Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Why, good heavens! Godolphin’s seen me before, and besides, I’m not going to propose marriage to him,” he protested.

  “Oh, it’s much more serious than that!” she sighed. “Anybody would take you, dear, but it’s your play we want him to take — or take back.”

  When Maxwell reached the hotel, he did not find Godolphin there. He came back twice; then, as something in his manner seemed to give Maxwell authority, the clerk volunteered to say that he thought he might find the actor at the Players’ Club. In this hope he walked across to Gramercy Park. Godolphin had been dining there, and when he got Maxwell’s name, he came half way down the stairs to meet him. He put his arm round him to return to the library.

  There happened to be no one else there, and he made Maxwell sit down in an arm-chair fronting his own, and give an account of himself since they parted. He asked after Mrs. Maxwell’s health, and as far as Maxwell could make out he was sincere in the quest. He did not stop till he had asked, with the most winning and radiant smile, “And the play, what have you done with the play?”

  He was so buoyant that Maxwell could not be heavy about it, and he answered as gayly: “Oh, I fancy I have been waiting for you to come on and take it.”

  Godolphin did not become serious, but he became if possible more sincere. “Do you really think I could do anything with it?”

  “If you can’t nobody can.”

  “Why, that is very good of you, very good indeed, Maxwell. Do you know, I have been thinking about that play. You see, the trouble was with the Salome. The girl I had for the part was a thoroughly nice girl, but she hadn’t the weight for it. She did the comic touches charmingly, but when it came to the tragedy she wasn’t there. I never had any doubt that I could create the part of Haxard. It’s a noble part. It’s the greatest rôle on the modern stage. It went magnificently in Chicago — with the best people. You saw what the critics said of it?”

  “No; you didn’t send me the Chicago papers.” Maxwell did not say that all this was wholly different from what Godolphin had written him when he renounced the play. Yet he felt that Godolphin was honest then and was honest now. It was another point of view; that was all.

  “Ah, I thought I sent them. There was some adverse criticism of the play as a whole, but there was only one opinion of Haxard. And you haven’t done anything with the piece yet?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “And you think I could do Haxard? You still have faith in me?”

  “As much faith as I ever had,” said Maxwell; and Godolphin found nothing ambiguous in a thing certainly susceptible of two interpretations.

  “That is very good of you, Maxwell; very good.” He lifted his fine head and gazed absently a moment at the wall before him. “Well, then I will tell you what I will do, Mr. Maxwell; I will take the play.”

  “You will!”

  “Yes; that is if you think I can do the part.”

  “Why, of course!”

  “And if — if there could be some changes — very slight changes — made in the part of Salome. It needs subduing.” Godolphin said this as if he had never suggested anything of the kind before; as if the notion were newly evolved from his experience.

  “I will do what I can, Mr. Godolphin,” Maxwell promised, while he knitted his brows in perplexity “But I do think that the very strength of Salome gives relief to Haxard — gives him greater importance.”

  “It may be so, dramatically. But theatrically, it detracts from him. Haxard must be the central figure in the eye of the audience from first to last.”

  Maxwell mused for a moment of discouragement. They were always coming back to that; very likely Godolphin was right; but Maxwell did not know just how to subdue the character of Salome so as to make her less interesting. “Do you think that was what gave you bad houses in Chicago — the double interest, or the weakened interest in Haxard?”

  “I think so,” said Godolphin.

  “Were the houses bad — comparatively?”

  Godolphin took a little note-book out of his breast-pocket. “Here are my dates. I opened the first night, the tenth of November, with Haxard, but we papered the house thoroughly, and we made a good show to the public and the press. There were four hundred and fifty dollars in it. The next night there were three hundred; the next night, two eighty; Wednesday matinée, less than two hundred. That night we put on ‘Virginius,’ and played to eight hundred dollars; Thursday night, with the ‘Lady of Lyons,’ we had eleven hundred; Friday night, we gave the ‘Lady’ to twelve hundred; Saturday afternoon with the same piece, we took in eleven hundred and fifty; Saturday night, with ‘Ingomar,’ we had fifteen hundred dollars in the house, and a hundred people standing.” Maxwell listened with a drooping head; he was bitterly mortified. “But it was too late then,” said Godolphin, with a sigh, as he shut his hook.

  “Do you mean,” demanded Maxwell, “that my piece had crippled you so that — that—”

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Maxwell. I never meant to let you see the figures. But you asked me.”

  “Oh, you’re quite right,” said Maxwell. He thought how he had blamed the actor, in his impatience with him, for not playing his piece oftener — and called him fool and thought him knave for not doing it all the time, as Godolphin had so lavishly promised to do. He caught at a straw to save himself from sinking with shame. “But the houses, were they so bad everywhere?”

  Godolphin checked himself in a movement to take out his note-book again; Maxwell had given him such an imploring glance. “They were pretty poor everywhere. But it’s been a bad season with a good many people.”

  “No, no,” cried Maxwell. “You did very well with the other plays, Godolphin. Why do you want to touch the thing again? It’s been ruinous to you so far. Give it up! Come! I can’t let you have it!”

