Blue-grass and Broadway
figure of her manager, which was clad in immaculate white flannel, suede
and linen, with a blue silk scarf knotted at the base of his lean,
bronze throat, which matched the blue of his keen eyes under their
gray-sprinkled brows, as the only bit of color in his irreproachable
costuming.
"You've read neither play, my dear Violet. You may like 'The Purple
Slipper.' In which case you get the same salary and I get all the
profits instead of the one-fifth our friend Weiner is offering me for
letting you act in my other play," he answered his star's outburst in an
easy, mollifying drawl.
"Everybody knows that a Hilliard play is a _play_, and I'm not going to
try out a new playwright just to put money in your pockets. Why should
I?" demanded the star virago, in a fury that made her snapping Irish
blue eyes, tall, strapping, curved body, and pale tawny hair combine
into a good semblance of the jungle queen on a prey quest.
"No reason except your contract entered into in all lawfulness,"
answered Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. "You know what the Courts are, and if
you like I'll meet you there and fight it out instead of by these
sounding sea waves in this delicious moonlight. Come here and kiss me
and do let our lawyers settle it all for us." As he spoke he rose lazily
and attempted to take the taut young cat into a pair of listlessly
desirous arms.
"Not on your life you big loafer, you, just because you put one over me
when I was a starved stage door drab don't think I am that same kind or
that sort of thing goes with me now." She spit the words at him as she
half yielded to his nonchalant embrace and half repulsed it.
"Be accurate, Violet, my dear: did I demand your heart until I had
managed you and my own affairs to the point where you could buy
Highcliff or any other trifles you wanted? There are other ladies to
love in the world besides you, aren't there? There are other gentlemen
besides me and you've had five years--and a wide hunting grounds. I've
got you under only one contract--business and not--pleasure."
"God, I don't know whether I love or hate you most," were the words of
the conciliating purr that he got as she turned to put herself back
under his caressing.
"Hate, I wager," he laughed softly, as he drew away from her and seated
himself on the railing of the veranda which hung out over the old ocean
so that its hungry waves seemed to be leaping up to engulf him. The gray
peaks and gable of the Hawtry cottage massed themselves back of him and
in the silvering moonlight he looked like a white eagle perched on an
eyrie.
"Don't make me play that play; give me over to Weiner," the star of many
such an encounter as well of "Dear Geraldine" coaxed, as she followed
him and put bare, white, glistening arms around his neck and attempted
to draw his head down against a bosom that still tossed with the storm
of anger that she had put out of voice and face. "You know how last year
nobody could get a theatre for love or money, and the producers who
owned theatres put on all the plays and coined money. It will be worse
next year. You have no theatre and Weiner has three. He offers to let us
open the New Carnival. It'll be a sure thing; while your play will have
to take its chance for a New York theatre and maybe get none. Please,
Godfrey!"
"Well, you see I had agreed to let Dennis Farraday in on this play, and
it would sell him out to Weiner too," answered Mr. Vandeford, as he very
gently but determinedly took the white arms from around his neck and
refused the pillow of the storming breast.
"Dennis Farraday?" Violet asked, and Mr. Vandeford shot a quick glance
of question at her as he felt the tautening of the muscles in the white
arms that he had in his grasp of untangling. "You are not going to trim
him, are you?"
"No, not if you make a hit in 'The Purple Slipper,' answered Mr.
Vandeford, as he gave her another appraising glance while he lit a
cigarette.
"Has he read the play?"
"He's putting his money on Hawtry in a play of Vandeford's selecting and
producing," was the slap administered with the soft drawl. And as he
slapped he watched the reaction.
"What did you do with that copy of the play that fellow Dolph sent out
this morning?" was what he got with an entire change of purpose in the
beautiful, stormy face that had calmed in an instant.
"It's in your room on the table by your bed," answered Mr. Vandeford, as
he rose, stretched, yawned and in other ways indicated his desire for
sleep in the primitive manner that a man uses in the bosom of his
family.
"I'm going to read it if you don't mind," the Violet said with a smile
of pleasure instead of the frown of anger which had so lately rested on
her fair face. Mr. Vandeford laughed inwardly; she was about as
transparent as a very young kitten in its eagerness for a saucer of
cream.
"Good girl," answered Godfrey, as together they entered the dark house.
Together they climbed the steps, and with a kiss executed by the Violet
he left her to turn into the door of her room while he went on to his
just beyond.
Out of her sight the lazy, care-free manner left his lithe body, and in
an instant every muscle stiffened to action. The smoulder of anger in
his eyes blazed. He looked at his watch.
"Thirty-five minutes to catch that eleven-fifteen train to town. Never
again. I'm done!" he murmured and looked about him at his belongings
strewn around his room. "I'll send Dolph out to pack to-morrow. A jump
into tweeds and a sprint down the beach will make it."
And after vigorously suiting his actions to his words for twenty minutes
he was running swiftly down the beach well ahead of the time of the
eleven-fifteen train. Just as the headlight cast a red ray down the long
track he stepped on the platform and in ten seconds more he was being
whirled away from the moonlight and sands and white arms, having
accomplished his purpose of the spanking, cut forever chains that
galled, and was well content with himself and the world.
