Robert Herrick

“ Those weeks on the trail with old Gunnison and the pack train of two horses and a mule were full of joy to the city-bred man, who had rarely escaped the pavements. The high altitudes, the vivid desert colors, the beauty and the savage wildness of this little-known part of the world filled him with ecstatic happiness as well as abounding health. He became hard and rugged, losing the pallor of the city man and all the petty physical weakness that had contributed largely to his fits of depression. Health made a new man of him in mind as well as in body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Frank as Brainard had become under the influences of his new life and much as he was attracted by the careless, good-humored young newspaper man, he could not bring himself to tell him the intimate details of his story, which in his feelings was so much more concerned with his unknown mistress than with himself. Ever since that evening when he had stood in the abandoned house above the Arizona desert, surrounded by the mute evidences of the girl’s existence, he had prosecuted vigorously the search for the elusive Melody, using every means known to him—and all in vain. ”

“ A regiment of rurales came galloping down the narrow street, with its band playing a lively air. The diligence pulled to one side, then turned off towards the west, and soon it was out in the flowering fields of the great plateau. As he left the city pavements, Brainard smiled to himself at the disappointment his acquaintance of the night before might be having at the railroad station. Of course, he might be nothing worse than a stranded dead-beat anxious to sponge a few dollars from a good-natured compatriot who appeared to be in funds. ”

“ As the mule cart drew up in the courtyard of a clean-looking hotel next to the cathedral and opposite the pretty plaza, he congratulated himself thoroughly on his luck. Having seen his bag deposited carefully in one of the enormous bedrooms that faced the plaza, and accomplished the desired bath, he descended to the patio on an exploring expedition. Near the trickling fountain in the center of the patio a well-dressed man was seated, reading a book. Brainard instinctively felt that he must be an American from the appearance of his clothes, although his face was hidden by the book. ”

“ It was unthinkable for Brainard to refuse from whim or shyness or fastidiousness the gracious advances of Society!
“I don’t like all this woman business,” Brainard remarked sulkily, laying aside his hat. “Whatever did you get us into it for, Ned? I don’t need their money.”
“No, you don’t need their money,” Farson pronounced oracularly, “and that’s just why you’ll get what you do need. You need their influence. You can’t get anything started without the women—not in America. A movement for art in any form couldn’t exist, if the women didn’t take it up. ”

“ MacNaughton was already there. The old actor’s face was very red; he had not said a single word all the afternoon, and his self-control was making him positively apoplectic. He stalked majestically past the footman, metaphorically shaking the dust of the milk-trust millions from his feet as he crossed the threshold.
“Asses, fools, imbeciles!” he cried, as the three reached the pavement. “What do they know about the drama? About anything but food and drink? They want us to build a theater for them!”
“Rather a frost, wasn’t it, Ned?” Brainard observed, smiling humorously at the secretary. ”

“ He had become an altogether different person, even in this week, from that beaten man who had stumbled homeward from a petty defeat through the New York streets in the gloom of an April day. For this one brief week in all the years he could remember he had been alive—fully alive—and with his hand now in the thick of this vital web he was not willing to withdraw. The one who had used him as a tool was dead, but his strong will lived on in him, not yet fulfilled, and to that strong will whose only hope of fulfillment lay in him—the chance stranger—a new sense of loyalty responded. ”

“ 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! ”

“ All about on the slopes of Orizaba and in the green valleys are extensive coffee plantations, watered by delightful streams. Everywhere great umbrageous trees, tropical in their luxuriance, shade the approaches to the old town. Jalapa itself consists of a few streets of white buildings with irregular tile roofs, a squat cathedral of the Spanish-American type, fertile green gardens carefully walled in, and of course a plaza, which at this season of the year was abloom with fragrant lilies. ”

“ Hollinger again shrugged his shoulders. In the pause that followed, Hollinger began to muse aloud softly, as if he were presenting a case to himself:
“Her life has been typical. Born on a dreary little ranch, educated for a few years in one of our national institutions for the stultifying of youth, then deserted by her worthless father and forced to do something for herself and her useless mother,—what is the answer to that? Chorus girl. Twelve dollars a week and mother to support as well as herself and no special talent or exceptional looks,—what is the answer to that? Man.” ”

“ You expected to find in me a bloody and brutal bounder, smelling of whisky and dazzling with diamonds. Instead you found an intelligent gentleman, interested in literature and life. The prize ring, Mr. Brainard, is as much an arena of Art in its way as the popular theater to which you are devoting so much effort and such large sums of money. And I was engaged in it as a business, as I am now engaged in the theatrical business. A financier, even of the prize ring, is not obliged to dirty himself with vulgar contacts. That explains the lofty idealism of some of our most prominent citizens. ”