  Godolphin laughed, and all his beautiful white teeth shone. There was a rich, wholesome red in his smoothly shaven cheeks; he was a real pleasure to the eye. “I believe it would go better in New York. I’m not afraid to try it. You mustn’t take away my last chance of retrieving the season. Hair of the dog, you know. Have you seen Grayson lately?”

  “Yes, I saw him this afternoon. It was he that told me you were in town.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “And Godolphin, I’ve got it on my conscience, if you do take the play, to tell you that I offered it to Grayson, and he refused it. I think you ought to know that; it’s only fair; and for the matter of that, it’s been kicking round all the theatres in New York.”

  “Dear boy!” said Godolphin, caressingly, and with a smile that was like a benediction, “that doesn’t make the least difference.”

  “Well, I wished you to know,” said Maxwell, with a great load off his mind.

  “Yes, I understand that. Will you drink anything, or smoke anything? Or — I forgot! I hate all that, too. But you’ll join me in a cup of tea downstairs?” They descended to the smoking-room below, and Godolphin ordered the tea, and went on talking with a gay irrelevance till it came. Then he said, as he poured out the two cups of it: “The fact is, Grayson is going in with me, if I do your piece.” This was news to Maxwell, and yet he was somehow not surprised at it. “I dare say he told you?”

  “No, he didn’t give me any hint of it. He simply told me that you were in town, and where you were.”

  “Ah, that was like Grayson. Queer fish.”

  “But I’m mighty glad to know it. You can make it go, together, if any power on earth can do it; and if it fails,” Maxwell added, “I shall have the satisfaction of ruining some one else this time.”

  “Well, Grayson has made nearly as bad a mess of it as I have, this season,” said Godolphin. “He’s got to take off that thing he has going now, and it’s a question of what he shall put on. It will be an experiment with Haxard, but I believe it will be a successful experiment. I have every confidence in that play.” Godolphin looked up, his lips set convincingly, and with the air of a man who had stood unfalteringly by his opinio
n from the first. “Now, if you will excuse me, I will tell you what I think ought to be done to it.”

  “By all means,” said Maxwell; “I shall be glad to do anything you wish, or that I can.”

  Godolphin poured out a cloudy volume of suggestion, with nothing clear in it but the belief that the part of Haxard ought to be fattened. He recurred to all the structural impossibilities that he had ever desired, and there was hardly a point in the piece that he did not want changed. At the end he said: “But all these things are of no consequence, comparatively speaking. What we need is a woman who can take the part of Salome, and play it with all the feminine charm that you’ve given it, and yet keep it strictly in the background, or thoroughly subordinated to the interest of Haxard.”

  For all that Godolphin seemed to have learned from his experience with the play, Maxwell might well have thought they were still talking of it at Magnolia. It was a great relief to his prepossessions in the form of conclusions to have Grayson appear, with the air of looking for some one, and of finding the object of his search in Godolphin. He said he was glad to see Maxwell, too, and they went on talking of the play. From the talk of the other two Maxwell perceived that the purpose of doing his play had already gone far with them; but they still spoke of it as something that would be very good if the interest could be unified in it. Suddenly the manager broke out: “Look here, Godolphin! I have an idea! Why not frankly accept the inevitable! I don’t believe Mr. Maxwell can make the play different from what it is, structurally, and I don’t believe the character of Salome can be subdued or subordinated. Then why not play Salome as strongly as possible, and trust to her strength to enhance Haxard’s effect, instead of weakening it?”

  Godolphin smiled towards Maxwell: “That was your idea.”

  “Yes,” said Maxwell, and he kept himself from falling on Grayson’s neck for joy.

  “It might do,” the actor assented with smiling eagerness and tolerant superiority. “But whom could you get for such a Salome as that?”

  “Well, there’s only one woman for it,” said Grayson.

  “Yolande Havisham?”

  The name made Maxwell’s heart stop. He started forward to say that Mrs. Harley could not have the part, when the manager said: “And we couldn’t get her. Sterne has engaged her to star in his combination. By the way, he was looking for you to-day, Mr. Maxwell.”

  “I missed him,” answered Maxwell, with immense relief. “But I should not have let him have the piece while I had the slightest hope of your taking it.”

  Neither the manager nor the actor was perhaps greatly moved by his generous preference, though they both politely professed to be so. They went on to canvass the qualities and reputations of all the other actresses attainable, and always came back to Yolande Havisham, who was unattainable; Sterne would never give her up in the world, even if she were willing to give up the chance he was offering her. But she was the one woman who could do Salome.

  They decided that they must try to get Miss Pettrell, who had played the part with Godolphin, and who had done it with refinement, if not with any great force. When they had talked to this conclusion, Grayson proposed getting something to eat, and the others refused, but they went into the dining-room with him, where he showed Maxwell the tankards of the members hanging on the walls over their tables — Booth’s tankard, Salvini’s, Irving’s, Jefferson’s. He was surprised that Maxwell was not a member of the Players, and said that he must be; it was the only club for him, if he was going to write for the stage. He came out with them and pointed out several artists whose fame Maxwell knew, and half a dozen literary men, among them certain playwrights; they were all smoking, and the place was blue with the fumes of their cigars. The actors were coming in from the theatres for supper, and Maxwell found himself with his friends in a group with a charming old comedian who was telling brief, vivid little stories, and sketching character, with illustrations from his delightful art. He was not swagger, like some of the younger men who stood about with their bell-crowned hats on, before they went into supper; and two or three other elderly actors who sat round him and took their turn in the anecdote and mimicry looked, with their smooth-shaven faces, like old-fashioned ministers. Godolphin, who was like a youthful priest, began to tell stories, too; and he told very good ones admirably, but without appearing to feel their quality, though he laughed loudly at them with the rest.

