"Not to give it there any more, apparently. He hasn't entered upon the
perpetual performance of the piece. But if he isn't like Jefferson,
perhaps he's like Rip; he don't count this time. Well, I might have
known it! Why did I ever trust one of that race?" He began to walk up
and down the room, and to fling out, one after another, the expressions
of his scorn and his self-scorn. "They have no idea of what good faith
is, except as something that brings down the house when they register a
noble vow. But I don't blame him; I blame myself. What an ass, what an
idiot, I was! Why, _he_ could have told me not to believe in his
promises; he is a perfectly honest man, and would have done it, if I had
appealed to him. He didn't expect me to believe in them, and from the
wary way I talked, I don't suppose he thought I did. He hadn't the
measure of my folly; I hadn't, myself!"
"Now, Brice!" his wife called out to him, severely, "I won't have you
going on in that way. When I denounced Godolphin you wouldn't listen to
me; and when I begged and besought you to give him up, you always said
he was the only man in the world for you, till I got to believing it,
and I believe it now. Why, dearest," she added, in a softer tone, "don't
you see that he probably had his programme arranged all beforehand, and
couldn't change it, just because your play happened to be a hit? I'm
sure he paid you a great compliment by giving it the first night. Now,
you must just wait till you hear from him, and you may be sure he will
have a good reason for not repeating it there."
"Oh, Godolphin would never lack for a good reason. And I can tell you
what his reason in this case will be: that the thing was practically a
failure, and that he would have lost money if he had kept it on."
"Is that what is worrying you? I don't believe it was a failure. I think
from all that the papers say, and the worst that they say, the piece was
a distinct success. It was a great success with nice people, you can
see that for yourself, and it will be a popular success, too; I know it
will, as soon as it gets a chance. But you may be sure that Godolphin
has some scheme about it, and that if he doesn't give it again in
Midland, it's because he wants to make people curious about it, and hold
it in reserve, or something like that. At any rate, I think you ought to
wait for his letter before you denounce him."
Maxwell laughed again at these specious arguments, but he could not
refuse to be comforted by them, and he had really nothing to do but to
wait for Godolphin's letter. It did not come the next mail, and then his
wife and he collated his dispatch with the newspaper notices, and tried
to make up a judicial opinion from their combined testimony concerning
the fate of the play with the audience. Their scrutiny of the telegram
developed the fact that it must have been sent the night of the
performance, and while Godolphin was still warm from his recalls and
from the congratulations of his friends; it could not have reached them
so soon as it did in the morning if it had been sent to the office then;
it was not a night message, but it had probably lain in the office over
night. In this view it was not such valuable testimony to the success of
the play as it had seemed before. But a second and a third reading of
the notices made them seem friendlier than at first. The Maxwells now
perceived that they had first read them in the fever of their joy from
Godolphin's telegram, and that their tempered approval had struck cold
upon them because they were so overheated. They were really very
favorable, after all, and they witnessed to an interest in the play
which could not be ignored. Very likely the interest in it was partly
from the fact that Godolphin had given it, but apart from this it was
evident that the play had established a claim of its own. The mail,
which did not bring a letter from Godolphin, brought another copy of
that evening paper which had printed the anticipatory interview with
him, and this had a long and careful consideration of the play in its
editorial columns, apparently written by a lover of the drama, as well
as a lover of the theatre. Very little regard was paid to the
performance, but a great deal to the play, which was skilfully analyzed,
and praised and blamed in the right places. The writer did not attempt
to forecast its fate, but he said that whatever its fate with the public
might be, here, at least, was a step in the direction of the drama
dealing with facts of American life--simply, vigorously, and honestly.
It had faults of construction, but the faults were not the faults of
weakness. They were rather the effects of a young talent addressing
itself to the management of material too rich, too abundant for the
scene, and allowing itself to touch the borders of melodrama in its will
to enforce some tragic points of the intrigue. But it was not mawkish
and it was not romantic. In its highest reaches it made you think, by
its stern and unflinching fidelity to the implications, of Ibsen; but it
was not too much to say that it had a charm often wanting to that
master. It was full of the real American humor; it made its jokes, as
Americans did, in the very face of the most disastrous possibilities;
and in the love-passages it was delicious. The whole episode of the love
between Haxard's daughter, Salome, and Atland was simply the sweetest
and freshest bit of nature in the modern drama. It daringly portrayed a
woman in circumstances where it was the convention to ignore that she
ever was placed, and it lent a grace of delicate comedy to the somber
ensemble of the piece, without lowering the dignity of the action or
detracting from the sympathy the spectator felt for the daughter of the
homicide; it rather heightened this.
Louise read the criticism aloud, and then she and Maxwell looked at each
other. It took their breath away; but Louise got her breath first. "Who
in the world would have dreamed that there was any one who could write
such a criticism, _out there_?"
Maxwell took the paper, and ran the article over again. Then he said,
"If the thing did nothing more than get itself appreciated in that way,
I should feel that it had done enough. I wonder who the fellow is! Could
it be a woman?"
There was, in fact, a feminine fineness in the touch, here and there,
that might well suggest a woman, but they finally decided against the
theory: Louise said that a woman writer would not have the honesty to
own that the part Salome played in getting back her lover was true to
life, though every woman who saw it would know that it was. She examined
the wrapper of the newspaper, and made sure that it was addressed in
Godolphin's hand, and she said that if he did not speak of the article
in his letter, Maxwell must write out to the newspaper and ask who had
done it.
Godolphin's letter came at last, with many excuses for his delay. He
said he had expected the newspaper notices to speak for him, and he
seemed to think that they had all been altogether favorable to the play.
It was not very consoling to have him add that he now believed the piece
would have run the whole week in Midland, if he had kept it on; but he
had arranged merely to give it a trial, and Maxwell would understand
how impossible it was to vary a programme which had once been made out.
One thing was certain, however: the piece was an assured success, and a
success of the most flattering and brilliant kind, and Godolphin would
give it a permanent place in his _répertoire_. There was no talk of his
playing nothing else, and there was no talk of putting the piece on for
a run, when he opened in New York. He said he had sent Maxwell a paper
containing a criticism in the editorial columns, which would serve to
show him how great an interest the piece had excited in Midland, though
he believed the article was not written by one of the regular force, but
was contributed from the outside by a young fellow who had been
described to Godolphin as a sort of Ibsen crank. At the close, he spoke
of certain weaknesses which the piece had developed in the performance,
and casually mentioned that he would revise it at these points as he
found the time; it appeared to him that it needed overhauling,
particularly in the love episode; there was too much of that, and the
interest during an entire act centred so entirely upon Salome that, as
he had foreseen, the rôle of Haxard suffered.