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

talked the other day," Mr. Height said as he came to the other side of

the wicker retreat of the hunted author. Something in his voice made Mr.

Dennis Farraday put his arm around the lizard's shoulders, a thing he

would not have thought of doing a week ago.

"We are all going to stand by, little girl, and it'll be some play that

we produce at the New Carnival October first," Mr. Farraday put in by

way of his contribution to the wounded young author.

However, it was the crack of Mr. Rooney's whip that brought her to her

feet again.

"Miss Adair, you and Lindsey come back with me to the theater now," he

commanded the shrinking and tragic author. "Somebody get Fido and tell

him to wake up everybody and have 'em all at the theater to rehearse in

a hour; that'll be three o'clock. Mr. Vandeford, you'd better get in a

press story over long distance before Hawtry beats you to it. You may

catch a morning paper or two. Now, everybody get out and work like fun

and we'll show Broadway a sure-fire hit October first."

"Can you do it, Bill?" Mr. Vandeford asked in a quiet voice. It was the

first time he had spoken since he had coolly and silently picked Miss

Adair up off a bench in the little railroad station and put her into the

sympathetic young Dago's one-man-power conveyance.

"I can take ten yards of calico, a pot of red wagon paint, and a pretty

gal and make a show to fill any theater on Broadway for six months--if

I'm let alone," answered Mr. Rooney, with the assurance that moves

mountains. "That Lindsey is one good actor with common horse-sense, and

the little author filly has Blue-grass speed. Watch us!"

"Goes!" answered Mr. Vandeford, and steel sparks struck out in his keen

eyes as he turned and went rapidly to one of the long-distance telephone

booths with which all Atlantic City keeps up its intimate relations with

New York. It was also astonishing how quickly he got his connection with

a great New York morning paper and was put on the desk wire of one of

the junior editors, who was a good friend in need.

. . . . . .

"Hello, Curt. Godfrey Vandeford speaking."

. . . . . .

"With my show in Atlantic City. Can you get a note across in the morning

issue?"

. . . . . .

"Good! Spread it that Hawtry is put out of 'The Purple Slipper' cast to

give place to a new Pacific Coast star, Mildred Lindsey. Hawtry handed

it to Denny and me rotten, but put that under pretty deep, with Lindsey

blazed in top lines. I'll have my publicity man send you a special

Lindsey Sunday story. Hot stuff."

. . . . . .

"Thanks, old man! By!"

* * * * *

Another fifteen minutes was spent in long distance communication with

Mr. Meyers, and it was ten minutes after three o'clock in the morning

when Mr. Vandeford slipped into his chair beside his author in the

little Atlantic City Theater, which Mr. Rooney had induced the old night

watchman door-keeper to open up at the hour when all teeming Atlantic

City is in the depths of repose. Mr. Rooney had with him the entire cast

of "The Purple Slipper," to whom he had just finished explaining the

cause of their extraction from their well-earned repose.

"Most of the Sister Harriet scenes are with me," Miss Bébé Herne was

saying, with efficient energy fairly radiating from her big body,

clothed in a decorous tailor skirt, but with a boudoir jacket serving

for blouse. Also two kid curlers showed at the nape of her neck. "I can

feed Miss Grayson into Miss Lindsey's part enough to get by

to-morrow--to-night I mean. And Wallace can do the same when he's on

with her. That ugly white cat Hawtry to double on Godfrey Vandeford

after he pulled her out of Weehawken!"

"Get on, get on, everybody, and use your brains until they lather,"

commanded Mr. Rooney as he took his stand beside the left stage box.

"Now, Miss, you gimme lines out of your head or your first draft when I

call for 'em, and I'll take 'em or leave 'em as suits me. Then you

smooth the ones I hand you into good talk, and we'll have a show here

by sun-up that you'll be proud to invite your Christian lady friends to

attend. And we'll keep all the 'pep' too, Vandeford, that you paid

Howard to write into it, only we'll take the Hawtry dirt out of it. On,

Betty Carrington, and the curtain's up."

Then from three o'clock in the morning until almost noon the machinery

of "The Purple Slipper" was overhauled and adjusted to the new cog. Mr.

Rooney lashed and rubbed and polished and oiled with never a let-up on

anybody, and beside him sat the author, with her head up and the bit in

her mouth. For every line that rang untrue in the reconstruction she had

a true one or she took a crude bit from Mr. Rooney and polished it into

place. Fido sat crouched in a front seat and transcribed every word into

his prompt copy so as to be a veritable first aid.

And Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, experienced show man that he was, felt as if

he was witnessing a miracle as he beheld Miss Adair's original "Purple

Slipper," with its haphazard amateur charm, again put forth bud and

bloom on the branches of Grant Howard's tight-knit, well-constructed,

and well-rounded drama. The highly-colored flowers of Hawtry personality

Mr. Rooney pruned away and constructed others for Lindsey, and Miss

Adair lent them color and perfume in passing them to the new star, who

was working steadily, slowly, surely, and with great power.

"Don't tell him that his eyes 'burn into yours until your soul is

seared.' That's old. We got to get a kind of smile here where Hawtry

looked like she was going to do the ham sandwich act to Height and his

silk tights." Mr. Rooney stopped the abhorred scene, being acted along

about six o'clock in the morning, to demand that it be played in the

proper key, up to which he had succeeded in wringing lines from Miss

Adair for the first act and most of the second. "What do hearts do to

each other that's hot and decent and funny all at once?" Mr. Rooney

fired this biological question to the author of "The Purple Slipper,"

and looked at her with a demand for an immediate answer in his little,

black, driving eyes.

"She can say 'There's chaff in my heart; guard the fire in yours,'" Miss

Adair supplied offhand.

"That hands it to him, and a good double meaning, too," Mr. Rooney

approved. "Go ahead, Height, but don't get this lady mixed with the

other kind. Remember, she lives at the ladies Christian home." The laugh

that greeted this sally was an uproar that added to the dash and quick

fire of the big scene, which Miss Adair and Mr. Rooney had so quickly

expurgated and reconstructed between them.

At seven o'clock the play had been entirely run through, and Fido had

the result in his prompt copy and was beginning to rapidly write it into

their lines for each of the cast.

"One half hour to get breakfast and Miss Herne's back hair down," Mr.

Rooney said, with the callousness of a slave-driver. "Then if you run

through again fairly well we'll be done by noon, and everybody can hit

the hay for six hours."

Mr. Vandeford watched his author's proud little head droop on the box

rail in front of her, and with his face very white he motioned Mr.

Farraday to come to her. After his degrading the night before at the

hands of Miss Hawtry, he felt that he would be unable to endure the pain

of the repulsion he felt sure he would find in her eyes if she ever

looked at him again.

But his summons of Mr. Farraday failed in peremptoriness, for that big,

bonny gentleman nodded to him, then stood in the wing to catch Miss

Lindsey in his arms and bear her away to immediate nourishment. In the

excitement of the last few hours a domesticity had grown up between Mr.

Farraday and Miss Lindsey that it would have taken months to build in a

world less hectic than that in which they were then living.

Their courtship had been brief, and consisted in one question, asked by

Mr. Farraday while Miss Lindsey stood in the wings waiting for a

moderated, impassioned cue from Mr. Height, and answered by her as she

responded to him and the call of her stage lover at the same moment.

"When will you marry me?"

"When 'The Purple Slipper' goes on Broadway."

In the circumstances it was natural that Mr. Dennis Farraday should take

Miss Lindsey for a reminiscent beefsteak and mushrooms during the only

free half hour she would have for either him or food in the ensuing day,

and to fail to heed Mr. Vandeford's summon.

Thus deserted, Mr. Vandeford was about to steal forth and appeal to some

member of the cast of "The Purple Slipper" to come to his rescue in

providing refreshment to restore the author during the precious half

hour respite when "the chaff in his heart" caught fire and began to burn

away forever. Miss Adair raised her eyes to his, with the faith still

in their wounded depths, and smiled a wan little smile.

"Please get me a glass of milk with an egg in it, and some of that

brown-bread turkey," she demanded. "I'm dead, but I'll come alive again

if I go to sleep a minute. Shake me when you get back with it, but get

something for yourself while you are gone."

"The kiddie, the precious, spunky kiddie," Mr. Vandeford said in his

heart over and over as he and the young Italian rushed to the hotel and

back with a waiter and a tray of the desired refreshment, to which had

been added an iced melon and a couple of bedewed roses.

The shaking had to be literally administered while young Dago Italiana

held the tray, and then had to be repeated several times by Mr.

