As the weeks and then the months slipped by without any sign from Krutzmacht’s former stenographer Brainard almost forgot the midnight visit that she and the fight-trust magnate had made and the disturbing conversation which had taken place. During this summer the People’s Company played a short season in Chicago, and were so cordially received in that city, which seemed to be more open-minded in theatrical matters than New York, that Brainard felt he had made a mistake in not starting his dramatic enterprise in this thoroughly American community. An opportunity offering of securing the lease of a new theater in Chicago, Brainard decided to take it and support a second company in the West to interchange with the parent company. He placed MacNaughton in charge of the new company, having found a younger and more adaptable man to work with him in New York. All these arrangements took much time and thought and involved many trips between the two cities to complete the negotiations. Brainard had the satisfaction of knowing that if they had failed in their first season to make the impression he had hoped, at least they had shown courage and determination. The Idea was far from dead,—was growing slowly and adapting itself, as all large Ideas must, to the environment and the conditions. . . .
One morning, the day after his return from one of these hurried journeys to Chicago, Brainard found Farson immersed as usual in the folds of a newspaper over his coffee. Instead of the customary greeting, the secretary handed over the paper with the simple remark:
“She’s struck!”
A front page story of the usual type, emanating from the Pacific Coast, related that a woman claiming to be Krutzmacht’s lawful widow, married to him several years before in a small southern California town, was about to institute legal proceedings to recover the remnants of the dead promoter’s scattered fortune. At the time of Krutzmacht’s death, so the story ran, it was supposed that his large fortune had been completely swallowed up in his unsuccessful enterprises, but recently through a series of extraordinary events a very considerable amount of unsuspected assets had been discovered, to which the widow now laid claim. Eminent counsel had been retained in the case, and sensational developments were promised, involving a capitalist well known in New York and Arizona.
As Brainard having finished the story laid the newspaper down with a slight smile, Farson observed:
“So it’s on!”
“Apparently. . . . It took her some time to get into action. I suppose she was collecting her properties.”
“She’ll produce a son in court lisping ‘Pap Krutz,’” the secretary growled. He could not forgive Brainard for what he called his “weak” manner of handling the affair.
“Now we shall have an opportunity of seeing what sort of story she can put up,” Brainard remarked, proceeding unconcernedly with his breakfast. “Perhaps this action, through the notoriety it will give to Krutzmacht’s affairs, will serve to produce the real heir,” he added hopefully.
But after a visit to his lawyers Brainard was less optimistic. They pointed out to him that undoubtedly the first legal move would be to tie up the great Melody mine by an injunction. Whether the so-called widow could prove her marriage to the satisfaction of the court or not, the mine must remain idle. And the case might drag on for a couple of years or more, depending upon the resources the widow could command. During all this time there would be no income from the property; instead it would greatly deteriorate. The lawyers’ prediction was quickly fulfilled. Brainard found himself without the large monthly income from the flow of the sulfur wells, with an expensive law suit on his hands, and two greedy theatrical companies to be provided for.
“As Hollinger warned me, Lorilla is a Rattler,” Brainard said to the secretary when the two went over the situation. “It looks very much, my boy, as if this law suit would be the final curtain for the great Idea. I’m tied up short. The Chicago theater has taken a lump of money. I don’t believe I could lay my hands on fifty thousand dollars cash, all told.”
“I wonder where she is getting her money to fight the case,” Farson said.
“Perhaps Hollinger is putting it up—as a promising speculation!”
“You don’t think he would do that?”
“Why not? It goes with his philosophy. He gave me my chance to compromise—”
“And when he saw that I wouldn’t compromise, he might decide to play on the other side. It makes little difference, anyway. If Miss Walters has any sort of claim, she can easily get all the money she needs. There are always ‘eminent counsel’ ready to take that kind of case on a good contingent fee.”
“Well, what will you do now?” Farson asked in a depressed tone.
“First I must get rid of the lease of the Chicago theater.”
“It’s too bad—the Chicago theater opened well. Mac thinks it will almost make expenses.”
“What Mac thinks and what the public thinks we have found to be two different propositions,” Brainard replied. “I don’t believe Chicago will miss us much. But I hate to close the New York theater.”
“Will you have to do that?”
“You know the figures—they don’t improve!”
“I suppose that dishes my play.”
Farson had been hard at work during the summer on a play of American life, based largely on material that Louisiana Delacourt had contributed in a series of amusing confidences about her own experiences, before her departure to complete her education in Europe. It was to be called Her Great Adventure, and had been coming on very fast latterly. The plan between the two friends had been to try it out toward the close of the present season, and, if the play proved successful, to open with it in the fall.
“I hadn’t thought about your play,” Brainard exclaimed sympathetically. “We must keep the house open until we can produce Her Great Adventure. There’s money enough in the bank for that.” He patted his secretary affectionately on the back. “But finish it, my boy, as soon as you can. That place eats money, and when the news leaks we shan’t be able to keep our company together long. Can you be ready by the first of March?”
“It will have to be ready! It’s awfully good of you, Brainard; and the play might possibly make money, you know.”
“If that happens, it will break all records for the People’s. We will give it every chance, anyway. How shall we cast it? Will Clara Dudley do for the girl?”
Forgetting all about Krutzmacht’s new widow and their financial predicament they began to discuss the cast for Her Great Adventure. The leading character was a young woman who had come fearlessly and pennilessly out of the great West, to find a career in New York. Brainard remarked suddenly:
“The woman to play that part is Louisiana herself.” Farson, for some reason, did not welcome the suggestion strongly. He preferred to take his chances with a more experienced actress. “Where is Louisiana, by the way? You haven’t given me any news of her for some time,” Brainard asked.
Farson blushed slightly as he replied:
“She’s in London just now—having a great time, I judge from the number of dashes and exclamations scattered over her letters. Characteristic style, you know. She hasn’t taken down much of the original bunting she carried.”
“She wouldn’t!” Brainard exclaimed with a laugh. “Louisiana is a genius. Don’t tell her what’s going to happen over here. Let her have her little dance out as long as it is possible. Her hard times, poor child, will begin soon enough!”
