Blue-grass and Broadway
rushing to the scene of action when we butcher her child. Pay the two
thousand to Hilliard for the option on 'The Rosie Posie Girl' until
January first, and tell him I am going to produce it in November. 'Phone
me at Highcliff to-morrow if you want me. I'll be clearing the deck for
the--spanking."
"I wish you good luck," said Mr. Meyers feelingly.
"What do you judge that play is about from reading the first act, and
what is the author's name? I might have to produce a little concrete
information in the fracas," the eminent producer paused to inquire just
as he was closing the door.
"It is written by a Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky, and it
has in plenty of ruffles and romance that is in a past time of a
Colonial Governor and his wife alone at home with him in Washington."
"That sounds about right for the weapon of castigation for Violet
Hawtry, _nee_ Murphy. I have always believed in hunches, and that
accord in color was meant to mean something. Better send me a copy
special in the morning. If Mr. Farraday calls me before I get him tell
him the Astor at one to-day. What did I say? Marrons, lip stick, and--"
"Rose oil," prompted Mr. Meyers, with just the trace of a sneer in his
voice.
"Right O! Rose oil it is. By!" And the door closed on Mr. Vandeford's
graceful figure in its gray London tweeds.
Thus a great adventure was undertaken in all levity. And with his
chief's complete departure a change came into the mien of Mr. Adolph
Meyers. He told the stenographer in the outer office to engage two girls
to copy a play that afternoon and evening, to keep him from being
interrupted until six, and to muffle the telephone unless in cases of
emergency. Then he seated himself in Mr. Vandeford's deep chair, put his
feet on the desk, lit a fat, black cigar and plunged into "The Purple
Slipper," _nee_ "The Renunciation of Rosalind." For two hours he read
with the deepest absorption, only pausing to make an occasional note on
a pad at his elbow. Then after he had laid down the manuscript with its
purple wrappings and ribbons, he sat for a half hour in a trance, out of
which he came to seat himself at the typewriter to indite a portentous
letter, which he put in an envelope, sealed and directed to:
MISS PATRICIA ADAIR,
Adairville, Kentucky.
The contents were:
_My dear Madam:_
I have carefully read your play entitled "The Renunciation of
Rosalind," and have decided to make you the following offer for the
production rights. I will give you two hundred and fifty dollars
for all rights of production, including moving picture rights and
supplementary road companies to extend over a period of two years
from the date of signing the contract, and will agree to pay you in
addition five per cent. of all box receipts up to five thousand per
week and seven and a half on all exceeding that sum. If you agree
to this proposition, I will send you a formal contract covering all
points in legal terms. Please let me know at your earliest
convenience your decision about the matter, as I now intend to
produce it in September with Violet Hawtry in the title role.
Believe me, my dear Madam,
Very truly,
GODFREY VANDEFORD.
The above epistle from a strange outer world found Miss Patricia Adair,
attired in a faded gingham frock, planting snap beans in her ancestral
garden. It was delivered to her by her brother, Mr. Roger Adair, from
the hip pocket of his khaki trousers, upon which were large smudges of
the agricultural profession. His blue gingham shirt was open at the
throat across a strong bronze throat, and his eyes were as blue as his
shirt and laughed out across big brown freckles that matched his
chestnut hair.
"Here's a letter I brought over from the post-office, Pat, along with a
sack of meal and fifty cents' worth of sugar. Mr. Bates said Miss Elvira
Henderson stopped in and told him to send it to you by the first person
coming your way," he said as he threw the reins of the filly, whose
chestnut coat matched his hair exactly, over the gate post, and
proceeded to take from the pommel of the saddle the two bundles of
groceries mentioned. "Mr. Bates sent you this bunch of tomato plants and
head lettuce to set out along the back border of your rose beds, and
I'll spade it all up for you right now if--"
"Oh, Roger, listen, listen!" exclaimed Patricia, as she sprang to her
feet from her knees upon which she had rested as she read the letter he
had handed her. "My play, my play, it's sold!" And as she sparkled at
him over the letter of Mr. Adolph Meyers held clasped to her gingham
bosom, wild roses bloomed in her cheeks and tears sparkled in her gray
eyes back of their thick black lashes.
"What play?" demanded Roger, stolid with astonishment.
"The one I wrote last month and the month before, when Mr. Covington
said that the mortgage must be paid--or give up Rosemeade. I knew it
would kill Grandfather to move him away from the house he was born in,
and I couldn't think of anything that would get money quick but coal oil
wells and gold mines and plays. It costs money to dig up oil and gold,
but it is easy to write a play."
"Oh, is it?" Roger questioned, with a twinkle in his eyes above the
freckles. In his arms he still held the meal and the sugar, and his
interest was an inspiration to Patricia to pour out the whole story in a
torrent of tumbling words.
"You know those love letters I have of our great grandmother's that she
wrote to her husband while he was in Washington consulting the President
about the first constitutional convention, the ones about the Indian
raid and the battle at Shawnee. You remember the day I read them to you
up in the apple tree in the orchard years ago, don't you?"
