X.

The weather grew rough early in September, and all at once, all in a

moment, as it were, the pretty watering-place lost its air of summer

gayety. The sky had an inner gray in its blue; the sea looked cold. A

few hardy bathers braved it out on select days in the surf, but they

were purple and red when they ran up to the bath-houses, and they came

out wrinkled, and hurried to their hotels, where there began to be a

smell of steam-heat and a snapping of radiators in the halls. The barges

went away laden to the stations, and came back empty, except at night,

when they brought over the few and fewer husbands whose wives were

staying down simply because they hated to go up and begin the social

life of the winter. The people who had thronged the grassy-bordered

paths of the village dwindled in number; the riding and driving on the

roads was less and less; the native life showed itself more in the

sparsity of the sojourners. The sweet fern in the open fields, and the

brakes and blackberry-vines among the bowlders, were blighted with the

cold wind; even the sea-weed swaying at the foot of the rocks seemed to

feel a sharper chill than that of the brine. A storm came, and strewed

the beach with kelp, and blew over half the bath-houses; and then the

hardiest lingerer ceased to talk of staying through October. There began

to be rumors at the Maxwells' hotel that it would close before the month

was out; some ladies pressed the landlord for the truth, and he

confessed that he expected to shut the house by the 25th. This spread

dismay; but certain of the boarders said they would go to the other

hotels, which were to keep open till October. The dependent cottages had

been mostly emptied before; those who remained in them, if they did not

go away, came into the hotel. The Maxwells themselves did this at last,

for the sake of the warmth and the human companionship around the

blazing hearth-fires in the parlors. They got a room with a stove in it,

so that he could write; and there was a pensive, fleeting coziness in it

all, with the shrinking numbers in the vast dining-room grouped at two

or three tables for dinner, and then gathered in the light of the

evening lamps over the evening papers. In these conditions there came,

if not friendship, an intensification of acquaintance, such as is

imaginable of a company of cultured castaways. Ladies who were not quite

socially certain of one another in town gossiped fearlessly together;

there was whist among the men; more than once it happened that a young

girl played or sang by request, and not, as so often happens where a

hotel is full, against the general desire. It came once to a wish that

Mr. Maxwell would read something from his play; but no one had the

courage to ask him. In society he was rather severe with women, and his

wife was not sorry for that; she made herself all the more approachable

because of it. But she discouraged the hope of anything like reading

from him; she even feigned that he might not like to do it without

consulting Mr. Godolphin, and if she did not live a lie concerning the

status of his play, she did not scruple to tell one, now and then.

That is, she would say it was going beyond their expectations, and this

was not so fabulous as it might seem, for their expectations were not so

high as they had been, and Godolphin was really playing the piece once

or twice a week. They heard no more from him by letter, for Maxwell had

decided that it would be better not to answer his missive from Midland;

but he was pretty faithful in sending the newspaper notices whenever he

played, and so they knew that he had not abandoned it. They did not know

whether he had carried out his threat of overhauling it; and Maxwell

chose to remain in ignorance of the fact till Godolphin himself should

speak again. Unless he demanded the play back he was really helpless,

and he was not ready to do that, for he hoped that when the actor

brought it on to New York he could talk with him about it, and come to

some understanding. He had not his wife's belief in the perfection of

the piece; it might very well have proved weak in places, and after his

first indignation at the notion of Godolphin's revising it, he was

willing to do what he could to meet his wishes. He did not so much care

what shape it had in these remote theatres of the West; the real test

was New York, and there it should appear only as he wished.

It was a comfort to his wife when he took this stand, and she vowed him

to keep it; she would have made him go down on his knees and hold up his

right hand, which was her notion of the way an oath was taken in court,

but she did not think he would do it, and he might refuse to seal any

vow at all if she urged it.

In the meanwhile she was not without other consolations. At her

insistence he wrote to the newspaper which had printed the Ibsen crank's

article on the play, and said how much pleasure it had given him, and

begged his thanks to the author. They got a very pretty letter back from

him, adding some praises of the piece which he said he had kept out of

print because he did not want to seem too gushing about it; and he

ventured some wary censures of the acting, which he said he had

preferred not to criticise openly, since the drama was far more

important to him than the theatre. He believed that Mr. Godolphin had a

perfect conception of the part of Haxard, and a thorough respect for the

piece, but his training had been altogether in the romantic school; he

was working out of it, but he was not able at once to simplify himself.

This was in fact the fault of the whole company. The girl who did Salome

had moments of charming reality, but she too suffered from her

tradition, and the rest went from bad to worse. He thought that they

would all do better as they familiarized themselves with the piece, and

he deeply regretted that Mr. Godolphin had been able to give it only

once in Midland.

