Blue-grass and Broadway
studying of stagecraft and the writing of half a hundred plays until he
writes one that is really great; after which, if he has the strength and
the nerves to produce that play, we will all go to see the great human
drama. That is, if he has had time to live with and in the hearts of
people so as to supply that gross sympathy with the masses who buy
tickets which Rooney got while climbing out of the gutter. God grant he
comes some day to America--but you are not he!"
"No, I'm not," admitted Miss Adair, with her eyes smiling back into his
whimsically, "but what you say makes me see that the--the
producer--_you_ are the whole thing. You get it all--me and Mr. Rooney
and Miss Hawtry together and pound us into--into a play. I make that
acknowledgment."
"If you ask the stage-manager he will say that the success of a play is
his; the costumer will claim that success; the star knows it is his or
hers, and the lead is sure that it is due to the support; the author
surely has some claim to draw the huge royalties, and the location of
his theater makes the theater-owner know that any play in that theater
will go. Yes, the producer will always claim the whole show if it all
goes well. If it fails the show then belongs entirely to the producer,
who picked it in its manuscript stage, and he is no good as a producer.
If he fails a few times hand-running, to the scrap heap with him!"
"But you've never failed," Miss Adair exclaimed, with a dart of fear in
her eyes.
"My last show, 'Miss Cut-up,' was a flivver all right, though we just
saved our faces. But I've got a show now that will put me in electric
light for two years hand-running and--" Mr. Vandeford was in a panic as
he realized that he was going so far in that curious thinking out loud
to Miss Adair that he had been about to launch forth on "The Rosie Posie
Girl" to her. It would have been like telling a friend the plans of his
own funeral with enthusiasm, as it would be obvious to her that Hawtry
would have to fail in and drop "The Purple Slipper" before becoming the
triumphant "Rosie Posie Girl."
"I'm willing to--to let them cut my play all up if--if it will really
run two years and make your reputation more brilliant than it is," Miss
Adair said, interrupting his pause of consternation at his near
betrayal of his plans. She spoke with the worshipful uplift of her gray
eyes to his that had betrayed him in the first place to such a confusion
of schemes. "If it added anything to it, I would even be willing to let
you put the Adair name to the vulgar thing they read here to-day, but it
wouldn't help it anywhere except in Louisville and Cincinnati and
Nashville and Atlanta and New Orleans and Richmond. People don't know us
in New York, and any name will do here; so mine won't--won't have to be
disgraced."
"Please don't say that!" pleaded Mr. Vandeford with consternation in his
soul as he thought of the development of the Howard "pep" Hawtry would
make as the rehearsals of "The Purple Slipper" progressed. "It is the
same thing with Miss Hawtry as it is with Mr. Rooney; she has a--a kind
of gutter drag that gets across to the multitude, and of course your
play had to be--be fitted to her. Hawtry, to be Hawtry, has to do and
say things that you couldn't write at all, that you couldn't very well
understand; but they'll get the crowd going and coming. Please give me
your promise again to sit tight and see it through--or go home and leave
it all to me." Mr. Vandeford was surprised to feel how hard his heart
beat, and he was afraid that it sounded like the echo of an anvil chorus
in the big empty theater.
"I never have to give promises a second time, and this is the last time
I am ever going to cry out," Miss Adair answered him, with a lift to her
proud little head. "I am going to stay right here and help if I can, and
learn. But I won't in any way distress or--or trouble you. Please don't
get me on your mind!"
"I won't get you on my mind," Mr. Vandeford answered out loud--"because
I've got you in my heart, poor kiddie," he continued to himself, in a
kind of desperation.
Mr. Dennis Farraday burst in upon the dusk of the theater and the
tragedy of the situation. He was vastly excited and he waved a letter
in his hand.
"Oh, you Patricia Adair, why didn't you tell me that you are old Roger
Adair's sister?" he demanded.
"Why, what do you mean about Roger? Do you know--"
"Do I know him? Just listen to this, will you, and here I've _not_ been
handing you around on a silver salver for two weeks!" He then read the
following letter aloud to Miss Adair and Mr. Vandeford:
Adairville, Kentucky.
DEAR DENNY:
Well, here I am! I'm the Captain of my county in the Army of the
Furrows, and hope to turn in many thousand pounds of food stuffs
for you people in New York to live on. In the meantime Miss
Patricia Adair, my sister, is going to New York to see to the
putting on of a play she has written for one Mr. Godfrey Vandeford.
She is the greatest girl ever, and you stay right on the job seeing
that things go right for her while I plant these potatoes to keep
you from starving. She will be at the Y. W. C. A. and will sleep
and eat safe enough, but you look out for her and don't let her get
homesick. If she needs me, of course I will come, but she's a
plucky child and you are the best ever, so I'll go on ploughing
with a free mind. Let me know how it all goes. What sort of a chap
is that Vandeford?
Yours as always and forever,
ROGER.
"Can you beat it?" demanded good Dennis, with a blaze of friendship in
his eyes as he regarded Miss Patricia Adair. "It was forwarded from my
old office number to my new, to Westchester to Nantucket, back to my
office, and finally arrived this morning. I've just sent Roger a
thousand-word telegram, and I hope he never knows that I was off the job
ten days. Give that child here to me, Van, and go get a report on your
character for me before you look at her again. Roger Adair is the best
friend I've got on earth, next to you, and you'd better watch your
step."
