There was no letter from Godolphin in the morning, but in the course of
the forenoon there came a newspaper addressed in his handwriting, and
later several others. They were Midland papers, and they had each,
heavily outlined in ink, a notice of the appearance of Mr. Launcelot
Godolphin in a new play written expressly for him by a young Boston
_littérateur_. Mr. Godolphin believed the author to be destined to make
his mark high in the dramatic world, he said in the course of a long
interview in the paper which came first, an evening edition preceeding
the production of the piece, and plainly meant to give the public the
right perspective. He had entered into a generous expression of his own
feelings concerning it, and had given Maxwell full credit for the lofty
conception of an American drama, modern in spirit, and broad in purpose.
He modestly reserved to himself such praise as might be due for the
hints his life-long knowledge of the stage had enabled him to offer the
dramatist. He told how they had spent the summer near each other on the
north shore of Massachusetts, and had met almost daily; and the reporter
got a picturesque bit out of their first meeting at the actor's hotel,
in Boston, the winter before, when the dramatist came to lay the scheme
of the play before Godolphin, and Godolphin made up his mind before he
had heard him half through, that he should want the piece. He had
permitted himself a personal sketch of Maxwell, which lost none of its
original advantages in the diction of the reporter, and which
represented him as young, slight in figure, with a refined and delicate
face, bearing the stamp of intellectual force; a journalist from the
time he left school, and one of the best exponents of the formative
influences of the press in the training of its votaries. From time to
time it was hard for Maxwell to make out whose words the interview was
couched in, but he acquitted Godolphin of the worst, and he certainly
did not accuse him of the flowery terms giving his patriotic reasons for
not producing the piece first in Toronto as he had meant to do. It
appeared that, upon second thoughts, he had reserved this purely
American drama for the opening night of his engagement in one of the
most distinctively American cities, after having had it in daily
rehearsal ever since the season began.
"I should think they had Pinney out there," said Maxwell, as he and his
wife looked over the interview, with their cheeks together.
"Not at all!" she retorted. "It isn't the least like Pinney," and he was
amazed to find that she really liked the stuff. She said that she was
glad, now, that she understood why Godolphin had not opened with the
play in Toronto, as he had promised, and she thoroughly agreed with him
that it ought first to be given on our own soil. She was dashed for a
moment when Maxwell made her reflect that they were probably the losers
of four or five hundred dollars by the delay; then she said she did not
care, that it was worth the money. She did not find the personal account
of Maxwell offensive, though she contended that it did not do him full
justice, and she cut out the interview and pasted it in a book, where
she was going to keep all the notices of his play and every printed fact
concerning it. He told her she would have to help herself out with some
of the fables, if she expected to fill her book, and she said she did
not care for that, either, and probably it was just such things as this
interview that drew attention to the play, and must have made it go
like wildfire that first night in Midland. Maxwell owned that it was but
too likely, and then he waited hungrily for further word of his play,
while she expected the next mail in cheerful faith.
It brought them four or five morning papers, and it seemed from these
that a play might have gone like wildfire, and yet not been seen by a
very large number of people. The papers agreed in a sense of the
graceful compliment paid their city by Mr. Godolphin, who was always a
favorite there, in producing his new piece at one of their theatres, and
confiding it at once to the judgment of a cultivated audience, instead
of trying it first in a subordinate place, and bringing it on with a
factitious reputation worked up from all sorts of unknown sources. They
agreed, too, that his acting had never been better; that it had great
smoothness, and that it rose at times into passion, and was full of his
peculiar force. His company was well chosen, and his support had an even
excellence which reflected great credit upon the young star, who might
be supposed, if he had followed an unwise tradition, to be willing to
shine at the expense of his surroundings. His rendition of the rôle of
Haxard was magnificent in one journal, grand in another, superb in a
third, rich, full and satisfying in a fourth, subtle and conscientious
in a fifth. Beyond this, the critics ceased to be so much of one mind.
