The Story of a Play | Page 5

think you could have it ready by the end of July?"

II.
They sat down and began to talk times and terms. They parted with a perfect understanding, and Maxwell was almost as much deceived as the actor himself. He went home full of gay hopes to begin work on the play at once, and to realize the character of Haxard with the personality of the actor in his eye. He heard nothing from him till the following spring, when the actor wrote with all the ardor of their parting moment, to say that he was coming East for the summer, and meant to settle down in the region of Boston somewhere, so that they could meet constantly and make the play what they both wanted. He said nothing to account for his long silence, and he seemed so little aware of it that Maxwell might very well have taken it for a simple fidelity to the understanding between them, too unconscious to protest itself. He answered discreetly, and said that he expected to pass the summer on the coast somewhere, but was not yet quite certain where he should be; that he had not forgotten their interview, and should still be glad to let him have the play if he fancied it. Between this time and the time when the actor appeared in person, he sent Maxwell several short notes, and two or three telegrams, sufficiently relevant but not very necessary, and when his engagement ended in the West, a fortnight after Maxwell was married, he telegraphed again and then came through without a stop from Denver, where the combination broke up, to Manchester-by-the-Sea. He joined the little colony of actors which summers there, and began to play tennis and golf, and to fish and to sail, almost without a moment's delay. He was not very fond of any of these things, and in fact he was fond only of one thing in the world, which was the stage; but he had a theory that they were recreation, and that if he went in for them he was building himself up for the season, which began early in September; he had appropriate costumes for all of them, and no one dressed the part more perfectly in tennis or golf or sailing or fishing. He believed that he ought to read up in the summer, too, and he had the very best of the recent books, in fiction and criticism, and the new drama. He had all of the translations of Ibsen, and several of M?terlinck's plays in French; he read a good deal in his books, and he lent them about in the hotel even more. Among the ladies there he had the repute of a very modern intellect, and of a person you would never take for an actor, from his tastes. What his tastes would have been if you had taken him for an actor, they could not have said, perhaps, but probably something vicious, and he had not a vice. He did not smoke, and he did not so much as drink tea or coffee; he had cocoa for breakfast, and at lunch a glass of milk, with water at dinner. He had a tint like the rose, and when he smiled or laughed, which was often, from a constitutional amiability and a perfect digestion, his teeth showed white and regular, and an innocent dimple punctured either cheek. His name was Godolphin, for he had instinctively felt that in choosing a name he might as well take a handsome one while he was about it, and that if he became Godolphin there was no reason why he should not become Launcelot, too. He did not put on these splendors from any foible, but from a professional sense of their value in the bills; and he was not personally characterized by them. As Launcelot Godolphin he was simpler than he would have been with a simpler name, and it was his ideal to be modest in everything that personally belonged to him. He studied an unprofessional walk, and a very colloquial tone in speaking. He was of course clean-shaven, but during the summer he let his mustache grow, though he was aware that he looked better without it. He was tall, and he carried himself with the vigor of his perfect health; but on the stage he looked less than his real size, like a perfectly proportioned edifice.
Godolphin wanted the Maxwells to come to his hotel in Manchester, but there were several reasons for their not doing this; the one Maxwell alleged was that they could not afford it. They had settled for the summer, when they got home after their brief wedding journey, at a much cheaper house in Magnolia, and the actor and the author were then