The pleasant drawing-room and the library of the theater, which were on
the second floor above the foyer, had been thrown open after the
performance, and a few well-wishers of the enterprise lingered there to
examine the new playhouse and to meet the shamefaced members of the
company, to whom Brainard was giving a supper. Miss Delacourt did not
appear with the others.
“She’s probably gone home, poor girl,” Farson said, as Brainard started
to find her. He went directly to the dressing rooms and knocked at one
of the closed doors. He had to knock twice before a sulky voice replied
irritably:
“Well, come in!”
Louisiana had torn off the blond wig in which she had played Cordelia and
tossed it into a corner. She had also removed the embroidered gold
bodice of her costume and put on a rumpled dressing sack, and was sitting
curled up on her long train, the big puppy in her lap. She was pulling
his ears; her brown hair fell about his head. It was plain that she had
been crying.
“What do you want?” she asked crossly, recognizing Brainard.
“I came to—to thank you for helping us in our emergency this evening,”
Brainard stammered.
“Helping! That’s a smooth word, I must say!” the girl flashed. “You may
like that sort of help; but it’s the last you’ll get from me, I reckon!”
“I hope not,” Brainard protested heartily. “You saved the performance
from being just a soggy failure, anyway.”
He could not help smiling at the memory of her saucy antics, yet the
picture of childish despair she presented, crumpled, with her hair
falling about the puppy’s head, roused another unfamiliar feeling of
sympathy and pity. She was such a forlorn little person, for all the
bravado of her speech!
“Is that what you call saving it?” Louisiana turned the puppy from her
lap and devoted all her passion to scorn. “Saving! To make yourself a
guy, to be ‘it’ for the merry haw-haws of the smart Alecks in New York!
I must say I don’t like your taste. I’d rather fail in some other way.”
She pushed back her falling hair and tied it excitedly in a knot, then
shrank into her dressing gown and glared at Brainard very much like a
kitten that has been cornered and is ruffled, “Let me tell you right
here, dear sir, if you are the big gun responsible for this whole show,
you haven’t got much to be proud of!”
“I heard you say that once before,” Brainard admitted humbly. “You said
it was rotten, and I guess it is. But we are going to try to make it
better.”
“Yes, try! You’d better try. I haven’t seen much acting, but I’ve seen
road shows in one-horse towns back in the State of Kansas that could play
all over your swell outfit. You think you are uplifting the theater, do
you? What do you know about the theater, anyway? You’d better go right
out to Iole, or over in the Bowery, and look at a ten-twent’-thirt’ show
and learn something about play-acting. This young ladies’
boarding-school sissy show—oh, why did I ever come to you? I’d have
learned more in a Kansas City variety!”
She crossed the room to hunt up a cigarette, and puffed the smoke with a
disdainful shrug of her thin shoulders, walking to and fro in the small
dressing room, kicking her dress about like a football, and generally
emitting sparks.
“So I saved your show from being too awfully dull—at the expense of my
reputation!”
Brainard could not help laughing at this display of childish vanity. She
was a child attempting to be dignified with something more than a child’s
intelligence. He suppressed his laughter and let her emotion explode.
“What do you think those writer-guys in the front row are going to say
about Louisiana Delacourt to-morrow morning? They’ll hand me the merry
laugh, that’s all. I’ll be a deader in the profession after this.
Anyway, I’ll have to make up another name.”
“Your name wasn’t on the program, you know,” Brainard suggested
soothingly. Louisiana merely cast him a withering glance. “Of course,
our company isn’t what it should be yet,” he admitted. “We’ll try to
give you a better chance—”
“You’ll have to do some mighty smart trying,” the girl sneered fiercely.
“You highbrows think all you’ve got to do is to open a theater and print
‘Ideals’ in big letters on the program, and the public will run to your
show. Folks have been going to the theater some before you undertook to
uplift it!”
“Do you think they do good work at the other theaters?”
