"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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sociation, 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 a.s.sociation 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. G.o.dfrey 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 a.s.sociation, 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 mult.i.tude 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Bluegra.s.s State Mr. G.o.dfrey 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 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. G.o.dfrey 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."
"G.o.d, 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 ma.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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, G.o.dfrey!"
"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.