PART II: MELODY (continued 3)

“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.”

“What do you mean?”

“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?”

“I think you can tell 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!”

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.