Part 12 (1/2)
”Tell him you'll come, of course,” said his wife.
Maxwell shook his head. ”He doesn't mean this any more than he meant to revise the thing himself. He probably finds that he can't do that, and wants me to do it. But if I did it he might take it off after the first night in Chicago if the notices were unfavorable.”
”But they won't be,” she argued. ”I _know_ they won't.”
”I should simply break him up from the form he's got into, if I went to the rehearsals. He must keep on doing it in his own way till he comes to New York.”
”But think of the effect it will have in New York if you should happen to make it go in Chicago.”
”It won't have the slightest effect. When he brings it East, it will have to make its way just as if it had never been played anywhere before.”
A bright thought occurred to Louise. ”Then tell him that if he will bring it on to Boston you will superintend all the rehearsals. And I will go with you to them.”
Maxwell only laughed at this. ”Boston wouldn't serve any better than Chicago, as far as New York is concerned. We shall have to build a success from the ground up there, if we get one. It might run a whole winter in Boston, and then we should probably begin with half a house in New York, or a third. The only advantage of trying it anywhere before, is that the actors will be warm in their parts. Besides, do you suppose G.o.dolphin could get a theatre in Boston out of the order of his engagement there next spring?”
”Why not?”
”Simply because every night at every house is taken six months beforehand.”
”Who would ever have dreamt,” said Louise, ruefully, ”that simply writing a play would involve any one in all these exasperating business details.”
”n.o.body can get free of business,” Maxwell returned.
”Then I will tell you,” she brightened up to say. ”Why not sell him the piece outright, and wash your hands of it?”
”Because he wouldn't buy it outright, and if I washed my hands of it he could do what he pleased with it. If he couldn't tinker it up himself he could hire some one else to do it, and that would be worse yet.”
”Well, then, the only thing for us to do is to go on to New York, and wait there till G.o.dolphin comes. I suppose papa and mamma would like to have us stay through October with them in Boston, but I don't see much sense in that, and I don't choose to have the air of living on them. I want to present an unbroken front of independence from the beginning, as far as inquiring friends are concerned; and in New York we shall be so lost to sight that n.o.body will know how we are living. You can work at your new play while we're waiting, and we can feel that the onset in the battle of life has sounded.”
Maxwell laughed, as she meant him, at the mock heroics of her phrase, and she pulled off his hat, and rubbed his hair round on his skull in exultation at having arrived at some clear understanding. ”I wouldn't have hair like silk,” she jeered.
”And I wouldn't have hair like corn-silk,” he returned. ”At least not on my own head.”
”Yes, it _is_ coa.r.s.e. And it's yours quite as much as mine,” she said, thoughtfully. ”We _do_ belong to each other utterly, don't we? I never thought of it in that light before. And now our life has gone into your work, already! I can't tell you, Brice, how sweet it is to think of that love-business being our own! I shall be so proud of it on the stage! But as long as we live no one but ourselves must know anything about it. Do you suppose they will?” she asked, in sudden dismay.
He smiled. ”Should you care?”
She reflected a moment. ”No!” she shouted, boldly. ”What difference?”
”G.o.dolphin would pay any sum for the privilege of using the fact as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. If he could put it into Pinney's hands, and give him _carte blanche_, to work in all the romance he liked--”
”Brice!” she shrieked.
”Well, we needn't give it away, and if _we_ don't, n.o.body else will.”
”No, and we must always keep it sacredly secret. Promise me one thing!”
”Twenty!”