Blue-grass and Broadway 7 – Daviess · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 7Chapter 7
18
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 7
Chapter 7
DaviessEnglish
The first two weeks of September spent in torrid New York were a strange period of time to have projected itself into the calm life of Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. Suddenly she found herself a cog screwed tight into a rapid-fire piece of machinery that was running at top speed night and day, by name, "The Purple Slipper."
For long hours she sat in the coolness of that stage-box and held her breath while she threw her whole self into the building of the play, which so fascinatingly was and was not hers. And through all those hours, close at her side, between her and the big dim theater, sat Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, with his arm across the back of her chair and his eager face close to hers and tilted at the same angle. Her slightest murmur or his lowest whisper caught and was answered, and they almost seemed to be breathing one breath, so absorbed were they in the destiny of their mutual adventure. Like all women of her kind, Patricia Adair had known men only through a cloud, which sex traditions had firmly held between her and them, and Godfrey Vandeford was the first man she had encountered since she had slipped outside of its deadening density into a world where men and women endeavored together first, and left their sentinel undertakings to a fitting secondary time and place. In all sincerity she accepted him as a co-worker and was as happy working with him as it was possible for a woman to be. She specially liked being beside him in the office, and watched him settle the details of the running the big machine smoothly, from the hiring of the property-man to the firing of three successive stage-carpenters.
"Real eats, Mr. Vandeford?" the former had inquired one morning.
"Brown-bread turkey, nice and tasty, good crackers, but soda-pop and so forth for booze. Remember, they've got to face it, we hope, many weeks; don't turn their stomachs so they'll all gag."
"I see, sir, I see. I fed 'Maple Leaves' for two years, and they all et every night and gimme a purse when it closed to go to London."
"Goes!"
"Brown-bread turkey sounds nice. I'm hungry," said Miss Adair, as the good-providing property-man departed.
"Pop is going to bring us a piece of pie and a bottle of milk from the automat," answered Mr. Vandeford, as he began putting busy stabs with the press pencil on a pile of papers. "I ought to send him to get Denny to motor you for a real feed in the cool somewhere, but I want you here." With perfect unconcern, he went on checking the list the property-man had left him. He had ceased trying to decide the meaning of the flutter which he was not sure Miss Adair really gave when she was pleased. He was too busy to think about anything but the rush and roar of the machinery of "The Purple Slipper," so he just kept Miss Adair so near him for all the waking hours of the day that he could have no occasion to have his thoughts distracted by worrying over just what might be befalling her. Day after day he extracted her from the Y. W. C. A. at ten o'clock A. M., fed her and Miss Lindsey coffee and rolls and berries just any place that they happened to see (often he even ate with the two girls in the big empty cafeteria at the institution), lunched with her in the same haphazard fashion, sought a cool and quiet spot to give her dinner, and a ride on a country road, turned her into the big safety at about eleven o'clock, and went to bed to sleep the sleep of the interestedly absorbed.
The few evenings that Miss Adair spent with Mr. Gerald Height Mr. Vandeford did not find repose so early or with such ease. Also, his awakening on those mornings after was not so joyous, and he arrived at the Y. W. C. A. fifteen and twenty minutes too early upon each occasion.
However, his time was well spent in chatting with the brisk young secretary, and his anxiety was entirely relieved each time by finding the look intact in the gray eyes raised to his in eager greeting after the prolonged absence of fourteen hours, when the usual separation was about ten.
"We went out to a place called the Beach Inn last night, and whom do you suppose we saw there?" she demanded on one of the mornings after, over her bowl of halved peaches.
"Mr. and Mrs. Devil?" he asked, with a sparkle breaking through the frown with which he had instantly greeted her mention of that gay beach resort.
"No; Miss Hawtry and Mr. Farraday. She wasn't nice to us at all, but Mr. Height says she always treats him badly when they are rehearsing together. I think Mr. Height is perfectly wonderful to her on the stage. He's so gentle and kind; but then he's that in real life, isn't he?"
"Is he?" growled Mr. Vandeford over his corn-flakes.
"Yes, and he's so just and fine in the way he speaks about everybody. He told me how poor Miss Hawtry used to be and how you pushed her along until she could buy that lovely house we passed, in which the Trevors are staying while she is in town. It is hard on you, too, not to be out there boarding with them and her instead of in this heat."
"Did Height say that I--I boarded--out there?" demanded Mr. Vandeford, pushing his coffee-cup away from him with a sudden snap.
"Yes, he said you stayed out there in the summer always, and--"
"We're late," interrupted Mr. Vandeford, snapping his watch with the same temper he had used on his coffee-cup. "Bring that saucer of peaches along and eat it in the car."
"I'll take an orange instead," assented Miss Adair, as with all good-nature and in all naturalness she deserted the last half of the rosy peach, took an orange from the bowl before her and stood up to go out to the car, which Valentine had parked in the shadow of the building opposite.
