“There’s an old crater up among them hills,” the miner vouchsafed, when the last slice of bacon and bread had disappeared, “and some sulfur springs. There’s another fortune, maybe, if you could get at the sulfur.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Brainard said. “How do you go?”
And so, while the old man turned back to look after their horses, which they had left tethered far below, Brainard clambered on among the sharp peaks toward the snow beds that lay in drifts along the ragged edge of the mountains. He passed the circular depression of which the miner had spoken, and noticed the yellow crust upon the earth; but for a long time he kept on upward. He wanted to be alone, to think over a certain daring idea that had seized hold of him while the miner was showing him the neglected riches of the Melody mine. Perhaps the keen mountain air, blowing dry and fresh from the desert below, had its part in stirring his brain to unwonted excitement. Perhaps it was the reaction from his disappointment of the evening before in not finding his young mistress waiting to receive her fortune. However that might be, his idea kept teasing him, expanding all the time in reasonableness and urgency.
Why should he not take up Krutzmacht’s purpose—use part of the money he had obtained from the bankers in developing this great property? While he was prosecuting the search for the young girl, which he foresaw might take much time, might indeed end in failure, this work would give a new incentive, a new meaning to his long adventure.
“Give it all to Melody!” the old adventurer had whispered with his last breath. Yes, all to Melody in one form or another, as soon as possible. He would dive deeper than the letter of Krutzmacht’s word—he would do as the old man might have done himself, if his life had gone on. He would fulfill his inmost purposes.
He had humor enough to smile at his own daring. “One Edgar Brainard,” as he had described himself to Krutzmacht, unsuccessful playwright, scrub of the city streets, to run a mine! But why not? For that old self, that “one Edgar Brainard,” buffeted, discouraged human chip on the muddy surface of the stream of life, had completely disappeared, never again to exist, he earnestly hoped. These eventful weeks of vital living, constant and quick decision, of prompt, forceful execution, of vivid feeling and yet calm self-reliance, had made a totally other man of him—one whose possibility he had never suspected, but one whom he liked and respected an infinite deal more than that old, familiar “one Edgar Brainard.”
Thanks to Krutzmacht and the elusive Melody, he could never again become the timid, inefficient struggler earning his precarious crust of bread by humiliating tasks, dreaming futile dreams and putting them into equally futile words. He had tasted of life, action, power, and he found them sweet. He would not resign them! Thus Krutzmacht had bestowed on the chance stranger who had befriended him in his last need more than those millions he was leaving to Melody.
His rapid thoughts swept over these last weeks. Everything in them, it seemed, had prepared the way for this decision, had fitted him to dare, to take the responsibility. If it had confronted him a month before, when he and Melody had passed each other unknown, he would not have been ready; if it had come a fortnight before while he was in Paris, he would not have risen to the opportunity. It had come Now, at the fertile moment. . . . His thin, weak body had filled out, just as his harassed face had taken on firm lines of real manhood. He was no longer afraid of life, nor of any of its chances. He would act for this girl as he would act for himself; he would be her trustee, her faithful servant, and the guardian of her property until such time as it could be given into her hands. And the idle millions should set about their proper task of breeding more millions.
At this point in his thinking he gave a boyish whoop that even caught the ear of the old miner below and made him look up. Brainard waved his hat and laughed from the glorious fun of it all,—the risk and the joy of life,—living at last! . . .
As was characteristic of the new man, having projected an idea, committed himself to a decision, his mind at once bent quickly to filling in the details of the pattern in action. He should go to-morrow across the mountains to look for his old friend Gunnison, to learn what more he could, if anything, about the girl’s sudden departure. Gunnison might also give him information of value concerning the mine. Then he should take the evening train for San Francisco, and there first of all he would look up the friendly reporter Farson, to enlist his aid in the search for the girl. In this he must exercise great caution, because San Francisco might not yet be a perfectly salubrious climate for him, nor did he wish to stir cupidinous desires in the breasts of possible claimants to Krutzmacht’s fortune. What he should do afterwards was not clear as yet, but he thought that Farson might be helpful in suggesting the best methods for prosecuting such a search as was before him. Hollinger, if he had returned to the States, might also be useful. He would willingly confide in the “fight-trust magnate.” In any case he should try to find the grizzled miner from Union,—just why, he could not say. But he felt that the old man who had searched fortune in the earth for thirty years might be useful in “handling the Melody proposition.” He would run across him either at the Palace in San Francisco or, if not there, could stop at Winnemucca on his way east and make the journey to Union. He had the man’s name written down somewhere. And then he must call for that trunk in Chicago, in which he hoped to find the title deeds to the mine and other interesting documents. There was much to be done, and to be done speedily. Yet he felt no haste, no nervous anxiety to be adoing. Time for thought was needed also. . . .
So he climbed on rapidly toward the glittering banks of snow until he reached a small plateau gleaming like a jeweled robe in the sunlight. Beneath him lay the little valley about the shaft, scarred by the ore pits with their abandoned rock piles. Far down, the old miner was leading the horses from the shed where they had been tied. Above beckoned the peaks, reaching into the steely heavens like naked icicles. A broad-winged bird circled majestically, tracing its dark shadow on the gleaming snow field, as with a brush.
Not a sound upon the earth nor in the sky! A broad, deep silence! The clear light, the lofty peaks pointing heavenward—nothing more, except his own beating heart!
The man stood there in the immense silence, his soul poised like the hawk above his petty world, surveying in one swift rush of thought that little self of his past, with its small ambitions and desires. Up to this level the road that Krutzmacht had opened for him had led.
He gazed steadily upward into the wonderful sea of blue sky, deeper than the blue depth of the Gulf Stream, above the snowy peaks, beyond the world, into his future. What he saw there was a vision of will, man’s will. He was all will—a vitalized mass of glorious energy to conceive, to create, to do!
He laughed in the cloudless amplitude of snow and blue heavens, laughed at the small self he had left behind, writing play pieces, making tiny scenes for a tiny stage. The world was the great stage upon which he would present his masterpiece! Krutzmacht had played on that stage, and Brainard had helped him to put up a rousing melodrama at the close. His own play thereon should be something different.
Krutzmacht’s will had made the fortune; his will should take it, if need be, reshape it, and speed it to some more perfect end than the old buccaneer of the West had ever dreamed of. Where Krutzmacht’s will had ended, his will would start.
