The Story of a Play | Page 2

and left, and joking and laughing with
everybody--a very small joke makes a very large laugh on occasions
like that, and I shall try to give some notion of the comparative size of
the joke and the laugh--and receiving congratulations, that give a
notion of what the dinner is for, and the kind of man he is, and how
universally respected and all that, till everybody has come; and then the
doors between the parlor and the dining-room are rolled back, and
every man goes out with his own wife, or his sister, or his cousin, or his
aunt, if he hasn't got a wife; I saw them do that once, at a big
commercial dinner I reported."
"Ah, I was afraid it was to be exclusively a man's dinner!" the actor
interrupted.
"Oh, no," Maxwell answered, with a shade of vexation. "That wouldn't
do. You couldn't have a scene, or, at least, not a whole act, without
women. Of course I understand that. Even if you could keep the
attention of the audience without them, through the importance of the
intrigue, still you would have to have them for the sake of the

stage-picture. The drama is literature that makes a double appeal; it
appeals to the sense as well as the intellect, and the stage is half the
time merely a picture-frame. I had to think that out pretty early."
The actor nodded. "You couldn't too soon."
"It wouldn't do to have nothing but a crowd of black coats and white
shirt-fronts on the stage through a whole act. You want color, and a lot
of it, and you can only get it, in our day, with the women's costumes.
Besides, they give movement and life. After the dinner begins they're
supposed to sparkle all through. I've imagined the table set down the
depth of the stage, with Haxard and the nominal host at the head,
fronting the audience, and the people talking back and forth on each
side, and I let the ladies do most of the talking, of course. I mean to
have the dinner served through all the courses, and the waiters coming
and going; the events will have to be hurried, and the eating merely
sketched, at times; but I should keep the thing in pretty perfect form,
till it came to the speaking. I shall have to cut that a good deal, but I
think I can give a pretty fair notion of how they butter the object of
their hospitality on such occasions; I've seen it and heard it done often
enough. I think, perhaps, I shall have the dinner an act by itself. There
are only four acts in the play now, and I'll have to make five. I want to
give Haxard's speech as fully as possible, for that's what I study the
man in, and make my confidences to the audience about him. I shall
make him butter himself, but all with the utmost humility, and brag of
everything that he disclaims the merit of."
The actor rose and reached across the table for the sugar. "That's a
capital notion. That's new. That would make a hit--the speech would."
"Do you think so?" returned the author. "I thought so. I believe that in
the hands of a good actor the speech could be made tremendously
telling. I wouldn't have a word to give away his character, his nature,
except the words of his own mouth, but I would have them do it so
effectually that when he gets through the audience will be fairly 'onto
him,' don't you know."
"Magnificent!" said the actor, pouring himself some more cocoa.

Maxwell continued: "In the third act--for I see that I shall have to make
it the third now--the scene will be in Haxard's library, after he gets
home from the complimentary dinner, at midnight, and he finds a man
waiting for him there--a man that the butler tells him has called several
times, and was so anxious to see him that Mrs. Haxard has given orders
to let him wait. Oh, I ought to go back a little, and explain--"
"Yes, do!" The actor stirred his cocoa with mounting interest. "Yes,
don't leave anything out."
"I merely meant to say that in the talk in the scene, or the act, before the
dinner--I shall have two acts, but with no wait between them; just let
down the curtain and raise it again--it will come out that Haxard is not
a Bostonian by birth, but has come here since the war from the
Southwest, where he went, from Maine, to grow up with the country,
and is understood to have been a sort of quiescent Union man there; it's
thought to be rather a fine thing the way he's taken on Boston, and
shown