Louise did not come down till she heard Godolphin walking away on the
plank. She said to herself that she had shipwrecked her husband once by
putting in her oar, and she was not going to do it again. When the
actor's footfalls died out in the distance she descended to the parlor,
where she found Maxwell over his manuscript at the table.
She had to call to him, "Well?" before he seemed aware of her presence.
Even then he did not look round, but he said, "Godolphin wants to play
Atland."
"The lover?"
"Yes. He thinks he sees his part in it."
"And do you?"
"How do I know?"
"Well, I am glad I let him get safely away before I came back, for I
certainly couldn't have held in when he proposed that, if I had been
here. I don't understand you, Brice! Why do you have anything more to
do with him? Why do you let him touch the new play? Was he ever of the
least use with the old one?"
Maxwell lay back in his chair with a laugh. "Not the least in the
world." The realization of the fact amused him more and more. "I was
just thinking how everything he ever got me to do to it," he looked down
at the manuscript, "was false and wrong. They talk about a knowledge of
the stage as if the stage were a difficult science, instead of a very
simple piece of mechanism whose limitations and possibilities any one
can seize at a glance. All that their knowledge of it comes to is
clap-trap, pure and simple. They brag of its resources, and tell you the
carpenter can do anything you want nowadays, but if you attempt anything
outside of their tradition they are frightened. They think that their
exits and their entrances are great matters, and that they must come on
with such a speech, and go off with such another; but it is not of the
least consequence how they come or go if they have something interesting
to say or do."
"Why don't you say these things to Godolphin?"
"I do, and worse. He admits their truth with a candor and an
intelligence that are dismaying. He has a perfect conception of
Atland's part, and he probably will play it in a way to set your teeth
on edge."
"Why do you let him? Why don't you keep your play and offer it to a
manager or some actor who will know how to do it?" demanded Louise, with
sorrowful submission.
"Godolphin will know how to do it, even if he isn't able to. And,
besides, I should be a fool to fling him away for any sort of promising
uncertainty."
"He was willing to fling you away!"
"Yes, but I'm not so important to him as he is to me. He's the best I
can do for the present. It's a compromise all the way through--a cursed
spite from beginning to end. Your own words don't represent your ideas,
and the more conscience you put into the work the further you get from
what you thought it would be. Then comes the actor with the infernal
chemistry of his personality. He imagines the thing perfectly, not as
you imagined it, but as you wrote it, and then he is no more able to
play it as he imagined it than you were to write it as you imagined it.
What the public finally gets is something three times removed from the
truth that was first in the dramatist's mind. But I'm very lucky to have
Godolphin back again."
"I hope you're not going to let him see that you think so."
"Oh, no! I'm going to keep him in a suppliant attitude throughout, and
I'm going to let you come in and tame his spirit, if he--kicks."
"Don't be vulgar, Brice," said Louise, and she laughed rather forlornly.
"I don't see how you have the heart to joke, if you think it's so bad as
you say."
"I haven't. I'm joking without any heart." He stood up. "Let us go and
take a bath."
She glanced at him with a swift inventory of his fagged looks, and said,
"Indeed, you shall not take a bath this morning. You couldn't react
against it. You won't, will you?"
"No, I'll only lie on the sand, if you can pick me out a good warm spot,
and watch you."
"I shall not bathe, either."
"Well, then, I'll watch the other women." He put out his hand and took
hers.