"You kid, you!" scoffed Mr. Vandeford, with an ache in his heart, but thanksgiving for that same youthful unsophistication. "Height or somebody will get it all across to her, and then what'll I do?" he growled to himself as he followed her into the car.
"And I saw that Mazie--Mazie woman there, too, with a terrible-looking man that has written ever so many plays that are successful." Mr. Vandeford was devoutly thankful that Mr. Grant Howard's name had not stuck in the consciousness of the author of "The Purple Slipper." "I--I was introduced to them too--because you know you said that I must--must accept broad standards, and I did--last night." Miss Adair looked away, but Mr. Vandeford could see that her little ears, set close against her small head, with their tips covered by a smooth band of hair, grew rosy.
"What?" he gasped, uncertain as to what she meant.
"Talked to that--that playwright and--and drank some champagne. I like cider better, but Mr. Height ordered it, and I thought--"
Here the car stopped, and Valentine was at the door. Valentine never failed to be at the door instantly when Miss Adair was in Mr. Vandeford's car, because his French soul rejoiced within him for thus serving a grand dame.
"Rooney is on the last lap of the last act, and then he'll begin to polish the whole for dress rehearsals," Mr. Vandeford said as he held the curtains of their box aside for her to enter.
"And Mr. Height told me, too, that the Trevors had--"
"Hush!" commanded Mr. Vandeford, becoming the stern producer, because he felt that he could stand no more of Mr. Height at the Beach Inn, though he began to listen intently to that same gentleman and Bébé Herne in the beginning of the great scene of the now authorless play. The anxieties passed from him, and in a moment he was in harness again with his author and running in perfect unison.
"Cut it off, Height, cut it off!" commanded Mr. Rooney, and he ran his hands into his shock of black hair, which stood up all over his head like a black, sooty mop. "That scene needs something. It isn't big and simple enough. What did she say to him in your first layout, miss?" he demanded of Miss Adair, for the first time acknowledging to the company the presence of the author of their play at the rehearsals. "Can you remember?"
"Yes," answered Miss Adair, with the home-made color blazing in her cheeks and fires in her gray eyes as she rose in the box, and gave the six lines as she had written them. Her lovely, slurring, Blue-grass voice made the whole company smile with pleasure.
"That's it! That's it! That's real people jawing and not a lot of smarty guff. Put that in, Fido, and write it in, Miss Herne," commanded Mr. Rooney, without any form of thanks to the accommodating and forgiving author.
And truth to say the author of "The Purple Slipper" did not notice his omission. She was in such joy at having something of the "big scene" express what she had intended that she was clasping one of Mr. Vandeford's hands in both hers and holding on tight to keep from shedding tears of joy.
"What did I tell you?" he asked, taking the two nervously clutched little hands into his warm, strong ones, unseen in the shadow of the box. "You keep getting things across to Bill by letting him ask you for what he wants. See?"
"Yes, and I'm always glad when I do as you tell me," she whispered, with her lips almost against his ear as they both turned back to the stage and watched their machine begin to run on greased wheels. Mr. Vandeford thought of the Beach Inn, Mazie, the bottle of champagne, and Mr. Gerald Height, and groaned inwardly.
The last week of the rehearsals of "The Purple Slipper" was a hectic rush, the like of which Miss Adair had never imagined. She had gone out again for the week-end to Mrs. Farraday's, up in Westchester, and this time Mr. Vandeford drove out on Sunday for tea and crape myrtle with Mr. Dennis Farraday, and, he was surprised to note again, Miss Mildred Lindsey. The day passed like an oasis in the midst of a desert storm, and Mr. Vandeford had the pleasure of making all arrangements for Mrs. Farraday, Mr. and Mrs. Van Tyne, and several other old Manhattaners, who had fallen under the spell of the young Kentuckian who had in an off moment perpetrated "The Purple Slipper," to go to Atlantic City the following week to be upon the spot for the opening of the play. Suites in the great new hotel were engaged by long-distance telephone, time-tables discussed, and trains settled upon by the time tea was over and the golden sun had let the twilight purple the rosy plumes of the huge myrtle hedges. In the dusk Valentine brought Mr. Vandeford's car from the garage and Mrs. Farraday's chauffeur drove out Mr. Dennis Farraday's beloved Surreness. Miss Lindsey said her farewell, and it again surprised Mr. Vandeford to see the gracious kiss Mrs. Farraday put upon the dusky red of the beautiful Western girl's cheek, while good Dennis stood smilingly by in the friendliest delight. Then a wistful sigh from the talented young author by his side claimed his instant attention.
"What is it?" he asked, with no attempt to control the tenderness in his voice, though the dusk hid that in his eyes.
"I want to go back to town with you," she answered him, with a little catch in her voice. "I feel so far away from you and--and IT, up here."
