XVIII
As he had promised, Brainard attended to the business affairs of Melody’s estate. The lawyers easily obtained a stay of proceedings and a retrial. With the proof of Krutzmacht’s real marriage to the mother of the young actress, the case dropped like a cracked egg, before it got to court. Hollinger and the counsel, who had been “staking” Miss Walters in her attempt, foresaw dangerous consequences and withdrew precipitately from the case. After the smoke had cleared away, Brainard did not forget the plea that Hollinger had made in behalf of Krutzmacht’s former stenographer. He resolved to use whatever influence he might have with the new heiress to secure for Lorilla Walters a modest crumb from the rich cake she had fought for that would make her independent for life and allow her to withdraw permanently from the stage. The last that Brainard heard of the versatile fight-trust magnate he was employed in the capacity of financial adviser to a Chinese prince, who had conceived the idea of developing a railroad in his province with the aid of Western capital. Hollinger, whose headquarters were generally in London, achieved a signal success in this kind of financial diplomacy for which his temperament and his morals both fitted him.
After the suit had been disposed of, Brainard amused himself by preparing an elaborate report of his trusteeship of the estate, in which everything was accounted for, to the original items he had spent on his first journey. He also put his own affairs in order, in preparation for that day at the close of the theatrical season when the young actress would deign to give her attention to business matters. She was too busy at present.
For the improbable had really happened. Her Great Adventure proved to be the one undoubted theatrical success of the past four seasons. That intelligent first-night audience had gone home and told its friends that they must not miss the new play at the queer theater in West Twelfth Street. They, in turn, had promptly told their friends, and the news had quickly become contagious. Instead of a two weeks’ run the house sold out until the end of June, and a road company was already being prepared to satisfy the curiosity of the provinces. Incredible fact! The People’s Theater was making money, even with its low scale of prices.
At the close of the fourth week, when the new manager came to see Brainard in regard to the next season, Brainard smiled at him in amusement.
“I’m out of the theater business, Leaventritt. The place isn’t mine any longer.”
“I saw that you had won your suit.”
“Yes, but the theater isn’t mine.”
“Sold out?” the manager asked, a disgusted look on his eager face.
“Not that, but I’m out of it, just the same. You’ll have to see Miss White about another season. Perhaps she can help you out.”
“And just when the blamed sucker had fallen into the mint, so to speak!” the manager complained to a subordinate. “So it’s up to Miss Melody White, is it? Well, that lady’s no sucker. I’ll have to show her good cause!”
The next day, as Brainard was superintending the dismantling of his rooms, word was brought to him that Miss White had called and wished to speak to him.
“Sure it isn’t Mr. Farson that Miss White wishes to see?” he asked the servant, thinking of the new play which Farson had begun for the actress.
“Sure it isn’t!” a laughing voice answered from the hall, and Melody pushed her head through the doorway. “You’re pulling out?” she asked in surprise, remarking the disheveled condition of the pleasant library. “Where to?”
“Don’t know yet—just stripping for action,” Brainard replied buoyantly. “You gather a lot of moss about you whenever you plant yourself.” He pointed to the books and pictures ranged along the walls, ready for the packing-cases. “And one sinks into the moss, too, so that it becomes hard to tear up,” he said less cheerfully.
Melody sat down on a lounge, crossed her knees, and slowly pulled off her long gloves, as if she had come to stay.
“My!” Brainard remarked, looking attentively at her clothes, “how dressy the lady is getting to be!”
“Marks of my position,” Melody replied, with elaborate indifference. “It makes Cissie’s eyes water when the things come home. It’s almost as good fun as telling her that I will try to save her a small part in the new play, or something in one of the road companies.”
“Haven’t you paid Cissie in full for all her airs? Or do you still get amusement out of teasing the poor thing?”
“One has to do something, you know,” Melody sighed.
“The ennui of success has come so soon!” Brainard mocked. “You’ll be taking to ’citis and lap dogs. But I have a document that may distract your starship’s idle moments meanwhile, and give you something to think about.”
He stepped into the inner room and returned with a typed manuscript.
“Another play?” Melody inquired in a languid tone. “Have you taken to writing plays, too?”
“Not exactly,” Brainard replied, running over the sheets.
“Leaventritt came to see me yesterday,” Melody remarked carelessly.
“I sent him.”
“So he said.”
“You want to be careful. There’s a mercenary streak in his blood, and success is likely to bring it out; but he’s intelligent and honest enough.”
“You’re still set on making an idiot of yourself about the money and things?”
