Blue-grass and Broadway
Mr. Vandeford as his chief treasure and sheet-anchor in times of the
high winds of life.
"What makes you do it, Van?" questioned Mr. Farraday, as he sat with Mr.
Vandeford in the early morning in the latter's rooms after the tumult of
the first night of the unsuccessful "Miss Cut-up."
"Excitement," answered Mr. Vandeford, as he put his bare heels,
protruding from his Chinese slippers, up on the edge of the mahogany
reading-table in his living-room, and began to pull at a long,
evil-smelling, briar pipe. "Nothing like it."
"Do you really care for all that noise, those explosions of chorus
girls, sweating stage hands, cursing director and cursing star, paint,
powder, electricity, paper walls and furniture, call-bells and
hand-clapping from boozy critics in front?"
"I do," answered Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, with a glint in his eyes deep
back in his head. "And so would you if you had bet about twenty thousand
on that combination and could see the people begin to eat it up right
before your eyes as you sat in a box and watched 'em. When you've backed
your own combination of inferno on riot, it gives you a thrill to stand
before the box-office and watch a line of people that stretches to the
next block plunk down dollars that they have earned at their own
particular combinations of life to see the combination you have made of
yours. Why, tears come into my eyes when I see some little, old,
dried-up seamstress pay a dollar to sit in the roost to see Gerald
Height love the powder off of Violet while she is cursing him under her
breath for so doing, and it tickles me under my ribs to see some fat,
jolly, lonely, old party buy a front seat two days hand-running to sit
and watch Mazie Villines dance over her own head and take the child out
to supper afterward in all propriety. It does him good all over after
selling white goods in Squeedunck, Illinois, eleven and three-quarter
months of every year. It's all to the good, Denny, and I wish you could
get the drag of it."
"Perhaps it would be well if I could," agreed Mr. Farraday, as he rose
and shook his big, lithe body with the agility of a frolicsome puppy who
knows he is going into mischief, and looked cautiously at Godfrey. "Is
backing the life of the Violet sport, too?" he ventured.
"Best I know. Took nothing and made it into something in five years. If
it bites my hand that's all in the game."
"Same force could beget and train about eleven small Vandefords into
pretty good American citizens," Mr. Farraday snapped out, and then
backed away.
"Absinthe cocktails ruin the taste for sweet milk. Don't talk about
things you know nothing about; thank God for that same ignorance," Mr.
Vandeford commanded. "Go to bed and sleep like the cherub you are, while
I expiate here with my pipe."
From that conversation it was natural to man nature that the demand for
a half-interest in the next Hawtry show would have been made by Mr.
Dennis Farraday of Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and acceded to with the
brotherly reservations already related. The eye-teeth of Mr. Dennis
Farraday were very precious to Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and he had the
intention of taking great care that their edges should not be dulled. It
was well that he did not know that the eleven-fifteen train he had taken
in his flight to New York passed the huge, eight-cylinder Surreness of
his beloved Jonathan in its race up the beach for the home of the
Violet.
Now, when all is said and considered, a large admiration is due and much
should be forgiven Miss Violet Hawtry, who, as half-starved Maggie
Murphy, had darted out of the gutter into the back stage-door at the age
of fifteen, snapped her huge violet eyes with their fringes of black,
trilled a vulgar, Irish street song in accompaniment to sundry
provocative swayings of her lissome, maturing young body, and thus had
made enough impression on her world to hang on by the tips of her
fingers until she dropped into the outstretched arms of Mr. Godfrey
Vandeford, who was prowling around Weehawken and the vicinity for just
such ripe fruit as she when he was casting his first musical girl-show
for the purpose of some violent excitement after a snowed-in winter in
the Klondike.
He had taken her to an old stage-mother he knew, had her thoroughly
washed, combed, manicured, dressed, schooled, and had given her the
benefit of his respect for five years while she worked up into the star
of "Dear Geraldine" with all the might of the Irish eyes and lissome
figure and cooing, creamy voice. He had then built Highcliff in the
artist's colony of the Beach for the joint domicile of mother and
daughter. However, it is easier to bathe, comb, manicure, and
luxuriously clothe a body than it is to renovate a soul, and within the
Violet Maggie dwelt in all her gutter vigor. It is also safe to say that
perhaps it was no little part of the Maggie that the beautiful and
haughty Violet threw across the footlights to draw to her the primitive
in the hearts of her vast audiences. It was to some extent the wisdom of
Maggie that the Violet was using as she prepared for her first encounter
alone with Mr. Dennis Farraday as he raced down the moonlit beach to
her.
"Not the violet and jet, Susette, but that white embroidered lisle, and
take time to sew three inches of tulle around the top of the bodice in
front and put folds five inches deep across the back. Let it come just
below the shoulder," she commanded, as she commenced the whirlwind of a
toilette with which, she had assured the hurrying Dennis, she was
already adorned.
"_Mais_, Mademoiselle--" Susette began.
"He'd shy at too much omitted clothing when we are alone. I'll have to
introduce him to myself gradually," she answered the protest, laughing
as she tossed her pale, yellow mane high on her head, and dabbed a
little curl against her cheek with the rose oil, and made a skilful use
of the lip-stick brought by Mr. Godfrey Vandeford from the famed
Celeste's.
