Blue-grass and Broadway
and let's break it to the Major. You may need me to stand by if it hits
him on the bias," and they both laughed with a tinge of uneasiness as
they went down the long walk of the garden which on both sides was
sprouting and leaving and perfuming in a medley of flowers and
vegetables.
As they walked slowly along Roger cast an eye of great satisfaction over
the long lines of rapidly maturing peas and beans and heavy-leaved
potatoes, and in his mind calculated that a year's food for the small
family at Rosemeade was being produced right at their door under his
skilful hoe which he wielded at off times when he could leave the negro
hands to their work out on Rosemeade, their ancestral five hundred acres
of blue-grass meadows and loamy fields. Roger had for the summer quit
his slowly growing law practice in Adairville, enlisted as a doughty
Captain in the Army of the Furrows and was as proud of his khaki and
gingham uniform with their loam smudges as of his diploma from the
University of Virginia which hung in the wide old hall, the top one in a
succession of five given from father to son of the house of Adair. The
whole county was farming under the direction of Roger, and he had been
obliged often to work Patricia's garden by moonlight.
"I'm almost afraid to tell Grandfather," Patricia interrupted his food
calculations to say as they came around the corner of the wide-roofed
old brick house with its traceries of vines that massed at the eaves to
give nesting for many doves, and beheld the Major seated in his arm
chair on the porch which was guarded and supported by round, white
pillars around which a rose vine festooned itself. A faded, plaid wool
rug was across the Major's knees in spite of the fact that the evening
was so warm, and about his shoulders was a wide, gray knitted scarf. A
bent, white-haired old negro stood beside him filling his pipe for him
and serving as a target for the words issuing from beneath his waxed
white mustache that gave the impression of crossed white swords.
"War! What do they know about war, Jeff? We killed our first Yankee
before we were seventeen, and now they fight behind guns located six
miles away by squinting through double-decker opera glasses. War, I say
in these days--"
"Yes, sir," assented Jeff, in soothing interruption of what he
considered debilitating heat in the Major's words. "We whipped them
Yankees in no time but they jest didn't find it out in time to stop
killing us 'fore it all ended. Now, I'm going to help you to your room
and make you comfortable for I--"
"I see Patricia and Roger approaching and I'll wait to talk to them for
a few minutes, Jeff," answered the Major with a slight note of entreaty
in his voice.
"Jess a little while, then, jess a little while," consented the old
black comrade nurse as he shuffled into the house and back to his
kitchen to complete his preparation of the simple evening meal for his
little household. As he crisped his bacon, scrambled his eggs and
browned his muffins he muttered to himself:
"He's gitting weaker every day--help him Lord, and me to keep care of
him."
Just as he was turning the fluffy yellow scramble into a hot, old silver
dish he paused and listened to the musketry of the Major's deep voice
which was huge even in weakness, then he shook his head and began to
hustle the food together to be able to use the announcement of the meal
as an interruption to the harmful excitement, whose scattering words he
was at a loss to understand.
"Impossible! Impossible that my granddaughter should barter and trade in
the theatrical world, a world into which no lady should ever set foot.
No! Do not argue, Patricia! Roger and I understand, and it is not
needful that you should," were the words of the assault and
counter-charge that so puzzled old Jeff over his skillet and baker.
"I'm not going to act in the play, Grandfather. I wrote it and I'm going
to show them how I want it acted and then come right home," soothed
Patricia, looking to Roger for help and reinforcement.
"She'll stay at the Young Women's Christian Association, Major, and
she'll be perfectly safe. I am going to write to Dennis Farraday, who
graduated with me at the University, and ask him to look after her if
she needs anything."
"Ah, that puts another face on the matter," said the Major, with a
degree of mollification coming into his keen, old face and weakly
booming voice. "Of course, the Adairs have always been geniuses of one
kind or another, and it is not surprising that my granddaughter should
have produced a great American Drama. If she has the interest and
protection of a gentleman who is a friend of her brother's, and a safe
retreat in a woman's organization I will have to permit her to
superintend the placing of her great work before an appreciative public.
Of course, she will not be thrown with any of the theatrical world
socially, and in a few weeks she will return to her own home, leaving
that world better for having had a brief glimpse of her. You may go,
Patricia. Jefferson!" Fatigue showed very decidedly in the Major's weak
call to the old negro, who came immediately and rolled his chair away
with an indignant cast of his eyes at the two young people.
"Wh-eugh, that was a battle, and if I hadn't thought of old Denny to
bring up as a support to the Young Women's Christian Association I think
it would have sure gone the other way." And Roger laughed with the
twinkle above the freckles as he leaned against the rose vine around the
pillar and fanned himself with his hat.
"_Is_ there any Denny?" questioned Patricia weakly, from the top step
upon which she had sunk when the Major was wheeled away.
"Certainly, and he's a jolly good fellow," answered Roger. "I had a
letter from him year before last. I'll write him all about everything
and he'll look after you for me. I'd trust Denny to do his best for me
if I hadn't seen him for fifty years. I lived with him our Junior and
Senior years and I know him. But I must go. I have to go back to the
grocery again to get a plow point."
