But their good luck did not hold. At the Saturday matinée of the first week the police visited the theater and the curtain was ordered down after the bedroom scene in the second act. There was a mild demonstration among the audience, whose curiosity was defeated, and the price of their tickets was repaid to all who demanded it. The press made considerable noise over the event.
“We’re made!” MacNaughton announced in great excitement. Farson was busy with the reporters, trying to get the most out of this unexpected bit of publicity. Brainard set forth in search of the virtuous police commissioner to protest in the name of outraged Art. But the commissioner was impervious to Art.
“That sort of show don’t go in New York,” he pronounced austerely, in reply to Brainard’s argument that the play had been given even more boldly in Vienna and Berlin and was held to be a “moral document” by the best European critics. The police commissioner seemed to think that New York had a different and better morality than that obtaining in Europe. He was obdurate. When Brainard reported his failure to his associates, Farson took it very lightly.
“All we’ll have to do,” he suggested, “is to make some slight changes—put a screen in front of the bed scene—and see the inspector. I’ll take care of him.”
But Brainard refused to pay the police to be allowed to produce his play, and so on Monday night the People’s Theater remained dark.
“And just look at all that money!” MacNaughton wailed, as something of a crowd began to form in front of the theater for the first time. “The governor is a miserable puritan,” he said to Farson, wringing his hands. “To think of turning his back on his luck just because of the morality of the New York police! He ought to run a Sunday school.”
Brainard was not to be moved, although the theater would have to remain closed for a week until the company could prepare another play. He was deeply disgusted with the whole affair, with the notoriety as well as the cheap pretense of morality by the police commissioner. For the first time in four years his faith in the great Idea began to waver, and he longed to escape from New York to the more vital air of Arizona. There had been some difficulty recently with the pumps at the Melody mine, and he might well take this opportunity of running down to Monument. Once there it would be a temptation to abandon the great Idea altogether and to remain in the mountains developing the copper mine. Or he could buy a coffee plantation in Jalapa, as he had once fleetingly thought of doing, and settle himself in Mexico like a medieval prince. Possibly the little señorita Marie had not yet found another Prince and had waited all these years for his expected return. The vision of that beautiful semitropical valley dominated by the snowy crown of the old volcano returned to his memory with alluring colors. Life in such a far-off Eden with a gentle creature as mistress of a rose-covered haçienda was an inviting contrast to the glare and vulgarity of New York. . . .