The Story of a Play | Page 9

time," said Mrs. Maxwell.
"Well, I don't know," returned Maxwell. "If Godolphin should happen to imagine doing without them he would go all lengths."
"Or if you imagined it and let him suppose he had. He never imagines anything of himself."
"No, he doesn't. And yet how perfectly he grasps the notion of the thing when it is done! It is very different from literature, acting is. And yet literature is only the representation of life."
"Well, acting is the representation of life at second-hand, then, and it ought to be willing to subordinate itself. What I can't bear in Godolphin is his setting himself up to be your artistic equal. He is no more an artist than the canvas is that the artist paints a picture on."
Maxwell laughed. "Don't tell him so; he won't like it."
"I will tell him so some day, whether he likes it or not."
"No, you mustn't; for it isn't true. He's just as much an artist in his way as I am in mine, and, so far as the public is concerned, he has given more proofs."
"Oh, his public!"
"It won't do to despise any public, even the theatre-going public." Maxwell added the last words with a faint sigh.
"It's always second-rate," said his wife, passionately. "Third-rate, fourth-rate! Godolphin was quite right about that. I wish you were writing a novel, Brice, instead of a play. Then you would be really addressing refined people."
"It kills me to have you say that, Louise."
"Well, I won't. But don't you see, then, that you must stand up for art all the more unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that will refine the theatre-going public, or create a new one? That is why I can't endure to have you even seem to give way to Godolphin."
"You must stand it so long as I only seem to do it. He's far more manageable than I expected him to be. It's quite pathetic how docile he is, how perfectly ductile! But it won't do to browbeat him when he comes over here a little out of shape. He's a curious creature," Maxwell went on with a relish in Godolphin, as material, which his wife suffered with difficulty. "I wonder if he could ever be got into a play. If he could he would like nothing better than to play himself, and he would do it to perfection; only it would be a comic part, and Godolphin's mind is for the serious drama." Maxwell laughed. "All his artistic instincts are in solution, and it needs something like a chemical agent to precipitate them, or to give them any positive character. He's like a woman!"
"Thank you," said Mrs. Maxwell.
"Oh, I mean all sorts of good things by that. He has the sensitiveness of a woman."
"Is that a good thing? Then I suppose he was so piqued by what I said about his skirt-dance that he will renounce you."
"Oh, I don't believe he will. I managed to smooth him up after you went out."
Mrs. Maxwell sighed. "Yes, you are very patient, and if you are patient, you are good. You are better than I am."
"I don't see the sequence exactly," said Maxwell.
They were both silent, and she seemed to have followed his devious thought in the same muse, for when he spoke again she did not reproach him with an equal inconsequence. "I don't know whether I could write a novel, and, besides, I think the drama is the supreme literary form. It stands on its own feet. It doesn't have to be pushed along, or pulled along, as the novel does."
"Yes, of course, it's grand. That's the reason I can't bear to have you do anything unworthy of it."
"I know, Louise," he said, tenderly, and then again they did not speak for a little while.
He emerged from their silence, at a point apparently very remote, with a sigh. "If I could only know just what the feelings of a murderer really were for five minutes, I could out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in that play. But I shall have to trust to the fall of man, and the general depravity of human nature, I suppose. After all, there's the potentiality of every kind of man in every man. If you've known what it is to hate, you've known what it is to kill."
"I felt once as if I had killed you," she said, and then he knew that she was thinking of a phase of their love which had a perpetual fascination for them both. "But I never hated you."
"No; I did the hating," he returned, lightly.
"Ah, don't say so, dear," she entreated, half in earnest.
"Well, have it all to yourself, then," he said; and he rose and went indoors, and lighted the lamp, and she saw him get out the manuscript of his play, while she sat still, recalling the