There rose, too, a vision of art as he had felt it in Paris at dawn, beneath the towers of the old cathedral. And sweetly the two united in his fecund mind. He laughed softly in the joy of this vision, and his laugh tinkled strangely among the silent mountain peaks. Throwing up his head to the dazzling rampart of snow that broke the wavering azure lines of the heavens, he exclaimed:
“That, too, will come true! That will be! We’ll make life our stage, and write the play in life, as God writes upon the snows up here. That is creation!”
Brainard could see the old man below holding the horses by their bridles and shielding his eyes with his free hand, as he searched for his companion. And faintly, very thinly, through the valley came the old man’s hail.
Brainard gave a last, lingering look to the immensity above, beyond, around him—the place where his great idea had been born. Then he turned his steps downward, the light of distant thoughts in his eyes, a smile upon his lips which said:
“I have seen. Now to do!”
“You will meet me again before long,” he said to the old miner, when they parted. “And then we’ll make the Melody sing!”
PART II: MELODY
I
“So that’s why I missed you in San Francisco four years ago!” Brainard exclaimed. “Because you wanted to write a play!”
He threw back his head and laughed as if the idea was peculiarly ironical.
“Yes!” the ex-reporter Farson replied, with an echo of Brainard’s irony. “You see I had always meant to be a playwright and took to reporting to make a living. When you came along and gave me that five hundred for helping you crack the safe and get away with the contents, I chucked the newspaper job and moved on to Broadway—been here ever since.”
“Well, how has it gone?”
Farson’s face wrinkled comically.
“I haven’t quite persuaded Broadway that I am another Sardou. In fact the only creation of mine that ever saw the footlights is a melodrama, founded on our adventures that evening in Frisco. And I sold that for fifty dollars to a western syndicate. I have never heard from it since. I need hardly say it does not satisfy my aspirations.”
“So you went back to reporting?”
“Of a kind,” the young man replied with a sudden attempt to become important. “I am on the staff of Bunker’s Magazine.”
“And they sent you here to interview me!” Brainard laughed again.
“Bunker’s thought that the public would be interested in your rapid rise into the limelight, and as I had some experience in the great West they sent me to extract from you the crude ore of a personal document article,” Farson explained with engaging impudence, glancing appreciatively at his subject.
The interview happened to take place in the parlor of a suite in the same large hotel on Fifth Avenue from which almost exactly four years before Brainard had slunk away with the manuscript of his rejected play in his pocket, and had thence wended his way disconsolately homeward to meet the fate that whirled him on during four years of exciting adventure. Numerous trunks and other impedimenta cluttered the room, indicating that the miner, who in the words of Farson “had succeeded in climbing into the limelight” had but just arrived from Arizona and did not yet know that he needed a man servant.
Through the open windows came the roar of the traffic on the avenue, so long unfamiliar to the miner’s ears. He rose from the table, where over a bottle of wine he had been telling the magazine man something about the wonderful Melody mine, and gazed out of the window into the seething stream of humanity below. This unexpected meeting with the reporter of the Despatch who had helped him in his first exploit with Krutzmacht’s fortune had brought to his memory sharply the great contrast between his last appearance in New York and the present.
His face, now adorned by a mustache and a short brown beard, which the hotel barber had not yet had an opportunity to trim to an artistic point, was reddened and roughened by exposure to the fierce Arizona sun. His hands were large and coarse, as if they had handled every instrument but the pen. His whole person had filled out solidly, and he walked with the awkward gait of one accustomed to the saddle rather than the motor car. But what occupied his mind at this moment was the curious consciousness of that other self, so vastly different, so inconceivably discouraged and weak, whom he could see down below on the pavement, dragging his thin body through the April mist. Whole worlds separated the two! . . .
The magazine man disturbed his revery by a question.
“You went out there after copper in the first place, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Brainard said, turning with a twinkle in his eyes, “I went after copper and got sulfur instead! That often happens in life.”
“You went out there as a rank greenhorn,” Farson translated, “and come back as the chief representative on this earth of his satanic majesty,—the Sulfur King.”
“The Sulfur King!” Brainard repeated with an appreciative chuckle. “That’s good. Are you going to write me up for Bunker’s as the Sulfur King?”
“You had rather have me do that than play you up as a successful safe-breaker?”
Farson looked at the miner with admiration mixed with a little envy, perhaps, as one to whom splendid chances of living had come. From the professional point of view Brainard would make excellent material for eulogy as type of “the man who does things,” so ardently beloved by magazine editors.
“Do whatever you like with me,” Brainard remarked slowly. “You couldn’t make it too wonderful,—nor explain it all. . . . Do you know that four years ago, just at nightfall like this, I stood out there in the crowd, wondering how I could best spend my last quarter for a meal? I never dreamed I should be looking down from this window some day!”
He chuckled quietly to himself over the picture. The magazine man pricked his ears for “the human interest note,” divining a life story, and hinted broadly:
“What really put you into mining, after you left Frisco?”
“How did I get to Arizona? Oh, that’s a long story. I went by way of Mexico and Paris and New York. Help yourself to another cigar.”
After a few moments he added in a less joking tone,—“I went out there in search of an heir to Krutzmacht’s property. I didn’t find her—instead I found the Melody mine!”
“I’d like to hear that story,” Farson said quickly, with the keen scent of the old newspaper man.
Brainard shook his head.
“Not to-day—perhaps sometime. . . . But not for publication—that! I’ve given you one good newspaper scoop four years ago, and this thing for your magazine. But the other I’ll keep for myself.”
Farson’s face expressed a momentary disappointment. But he merely remarked:
“I’ve often wondered about you ever since I helped you aboard the ferry with that big bag. Got it still?”
“Yes, what’s left of it.” . . .
Frank as Brainard had become under the influences of his new life and much as he was attracted by the careless, good-humored young newspaper man, he could not bring himself to tell him the intimate details of his story, which in his feelings was so much more concerned with his unknown mistress than with himself. Ever since that evening when he had stood in the abandoned house above the Arizona desert, surrounded by the mute evidences of the girl’s existence, he had prosecuted vigorously the search for the elusive Melody, using every means known to him—and all in vain. There had been no clew whatever that led beyond the railroad tracks. Neither in San Francisco, where he had looked first, nor in New Orleans, where he had gone in the hope of finding some trace of the girl’s mother, nor in New York, where the old German was well known, could he learn anything definite of Krutzmacht’s family affairs. There were many who had known the business man, but as sometimes happens the business man had admitted no one into his personal confidence.
