Blue-grass and Broadway
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.
CHAPTER VIII
At twelve-thirty Mr. Rooney was still in the theater with his
property-man and his electrician, but just before one he left through
the stage-door.
"All over, old man, you can put out your lights, lock up, and beat it,"
he said to the old gentleman who had sat year after year and kept the
gates of his Inferno.
"Star still in her dressing-room, gent with her," the old keeper
answered, as he leered at Mr. Rooney, and accepted the big black cigar
offered him.
"Big, red-headed chap with the show?" Mr. Rooney questioned carelessly.
"Same," admitted the old keeper.
"Cuss her," Mr. Rooney remarked, without either special interest or
malice, and took his leisurely way to his hotel.
The star dressing-room at the little Atlantic City theater, in which
half the plays produced on Broadway first try out their charm, is larger
than the dressing-rooms in most of the modern theaters, and dainty
Susette always made any dressing-room which happened to serve Miss
Hawtry look more like a boudoir than seemed possible, by taking thought
to have silky rose curtains to adjust over costume-racks and windows,
with covers to match to be slipped over the couple of rough chairs
usually supplied dressing-rooms. A fillet covering large enough for any
dressing-table, the silver and ivory of the make-up outfit, and lights
shaded with the fillet over rose were about all the equipment that the
French girl carried in the top of one of Miss Hawtry's costume trunks,
but she managed an effect with them that many a Fifth Avenue decorator
might envy. Following instructions, she had put all in exquisite order
and left the theater before Miss Hawtry was off the stage. The Violet
had been obliged to send her summons to Mr. Dennis Farraday by the old
door-keeper; hence his knowledge of her manoeuvers.
Miss Hawtry was still encased in the magnificence of the costume for the
final scene of "The Purple Slipper," and in the rose light of the little
dressing-room she glowed like a fire-hearted opal as Mr. Dennis Farraday
entered with the great hesitation of a first appearance in a stage
dressing-room. His face was pale and serious. Miss Hawtry had seen that
her Maggie Murphy insult to Mr. Vandeford had apparently cut more deeply
into the big Jonathan than into Mr. Vandeford himself, and she had
realized that she must set her scene well and act quickly and with
daring if she accomplished her purposes.
"Forgive me--and comfort me. I have hurt myself more than I have hurt
him," she cried out as she turned to him and expelled two sparkling
tears from her great blue eyes, and held out bare, white, glorious arms
to him, with the sob of a repentant child caught in her throat.
Now, Mr. Dennis Farraday, great gentleman and the son of a line of
gentlemen, was in the same state that many another good man and true
would be in after witnessing "The Purple Slipper" as played by Miss
Hawtry in her compelling animality, and his angry eyes suddenly blazed
with another light than anger, as with a hard breath he admitted the
big, beautiful, treacherous cat into his arms and allowed her bare arms
to coil around his neck and her body to cling to his.
"How could you--how can you?" he asked, and the question on his lips
made them cold, and kept them from hers--long enough.
Mr. Vandeford stood in the dressing-room door without so much as rapping
for permission to enter, and his face was dead white while his eyes
blazed in a great terror. He seemed not to notice the purport of the
scene he had interrupted, but his voice cut into the situation like cold
steel.
"Denny, we can't find Miss Adair anywhere, and here's a note she left
Miss Lindsey. What do you make of it?" He handed Mr. Farraday a sheet of
hotel note-paper, which he took with a trembling hand while Miss Hawtry
shrank back against her lace-covered dressing-table and gathered her
forces to annihilate Mr. Vandeford. This was the note, which Mr.
Farraday read with one glance, but failed to read to Miss Hawtry,
because its few lines struck all consciousness of her existence entirely
from his mind.
_Dear Mildred_:
Dishonor has never smirched the name of Adair until I put it on
that theater program. I have branded the annals of my family, and I
never want to look into a human face again. Good-by. You've been
good to me.
PATRICIA.
"My God! What do you suppose she means?" Mr. Farraday gasped, as he
looked in abject terror at Mr. Vandeford, who returned his glance in
kind.
"And I promised Roger to take care of her," Mr. Farraday gasped, and
without so much as a glance at Miss Hawtry, both men departed with all
the rapidity possible. There must be some reason that all bonds
without-the-law are so brittle, and those of friendship and honor and
love so strong within the code.
Miss Hawtry did some rapid thinking, as unaided, she slipped from the
costume of the star of "The Purple Slipper" into her normal raiment and
character. Then she called a wheel-chair and had herself trundled to the
hotel. While she was propelled, many other wheels were turning and
turning fast.
"What does Miss Lindsey think is the matter, and where she is?" Mr.
Farraday questioned Mr. Vandeford as they strode along together down the
board-walk towards the hotel.
"She says it's that rotten scene between Hawtry and Height that's killed
her, and she is right. I felt her die right there by my side," Mr.
Vandeford answered.
"You two don't think she would really put an end to--to herself about a
play, do you?" demanded Mr. Farraday, and he fairly staggered as he
asked the question. Then not waiting for an answer, he began to run
toward the entrance of the hotel half a block ahead. Just as he was
turning into the doors with Mr. Vandeford closely following, an Italian
wheel-chair boy darted out of the dusk of his stand, and plucked the
latter by the sleeve; then together they went racing back the way Mr.
Vandeford had come.