"You shall," he answered, and turned toward Mrs. Farraday, who was coming across the grass towards them with a huge sheaf of myrtles for his car flower-baskets in her arms. "I wonder if you'll let me take my author back to town in a hurry to-night, Mater Farraday," he pleaded, with the affectionate smile in both his voice and eyes that he had learned to use in coaxing her since the days ten years ago when she had begun to mother him along with big Dennis. "I--I sorter--sorter need her."
Mrs. Farraday looked at them both with a keenness under the affection in her glance, and then laughed merrily.
"Yes, go with him, Patricia," she commanded. "I have lived through the week before the presentation of five plays for Van, and I think that it is only just that you should share that ordeal with me. He's impossible, and demands--everything. I gave him a perfectly new and wonderful hat that cost a hundred and ten dollars for the second scene of 'Dear Geraldine' right off my head at the dress rehearsal, and 'Miss Cut-up' did her dances on one of my most choice Chinese rugs. Now he's taking you from me. But go!"
"Here's your wrap, still in the car, so hop in," commanded Mr. Vandeford hurriedly, as though he feared that Mrs. Farraday would withdraw her sympathetic permission. "Good-night, and thank you!"
"Good-night, you two--two dear children," returned Mrs. Farraday, as she saw them off, after tenderly embracing Miss Adair and making plans for their future meeting. "How lovely it would be!" she murmured to herself, with a lack of definition, as she went back to the stately house behind the tree, where windows were beginning to glow.
For a long time the producer and his author were silent.
"I hate it--and I love it," Miss Adair finally said, with her soft, slurring voice lowered almost to a whisper as Valentine sped them along the country road perfumed and dusky with the early night, though a silvery radiance proclaimed a chaperoning moon as imminent.
"That is the proper way for an author to feel about a play one week before the opening," Mr. Vandeford assured her, with a laugh keyed to match her declaration. "It shows an entire sympathy with the poor producer."
"Suppose, just suppose, that the producer had been anybody but you and I had had to stand all--" Words failed Miss Adair in imaging her plight as author to another producer than Mr. Vandeford.
"Any other producer might have done better than I have done for you," Mr. Vandeford answered her, with a sadness in his voice that he himself had never heard before. And as he spoke he resolved to tell her the whole Hawtry situation, which was haunting him day and night; to begin with the purple, letter-manuscript hunch, which he had lightly taken up to spank Miss Hawtry for trying to double-cross him with Weiner about "The Rosie Posie Girl," and end up with the hopeless state of his feelings about herself. Miss Adair herself stemmed the confession which might have altered the fate of that good machine "The Purple Slipper."
"You've made the whole horrible experience worth while to me, and I'm going to be a great playwright yet, just to make you--you proud of me," she assured his sadness in the purple dusk, and this time Mr. Vandeford was so sure of the flutter that he reached out his hand and captured a part of it, a white, slim little hand that nestled into his as though it were not in any way aware of doing so. "I'm going to dinner with Miss Herne to-morrow night, so Mr. Kent can show me what is the matter with part of his costume for the third act, and then I'm going to coax Mr. Corbett to fix it over for him," she continued, speaking of the business of learning to be the great playwright she had promised him to become.
"Er--er, did you say dinner with Bébé and--and Kent?" Mr. Vandeford stammered as a desperate opening for letting his author know just what she was doing in visiting that establishment without-the-law.
"Yes, I know about them; Mildred told me, but I told her that I was going to accept the 'broad standard' that prevailed in my profession. I like both of those people a lot. What business is it of mine if they don't want to get married?" Miss Adair's voice was coolly unconcerned and professional.
"Help!" ejaculated Mr. Vandeford, holding the slim little hand as if drowning. And indeed he did have a sinking sensation, which, strange to say, was relieved by a quick mental vision of the capable young woman at the desk of the great international safety.
"And I know about Mr. Height's three divorces, and I think he is to be pitied instead of criticized for being so unfortunate and lonely. Mildred says she doesn't believe he is as lonely as he tells me he is, but I know he is. I asked Miss Herne to ask him to dinner, too, and she did," Miss Adair continued, thus making little stabs into Mr. Vandeford's vitals.