After the first few months of this search, when forced finally to fall back upon the usual devices of advertising and employing detectives, Brainard returned to Monument,—the spot where he had found and lost his one substantial proof of the girl’s reality,—and there he had taken up the project he had conceived of working the abandoned mine until some heir should be found. Into this project he had thrown himself with all the ardor of his newly awakened temperament and found in the struggles that ensued a relief from the aimless hunting for the lost girl. As time passed with no results from all the agencies he had used in his search, his mind became less occupied with the vision of his unknown mistress, and his life concentrated itself upon this accidental undertaking,—all the more as it proved unexpectedly difficult and failure frequently threatened. His pride and good faith as well as his new manhood were challenged in the struggle, which had only quite recently resulted in abounding triumph. Now that he was free to look about him again and direct his energy into a new channel, the thought of Melody returned to haunt his mind. One of his purposes in coming to New York was to start afresh the hopeless search. An idea came to him as he talked with Farson about the mine. Perhaps publicity of his success with the Melody mine in Arizona might attract the attention of the one most concerned. With this thought in mind he said to the magazine man, turning away from the window:
“I’ll tell you all you want to know about the mine—you can put it in your story.”
He gave him a lively account of the vicissitudes of the great Melody mine at Monument, Arizona, and his experiences with it.
“So,” Farson summed up at the end, “the copper gave out?”
Brainard laughed.
“I should say not! There are millions of tons of copper in those hills.”
“Then what was the trouble?”
“It cost too much to mine and smelt it at present prices. After pouring a good bit of money into the thing, I found that out. The sulfur looked promising, and we went in for that; but that, too, came near taking our last dollar before it made good.”
He told the magazine man how he had discovered traces of sulfur in an old crater among the hills, had made tests, and had found that the mineral existed in great quantities and almost pure. But when they went after it, new difficulties were encountered—quicksands. One method after another was tried and found useless, until the experts he had summoned were ready to give up the job. Then, almost in despair, Brainard had experimented with a novel method of extracting the sulfur by pumping steam through one pipe into the earth and taking the solution out by another. It was successful.
“It’s a steady yellow stream out of the bowels of the earth—a stream of gold!”
The young man sighed with envy.
“Better than gold,” Brainard continued. “A thousand per cent better! I wouldn’t dare tell you how much money that yellow stream pours into my pockets every twenty-four hours.”
Farson’s eyes gleamed, and he looked covetously at the bulging pockets of the miner’s loose coat.
“So you made good,” he said; “and of course you came up here to New York, straight off, to spend your money.”
“That’s it,” Brainard assented with a laugh.
“It’s a good place to enjoy oneself. What are you going to do?”
Brainard looked quizzically at the ex-reporter. “Get some clothes, first. I need ’em, don’t you think?”
Farson candidly admitted that he did.
“But,” he added, “you don’t seem the sort to blow your money the usual way—chorus-girls, or country places, or yachts, or stock market, or—”
Brainard shook his head vigorously at each item of gratification mentioned.
“What are you going to do with that yellow stream?”
“I have my idea,” Brainard admitted.
“That’s what I want to know.”
“I’ll tell you, and you can make another article about it, if you like.”
The young man leaned forward, all eager attention. Brainard smoked thoughtfully, then began.
“You’ve written plays—got one in your pocket this minute, probably.”
“You don’t mean you are going to write plays!” Farson said disgustedly.
“No, my boy—not now. I tried it once. But I hope to make it possible for you and other young men to write their plays and get them put on the stage. I’m going to build theaters, here and in other cities. I shall found a national society of dramatic art. That’s the way I’m going to blow in the money from the sulfur stream as long as it flows!”
“Whew!” The magazine man whistled dubiously. “Another uplift movement for the poor drama?”
“Let me explain,” Brainard continued.
With much more eagerness than he had shown over his exploits with copper and sulfur, he sketched the story of his great idea, which had first taken possession of him that last night of his week’s stay in Paris, while he wandered through the silent streets. He told of the vision that had come to him in the snowy heights of the Arizona mountains, in the silence of earth and sky—a vision of beautiful art that might be created into reality by the aid of the wealth which he could give it. He had set himself earnestly to the task of getting the necessary gold out of the ground, and all through these years, in the vigils of his lonely nights in the mining camp, he had nursed his vision.
He poured out his heart freely to Farson, because he was young and a would-be dramatist, and could understand; and Farson, listening to the story of this idea, became warmed with the enthusiasm of the other and forgot his habitual journalistic skepticism.
“It’s big!” he murmured.
“And now it will no longer be just an idea. It’s to become fact! I have the money—at least, it’s mine for the present.” Brainard corrected himself. “One can do something with half a million or so a year.”
“Half a million a year!” the young man gasped.
“More or less—at present rather more, I should say,” Brainard admitted carelessly. “Depends on the market for crude sulfur, you understand. It’s pretty strong just now. And there’s the copper to fall back upon, when the price of copper goes up. There’s no need to worry about the money.”
Just here they were interrupted by a boy with a card.
“Show the gentleman up!” Brainard exclaimed, glancing a second time at the card.
The magazine man rose reluctantly to go, saying:
“Another time, if you would be good enough to tell me more about your plans—”
“Don’t go!” Brainard interrupted warmly. “If you are interested, stay, and you will hear more about my great idea. This gentleman has come from Chicago by appointment to talk it over.”
“Thanks!”
“Why don’t you drop that magazine job?” Brainard suggested abruptly. “I shall need a secretary. I think you would be the right sort. Why not begin now?”
“Done!” the journalist exclaimed boyishly, and they shook hands. This was a millionaire after his own heart, who did things casually at the drop of the hat with the most surprising ease.
“You’ll have a better chance to write your plays,” Brainard remarked genially.
It pleased him to think that here, on the spot where he had experienced his last defeat, he was able to play the part of good fortune to youth.
“Somehow,” said Farson enthusiastically, “I feel it’s going to be like a play all the time with you!”
