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The Story of a Play: A novel, a novel by William Dean Howells |
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Chapter 9 |
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_ CHAPTER 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!" Still Maxwell walked on and she continued: "I don't know what I shall say to my family. They can never understand such a thing, never! Papa couldn't conceive of giving a promise and not keeping it, much less giving a promise just for the _pleasure_ of breaking it. What shall I tell them, Brice? I can't bear to say that Godolphin is going to make your play over, unless I can say at the same time that you've absolutely forbidden him to do so. That's why I wanted you to telegraph. I wanted to say you had telegraphed." Maxwell stopped in his walk and gazed at her, but she could feel that he did not see her, and she said: "I don't know that it's actually necessary for me to say anything at present. I can show them the notices, or that article alone. It's worth all the rest put together, and then we can wait, and see if we hear anything more from Godolphin. But now I don't want you to lose any more time. You must write to him at once, and absolutely forbid him to touch your play. Will you?" Her husband returned from his wanderings of mind and body, and as he dropped upon the lounge at her side, he said, gently, "No, I don't think I'll write at all, Louise." "Not write at all! Then you're going to let him tamper with that beautiful work of yours?" "I'm going to wait till I hear from him again. Godolphin is a good fellow--" "Oh!" "And he won't be guilty of doing me injustice. Besides," and here Maxwell broke off with a laugh that had some gayety in it, "he couldn't. Godolphin is a fine actor, and he's going to be a great one, but his gifts are not in the line of literature." "I should think not!" "He couldn't change the piece any more than if he couldn't read or write. And if he could, when it came to touching it, I don't believe he would, because the fact would remind him that it wasn't fair. He has to realize things in the objective way before he can realize them at all. That's the stage. If they can have an operator climbing a real telegraph-pole to tap the wire and telegraph the girl he loves that he is dead, so that she can marry his rich rival and go to Europe and cultivate her gift for sculpture, they feel that they have got real life." Louise would not be amused, or laugh with her husband at this. "Then what in the world does Godolphin mean?" she demanded. "Why, being interpreted out of actor's parlance, he means that he wishes he could talk the play over with me again and be persuaded that he is wrong about it." "I must say," Louise remarked, after a moment for mastering the philosophy of this, "that you take it very strangely, Brice." "I've thought it out," said Maxwell. "And what are you going to do?" "I am going to wait the turn of events. My faith in Godolphin is unshaken--such as it is." "And what is going to be our attitude in regard to it?" "Attitude? With whom?" "With our friends. Suppose they ask us about the play, and how it is getting along. And my family?" "I don't think it will be necessary to take any attitude. They can think what they like. Let them wait the turn of events, too. If we can stand it, they can." "No, Brice," said his wife. "That won't do. We might be silently patient ourselves, but if we left them to believe that it was all going well, we should be living a lie." "What an extraordinary idea!" "I've told papa and mamma--we've both told them, though I did the talking, you can say--that the play was a splendid success, and Godolphin was going to give it seven or eight times a week; and now if it's a failure--" "It _isn't_ a failure!" Maxwell retorted, as if hurt by the notion. "No matter! If he's only going to play it once a fortnight or so, and is going to tinker it up to suit himself without saying by-your-leave to you, I say we're occupying a false position, and that's what I mean by living a lie." Maxwell looked at her in that bewilderment which he was beginning to feel at the contradictions of her character. She sometimes told outright little fibs which astonished him; society fibs she did not mind at all; but when it came to people's erroneously inferring this or that from her actions, she had a yearning for the explicit truth that nothing else could appease. He, on the contrary, was indifferent to what people thought, if he had not openly misled them. Let them think this, or let them think that; it was altogether their affair, and he did not hold himself responsible; but he was ill at ease with any conventional lie on his conscience. He hated to have his wife say to people, as he sometimes overheard her saying, that he was out, when she knew he had run upstairs with his writing to escape them; she contended that it was no harm, since it deceived nobody. Now he said, "Aren't you rather unnecessarily complex?" "No, I'm not. And I shall tell papa as soon as I see him just how the case stands. Why, it would be dreadful if we let him believe it was all going well, and perhaps tell others that it was, and we knew all the time that it wasn't. He would hate that, and he wouldn't like us for letting him." "Hadn't you better give the thing a chance to go right? There hasn't been time yet." "No, dearest, I feel that since I've bragged so to papa, I ought to eat humble-pie before him as soon as possible." "Yes. Why should you make me eat it, too?" "I can't help that; I would if I could. But, unfortunately, we are one." "And you seem to be the one. Suppose I should ask you not to eat humble-pie before your father?" "Then, of course, I should do as you asked. But I hope you won't." Maxwell did not say anything, and she went on, tenderly, entreatingly, "And I hope you'll never allow me to deceive myself about anything you do. I should resent it a great deal more than if you had positively deceived me. Will you promise me, if anything sad or bad happens, that you don't want me to know because it will make me unhappy or disagreeable, you'll tell me at once?" "It won't be necessary. You'll find it out." "No, do be serious, dearest. _I_ am _very_ serious. Will you?" "What is the use of asking such a thing as that? It seems to me that I've invited you to a full share of the shame and sorrow that Godolphin has brought upon me." "Yes, you have," said Louise, thoughtfully. "And you may be sure that I appreciate it. Don't you like to have me share it?" "Well, I don't know. I might like to get at it first myself." "Ah, you didn't like my opening Godolphin's letter when it came!" "I shouldn't mind, now, if you would answer it." "I shall be only too glad to answer it, if you will let me answer it as it deserves." "That needs reflection." _ |
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