Now, there are many, many fair women born within the state lines of Old Kentucky who live calm and peaceful lives and die and are buried with no greater contrast of experience than comes from birth and death, love and hate, riches and poverty, and they never know the difference; but occasionally one bursts out of her bonds and flames her beauty over strange worlds, in foreign emba.s.sies, in the courts of St. James or Petrograd, or in an opera or theater box in New York. When this eruption occurs many sparks fly. And many sparks from bright eyes were showered on the author of "The Purple Slipper," who sat calmly unaware in the left stage-box of the Big Show that August night beside the notorious Hawtry, Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford, and Mr. Dennis Farraday. And of the sparks no one was more conscious than both Miss Hawtry and Mr.
Vandeford, while big Dennis was in a blissfully ignorant state of mind like to that of Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. Though he had been for about forty-eight hours a producer on the rear side of the footlights, Mr. Farraday still had the att.i.tude of mind possessed by one of an audience, and he watched the stage rather than the "front." He thus failed to get the impression created by his guest from Kentucky, and blissfully left Mr. Vandeford to deal with her sensations derived from the show. Mr. Vandeford had his hands full.
To Miss Adair the Big Show was a series of mental and moral and artistic explosions. She sat with delight through the j.a.panese acrobats and Swiss quartette of yodelers, and she welcomed pretty, pert little Mazie Villines with enthusiasm that gradually faded into horror as that artist flaunted more and more lingerie and "dished the dirt" which the inebriate playwright, at that moment engaged in "putting pep" into Miss Adair"s own beloved "Purple Slipper," _nee_ "The Renunciation of Rosalind," had supplied. The "dirt" was received by the audience at large with a hilarious joy that entirely justified the managers of the Big Show for keeping Mazie busy "dishing."
However, all things come to an end, and with a last provocative, revealing kick Mazie was allowed to depart and give way to a pair of young dancers who promised to display wares more wholesome.
Without knowing why he did it, Mr. Vandeford leaned forward so that his left ear was within reach of the whisper of Miss Adair"s lips as she turned her head and tilted it like a droopy flower toward his.
"I"ve only seen Sarah Bernhardt and John Drew and Maude Adams and Mansfield and Joe Jefferson and Arliss and the Coburns, up in Louisville," she faltered with her eyes questioning his and wide open with horror.
"These next ones aren"t so bad, and we"ll go before any more come on that--that you won"t like," he whispered in return. He had glanced through the program and seen that the climax would be an exhibition of jungle courtship by one of America"s most notorious women and her partner, done to extreme negroid melody.
"Thank you," she murmured as she turned to watch the willowy youth and maid go through some very beautiful movements of the dance that was entirely un.o.bjectionable. In two minutes she had turned her face, beaming with pleasure, so that Mr. Vandeford could see that all was well with her; and ten minutes later she giggled out loud at the repartee of two black-faced artists.
During the respite that his knowledge of the numbers on the program gave him, Mr. Vandeford did more of his peculiar brand of thinking, and reached a diplomatic conclusion. By the intermission, which came just before the jungle "big number" to give late comers time to gather in for their salacious feast, he was ready to act.
"Miss Adair and I are going to get a breath of air," he announced.
"But the big number is next, and she might miss it," objected Miss Hawtry, with solicitude for Miss Adair"s pleasure. Mr. Vandeford had thought past just that objection delivered by Miss Hawtry, and he knew that in no way must he seem to be shielding the author of "The Purple Slipper" from the salaciousness that gave Miss Hawtry great joy. If he went too far in any act of comparative a.n.a.lysis he would bring danger upon "The Purple Slipper," with whose fate Miss Adair"s was one.
"We"ll be back in plenty of time," he lied.
"Be sure!" Miss Hawtry commanded, and then turned to devote herself to Mr. Farraday, who was laying himself out to salve what he thought must be her pain at the loss of his beloved friend. The Violet had soon caught his att.i.tude toward her, and was encouraging his chivalry in every way possible by the most pensive of poses as the generous deserted. Such a situation is all to a woman"s advantage if she knows how to work it, and Miss Hawtry possessed that knowledge.
