Part 8 (1/2)

Maxwell frowned, as he always did when he became earnest, and said with a little sigh, ”He must be pa.s.sive, negative, as I said; you must simply feel that he is _good_, and that she will be safe with him, after the worst has happened to her father. And I must keep the interest of the love-business light, without letting it become farcical. I must get charm, all I can, into her character. You won't mind my getting the charm all from you?”

”Oh, Brice, what sweet things you say to me! I wish everybody could know how divine you are.”

”The women would all be making love to me, and I should hate that. One is quite enough.”

”_Am_ I quite enough?” she entreated.

”You have been up to the present time.”

”And do you think I shall always be?” She slid from her chair to her knees on the floor beside him, where he sat at his desk, and put her arms round him.

He did not seem to know it. ”Look here, Louise, I have got to connect this love-business with the main action of the play, somehow. It won't do simply to have it an episode. How would it do to have Atland know all the time that Haxard has killed Greenshaw, and be keeping it from Salome, while she is betraying her love for him?”

”Wouldn't that be rather tawdry?” Louise let her arms slip down to her side, and looked up at him, as she knelt.

”Yes, it would,” he owned.

He looked very unhappy about it, and she rose to her feet, as if to give it more serious attention. ”Brice, I want your play to be thoroughly honest and true from beginning to end, and not to have any sort of catchpenny effectivism in it. You have planned it so n.o.bly that I can't bear to have you lower the standard the least bit; and I think the honest and true way is to let the love-business be a pleasant fact in the case, as it might very well be. Those things _do_ keep going on in life alongside of the greatest misery, the greatest unhappiness.”

”Well,” said Maxwell, ”I guess you are right about the love-business.

I'll treat it frankly for what it is, a fact in the case. That will be the right way, and that will be the strong way. It will be like life. I don't know that you are bound to relate things strictly to each other in art, any more than they are related in life. There are all sorts of incidents and interests playing round every great event that seem to have no more relation to it than the rings of Saturn have to Saturn.

They form the atmosphere of it. If I can let Haxard's wretchedness be seen at last through the atmosphere of his daughter's happiness!”

”Yes,” she said, ”that will be quite enough.” She knew that they had talked up to the moment when he could best begin to work, and now left him to himself.

Within a week he got the rehabilitated love-business in place, and the play ready to show to G.o.dolphin again. He had managed to hold the actor off in the meantime, but now he returned in full force, with suggestions and misgivings which had first to be cleared away before he could give a clear mind to what Maxwell had done. Then Maxwell could see that he was somehow disappointed, for he began to talk as if there were no understanding between them for his taking the play. He praised it warmly, but he said that it would be hard to find a woman to do the part of Salome.

”That is the princ.i.p.al part in the piece now, you know,” he added.

”I don't see how,” Maxwell protested. ”It seems to me that her character throws Haxard's into greater relief than before, and gives it more prominence.”

”You've made the love-business too strong, I think. I supposed you would have something light and graceful to occupy the house in the suspense between the points in Haxard's case. If I were to do him, I should be afraid that people would come back from Salome to him with more or less of an effort, I don't say they would, but that's the way it strikes me now; perhaps some one else would look at it quite differently.”

”Then, as it is, you don't want it?”

”I don't say that. But it seems to me that Salome is the princ.i.p.al figure now. I think that's a mistake.”

”If it's a fact, it's a mistake. I don't want to have it so,” said Maxwell, and he made such effort as he could to swallow his disgust.

G.o.dolphin asked, after a while, ”In that last scene between her and her father, and in fact in all the scenes between them, couldn't you give more of the strong speeches to him? She's a great creation now, but isn't she too great for Atland?”

”I've kept Atland under, purposely, because the part is necessarily a negative one, and because I didn't want him to compete with Haxard at all.”

”Yes, that is all right; but as it is, _she_ competes with Haxard.”

After G.o.dolphin had gone, Louise came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his ma.n.u.script. He looked up at her with a lack-l.u.s.tre eye, and said, ”G.o.dolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, she will take all the attention from him.”

Louise appeared to reflect. ”Well, isn't there something in that?”

”Good heavens! I should think you were going to play Haxard, too!”