“If you mean that I am still determined to render unto Melody the riches that are Melody’s by rights, why, yes!”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Any one of a number of things,” Brainard replied cheerfully. While Melody negligently turned over the pages of his elaborate report, he continued musingly: “It was just six years ago this month when my play was turned down—the last one I ever wrote. I walked back up the avenue with the manuscript in my pocket, feeling that the bottom of the world had dropped out. I was a forlorn, broken specimen. It was a day something like this, too.” He glanced at the lowering April sky. “It is very different now. I’m not much richer than I was then, but I am a totally different being. In fact, I think now I could call myself a man!”
“I think so,” Melody agreed, in a rather doleful voice.
“And a man can always face the world with a light heart, no matter how light his pockets happen to be.”
Melody nodded sympathetically, and murmured,—“for the great adventure!”
“Yes! Life is the great adventure!”
After a long silence, Melody looked up into Brainard’s face and stretched out her hands to him.
“Won’t you take me—with you—on the great adventure?”
Brainard grasped her hands, and, leaning forward, tried to read the full purpose in the gray eyes.
“Melody!”
“Must I ask twice?” she said, blushing. “It’s more than most women have the nerve to do once. You see, after you left that night, I guessed—and—”
As Brainard took her in his arms she threw back her head, and, holding him away, said:
“And you’ll have to take the Melody mine along with Melody. I said I’d make you keep the old thing!”
XIX
“And what shall we do with the theater?” Brainard asked, in a lucid interval, early in June. “Shall we sell it to Einstein & Flukeheimer for vaudeville? Or shall we keep it for a certain American actress when she wearies of matrimony? Or shall we try to put new life into the great Idea, and keep on giving the dear Public what bores it, because it’s good for the dear Public to be bored?”
“I never thought much of your great Idea,” Melody confessed candidly. “The trouble with it is that it doesn’t do any good to give people what they aren’t willing to work for. You’ve got to earn your bread, so to speak, in order to digest it properly. The Public’s got to want good plays and good acting enough to pay the proper price for ’em. You can’t get people interested in an art they don’t understand and don’t want enough to work for. Let ’em give themselves the best they can understand and like until they kick for better!”
“That even I have begun to comprehend, O Minerva and Melody in one! Still, there are exceptions to your philosophical principle—for example, yourself, goddess, and me, who digest with an excellent appetite our heaven-sent cake.”
“Didn’t you earn it—and me? As few men ever earned the love they take! And I reckon I earned you, too.”
There followed an unlucid interval.
“But what, then,” Brainard resumed, after the interval, “shall we do with one large, commodious theater building; also one great Idea with a hole punched in it, through which the gas has escaped?”
“I’ve been thinking of that problem, too. We might turn it into a coöperative company, and let the players own it and run it to suit themselves.”
“Even into the ground?”
“Just that! But there are some good heads in the company, and it will give them all a chance. Besides, we can afford it, dear!”
“Yes, we can much better afford to give it away than to keep it running,” Brainard admitted. “As your husband, I can’t countenance all the follies I put on you as mere guardian!”
So the last night of the season, a warm June night, the People’s players got together at the close of the performance in the pleasant library of the theater, and Brainard and Melody made them two little speeches. First, Brainard explained to the players the plan of a coöperative stock company, in which all members were to own shares, with a board of directors, of which Leaventritt was to be chairman and Farson secretary. Then Melody said:
“You heard the boss on the new plan. You’re in great luck, let me tell you! And you will be awful chumps if you fight among yourselves, or otherwise don’t make a go of it.” Melody looked severely at Cissie Pyce, who was seated obscurely in the rear of the room. “Of course, you’ll all think yourselves Coquelins and Sarahs. Well, you’re not. Mind what the manager says. You’ve got the prettiest, nicest theater in the city, a fair company, and a good start with Mr. Farson’s new play. I shan’t be with you next season. As you’ve doubtless heard, I’ve taken a new manager—for life—and we’re going abroad on our first tour. So buck up! Don’t fight! Good luck!”
And thus was formed the independent Company of Actors, with one Edgar Brainard as honorary president, and Mrs. Edgar Brainard, née Melody White, as honorary vice president. All the company came to the wedding, and later trooped to the dock to see the couple depart for Europe.
A floral offering from the company—an elegant version of the great scene in Farson’s play, done in roses and carnations—filled their stateroom to the exclusion of much else. It was labeled, “Their Great Adventure.”
“That’s right,” Melody said when they went to inspect their quarters. “It’s life, not art!”
“We’ve made a fair start, don’t you think?” Brainard added.
Melody replied by raising her lips for the expected kiss.