Maxwell went to a manager whom he had once met in Boston, where they had
been apparently acceptable to each other in a long talk they had about
the drama. The manager showed himself a shrewd and rather remorseless
man of business in all that he said of the theatre, but he spoke as
generously and reverently of the drama as Maxwell felt, and they parted
with a laughing promise to do something for it yet. In fact, if it had
not been for the chances that threw him into Godolphin's hand
afterwards, he would have gone to this manager with his play in the
first place, and he went to him now, as soon as he was out of
Godolphin's hands, not merely because he was the only manager he knew in
the city, but because he believed in him as much as his rather sceptical
temper permitted him to believe in any one, and because he believed he
would give him at least an intelligent audience.
The man in the box-office, where he stood in the glow of an electric
light at midday, recovered himself from the disappointment he suffered
when Maxwell asked for the manager instead of a seat for the night's
performance. He owned that the manager was in his room, but said he was
very much engaged, and he was hardly moved from this conviction by
Maxwell's urgence that he should send in his card; perhaps something in
Maxwell's tone and face as of authority prevailed with him; perhaps it
was the title of the Boston _Abstract_, which Maxwell wrote under his
name, to recall himself better to the manager's memory. The answer was a
good while getting back; people came in and bought tickets and went
away, while Maxwell hung about the vestibule of the theatre and studied
the bill of the play which formed its present attraction, but at last
the man in the box-office put his face sidewise to the semi-circular
opening above the glass-framed plan of seats and, after he had
identified Maxwell, said, "Mr. Grayson would like to see you." At the
same time the swinging doors of the theatre opened, and a young man came
out, to whom the other added, indicating Maxwell, "This is the
gentleman;" and the young man held the door open for him to pass in, and
then went swiftly before him into the theatre, and led the way around
the orchestra circle to a little door that opened in the wall beside
one of the boxes. There was a rehearsal going on in the glare of some
grouped incandescent bulbs on the stage, and people moving about in top
hats and bonnets and other every-day outside gear, which Maxwell lost
sight of in his progress through the wings and past a rough brick wall
before he arrived at another door down some winding stairs in the depths
of the building. His guide knocked at it, and when an answering voice
said, "Come in!" he left Maxwell to go in alone. The manager had risen
from his chair at his table, and stood, holding out his hand, with a
smile of kindly enough welcome. He said, "I've just made you out, Mr.
Maxwell. Do you come as a friendly interviewer, or as a deadly
dramatist!"
"As both or as neither, whichever you like," said Maxwell, and he gladly
took the manager's hand, and then took the chair which he cleared of
some prompt-books for him to sit down in.
"I hadn't forgotten the pleasant talk I had with you in Boston, you
see," the manager began again, "but I had forgotten whom I had it with."
"I can't say I had even done that," Maxwell answered, and this seemed to
please the manager.
"Well, that counts you one," he said. "You noticed that we have put on
'Engaged?' We've made a failure of the piece we began with; it's several
pieces now. _Couldn't_ you do something like 'Engaged?'"
"I wish I could! But I'm afraid Gilbert is the only man living who can
do anything like 'Engaged.' My hand is too heavy for that kind."
"Well, the heavy hand is not so bad if it hits hard enough," said the
manager, who had a face of lively intelligence and an air of wary
kindliness. He looked fifty, but this was partly the effect of overwork.
There was something of the Jew, something of the Irishman, in his
visage; but he was neither; he was a Yankee, from Maine, with a Boston
training in his business. "What have you got?" he asked, for Maxwell's
play was evident.
"Something I've been at work on for a year, more or less." Maxwell
sketched the plot of his play, and the manager seemed interested.
"Rather Ibsenish, isn't it?" he suggested at the end.
The time had passed with Maxwell when he wished to have this said of his
play, not because he did not admire Ibsen, but because he preferred the
recognition of the original quality of his work. "I don't know that it
is, very. Perhaps--if one didn't like it."
"Oh, I don't know that I should dislike it for its Ibsenism. The time
of that sort of thing may be coming. You never can be sure, in this
business, when the time of anything is coming. I've always thought that
a naturalized Ibsenism wouldn't be so bad for our stage. You don't want
to be quite so bleak, you know, as the real Norwegian Ibsen."
"I've tried not to be very bleak, because I thought it wasn't in the
scheme," said Maxwell.
"I don't understand that it ends well?"