“The chap that’s coming up to see me,” explained Brainard, “is an actor and a manager in a small way. He calls himself Ferris MacNaughton—an odd genius, a Scotsman who has played all over the world. I ran across him in a small Arizona town, doing Shakespeare to the mining camps, and doing it well, too. He seemed interested in the idea, and so, when I got ready to pull out, I wired him to meet me here. He hasn’t lost any time,” he added as the door swung open.
II
It was a curious figure that entered the room. The Scotsman was short, thick-set, about fifty years old, with a round, bald head fringed with white hair. He was dressed with an evident attempt at youthful smartness, and dangled a small cane. Between his thick lips was the end of a black cigar. His large face, portentous brows, and mild blue eyes looked as if he had started as Falstaff and ended as a Scottish Hamlet.
MacNaughton bowed profoundly, and said in deep, measured tones, that were reminiscent of blank verse:
“Good afternoon, gentlemen! I received your telegram yesterday, Mr. Brainard. It found me at an unoccupied moment in my career, and I am happy to place myself at your disposal.”
Farson grinned. He judged from his acquaintance with Broadway that the unoccupied moments in the Scotsman’s career had been frequent of late years, and that he had spent a good many of them in the outer offices of theatrical managers. He wondered how his new employer, who seemed wide awake enough to capture one fortune and make a second, had come to mix himself up with this seedy actor.
“Good!” Brainard exclaimed genially, shaking MacNaughton’s hand. “This is my secretary, Edward Farson—Ferris MacNaughton. Let us get to work at once and see how we can spend the better part of half a million a year on the theater!”
At the casual mention of this large sum of money, the old actor did a bit of unpremeditated acting, displaying astonishment so genuine that it set the secretary laughing. He recovered himself, and remarked in his Shakespearian tones:
“One might do a good deal on even less!”
The three sat down about the table, and lighted fresh cigars. Brainard presently drew a small, much worn note book from an inner pocket, and began turning its leaves, reading thoughtfully from time to time:
“Item first—create an organization that will build and support theaters in the chief cities of the United States—to be called in every instance ‘The People’s Theater.’
“Good!” the actor assented loudly. “I have always maintained that the drama came originally from the ranks of the common people, and should be the chief means of their education.”
The magazine man made a wry face. The “People” according to Broadway were visitors from out of town who would pay two fifty apiece for the “show”—any show. Brainard read on:
“Item second—no boxes and no reserved seats in the People’s Theaters. Highest price of seats, one dollar, and free matinees on Saturdays.”
“You will need a million!” Farson murmured.
“I used to find it so hard to get a good seat when I wanted to go to the theater,” Brainard explained. “Even when I had scooped together the price, for some extraordinary occasion, I couldn’t get nearer than the twelfth row. Every theater was always sold up to that row, no matter how early in the day I got to the box office. I have an invention in mind that will register every seat sold or given out, and show it on a diagram, to put an end to the usual practice. But let us get to more important matters!”
He read out different items:
“Exchange of the different companies in the organization—a college of dramatic art—cafés in the theaters—libraries of dramatic literature—open-air theaters in the suburbs and city parks, etc.”
“But,” the actor inquired sententiously, “what do you propose to give the people in your theaters?”
“Plays, of course!” Brainard replied. “All sorts of plays that are worth while, old and new!”
“Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Hauptmann,” the actor remarked voluptuously. “Sophocles, Molière—”
“Hold on!” Farson put in. “Where will you get the people to sit through that?”
“My dear young sir,” the actor retorted paternally, “the people love the best. I have played the classics in every State in the Union to enthusiastic audiences,—sometimes small.”
“You bet!” Farson murmured.
“But always enthusiastic!”
“We must have modern plays, too,” Brainard added.
“But all the modern plays are copyrighted, and the dramatists are under contract to Einstein & Flukeheimer, and their brethren.”
“Then we’ll make our own playwrights,” Brainard replied placidly. “Here’s one!” He tapped the younger man fraternally on the knee.
The secretary subsided.
“And the companies?” the Scotsman inquired. “They make the piece!”
“The very best actors, of course,” Brainard agreed enthusiastically. “We’ll pay the highest salaries and give long contracts and pensions—that’s all in the scheme. You will help us to organize the parent company, Mac. I’ll give you a free hand.”
The old actor closed his eyes in a happy dream. He saw himself at last as a metropolitan impresario, dealing magnificently with the “talent.”
Brainard read on, but before he had finished the note book—which contained a remarkable mixture of detail and aspiration—dinner came up. They talked as they ate, and they talked afterward as they sipped their coffee and smoked. They became heady with enthusiasm, for Brainard’s imperturbable optimism and faith in his idea were like drafts of Arizona air, intoxicating to those who lived in lower altitudes.
The actor, mellowed by good food and good wine,—and more by the confidence this new Croesus seemed to have in him,—discoursed almost tearfully of aspirations and ambitions suppressed through long years that were now within the possibility of realization. He had always wished to devote his life to Ibsen and the great classics, he declared, but the box office had prevented the fulfillment of his artistic ideals.
“I’m the box office now,” Brainard laughed, “and I am here to fulfill ideals!” He picked up the note book again. “I had forgotten the college of actors, for both sexes, which we must run in connection with the enterprise. It will give free tuition, of course, and there will be scholarships for promising pupils. You will have to look after that, too, Mac.”
“Haven’t I been training lads and lassies who couldn’t speak the language all my life?” the old Scotsman burred.
“We should recruit our road companies from the college,” Brainard suggested.
“It will take a good deal of time to do all that,” Farson remarked.
“We’ve all the time in the world,” Brainard retorted confidently. “Make a note of that, Mr. Secretary!”
So they talked on as men will talk, when it is still a matter of words and not actions. Late in the evening, or rather early in the morning, Brainard developed his plan for an outdoor theater in some beautiful mountain spot, or on an island along the seacoast. It was a bit of fairy fancy which he called the “Summer Festival.” Every summer, for a few weeks in August, in some sylvan spot of great natural beauty, with a background of lofty trees and cliffs, there would be held a dramatic festival, where lovers of the art could resort to live for a time in the atmosphere of Sophocles, Calderon, Molière, Goethe, Shakespeare.
“A kind of theatrical camp meeting,” the secretary jokingly named it.
“Exactly. Imagine an open-air theater built upon a cliff, with the blue sea below, backed by thick trees and a wild forest park, where the audience might stroll between the acts and after the performance. Think what could be made of such a place!”
