Blue-grass and Broadway
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 Bebe 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