"Unless you consider the implicated marriage of the young people a good
ending. Haxard himself, of course, is past all surgery. But the thing
isn't pessimistic, as I understand, for its doctrine is that harm comes
only from doing wrong."
The manager laughed. "Oh, the average public would consider that _very_
pessimistic. They want no harm to come even from doing wrong. They want
the drama to get round it, somehow. If you could show that Divine
Providence forgets wrong-doing altogether in certain cases, you would
make the fortune of your piece. Come, why couldn't you try something of
that kind? It would be the greatest comfort to all the sinners in front,
for every last man of them--or woman--would think she was the one who
was going to get away."
"I might come up to that, later," said Maxwell, willing to take the
humorous view of the matter, if it would please the manager and smooth
the way for the consideration of his work; but, more obscurely, he was
impatient, and sorry to have found him in so philosophical a mood.
The manager was like the man of any other trade; he liked to talk of his
business, and this morning he talked of it a long time, and to an effect
that Maxwell must have found useful if he had not been so bent upon
getting to his manuscript that he had no mind for generalities. At last
the manager said, abruptly, "You want me to read your play?"
"Very much," Maxwell answered, and he promptly put the packet he had
brought into the manager's extended hand.
He not only took it, but he untied it, and even glanced at the first few
pages. "All right," he said, "I'll read it, and let you hear from me as
soon as I can. Your address--oh, it's on the wrapper, here. By-the-way,
why shouldn't you lunch with me? We'll go over to the Players' Club."
Maxwell flushed with eager joy; then he faltered.
"I should like to do it immensely. But I'm afraid--I'm afraid Mrs.
Maxwell will be waiting for me."
"Oh, all right; some other time," answered the manager; and then Maxwell
was vexed that he had offered any excuse, for he thought it would have
been very pleasant and perhaps useful for him to lunch at the Players'.
But the manager did not urge him. He only said, as he led the way to the
stage-door, "I didn't know there was a Mrs. Maxwell."
"She's happened since we met," said Maxwell, blushing with fond pride.
"We're such a small family that we like to get together at lunch," he
added.
"Oh, yes, I can understand that stage of it," said the manager.
"By-the-way, are you still connected with the _Abstract_? I noticed the
name on your card."
"Not quite in the old way. But," and with the words a purpose formed
itself in Maxwell's mind, "they've asked me to write their New York
letter."
"Well, drop in now and then. I may have something for you." The manager
shook hands with him cordially, and Maxwell opened the door and found
himself in the street.
He was so little conscious of the transit homeward that he seemed to
find himself the next moment with Louise in their little parlor. He
remembered afterwards that there was something strange in her manner
towards him at first, but, before he could feel presently cognizant of
it, this wore off in the interest of what he had to tell.
"The sum of it all," he ended his account of the interview with the
manager, "is that he's taken the thing to read, and that he's to let me
hear from him when he's read it. When that will be nobody knows, and I
should be the last to ask. But he seemed interested in my sketch of it,
and he had an intelligence about it that was consoling. And it was a
great comfort, after Godolphin, and Godolphin's pyrotechnics, to have
him take it in a hard, business way. He made no sort of promises, and he
held out no sort of hopes; he didn't commit himself in any sort of way,
and he can't break his word, for he hasn't given it. I wish, now, that I
had never let Godolphin have the play back after he first renounced it;
I should have saved a great deal of time and wear and tear of feelings.
Yes, if I had taken your advice then--"
At this generous tribute to her wisdom, all that was reluctant ceased
from Louise's manner and behavior. She put her arm around his neck and
protested. "No, no! I can't let you say that, Brice! You were right
about that, as you are about everything. If you hadn't had this
experience with Godolphin, you wouldn't have known how to appreciate Mr.
Grayson's reception of you, and you might have been unreasonable. I can
see now that it's all been for the best, and that we needed just this
discipline to prepare us for prosperity. But I guess Godolphin will
wish, when he hears that Mr. Grayson has taken your piece, and is going
to bring it out at the Argosy, here--"
"Oh, good heavens! Do give those poor chickens a chance to get out of
the shell this time, my dear!"
"Well, I know it vexes you, and I know it's silly; but still I feel sure
that Mr. Grayson will take it. You don't mind that, do you?"
"Not if you don't say it. I want you to realize that the chances are
altogether against it. He was civil, because I think he rather liked me
personally--"
"Of _course_ he did!"