Half way down the long arbor, dusky under its vines, Mr. Farraday met
Miss Lindsey, and in the subdued light they paused and looked into each
other's faces; then entirely to the surprise of them both, they went
into each other's arms and clung together like two frightened children.
Miss Lindsey was smothering sobs which made her tender breast storm
against Mr. Farraday's, in whose own a heart was racing with terror.
"I don't blame her; it was loathsome, and it was about her own
grandmother," Miss Lindsey managed to say in a fierce, beautiful voice.
"You don't think, do you, that--" Mr. Farraday was gasping as he held
Miss Lindsey still tighter against the racing heart, which was beginning
to slow down and pound against hers with a slightly different speed.
However, the terror in his voice made Miss Lindsey press him to her with
sustaining closeness.
"She's Southern and different, and I don't know what to think," she was
saying, and in the absorption of their terror they failed to notice that
Miss Hawtry passed them not six feet away in her wicker chair.
And while they clung to each other and enjoyed their fright and anxiety
together, Miss Hawtry went into the telephone-booth and got a
long-distance connection with Mr. Weiner in New York in an incredibly
short time. Their conversation was almost as incredibly short in view of
its portentousness, but while it lasted, Mr. Gerald Height and Mr.
William Rooney had been added to the group of anxiety under the arbor,
and they were all in close conclave, though not in embrace, when Miss
Hawtry returned to them, walking with cool determination in every step.
"Mr. Farraday," Miss Hawtry said, with a serenity in her rich voice and
manner, "I will have to tell you as Mr. Vandeford's partner in 'The
Purple Slipper' that I am entirely dissatisfied with the way the play
proves up at dress rehearsal and refuse to open in it. As I am under no
contract to him since Saturday night, I am motoring back to New York
to-night to begin rehearsals to-morrow in 'The Rosie Posie Girl' for Mr.
Weiner. Good-night!" With a stately curtsy to the assembled principals
of "The Purple Slipper," very dramatic in execution, the Violet bowed
herself away from them forever. Ten minutes after she was on her way
back to Manhattan in a big touring-car provided by the hotel management
per a telephone order from Mr. Weiner of New York.
"And Van sold 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' for her opening on Broadway in the
New Carnival Theater with 'The Purple Slipper,'" Mr. Farraday gasped as
he sat down suddenly on one of the benches in the dim little arbor.
"Lord, what a lose, both shows and maybe--maybe Miss Adair, too," Mr.
Gerald Height exclaimed, and there were both sympathy and anxiety in his
voice.
"Oh, I don't know," said Mr. Rooney, as he rolled his fat cigar from the
left of his mouth to the right and spat into the vines. "I've made a
pretty good play out of 'The Purple Slipper.' It will go all right
without her. Actors aren't so much. It's the situation and the
stage-managing."
"That's what you think," jeered Mr. Gerald Height, gloomily. "I always
had a hunch that I would never play wig and ruffles."
"Can that hunch," commanded Mr. Rooney. "I'm going to put Miss Lindsey
in the part and play it refined for a winner. Been understudying Miss
Hawtry, haven't you, Miss Lindsey?"
"Yes," answered Miss Lindsey, and a sudden radiance shone from her dark,
intellectual face that lit up the whole arbor and lighted a flame in the
creative hearts of both Mr. Gerald Height and Mr. William Rooney. And
what it lighted in the hearts of both of those gentlemen was nothing to
the blaze it fanned in the heart of Mr. Dennis Farraday, where it had
been smouldering along from a spark touched off the day of the beefsteak
and mushrooms. "If you'll help me play it as I have seen it all along,
Mr. Rooney, I can go on to-morrow night."
"Good," agreed Mr. Rooney. "I'll shove Miss Grayson up into your part,
and cut out hers until we get a girl. We'll get the little author busy
right now, blotting out the Hawtry smell and putting you in, as I say,
refined and--"
"Oh, but where _is_ she?" moaned Mr. Farraday, coming back to his agony
of uneasiness, which had been drugged by hearing and seeing "The Purple
Slipper" and Mr. Vandeford's fortunes rescued and reconstructed right
before his ears and eyes.
"There ain't but two places for a refined lady to run in Atlantic
City,--the railroad station and the ocean,--and I bet Mr. Vandeford is
lugging her from the railroad station right now," Mr. Rooney said with
easy conviction. "Course she'd dodge back to the Christian ladies home
the first mud-puddle she stepped into, but we'll set her on her feet and
rub the splashes off her white stockings and--"
Mr. Rooney was interrupted in his kindly flow of reassurance by the
appearance of a wheel-chair propelled by the shrewd Italian youth, who
had that evening made his individual fortune, in which sat Mr. Vandeford
and the author of "The Purple Slipper." Without command, he stopped
beside the group of friends, and Mr. Vandeford alighted, but Miss Adair
shrank back into the shadow of the perambulator.
"Oh, darling, listen," cried Miss Lindsey, as she reached into that
retreat and drew Miss Adair into her arms. "Miss Hawtry has thrown up
the part and gone back to New York, and I am going to act it for you
just as you and I have talked about it all this time. Mr. Rooney is
going to help us, and we--we are going to make good for you--and Mr.
Vandeford--to-morrow night. We are!"
"Just watch us, Miss Adair. I'll do my best, and I'll--I'll be like we