And right there Mr. Vandeford paid the entire penalty for all his tilts against organized morality by feeling unworthy to take a beautiful, fragrant, adoring, confiding girl in his arms and telling her all he had learned of the tragic results of such tilts. His predicament was tragic, though unique. If he summed up these others, he sized up himself to her, and by what judgment he taught her to judge them she would judge him when the time came. If he taught her to turn from Kent or Height she would turn from him, when she knew him entirely, as she surely would soon. And, forsooth, how would he prove to her that he was a better man than the copper-headed tango lizard, Height, though he knew himself to be? And who was this girl, anyway, to come out of a little back-woods town where the standards of life were so narrow that all who could lived out of them in degrading secrecy, and make him feel himself unworthy when he had lived openly in a way about which his own conscience had not troubled him? Why did he hesitate to tell her about his affair with the Violet and his anxiety about her contract, and why should his face burn at the thought of telling her how he had coolly let his best friend in for the prospect of an affair with the star for the purpose of protecting her and her play? And why should the sex and business standards of his world be entirely different from those of hers or any other world! On the other hand why shouldn't they all double-cross and prey on and defame and applaud each other to their heart's content? Why should they care if they were judged by--? At this part Mr. Vandeford's bitter reflections were suddenly invaded by a perceptible collapse of Miss Adair's soft and proud young body against his, and a round, warm cheek fell against his silk-clad sleeve, as he perceived that his eminent author had plunged suddenly into the depths of healthy and innocent slumber, while he had been moralizing about her and the rest of the universe. He slipped his arm about her with cautious tenderness and made her comfortable, while he muttered to himself:
"She's a white flame and, God willing, I'm going to keep her that!"
During the next week the "white flame" burned high and bright while the author of "The Purple Slipper" threw herself into her place in the grinding of the machine that was to turn out a perfected play on the following Tuesday night at Atlantic City. Everywhere Mr. Rooney was tightening bolts and polishing surfaces until they glistened while he snapped and tried out all bands.
Miss Lindsey was pale and quiet, but she acted her part to Mr. Rooney's entire satisfaction, though he never said so. Mr. Leigh's feet were still a target, and the glowering girl, Miss Grayson, was always tearful, but constantly improving. When the company was not being ground and polished, Mr. Corbett's tailors and dressmakers were fitting costumes, and the property man was checking over and over each demand of each and every person, from the fresh rose Mr. Kent was to give to Dame Carrington to the mud that was to be splashed every day upon Mr. Gerald Height's riding-boots for his last and triumphant entry. Miss Adair had lost all sense of the play as a whole and only thought of it as distracting and distracted bits. She had, of course, never witnessed the scenes between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Height, as they were still rehearsed in private and would be until the night of the dress rehearsal on Monday at Atlantic City. This was well.
But one thing she kept with her through the whole strain; the sense of being one with Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and that one working for pure joy.
As for Mr. Vandeford, his eyes sank back under his brows, and Mr. Adolph Meyers was with him far into every night.
"How does the booking stand now, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford demanded on the Thursday night before the opening Tuesday.
"Atlantic City next week, Wilmington and New Haven the next if need be, and--it is to Syracuse or Toronto we must jump, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Meyers, with beads of perspiration on his high brow.
"Violet will never make that jump, Pops. Her contract closes the day we open in Atlantic City, and there we'll close, too, if we haven't New York right in sight. What'll we do?"
"It is many a show closed before it opened," Mr. Meyers said, with a wary look at Mr. Vandeford.
"This show is going to open and never close--until it's had a thorough Broadway try-out, Pops," said Mr. Vandeford, quietly. "Anything from Mr. Breit?"
"Nothing to hope for a Broadway opening before November first."
"I'll pass the question up Friday, and then see what I'll do," Mr. Vandeford said slowly as if turning his back for the moment to something that stared him in the face.
All Friday morning he worked with "The Purple Slipper" machine with a bitter defiance in his eyes that made Miss Adair keep close to his side, though she didn't understand her reason for doing so.
"Is anything the matter?" she questioned, with her gray eyes stricken with alarm. The fear for her play in those gray eyes sent Mr. Vandeford into desperate measures. He asked Miss Hawtry to go to luncheon with him, and she graciously accepted.
"Where do we get in on Broadway after Atlantic City, Van?" she asked as soon as she was served with her iced melon.
"We get in all right," he parried, putting his spoon into his cantaloupe.
"That's fine. I don't mind that Atlantic City week, but I'm glad I'm past ever doing the road again except to the Coast. They'll eat up 'The Rosie Posie Girl' in Chicago and San Francisco." Miss Hawtry was deliberately declaring her intentions to Mr. Vandeford without saying a word about them.
"I'm going to take 'The Purple Slipper' over to London before I take it West." Mr. Vandeford answered her declaration with another not put in words, but so well did he know the workings of her shrewd, small mind that he saw that the game was up unless he did what he must do. During the rest of their luncheon they talked about the Trevors.
Straight from the Astor Mr. Vandeford walked into the office of Mr. Weiner.
"Weiner," he asked, without any sort of preamble, "will you give a month's try-out of my play, 'The Purple Slipper,' in your New Carnival Theater from October first to November first, with a proper guarantee, and then an option on an unlimited run there if it makes good, for a half-interest in 'The Rosie Posie Girl' without Hawtry?" Mr. Vandeford knew that he was offering Mr. Weiner a good thing, for the rights of "The Rosie Posie Girl" had been hotly contested by all the big theatrical managers on Broadway the winter before, and Mr. Vandeford had got them from Hilliard because of his success with "Dear Geraldine" by the same author. They had all coveted it because it was one of those combinations about the success of which there could be no doubt. In offering Weiner a half-interest Mr. Vandeford was aware that he was offering him at least a hundred thousand dollars, but Mr. Vandeford's hunch about the purple on purple was beginning to cost him dear, though at least a hundred thousand dollars did not seem too much to pay to keep the agony of failure out of a pair of sea-gray eyes that had trusted him the first time they had looked into his.