Vandeford, as he almost as literally fed his exhausted author, up until

the very minute in which Mr. Rooney rang up the curtain and again called

her into action.

Five hours was more than enough for the smooth running of the three-hour

"Purple Slipper" show, and at eleven o'clock Mr. Rooney dismissed his

jaded cast with this strict command delivered in his rich, deep voice,

which held a note of genuine solemnity.

"All of you go to sleep every minute between now and night, and then

come back here and make good--for all of us."

With the assistance of young Dago Italiana, Mr. Vandeford delivered Miss

Adair to a hotel maid, who accepted five dollars from him as a fee for

putting her to bed, and then he plunged into still greater

strenuosities.

He sat for three hours with his skilled young publicity man and

advance-agent, and laid out a discreet, dignified, but very interesting,

publicity campaign for the new star of "The Purple Slipper." Due

importance was to be given in all the notices that "The Purple Slipper"

was to open the New Carnival Theater and in his heart the young

advertiser put away the intention of making the fact that Mr. Vandeford

had sold Hawtry and "The Rosie Posie Girl" for "The Purple Slipper," his

most brilliant reserve story to set all of Broadway, at least, agog for

the opening of the expensive new play.

"It puts 'The Purple Slipper' at the big end of the horn, and it's not

your fault that there is only the little end of the horn left for 'The

Rosie Posie Girl' for the time being," he explained to Mr. Vandeford.

"You see, it is a kind of double-cross that acts both ways. If it goes,

people will think it was worth your paying a big price for, and if it

fails, they'll think the 'Rosie Posie Girl' couldn't have been much if

you traded a chance on such a poor show for it."

"Goes!" said Mr. Vandeford, but he was aware that the smart manoeuver,

which would once have delighted his soul, made him intensely weary.

In fact, so fatigued did he feel when he left this young press schemer,

that he dropped into his bed for an hour, and had a masseur come and

pound him into condition to go to the train with good Dennis Farraday to

meet Mrs. Farraday, Mrs. and Mr. and Miss Van Tyne, who arrived at five

o'clock from big Manhattan. Mr. Farraday had had a like operation

performed upon himself, and was in such a radiant condition that Mr.

Vandeford felt badly eclipsed beside him.

"What does it all mean about Miss Hawtry and Miss Lindsey and the show,

Van?" Mrs. Farraday questioned, with greater anxiety in her face than

she had had at any other opening night of her favorite's successful

shows. "Are we going to have a terrible time?"

"I'm going to put you in a wheel-chair and let Denny take you up to the

north end of the board-walk and tell you all about it while I locate and

make comfortable the rest of the folks," Mr. Vandeford answered with a

deep relief at her presence in his eyes.

"Where are my girls?" she questioned.

"Both dead--asleep," he answered, as if deeply happy to be able to say

it of his star and his author.

His statement was only partly true, for while Miss Adair slept the sleep

of the emotionally unanxious, Mildred Lindsey sat crouched by her

window, with her eyes looking far out over the Atlantic Ocean, waiting

for the result of Mr. Dennis Farraday's talk with his mother at the

north end of the board-walk.

There are occasionally mothers who bear sons who can tell them all about

things, and Mrs. Farraday really enjoyed the whole story that big,

bonnie Dennis poured out to her at the sunset hour by the brink of old

ocean, Dago Italiana squatting on his heels out of hearing and basking

in inactivity, from the moment of the beefsteak episode in his and Miss

Lindsey's acquaintance up to the moment in which Miss Hawtry had

established herself in his arms on the occasion of his début in a stage

dressing-room. And even at that stage of the narration she rather

astonished Mr. Farraday, who was shamefaced enough at the telling, by

saying with soft pity in her motherly voice:

"The poor woman. Of course she couldn't help loving you, and now she's

lost both Van and you. Now go on and tell me about Mildred."

"She--she's the best ever," was Mr. Farraday's explicit and enlightening

answer.

"Of course she is. I saw that the time you brought her to dinner with

me, and also that you were in love with her. She's really a rather

wonderful girl, and--and--Dennis, I'll tell you something that I never

expected to tell you--I've always wanted to be an actress. I simply

adore that Lindsey girl, and I know she'll make a great actress. Why on

earth should she want to marry you?" Which goes to show that

aristocratic Mrs. Farraday was not the ordinary mother.