"Please don't go until after supper," pleaded Patricia. "I want to think
out loud to you. It has just struck me that I will have to have some
clothes. What will I do about it? I can't go to New York in a gingham
dress."
"In such a crisis as that I think Miss Elvira will be a better target
for your thoughts than I can be. I'll stop and tell her the news and
send her over," teased Roger with his engaging twinkle.
"I can't think to anybody like I can to you," said Patricia, as she came
and stood beside him.
"I really have to go, honey child, to see about the ploughing in my
South meadow, but I'll come back to be in the finish of the dimity
confab," answered Roger, as he patted Patricia on the shoulder and went
rapidly away.
And a dimity confab was a good name for the conference that was held in
the July moonlight on the front porch of Rosemeade for several silvered
hours that night. Miss Elvira Henderson, modiste, who was the guide,
philosopher and friend, in the matter of costuming as well as in all
other matters, of the feminine population of Hillcrest, had hurried down
the street to the Rosemeade gate as soon as she had consumed her
spinster baked apple and toast supper, and on her way had collected
pretty Mamie Lou Whitson and progressive Jenny Kinkaid, who formed a
thrilled chorus to her interested and joyful conversation with
Patricia.
"The eyes of the world will be on you, Patricia, and nothing short of a
silk tailor suit will be suitable for you to wear to sustain yourself in
such a position," declared Miss Elvira, with a positive degree of
finality in her voice.
"And you'll have to have at least three evening dresses, Pat, for that
same article about Mr. Godfrey Vandeford said that Broadway only woke up
at night. And you know it said he was the best known man on Broadway. Of
course, he'll take you to lots of Cafes and dances, and midnight frolics
and--and things," bubbled Mamie Lou very unwisely.
"Patricia is to stay at The Young Women's Christian Association, and I
am sure they will expect her to be in bed before any midnight
foolishness," said Miss Elvira, with a severe glance at the frivolous
Mamie Lou. "I shall, of course, make her an evening dress or two, one
especially to wear when the multitude calls her before the curtain to
express their admiration of and enthusiasm over her play, but I shall
trust Patricia not to let them lead her into any undue frivolity. The
theatres all close at eleven o'clock."
"The article said that was the time that Broadway woke up, and--" Jenny
began, as she hid behind Mamie Lou as if expecting a volley from Miss
Elvira. But Miss Elvira was too much absorbed to notice her in any way.
Miss Elvira was also in the throes of conceptive genius.
"The last 'Woman's Review' had a colored plate of a suit that I can see
on you, Patricia," she mused under her breath. "It was queer blue,
with--"
"In that big trunk of your great grandmother's up in the garret there's
a blue silk that she wore in Washington that is that curious new blue
color, Pat, and a lot more of--" Mamie Lou was saying with great
executive ability when Miss Elvira seized on her idea and made it her
own with the avidity of real genius.
"We'll make over all of old Madam Adair's dresses for you, Patricia,"
she decreed.
"They've always been kept kind of sacred and--" Patricia began to
remonstrate with uncertainty in her voice.
"And rightly so--but at the presentation of her play it is proper for
them to emerge," Miss Elvira further decreed. "Get a lamp and let's go
look at them and decide to-night," she further commanded.
And from the result of that resurrection in the garret of Rosemeade,
Adairville, Kentucky, later Broadway, even Fifth Avenue, New York, got a
decided and unwonted thrill.
"The clothes are all right, Roger. Miss Elvira is going to make me a lot
out of great-grandmother's clothes she wore in Washington to dance with
Lafayette," Patricia confided to Roger as they stood under the rose vine
in the moonlight at the late hour of ten-thirty that evening after she
had helped him transplant a lot of sturdy tomato vines.
"Little old New York will sit up and take notice when it sees you in
party dimity, Pat," he said as he smiled down into the eager, gray eyes
that were raised to his, beaming through their long black lashes.
"Oh, I hope I'll make friends, Roger," Patricia answered the warmth in
his voice as she clung to the warmth and strength of his arm as if in
foreboding.
"Of course New York will love you, Pat. Hasn't everybody always loved
you?" he asked tenderly as he put his work-worn hand over hers on his
arm.
"Yes," answered Patricia, with her head suddenly held high. "If anybody
don't like me, I'll make them."
At about the same hour that this challenge to his world was flung from
the lips of the beautiful and talented Miss Patricia Adair upon the
moonlit and mockingbird trilled air of the Bluegrass State Mr. Godfrey
Vandeford was engaged in about the twenty-fifth round of the spanking of
Miss Violet Hawtry in the State of New York, and he was having a hard
time accomplishing his purpose.
"It's just like your selfishness to try to put me into a piffling play
by some unknown author with every risk to be run, when Weiner wants to
buy your contract and put me into 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' which is a
play by Hilliard that gives me scope for all of my ability. He is
willing to give you a fifth interest in it and that's all you deserve.
I'll show you whether or not you can sacrifice my career,
you ----! ----! ----! you!" And with which tirade the beautiful Violet
stormed up and down the veranda of Highcliff in front of the supine