“ Brainard was like a dry sponge that soaks and soaks but never satisfies its thirst, so Mme. Vernon declared. With her help, the rapid dialogue of the theater became easily comprehensible. For the young man’s ears seemed attuned, his whole intelligence quickened. He was like one arriving, after a long journey, at the promised land.
“You are an artist,” the Frenchwoman flattered, “and should stay here with us in the land of artists!” ”

“ With his Broadway prejudice that the United States stopped somewhere just above the Bronx and behind the Jersey hills, he was astonished to find so much habitable country beyond these horizons and so many people in it who did not seem to depend upon New York City for their livelihood or happiness. At first he was so much preoccupied with his errand and himself in his surprising new rôle that he paid little attention to the scenes spread before his eyes. Chicago impressed him only as a dirtier and more provincial New York. ”

“ Brainard was hungry. Snatching up his old cap, he went out to the neighboring avenue, and, without hesitation, entered the most expensive restaurant in sight—a resort he frequented only on rare days of opulence. Instead of the oyster-stew and doughnuts which had latterly been his luxurious limit, he ordered a good dinner, as if he had earned it, and devoured the food without the usual qualms of prudence. ”

“ After Farson had taken the hint and removed his bewildered person from the room, Brainard sat for another hour before the dead fire, in a sleepless revery. The unexpected visit of the stenographer and the fight-trust man had brought back vividly a long train of memories of what had constituted his active life for the last four years. The situation that had developed had again emphasized the dream quality of all living. It is the conventionally expected in life that makes what men ordinarily term reality. A slight turn from the ordinary course of events produces a sense of unreality. ”

“ Too many even of the social leaders of the city remembered the small bottles of Barton’s pale-blue fluid, retailed as milk at nine cents a quart, to forgive the social ambitions of Mrs. Donnie Pearmain, in spite of her respectable veneer of glue.
The energetic little lady, however, had learned from her rich father his great life axiom—if you can’t do what you want in one way, you can in another. So she attacked the citadels of social leadership by the way first of Philanthropy and now of Art, as the magazine man had accurately related to Brainard. ”

“ He had gone to New York to raise the funds with which to evade impending bankruptcy and loss of control of the properties which he had created. Brainard now fully believed that Krutzmacht had succeeded in this, and that he had been stricken at last by the hand of a hired thug and thrown on the street to die. But even in the torture of his final convulsions the old man had exerted his powerful will to defeat these cowardly foes, and had lingered on in life just long enough to enable his agent to snatch the prey from their jaws. ”

“ Brainard concluded whimsically. “And she’s not yet launched. Our kind of art comes high, Ned!”
“You’re a tip-top loser,” the young man said admiringly. “Don’t you ever think what it will mean to you, if Lorilla should win her suit?”
Brainard stretched himself leisurely.
“Except for being licked in this theater business—and I don’t like being beaten any better than the next man—I should howl for joy when they produce the fictitious widow and the orphan son in court. It would set me free for another great adventure. That’s what Herbert Krutzmacht and Melody have done for one Edgar Brainard!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brainard, who was smarting under the fight-trust magnate’s moral advice, paid little attention to the servant’s chatter and went directly to his room. He undressed slowly, thinking of the charming girl at the Haçienda di Rosas and the happy day he had spent with her. Hollinger’s frank warning to get to his “job” and let women alone rankled all the more because he felt the good sense of it. But something within him tempted him to rebel at good sense. He was young, and he had been through a series of strenuous weeks, living a lonely, rough life. ”

“ In the curious half light of the sun sinking into the desert behind and illuminating all the vast high plain with a brilliant reddish light, the huddle of passengers along the right of way and the stalled cars seemed singularly out of place, accentuating the desolate loneliness of the country, where for miles and miles as far as the eye could reach nothing was to be seen rising above the sagebrush and cactus except a range of misty, purple mountains a few miles to the south and a huge water tank a mile or two in the rear. ”

“ To get to that pin-prick on the map called Monument, Arizona, you drop off the railroad at Defiance, which is somewhere east of the water tank named Phantom, and then follow an old post road across the lofty plateau in the direction of the mountains to the southwest. After something more than twenty miles, the trail strikes a deeply sunk river bed that winds like a gigantic serpent over the desert toward the declining sun. In one of the coils of this dead river serpent lies what is left of the mining camp of Monument. ”

“ For ever since that fatal luncheon, the editor of the Beacon had directed the most skillful members of his celebrated stiletto gang in their sneers at Brainard. To the New York newspaper mind it was simply inconceivable that a man with a great fortune could put it to so purely childish a use as running a popular theater. ”

“ We were compelled to violate nature again, and in deference to the public’s unquenchable thirst for Virtue we allowed the slow-moving heroine to accomplish the dire purpose of her vengeful passions with the assistance of the government. In its present form our play is terribly satisfying to our public. It gratifies especially that common human desire to get somebody. Half our criminal justice is built upon the same unpleasant trait of human nature. ”