"Van ought to have a medical degree for operating young girls" eyes open, and making them see rose-colored for a while," she said with a good-humored smile and a soft little sigh, as she raised her Irish eyes in all their softness to Mr. Farraday"s.
To this insinuation, founded on an implied lie as far as the Hawtry was concerned, Mr. Farraday made no reply, but turned to greet with fitting applause the great dancer, on whose account one of the American artistic bright lights had been extinguished forever, and in ten seconds was inwardly thanking Vandeford for extracting Miss Adair before she had felt the blighting smirch of the big number. While Mr. Farraday watched the exhibition before him, Mr. Vandeford was amusing the child of their joint solicitude by letting her look at the white lights. While waiting at the curb before the Big Show for the large dignitary in uniform to summon Valentine, he had directed that worthy to have a message sent in to Miss Hawtry that they would join her at supper. Then upon the arrival of his car, he had carefully inserted Miss Adair before he had said to the puzzled Valentine:
"Drive slowly down around the circle and down Broadway, so that you can come back just while the theater crowd is on."
Some instinct had led Mr. Vandeford to choose exactly the panacea to soothe Miss Adair"s shock--the lights of Broadway.
"It"s like fairy-land," she gasped, as they rolled down past Forty-seventh Street. "Oh, look at the kitten chasing the spool, all in electric lights!"
"Wait a minute, and I"ll show you an eagle flop his wings," promised Mr.
Vandeford, and he was surprised that he seemed for the first time to feel the actual glory of the electric signs on his great Broadway, which is as much of an all-American inst.i.tution as the shipyards in Brooklyn.
"All the world is on fire, and everybody is going to it," Miss Adair exclaimed, as Valentine made his return just as the theaters were pouring their crowds out into the seething maelstrom of the great scintillating canon. She watched as the big car stood motionless before a stream of humanity that poured across its front wheels and then bounded forward as blue-coated arms stemmed the tide on the edges of both sidewalks for a few brief minutes in which they were allowed to progress to a street beyond, where they were again halted, wedged in with other impatient, purring cars.
In a limousine next her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" a.s.siduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his cushions in triumphant inebriety.
Also, while she and Vandeford waited, she saw a guardian spinster shoo a bevy of school-girls across in front of the cars, and turn in the middle of the street to reprove a college boy for a laughing word tossed to the combined bevy, while the blue arms on both sidewalks waved her into haste so that they might unleash their restrained monster motors.
Everywhere protective men had women"s arms fastened within their own and were shoving through the throng, while other men and women jostled along by themselves, or in companies of twos and threes, with laughing good nature. Fakirs were crying many wares, and in and out squirmed newsboys calling war extras in words that seemed to imply that New York was being sh.e.l.led from the sea, but did not make that exact statement.
"It"s all the world, and I"m a part of it," Miss Adair again said, and Mr. Vandeford was again surprised at himself that he was not surprised to find tears glinting in the sea-gray eyes raised to his.
"_This_ is the Big Show," he said with a little answering thrill in his own voice, as the enormity of the scene he had witnessed night after night broke on him for the first time.
"They all live here and sleep here and eat here and work here and--and--love here," she said softly, and smiled, for again the limousine with the embracing lovers had paused by the side of Valentine"s car, and the embrace still held.
"No, the sleepers and eaters and workers of New York were in bed long ago. Everybody you see here in this push has his or her vital wires connected up at Squeedunck, Illinois, or Zanesville, Indiana or--"
"Or in Adairville, Kentucky," Miss Adair added with a laugh.
"No, you belong--anywhere. Creative people ought to have no--no home wires," Mr. Vandeford answered, and there was a queer sadness in his voice that he did not himself understand. "People with messages must have ma.s.ses to hand them to. That"s why you came, and, I suppose, must stay."
"Yes," answered Miss Adair, "I want to stay--if you"ll let me."
"I can"t do otherwise," Mr. Vandeford answered her. Then he turned and looked her full in her serious eyes. "But if you stay you will have to accept broad standards, or suffer."
"That Mazie woman?"
"Maybe worse."
