“Then we’ll make our own playwrights,” Brainard replied placidly. “Here’s one!” He tapped the younger man fraternally on the knee.
The secretary subsided.
“And the companies?” the Scotsman inquired. “They make the piece!”
“The very best actors, of course,” Brainard agreed enthusiastically. “We’ll pay the highest salaries and give long contracts and pensions—that’s all in the scheme. You will help us to organize the parent company, Mac. I’ll give you a free hand.”
The old actor closed his eyes in a happy dream. He saw himself at last as a metropolitan impresario, dealing magnificently with the “talent.”
Brainard read on, but before he had finished the note book—which contained a remarkable mixture of detail and aspiration—dinner came up. They talked as they ate, and they talked afterward as they sipped their coffee and smoked. They became heady with enthusiasm, for Brainard’s imperturbable optimism and faith in his idea were like drafts of Arizona air, intoxicating to those who lived in lower altitudes.
The actor, mellowed by good food and good wine,—and more by the confidence this new Croesus seemed to have in him,—discoursed almost tearfully of aspirations and ambitions suppressed through long years that were now within the possibility of realization. He had always wished to devote his life to Ibsen and the great classics, he declared, but the box office had prevented the fulfillment of his artistic ideals.
“I’m the box office now,” Brainard laughed, “and I am here to fulfill ideals!” He picked up the note book again. “I had forgotten the college of actors, for both sexes, which we must run in connection with the enterprise. It will give free tuition, of course, and there will be scholarships for promising pupils. You will have to look after that, too, Mac.”
“Haven’t I been training lads and lassies who couldn’t speak the language all my life?” the old Scotsman burred.
“We should recruit our road companies from the college,” Brainard suggested.