“She writes that Cissie Pyce is over there. Remember Cissie—our first experiment as emotional lady?”
“She wept all over this carpet when I fired her—do I remember?”
“Louisiana says that Cissie has been taken up by Bantam, and is coming back to the States to play in The Star of the Seven Seas.”
“We’ll make somebody’s fortune yet,” Brainard commented, “by discharging ’em, if in no other way. But Louisiana was really our first and only find—the one personality that we might have developed and produced.”
“And she found us!” the secretary corrected.
“Let’s see what it has cost all told.” He ran over on his fingers the different large items of expense that the great Idea had involved: “The theater building eight hundred, the first year in New York two hundred, Chicago . . . one million six hundred thousand odd for Louisiana!” Brainard concluded whimsically. “And she’s not yet launched. Our kind of art comes high, Ned!”
“You’re a tip-top loser,” the young man said admiringly. “Don’t you ever think what it will mean to you, if Lorilla should win her suit?”
Brainard stretched himself leisurely.
“Except for being licked in this theater business—and I don’t like being beaten any better than the next man—I should howl for joy when they produce the fictitious widow and the orphan son in court. It would set me free for another great adventure. That’s what Herbert Krutzmacht and Melody have done for one Edgar Brainard!”
In his eyes was the azure glitter of the sky above the stern Arizona mountains. For it was, indeed, a glorious world of venture for him whose soul was keyed to the right pitch.
XIV
Nevertheless, Brainard felt depressed as the time drew near when the doors of his theater would have to close, the windows be boarded up. Even should he win the case against the fraudulent claimants of the Melody, the great Idea could never be wholly perfected in all the splendid details that he had dreamed. No one man, were he Croesus incarnate, could create a national art. He had learned that. . . .
On the afternoon of the first rehearsal of Her Great Adventure, Brainard came early to the theater and waited in the library. It was a pleasant place, he reflected, as his eyes wandered over the empty room, with its polished marquetry floor richly covered with rugs, and the charming empire furniture, clocks, and ornaments that he had taken the pains to place there. He had tried to make these public rooms as clublike as possible, with ample lounging places, so that the theater might be something of a home for the players, as well as a workshop. Above the library was a glorified green room, where simple meals were to be had for a moderate price. All these details were part of the Idea, as he had seen it.
The People’s had a much better company this year, he reflected,—no great talent, but all fairly competent, and they worked together well. His enthusiasm and Farson’s had finally penetrated the ignorant and selfish surface of theatrical nature. Mac had been tactfully relegated to Chicago, and the promising young actor Leaventritt was fast making a place for himself as manager.
The company was really getting into shape. Ignored as they were by the critics and the “intelligent” public, or ridiculed for their efforts, the People’s Theater had won the allegiance of its players. They were developing a fine loyalty to the Idea, and a respect for themselves as members of an institution that had not been founded for profit. The week before, when Brainard had felt obliged to tell the company of his financial difficulties, and of the fate probably in store for the theater, there had been genuine, unselfish concern.
“Your salaries will be paid until the close of the season,” he told them; “and, in addition, each one will receive the percentage of his pension earned by his length of service. Unfortunately, there are no profits to share; but of course I have assumed all losses. And now I want you to do your utmost for our last play—this piece by Mr. Farson. Give it the very best you have in you. It is a strong play, an American play, the sort of play for us to produce. Let us end well!”
Then they had proceeded to the reading of the piece. Afterward, many of the company had come to him to express personally their honest disappointment at the enforced closing of the People’s Theater. They seemed to realize that their loss was more than that of salary.
“And we’ll make Her Great Adventure go!” they all said.
The spirit of the players had been comforting to the embarrassed patron.
“The People’s might have won out in time, with such a company—who knows?” he mused to the secretary.
“We may win out yet!” the young playwright answered, with a certain touch of vanity.
“I hope so, for your sake, I’m sure; but one play, no matter how successful, could not keep the Idea afloat.”
On the eve of failure, a new light had dawned in the enthusiastic mind of the founder. He realized that whatever one man tries to carry through alone, by brute force of will, without regard for the sympathy and the help of others, is destined to fail, especially where it is a matter of art that should appeal to the many. Not Mrs. Donnie Pearmain and her “upper classes” were needed, to be sure, but the People; and the People’s Theater had failed to touch the People. Very likely, Brainard mused, Lorilla was the hand of fate needed to prove this deeper truth to him. He had failed to find his vanished mistress, Melody, and with her inheritance he had tried to achieve the impossible. Now that inheritance might be taken altogether out of his control, and the great Idea vanish into the air from which his will had conjured it. . . .
A page brought Brainard a letter with a foreign postmark just as he was leaving the library for the theater. It was a hasty little scribble from Miss Delacourt—one of the few with which the young lady had favored him. In a hand that galloped unevenly over the paper, she informed him:
“I’m coming home—sail Saturday, on the Amerika, with Cissie Pyce. Best wishes!
“L. D.”
Brainard wondered what freak had possessed the youngster thus to cut short her lark, as he went to the telephone to inquire when the Amerika was due in New York. He determined to say nothing to Farson of the girl’s homecoming and to meet the young woman at the dock himself.
There might, after all, be some method in her insanity—and there might be some good fortune in it for Farson and his play. For the little neurasthenic Miss Dudley, who, to the most casual eye, had evidently never been farther West than Hoboken, was hardly the ideal of adventurous American womanhood that the dramatist had drawn in his Gertrude. He would see Louisiana first, and make up his mind whether she was safe to try before speaking to Farson, whom he suspected of a more than friendly liking for the young woman.
When Brainard returned to the auditorium he found a stranger leaning over a rear seat, an unlighted cigar between his teeth, apparently interested in the lines of the new play that Leaventritt was going over with the company. As Brainard approached, the man turned his head; it was Hollinger.
“Hello!” he said, and nodding his head toward the stage asked, “New piece?”