"With Hawtry it goes; without Hawtry, no, Mr. Vandeford," was the prompt answer.
"With Hawtry six months from now?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.
"It is that I have a weak heart, Mr. Vandeford, and I do not trade in futures," answered Mr. Weiner, with a spark in his black eyes.
"You know my fix, Weiner; now what will you take for the New Carnival October first for my Hawtry show?"
"I will trade that entire 'Rosie Posie Girl' manuscript, with all rights for that New Carnival Theater on October first, with option for the entire season, Mr. Vandeford," said Mr. Weiner, rolling his big cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
"Without Hawtry?"
"I have a new Hawtry right now--in pickle," Mr. Weiner answered.
"Will the New Carnival certainly be finished October first?"
"Yes, to a certainty of a large guarantee."
"How long will you give me to answer?" asked Mr. Vandeford.
"I have made an appointment with S. & K. to talk that New Carnival Theater for a show at five o'clock to-day, Mr. Vandeford. I will call it six o'clock for you," answered Weiner, as he turned the screw with all show of consideration for his fellow producer.
"I'll be back at four-forty-five," Mr. Vandeford answered him, and with no further good-by took his departure.
Arriving at his office, Mr. Vandeford directed Mr. Meyers that he was to have half an hour entirely undisturbed, entered his own office, and after a second's pause went into the little office that had been assigned to Miss Adair, the author, and sat down in the chair she very seldom occupied, but which was hers by tenancy. On the desk were a pair of silk gloves she had left there the day before, and in a blue vase were several roses in a good state of preservation, which he recognized as having come from a bunch Miss Adair had been wearing after having had luncheon with Mr. Gerald Height on Monday. These objects disturbed Mr. Vandeford vaguely. He put them out of his mind roughly and went into conference with himself sternly. Literally he was weighing the question.
On one side of the balance he laid "The Rosie Posie Girl," which, with Hawtry, was sure to run on Broadway for at least two seasons and make for him a fortune that was indefinitely large and sure. Beside this, its production would insure him a position among the country's really great producers. The show was big enough in conception to admit of a spectacularly artistic treatment, which he had intended to give it so that it would place musical comedy on a plane upon which it had never stood before. He knew himself well enough to know that a real triumph of that kind once accomplished, he would want to turn to other fields of endeavor, and he could see his greater self standing patiently waiting for his lesser to be liberated by the process of climbing out of the very top of the theatrical profession.
Sternly he turned from himself to the filling of the other pan of the scales in which he was weighing the question. He looked for something to put in to over-balance the certainty of "The Rosie Posie Girl," and found nothing but a vast uncertainty with many potentialities. "The Purple Slipper" was a play of no known classification, and with Hawtry in it was still less fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring. And there was added the uncertainty of that week from the twenty-third to the first during which he had no legal hold on the fair Violet. He felt reasonably sure that the announcement that "The Purple Slipper" would open the big new Weiner theater, with all the clash of publicity which he could give to it, would hold her steady on her job, but as he laid it down on the scales, it had to be classed as an uncertainty. The fifteen per cent. seat sales based on Mr. Gerald Height's appearance in silk tights, velvet, and lace was about the only positive he had to lay in the scales, and that, of course, failed to tip them to any degree. For about fifteen minutes he sat perfectly rigid. Then he gently laid on the uncertain side of the scales the positive and concrete faith in a pair of sea-gray eyes, jeweled with tears, and watched "The Rosie Posie Girl" rise high as "The Purple Slipper" sank down heavily.
After this he took a rose from the green vase, stuck it in his buttonhole, and went forth--into his own office. He there rang his buzzer for Mr. Meyers, and seated himself with the air of a man who has had a burden lifted off his shoulders rather than with the air of one about to give away half a million dollars.
"Pops, 'The Rosie Posie Girl' is sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to Weiner for a month's try-out of 'The Purple Slipper' at the New Carnival Theater, good guarantee for that month, and an option on a run to the limit for eight-thousand-a-week houses. Get Lusky over the 'phone, and you and he have the contracts drawn as tight as wax by four-thirty."
"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, I must have a say that--"
"No, Pops, don't say anything."
"With a pardon it is that I think that Miss Adair is a very fine lady, and so also 'The Purple Slipper.'" With this incoherent pronouncement of sympathy and encouragement, though devastated at the loss of "The Rosie Posie Girl," upon which he had already spent many creative days, Mr. Meyers departed into the outer office.