"He will behold that Mademoiselle Simone dance with very few garments
_alors_," Susette pouted as she laid in the folds of modest tulle.
"But he won't be alone in the moonlight with her, that is, if I can help
it," answered the mistress, as she further perfumed and painted the lily
of her beauty. "Don't worry, Susette; I'm going to give monsieur the
time of his life."
"That is without saying, Mademoiselle," answered Susette, as she slipped
the silky fluff over the Violet's head, and fastened the one or two
hooks that held it in place over the filmy undergarments in which the
Violet stood waiting for its veiling. "_Mon Dieu_, what a beauty it
gives you, and that placing of the tulle is _ravissant_."
"That is what I meant it to be," laughed the Violet. "There's his car!
Bring me that orchid wrap when I ring for it." And leaving the
admiration of Susette, the Violet hurried down to drink from the cup of
the same vintage she was sure would be offered her by Mr. Dennis
Farraday. It was offered.
"It's awfully good of you people to help a poor lonely dub to a pleasant
evening," were the words with which the victim greeted the Violet, while
his eyes offered the expected portion of admiration as he beheld her
bathed in the radiance of the moon.
"Sure the pleasure is ours--or rather mine, poor old Van," she answered,
with not a little trepidation well hidden under her rich voice.
"Couldn't you wake him up, the old scout? Let me get to him. I have a
way with him I learned in the Nova Scotia woods." Mr. Farraday laughed a
big laugh, which had in it the tang of the breeze in the tops of
pine-trees. But the Violet was ready for him.
"He's not there for your torture. The poor darling got a telephone
message just twenty minutes ago to come back to New York to-night. I've
just motored him up the beach to catch the eleven-fifteen train. Some
day that tiresome Dolph will follow Van about some play snarl into--into
Paradise."
"He did that to-night, didn't he?" asked Mr. Farraday, with a merry
laugh as he ruffled his red forelock up off his broad brow, and made
himself look like a huge, tame lion.
"Away with your blarney, boy!" laughed the Violet, in return, using her
Maggie Murphy form of speech with telling effect, as she often did. "He
left a thousand apologies for you," she added, slipping back into her
veneer of the--for Maggie--upper world. "And you've had your race down
for nothing; poor Simone!"
"Oh, I say, can't we just go on over to supper at the Beach Inn? The
Clyde Trevors asked me, and we can have supper with them. Wouldn't you
like that? We can tell them about poor Van." He was as eager as a boy in
his friendly efforts to mend what he thought must be a broken evening
for her.
"I'd love it," answered the Violet, with a flash of her white teeth and
violet eyes at him.
After a summons Susette appeared with the alluring orchid garment, and a
white film of seed-pearls for her mistress's hair. She assisted the
Violet's discreet Japanese butler to put them into the big car, which
Mr. Farraday was driving himself, and then stood for a minute watching
them hurl themselves away across the white sand.
"_Quelle vie!_" she muttered to herself as she turned back into the
darkened house.
The Beach Inn was aglow and atwinkle and in full laugh as they ascended
the steps of the wide veranda hung out over the ocean, where members and
guests were having supper at small tables lit with shaded lamps. Men and
girls, in bathing suits that were lineal descendants of the scant
fig-leaf, were eating and drinking together sparsely because of their
intention of taking a midnight plunge in the breakers under the hot
moon, while other women in radiant evening garb were almost as scantily
attired, though attended by stuffily garbed men. Most of the parties
turned and called a laughing greeting to the Violet, for they were the
men and women of her world disporting themselves away from Broadway, and
Clyde Trevor, who had written the book for "Miss Cut-up," rose and came
over to claim his guests.
"Lost Van?" he questioned, as he led them to their seats beside Mrs.
Trevor, who had danced fifty thousand dollars out of New York the winter
just ended. His voice held a hint of irony, which the Violet got and Mr.
Dennis Farraday missed.
"Not quite yet," she said, with a coo at which Trevor smiled, and under
his breath he gave her the word, "Good hunting!"
"Thanks."
"Old Van had to hop back to New York on the eleven-fifteen, but we came
on to glad with you anyway," Mr. Farraday was saying to Mrs. Trevor,
with an ingenuous smile.
"Go to it, baby," commanded Trevor to his wife, as a rich negro melody
began to fling its invitation against the roaring call of the ocean, and
at his word Simone rose from the seat of Mrs. Trevor and slid out into
the cleared space at the head of the steps.
"Just in time," commented Mr. Farraday under his breath, as he turned
his chair to watch her drop her silk coat, and float out on the waves of
sound just as she would later float on the waves of the ocean after she
had plunged from the steps to lead the midnight bathing in the surf, for
which the management of the inn paid her the sum of two hundred dollars
per plunge.
All of this gaiety and amusement was just a prelude to the ride home in
the moonlight, which the Violet took with good Dennis Farraday and
during which she discovered that there is such a thing as honor among
men about poaching on other men's preserves, and during which, also, the
fate of Major Adair, Patricia, Roger, and old black Jeff hung in the
balance.
"Just what are we racing?" she questioned as they flew along the beach
with rubber tires that just skimmed the hard, white sand.
"A bit fast?" asked Mr. Farraday, with a protective laugh, as he slowed
down the flight.