"I like his steps," Miss Adair said, and again Mr. Vandeford felt
uncertain as to that curious little flutter that was like a nestling of
which he felt he was never to be certain and which Mr. Farraday did not
seem to observe at all.
"Didn't you know that Roger was turning you over to me, young lady? Why
have you side-stepped me?" Mr. Farraday demanded of the young author, in
a voice of great severity.
"I thought that Roger was going to write to a Mr. Denny about me; and I
didn't write to him that Mr. Denny hadn't come to take care of me
because--because I was afraid he'd leave his work and come up to look
after me himself. I didn't remember the Farraday part of your name at
all. Roger always said 'Denny.'"
"Well, I suppose I'll have to accept that excuse, as it sounds fairly
reasonable; but I'd like to know, Van, why you have been keeping my
child here in this musty old theater until past luncheon time when she
must be both tired and hungry. Come out to Claremont to luncheon, both
of you, this minute," Mr. Farraday both questioned and commanded, with
pure delight in his voice and manner. "I'll go run the car around to the
door, so you won't have to walk in the sun." And he departed as quickly
as he had come.
That night Mr. Vandeford lay stretched on his bed in a dark coolness,
with his hands clasped over his eyes, when Mr. Farraday came in with his
latch-key at twelve-thirty.
"Denny?" he asked from the darkness as Mr. Farraday was tiptoeing past
his open door, through which the southern sea-breeze was pouring, "'What
sort of chap _is_ that Vandeford?'"
"The telegram I sent read, 'the best ever.'"
"Are you competent to judge me?"
"I am."
"Good-night!"
For an hour before this masculine version of a scene a feminine real
thing was being conducted in the two little dotted-muslin-curtained
cells at the Y. W. C. A. Miss Adair was telling Miss Lindsey "all about
it," and sparks and tears both were in the atmosphere. The explosion was
brought on by Miss Lindsey remarking to Miss Adair:
"You know, honey lady, that play of yours is simply ripping, but it is
not at all like--like what I thought it would be from hearing you and
Mr. Farraday tell it."
"It's not my play at all; it's Mr. Vandeford's. He got somebody to fit
it to Miss Hawtry," replied Miss Adair, calmly, as she began to brush
her dark, sleek mane.
"What do you mean?" demanded Miss Lindsey, in astonishment.
"He just took the dinner situation in my play and got a man to make a
new one out of it that is--is vulgar enough to appeal to the New York
theater-goers. He let everybody put in anything they wanted to, instead
of what I wrote. He left in a little of mine to compliment me. It's all
right, because nobody would have gone to see my play if anybody goes to
see--see his." Miss Adair went on calmly with the fifty-third stroke on
her raven tresses, but her eyes were beginning to blaze.
"Mr. Vandeford's a complete fool," was on the tip of Miss Lindsey's
tongue, but she remembered her main chance, which was the favor of Mr.
Godfrey Vandeford, and said instead: "I wish you would let me see a copy
of the play as you wrote it. Have you one?"
"I have, in my trunk, and I'll read it to you," answered Miss Adair, and
in defensive pride she produced a copy of "The Purple Slipper," which
bore the unexpurgated title of "The Renunciation of Rosalind," and
proceeded to read it to Miss Lindsey, with both fire and tragedy in her
voice.
The operation occupied the two hours before midnight, and Miss Lindsey
lay prostrate when it was finished.
"Now, what do you think?" demanded Miss Adair.
"I wish I could have had the making of it over, and for myself instead
of Hawtry. That's no play as it stands, but there is a dandy one to be
worked up from it that you--you--that would be like you," was the reply
that Miss Lindsey gave as she looked out into distance, with glowing
eyes.
"Do you think that--that horrid play will be a success?" asked Miss
Adair, with her voice sparkling.
"I do," answered Miss Lindsey. "And it is curious that with all its
changes it is still--still yours. There is a lot more of your stuff left
than you realize, and the turns that--that Mr. Vandeford's playwright
has given it are very clever. Lots of times he's just paraphrased your
lines into Hawtryites. It will be interesting to see how much of you is
left when we all come out of the wash for the first night."
"I wish I were dead and buried!" she was surprised to hear Miss Adair
confess, and there then ensued a downpour, which the hardier Western
girl weathered for very love of the young Southern tempest in her arms.
"I suppose I ought to go home, out of the way, but I'm going to stay
and--and learn--and write another one all by myself," she finally
sobbed, with returning courage, thus comforting herself with the resolve
which every playwright who ever built a play has used to keep from going
entirely mad during the rehearsals of his first play.
"Just try to live until the New York opening, and then see how you feel.
That is the way actors do to keep going during the awful grilling of the
rehearsals and the road try-out," advised Miss Lindsey, with great
soothing.
"I will," promised Miss Adair, and turned her face on her pillow, to
sleep, while Miss Lindsey took herself and her jar of cold-cream into
her own cell.
"I wish I had a chance at that play! What'll she do when she sees Hawtry
and Height really in action in some of those scenes?" she murmured into
her own pillow.
The next morning Miss Adair rose, donned a most lovely home-spun linen
gown, which was of an old ivory hue and which had been spun upon the