"Oh!"
"Well, never mind. Personally--"
"And I don't suppose it did me any harm with him to suppose that I still
had a newspaper connection. I put Boston _Abstract_ on my card--for
purposes of identification, as the editors say--because I was writing
for it when I met him in Boston."
"Oh, well, as long as you're not writing for it now, I don't care. I
want you to devote yourself entirely to the drama, Brice."
"Yes, that's all very well. But I think I shall do Ricker's letters for
him this winter at least. I was thinking of it on the way down. It'll be
work, but it'll be money, too, and if I have something coming in I
sha'n't feel as if I were ruined every time my play gets back from a
manager."
"Mr. Grayson will take it!"
"Now, Louise, if you say that, you will simply drive me to despair, for
I shall know how you will feel when he doesn't--"
"No, I shall not feel so; and you will see. But if you don't let me hope
for you--"
"You know I can't stand hoping. The only safe way is to look for the
worst, and if anything better happens it is so much pure gain. If we
hadn't been so eager to pin our faith to Godolphin--"
"How much better off should we have been? What have we lost by it?" she
challenged him.
He broke off with a laugh. "We have lost the pins. Well, hope away! But,
remember, you take the whole responsibility." Maxwell pulled out his
watch. "Isn't lunch nearly ready? This prosperity is making me hungry,
and it seems about a year since breakfast."
"I'll see what's keeping it," said Louise, and she ran out to the
kitchen with a sudden fear in her heart. She knew that she had meant to
countermand her order for the fillet and mushrooms, and she thought that
she had forgotten to order anything else for lunch. She found the cook
just serving it up, because such a dish as that took more time than an
ordinary lunch, and the things had come late. Louise said, Yes, she
understood that; and went back to Maxwell, whom she found walking up and
down the room in a famine very uncommon for him. She felt the motherly
joy a woman has in being able to appease the hunger of the man she
loves, and now she was glad that she had not postponed the fillet till
dinner as she had thought of doing. Everything was turning out so
entirely for the best that she was beginning to experience some revival
of an ancestral faith in Providence in a heart individually agnostic,
and she was piously happy when Maxwell said at sight of the lunch,
"Isn't this rather prophetic? If it isn't that, it's telepathic. I
sha'n't regret now that I didn't go with Grayson to lunch at the
Players' Club."
"Did he ask you to do that?"
Maxwell nodded with his mouth full.
A sudden misgiving smote her. "Oh, Brice, you ought to have gone! Why
didn't you go?"
"It must have been a deep subconsciousness of the fillet and mushrooms.
Or perhaps I didn't quite like to think of your lunching alone."
"Oh, you dear, faithful little soul!" she cried. The tears came into her
eyes, and she ran round the table to kiss him several times on the top
of his head.
He kept on eating as well as he could, and when she got back to her
place, "Of course, it would have been a good thing for me to go to the
Players'," he teased, "for it would have pleased Grayson, and I should
probably have met some other actors and managers there, and made
interest with them provisionally for my play, if he shouldn't happen to
want it."
"Oh, I know it," she moaned. "You have ruined yourself for me. I'm not
worth it. No, I'm not! Now, I want you to promise, dearest, that you'll
never mind me again, but lunch or dine, or breakfast, or sup whenever
anybody asks you?"
"Well, I can't promise all that, quite."
"I mean, when the play is at stake."
"Oh, in that case, yes."
"What in the world did you say to Mr. Grayson?"
"Very much what I have said to you: that I hated to leave you to lunch
alone here."
"Oh, didn't he think it very silly?" she entreated, fondly. "Don't you
think he'll laugh at you for it!"
"Very likely. But he won't like me the less for it. Men are glad of
marital devotion in other men; they feel that it acts as a sort of
dispensation for them."
"You oughtn't to waste those things on me," she said, humbly. "You ought
to keep them for your plays."
"Oh, they're not wasted, exactly. I can use them over again. I can say
much better things than that with a pen in my hand."
She hardly heard him. She felt a keen remorse for something she had
meant to do and to say when he came home. Now she put it far from her;
she thought she ought not to keep even an extinct suspicion in her heart
against him, and she asked, "Brice, did you know that woman was living
in this house?"
"What woman?"
Louise was ashamed to say anything about the smouldering eyes. "That
woman on the bathing-beach at Magnolia--the one I met the other day."