The Story of a Play / A Novel

by William Dean Howells

"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 so much local patriotism and public spirit and philanthropy, in the way he's brought himself forward here. People don't know a great deal about his past, but it's understood to have been very creditable. I shall have to recast that part a little, and lengthen the delay before he comes on, and let the guests, or the hosts—for they're giving him the dinner—have time to talk about him, and free their minds in honor of him behind his back, before they begin to his face."

"Never bring your principal character on at once," the actor interjected.

"No," Maxwell consented. "I see that wouldn't have done." He went on: "Well, as soon as Haxard turns up the light in his library, the man rises from the lounge where he has been sitting, and Haxard sees who it is. He sees that it is a man whom he used to be in partnership with in Texas, where they were engaged in some very shady transactions. They get caught in one of them—I haven't decided yet just what sort of transaction it was, and I shall have to look that point up; I'll get some law-student to help me—and Haxard, who wasn't Haxard then, pulls out and leaves his partner to suffer the penalty. Haxard comes North, and after trying it in various places, he settles here, and marries, and starts in business and prospers on, while the other fellow takes their joint punishment in the penitentiary. By the way, it just occurs to me! I think I'll have it that Haxard has killed a man, a man whom he has injured; he doesn't mean to kill him, but he has to; and this fellow is knowing to the homicide, but has been prevented from getting onto Haxard's trail by the consequences of his own misdemeanors; that will probably be the best way out. Of course it all has to transpire, all these facts, in the course of the dialogue which the two men have with each other in Haxard's library, after a good deal of fighting away from the inevitable identification on Haxard's part. After the first few preliminary words with the butler at the door before he goes in to find the other man—his name is Greenshaw—"

"That's a good name, too," said the actor.