Part 11 (1/2)
”Oh!”
”And he won't be guilty of doing me injustice. Besides,” and here Maxwell broke off with a laugh that had some gayety in it, ”he couldn't.
G.o.dolphin is a fine actor, and he's going to be a great one, but his gifts are not in the line of literature.”
”I should think not!”
”He couldn't change the piece any more than if he couldn't read or write. And if he could, when it came to touching it, I don't believe he would, because the fact would remind him that it wasn't fair. He has to realize things in the objective way before he can realize them at all.
That's the stage. If they can have an operator climbing a real telegraph-pole to tap the wire and telegraph the girl he loves that he is dead, so that she can marry his rich rival and go to Europe and cultivate her gift for sculpture, they feel that they have got real life.”
Louise would not be amused, or laugh with her husband at this. ”Then what in the world does G.o.dolphin mean?” she demanded.
”Why, being interpreted out of actor's parlance, he means that he wishes he could talk the play over with me again and be persuaded that he is wrong about it.”
”I must say,” Louise remarked, after a moment for mastering the philosophy of this, ”that you take it very strangely, Brice.”
”I've thought it out,” said Maxwell.
”And what are you going to do?”
”I am going to wait the turn of events. My faith in G.o.dolphin is unshaken--such as it is.”
”And what is going to be our att.i.tude in regard to it?”
”Att.i.tude? With whom?”
”With our friends. Suppose they ask us about the play, and how it is getting along. And my family?”
”I don't think it will be necessary to take any att.i.tude. They can think what they like. Let them wait the turn of events, too. If we can stand it, they can.”
”No, Brice,” said his wife. ”That won't do. We might be silently patient ourselves, but if we left them to believe that it was all going well, we should be living a lie.”
”What an extraordinary idea!”
”I've told papa and mamma--we've both told them, though I did the talking, you can say--that the play was a splendid success, and G.o.dolphin was going to give it seven or eight times a week; and now if it's a failure--”
”It _isn't_ a failure!” Maxwell retorted, as if hurt by the notion.
”No matter! If he's only going to play it once a fortnight or so, and is going to tinker it up to suit himself without saying by-your-leave to you, I say we're occupying a false position, and that's what I mean by living a lie.”
Maxwell looked at her in that bewilderment which he was beginning to feel at the contradictions of her character. She sometimes told outright little fibs which astonished him; society fibs she did not mind at all; but when it came to people's erroneously inferring this or that from her actions, she had a yearning for the explicit truth that nothing else could appease. He, on the contrary, was indifferent to what people thought, if he had not openly misled them. Let them think this, or let them think that; it was altogether their affair, and he did not hold himself responsible; but he was ill at ease with any conventional lie on his conscience. He hated to have his wife say to people, as he sometimes overheard her saying, that he was out, when she knew he had run upstairs with his writing to escape them; she contended that it was no harm, since it deceived n.o.body.
Now he said, ”Aren't you rather unnecessarily complex?”
”No, I'm not. And I shall tell papa as soon as I see him just how the case stands. Why, it would be dreadful if we let him believe it was all going well, and perhaps tell others that it was, and we knew all the time that it wasn't. He would hate that, and he wouldn't like us for letting him.”
”Hadn't you better give the thing a chance to go right? There hasn't been time yet.”
”No, dearest, I feel that since I've bragged so to papa, I ought to eat humble-pie before him as soon as possible.”