For a few moments the two men listened to the halting lines from the stage, then Brainard asked coldly:
“Did you want to see me?”
Hollinger looked at him coolly, the merest smile on his curving lips.
“Yes,” he replied, “that is if you aren’t busy? I was in New York and thought I’d look you up.”
Brainard led the way to his private office, which was in the front of the theater behind the library.
“What is it?” he asked shortly, closing the door and standing above his visitor, who had seated himself and crossed his knees comfortably. Hollinger’s smile deepened to a grin.
“I suppose you have something to say to me,” Brainard added impatiently.
“Nothing in particular,” Hollinger replied. “I wanted to see you!”
“What for?”
“Well, to see how you take it for one thing.”
Brainard sat down in his chair more calmly and waited.
“Don’t you think you made a mistake?” Hollinger inquired.
“No!”
“You don’t mind the—er—row?”
“Not in the least.”
“You don’t want to stop it all before it’s too late?”
Brainard shook his head slowly.
“Not your way,” he said emphatically.
“I didn’t suppose you would,” the old fight-trust magnate sighed.
“You knew I wouldn’t!”
“Sometimes your kind come to their senses—too late. I just thought I would sound you again before the case came to trial.”
“And save your money for counsel fees?” Brainard inquired suavely.
“Oh, that doesn’t trouble me,” Hollinger replied lightly. “You guessed that I was putting up the money? How clever of you!”
“But I can’t yet bring myself to believe that you mean to share with that woman in the profits of her perjury, if she succeeds.”
Hollinger smoked a few moments before replying.
“I don’t mind telling you that I have no intention of taking a cent from Miss Walters, or Mrs. Krutzmacht, as I suppose we ought to call the lady.”
“Then why do you go to all this trouble?”
“For various reasons, my dear young man. For the amusement I find in it for one thing. Can you understand that?”
“With some difficulty.”
“A sort of sporting interest in seeing whether she can win and carry off the bag, with the mine, from your hands, just as the other time I was immensely interested in seeing you escape from her hands at Jalapa. . . . She has a very pretty case, a very pretty case,” he mused. “The best legal talent have passed on it and found it quite flawless. It ought to go through without a hitch.”
“Unless the real heir should turn up meanwhile.”
“You still stick to that romantic fiction—that young man’s fancy?”
“You said that you had other reasons for helping Miss Walters?”
“One other reason: I felt that you had treated her—unsympathetically—oh, quite correctly from your puritan point of view; morally you are always above reproach, my young friend. But you are slightly inhuman. Your attitude that night when we discussed this matter at your house was both narrow and inhuman. It disgusted me, if you care to know frankly what I thought.”
“And in order to punish me for not following your advice you are conniving with this woman in the perpetration of fraud,” Brainard sneered.
“You use words rather crudely,” Hollinger replied in a mild tone. “I don’t understand ‘punish’ and ‘fraud’ in the way you do. You are determined to complicate a simple enough situation, and I am determined to give your virtue an all-round test. . . . Well, your mind is made up?”
“Absolutely!” Brainard exclaimed, rising to terminate the interview.
“Perhaps you have your own widow and child?” Hollinger suggested with a laugh.
“Possibly!”
Then they went into the library, which the fight-trust man looked at with much interest.
“Would you like to see the house?” Brainard asked good-naturedly, always proud to show off his beloved theater.
“Above everything! I’ve read so much about it.”
Brainard conducted Hollinger over the building, explaining to him his purposes in making it more than a mere auditorium with a stage. Hollinger admired generously and intelligently all that he saw. As they came out at last in the darkened auditorium where the new play was still being read, he remarked to his host:
“I am very much obliged. It is all extremely interesting, a kind of kindergarten for the drama. Is this one of your products?” he nodded towards the stage.
“It’s Farson’s new play. We have high hopes for it!” Brainard said.
“Well, hurry up with it. I suppose you won’t be running theaters for amusement after—er—the event?”
“That remains to be seen!”
“If you find that you want to get rid of this place, let me know, will you?”
“I might find a use for it. . . . I believe Miss Walters has ambitions to be a real star with her own theater. That is more chic these days than owning a copper mine, and she will need occupation.”
“So that was another of your reasons for this call?” Brainard suggested with a laugh.
Hollinger smiled.
“She might take you on as manager—how would that do?”
“I’ll discuss it with her personally, when the time comes!”
“I shall advise her to let you manage the mine instead!” Hollinger retorted, after listening to another of Farson’s rather flamboyant periods. “I think she and I have better notions of what the ‘People’ like.”
With a last smile he slowly sauntered towards the exit, where he paused long enough to catch a few more of the speeches in Her Great Adventure, which seemed to cause him unhappiness.
“Oh, Lord!” he murmured, and rushed for the door.
XV
As the big, pot-bellied steamship was being slowly pushed into her berth, Brainard, standing at the end of the pier, fancied that he could recognize two little figures on the upper deck. These feminine figures, rather eccentrically dressed, were evidently the knot of a laughing, joking circle of American men, all exhilarated by their approaching return to their beloved city. When the great black hull threw its shadow over the dock, one of the little figures waved both arms.
“That’s Louisiana, sure enough!” Brainard exclaimed, much relieved to know that the impulsive young woman had not abandoned her home-coming at the last moment from some fresh whim.
Ever since he had received her little note on the previous Monday, he had been astonished at himself. The prospect of seeing Louisiana again had often come into his mind with an agreeable sensation, hopping in without reason, as if sure of a welcome. This morning he had displayed a greater nervousness at breakfast than he had shown over the possible loss of the Melody mine, and had reached the dock an hour too early.
All this anxiety he explained to himself on the score of his desire to help on his secretary’s play. From the beginning Miss Dudley had shown such an inability to understand her part, and to cope with the character of Gertrude, that the young playwright was in despair. And yet Brainard’s interest in the maiden effort of his young secretary had not led him to confide the news of Louisiana’s unexpected return. He had been gratified indeed to learn that the young man did not suspect it.