It was the final flash of Brainard’s vision, and they sat for some time in silent contemplation of what was before them. At last the old actor spoke in a husky voice:
“My boy, it is sublime! It has come almost too late for me. I cannot walk your great stage and triumph in your triumph. My days are nearly over, spent in miserable efforts to exist and not debase my noble art. But I can help, and I pledge to you and to the People’s Theater all the strength that is left in me.”
The old Scotsman’s eyes were moist with tears. Here was another whom the great idea had touched and lifted to unexpected heights, Brainard thought happily.
“You’ll have your chance to act, too,” Brainard remarked consolingly.
“What do you mean to do first?” the secretary demanded impatiently.
“Incorporate, and find an architect,” Brainard replied concisely.
“Another trust!”
“What we need is publicity,” the young magazine man announced. “I’ll look out for that!”
“What we all need now,” laughed Brainard, “is sleep. We’ve done enough for one day.” For the early morning procession of drays had begun to thunder over the pavements beneath the window. “And to-day I must engage a tailor and consult with my banker.”
“Before we go,” Farson said, “let us drink to Aladdin and his sulfur lamp! Here’s to Aladdin, the Sulfur King!”
They drank the toast, and another proposed by the actor:
“The American Drama!”
And a third which was scarcely intelligible to Farson, although the old actor considered it quite suitable:
“To Melody!”
Then they separated. In this gay and careless fashion the plot was laid for pouring half a million a year into the Sulfur King’s great Idea.
III
The new secretary had some difficulty in convincing Brainard of the importance of what he called “publicity.” His own varied experience as a newspaper and magazine writer had given him a deep faith in this modern method of propaganda. He constituted himself at once the publicity agent of the new undertaking.
“It’s the only way to do things in this country. You must scatter your idea about in the newspapers and magazines, get people to talk about it and read about it, or it is dead before you start.”
Rather against Brainard’s inclination, Farson set off the first of a series of journalistic squibs concerning the “Sulfur King,” his spectacular fortune, and the novel manner in which he purposed to spend it, in a profusely illustrated article in the new Bunker’s Magazine. Brainard submitted to this indignity because of his desire to advertise the Melody mine and in this way possibly attract the attention of its unknown mistress. But of all the letters that came to him after the publication of his spectacular biography, not one was from “Melody.”
The People’s National Drama Society had not been incorporated before the sputter in the daily press began, with long-winded remarks by theatrical experts—actors, managers, and critics—predicting failure and ridiculing “the new uplifter of the stage from Arizona.” The public yawned and skipped. There was nothing new in this “uplift” talk about the drama; but the “Sulfur King” was new, and the public was much more interested in him and his golden stream of wealth than in his dream of creating a popular drama.
All sorts of mythical tales began to appear in print concerning his personality. The story that obtained the widest vogue was that Brainard, having in his younger and penniless days sighed in vain for the favor of a theatrical lady, had gone off to Arizona with despair in his heart, “struck sulfur,” and now had returned to build a palatial theater on Broadway for his old flame. A rather obscure young actress was named as the heroine of the tale, and the lady, when asked about the story by reporters, failed to deny it. Instead, she coyly led the newspaper men to embroider further details on the theme.
“See what you’ve got me into with your publicity business!” Brainard exclaimed ruefully, holding out the morning newspaper to Farson, when the latter came for the day’s work to the little house on Gramercy Park into which Brainard had moved.
The secretary, who had already seen the article, merely grinned and admitted:
“She has the cheek! They are all like that—anything to get themselves talked about. But it’s all right—it helps to spread the great idea.”
“I should say it did! Look at that!” Brainard pointed to a sack of mail that had been poured out over the library table. “And there’s a lot more, they tell me, at the post office. We shall have to open an office and hire some clerks, or chuck it into the fire.”
“It all helps,” the ex-reporter affirmed, dipping his hands into the mass with zest. “You don’t understand the American public yet. It has to have Romance with a capital R to sugar-coat any idea before it will swallow it.”
“There was pretty nearly everything in yesterday’s mail, from an offer of marriage to a recipe for making a successful play, not to mention one hundred and eighty-seven specimens of original American drama.”
“Here are a few more of the same sort,” the secretary laughed, tossing out a handful of bulky packages. “The literary committee will have something to do when it finds time. That’s me!”
He tossed the manuscripts into a corner.
“The thirty-first application for position as leading lady from an actress ‘of established reputation, at present on the Oregon circuit’—that goes to Mac’s pile,” he remarked, throwing the lady’s letter into a basket. “Proposal of marriage, marked ‘strictly personal,’” he continued, handing over an envelope to his employer. “We must get out some printed forms for acknowledgment of these—one for marriage, one for plays, and one for positions in the company.”
“If this is publicity, let’s try for privacy!” Brainard groaned, tearing the marriage letter into bits.
“Here’s a new note!” Farson exclaimed, pausing in his swift disposal of the mail to read aloud a letter.
“Gents:
“I saw in yesterday’s Kansas City papers a piece about your new theater. I think your idea is fine! It’s all right! Have you got a part for a beginner who will take anything or everything, but wants to begin? I know I’ve got stuff in me, and I must see New York. Please reply.
“Yours anxiously,
“Louisiana Delacourt,
“P. O. Box 8, Iole, Kansas.”
“I think that Louisiana should get a chance to see New York,” Brainard observed.
“She might take less than everything then. What do you say?”
“Put her down for the college,” laughed Brainard. “She thinks the Idea is fine.”
And that is how Miss Louisiana Delacourt, of Iole, Kansas, became the first pupil in the new college of dramatic art, which was not yet founded.
When the second mail came in with a large assortment of begging letters and more manuscript plays, Brainard rose in disgust and seized his hat to flee from his own house.
“Don’t forget Mrs. Pearmain’s—luncheon at half past one!” the secretary warned.
“Confound Mrs. Pearmain!” Brainard muttered. “Just tell her I’ve gone out of town, Ned.”
A look of horror spread over the secretary’s handsome face.
“It wouldn’t do! She’s to have a lot of important people there to hear about the Idea. She would never forgive you. It would spoil everything at the social end,” the young man pleaded. He had worked for weeks to “start the social business,” as he called it, and thus arouse an interest of a fashionable kind in their undertaking. This luncheon at Mrs. Pearmain’s was to be the brilliant opening of a social campaign that should go hand in hand with the more democratic press campaign. It was unthinkable for Brainard to refuse from whim or shyness or fastidiousness the gracious advances of Society!
