Part 6 (1/2)
”Yes, for a poor creature of experience and knowledge, he will do very well. But he doesn't compare with the girl.”
”I hadn't so good a model.”
She hugged him for saying that. ”You pay the prettiest compliments in the world, even if you don't pick up handkerchiefs.”
Their joy in the triumph of his art was unalloyed by the hope of anything outside of it, of any sort of honor or profit from it, though they could not keep the thought of these out very long.
”Yes,” she said, after one of the delicious silences that divided their moments of exaltation. ”There won't be any trouble about getting your play taken, _now_.”
After supper they strolled down for the sunset and twilight on the rocks. There, as the dusk deepened, she put her wrap over his shoulders as well as her own, and pulled it together in front of them both. ”I am not going to have you taking cold, now, when you need all your health for your work more than ever. That love-business seems to me perfect just as it is, but I know you won't be satisfied till you have put the very last touch on it.”
”Yes, I see all sorts of things I can do to it. Louise!”
”Well, what?”
”Don't you see that the love-business is the play now? I have got to throw away all the sin-interest, all the Haxard situation, or keep them together as they are, and write a new play altogether, with the light, semi-comic motive of the love-business for the motive of the whole. It's out of tone with Haxard's tragedy, and it can't be brought into keeping with it. The sin-interest will kill the love-business, or the love-business will kill the sin-interest. Don't you see?”
”Why, of course! You must make this light affair now, and when it's opened the way for you with the public you can bring out the old play,”
she a.s.sented, and it instantly became the old play in both their minds; it became almost the superannuated play. They talked it over in this new aspect, and then they went back to the cottage, to look at the new play as it shadowed itself forth in the sketch Maxwell had made. He read the sketch to her again, and they saw how it could be easily expanded to three or four acts, and made to fill the stage and the evening.
”And it will be the most original thing that ever was!” she exulted.
”I don't think there's been anything exactly like it before,” he allowed.
From time to time they spoke to each other in the night, and she asked if he were asleep, and he if she were asleep, and then they began to talk of the play again. Towards morning they drowsed a little, but at their time of life the loss of a night's sleep means nothing, and they rose as glad as they had lain down.
”I'll tell you, Brice,” she said, the first thing, ”you must have it that they have been engaged, and you can call the play 'The Second Chapter,' or something more alliterative. Don't you think that would be a good name?”
”It would make the fortune of any play,” he answered, ”let alone a play of such merit as this.”
”Well, then, sha'n't you always say that I did something towards it?”
”I shall say you did everything towards it. You originated the idea, and named it, and I simply acted as your amanuensis, as it were, and wrote it out mostly from your dictation. It shall go on the bills, 'The Second Chapter,' a demi-semi-serious comedy by Mrs. Louise Hilary Maxwell--in letters half a foot high--and by B. Maxwell--in very small lower case, that can't be read without the aid of a microscope.”
”Oh, Brice! If you make him talk that way to her, it will be perfectly killing.”
”I dare say the audience will find it so.”
They were so late at breakfast, and sat there so long talking, for Maxwell said he did not feel like going to work quite so promptly as usual, that it was quite ten o'clock when they came out of the dining-room, and then they stayed awhile gossiping with people on the piazza of the hotel before they went back to their cottage. When they came round the corner in sight of it they saw the figure of a man pacing back and forth on the veranda, with his head dropped forward, and swinging a stick thoughtfully behind him. Louise pulled Maxwell convulsively to a halt, for the man was G.o.dolphin.
”What do you suppose it means?” she gasped.
”I suppose he will tell us,” said Maxwell, dryly. ”Don't stop and stare at him. He has got eyes all over him, and he's clothed with self-consciousness as with a garment, and I don't choose to let him think that his being here is the least important or surprising.”
”No, of course not. That would be ridiculous,” and she would have liked to pause for a moment's wors.h.i.+p of her husband's sense, which appeared to her almost as great as his genius. But it seemed to her an inordinately long time before they reached the cottage-gate, and G.o.dolphin came half-way down the walk to meet them.
He bowed seriously to her, and then said, with dignity, to her husband, ”Mr. Maxwell, I feel that I owe you an apology--or an explanation, rather--for the abrupt note I sent you yesterday. I wish to a.s.sure you that I had no feeling in the matter, and that I am quite sincere in my offer of my services.”