Brainard wormed his way into the crowd at the foot of the gangway and waited impatiently while the thin stream of passengers filed down to the dock. The two actresses came together. Louisiana reached out a thin little arm to grasp Brainard’s hand with a ringing “Howdy!” before she gained the dock.
The European trip had made little surface change in the young woman. She was hugging to her a variety of flowers, several parcels, and a toy dog—a substitute for that shambling pup with which she used to appear at the People’s Theater.
“Thanks!” she bubbled, as Brainard relieved her of these impedimenta. “A lot of trucky rubbish I couldn’t jam into my trunk nohow, though I got a tub of a German steward to do the dead-weight act on the lid. You see, I started from London on the run for the steamer—didn’t have time to pack.”
She glanced furtively at Brainard, then down the long pier.
“This town looks good to me, even after Vienna and Paris. Yes, I’d like some real breakfast, thank you! You must have camped out here all night to turn up at such an hour. And how’s everything? How’s the—”
Her voluble stream suddenly ceased, and her gray eyes rested full on Brainard’s face, as if even in her heedless mood she hesitated to ask certain painful questions. Louisiana was very pretty and quite smartly dressed, as Brainard noticed, with a sense of satisfaction in the size of the letter of credit that he had replenished generously from time to time during the last year. Yes, in spite of her careless chatter, any one could see that Miss Delacourt was something of a person now.
Her companion joined them.
“You know Miss Pyce, of course,” Louisiana said. “Spell it with a y, please! We ran bump into each other in Piccadill last week. Cissie had engaged a deck stateroom all to herself, little swell, and that’s how I could get back on this boat.”
“But why did you come in such a hurry?” Brainard asked, when Miss Pyce was diverted to the inspection of her trunks. “I thought you were to stay over until the fall.”
Louisiana looked softly up out of her gray eyes. “But you see Cissie told me all about it!”
“Told you what?”
“That your mine had gone dry, or something, and the theater had to close, and you were in a hole generally.”
“But that wouldn’t have made any difference about you—at least at present. I told Farson not to write you of our troubles.”
“He didn’t. If it hadn’t been for Cissie, I shouldn’t have known a thing, though she said it was all in the papers. But I never read the papers over there.”
“I wish Cissie had kept her mouth shut!”
“She couldn’t, you know, if she had something nasty about the People’s to tell. But ain’t you the least bit glad to see me, after all my hustle to get here as quick as I could?”
“You know I am awfully glad!”
“Naturally I couldn’t stay over there, batting around, and you folks in trouble—just couldn’t have swallowed a mouthful of food!”
Brainard held out his hand.
“Thank you! That’s the nicest thing I have heard for many a day.”
“Perhaps I could do something to help?”
“What?” Brainard asked jokingly. “Discover the real heir to the property?”
Miss Delacourt looked puzzled by this reference to his predicament. Evidently Miss Pyce’s information had been only of the most general character. The details of the threatened suit had not been considered of sufficient importance by the news agencies to cable to Europe.
“I can do something,” the girl said, drawing herself up haughtily. “I’m no stage-struck kid now. I’m going to act.”
“There is something you can do for me—for us,” Brainard hastened to say, remembering his chief excuse for meeting her at the dock. “I want you to come up to my house for breakfast right away, and hear what it is. Bring Miss Pyce, too, if she will come.”
“Oh, she’ll come! Cissie carries around a trunkful of floppy airs, but she’s a right good sort. I’m going to stay with her until I strike a job. She’s half promised to get me something in The Star of the Seven Seas—kitchen wench, I fancy. Cissie isn’t giving much away.”
“There’s something better than that ready for you. We want you to do the Gertrude in Ned’s play.”
“Is the People’s still open?” she cried in astonishment. “Cissie said it had gone dead broke, and was shut for good.”
“This is our last effort; and we want to go down waving the flag. It’s Farson’s play—”
“Yes, I know—he tried to put me in, but I bet he didn’t succeed.”
“It’s a good play, though! And Ned has slaved for the theater these last two years. We must do our best for him. Has he written you about the play?”
“Oh, yes; I should say he had—lots.”
The calm, impersonal way in which she admitted her correspondence with the young secretary pleased Brainard unreasonably.
“He’ll be there for luncheon; so speak to your friend, and let’s be off.”
Miss Pyce condescended to accept the invitation to breakfast from the proprietor of the People’s Theater, as she had nothing better to do with her time. Her own manager had wounded her vanity by not appearing at the dock with an automobile. So the three were soon tucked into Brainard’s motor and crossing the ferry. Miss Pyce inquired after the fate of the People’s company in a tone of lofty kindness, until Louisiana kicked her about the ankles, causing her to relapse into a sulky gloom.
“The salubrious air of Broadway will do you good, I hope, Cissie,” Louisiana remarked severely. “I’ve stood your nonsense for six days because I had to. Now come to, please! Just because you’ve got a fool play, and a fool manager to waste his money on you, you needn’t try the Duse-Bernhardt-Ellen Terry pose on old friends!”
Miss Pyce promptly descended several steps and began to converse about the New York weather, which she said was trying to English nerves.
When they arrived at Brainard’s house, they found that Farson had not yet come in from rehearsal. The two women were shown into the little den behind the library, while Brainard glanced over his mail.
Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when a shriek came from the inner room, and the door was thrown violently open. Louisiana stood on the threshold, clasping against her breast a little picture framed in a thin gold molding.
“Where did you get this?” she demanded breathlessly.
Brainard looked at her admiringly. As she stood there against the dark shadows of the inner room, the sun from the window falling in a great gold bar across her auburn hair and violet-colored traveling dress—thin, erect, full of the passionate eagerness of youth—he saw Farson’s character created.
“Tell me, where did you find this?” she insisted impatiently.
“What have you got there?” he asked, taking the picture from her hands.
Her face followed his with curiosity and expectation, her eyes searching him.
“Where did you get it?” she repeated.
“This water color? I picked it up in Arizona—out there where my mine is located. It’s a long story—my story. I’ll tell it to you some of these days.”
“Now! Tell it to me now!” she insisted, with something more than childish impetuosity.