“I don’t like all this woman business,” Brainard remarked sulkily, laying aside his hat. “Whatever did you get us into it for, Ned? I don’t need their money.”
“No, you don’t need their money,” Farson pronounced oracularly, “and that’s just why you’ll get what you do need. You need their influence. You can’t get anything started without the women—not in America. A movement for art in any form couldn’t exist, if the women didn’t take it up. Why, there isn’t any Art in any form in this country, except what the women keep going. So far as literature, drama, and music go, there’s but one sex in America, and it doesn’t wear trousers either!”
“Lord!” the young Mæcenus groaned, “I didn’t know that, Ned.”
“There’s a good deal you don’t know about America and Americans that you’ll have to learn, if you want to make good in this thing,” the secretary commented severely. “That’s what you need me for—to open your eyes.”
“Thanks,” Brainard murmured humbly.
“You will find Mrs. Donnie Pearmain the very one to give the right cachet to the movement.”
The young man rather prided himself on his social knowingness acquired since his return to New York. Brainard sighed, and, with a grimace, resigned himself to Mrs. Donnie Pearmain. The secretary proceeded to prepare his master for the coming luncheon.
“You know what she did for the half orphans last year? The year before it was the tuberculosis campaign. But now she’s giving up mere charity for art, and ours is the very thing to interest her. The Rev. Thomson Spicer will be there.”
“The clergy, too!”
“Of course. They make the next best publicity agents after the newspapers. They preach about popular movements, you know. You’ll see what Spicer will do for us next Sunday. He’s much interested in the moral influence of the theater upon the masses.”
Brainard groaned.
“President Nathaniel Butterfield of Eureka University has also promised to be there.”
“Professors? Ye gods! Where will you stop, Ned?”
“Dr. Butterfield has views on the educational value of the stage.”
“I’m not founding a religious kindergarten!”
The secretary, ignoring this feeble protest, consulted his note book for further details.
“Jaggard, the banker, has been asked, and Toowit, of the Daily Beacon, and my old boss, Howard Bunker. A very representative gathering of prominent persons!” the secretary commented complacently. “They would make an admirable board of trustees.”
“What do you propose to trustee—me?” Brainard roared.
“Every movement has to have a board of trustees—a list of good names to print at the head of the note paper, you know,” the young man explained patiently. Brainard’s simplicity was occasionally wearisome, and he was proving more difficult to handle than Farson had expected. It required considerable tact at times “to keep the ‘Sulfur King’ all on the track.” He remarked to pacify his employer, “They don’t interfere unless you ask them for money, and of course you won’t have to do so in this case.”
What Brainard might have said about wrapping his great idea in a wad of distinguished trustees was prevented by the appearance of MacNaughton. He came into the library at that moment, with the air of an old diplomat, which was the rôle he had affected since he had joined the movement. His quiet gray suit was adorned with a small red button. He wore horn-bowed eyeglasses and carried a large leather portfolio. An unlighted cigar protruded from his mouth.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he remarked, settling himself in a chair opposite the secretary and turning over the pile of applications for positions in the companies of the new society. He slowly dropped the letters to the floor. “All rotters, every one of them,” he announced with a profound sigh. “My boy, will you please hang out the sign, ‘No lady help wanted’?”
“Are you sure they are all so bad?” Brainard asked hopefully.
“My dear fellow,” the old Scotsman replied languidly, “there are at least three thousand women in New York to-day, young and old, who think they can act and want a chance to take your money. I’ve seen twenty-nine hundred and ninety-nine of them!”
“There must be some good ones eager for the opportunity we offer.”
“All those that are any good, and many that aren’t, have signed up with Einstein & Flukeheimer and the other managers. I tell you they have passed the word up and down Broadway to have nothing to do with us. They call us cranks!” the old actor cried. “We are blacklisted, sir—that’s what it is.”
“But with this great chance to do something for dramatic art?” Brainard protested, quoting from a conversation he had had with a famous actress.
“Talk!”
“The opportunity to devote themselves to their profession, relieved of all sordid cares?”
“More talk!”
“Their desire to subordinate personal ambitions for the good of dramatic art?”
“All talk!”
“We’ll have to double the salaries, then.”
“Even that won’t bring the better ones who have made names already. They don’t want to compromise themselves with highbrows. We shall have to start with unknown talent and build up our company gradually.”
“That will take time, but I like it better,” Brainard replied optimistically. “Show him Louisiana’s letter, Ned. That’s the right spirit.”
“The little dear,” MacNaughton commented ironically. “How many like her there are!” He dropped the letter in the secretary’s basket.
Presently there appeared the architect who had been asked to prepare plans for the first playhouse. The three gathered around him and examined the voluminous prints and watercolor sketches that he had brought with him. He was a young man, and he had seen his opportunity, with the wealth of the sulfur king behind him He had planned a monumental building of marble, with beautiful colonnades, a magnificent foyer, reception rooms, a restaurant, and a library. Behind, in the form of an annex, was the college of dramatic art with its own little theater, lecture rooms, and dormitory. The whole looked like a public institution for the insane rather than a simple theater.
“What do you think it would cost to build?” Brainard inquired, as they came to the last sheet.
“I should think it could be done for three millions,” the architect replied glibly.
“Three millions,” the secretary repeated easily.
“Three millions—um!” MacNaughton echoed, as one who dealt habitually in seven figures.
Brainard said nothing. He was thinking, perhaps, that the Melody sulfur spring must gush like a yellow geyser to pour forth enough gold for the Idea as it was expanding from day to day. He had learned, however, not to be daunted by large figures—the mine had taught him that—nor did he ever allow himself to worry over expense. He had wasted his youth in such fruitless cares. As a man he would do what he could, and then stop.
Presently the three left for Mrs. Pearmain’s luncheon. The secretary thoughtfully took with him the plans for the new theater.
IV
Mrs. Donnie Pearmain, as everybody knows, is the only daughter of old Joseph P. Barton, the founder of the milk trust, and derived her very ample personal fortune from that famous financier’s successful manipulation of the milk market. Starting as a plain New Jersey farmer, who peddled his own milk, Barton organized the great trust, and when he died was its largest individual stockholder. It was he, too, who first generally introduced the use of the small glass bottle instead of the large tin can in the distribution of milk, thereby enabling the trust to add at least thirty per cent to the retail price of its product.