She sat silent until, a few moments later, Valentine drew up again at the curb before the Big Show, which had been out long enough to disperse most of its crowd, and was now receiving supper guests for the Garden Grove above.
"I"m going to stay--with you--and "The Purple Slipper,"" she announced, as he reached into the car for her and swung her to the pavement.
"Goes!" he answered, with mingled emotions, which he could not have a.n.a.lyzed.
Miss Adair was as good as her word. She accepted the reveling crowd of the garden, looked upon the abandon of drinking women and men, with only a slightly hunted expression in her eyes, and with her slim white hands applauded Simone when that artist made most audacious slings of her supple body in its scant clothing. She beamed upon the dancer when, as Mrs. Trevor, she came, at Mr. Farraday"s invitation, to have a gla.s.s of champagne with them, and she quailed only once, when a band of extremely young girls, clothed in filmy garments, took tiny search-lights and went merrily hunting among the tables of laughing men and women after the lights had been put out for the sport. Her horror at observing Mr. Vandeford, who sat between her and the narrow aisle take various moneys from his pocket to defend himself from successive hunters, made her pale, and the moment the lights were flashed on again she rose to go.
"Wonder what they"ll do next," muttered Mr. Farraday, as he helped her into her wrap. Mr. Vandeford was not looking at his author or speaking.
Once when he had put his hand in his pocket to get out a coin for one of the teasing girls with her search-light he had felt the Y. W. C. A.
latch-key there, and it had short-circuited him entirely.
"I know you are tired. It takes some time to get the New York pace, but you"ll strike it. I think I"ll stay to see the next Folly with Mr.
Farraday," he heard the Violet saying to Miss Adair, and still short-circuited, he went with his calm young author down to the car. The hour was one-thirty, and a moon had climbed the heights of the Broadway canon. Valentine, with some sort of psychic direction, went across Central Park and down wide, clean, silent, and dimly lighted Fifth Avenue. Both Mr. Vandeford and Miss Adair were silent, and he was not aware that she was crying until just before they turned into her side street.
"They were so young, those girls, and they--they didn"t want to--to do that," she said with little catches in her beautiful, slurring, Blue-gra.s.s voice.
"Maybe they didn"t; but they wouldn"t go back now, not one," he answered her.
She was silenced, and stood quiet beside him as he opened the door of the big, gloomy, protective building, with the key the woman of another world than his had intrusted to him.
"I know," she said at last, as she held out her hand to him. And because it trembled ever so slightly and was cold, he put his warm lips to it for a second before he handed her into a great international safety. He remembered the key, but he didn"t give it to her. Somehow he wanted it himself. He liked the feel of it in his pocket.
"Wish I had Denny locked up in the Christian a.s.sociation!" he growled to himself as Valentine whirled him home.
Just at that exact moment Mr. Dennis Farraday sat in Miss Violet Hawtry"s Louis Quinze parlor at the Claridge, engaged in tenderly and awkwardly patting that star"s sobbing white shoulder, as she lay on just such a couch as Manon Lescaut probably had had for just such scenes.
"I don"t blame him at all," sobbed Miss Hawtry, provocatively, with the art of long practice both on the stage and off. "My kind always loses to hers when the time comes."
"Don"t!" pleaded Mr. Farraday. It was all he could or was willing to plead at that moment.
"But I want to make good in this play for him and her--and you--before I go out of his life forever. I want to repay him with--with both money and happiness. He made me an artist." With these words Miss Hawtry made an acknowledgment of the truth that she herself really believed to be untrue, because she saw that to praise Mr. Vandeford was the best way to blind Mr. Farraday while she approached him in that blindness. She knew that his loyalty to his David would be a barrier unless she used it as a ladder.
"My G.o.d! How--how great women are!" was the immediate and hoped-for response she drew from the big Jonathan.
"My art must fill my life now. Only there will be--friendship. You make me see that by the comfort of your kindness." Miss Hawtry laid her flushed cheek in the hollow of good Dennis"s big warm hand. The moment was tense, but Hawtry had timed her line a little too far ahead, and it failed to get across. The prey was as embarra.s.sed as a girl and, with another brotherly pat, arose to go.