But just then Cissie Pyce, patting the marvelous folds of her hair, came from the inner room.
“Not now,” Brainard replied, looking meaningly at Miss Pyce.
Taking the water color from Louisiana’s reluctant hands, he replaced it above the desk in his private study, where it had always hung since he had moved into this house.
Farson came in presently, and in the flurry of his surprise and greetings the subject of the water color was apparently forgotten. Now and again, however, during their lively breakfast, Brainard found Louisiana’s gray eyes resting on him with a peculiar intentness. She did not seem so much excited over the prospect of playing Gertrude in Her Great Adventure as he had expected.
After the meal Cissie tore herself away reluctantly, and the three others went over the new play, the author explaining some of his ideas, and seeking to get the young actress interested in her part. Louisiana listened, but evidently her thoughts were far away. Farson was visibly disappointed.
“I think Miss Delacourt must be tired after her journey and the early landing,” Brainard interposed in kindly fashion.
“Of course—pardon me!” the young dramatist said, throwing down his manuscript. “Let me set you down at your hotel on the way to the theater.”
“No, you are already late for the rehearsal. I will take Miss Delacourt home when the motor comes back. I have something to say to her.”
Farson left with reluctance, after making an engagement for the morrow with the young actress.
“And I’ll know my lines by that time,” she promised him.
No sooner had the door closed upon the secretary than she leaped to her feet.
“Now for the story! And may I see the picture again?”
Brainard fetched the little water color and placed it in her hands.
“As I told you,” he said, “it’s by way of being the story of my own life—at least, of the only part that counts as life!”
“Yes?” she said expectantly.
Looking over her shoulders, he pointed to a spot in the distant mountain background of the sketch.
“In there is the site of the great Melody mine—”
“Melody—what? Why, what do you mean?” the girl stammered in renewed excitement.
“The Melody mine—that’s the name of the mine about which there is the litigation, you know. That’s where all the money for the theater came from. It’s the famous pot of gold—my Aladdin’s lamp—only it’s likely to change owners.”
“But why did you call it Melody?” Louisiana demanded, with glistening eyes.
“That’s all in the story, too,” laughed Brainard.
“Then tell it to me—all!”
She dropped the picture into her lap, and, holding her little hands tightly clasped, fastened her eyes on Brainard’s face, as if what he had to say was of momentous interest to her. But that, he reflected, somewhat flattered, was just Louisiana’s way.
“Here goes, then, Miss Delacourt, for the story of my life, which explains that water-color sketch being in my possession!”
And Brainard retold the tale of his great adventure since he played the part of good Samaritan to the dying stranger. It took some time to tell the story, and he did not hurry. The motor came back and waited below, while he went into all the details of the story with which we are familiar.
At certain places Louisiana opened her lips, as if she could not control an exclamation; but when Brainard paused, she merely motioned him impatiently to continue. As he told of his dropping from the train at the lonely water tank, and of the strange little girl who had guided him to Gunnison’s shack, Louisiana’s mobile lips parted in a curious smile. She was not so much interested in his Mexican adventures, nor in the European chapters, but when he described his first visit to the deserted house on the hill above Monument, the girl’s face sobered to a wistful expression, and she caught her breath as if she might sob.
“And there I missed her by a few weeks!” Brainard said.
Louisiana laughed aloud, as if it were all a joke.
“It sounds,” Brainard remarked, having rapidly concluded the account of his experiences as a miner, “like a dime-novel yarn, but it happens to be all true. And throughout my adventures, all through these six years, I’ve clung to the idea of just being the trustee for this unknown lady—this Miss Melody Krutzmacht, or whatever her real name may be. I think that is what has saved me from becoming a plain gambler, and the whole business no better than the melodrama Farson and I saw, The Stolen Bonds, where we met my old friend Hollinger. I’ve got Melody to thank for saving my moral character, as well as doing a lot else for me. But I haven’t much hope now of finding the lady, to thank her for anything!”
“She ought to have something to thank you for, I should say!” Miss Delacourt exclaimed warmly.
“I’m afraid not. I really feel in my bones that those crooks will beat me out of the property, unless a miracle comes along. I’ve been a poor sort of steward while I had charge of the money. I put every cent I squeezed out of the bankers into developing the mine, and saved myself by a fluke with the sulfur wells. Then all the money they brought in I’ve sunk in this theater game, without much to show for it, as you know.”
“Didn’t you keep a few dollars for yourself?” Louisiana inquired with childish directness.
“Oh, there are a few thousands lying around—enough, young lady, to have kept you going in Europe another year, and to put on this play of Farson’s. That wipes the slate clean, and I must pawn these duds to stake myself!”
“Maybe this play will make money,” the actress suggested thoughtfully.
“That will be the miracle, then!” Brainard exclaimed whimsically. “It will be a greater miracle than the one that made me into a millionaire.”
“Don’t you believe in Mr. Farson’s play?”
“Of course! But I don’t believe in our luck, nor in the people’s taste in drama, as I once did.”
The girl sat staring at the little picture, clutching its frame with her hands. After a time she looked up into Brainard’s face with a winning expression about her small mouth.
“Will you give me this?”
Brainard hesitated.
“I would give you pretty much anything else I have,” he replied. “But, you see, that sketch is all I have of Melody—supposing it was hers! You understand?”
“You have a good deal of feeling for this Melody?”
“Yes,” Brainard admitted, slightly reddening, and added more lightly, “She’s been my benefactress, you see.”
The girl raised her gray eyes and looked steadfastly at him. Her face was older, Brainard suddenly perceived, than he had remembered it. Yes, the trip abroad had done much for the wild young girl.
“I want this!” she insisted.
“Then you shall have it!” Brainard exclaimed impulsively, and added with another blush, “It’s about all that I can give you!”
“I know it—and that’s why I want it so much!”
After that there was a conscious silence between them, until Miss Delacourt rose to leave. She walked slowly to the door, as if loath to go; then she turned and reached out both hands to Brainard. He took them, and they stood facing each other mutely.