In spite of these accomplishments, financial and hygienic, Barton was one of the most widely misunderstood and execrated of the older generation of millionaires, doubtless because of the abnormal increase in cost of this necessary article of domestic consumption, and its deterioration in quality, since the formation of the milk trust. Consequently, although Barton’s daughter had married into glue—one of the Pearmain sons—which is, of course, an eminently quiet and respectable fortune that has escaped the keen eyes of the muckrakers, she had never been able wholly to live down the taint of milk. Too many even of the social leaders of the city remembered the small bottles of Barton’s pale-blue fluid, retailed as milk at nine cents a quart, to forgive the social ambitions of Mrs. Donnie Pearmain, in spite of her respectable veneer of glue.
The energetic little lady, however, had learned from her rich father his great life axiom—if you can’t do what you want in one way, you can in another. So she attacked the citadels of social leadership by the way first of Philanthropy and now of Art, as the magazine man had accurately related to Brainard. Thanks to her energy as patroness in these allied fields, she was in a fair way of living down at last the odor of milk and attaining the coveted reward of social leadership.
Mrs. Pearmain had received Edgar Brainard most graciously in the previous interviews that had been arranged between them by the young secretary, and had shown a most intelligent interest in his scheme of creating a People’s Theater. The young sulfur king appealed to her all the more because he expected no financial assistance in developing his hobby. She would not be called upon to pour any milk into this philanthropy.
She did not in the least doubt that Brainard’s controlling purpose was the same as hers—to become properly known in society by identifying himself with a popular cause, and she commended his sagacity in taking this means of living down sulfur. Therefore she had easily been brought to lend her influence to the Idea. At Farson’s suggestion, she had gathered together, in her great house on the upper avenue, a most distinguished luncheon party, which, as the secretary had shrewdly said, would give éclat to any letterhead.
When Brainard arrived, with his companions, he was shown into the picture gallery, where Mrs. Pearmain was chatting with her guests. He was immediately presented to each one. They examined him with curiosity, for even in New York a young man with an annual income of more than half a million, which he desires to spend upon the public, is not a common phenomenon.
The university president, who looked like a banker, was especially affable, and stuck closely to Brainard’s side. Dr. Butterfield sincerely regretted that he had not had the good luck to capture this young Croesus before he had committed himself to this freakish idea about the drama, and hoped that there was still some stray million which he might divert into the channels of the higher education at Eureka. It was for this purpose that he had torn himself away at midday from his many duties at the university. The other guests, understanding the game, looked on with sympathetic smiles.
Brainard had spent two dreary years at Eureka where he had found little to relieve the ignominy of his dire poverty, and thus he knew something about “old Nat,” as the head of that institution was familiarly known among the undergraduates. When in the course of their conversation Brainard admitted that he had been enrolled at the university, Butterfield beamed upon him with a new warmth and remarked eagerly:
“How interesting! I didn’t know that you were a Eureka man.”
“I didn’t graduate,” Brainard confessed.
“Ah, that’s too bad! I presume you left college for the more arduous education of a business career?” the college president suggested.
“I left it to earn a living,” Brainard replied simply.
“Exactly,” the president said with a deprecatory cough. “That’s what I meant.”
He made a mental note of the fact that Brainard had been a student at Eureka. The university should be able to use that happy fact; the trustees might consider it proper to bestow an honorary degree upon this distinguished half son, who had somehow managed to achieve fame and wealth after deserting the maternal halls. And immediately he began to compose in imagination a few of those celebrated periods with which he was accustomed to bestow academic honors upon similar practical “sons of Eureka.”
“Can’t you find time to come out to us some day?” he inquired deferentially. “I’m sure the boys will be delighted to welcome you back to your old home. A little address at chapel? It is a great inspiration for young men thus to come into touch with persons who have made their mark in life.”
Brainard merely laughed. He remembered a number of occasions when “old Nat” had introduced distinguished visitors to the academic audience in somewhat similar words. . . .
At the luncheon Brainard was seated between the college president and his hostess. He easily recovered from his natural shyness and talked fluently of Arizona and sulfur. The others listened deferentially to him, and in the many subtle ways that these people understood of testifying their consideration for a promising man he was made to feel welcome.
The banker, who had already put him on his list of capitalists that might be interested in some “undigested” railroad bonds his house had on their hands, was especially attentive. Indeed there was something of a contest for the guest’s attention between the banker and the university president, who each understood the other only too well. The banker, of course, did not commit the crudity of talking finance or even business; instead he discussed “public service” and “the new spirit of capital.” The kindly gleam of his shrewd blue eyes seemed to say to Brainard,—“You are one of the new kind, who will do everything for the dear Public!”
And so before the succession of excellent courses had gone far, Brainard had forgotten his distaste for the social side of life, which he had expressed so vigorously to Farson that morning, and really believed that all these good people were as eager as he was to give the American public a superior form of dramatic art at prices within the reach of the poorest. And when he began to talk to the company at the conclusion of the luncheon, after a few words of flattering introduction from the hostess, he had no trouble in finding what he wanted to say.
“First, you will forgive me if I say a word about myself, by way of introduction,” he began, with an engaging smile. “Four years ago, just about, I was here in New York, down and out—a poor, discouraged scribbler, earning a precarious existence by writing furniture advertisements, and sneaking into the upper gallery of a theater when I could get the price of an admission ticket.”
The magazine man, at the farther end of the table, writhed uncomfortably over this introduction. Why, he said to himself, go back—so far back? But the others seemed much interested, and as Brainard went on with his personal story, describing, in simple, straightforward language, life as he had lived it on the other side of the fence—its monotony and sordidness, its lack of interests that relieved from toil and worry—it was apparent that he had hit upon the best way to secure the attention of these people. There were some present, like Butterfield and Haggard, who had begun very near the beginning, and these liked to feel again the unmeasurable distance that separated them from their former state. Others, like Bunker and Mrs. Pearmain, thought the story so “picturesque” or “dramatic.” It served to increase their complacency at not “having been through all that, you know.” To Toowit of the Beacon and the few of a middling prosperity the tale of a rich man’s marvelous rise was exasperatingly titillating to the nerves.