For a long minute Mr. Vandeford glared at the unoffending rose in his buttonhole, then smiled, ran his hands through his hair, turned to the telephone, and plunged into the last lap of the race of "The Purple Slipper." Until four o'clock he was closeted with the most brilliant theatrical publicity man in New York City; then he took his contracts and went over to Weiner's office and sacrificed "The Rosie Posie Girl" to--
An hour later he had told his partner, Mr. Dennis Farraday, all about it, and showed him the deeds of execution.
"You ought not to have done it, Van. It was too big a price to pay," Mr. Farraday declared, with his mane rumpled on high.
"No," answered Mr. Vandeford, in happy calmness. "'The Purple Slipper' will pay it all out--one way or another."
"It must," declared Mr. Farraday, with helpless energy. "What can I do?"
"Oh, be the usual ray of sunshine around the place and--and keep the Violet happy and busy until we land on Broadway." Mr. Vandeford said this with a coldness in tone and voice that he had to force hard. His attitude was that he had had to sacrifice himself so why not sacrifice Mr. Farraday also? And he hated himself for that attitude.
"I understand, and you can count on me," answered Mr. Farraday, with such an innocently happy face that Mr. Vandeford groaned inwardly at the fact that he did not understand, and would surely be made to soon if his calculations on the intentions of Miss Hawtry were correct.
"I've arranged for a chair-car to take the whole company down to Atlantic City Sunday morning, so the whole bunch can have a plunge and a good rest-up before the Monday dress rehearsal." Mr. Farraday produced that piece of business with great pride.
"Good!" was all the commendation that he got, and he betook himself off for other good-natured efforts on the affairs of "The Purple Slipper."
Though at times Mr. Godfrey Vandeford approached the heroic in action, he was very human in reflexes and, having paid a price for the happiness of Miss Patricia Adair, he proceeded to partake of as much of that happiness as he could get hold of. He captured the author of "The Purple Slipper" after the rehearsals on Friday, which were the last before the dress rehearsal in Atlantic City on Monday night, because the cast of a play are, after all, so many human beings, who have to be given at least a day for such animal functions as packing trunks, closing apartments, dodging creditors, and severing home ties, and he carried her off to the country with the intention of having her all to himself for dinner at a little inn up Westchester way. After they had started in that direction and were flying behind Valentine along sun-gilded country lanes, he changed his mind, changed the road slightly, and had them landed under the wing of Mrs. Farraday for dinner. He did this with direct intention. He judged himself, and decided that it would be safest to announce to Miss Adair that her play was to have the honor of opening the great New Carnival Theatre on Broadway somewhere within two hundred yards of Mrs. Farraday. This program he carried out with efficient directness and then found a strange lacking in himself.
"Oh, how wonderful you are!" was Miss Adair's exclamation when he had imparted his news just as a young moon was silvering the poplar under which they sat on an old stone bench at the bottom of the sunken garden. "Everybody has said that you couldn't do it, but I didn't worry at all like the rest of them. I knew that you could."
"How did you know that I could do it?" he asked, and he rejoiced with pride that his author did not yet know of either the existence or his sacrifice of "The Rosie Posie Girl."
"Why, I don't know--I knew just because I--I--" For the first time Mr. Vandeford was absolutely certain of the flutter towards him, and at the same time felt certain that he was the first man who ever had been certain of it; and just as his breast and arms were hollowing themselves to nest it he--denied it and himself. He didn't want it at a purchase price, and he took Miss Adair home and locked her in the Y. W. C. A. before midnight.
The journey down to Atlantic City on Sunday morning was accomplished with much joy and hilarity. The entire cast of "The Purple Slipper" acted like boys and girls let out of school, and mischievous children at that. Miss Adair enjoyed it all immensely, and at times she very timidly joined in the fun, which was centering itself upon putting Mr. Leigh of the uncertain feet, and Miss Grayson, the glowerer, into white ribbon bonds, which bonds were supplied from a large box of bonbons, the identity of the donor of which she refused to reveal, though Mr. Kent declared he had brought her to the station in a gold limousine with diamond wheels, and bore the name of Billy Astorbilt.
Only Miss Hawtry held aloof, as she and her maid and various pieces of ultra luggage occupied the four seats at the end of the car. The seat next her was kept vacant, and at various times during the several hours' run Mr. Vandeford, Mr. Height, and Miss Adair occupied it with respectful tribute, but most of the time Mr. Farraday sat considerately beside her, and smiled upon the fun. Mr. William Rooney and Fido rode in the day-coach and worked the entire way on duplicate prompt copies.
Also Mr. Rooney and Fido were absent that evening from the dinner-party given by Mr. Farraday in the great new hotel to the entire cast of "The Purple Slipper"--in honor of Miss Hawtry. They were working with the stage-carpenter, the property-man, and the electrician until a late hour, when they met the members of the dinner-party in pairs in wheel-chairs being trundled along the board-walk for sea air before retiring.
