When Brainard confided to Farson the plan he had formed for Louisiana
Delacourt’s education, the younger man looked sharply at him for one
moment as if he also suspected ulterior motives in this unexpected
interest in the young woman, who had given the People’s Theater such
dubious notoriety by her performance of Cordelia. In that rapid
interchange of glances between the two men, Brainard felt for the first
time a slight antagonism to his cheerful and companionable secretary.
Why should Farson immediately infer that there was anything more than a
disinterested desire on his part to help a poor and promising girl, whom
fate had rather casually thrown in his path? Was it necessary that in
the theater world this should inevitably be the implication,—that there
could be no simple kindness between men and women!
“No!” he exclaimed, with a slight smile, answering Farson’s glance, “I
don’t mean that!”
“Why do you think that it would be a good thing for Louisiana to go
abroad now? She’s got a good deal to learn that she could learn here
just as well,” the secretary observed evasively.
Brainard smiled more openly. It was plain enough that the young
secretary did not like the idea of losing sight of their Kansas star, of
whom he had seen a good deal in the course of business these last months.
“She’s nothing but a kid, you know,” he added in an indifferent tone.
“Exactly! And it’s just because she is so much of a child that I think
the best thing for her is to have a lot of new experience of a totally
different kind from any she’s likely to get over here. What she wants is
to grow,—not learn grammar and elocution. She must develop in every way
to become the actress that is in her, and that development she will get
more easily somewhere out of her old environment—apart from all the
inspiration that will come to her eager little mind by seeing real acting
and real plays, of which there is much more just at present in Europe
than in New York.”
“I see you have thought it all out,” the secretary replied dryly.
“Yes, I have thought a good deal about Louisiana since last night,”
Brainard admitted.
It had occurred to him possibly in the course of this thought that the
secretary’s growing intimacy with the girl was not altogether
advantageous. His nature was too generous, however, to entertain this
consideration seriously. The idea of rivalry between them for the girl’s
interest was too ridiculous to be thought of, and yet he was forced to
recognize in himself a trace of that subtle sex jealousy that seems
inevitable wherever two men are concerned with one woman, no matter how
trivial the occasion. He put it summarily out of his head.
“She won’t be away for always, Ned,” he observed good-naturedly. “And we
must give the girl her chance—it’s the least we can do after encouraging
her to come on here and join our organization, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” the secretary agreed more cordially.
When Brainard told MacNaughton of his purpose, the old actor expressed an
unfeigned and unflattering surprise.
“What do you want to turn that silly’s little head for?” he roared,
flourishing his cigar. “Send her abroad to study! You’d much better
send her to a grammar school or a young lady’s fem sem where she could
learn ordinary deportment. She’ll never make an actress.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Brainard replied quickly. “She’s the best
we’ve got already.”
Farson watched the two with an amused smile. The old actor shrugged his
shoulders in mute disgust.
“It isn’t saying much either,” the patron of the People’s Theater
continued somewhat tartly. “Cordelia wasn’t the worst that happened last
night by any means.”
“My God!” the Scotsman groaned fervently. “I hope nothing as bad will
ever happen to me again in this life.”
Brainard’s doubts of MacNaughton’s fitness for his position of manager
grew rapidly from this moment into a conviction that eventually produced
difficulties in the hitherto harmonious management of the theatrical
enterprise. Another disturbing current set in motion by the young person
from Iole, Kansas!
Brainard and Farson discussed at some length the details of Louisiana’s
trip. The secretary was firmly convinced that some sort of chaperone
should be provided for the girl. She needed a duenna or guardian, he
said, to keep her out of scrapes, if ever a woman did. When this idea
was suggested to Miss Delacourt, it received an immediate and positive
discouragement.
“I don’t know any female whom I could endure to have trailing around
after me,” she said. “And what’s the use, anyhow? They won’t eat me up
over there, I reckon. I’ve always managed to look out for myself so far,
and I’m not likely to forget how now I’ve something worth doing to keep
me busy. . . . No, I’ll go it alone, thank you, or not at all until I’m
ready to select my own guardian.”
With this she cast Farson a belligerent look that delighted Brainard.
When the secretary tried to explain in circumspect terms the manifold
dangers to which a young woman traveling alone was necessarily exposed,
she said:
“I’m going to take the pup along. A good dog is worth any two chaperones
in case of trouble.”
Brainard observed finally:
“I think Miss Delacourt is right. She will get on very well anywhere by
herself. She has the habit of independence.”
“You see!” the young woman remarked, nodding loftily to Farson. “You are
too conventional for the theater. I have the habit of perfect
independence, as your boss said. And I don’t propose to give it up in a
hurry either.”
With this second jab at the secretary she squeezed her dog in an ecstasy
of good spirits.
This important question being settled, there remained merely the plan of
work and travel, which Brainard undertook to prepare and to which he gave
much careful consideration. Then the passage was engaged, and the
morning of the sailing the three had a pleasant breakfast together at a
little down-town restaurant. Louisiana appeared in what she called “the
proper make-up for her new part,”—a smart traveling costume, with fresh
hat, gloves, boots, and parasol. Brainard was glad to see that she had
made such an immediate and natural use of the liberal means he had placed
at her disposal through his secretary, although the transformation worked
by her new costume took away a certain quality of primitive girlishness
that was pleasant to him. Louisiana was emerging rapidly from her
chrysalis under the stimulus of the opportunity he had provided for her.
As he sat back and watched her spar with Farson, he wondered whether the
old Louisiana would ever return from Europe. What sort of woman would
take the place of the girl who had made her début in the most
unconventional Cordelia the English stage had ever seen?
At any rate everything was spontaneous in her now,—not a trace of
self-consciousness in her attitude to him as her benefactor, and all the
simplicity and directness of the child which had first touched him.
“He says he’s going to write a piece for the theater and put _me_ in,”
Louisiana remarked turning to Brainard. “He’d better let me see it
first—I’ll give him a few points most men writers overlook. . . . You’ll
keep the theater open until I get back?”
“Longer than that, we hope!” Brainard laughed.
“I want to make my début there—my real début,” she said importantly.
“I promise you we’ll keep it open for that!”
“You’d better fire the whole bunch and start over,” she observed
thoughtfully. . . .
At the last moment, when Farson had already gone down the gangway, the
girl drew Brainard to one side and uttered the first serious words they
had had since their talk in her dressing room the night of _Lear_.
“It’s no use saying thanks, you know!”
“I don’t want you to thank me.”
“I know you don’t and I’m not—but I want you to know I understand.”
“What?”
“What you’re doing for me. . . . I’ll make good.”
“I believe you will!”
“Good-by!”
She gave him a lean little hand that gripped his nervously. The last he
saw of Louisiana Delacourt as he went over the ship’s side, she was
chasing her dog into some stranger’s deck cabin. As he made his way from
the dock towards the People’s Theater that morning, his world seemed less
gay and amusing with Louisiana out of it.