"It wouldn't do to have nothing but a crowd of black coats and white
shirt-fronts on the stage through a whole act. You want color, and a lot
of it, and you can only get it, in our day, with the women's costumes.
Besides, they give movement and life. After the dinner begins they're
supposed to sparkle all through. I've imagined the table set down the
depth of the stage, with Haxard and the nominal host at the head,
fronting the audience, and the people talking back and forth on each
side, and I let the ladies do most of the talking, of course. I mean to
have the dinner served through all the courses, and the waiters coming
and going; the events will have to be hurried, and the eating merely
sketched, at times; but I should keep the thing in pretty perfect form,
till it came to the speaking. I shall have to cut that a good deal, but
I think I can give a pretty fair notion of how they butter the object of
their hospitality on such occasions; I've seen it and heard it done
often enough. I think, perhaps, I shall have the dinner an act by
itself. There are only four acts in the play now, and I'll have to make
five. I want to give Haxard's speech as fully as possible, for that's
what I study the man in, and make my confidences to the audience about
him. I shall make him butter himself, but all with the utmost humility,
and brag of everything that he disclaims the merit of."
The actor rose and reached across the table for the sugar. "That's a
capital notion. That's new. That would make a hit--the speech would."
"Do you think so?" returned the author. "_I_ thought so. I believe that
in the hands of a good actor the speech could be made tremendously
telling. I wouldn't have a word to give away his character, his nature,
except the words of his own mouth, but I would have them do it so
effectually that when he gets through the audience will be fairly 'onto
him,' don't you know."
"Magnificent!" said the actor, pouring himself some more cocoa.
Maxwell continued: "In the third act--for I see that I shall have to
make it the third now--the scene will be in Haxard's library, after he
gets home from the complimentary dinner, at midnight, and he finds a man
waiting for him there--a man that the butler tells him has called
several times, and was so anxious to see him that Mrs. Haxard has given
orders to let him wait. Oh, I ought to go back a little, and explain--"
"Yes, do!" The actor stirred his cocoa with mounting interest. "Yes,
don't leave anything out."
"I merely meant to say that in the talk in the scene, or the act, before
the dinner--I shall have two acts, but with no wait between them; just
let down the curtain and raise it again--it will come out that Haxard is
not a Bostonian by birth, but has come here since the war from the
Southwest, where he went, from Maine, to grow up with the country, and
is understood to have been a sort of quiescent Union man there; it's
thought to be rather a fine thing the way he's taken on Boston, and
shown so much local patriotism and public spirit and philanthropy, in
the way he's brought himself forward here. People don't know a great
deal about his past, but it's understood to have been very creditable. I
shall have to recast that part a little, and lengthen the delay before
he comes on, and let the guests, or the hosts--for _they're_ giving
_him_ the dinner--have time to talk about him, and free their minds in
honor of him behind his back, before they begin to his face."
"Never bring your principal character on at once," the actor
interjected.
"No," Maxwell consented. "I see that wouldn't have done." He went on:
"Well, as soon as Haxard turns up the light in his library, the man
rises from the lounge where he has been sitting, and Haxard sees who it
is. He sees that it is a man whom he used to be in partnership with in
Texas, where they were engaged in some very shady transactions. They get
caught in one of them--I haven't decided yet just what sort of
transaction it was, and I shall have to look that point up; I'll get
some law-student to help me--and Haxard, who wasn't Haxard then, pulls
out and leaves his partner to suffer the penalty. Haxard comes North,
and after trying it in various places, he settles here, and marries, and
starts in business and prospers on, while the other fellow takes their
joint punishment in the penitentiary. By the way, it just occurs to me!
I think I'll have it that Haxard has killed a man, a man whom he has
injured; he doesn't mean to kill him, but he has to; and this fellow is
knowing to the homicide, but has been prevented from getting onto
Haxard's trail by the consequences of his own misdemeanors; that will
probably be the best way out. Of course it all has to transpire, all
these facts, in the course of the dialogue which the two men have with
each other in Haxard's library, after a good deal of fighting away from
the inevitable identification on Haxard's part. After the first few
preliminary words with the butler at the door before he goes in to find
the other man--his name is Greenshaw--"
"That's a good name, too," said the actor.
"Yes, isn't it? It has a sort of probable sound, and yet it's a made-up
name. Well, I was going to say--"
"And I'm glad you have it a homicide that Haxard is guilty of, instead
of a business crime of some sort. That sort of crime never tells with an
audience," the actor observed.
"No," said Maxwell. "Homicide is decidedly better. It's more
melodramatic, and I don't like that, but it will be more appreciable, as
a real sin, to most of the audience; we steal and cheat so much, and we
kill comparatively so little in the North. Well, I was going to say that
I shall have this whole act to consist entirely of the passage between
the two men. I shall let it begin with a kind of shiver creeping over
the spectator, when he recognizes the relation between them, and I hope
I shall be able to make it end with a shudder, for Haxard must see from
the first moment, and he must let the audience see at last, that the
only way for him to save himself from his old crime is to commit a new
one. He must kill the man who saw him kill a man."