  When Maxwell refused every one’s wish to have him eat or drink something, and said good-night, Grayson had already gone in to his supper, and Godolphin rose and smiled so fondly upon him that Maxwell felt as if the actor had blessed him. But he was less sure than in the beginning of the evening that the play was again in Godolphin’s hands; and he had to confirm himself from his wife’s acceptance of the facts in the belief that it was really so.

  XXI.

  Louise asked Maxwell, as soon as they had established their joint faith, whom Godolphin was going to get to play Salome, and he said that Grayson would like to re-engage Miss Pettrell, though he had a theory that the piece would be strengthened, and the effect of Haxard enhanced, if they could have a more powerful Salome.

  “Mr. Ray told me at lunch,” said Louise, impartially but with an air of relief, “that in all the love-making she was delightful; but when it came to the tragedy, she wasn’t there.”

  “Grayson seemed to think that if she could be properly rehearsed, she could be brought up to it,” Maxwell interposed.

  “Mr. Ray said she was certainly very refined, and her Salome was always a lady. And that is the essential thing,” Louise added, decisively. “I don’t at all agree with Mr. Grayson about having Salome played so powerfully. I think Mr. Godolphin is right.”

  “For Heaven’s sake don’t tell him so!” said Maxwell. “We have had trouble enough to get him under.”

  “Indeed, I shall tell him so! I think he ought to know how we feel.”

  “We?” repeated Maxwell.

  “Yes. What we want for Salome is sweetness and delicacy and refinement; for she has to do rather a bold thing, and yet keep herself a lady.”

  “Well, it may be too late to talk of Miss Pettrell now,” said Maxwell. “Your favorite Godolphin parted enemies with her.”

  “Oh, stage enemies! Mr. Grayson can get her, and he must.”

  “I’ll tell him what your orders are,” said Maxwell.

  The next day he saw the manager, but nothing had been done, and the affair seemed to be hanging fire again. In the evening, while he was talking it over with his wife in a discouragement which they could not shake off, a messenger came to him with a letter from the Argosy Theatre, which he tore nervously open.

  “What is it, dear?” asked his wife, tenderly. “Another disappointment?”

  “Not exactly,” he returned, with a husky voice, and after a moment of faltering he gave her the letter. It was from Grayson, and it was to the effect that he had seen Sterne, and that Sterne had agreed to a proposition he had made him, to take Maxwell’s play on the road, if it succeeded, and in view of this had agreed to let Yolande Havisham take the part of Salome.

  Godolphin was going to get all his old company together as far as possible, with the exception of Miss Pettrell, and there was to be little or no delay, because the actors had mostly got back to New York, and were ready to renew their engagements. That no time might be lost, Grayson asked Maxwell to come the next morning and read the piece to such of them as he could get together in the Argosy greenroom, and give them his sense of it.

  Louise handed him back the letter, and said, with dangerous calm: “You might save still more time by going down to Mrs. Harley’s apartment and reading it to her at once.” Maxwell was miserably silent, and she pursued: “May I ask whether you knew they were going to try to get her?”

  “No,” said Maxwell.

  “Was there anything said about her?”

  “Yes, there was, last night. But both Grayson and Godolphin regarded it as impossible to get her.”

  “Why
didn’t you tell me that they would like to get her?”

  “You knew it, already. And I thought, as they both had given up the hope of getting her, I wouldn’t mention the subject. It’s always been a very disagreeable one.”

  “Yes.” Louise sat quiet, and then she said: “What a long misery your play has been to me!”

  “You haven’t helped make it any great joy to me,” said Maxwell, bitterly.

  She began to weep, silently, and he stood looking down at her in utter wretchedness. “Well,” he said at last, “what shall I do about it?”

  Louise wiped her tears, and cleared up cold, as we say of the weather. She rose, as if to leave the room, and said, haughtily: “You shall do as you think best for yourself. You must let them have the play, and let them choose whom they think best for the part. But you can’t expect me to come to see it.”

  “Then that unsays all the rest. If you don’t come to see it, I sha’n’t, and I shall not let them have the piece. That is all. Louise,” he entreated, after these first desperate words, “can’t we grapple with this infernal nightmare, so as to get it into the light, somehow, and see what it really is? How can it matter to you who plays the part? Why do you care whether Miss Pettrell or Mrs. Harley does it?”

  “Why do you ask such a thing as that?” she returned, in the same hard frost. “You know where the idea of the character came from, and why it was sacred to me. Or perhaps you forget!”

  “No, I don’t forget. But try — can’t you try? — to specify just why you object to Mrs. Harley?”