"Something I've been at work on for a year, more or less." Maxwell sketched the plot of his play, and the manager seemed interested.
"Rather Ibsenish, isn't it?" he suggested at the end.
The time had passed with Maxwell when he wished to have this said of his play, not because he did not admire Ibsen, but because he preferred the recognition of the original quality of his work. "I don't know that it is, very. Perhaps—if one didn't like it."
"Oh, I don't know that I should dislike it for its Ibsenism. The time of that sort of thing may be coming. You never can be sure, in this business, when the time of anything is coming. I've always thought that a naturalized Ibsenism wouldn't be so bad for our stage. You don't want to be quite so bleak, you know, as the real Norwegian Ibsen."
"I've tried not to be very bleak, because I thought it wasn't in the scheme," said Maxwell.
"I don't understand that it ends well?"
"Unless you consider the implicated marriage of the young people a good ending. Haxard himself, of course, is past all surgery. But the thing isn't pessimistic, as I understand, for its doctrine is that harm comes only from doing wrong."
The manager laughed. "Oh, the average public would consider that very pessimistic. They want no harm to come even from doing wrong. They want the drama to get round it, somehow. If you could show that Divine Providence forgets wrong-doing altogether in certain cases, you would make the fortune of your piece. Come, why couldn't you try something of that kind? It would be the greatest comfort to all the sinners in front, for every last man of them—or woman—would think she was the one who was going to get away."
"I might come up to that, later," said Maxwell, willing to take the humorous view of the matter, if it would please the manager and smooth the way for the consideration of his work; but, more obscurely, he was impatient, and sorry to have found him in so philosophical a mood.
The manager was like the man of any other trade; he liked to talk of his business, and this morning he talked of it a long time, and to an effect that Maxwell must have found useful if he had not been so bent upon getting to his manuscript that he had no mind for generalities. At last the manager said, abruptly, "You want me to read your play?"