The Story of a Play

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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 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 absolutely he rested upon her sympathy, if
not her judgment, 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 thinking 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, having 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 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 himself, 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 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 consuming, 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.

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 _Abstract_ 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 compliment 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 would 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 correspondent of the Boston _Abstract_ might have a claim upon
the attention of the managers which a wholly unaccredited playwright
could not urge; there was no question 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 neighborhood 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 certain. I've been wanting you here badly. Just tell
me what you think of that."

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 killing to creative work as
any sort of journalism."

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

"Oh, very well! If you are so fickle as all that, _I_ 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."

"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 existence 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 altogether. 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 hallway, 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 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 because 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 thereafter, rather than share ever again
in misery like that, which dishonored his wife even more than it
dishonored 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 round
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
confronted.

"What should you 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?"

"Better than that!" she shouted, and she brought an open letter from
behind her, and flourished it before 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 I take back everything 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 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 rioting 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 Godolphin 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 implicitly, and I'm going to make you.
No more question 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 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 Godolphin 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, seriously.

"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 stopped her.

"Don't! I'm not good; and I don't deserve success. 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 nothing 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 Godolphin. 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
collapse, 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 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 from losing courage. "You
see, he says he had to take the brunt of public opinion _alone_. He was
sore about that."

"Oh, well, if he 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 assented, 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 anything 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 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 anything 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 package, 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. 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 renounced 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 me, dear," he said, for she was beginning 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."

"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 simply trust him in everything.

Louise still had it on her conscience to offer Maxwell 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 rejected 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,
delightful review of his behavior ever since that moment, and she found
that, although he was certainly as self-centred as she had ever thought
or he had owned himself to be, self-seeking he 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 haughtier 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 nothing for him in the
present emergency, but rather flung upon him the burden of her own
disappointment. She thought how valiantly he had risen up under it, and
had not lost one moment in vain repining; 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 peremptorily 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 accepted 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 candor in the
matter, and should be all the happier to make a success of it because
Godolphin had failed with it.

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