"Same to you," was the reply she received. G.o.dfrey spoke in a good-natured tone of voice. "Now, what did you come to town to talk about--"The Purple Slipper"?"
"Why did you leave Highcliff like a thief in the night?"
"Did you read the deeds Dolph gave you when he went up to pack my personal effects?"
"Yes, thanks! I suppose you consider Highcliff the price of your freedom?"
"And cheap at that."
"Then why not turn me over to Weiner?" Violet asked in a dangerous tone of voice that made Mr. Vandeford glance around with apprehension to see who would witness the explosion if it occurred.
"I tried to buy Denny off yesterday, but you fastened "The Purple Slipper" firmly in his head, maybe his heart, the other evening, and it would be like taking candy from a child. Maybe you can--can influence him to let go--if I give you the chance." There was something coolly insulting in his voice that told Violet he had surmised her intentions and the failure of her a.s.sault on his big Jonathan.
"Your usual impertinence! I"ll get him yet, just to spite you. I"ll go in and play that "Purple Slipper" to win, and--"
"Again Miss Adair breaks in on enthusiasm for her play." Dennis Farraday"s big voice boomed right at the elbows of the embattled pair.
"Look who"s here, Van!"
Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford looked up quickly, and as quickly rose to his feet. And with one glance into slate-gray eyes behind long black lashes--eyes filled with awed, worshipful grat.i.tude to him--his heart rose in his breast and all but flitted out upon his sleeve.
"Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford, the producer of your play," good Dennis flourished. "And Miss Violet Hawtry! In fact, the whole happy family!"
CHAPTER III
Now, by all rules of the game, it was the prerogative of Miss Violet Hawtry to take charge of a situation in which the star of a play meets the author; but she missed her cue, and the gutter instinct within her sat dumb and dumfounded before the lady from Adairville.
"I"m charmed to meet you, Miss Hawtry," Miss Adair a.s.sured her, with a glance of such admiration and friendliness that even Violet"s narrow-gage soul expanded into a variety of graciousness all its own, and she smiled back into the eyes of the young author with a radiance that had the semblance of warmth.
"And this is Miss Lindsey, whom we have chosen to support you in our play, Miss Hawtry," Mr. Dennis Farraday continued, with a glance of respectful awe at the Hawtry, which matched that given her by the author a second before and obtained for Miss Lindsey a cordial enough recognition of the introduction only slightly to frappe her instead of freezing her entirely. "We are all hungry," he added after the change of civilities.
"You are all having luncheon with me," Mr. Vandeford found his voice to say. Ignoring Violet"s glance of indignation at this skilful avoidance of a climax of her scene with him, he had three extra covers laid at the corner table devoted to the services of Miss Hawtry.
"I warned you that we were hungry, Van," said Mr. Farraday, as he began to search through the menu for an article of diet safe to pour in quant.i.ties into a girl who had long been empty. "How"d rare steak and fresh mushrooms do?" he asked, and he looked away from what he was sure would be in the eyes of Miss Lindsey, and which was there.
"Wonderful!" she murmured.
"Right-o, for you and Miss Lindsey, but what about nightingales" tongues for my author?" laughed Mr. Vandeford, with an interested note in his rich voice, which caused Miss Hawtry to look at him sharply and Miss Adair to repeat the blush to such a degree that Miss Hawtry, as Miss Lindsey before her, was forced to admit that it was native and not imported. The flush did not pa.s.s unnoticed by Mr. Vandeford, as he laughed again with a question as to her nourishing.
"I want something that I don"t know what the name means," calmly returned Miss Adair, with delighted excitement at the thought of adventuring into a land of strange food. "I know steak and ham and eggs and chicken and turkey."
"Will you trust me?" asked Mr. Vandeford. There was an eagerness in his voice and smile that again made the Violet glance at him and then at Mr.
Dennis Farraday. The latter was beaming with mirth at the dilemma of feeding the young author who was so frankly scattering her hay-seeds on the metropolitan atmosphere. At that instant Miss Hawtry made a momentous decision.
"Trust Mr. Vandeford and you can"t go wrong," she advised with peaches and cream in her voice, and for some unknown reason Mr. Vandeford would have been glad to twist the creamy throat from which issued the creamy voice. Instead, he turned, calmly summoned the head waiter, and went into a conference with him in a few very discreet words, which the rest could not hear, though there was no sign of any intention of keeping the consultation from them.