Back at Highcliff the beautiful Violet had been undergoing the rites of
retirement, assisted by her very well-skilled maid, deep in an exciting
dream of conquest. As she let her soft, perfumed, silken garments be
taken from her one at a time until her pearly body was exposed to the
brisk sea air, for which tonic Susette had thrown wide both broad
windows, she was weighing in her shrewd little gutter-gamin mind the
advantages of the road to the right against the turn to the left. The
Hilliard "Rosie Posie Girl" in the fall produced by Weiner with all his
trained staff, command of a big new theatre and three others, and
following road prestige appealed strongly to her cupidity, which had
been well trained in getting dimes from tight pockets in cheap cafes and
ten, twenty and thirty theatres, but she had seen a grouping of Dennis
Farraday's name in the paper a few days ago with the names of some young
New York multimillionaires in a National Commission, and she knew that
he and his "pile" were worthy of the effort of her charms. Also she had
seen big, broad, breezy, gallant Dennis himself at luncheon with Mr.
Vandeford in the Astor not ten days before, and her designs had been
decidedly set in his direction. To her thinking, big, broad, breezy,
gallant men were always easy. As Susette enveloped her rosiness from the
sea air in a soft white cloud of chiffon and embroidery, removed the
rose mules from her feet, helped her in between the fragrant linen
sheets that were as soft as rich silk, threw over her a rose-colored
puff of silk and lace and down, turned on her reading lamp, upon whose
shade wanton fauns and nymphs sported, piled her pillows high and left
her, the scales were about going down on the side in which was placed
"The Purple Slipper," Mr. Dennis Farraday--and Miss Patricia Adair, who
at that time was the unknown quantity which Fate often throws in any
balance.
With a luxurious sigh and flexing of her long, supple body the Violet
picked up the business-like copy of the Violet manuscript which Mr.
Adolph Meyers had sent her instead of the beribboned, purple
"Renunciation of Rosalind," and began to read the first page when the
telephone beside her bed rang with a soft tinkle. She picked up the
ivory receiver and into it murmured a softly tentative:
"Yes?"
. . . . . .
"Oh, Mr. Farraday! How are you?"
. . . . . .
"Yes, this is Violet Hawtry."
. . . . . .
"Deliciously well, thank you."
. . . . . .
"Yes, he's here, but the gay young thing has gone to bed hours ago."
. . . . . .
"Most interesting for me, but I have to submit."
. . . . . .
"Oh, lovely. Do come. I'll adore having him routed out for you. Of
course we'll go with you. I had forgot that Simone was to dance at the
Beach Inn to-night."
. . . . . .
"No indeed, I have not undressed at all. I was going to study a part
to-night."
. . . . . .
"I'm sure Godfrey can be dressed in half an hour, and it will take even
your Surreness that time to get here. Take the beach road; it's fine.
Good-by then. In half an hour."
. . . . . .
With which ending and beginning the Violet hung up the ivory receiver
and rang for Susette. The summons was answered by Mrs. Aline Hawtry,
_nee_ Maggie Murphy the first, an embarrassing but in a manner cherished
relict of the Hawtry past life in Weehawken.
"Sure, and the little Frinchy is a-bed, Mag! What be ye wanting? The
night is after sneaking out the back door of the morning." Mrs. Hawtry,
once Murphy, was a big bonny edition of the Violet grown into a cabbage
rose and her voice was also of the same rich texture.
"Rout out Godfrey, Ma, and then stir up Susette with a hot stick. Mr.
Dennis Farraday is coming down to take us over to see Simone dance at
the Beach Inn. I want him to see me instead of Simone. Hurry!"
"The poor dear boy, after a hard day in the cruel hot city. Alack!"
moaned Mrs. Maggie as she billowed across to Mr. Vandeford's door and
knocked. Then she paused and knocked again. From neither knock did she
receive an answer as the moment was just about the one in which he had
boarded the New York bound train a half mile up the beach down which Mr.
Dennis Farraday was racing.
When a search of the unresponsive room had convinced the Violet of his
flight, for a moment her eyes were stormy, then her face cleared with a
smile of delight, and as she padded back to her room and the waiting
Susette, to herself she purred:
"Nobody can beat my luck."
CHAPTER II
There is a certain kind of man over whom all other men smile inwardly.
The tone of voice in which they speak of him has an affectionate growl,
which, once heard, cannot be mistaken. Such a man is apt to cherish what
other men call "impossible ideals about women," and it behooves his
masculine friends to watch out for him carefully lest he come a cropper.
Mr. Dennis Farraday was such a man among men, and Mr. Godfrey Vandeford
loved him deeply. They had met when they were both twenty-three, on
board a tramp steamer, bound for adventure in South Africa, and in the
seven years that had elapsed since then they had spent periods of time
together, in various kinds of sports. Killing time on Broadway was about
the only sport that they had not tried together. By very solid banking
and brokering Mr. Vandeford enjoyed and increased for himself and an
aristocratic, Knickerbocker-descended mother a few ancestral millions.
Incidentally, he took care of the sole hundred thousand dollars of which
Mr. Vandeford's high financiering on Broadway had left him possessed.
Mr. Farraday and Mrs. Justus Farraday represented the sole family ties
possessed by Mr. Vandeford, and he considered them both most valuable.
In fact, the maternal regard of Mrs. Justus Farraday was looked upon by