"Hope the angel gave the bunch enough drink to keep 'em asleep until two-thirty to-morrow," Mr. Rooney remarked to Fido as he spat out into the Atlantic Ocean. "I'm going to put the gaff to 'em to-morrow night, and I want to start with 'em unstrung and string 'em to suit myself. That little author is some girl, but I wonder why Vandeford wanted to shunt that white devil onto a nice boob like Farraday, and him his friend, too," he further remarked as he watched the star and the angel being trundled by in one of the big wicker perambulators that infest the board walk.
In the other direction were being trundled the author and the producer of "The Purple Slipper," and at that moment they were in the mood of fellow-workmen at the machine of "The Purple Slipper."
"Rooney sent me word that the lighting is doubtful. This rotten little theater is hard to count on for any kind of unusual lighting, and we must have that diffusion for the dinner scene so as to make the candle effect seem real," Mr. Vandeford was saying with great animation to Miss Adair and with a total lack of sentiment under the same young moon that had baffled him Friday night out in Westchester.
"The whole thing seems a confused jumble to me," admitted Miss Adair. "I feel as if I couldn't wait until to-morrow night to really see the play with the costumes and scenery and love scenes and all in the right place. And yet I'm so tired I feel as if I could sleep a week."
"I'll shake you if you go dead on me here as you did the other night in the car," threatened Mr. Vandeford, with a laugh, but he adjusted his shoulder back of hers as if he considered the danger entirely real.
"I'll certainly do it if you don't take me back where I belong, wherever it is," threatened Miss Adair. "I hope Mildred isn't as--as tired as I am and--and can help me. I'll go to bed with my clothes on if she doesn't," Miss Adair gasped between yawns, and fluttered to Mr. Vandeford with a frank intention of gaining support.
"Back to the hotel, boy, and go a good pace. Double tip," commanded Mr. Vandeford to their propelling Italian youth, with an alarm which puzzled him as much as it would have puzzled many of his friends, while he accorded his exhausted author the amount of support needed for the occasion--and no more.
And as Mr. Rooney had hoped, the entire cast of "The Purple Slipper" slept into the afternoon of the dress-rehearsal day in the complete collapse which the sea air induced, and they were in a good condition for restringing. In fact, some of them began that process for themselves by an afternoon plunge in the ocean.
One of those plunges had an after-effect on the fate of "The Purple Slipper" further than keying up Mr. Gerald Height for his dress rehearsals. When he discovered, while detaining Miss Adair for a chat after his late luncheon, that the author had never beheld the sea before in all her inland existence, and had never been in it, he insisted on procuring a bathing-suit and initiating her into that sport. She assented to the proposition with the greatest eagerness, and in less than half an hour she had trusted herself to the arms of Mr. Gerald Height and the Atlantic Ocean. They were both rough in their handling, and finally she came to resent the boldness of the former as much as she enjoyed that of the latter. With crimson in her cheeks and lightning in her eyes, she first attempted to drown them both, then waded to shore, sat down on the sand, and said things to Mr. Gerald Height, which had the magic effect of making him unburden himself and his lizard-like career to her in its entirety.
"You see, I didn't know what a girl who--who wrote your play was like exactly, and because I couldn't find out I have kept on trying. Now--now, by George, I know," he said, with a boyishness coming into his murky eyes. "Say, you know my mother was a Kentucky girl, and I guess that is one reason I have stuck by this fool--this 'Purple Slipper.' That and wanting to chase you down."
"Well, now that you've 'chased me down' and found that I'm not--not there, you'll stay by me and 'The Purple Slipper,' won't you?" Miss Adair asked, and then like two merry children they both laughed at her jumble.
"I will," answered Mr. Height, with the queer attachment in his heart that a man feels for a perfectly good woman who is jolly and friendly with him after she has allowed him to tell her just how wicked he is or thinks he is. "I thought the whole thing was a flivver, but when Vandeford got the opening of the New Carnival for it, I sat up and took notice. Just you watch the stuff between Hawtry and me put a line a mile long from the box office."
"I'm wild to see you and Miss Hawtry in your scenes, and we must go to dress for early dinner. The rehearsals are called for six-thirty. Thank you for--for being my friend." As she rose from the sand Miss Adair held out her hand to Mr. Height, with the friendliness and confidence in her eyes that had smoothed over other rough, though not so rough, places of the same character in her young life.
"That's some kid and there are lots like her. I've got to halt sooner or later," Mr. Height muttered to himself as he dressed for his early dinner. "I'm going to put this fool play across for her, too." There are a few women who distill loyalty out of declined passion; but not many. They make their mark on their generation.
