Blue-grass and Broadway
"Did you think as little of me as he did?"
"No, by George, I knew you'd stick by us, and I said so!" Mr. Farraday
exploded with genuine emotion.
"Thank you. You know me after these few weeks better than he does after
all these years of--" And the Violet bent her head on Mr. Farraday's
nearest arm and began to weep softly. They were in a secluded corner of
the veranda of the Inn, and the Violet raged at herself for having
closed the complete seclusion of Highcliff for herself and her purposes
by renting it to the Trevors when she had gone to town to the rehearsals
of "The Purple Slipper."
And as good Dennis Farraday had no valid reason, either within or
without the law for not doing so, he put consoling and comforting arms
about her, and exposed his wide, silk-garbed shoulder to the rain of her
tears, which were not really raining. In his big heart there was the
same comforting for this conspirator as there would have been for Mr.
Vandeford's lawful widow, and he administered it with the same
affectionate respect that he would have used to the relict.
"You're a dear, wonderful little woman!" he was saying, when the voice
of the Clyde Trevors was heard calling to them from around the veranda,
and an oath rose in the Violet with such force that she almost allowed
it to explode. Still she felt sure of her ultimate results.
"You can count on me to stand by you and the play forever," she
promised, and the hurried pressure of their lips in the soft, dark,
sea-perfumed air was biologically inevitable.
Mr. Godfrey Vandeford had woven a tangled web when he had let fall the
purple letter on the purple manuscript and gone out recklessly to follow
the hunch their juxtaposition implied.
CHAPTER VII
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 Bebe 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