For the first time in all these years his loyalty to his unknown mistress completely vanished. The ideal of Melody had faded from his mind.
XVI
If the young dramatist had been disappointed by Miss Delacourt’s apparent lack of interest in his play and in the part of Gertrude on the occasion of that first luncheon, he was quickly reassured by the energetic way in which, beginning with the next day, she threw herself into her work. As soon as she had time “to roll up her sleeves,” as she expressed it, she plunged into the rehearsals, an incarnation of work and enthusiasm.
To be sure, she put the author through some uncomfortable hours while she criticized his piece and suggested many important changes with her usual frankness and point. She “combed it out,” as she said, line by line, and convinced him, against his will, that he should cut freely and sharpen his dialogue all through. Moreover, she set him right on several subtle points in the heroine’s psychology.
“She knows what she’s about, too,” Farson reported to Brainard. “I don’t see how she’s done it, but in her flip way she’s absorbed a lot in Europe. She knows what all of them are doing. She was quoting Brieux, Barrie, and Shaw at me last night all in one gulp. I must rewrite that third curtain to suit her ladyship.”
“You must remember that you are dealing with a star,” Brainard observed dryly. “Louisiana may be new to the firmament, but she knows instinctively what belongs to her starship.”
In much the same manner the new leading lady took hold of the other players, and “shook ’em all by the neck and woke ’em up.” There were but three weeks left, and she wore the company almost to the point of revolt by the long rehearsals she demanded. When they grumbled, she read them a characteristic lecture.
“It’s your last stunt for the old People’s. You know you have all got a lot out of the concern—for one thing, better pay than some of you will ever see again; and much more besides. So show that you’ve got something warm inside your anatomy where your hearts ought to be—at least a dog’s gratitude for the hand that’s fed you. The piece is all right, too; it will make the jaded pulse of Broadway flutter like an ingénue. Just you give the public a chance to discover that here is a play as is a play!”
During these strenuous weeks of rehearsal Brainard was absent most of the time in Arizona and Washington, where the already celebrated case of the Krutzmacht widow was now imminent. He had come to believe that Farson had more than a professional interest in his Gertrude, and he preferred to be absent from the scene of the wooing; but on the day of the dress rehearsal of Her Great Adventure he returned to New York and dropped in at the theater on his way home, slipping into a seat in the rear of the dim house.
The piece went with amazing swiftness and smoothness, thanks to the hard work Miss Delacourt had got out of the company. Absorbed by the play, Brainard was completely taken out of the wearying round of his daily perplexities.
“It is a play,” he muttered excitedly to himself, “and they do it wonderfully well. That girl is almost great. If the public will only come to see her, and not believe what the newspapers say, they’ll understand. She’s an actress!”
He repeated these warm words of praise a little later in Miss Delacourt’s dressing room, where he went to congratulate the actress. Louisiana was in street costume, buttoning up her gloves, when he arrived.
“I saw you in the back row,” she said in reply. “Any better news?”
“I am afraid not. The first court reserved its decision. They put up an amazing case, the impudent rascals! They almost made me believe them in spite of myself. I must tell you all about it sometime. I think we shall be able to pull off Her Great Adventure just in time before the sheriff closes the doors.”
He laughed good-humoredly at the situation, and handed her his cigarette case. Louisiana lighted a cigarette, then said abruptly:
“I hope you won’t be angry with me. I’ve borrowed something of yours while you were away. Couldn’t wait to get permission.”
“Honored that you found anything worth taking! What is it?”
“I borrowed a new name for myself!”
“I remember you said that we had ruined the old one for you!” he laughed. “You were sitting over there in the corner, too mad to cry, when you said it.”
“After making such a guy of myself as Cordelia I couldn’t bear to see the old name on the billboards. Besides, I think I like this one better, anyway.”
“What is it?”
“I’m calling myself Melody—”
Brainard’s expression changed suddenly; and he turned away.
“You don’t like it,” she said coaxingly. “But it’s a pretty name!”
“Melody what?” he asked with a touch of sternness.
“Oh, just Melody White—that’s all.”
“But Melody was her name,” he protested.
“I know! You told me so. But that Melody doesn’t exist really; she’s just a name—an idea you have. I took a fancy to it—my dotty point, see? I’m superstitious about it. I want to make this play a great big success, as you made the mine,” she said swiftly. “So don’t be cross with me for making free with your unknown lady love’s first name!”
Brainard smiled in spite of himself at the girl’s insistence on a trivial thing.
“I don’t know why I should object,” he said slowly.
But he realized that even in speaking he did object. It was one thing to ask him for Melody’s sketch, the only memento he had of his mistress, but another to take this liberty with the mythical Melody’s name, and to post it up for the whole world to see on a theatrical billboard. In a moment, however, Brainard’s common sense came back to him.
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t take that name as well as any other, if you can make it right with Farson and the manager. I should think they might object, after all the press work they have done for Louisiana Delacourt.”
“I can manage them all right!”
The new Melody puffed these gentlemen aside in a cloud of smoke.
They drove uptown together in Brainard’s car, but neither spoke. The girl, Brainard observed, was unwontedly excited, her little hands gnawing at the muff in her lap, her keen eyes devouring the passing crowd on the streets. Brainard, who was tired in mind and body, was content merely to watch his companion from his corner through half-closed eyes.
After all the hard work of the past weeks, Louisiana—or, as she now preferred to call herself, Melody—was marvelously fresh and pretty. She had the lithe body, the deep-set eyes, the sensitive, mobile features of a real temperament. He wondered whether she cared deeply for Farson. The young secretary was undoubtedly attractive, and should this play bring him the attention it ought, he might become a good dramatist; but if the girl had an ambition to be a great actress, she had better not tie herself yet to any man. And it comforted Brainard curiously to remember how unmercifully she had handled the young man’s play.
“The Star of the Seven Seas is to be withdrawn,” she said at last, breaking in on his meditation. “Only two weeks’ run—dead failure! Cissie thinks New York audiences are exceedingly provincial. She is going back to dear old Lunnon as soon as she can get there. Maybe I shall be able to help her later.”