"Yes, I remember the day," answered Roger, with another twinkle turned
inward at the memory of his seventeen-year-old scorn of Patricia's
eleven-year-old sentimentality.
"Well, those letters are the play," announced Patricia triumphantly. "I
read a lot of Shakespeare and other old English dramas I found in
Grandfather's library to see exactly how to make one. It ends when he
comes back expecting to find her killed and she is dancing at a dinner
she has given her lover as a bet that he would come back by that night.
It's wonderful!" As she thus laid bare the skeleton of her play child,
Patricia took from doubting Roger the sack of sugar.
"Shoo, that's not a play," hooted Roger, with a decided return of his
seventeen-year-old scorn in his thirtieth summer.
"Read that," answered Patricia with dignity, as she handed him Mr.
Godfrey Vandeford's letter, written and signed by Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Whew--uh, Pat, two hundred and fifty dollars!" Roger exclaimed, as his
manner dissolved quickly from affectionate derision into respectful awe.
"Oh, that's just a trifle for a beginning; those royalties may be worth
several hundred thousand. In the 'Times Magazine' article that I read
about Godfrey Vandeford and his plays, it said he had paid the author of
'Dear Geraldine' more than a hundred thousand dollars in royalties. That
is what made me write the play."
"Say, let me take it sitting down," said Roger as he sank upon the grass
beside a rose bed that had a row of spring onions growing odoriferously
defiant under the very shower of its petals, and laid the sack of
precious meal tenderly across his knees. "Now go on and tell me."
"You see, Roger, I had to do something to get the money to keep the
house for Grandfather. You know we couldn't get any more mortgage money,
because it had closed up or something, and--"
"Did Covington tell you he was going to foreclose after I--that is,
right away?" demanded Roger fiercely, with a snap in the blue eyes above
the freckles.
"No," said Patricia, as she settled herself on the grass beside Roger,
with the valuable sugar balanced tenderly upon her knee. "He told me
that he would let it stand just as it was for three months until October
first, but after that we would have to--to tell--Grandfather and move,"
a quiver came into Patricia's soft voice that had in it the patrician,
slurring softness that can only come from the throat of a grand dame
sprung from the race which has dominated blue-grass pastures. "Doctor
Healy says it won't be long but--but now he'll--he'll die in his own
home that Grandmother built where he fought off the Indians. Her play
has saved us."
"I had fixed it to run until I make my crops," said Roger, with a choke
in his voice that was a rich masculine accompaniment to Patricia's.
"The play will have been running six weeks by that time, and I can pay
most of it off. A hundred thousand a year is almost ten thousand a month
and--"
"But all plays don't succeed, Pat, honey, and--"
"The 'Times Magazine' said that Godfrey Vandeford had never had a
failure, and didn't you read that he wants to star Violet Hawtry in it?
She was 'Dear Geraldine.' How could it fail?" Patricia was positively
haughty toward Roger's timorousness.
"That's so," admitted Roger, convinced. "And we can easy get by on the
two fifty until October, especially with the garden I am going to raise.
I'm no Godfrey Vandeford, but I'm a first-class producer--of potatoes
and onions and cabbage and turnip greens and corn. In these war times a
potato producer ranks with any old producer."
"But I won't be able to leave all of the two hundred and fifty to use
this summer. I'll have to take some of it with me."
"With you where?" demanded Roger.
"To New York. Do you suppose even Mr. Godfrey Vandeford would undertake
to produce a play without the author there to help him?" Patricia's
scorn of Roger's lack of sound reasoning about theatrical matters was
hurled at him pitilessly.
"Of course not," admitted Roger hurriedly. "You can take the whole two
hundred and fifty and I'll look after the Major and Jeff."
"I don't know what I'd do without you, Roger," said Patricia, as she
cuddled her cheek for an instant against his strong, warm shoulder under
the gingham shirt. "I'm afraid of New York. I know you'll take care of
Grandfather; but who'll look after little me--I don't know what I'll do
all by myself. Maybe I won't have to--"
"Certainly you'll have to go," Roger interrupted with comforting
assurance. "Go to the Young Women's Christian Association, and if
anything happens to you telegraph me and I'll come get you."
"I hadn't thought of the Y. W. C. A. Of course I'll be all right there.
I'll get Miss Elvira to write a special letter to the secretary about
me," exclaimed Patricia with the joy lights back in the great, gray
eyes. "And it's so cheap there that I can leave a lot of the money at
home. I'll only be gone about six weeks."
"No, I think you had better take all the two fifty with you," said
Roger. "You know you have to spend money to make money and you mustn't
be short. I'll look after the Major and Jeff. Don't you worry, dear."
"Will you let me buy you a big silo and a tractor plow when I get all
the money? You are the greatest farmer in the world and you only need a
little machinery to prove it." Again the young playwright rose to her
knees and with letter and sugar in her embrace she entreated to be
allowed to spend the money that was to be hers from "The Renunciation of
Rosalind," which she did not know was being cast in New York as "The
Purple Slipper."
"Certainly I'll let you help me, Pat. Hasn't what's yours and mine
always been ours since we set our first hen together?" laughed Roger, as
he rose to his feet and dragged Patricia to hers beside him. "Come on