Maxwell, now, at least, knew that he had got his play going in the right
direction again. He felt a fresh pleasure in returning to the old lines
after his excursion in the region of comedy, and he worked upon them
with fresh energy. He rehabilitated the love-business as he and his wife
had newly imagined it, and, to disguise the originals the more
effectively, he made the girl, whom he had provisionally called Salome,
more like himself than Louise in certain superficial qualities, though
in an essential nobleness and singleness, which consisted with a great
deal of feminine sinuosity and subtlety, she remained a portrait of
Louise. He was doubtful whether the mingling of characteristics would
not end in unreality, but she was sure it would not; she said he was so
much like a woman in the traits he had borrowed from himself that Salome
would be all the truer for being like him; or, at any rate, she would be
finer, and more ideal. She said that it was nonsense, the way people
regarded women as altogether different from men; she believed they were
very much alike; a girl was as much the daughter of her father as of her
mother; she alleged herself as proof of the fact that a girl was often a
great deal more her father's daughter, and she argued that if Maxwell
made Salome quite in his own spiritual image, no one would dream of
criticising her as unwomanly. Then he asked if he need only make Atland
in her spiritual image to have him the manliest sort of fellow. She said
that was not what she meant, and, in any case, a man could have feminine
traits, and be all the nicer for them, but, if a woman had masculine
traits, she would be disgusting. At the same time, if you drew a man
from a woman, he would be ridiculous.
"Then you want me to model Atland on myself, too," said Maxwell.
She thought a moment. "Yes, I do. If Salome is to be taken mostly from
me, I couldn't bear to have him like anybody but you. It would be
indelicate."
"Well, now, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to stand it," said
Maxwell. "I am going to make Atland like Pinney."
But she would not be turned from the serious aspect of the affair by
his joking. She asked, "Do you think it would intensify the situation if
he were not equal to her? If the spectator could be made to see that she
was throwing herself away on him, after all?"
"Wouldn't that leave the spectator a little too inconsolable? You don't
want the love-business to double the tragedy, you want to have it
relieved, don't you?"
"Yes, that is true. You must make him worth all the sacrifice. I
couldn't stand it if he wasn't."
Maxwell frowned, as he always did when he became earnest, and said with
a little sigh, "He must be passive, negative, as I said; you must simply
feel that he is _good_, and that she will be safe with him, after the
worst has happened to her father. And I must keep the interest of the
love-business light, without letting it become farcical. I must get
charm, all I can, into her character. You won't mind my getting the
charm all from you?"
"Oh, Brice, what sweet things you say to me! I wish everybody could know
how divine you are."
"The women would all be making love to me, and I should hate that. One
is quite enough."
"_Am_ I quite enough?" she entreated.
"You have been up to the present time."
"And do you think I shall always be?" She slid from her chair to her
knees on the floor beside him, where he sat at his desk, and put her
arms round him.
He did not seem to know it. "Look here, Louise, I have got to connect
this love-business with the main action of the play, somehow. It won't
do simply to have it an episode. How would it do to have Atland know all
the time that Haxard has killed Greenshaw, and be keeping it from
Salome, while she is betraying her love for him?"
"Wouldn't that be rather tawdry?" Louise let her arms slip down to her
side, and looked up at him, as she knelt.
"Yes, it would," he owned.
He looked very unhappy about it, and she rose to her feet, as if to give
it more serious attention. "Brice, I want your play to be thoroughly
honest and true from beginning to end, and not to have any sort of
catchpenny effectivism in it. You have planned it so nobly that I can't
bear to have you lower the standard the least bit; and I think the
honest and true way is to let the love-business be a pleasant fact in
the case, as it might very well be. Those things _do_ keep going on in
life alongside of the greatest misery, the greatest unhappiness."
"Well," said Maxwell, "I guess you are right about the love-business.
I'll treat it frankly for what it is, a fact in the case. That will be
the right way, and that will be the strong way. It will be like life. I
don't know that you are bound to relate things strictly to each other in
art, any more than they are related in life. There are all sorts of
incidents and interests playing round every great event that seem to
have no more relation to it than the rings of Saturn have to Saturn.
They form the atmosphere of it. If I can let Haxard's wretchedness be
seen at last through the atmosphere of his daughter's happiness!"
"Yes," she said, "that will be quite enough." She knew that they had
talked up to the moment when he could best begin to work, and now left
him to himself.
Within a week he got the rehabilitated love-business in place, and the
play ready to show to Godolphin again. He had managed to hold the actor
off in the meantime, but now he returned in full force, with suggestions
and misgivings which had first to be cleared away before he could give a
clear mind to what Maxwell had done. Then Maxwell could see that he was
somehow disappointed, for he began to talk as if there were no
understanding between them for his taking the play. He praised it
warmly, but he said that it would be hard to find a woman to do the
part of Salome.
"That is the principal part in the piece now, you know," he added.
"I don't see how," Maxwell protested. "It seems to me that her character
throws Haxard's into greater relief than before, and gives it more
prominence."
"You've made the love-business too strong, I think. I supposed you would
have something light and graceful to occupy the house in the suspense
between the points in Haxard's case. If I were to do him, I should be
afraid that people would come back from Salome to him with more or less
of an effort, I don't say they would, but that's the way it strikes me
now; perhaps some one else would look at it quite differently."
"Then, as it is, you don't want it?"
"I don't say that. But it seems to me that Salome is the principal
figure now. I think that's a mistake."
"If it's a fact, it's a mistake. I don't want to have it so," said
Maxwell, and he made such effort as he could to swallow his disgust.
Godolphin asked, after a while, "In that last scene between her and her
father, and in fact in all the scenes between them, couldn't you give
more of the strong speeches to him? She's a great creation now, but
isn't she too great for Atland?"
"I've kept Atland under, purposely, because the part is necessarily a
negative one, and because I didn't want him to compete with Haxard at
all."
"Yes, that is all right; but as it is, _she_ competes with Haxard."
After Godolphin had gone, Louise came down, and found Maxwell in a
dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre
eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants
is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He
thinks that as it is, she will take all the attention from him."