As the car stopped before a third-rate hotel in the Forties, Brainard inquired:
“So Cissie has moved from the Astor?”
“Yes, Cissie is visiting me now,” the actress replied.
“Times change—for us all!”
“They do that—sure—and for the better sometimes!” the young actress averred with a contented smile.
XVII
Latterly the critics had completely ignored the existence of the People’s Theater. Its announcements aroused no more public interest than the program of an ethical culture society. Brainard, who had at last learned the real importance of publicity, feared lest this same contemptuous indifference on the part of the press might bury his young secretary’s play in hasty and undeserved oblivion.
But as he sank into his seat on the following Monday night he was surprised and relieved at the size and the character of the audience. All the leading critics of the metropolitan press were there, also many of “those who know,” and whose verdict is useful indirectly. There were some theatrical people, and a few fashionable folk from Mrs. Donnie Pearmain’s world. The rest were of the ordinary, semi-intelligent theater-going sort.
It was an ideal house before which to try out the new piece. If the play had anything enduring in it, there were those present who could recognize the fact. Ned Farson had many personal friends in the city—college mates at various clubs, young literary aspirants, dramatists, newspaper and professional men. Among these, evidently, the word had been passed around that Ned’s play was to be produced—and that was enough. Louisiana had also worked Cissie, and Cissie Pyce had reached other professional circles.
“And now for the play,” Brainard sighed, dropping his glasses after this preliminary reconnaissance, “and for our one actress!”
At last, in the hush of a well-trained, expectant audience, the heavy curtains drew apart noiselessly, revealing the first scene—a rough shack in a mining camp, with a splendid background of mountains and desert.
There was no doubt from the first curtain that the piece would go—would hold this audience, any audience, by the simple power of its story, its honest pathos and humor, its vitality and veracity. But it was not until the first scene of the third act that the people gathered there awoke to the fact that a real actress, and one whose very name had not been heard before that night, was taking this piece, and the part of the Western girl, Gertrude, to present herself as an artist. “Melody White” was her name on the program.
“Who is she?” was the whisper that ran around the theater.
Certainly she was not the Louisiana Delacourt whose liberties with Cordelia had made a farce of Lear! Quiet, almost subdued in her methods, with an extraordinary variety of power, she gave the lines—many of which had a real poetic quality—with a musical accent that swept over the ears of the audience like a soft, summer wave. Her face was lighted with a glow; her slightest gesture seemed to reveal something of the character—the free, fearless, capable woman of the great West.
As the play went on, hardened theatergoers looked at one another in wonder and joy. Here, beyond the shadow of doubt, was a fresh talent, as Brainard had predicted.
At the close of the act, after the furious applause, the flowers, and the curtain calls for company, actress, and author, there was a clamor behind the scenes for a speech from the founder. The company gathered about Brainard and insisted that he “must say something.”
“You talked to ’em when I was down, do you remember?” Melody remarked. “I think you ought to say a word now that I am up!”
So for the second and last time Brainard faced an audience in the People’s Theater, and the irrepressible young actress was the occasion for both his speeches. In a few rapid words he reviewed the purposes he had had in mind in opening the theater, two years before.
“We have made many mistakes, of course. Perhaps some of you may think that we have made more mistakes than anything else. We have learned a great deal; and first of all, that in our country there is no ‘people’—no one public. At least, they haven’t patronized their own theater! But I can’t think that we have altogether failed, after such a night as this.
“One of our desires was to produce truthful American plays of American life. Her Great Adventure is American to the core, and you seem to think it good. Another object was to discover and educate persons of unusual dramatic talent, to create artists and free them from the base compromises of the commercial stage. To-night you have witnessed the début of such a talent. Having given the world Her Great Adventure and Miss Melody White, who shall say that we have failed? . . .”
After the play, the company gathered in the library for supper, to celebrate their triumph. It was Brainard’s custom to give such a feast at every premiere, but to-night there was among the fifty or sixty guests an unaccustomed air of success and intoxication that bubbled into speeches and songs and kept them until long after midnight. At last, after dreary failures, contempt, and neglect, the People’s had achieved a real, big, popular success! The critics had scattered to tell all New York to go to the People’s Theater in West Twelfth Street, to see Her Great Adventure and a real American actress.
“We shan’t be closing right off, I reckon,” Miss White whispered across the table to Brainard.
“Not as soon as I expected!” he replied with a smile.
When the party finally broke up, he looked to see the successful author lead away his triumphant star; but, to his surprise, Farson went off with some young men, to finish his triumph with them at a club. Brainard questioned the actress with his eyes.
“Yes, you’ve got to take me home in your car! Cissie has left. Don’t you see that I have waited until all the women are gone, and now you are making me ask you for a ride outright?”
“I merely wished to efface myself before the hero of the occasion,” he replied joyfully.
“No need of such consideration. He’s left me to cab it up alone.”
“Have you already had the usual tiff between two collaborators?”
“Oh, no,” she drawled, as the car started with them. “Not at all! But you see, he wanted to push the contract.”
“Ned asked me yesterday to marry him. It would be a convenient arrangement, you know; he could write the plays and I make ’em famous!”
“Don’t put it that way!” Brainard protested quickly. “He’s the best of fellows, and I know that he cares for you.”
“It won’t hurt him, I reckon. Clever boy—my, how big his head will be after to-night, though!”
The young actress yawned, and snuggled under the fur robe.
“How about yours?”
“I’m just happy. You see, I was right. The play is going to be a great money-maker.”
“It certainly looks that way to-night That means that we shall be able to keep the theater open till the end of the season, and close with the band playing. For all of which we have to thank you!”
“And your clever secretary! Tell me, have you heard anything more about the case?”
“The lawyers telephoned me late this afternoon that the judge had given his decree—in their favor.”
Her hand stole across to his under the robe.
“Of course, we appeal,” Brainard went on; “but they’ve got a strong case. Fraud, of course, but we can’t prove it.”