They were, by a casting vote, adverse to the leading lady, whom the
majority decided an inadequate Salome, without those great qualities
which the author had evidently meant to redeem a certain coquettish
lightness in her; the minority held that she had grasped the rôle with
intelligence, and expressed with artistic force a very refined intention
in it. The minority hinted that Salome was really the great part in the
piece, and that in her womanly endeavor to win back the lover whom she
had not at first prized at his true worth, while her heart was wrung by
sympathy with her unhappy father in the mystery brooding over him, she
was a far more interesting figure than the less complex Haxard; and they
intimated that Godolphin had an easier task in his portrayal. They all
touched more or less upon the conduct of the subordinate actors in their
parts, and the Maxwells, in every case, had to wade through their
opinions of the playing before they got to their opinions of the play,
which was the only vital matter concerned.
Louise would have liked to read them, as she had read the first, with
her arm across Maxwell's shoulder, and, as it were, with the same eye
and the same mind, but Maxwell betrayed an uneasiness under the
experiment which made her ask: "Don't you _like_ to have me put my arm
round you, Brice?"
"Yes, yes," he answered, impatiently, "I like to have you put your arm
around me on all proper occasions; but--it isn't favorable to collected
thought."
"Why, _I_ think it is," she protested with pathos, and a burlesque of
her pathos. "I never think half so well as when I have my arm around
you. Then it seems as if I thought with your mind. I feel so judicial."
"Perhaps I feel too emotional, under the same conditions, and think with
_your_ mind. At any rate, I can't stand it; and we can't both sit in the
same chair either. Now, you take one of the papers and go round to the
other side of the table. I want to have all my faculties for the
appreciation of this noble criticism; it's going to be full of
instruction."
He made her laugh, and she feigned a pout in obeying him; but,
nevertheless, in her heart she felt herself postponed to the interest
that was always first in him, and always before his love.
"And don't talk," he urged, "or keep calling out, or reading passages
ahead. I want to get all the sense there doesn't seem to be in this
thing."
In fact the critics had found themselves confronted with a task which is
always confusing to criticism, in the necessity of valuing a work of art
so novel in material that it seems to refuse the application of
criterions. As he followed their struggles in the endeavor to judge his
work by such canons of art as were known to them, instead of taking it
frankly upon the plane of nature and of truth, where he had tried to put
it, and blaming or praising him as he had failed or succeeded in this,
he was more and more bowed down within himself before the generous
courage of Godolphin in rising to an appreciation of his intention. He
now perceived that he was a man of far more uncommon intelligence than
he had imagined him, and that in taking his play Godolphin had shown a
zeal for the drama which was not likely to find a response in criticism,
whatever its fate with the public might be. The critics frankly owned
that in spite of its defects the piece had a cordial reception from the
audience; that the principal actors were recalled again and again, and
they reported that Godolphin had spoken both for the author and himself
in acknowledging the applause, and had disclaimed all credit for their
joint success. This made Maxwell ashamed of the suspicion he had
harbored that Godolphin would give the impression of a joint
authorship, at the least. He felt that he had judged the man narrowly
and inadequately, and he decided that as soon as he heard from him, he
would write and make due reparation for the tacit wrong he had done him.
Upon the whole he had some reason to be content with the first fortune
of his work, whatever its final fate might be. To be sure, if the
audience which received it was enthusiastic, it was confessedly small,
and it had got no more than a foothold in the public favor. It must
remain for further trial to prove it a failure or a success. His eye
wandered to the column of advertised amusements for the pleasure of
seeing the play announced there for the rest of the week. There was a
full list of the pieces for the time of Godolphin's stay; but it seemed
that neither at night nor at morning was Maxwell's play to be repeated.
The paper dropped from his hand.
"What is the matter?" his wife asked, looking up from her own paper.
"This poor man is the greatest possible goose. He doesn't seem to know
what he is talking about, even when he praises you. But of course he has
to write merely from a first impression. Do you want to change papers?"
Maxwell mechanically picked his up, and gave it to her. "The worst of
it is," he said, with the sardonic smile he had left over from an
unhappier time of life, "that he won't have an opportunity to revise his
first impression."
"What do you mean?"
He told her, but she could not believe him till she had verified the
fact by looking at the advertisements in all the papers.