"Let's go ask her," roared big Dennis, as he embraced her in a way that

made the sympathetic and now wealthy young Dago Italiana flash his white

teeth in joy.

And nobody can say how much the fate of "The Purple Slipper" was

affected by the fact that Rosalind went upon the stage for her first

appearance as a star, straight from the tender arms of stately,

white-haired Mrs. Farraday.

The opening night of "The Purple Slipper," by Patricia Adair, produced

by Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and staged by Mr. William Rooney, was a

triumph undisputed and acknowledged by a brilliant cosmopolitan audience

such as Atlantic City furnishes any play presented to it before

September the twenty-fifth, for up until that week on the board-walk of

that resort East meets West and the South joins them. The eminent author

sat in the left stage box with Mrs. Justus Farraday of New York and Mr.

and Mrs. Derick Van Tyne, and at her side was a chair into which at

times dropped Mr. Dennis Farraday, but which had been reserved for the

producer. Things had gone brilliantly from the start, from the moment

the curtain went up with polished, interesting Miss Herne manoeuvering

the frightened and substituted Betty Carrington through the opening

dialogue. A veritable gasp of joy had greeted the beautiful Mr. Gerald

Height as he entered in his colonial wig, ruffles, and velvet, and his

big eyes under their bowed brows sought out the author and smiled at her

with a genuine pledge of loyalty which no lizard could ever have given

forth as he glided richly into his archaic banter with Miss Herne.

"He'll get 'em going, get 'em going the whole dame bunch from Harlem to

the Battery," muttered Mr. Rooney to Fido, who stood in the wings, with

his eyes glued to the much annotated prompt copy. "Now watch out for

Lindsey; she's doing forty sides of new stuff in twenty hours. Me for

the stock company to train 'em young. Let her rip, Rosalind!" And with a

nod Mr. Rooney sent his "bet" out upon the stage to make the audience

forget that they had paid their money to see Violet Hawtry and make them

glad to have paid it to see her.

As Mildred Lindsey stepped out on the stage in all the glory of an

almost unbelievable beauty, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, who sat with his

shoulder back of that of the author of his play, seemed to behold a

vision with his trained theatrical foresight. This slender, powerful

young woman, with the rose dusk of the prairie sun on her cheeks, the

depths of the great cañons in her dark eyes, and the breadth of the far

horizons across her broad brow seemed to him to typify the rise of order

in her profession, over which so long had ruled chaos. And as her rich

voice led the intrigued audience from one brilliant scene to another, in

which she reincarnated before their eyes a very flower of the old

Southern chivalry with dash, finish, and lucidity, he felt as if he had

done his best and now had a right to be allowed to depart in peace from

the world of tinsel and illusion. As Lindsey and Height held the

audience spell-bound while the tempted wife dueled with her might

against the tender and desperate lover, placing, with a combined art

that was as great as any he had ever witnessed, the "big scene" of "The

Purple Slipper" among the "big scenes" of the modern stage instead of in

the class of lascivious masterpieces where the night before Hawtry had

laid it, Mr. Vandeford looked down into the gray eyes of the girl who

had had it all in her blood for generations, and who had so brilliantly

given it birth, and felt a prophecy rise within him that soon the

American drama would begin to draw on the wealth of tradition which had

been piling up in a vast storage for it, and that when it did,

dramatists and actors, men and women, would rise to interpret it to a

wondering world.

"Is it really mine?" she asked him, in proud surprise and wonder.

"Yes, it's yours--filtered through Howard and Rooney and all the rest,

but--it--is--you," he answered. "You lost it a dozen times, but--his

own comes back to a man or a woman."

His eyes blazed so that the long lashes lowered over the stars in hers,

and she saw the curtain fall on the last scene in a mist of tears. The

onrush of applause that raised the curtain half a dozen times was

confused in her by the pounding of Mr. Vandeford's heart back of her

shoulder and the echo in her own.

"Fifty weeks and then some, Van," she heard the young press-agent

declare, in business-like congratulation.

"Sure-fire hit," Mr. Rooney pronounced, as he spat on the stage floor

behind the curtain. "Rehearsals at ten to-morrow to tighten up, Fido. Me

for the hay." Miss Adair had gone back of the footlights to cast her

gratitude into his arms, and he had failed to notice her appearance in

any way at all, but had spat and gone on his autocratic way. Perhaps in

the New World of the Theater, stage-managers may be able to afford to be

human, perhaps not.

