The Story of a Play | Page 5

small humor, mellowly, but hollowly.
"No, no! We must have the love-affair end happily. You can manage
that somehow. Have you got the play roughed out at all?"
"Not in manuscript. I've only got it roughed out in my mind."
"Well, I want that play. That's settled. I can't do anything with it this
winter, but I should like to open with it next fall. Do you 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
Mæterlinck'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