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?