Mr. Vandeford's supper-party to the cast of "The Purple Slipper" and the

friends from New York who had come down to see its try-out, lasted until

two o'clock in the morning, but when it was over neither the moon, which

was as full that night as Mr. Kent had become by coffee and cigars, nor

Dago Italiana had retired, and both stayed on their jobs out at the

south end of the board walk, where boards melt off into sand and ocean

and sky.

Mr. Godfrey Vandeford had got about two thirds of the way along the

painful stretch of autobiography, with which he was inflicting agony on

himself by recounting to Miss Adair, when she raised her gray eyes to

his with the faith and reverence still at their average level, even

slightly higher, and stopped his punishment.

"I understand exactly why people like you and Miss Hawtry don't marry

each other," she astonished him by saying in all calmness. "Mr. Height

explained it all to me the other day. Actors and actresses have

peculiar temperaments that fly together when they ought not to, and fly

apart when they ought to stay together. I know just how that is because

I feel--"

"Hush!" commanded Mr. Vandeford, as he laid his hands on the shoulders

of his author, who was standing close to him, with the moonlight full on

her clear-cut, high-bred face, and he gave her a savage shake. "The

whole crazy bunch will have to have law and order shot into 'em or the

theatrical profession will follow horse-racing to the devil. If they

don't give up unfaith and the double-cross Broadway will open some night

and swallow them all. And here you come out of a real world and say to

me--"

"What did you think I was going to say?" demanded Miss Adair, pressing

so close to him that it was impossible for him to administer another

shake.

"I don't know and I don't want to hear it. I'm afraid to have you say

anything to me."

"It was this: I was going to ask you what I would have done if you had

been married to Miss Hawtry when I got to you and we had begun to

produce our play together. It's different when men and women work

together! Standards have to be broader. How do I know that I would have

run away to--"

"Don't, don't!" pleaded Mr. Vandeford as she crept still nearer to him

and forcibly tried to open his arms for herself. "I'm punished. I've

taught you myself! When I leave you how'll I ever know if I'm going to

find you there when I come back?"

"Well, how'd you expect to find me--me--there if you don't take me

there?" Miss Adair pleaded as she tugged at his folded arms, with such

energy that her polished thumb-nail slightly marked his iron wrists.

"I'm not worthy, child, I'm not worthy," Mr. Vandeford answered with

grim words, and his arms still taut against his breast.

"You have to judge yourself with the same--same 'broad standards' I

judge you by, like you told me to use. Please open your arms!"

"I take those broad standards away from you."

"Jesus Christ gave them to me, only I didn't understand in Adairville."

"God, I wish you had never left Adairville."

"I know what there is for us to do."

"What?"

"I'll go back and marry you by Adairville narrow standards for better

and for worse, and then we'll have to keep 'em for ourselves when we

come back, because we did it knowing what we know, but let other people

be broad wherever they are without judging them. I'm going to drop

asleep right here on the sand if you don't open your arms."

"Oh, good Lord, what did You make women out of?" Mr. Vandeford said in

all reverence and bewilderment, as he took the "white flame" to his

breast and drew it past her lips until it burned away all the chaff in

his soul and established itself upon its altar.

After Mr. Vandeford had again delivered his author to the hopeful maid,

waiting up for another greenback, he met Mr. Rooney at the desk of the

hotel still on his way to "the hay."

"Closed up with Weiner to begin rehearsing 'The Rosie Posie Girl' on

Tuesday, after we open 'The Purple Slipper' in the New Carnival. Said

Hawtry wouldn't sign up until I had signed too. She's got a hunch for

me. If you fail, their show goes in in your place; if you win, Weiner

shunts John Drew or Arliss out to one of his other theaters on the road,

and puts in 'The Rosie Posie Girl.' Good business, eh?" And Mr. Rooney

rolled his cigar from east to west and questioned Mr. Vandeford, with a

new fire for a new undertaking beginning to burn in his little black

eyes.

"Fine," answered Mr. Vandeford, with all cordiality, and not even

thinking of his lost thousands. "It will go big, Rooney, and I'll be

glad--none gladder."

"Sure," answered Mr. Rooney. "It's all in the business. Everybody on

Broadway is out to stab everybody else--but mostly it's paper daggers if

you take it right."