The dress rehearsals of a play are varied in finish and intensity, but the variety which Mr. William Rooney conducted was of the most brilliant, and he expected them to go as well as the opening night. He made small allowance for the strangeness of lights, scenery, and costuming, and that allowance was only for time, not in smoothness. As he willed, his cast generally performed. The cast of "The Purple Slipper" was of experienced actors, and he felt certain that they would meet his expectations. At six-thirty o'clock he seated himself in the middle seat of the sixth row center, looked around to see that the electrician and the costumer were at hand to catch any criticism he wished to make, and in a crisp hard voice that exploded like a cannon he called up the curtain.
The author was at her post in the left stage box, and bulwarked and buttressed by the producer as usual, while Mr. Dennis Farraday, the angel, sat alone in the box opposite, with a delighted smile on his broad face.
The curtain went up, and "The Purple Slipper" glided on the stage with never a creak or a careen. The lights scintillated and glared on the wonderful costumes and scenery, and the sparkling dialogue began to unwind itself into the startling plot. For the first ten minutes the author glowed with such joyous excitement that the producer felt the actual radiations; then little by little he felt her begin to cool, and a chill ran up and down his own spine as Hawtry and Height held the stage alone in the first dash of Howard-"pepped" dalliance near the last of the first act. He held his breath, frozen within him, until the curtain went down, and then he refused to turn to the author at his side. He was in a panic and undecided what to do until Mr. Rooney relieved him of the need of action.
"Mr. Vandeford," he commanded from the middle of the theater, "get New York on the wire and have Lindenberg start a good scenery man out on the early morning train. That back-drop must have a toning wash: it jumps out at the costumes. Lindenberg is in his office until seven to get a message from you. It's ten to now. You gotter jump."
Without a look at Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford "jumped," and thus she was left alone to watch the second act grind along to its climax, with Hawtry acting the high-bred virago with an extremity of brilliant sensuality, with Mr. Height supporting her in broad lines that could be well-read between. Once the author looked at Mr. Dennis Farraday in the box opposite, and then looked away from his blazing enjoyment of the startling climax, which the lovers acted in such beauty of body, and such beauty of execution that, without knowing why, she was thrilled from her head to her feet.
"Broad standards," she whispered to encourage herself, as her eyes shone and her cheeks glowed as she lowered her head and re-read the proof of the program to be used on Tuesday night, which Mr. Vandeford had given her and upon which she observed the name Patricia Adair in type only slightly smaller than that of Violet Hawtry. In a few minutes the curtain was again called up; Mr. Vandeford was still absent, and again her attention was riveted to the stage.
Almost the entire first half of the last act was hers, and the tension in her glowing young body had relaxed and she gave Mr. Vandeford a semblance of a smile as he seated himself beside her just before Hawtry came on the scene to lay with Height the foundation of the great dinner scene. This hurdle was held firmly in front of the young author.
Miss Hawtry entered in a blaze of eighteenth century glory, only with her authentic costume cunningly contrived to reveal more of her wonderful white body than any woman of that period would have done, and beautiful in his velvet and ruffles, Gerald Height followed her to thereupon enact a scene which was a slow and marvellous distilling of the very wine of emotion intended to go through human blood like a stinging poison. It had reached its climax, and even the emptiness of the theater was breathless when, like a whip, Mr. Rooney's cold voice brought Miss Hawtry out of Mr. Height's arms.
"Cut it, cut it!" he commanded. "You couldn't get that across even on Broadway. The censor will close the show. Play it fifty per cent. and then all the subway will quit you."
"I'll play it as I choose, you black monkey, you, with your Irish name." Maggie Murphy sprang out from the body of the beautiful Hawtry to answer back gutter with gutter.
"Wait a minute, Miss Hawtry." Mr. Vandeford rose in his box from beside the author of the violent scene that was becoming a basis of a scene of violence. "Rooney, it can be played with--"
"You sit down and help your bread-and-butter baby hide her face for writing such rot instead of trying to tell me how to act." Maggie was now commanding the Violet, and she was wild with nervous rage. "She's welcome to you; five years of your living off me and my work is enough, and I don't intend to--"
"Back to your lines on which Miss Hawtry enters, Miss Lindsey," commanded Mr. Rooney, in his machine-gun manner. "Get ready for your cue, Height."
Completely ignoring Miss Hawtry, who was standing down center, Mildred Lindsey calmly entered and began the beautiful little bit of persiflage with Miss Herne, who had gone on before her with an agility unlike her usual slow gait. There was nothing for Miss Hawtry to do but retire to the wings, which she did, and with the nervous bomb exploded, she continued the rehearsals to a finish with the greatest brilliancy, playing the interrupted scene at fifty per cent. of its fire, as directed by Mr. Rooney.
But the author of "The Purple Slipper" was not there to see the ending in calm after the storm, for she had fled at the Violet's attack upon Mr. Vandeford, and while he stood his ground to see the matter settled in the face of the insult, she had vanished.