“Why not? Tell me more about the case. I’ve been meaning to ask you all along; but this play has filled every corner of my little head. Now I can think of something else. Come on upstairs. I don’t feel the least bit sleepy, and you can tell me all about your case—why they won when it’s a fraud.”
“That’s simple enough,” Brainard began, when they had seated themselves in the actress’s tiny parlor. “This man Krutzmacht, it seems, had married his stenographer out there in San Francisco. At least, she’s got a perfectly good certificate.”
“But how could he have really married her, if he was already married?”
“You mean if he was already married to the lost Melody’s mother? But was he married to her mother? We can’t find any record of it. Nobody knows, unless we could find Melody herself, and I have given up all hope of that. Krutzmacht might have deceived her, too, you know.”
“Why, of course he was married to Melody’s mother—and wasn’t divorced, either!”
“What do you know of it?”
“Stupid!” she said gently, rising and putting her hands on his shoulders. “Can’t you see that—I am Melody—yes, the real Melody!”
“Louisiana—”
“Name of my mother’s State. I made up Delacourt for the stage. Louisiana Delacourt was to be my stage name but Cordelia spoiled it.”
She laughed at his astonishment.
“And you are Melody Krutzmacht?”
“Lord, no! Melody White. Krutzmacht wasn’t any father of mine, thank goodness!”
“And your mother?”
“Was Mrs. Della White—legally married to Herbert Krutzmacht in the American consulate at Guatemala City. He met mama down there, and married her, when I was a child, and adopted me, too. I’ve got everything necessary to prove what I say. So you just telegraph that judge to hold his horses and get ready to write another decree!”
“And they hadn’t been divorced?” Brainard pursued, bewildered.
“Not that! He was bad enough, gave mother a dreadful life, took her up to that desolate mining town in Arizona, and left her there. Poor ma! But he sent her money when he had any—even that last time when he was in New York—and always called her his wife. I have letters to show it.”
“But you weren’t his child!” Brainard mused.
“Only by adoption; but I am my mother’s only living relative, and she died after him!”
“So, as the old man seems to have had no other living heirs to make claim, it is all your money!”
Melody shook her head smilingly.
“Not quite that! A good part of it must belong to my able trustee, who discovered the sulfur and made it pay. Dad Krutzmacht couldn’t have had very much to the good when he died. He wasn’t a nice sort of man, Dad Krutzmacht,” she added thoughtfully.
“Well, he left you a nice little fortune—something that should run into the millions. You will have to think more tenderly of the old fellow.”
“Ugh! How I hated him and Monument! That’s why I dropped his name. And just as soon as mother was gone, I fled.”
“In the night—rode down to the railroad. I remember it all. But tell me, where did you go then, and what happened to you? How did you escape the search I made for you all over the world?”
“That’s my story! I’ll tell it to you some day—how I dishwashed and cooked on a ranch for a living, peddled corsets, and worked in a factory—it’s a long yarn. Some of it is in the play; I told Ned the amusing things. But he has fixed it up a whole lot—I don’t know myself!”
“It must have been hard for a girl.”
“It was, but I am not sorry. It gave you a chance to work the mine, for one thing.”
There was a pause, and then Brainard rose to leave, saying:
“Well, Miss White—”
“Just plain Melody, please! I like the name—don’t you?”
“It means a good deal to me, as I told you.”
The girl blushed, remembering what Brainard had said about his unknown mistress, and drawled:
“But you didn’t like my taking it a little bit.”
“No,” Brainard admitted. “But I don’t mind now.”
“You oughtn’t to, really, seeing that it is my own name by baptism.”
They both laughed at this. Melody danced about the small room, woke up the new Boston bull, and made him dance with her. She was once more the child Brainard had first known at the opening of the theater.
“You’ll have to squelch that woman who’s trying to take poor mama’s place,” she remarked, in a pause.
“Of course I shall attend to that at once—and all other business until I can straighten out your property and hand it over to you clear of tangles.”
“What do you mean? Do you think I am going to take your old mine?” Melody fairly shouted. “It’s yours, yours, all yours! You won the first stake with your nerve, and you made the rest of it. And you’ll keep it, too, my friend—at least, most of it. Perhaps some day, when I get the fool-bug in my head, and want a company of my own, I’ll come around and call on you for a couple of hundred thousand.”
Brainard looked at the girl almost severely.
“All the property is yours, of course. Krutzmacht meant it so. Your name was the last word on his lips. I have been merely your guardian. It would be impossible for me to keep it now. You can see that it would be entirely different from what it has been while you were only a name to me.”
“I see what you are,” she replied slowly. “The honestest, most generous, most unselfish of men—and the foolishest! Come, let’s stop this swapping of compliments like a couple of children—‘You take it, George!’ ‘No, you take it, Edith!’ . . . So old Pap Krutz wanted me to have his money when he was dying! I suppose he thought to make it square for what he put mother and me through. He treated us like peons!”
Brainard laughed.
“You may think differently about your millions in the morning. We’ll wait till then. Good night, and double congratulations, Melody!” he said.
“Yes, we’d quite forgotten how good I was in the play. I’ll send you those papers about mother to-morrow morning, and you see that the scalawags don’t make good! I can’t be bothered with law suits and things until after the season closes. I’m making my great adventure now, the same as you did once! I don’t want to be disturbed until I have carried it through.”
“I’ll see that you are not disturbed. Before I go, please tell me why you didn’t let me know the truth when you found that picture in my room?”
“I had my idea,” Melody replied vaguely, her eyes shining into his. “I shouldn’t have given it away now—not until I had really made good—if it hadn’t been for that woman winning the law suit. When I discovered what the trouble was, I had to tell, of course.”
“I almost wish you hadn’t!” Brainard exclaimed, starting for the door.
“Why?”
And he was gone, leaving Melody with a thoughtful smile on her pretty face.
“I believe,” she remarked after a time, as in rapid, unstarlike haste she divested herself of her clothes, “that I shall find a way of compelling him to keep the money—somehow or other!”