"A tissue-paper world sewed together with tinsel thread," Mr. Vandeford

murmured, as he fell asleep with his cheek pillowed on the wrist that

Miss Adair had marked in the struggle for her own.

A week from that night "The Purple Slipper" had its first night on

Broadway, and opened the New Carnival Theater in a blaze of glory,

publicity, and electric lights. The talented young press-agent had done

his work well, and the audience assembled was the most brilliant

possible, made up of the usual blasé critics, eager theatrical people

who were not on the boards themselves, and interested and distinguished

men and women from many outer worlds. In the box facing the one occupied

by Mrs. Justus Farraday, in a blaze of both the Farraday and Justus

jewels and prestige, and the beautiful young author of the play, with

her son Mr. Dennis Farraday, and the producer, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford,

sat Miss Violet Hawtry with Mr. Weiner, the owner of the beautiful new

theater which was opening its doors for the first time on Broadway. When

the curtain fell upon the new Lindsey star after its eighth elevation,

the Violet rushed behind the scenes and took that astonished young woman

in her arms, with the real tears of emotion, with which one genuine

artist greets another, in her great blue eyes.

"You were wonderful, my dear, perfectly wonderful," she exclaimed. "You

see, Van, I never could have done it like that. Good luck to both of

you, and the little author--oh, there you are, my dear! All of you shake

hands with Mr. Weiner. He's so pleased that he is speechless, but he's

going to give you a big banquet on your fiftieth performance. He's

promised me."

Which demonstration was perfectly in keeping with Miss Hawtry and

Maggie Murphy's character, and emanated from that quality within her

that a month later put "The Rosie Posie Girl" up as high and as

brilliant in electric lights as "The Purple Slipper," and kept it there

an entire year. Which goes to prove that the "tissue paper world" is yet

of heroic fibre.

When Mr. Vandeford went to insert his author into the international

safety that evening at about the hour of midnight, he saw that his

friend the secretary was shooing a chattering party of Christian ladies,

who, as his guests, had sat in a group, fifth row center, in the New

Carnival Theater that evening, off up-stairs. With his talisman key,

which had never left his pocket since it had been presented to him, in

his hand, he paused to speak in a friendly shadow to his successful and

now truly eminent playwright.

"You'll have to go South Thursday, and I'll follow Sunday to get that

little marriage business over in Adairville before we leave for the

Klondike. My commission has arrived from Washington, and the Secretary

of the Navy wants quick reports of the copper before the big freeze. Do

you suppose I can keep you warm in Eskimo furs and--and my heart?"

"Yes," answered Miss Adair, with the flutter which Mr. Vandeford now

answered, without any conscious volition. "There ought to be a great

play out of the Klondike. Jack London could have done it, but--but--"

the faithful gray eyes were raised to his with the flame in their

depths.

With a groan, but an answering flame, Mr. Vandeford replied:

"It's a fatal drag--. Yes. Some day we'll come back and try to put

across another one!"

THE END

* * * * *

Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 12: "marischino" changed to "maraschino".

Page 14: "plenty ruffles" changed to "plenty of ruffles".

Page 14: "nee" changed to "née".

Page 29: "heatrical" changed to "theatrical".

Page 37: "mocking bird" changed to "mockingbird".

Page 40: "Highcliffe" changed to "Highcliff".

Page 42: "Vanderford" changed to "Vandeford".

Page 57: "Madamoiselle" changed to "Mademoiselle".

Page 58: "Madamoiselle" changed to "Mademoiselle".

Page 61: "atinkle" changed to "atwinkle".

Page 67: "Highcliffe" changed to "Highcliff".

Page 90: "coemployer's" changed to "co-employer's".

Page 114: "Fou get Gerald" changed to "You get Gerald".

Pages 118-119: "ear of his coproducer" changed to "ear of his

co-producer".

Page 125: "Lindenberger" changed to "Lindenberg".

Page 145: "I'd going to" changed to "I'm going to".

Page 193: "She's geting along" changed to "She's getting along".

Page 220: "the he Christian" changed to "the Christian".

Page 236: "touseled" changed to "tousled"

Page 237: "manila envelop" changed to "manila envelope".

Page 245: "Vanderford" changed to "Vandeford".

Page 307: "tryout" changed to "try-out".

Page 373: "Esquimo" changed to "Eskimo".

End of Project Gutenberg's Blue-grass and Broadway, by Maria Thompson Daviess