At this Mrs. Maxwell's wounds inwardly bled afresh, and she came little

short of bedewing the kind letter with her tears. She made Maxwell

answer it at once, and she would not let him deprecate the writer's

worship of him as the first American dramatist to attempt something in

the spirit of the great modern masters abroad. She contended that it

would be as false to refuse this tribute as to accept one that was not

due him, and there could be no doubt but it was fully and richly

merited. The critic wrote again in response to Maxwell, and they

exchanged three or four letters.

What was even more to Louise was the admirable behavior of her father

when she went to eat humble-pie before him. He laughed at the notion of

Godolphin's meddling with the play, and scolded her for not taking her

husband's view of the case, which he found entirely reasonable, and the

only reasonable view of it. He argued that Godolphin simply chose to

assert in that way a claim to joint authorship, which he had all along

probably believed he had, and he approved of Maxwell's letting him have

his head in the matter, so far as the West was concerned. If he

attempted to give it with any alterations of his own in the East, there

would be time enough to stop him. Louise seized the occasion to confirm

herself in her faith that her father admired Maxwell's genius as much as

she did herself; and she tried to remember just the words he used in

praising it, so that she could repeat them to Maxwell. She also

committed to memory his declaration that the very fact of Godolphin's

playing the piece every now and then was proof positive that he would be

very reluctant to part with it, if it came to that. This seemed to her

very important, and she could hardly put up with Maxwell's sardonic

doubt of it.

Before they left Magnolia there came a letter from Godolphin himself,

wholly different in tone from his earlier letter. He said nothing now of

overhauling the piece, which he felt was gradually making its way. He

was playing it at various one-night stands in the Northwest, preparatory

to bringing it to Chicago and putting it on for a week, and he asked if

Maxwell could not come out and see it there. He believed they were all

gradually getting down to it, and the author's presence at the

rehearsals would be invaluable. He felt more and more that they had a

fortune in it, and it only needed careful working to realize a bonanza.

He renewed his promises, in view of his success so far, to play it

exclusively if the triumph could be clinched by a week's run in such a

place as Chicago. He wrote from Grand Rapids, and asked Maxwell to reply

to him at Oshkosh.

"Tell him you'll come, of course," said his wife.

Maxwell shook his head. "He doesn't mean this any more than he meant to

revise the thing himself. He probably finds that he can't do that, and

wants me to do it. But if I did it he might take it off after the first

night in Chicago if the notices were unfavorable."

"But they won't be," she argued. "I _know_ they won't."

"I should simply break him up from the form he's got into, if I went to

the rehearsals. He must keep on doing it in his own way till he comes to

New York."

"But think of the effect it will have in New York if you should happen

to make it go in Chicago."

"It won't have the slightest effect. When he brings it East, it will

have to make its way just as if it had never been played anywhere

before."

A bright thought occurred to Louise. "Then tell him that if he will

bring it on to Boston you will superintend all the rehearsals. And I

will go with you to them."

Maxwell only laughed at this. "Boston wouldn't serve any better than

Chicago, as far as New York is concerned. We shall have to build a

success from the ground up there, if we get one. It might run a whole

winter in Boston, and then we should probably begin with half a house in

New York, or a third. The only advantage of trying it anywhere before,

is that the actors will be warm in their parts. Besides, do you suppose

Godolphin could get a theatre in Boston out of the order of his

engagement there next spring?"

"Why not?"

"Simply because every night at every house is taken six months

beforehand."

"Who would ever have dreamt," said Louise, ruefully, "that simply

writing a play would involve any one in all these exasperating business

details."

"Nobody can get free of business," Maxwell returned.

"Then I will tell you," she brightened up to say. "Why not sell him the

piece outright, and wash your hands of it?"

"Because he wouldn't buy it outright, and if I washed my hands of it he

could do what he pleased with it. If he couldn't tinker it up himself he

could hire some one else to do it, and that would be worse yet."

"Well, then, the only thing for us to do is to go on to New York, and

wait there till Godolphin comes. I suppose papa and mamma would like to

have us stay through October with them in Boston, but I don't see much

sense in that, and I don't choose to have the air of living on them. I

want to present an unbroken front of independence from the beginning, as

far as inquiring friends are concerned; and in New York we shall be so

lost to sight that nobody will know how we are living. You can work at

your new play while we're waiting, and we can feel that the onset in the

battle of life has sounded."

Maxwell laughed, as she meant him, at the mock heroics of her phrase,

and she pulled off his hat, and rubbed his hair round on his skull in

exultation at having arrived at some clear understanding. "I wouldn't

have hair like silk," she jeered.

"And I wouldn't have hair like corn-silk," he returned. "At least not on

my own head."

"Yes, it _is_ coarse. And it's yours quite as much as mine," she said,

thoughtfully. "We _do_ belong to each other utterly, don't we? I never

thought of it in that light before. And now our life has gone into your

work, already! I can't tell you, Brice, how sweet it is to think of that

love-business being our own! I shall be so proud of it on the stage! But

as long as we live no one but ourselves must know anything about it. Do

you suppose they will?" she asked, in sudden dismay.