The Story of a Play

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Hilary wanted the young people to stay the afternoon, 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 definite about anything but their future, which
Louise, at least, beheld all rose color. Just what size or shape 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 disappoint yourself frightfully; and if you
insist, you will make them hate you. People can't share your happiness
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."

"I know," said Maxwell, so appreciatively that she felt all her loss
made up to her, and shrunk closer to him in the buggy 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 possibilities, and began to tell
her of the scheme for still another 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 workings of his genius, and she
celebrated that till he had to beg her to stop, for she made him ashamed
of himself 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 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 morning, 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 appearance of Mr. Launcelot
Godolphin in a new play written expressly for him by a young Boston
_litterateur_. Mr. Godolphin believed the author to be destined 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
conception 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 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, when the dramatist came to lay the scheme
of the play before Godolphin, 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 Maxwell, 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 journalist 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 opening night of his engagement in one of the
most distinctively 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!" she 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 probably 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 account
of Maxwell offensive, though she contended that it did not do him full
justice, and she cut out the interview 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 expected 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 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
graceful 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
smoothness, 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 surroundings. His rendition of the role of
Haxard was magnificent in one journal, grand in another, superb in a
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
intelligence, and expressed with artistic force a very refined 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 father 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, and, as it were, with the same eye
and the same mind, but Maxwell betrayed an uneasiness under the
experiment 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 occasions; but--it isn't favorable to collected
thought."

"Why, _I_ 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 conditions, 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 criticism; 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."

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 material that it seems to refuse the application of
criterions. 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 succeeded in this,
he was more and more bowed down within himself before the generous
courage of Godolphin in rising to an appreciation of his intention. He
now perceived that he was a man of far more uncommon 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 criticism,
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 applause, and had disclaimed all credit for their
joint success. This made Maxwell ashamed of the suspicion he had
harbored that Godolphin would give the impression of a joint
authorship, at the least. He felt that he had judged the man narrowly
and inadequately, 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 received 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 Godolphin'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 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 told 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 honest man, and would have done it, if I had
appealed to him. He didn't expect me to believe in them, and 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 the 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 beforehand, 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 repeating it there."

"Oh, Godolphin would never lack for a good reason. 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 can
see that for yourself, and it will be a popular success, 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
Midland, 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 telegram
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 congratulations 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 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 anticipatory interview with
him, and this had a long and careful consideration of the play in its
editorial columns, 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 American life--simply, vigorously, and honestly.
It had faults of construction, but the faults were not the 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 allowing 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 American 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 episode 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 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 wrapper of the newspaper, and made sure that it was addressed 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 newspaper 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 merely to give it a trial, and Maxwell would understand
how impossible it was to vary a programme which had once been made out.
One thing was certain, 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 outside 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 developed 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 role 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_!"

"No," he answered with a ghastly laugh; "this passes my most sanguine
expectations, even of Godolphin. 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 retorted. "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 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 himself, 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 hack and forth, and Louise began again at a new
point.

"I was willing to have it remain simply a _succes d'estime_, as far as
Midland was concerned, though I think you were treated abominably in
that, for he certainly 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!"

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