The Story of a Play. William Dean Howells

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

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

      "Pshaw! You could go to a manager."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "Oh, now, my dear!"

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

      Maxwell leaned forward with his thin face between his hands. This made him miserable, personally, but he was not so miserable but his artistic consciousness could take note of the situation as a very good one, and one that might be used effectively on the stage. He analyzed it perfectly in that unhappy moment. She was jealous of his work, which she had tolerated only while she could share it, and if she could not share it, while some other was suffered to do so, it would be cruel for her. But he knew that he could not offer any open concession now without making bad worse, and he must wait till the right time for it came. He had so far divined her, without formulating her, that he knew she would be humiliated by anything immediate or explicit, but would later accept a tacit repentance from him; and he instinctively forebore.

III.

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

      Their cottage was one of the farthest from the hotel, and the smallest and quietest. In fact there was yet no one in it but themselves, and they dwelt there in an image of home, with the sole use of the veranda and the parlor, where Maxwell had his manuscripts spread about on the table as if he owned the place. A chambermaid came over from the hotel in the morning to put the cottage in order, and then they could be quite alone there for the rest of the day.

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

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

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

      "Yes, you could do that," he assented, with pleasure in her notion; "and that would be better. I suppose that is what would be aimed at in a description of the scene, which would be tiresome if it didn't give the feeling of the spectator."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "Oh, his public!"

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

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

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

      "Well, I won't. But don't you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem to give way to Godolphin."

      "You must stand it so long as I only seem to do it. He's far more manageable than I expected him to be. It's quite pathetic how docile he is, how perfectly ductile! But it won't do to browbeat him when he comes over here a little СКАЧАТЬ