The Maxwells stared at each other in dismay when they had finished this
letter, which Louise had opened, but which they had read together, she
looking over his shoulder. All interest in the authorship of the article
of the Ibsen crank, all interest in Godolphin's apparent forgetfulness
of his solemn promises to give the rest of his natural life to the
performance of the piece, was lost in amaze at the fact that he was
going to revise it to please himself, and to fashion Maxwell's careful
work over in his own ideal of the figure he should make in it to the
public. The thought of this was so petrifying that even Louise could not
at once find words for it, and they were both silent, as people
sometimes are, when a calamity has befallen them, in the hope that if
they do not speak it will turn out a miserable dream.
"Well, Brice," she said at last, "you certainly never expected _this_!"
"No," he answered with a ghastly laugh; "this passes my most sanguine
expectations, even of Godolphin. Good Heaven! Fancy the botch he will
make of it!"
"You mustn't let him touch it. You must demand it back, peremptorily.
You must telegraph!"
"What a mania you have for telegraphing," he retorted. "A special
delivery postage-stamp will serve every purpose. He isn't likely to do
the piece again for a week, at the earliest." He thought for awhile, and
then he said: "In a week he'll have a chance to change his mind so
often, that perhaps he won't revise and overhaul it, after all."
"But he mustn't think that you would suffer it for an instant," his wife
insisted. "It's an indignity that you should not submit to; it's an
outrage!"
"Very likely," Maxwell admitted, and he began to walk the floor, with
his head fallen, and his fingers clutched together behind him. The sight
of his mute anguish wrought upon his wife and goaded her to more and
more utterance.
"It's an insult to your genius, Brice, dear, and you must resent it. I
am sure I have been as humble about the whole affair as any one could
be, and I should be the last person to wish you to do anything rash. I
bore with Godolphin's suggestions, and I let him worry you to death with
his plans for spoiling your play, but I certainly didn't dream of
anything so high-handed as his undertaking to work it over himself, or I
should have insisted on your breaking with him long ago. How patient you
have been through it all! You've shown so much forbearance, and so much
wisdom, and so much delicacy in dealing with his preposterous ideas, and
then, to have it all thrown away! It's too bad!"
Maxwell kept walking hack and forth, and Louise began again at a new
point.
"I was willing to have it remain simply a _succès d'estime_, as far as
Midland was concerned, though I think you were treated abominably in
that, for he certainly gave you reason to suppose that he would do it
every night there. He says himself that it would have run the whole
week; and you can see from that article how it was growing in public
favor all the time. What has become of his promise to play nothing else,
I should like to know? And he's only played it once, and now he proposes
to revise it himself!"
Still Maxwell walked on and she continued:
"I don't know what I shall say to my family. They can never understand
such a thing, never! Papa couldn't conceive of giving a promise and not
keeping it, much less giving a promise just for the _pleasure_ of
breaking it. What shall I tell them, Brice? I can't bear to say that
Godolphin is going to make your play over, unless I can say at the same
time that you've absolutely forbidden him to do so. That's why I wanted
you to telegraph. I wanted to say you had telegraphed."
Maxwell stopped in his walk and gazed at her, but she could feel that he
did not see her, and she said:
"I don't know that it's actually necessary for me to say anything at
present. I can show them the notices, or that article alone. It's worth
all the rest put together, and then we can wait, and see if we hear
anything more from Godolphin. But now I don't want you to lose any more
time. You must write to him at once, and absolutely forbid him to touch
your play. Will you?"
Her husband returned from his wanderings of mind and body, and as he
dropped upon the lounge at her side, he said, gently, "No, I don't think
I'll write at all, Louise."
"Not write at all! Then you're going to let him tamper with that
beautiful work of yours?"
"I'm going to wait till I hear from him again. Godolphin is a good
fellow--"
"Oh!"
"And he won't be guilty of doing me injustice. Besides," and here
Maxwell broke off with a laugh that had some gayety in it, "he couldn't.
Godolphin is a fine actor, and he's going to be a great one, but his
gifts are not in the line of literature."
"I should think not!"
"He couldn't change the piece any more than if he couldn't read or
write. And if he could, when it came to touching it, I don't believe he
would, because the fact would remind him that it wasn't fair. He has to
realize things in the objective way before he can realize them at all.
That's the stage. If they can have an operator climbing a real
telegraph-pole to tap the wire and telegraph the girl he loves that he
is dead, so that she can marry his rich rival and go to Europe and
cultivate her gift for sculpture, they feel that they have got real
life."
Louise would not be amused, or laugh with her husband at this. "Then
what in the world does Godolphin mean?" she demanded.
"Why, being interpreted out of actor's parlance, he means that he wishes
he could talk the play over with me again and be persuaded that he is
wrong about it."
"I must say," Louise remarked, after a moment for mastering the
philosophy of this, "that you take it very strangely, Brice."
"I've thought it out," said Maxwell.
"And what are you going to do?"
"I am going to wait the turn of events. My faith in Godolphin is
unshaken--such as it is."
"And what is going to be our attitude in regard to it?"
"Attitude? With whom?"
"With our friends. Suppose they ask us about the play, and how it is
getting along. And my family?"
"I don't think it will be necessary to take any attitude. They can think
what they like. Let them wait the turn of events, too. If we can stand
it, they can."
"No, Brice," said his wife. "That won't do. We might be silently patient
ourselves, but if we left them to believe that it was all going well, we
should be living a lie."
"What an extraordinary idea!"
"I've told papa and mamma--we've both told them, though I did the
talking, you can say--that the play was a splendid success, and
Godolphin was going to give it seven or eight times a week; and now if
it's a failure--"
"It _isn't_ a failure!" Maxwell retorted, as if hurt by the notion.
"No matter! If he's only going to play it once a fortnight or so, and is
going to tinker it up to suit himself without saying by-your-leave to
you, I say we're occupying a false position, and that's what I mean by
living a lie."
Maxwell looked at her in that bewilderment which he was beginning to
feel at the contradictions of her character. She sometimes told outright
little fibs which astonished him; society fibs she did not mind at all;
but when it came to people's erroneously inferring this or that from her
actions, she had a yearning for the explicit truth that nothing else
could appease. He, on the contrary, was indifferent to what people
thought, if he had not openly misled them. Let them think this, or let
them think that; it was altogether their affair, and he did not hold
himself responsible; but he was ill at ease with any conventional lie on
his conscience. He hated to have his wife say to people, as he sometimes
overheard her saying, that he was out, when she knew he had run
upstairs with his writing to escape them; she contended that it was no
harm, since it deceived nobody.