Brainard touched briefly on the dramatic occurrence that had suddenly lifted him into action. His auditors looked as if they would like to hear more of this; but he paused after saying:
“I won’t go into that. It made another man of me—the man you see here now, that’s all!”
In a few moments he resumed, throwing back his head:
“My friends, I have had a vision!”
“Oh,” thought the secretary, “why doesn’t he come to the point? They don’t want to hear about his dreams!” But with that simple earnestness which was the most characteristic quality in his developed character, Brainard persisted in his effort to share his idealistic enthusiasm. He concluded his confession of faith with the words,—“It is not mere amusement, my friends, that I wish to further—it is life!”
Dr. Butterfield nodded his head approvingly at this point. He had said something not unlike this a few weeks before, when his college dedicated a new hall, the gift of a whisky millionaire. But the editor of the Daily Beacon looked thoroughly bored, and presently slipped away. All this idealistic talk was merely angel food for ladies and parsons, he seemed to think.
“I promised myself,” Brainard continued, “that if I were ever free to do so, I would give myself wholly to this Idea—give myself and all that I could command of resources to found a national theater worthy of our great people.”
Then, taking his little worn note-book from his pocket, Brainard ran rapidly over the details of his plan, most of which we have already learned. The magnitude of the scheme seemed to appeal at first to this fashionable audience; they were accustomed to deal in large figures, complex enterprises, and size stimulated their imaginations like alcohol. Oddly enough, it was only when he mentioned a small detail—the low, fixed scale of prices to be charged at the theaters—that the first dissenting voice made itself heard.
“You will pauperize the people!” the banker objected. That, he urged, was the trouble with so many humanitarian movements; they deprived the poor people of the joys of competition. The point passed, however, after a feeble discussion. That was a detail evidently to be settled later when the exigencies of deficits would doubtless force a more practical view upon this enthusiast. But a chorus of objections rose when Brainard said that the theaters were to have no reserved seats and no boxes.
“No boxes!” Mrs. Pearmain murmured, as if personally affronted. “But where shall we sit?”
“Where the others do,” Brainard replied promptly.
Significant glances were exchanged about the table. Was this a socialist who had slipped in among them in disguise?
“Think what the opera would be without the boxes!” a large bejeweled woman whispered to her neighbor.
“These are to be the people’s theaters!” Brainard remarked somewhat sharply.
“Oh, I hadn’t understood!”
“Where will your theater be in New York?” some one asked.
“That is yet to be decided. I am looking into the matter to determine where the largest number of people can most easily reach a theater by the transportation system of the city. Somewhere on the lower West Side, I suspect.”
“Nobody will ever go down there!” several protested. “Everything is going up town all the time. . . . The Opera is too far away. . . .”
“Everybody can get there most cheaply and easily,” Brainard returned.
From this point interest waned visibly, and the company merely gave a polite half attention to the remaining notes, including the plan for a great summer festival of drama.
“It sounds like a Chautauqua,” Butterfield superciliously remarked. He detested these popular efforts for education, regarding them as “scabs” on the genuine industry.
“It would be exceedingly drafty, an open-air theater in the American climate,” said an old gentleman. “Think of a Bar Harbor fog!”
When these trivialities had passed, Brainard hastily read a few notes on the ideals of the enterprise—the careful staging of plays, the giving of classics, the revival of old plays, the need for purity of speech, something about poetic plays and the new drama.
As he read, there were signs of impatience. At the close came the hard, round voice of the Rev. Thomson Spicer:
“What sort of plays, may I inquire, Mr. Brainard, do you propose to give in your theaters?”
“All sorts,” Brainard replied, surprised.
“I trust there will be a strict moral censorship.”
“I agree with you, Dr. Spicer,” Mrs. Pearmain added in a severe tone. “The greatest care should be taken not to incite the people to discontent with their lot. Many of the plays given to-day are most dangerous in their tendency. They hold us up to ridicule, and even criticize our morals and our fortunes!”
It was here that Brainard committed his unpardonable blunder, and the secretary knew that he had finally “queered himself” with these influential people.
“I think,” he said sternly, “that the people should be the judge of what plays they want to see. You would not try to tell them what to eat or drink, would you, Mrs. Pearmain?”
There was an unfortunate allusion, perhaps, though unconscious, in the word “drink”; for that was precisely what Joseph Barton had done to the people—he had made them drink a very inferior grade of blue-white fluid called milk.
Brainard was rebuked by a stony silence, for his unintentional faux pas, and then there burst forth a flood of criticism. For an hour these good people tore to tatters the fabric of his dream. There seemed to be a perplexing double fire of objections. A few, the Reverend Spicer among them, felt that Brainard’s ideas about the sort of dramatic art suited to the people were dangerous and anarchistic. Unless such a scheme were carefully hedged in by a sound conservatism, it might work more harm than good. Others—and these were in the majority—asserted that it was altogether a mistake to found a people’s theater on the level of the people. Art was always aristocratic, they maintained, and the people should be invited guardedly to partake of the intellectual entertainment provided for them by their superiors in a playhouse situated where the best classes could patronize it, with obscure galleries to which the commonalty might penetrate.
“You must appeal to the intelligent classes,” the college president told Brainard dogmatically.
“Where are they?” he asked caustically.
Thereafter he sat silent, and did not answer any of the comments made.
At this point Farson circulated the plans for the new theater, in order to create a diversion, if possible, and explained to a little group the design of the grandiose edifice. Here the banker, who prided himself on his knowledge of architecture, took a hand and condemned the plans severely as “mixed in style,” “not indicative of the purpose of the building,” and so on.
The sheets passed up and down the drawing-room, to which the party had adjourned, and were ogled by fine ladies with lorgnettes, until Brainard rose, and, bowing to his hostess, prepared to leave.
“It’s so interesting, your plan, Mr. Brainard,” Mrs. Pearmain gushed; “but I think you must modify some of your ideas. You must start from above always, and work down.”
“Perhaps I shall, when I discover what is above,” he retorted.
The secretary gathered up the plans, and overtook Brainard in the hall. MacNaughton was already there. The old actor’s face was very red; he had not said a single word all the afternoon, and his self-control was making him positively apoplectic. He stalked majestically past the footman, metaphorically shaking the dust of the milk-trust millions from his feet as he crossed the threshold.
“Asses, fools, imbeciles!” he cried, as the three reached the pavement. “What do they know about the drama? About anything but food and drink? They want us to build a theater for them!”