"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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.sembled princ.i.p.als 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 rea.s.surance 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 a.s.surance that moves mountains. "That Lindsey is one good actor with common horse-sense, and the little author filly has Blue-gra.s.s speed. Watch us!"