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?”
“Thanks!”
“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.