"What? That I was not an intending dramatist?"
"That you didn't have such excitements in your life. They will kill
you."
"They are all that will keep me alive."
They went down to the beach, and walked back and forth on its curve
several times before they dropped in the sand at a discreet distance
from several groups of hotel acquaintance. People were coming and going
from the line of bath-houses that backed upon the low sand-bank behind
them, with its tufts of coarse silvery-green grasses. The Maxwells bowed
to some of the ladies who tripped gayly past them in their airy costumes
to the surf, or came up from it sobered and shivering. Four or five
young fellows, with sun-blackened arms and legs, were passing ball near
them. A pony-carriage drove by on the wet sand; a horseman on a
crop-tailed roan thumped after it at a hard trot. Dogs ran barking
vaguely about, and children with wooden shovels screamed at their play.
Far off shimmered the sea, of one pale blue with the sky. The rooks were
black at either end of the beach; a line of sail-boats and dories swung
across its crescent beyond the bathers, who bobbed up and down in the
surf, or showed a head here and there outside of it.
"What a singular spectacle," said Maxwell. "The casting off of the
conventional in sea-bathing always seems to me like the effect of those
dreams where we appear in society insufficiently dressed, and wonder
whether we can make it go."
"Yes, isn't it?" His wife tried to cover all the propositions with one
loosely fitting assent.
"I'm surprised," Maxwell went on, "that some realistic wretch hasn't put
this sort of thing on the stage. It would be tremendously effective; if
he made it realistic enough it would be attacked by the press as
improper and would fill the house. Couldn't we work a sea-bathing scene
into the 'Second Chapter'? It would make the fortune of the play, and it
would give Godolphin a chance to show his noble frame in something like
the majesty of nature. Godolphin would like nothing better. We could
have Atland rescue Salome, and Godolphin could flop round among the
canvas breakers for ten minutes, and come on for a recall with the
heroine, both dripping real water all over the stage."
"Don't be disgusting, Brice," said his wife, absently. She had her head
half turned from him, watching a lady who had just come out of her
bath-house and was passing very near them on her way to the water.
Maxwell felt the inattention in his wife's tone and looked up.
The bather returned their joint gaze steadily from eyes that seemed, as
Maxwell said, to smoulder under their long lashes, and to question her
effect upon them in a way that he was some time finding a phrase for.
He was tormented to make out whether she were a large person or not;
without her draperies he could not tell. But she moved with splendid
freedom, and her beauty expressed a maturity of experience beyond her
years; she looked young, and yet she looked as if she had been taking
care of herself a good while. She was certainly very handsome, Louise
owned to herself, as the lady quickened her pace, and finally ran down
to the water and plunged into a breaker that rolled in at the right
moment in uncommon volume.
"Well?" she asked her husband, whose eyes had gone with hers.
"We ought to have clapped."
"Do you think she is an actress?"
"I don't know. I never saw her before. She seemed to turn the sunshine
into lime-light as she passed. Why! that's rather pretty, isn't it? And
it's a verse. I wonder what it is about these people. The best of them
have nothing of the stage in them--at least, the men haven't. I'm not
sure, though, that the women haven't. There are lots of women off the
stage who are actresses, but they don't seem so. They're personal; this
one was impersonal. She didn't seem to regard me as a man; she regarded
me as a house. Did you feel that?"
"Yes, that was it, I suppose. But she regarded you more than she did me,
I think."
"Why, of course. You were only a matinée."
They sat half an hour longer in the sand, and then he complained that
the wind blew all the warmth out of him as fast as the sun shone it into
him. She felt his hand next her and found it still cold; after a glance
round she furtively felt his forehead.
"You're still thinking," she sighed. "Come! We must go back."
"Yes. That girl won't be out of the water for half an hour yet; and we
couldn't wait to see her clothed and in her right mind afterwards."
"What makes you think she's a girl?" asked his wife, as they moved
slowly off.
He did not seem to have heard her question. He said, "I don't believe I
can make the new play go, Louise; I haven't the strength for it. There's
too much good stuff in Haxard; I can't throw away what I've done on it."
"That is just what I was thinking, Brice! It would be too bad to lose
that. The love-business as you've remodeled it is all very well. But it
_is_ light; it's comedy; and Haxard is such splendid tragedy. I want
you to make your first impression in that. You can do comedy afterwards;
but if you did comedy first, the public would never think your tragedy
was serious."
"Yes, there's a law in that. A clown mustn't prophesy. If a prophet
chooses to joke, now and then, all well and good. I couldn't begin now
and expand that love-business into a whole play. It must remain an
episode, and Godolphin must take it or leave it. Of course he'll want
Atland emaciated to fatten Haxard, as he calls it. But Atland doesn't
amount to much, as it is, and I don't believe I could make him; it's
essentially a passive part; Salome must make the chief effect in that
business, and I think I'll have her a little more serious, too. It'll be
more in keeping with the rest."
"I don't see why she shouldn't be serious. There's nothing ignoble in
what she does."
"No. It can be very impassioned."
Louise thought of the smouldering eyes of that woman, and she wondered
if they were what suggested something very impassioned to Maxwell; but
with all the frankness between them, she did not ask him.
On their way to the cottage they saw one of the hotel bell-boys coming
out. "Just left a telegram in there for you," he called, as he came
towards them.
Louise began, "Oh, dear, I hope there's nothing the matter with papa! Or
your mother."
She ran forward, and Maxwell followed at his usual pace, so that she had
time to go inside and come out with the despatch before he mounted the
veranda steps.
"You open it!" she entreated, piteously, holding it towards him.
He pulled it impatiently open, and glanced at the signature. "It's from
Godolphin;" and he read, "Don't destroy old play. Keep new love-business
for episode. Will come over this afternoon." Maxwell smiled. "More mind
transference."
Louise laughed in hysterical relief. "Now you can make him do just what
you want."