Blue-grass and Broadway Part 24

"We went out to a place called the Beach Inn last night, and whom do you suppose we saw there?" she demanded on one of the mornings after, over her bowl of halved peaches.

"Mr. and Mrs. Devil?" he asked, with a sparkle breaking through the frown with which he had instantly greeted her mention of that gay beach resort.

"No; Miss Hawtry and Mr. Farraday. She wasn't nice to us at all, but Mr.

Height says she always treats him badly when they are rehearsing together. I think Mr. Height is perfectly wonderful to her on the stage. He's so gentle and kind; but then he's that in real life, isn't he?"

"Is he?" growled Mr. Vandeford over his corn-flakes.

"Yes, and he's so just and fine in the way he speaks about everybody. He told me how poor Miss Hawtry used to be and how you pushed her along until she could buy that lovely house we pa.s.sed, in which the Trevors are staying while she is in town. It is hard on you, too, not to be out there boarding with them and her instead of in this heat."

"Did Height say that I--I boarded--out there?" demanded Mr. Vandeford, pus.h.i.+ng his coffee-cup away from him with a sudden snap.

"Yes, he said you stayed out there in the summer always, and--"

"We're late," interrupted Mr. Vandeford, snapping his watch with the same temper he had used on his coffee-cup. "Bring that saucer of peaches along and eat it in the car."

"I'll take an orange instead," a.s.sented Miss Adair, as with all good-nature and in all naturalness she deserted the last half of the rosy peach, took an orange from the bowl before her and stood up to go out to the car, which Valentine had parked in the shadow of the building opposite.

"You kid, you!" scoffed Mr. Vandeford, with an ache in his heart, but thanksgiving for that same youthful unsophistication. "Height or somebody will get it all across to her, and then what'll I do?" he growled to himself as he followed her into the car.

"And I saw that Mazie--Mazie woman there, too, with a terrible-looking man that has written ever so many plays that are successful." Mr.

Vandeford was devoutly thankful that Mr. Grant Howard's name had not stuck in the consciousness of the author of "The Purple Slipper." "I--I was introduced to them too--because you know you said that I must--must accept broad standards, and I did--last night." Miss Adair looked away, but Mr. Vandeford could see that her little ears, set close against her small head, with their tips covered by a smooth band of hair, grew rosy.

"What?" he gasped, uncertain as to what she meant.

"Talked to that--that playwright and--and drank some champagne. I like cider better, but Mr. Height ordered it, and I thought--"

Here the car stopped, and Valentine was at the door. Valentine never failed to be at the door instantly when Miss Adair was in Mr.

Vandeford's car, because his French soul rejoiced within him for thus serving a grand dame.

"Rooney is on the last lap of the last act, and then he'll begin to polish the whole for dress rehearsals," Mr. Vandeford said as he held the curtains of their box aside for her to enter.

"And Mr. Height told me, too, that the Trevors had--"

"Hus.h.!.+" commanded Mr. Vandeford, becoming the stern producer, because he felt that he could stand no more of Mr. Height at the Beach Inn, though he began to listen intently to that same gentleman and Bebe Herne in the beginning of the great scene of the now authorless play. The anxieties pa.s.sed from him, and in a moment he was in harness again with his author and running in perfect unison.

"Cut it off, Height, cut it off!" commanded Mr. Rooney, and he ran his hands into his shock of black hair, which stood up all over his head like a black, sooty mop. "That scene needs something. It isn't big and simple enough. What did she say to him in your first layout, miss?" he demanded of Miss Adair, for the first time acknowledging to the company the presence of the author of their play at the rehearsals. "Can you remember?"

"Yes," answered Miss Adair, with the home-made color blazing in her cheeks and fires in her gray eyes as she rose in the box, and gave the six lines as she had written them. Her lovely, slurring, Blue-gra.s.s voice made the whole company smile with pleasure.

"That's it! That's it! That's real people jawing and not a lot of smarty guff. Put that in, Fido, and write it in, Miss Herne," commanded Mr.

Rooney, without any form of thanks to the accommodating and forgiving author.

And truth to say the author of "The Purple Slipper" did not notice his omission. She was in such joy at having something of the "big scene"

express what she had intended that she was clasping one of Mr.

Vandeford's hands in both hers and holding on tight to keep from shedding tears of joy.

"What did I tell you?" he asked, taking the two nervously clutched little hands into his warm, strong ones, unseen in the shadow of the box. "You keep getting things across to Bill by letting him ask you for what he wants. See?"

"Yes, and I'm always glad when I do as you tell me," she whispered, with her lips almost against his ear as they both turned back to the stage and watched their machine begin to run on greased wheels. Mr. Vandeford thought of the Beach Inn, Mazie, the bottle of champagne, and Mr. Gerald Height, and groaned inwardly.

The last week of the rehearsals of "The Purple Slipper" was a hectic rush, the like of which Miss Adair had never imagined. She had gone out again for the week-end to Mrs. Farraday's, up in Westchester, and this time Mr. Vandeford drove out on Sunday for tea and c.r.a.pe myrtle with Mr.

Dennis Farraday, and, he was surprised to note again, Miss Mildred Lindsey. The day pa.s.sed like an oasis in the midst of a desert storm, and Mr. Vandeford had the pleasure of making all arrangements for Mrs.

Farraday, Mr. and Mrs. Van Tyne, and several other old Manhattaners, who had fallen under the spell of the young Kentuckian who had in an off moment perpetrated "The Purple Slipper," to go to Atlantic City the 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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-ma.n.u.script 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 a.s.sured 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 s.e.x 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, G.o.d willing, I'm going to keep her that!"