“They ain’t all they might be, perhaps, but they’re so much more in the
game than you are, Mr. Head-in-the-Clouds, that you can’t see ’em at all,
at all! And to start off with Shakespeare, of course!”
She sniffed outrageously.
“_Lear_ was a mistake.”
“I should say it was!” she agreed with infinite sarcasm. “Why don’t you
look around and see what the others are doing—what the horrid trust is
putting on? They know their business, anyway.”
“Oh, come—you are a little hard on us!”
“I mean it. . . . Now, if you don’t mind stepping along, I’m going to
shake off this meal sack and hike home to bed. Good-by to high art for
me, thank you!”
Brainard started for the door on this broad hint, but paused with his
hand on the knob.
“Miss Delacourt,” he said, facing the angry girl, “I came here to-night
to say to you what I sincerely believe—that you have in you the making of
a fine actress. I gather from what you have said about our undertaking
that my opinion means nothing to you. But let me assure you that I
didn’t see your mistakes to-night as much as the spirit and the
talent—the very great talent, if I am not mistaken.”
“Very kind of you, I am sure,” the girl snapped.
“I don’t wish to persuade you to stay with us against your inclination.
In our present shape, we can’t give you what you need.”
“I should think not!”
“One of my purposes, however, in this enterprise was to discover just
such talent as I think you have, and develop it. Perhaps, if I can’t
help you in one way to develop your talent, I can in another.”
Miss Delacourt deigned to pause in her toilette to stare at Brainard.
“I’m sure you have the real thing in you, even after this one unfortunate
performance. I can’t tell whether the vein will hold deep, whether you
have the character to develop it thoroughly, or will be content with the
superficial success you might easily achieve in one of the commercial
theaters. But I want to help you to do better than that—to give your
talent a chance.”
“Well?”
“You must go where you can study—where you can see good acting also. You
must go abroad—to England and France and Germany.”
The girl’s eyes opened wider and wider. She murmured:
“But that would take a sight of time and money, and I haven’t a cent in
the world!”
“You have the time, at your age, and I can give you all the money you
need,” he went on earnestly. “To-morrow Mr. Farson and I will talk the
matter over with you and decide on what’s the best way to go about it.”
Louisiana threw back her head, as if to embrace the splendid vision
opened before her. Still gazing at Brainard to see whether he really
meant it all, or was perpetrating a cruel joke, she gave a long sigh.
There was something pathetically wistful and desirous in her small face
that stirred Brainard strongly. He seemed to be looking into a little
starved soul that was trying to grasp the meaning of his promise.
“You don’t mean—”
She began and stopped. Her look wavered for one moment, as if an
unpleasant idea had crossed her mind and made her doubt Brainard’s
disinterestedness. Brainard understood the expression. Probably in her
short experience of life she had met with little real generosity from
men.
“I mean exactly what I said—and nothing more!” he added with meaning
emphasis.
The girl’s face cleared with wonderful rapidity. Once more it had the
eager, wistful expression of the child.
“My, but you are a good one!” she exclaimed at last, convinced of his
earnestness and his singleness of purpose. “After all those fancy
compliments I just passed you, too!”
“I guess we deserved a good part of what you said. Perhaps you’ll save
the day for us again sometime—when you come back.”
“I sure hope I can! But not that way!” she blushed. “You mean it
all—the study and travel? To go to Paris?”
“And London and Berlin and Vienna,” Brainard added with a smile. “And a
lot of hard work, too, remember!”
“That never rattled me!” Louisiana exclaimed, gathering the sleepy pup
into her arms and hugging him until he yelped. Presently she held out a
hand to Brainard with an expression on her mobile face more mature than
he had yet seen there. “Some day I’ll tell you my story, and then you’ll
see what it means to me. You’ve given me—life!”
He left her hastily to spare her the embarrassment of a second fit of
tears. In spite of all the humiliation that the evening had brought him,
Brainard returned to his house in a happy and contented frame of mind.