"That's good," the actor thoughtfully murmured, as if tasting a pleasant
morsel to try its flavor. "Excellent."
Maxwell laughed for pleasure, and went on: "He arranges to meet the man
again at a certain time and place, and that is the last of Greenshaw. He
leaves the house alone; and the body of an unknown man is found floating
up and down with the tide under the Long Bridge. There are no marks of
violence; he must have fallen off the bridge in the dark, and been
drowned; it could very easily happen. Well, then comes the most
difficult part of the whole thing; I have got to connect the casualty
with Haxard in the most unmistakable way, unmistakable to the audience,
that is; and I have got to have it brought home to him in a supreme
moment of his life. I don't want to have him feel remorse for it; that
isn't the modern theory of the criminal; but I do want him to be anxious
to hide his connection with it, and to escape the consequences. I don't
know but I shall try another dinner-scene, though I am afraid it would
be a risk."
The actor said, "I don't know. It might be the very thing. The audience
likes a recurrence to a distinctive feature. It's like going back to an
effective strain in music."
"Yes," Maxwell resumed, "slightly varied. I might have a private dinner
this time; perhaps a dinner that Haxard himself is giving. Towards the
end the talk might turn on the case of the unknown man, and the guests
might discuss it philosophically together; Haxard would combat the
notion of a murder, and even of a suicide; he would contend for an
accident, pure and simple. All the fellows would take a turn at the
theory, but the summing-up opinion I shall leave to a legal mind,
perhaps the man who had made the great complimentary speech at the
public dinner to Haxard in the first act. I should have him warm to his
work, and lay it down to Haxard in good round fashion, against his
theory of accident. He could prove to the satisfaction of everybody that
the man who was last seen with the drowned man--or was supposed to have
been seen with him--according to some very sketchy evidence at the
inquest, which never amounted to anything--was the man who pushed him
off the bridge. He could gradually work up his case, and end the
argument with a semi-jocular, semi-serious appeal to Haxard himself,
like, 'Why, suppose it was your own case,' and so forth, and so forth,
and so forth, and then suddenly stop at something he notices queer in
Haxard, who is trying to get to his feet. The rest applaud: 'That's
right! Haxard has the floor,' and so on, and then Haxard slips back into
his chair, and his head falls forward---- I don't like death-scenes on
the stage. They're usually failures. But if this was managed simply, I
think it would be effective."
The actor left the table and began to walk about the room. "I shall want
that play. I can see my part in Haxard. I know just how I could make up
for him. And the play is so native, so American, that it will go like
wildfire."
The author heard these words with a swelling heart. He did not speak,
for he could not. He sat still, watching the actor as he paced to and
fro, histrionically rapt in his representation of an actor who had just
taken a piece from a young dramatist. "If you can realize that part as
you've sketched it to me," he said, finally, "I will play it
exclusively, as Jefferson does Rip Van Winkle. There are immense
capabilities in the piece. Yes, sir; that thing will run for years!"
"Of course," Maxwell found voice to say, "there is one great defect in
it, from the conventional point of view." The actor stopped and looked
at him. "There's no love-business."
"We must have that. But you can easily bring it in."
"By the head and shoulders, yes. But I hate love-making on the stage,
almost as much as I do dying. I never see a pair of lovers beyond the
footlights without wanting to kill them." The actor remained looking at
him over his folded arms, and Maxwell continued, with something like a
personal rancor against love-making, while he gave a little, bitter
laugh, "I might have it somehow that Haxard had killed a pair of
stage-lovers, and this was what Greenshaw had seen him do. But that
would have been justifiable homicide."
The actor's gaze darkened into a frowning stare, as if he did not quite
make out this kind of fooling. "All the world loves a lover," he said,
tentatively.
"I don't believe it does," said Maxwell, "except as it's stupid, and
loves anything that makes it laugh. It loves a comic lover, and in the
same way it loves a droll drunkard or an amusing madman."
"We shall have to have some sort of love-business," the actor returned,
with an effect of leaving the right interpretation of Maxwell's peculiar
humor for some other time. "The public wants it. No play would go
without it. You can have it subordinate if you like, but you have got
to have it. How old did you say Haxard was?"
"About fifty. Too old for a lover, unless you could make him in love
with some one else's wife, as he has one of his own already. But that
wouldn't do."
The actor looked as if he did not know why it would not do, but he said,
"He could have a daughter."
"Yes, and his daughter could have a lover. I had thought of something of
that kind, and of bringing in their ill-fated passion as an element of
the tragedy. We could have his disgrace break their hearts, and kill two
birds with one stone, and avenge a long-suffering race of playwrights
upon stage-lovers."
The actor laughed like a man of small humor, mellowly, but hollowly.
"No, no! We must have the love-affair end happily. You can manage that
somehow. Have you got the play roughed out at all?"
"Not in manuscript. I've only got it roughed out in my mind."
"Well, I want that play. That's settled. I can't do anything with it
this winter, but I should like to open with it next fall. Do you think
you could have it ready by the end of July?"