of an echo, 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
Havisham. 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
messenger 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 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 escaped 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 Godolphin might do in the
case of a Salome who was certainly no more subordinated to his Haxard
than Miss Havisham's, or what new demands he might not make 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 Pettrell,
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 domestic hearth."

That Salome has never done so in any serious measure 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.

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