"I think it will be wonderful not to know until I taste it and maybe not then!" exclaimed the author, with another of her sea-gray, long-lashed glances of worshiping admiration at Mr. Vandeford, the eminent Broadway producer who was putting a great star into her play based on the adventures of an ancestress.
Of course the situation was dangerous to both Mr. Vandeford and his author, but who was to blame?
And the jolly, impromptu luncheon-party was not the kind of episode that could soon be forgotten by any of the guests. The unknown food for the author was served by the head waiter himself, and he refused to answer questions as to its origin or component parts, even when urged by Mr.
Dennis Farraday. The expression on Miss Lindsey"s face after her encounter with the steak and mushrooms, served with an exalted baked potato, was one of decided relaxation. The look of affection in her eyes as she glanced at the author who had dragged her into this food situation rivaled the suddenly rooted admiration which beamed in the eyes of Mr. Dennis Farraday and which put Miss Hawtry alertly on watch, so much so that Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford was privileged to lean back in his chair behind a mist of cigarette-smoke and let his eyes gleam where they listed.
"Now tell us just how you happened to think of all the wonderful things in your play, Miss Adair, specially that dinner situation," Mr. Dennis Farraday urged. He was lighting Miss Hawtry"s cigarette, to the intense, though concealed, interest and astonishment of Miss Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. He thus asked sincerely and interestedly the usual question that the unsophisticated fires at an author at the first opportunity and which the author, no matter how sophisticated, really enjoys answering.
And thereupon followed the story of the old letters in the trunk, with the mortgage only so lightly and proudly alluded to that the hearts of the listeners were decidedly touched, told by the author with the delighted enthusiasm that their sympathy warranted.
"And so you see, since it couldn"t be oil-wells or gold mines it had to be the play," she ended, quoting herself in her conversation with the faithful Roger, who was at that moment following his plow with his mind on the straight furrows and his heart in New York.
"You are a precious darling, and your play _must_ succeed!" said Miss Lindsey impulsively at the end of the recital, and then she quickly glanced at Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford to see if he resented her taking this affectionate liberty with his distinguished author. She found that eminent producer not at home to her glance; he was lost in contemplation of tears that hung on the long black lashes that veiled Miss Adair"s gray eyes and a little quiver that manifested itself on her red lips.
Then she shook off the tears by lifting those long lashes so that she could look straight into his eyes with a smile of absolute confidence in his intention and ability to remove from her life forever all of her distress, which was alone poverty in the concrete, by being the successful producer of her wonderful play. Men of G.o.dfrey Vandeford"s type admit many strange fires and their votaries into the outer temple of their hearts, but they keep the inner shrine tightly surrounded by asbestos curtains. However, there is always one, and one only, closely guarded entrance through which the ultimate woman must slip in an unguarded moment. Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford would never have thought of being on any particular guard against the author of a play in purple ribbons ent.i.tled "The Renunciation of Rosalind," but he knew almost instantly that something dire had happened to him as he sat and writhed at the thought of his plans for the extinction of that piece of dramatic art, which he had not even read. The whole sophisticated world has decided that there is no such thing as love at first sight, except the biological scientists and they know and can prove that such a thing does exist and that it is a worker of wonders. And dire pain is one of its reactions.
But all agony comes to an end and so did Mr. Vandeford"s. Miss Hawtry, who had been so busy in her own mind with her own schemes that she had no time to listen to Miss Adair"s, picked up her gloves from beside her final coffee-cup, and pulled the fine-meshed veil down over her beautiful, though slightly snubbed, nose as a signal for a separation of the group of feasters.
"May I motor you to your hotel, Miss Adair?" she asked very sweetly. Of course Patricia did not know that she had got in her invitation at the first signal of the feasters" disintegration, which she herself had given, for the purpose of forestalling a similar invitation from Mr.
Farraday, whose Surreness she knew must be moored somewhere near. "Where are you stopping?" she asked with very little interest, and received an answer that almost upset her equanimity.
"I"m staying at the Young Women"s Christian a.s.sociation," calmly announced the author of "The Purple Slipper," with no sense of embarra.s.sment in either voice or manner. "Thank you for offering to take me there, but Mr. Farraday is going to take Miss Lindsey and me to buy a hat at a place which Miss Lindsey knows of. She is going to buy one, too, now that she is going to play in our play."
"The Y. W. C. A.! Great guns!" muttered Mr. Vandeford under his breath, while the Violet leaned back in her chair and fanned herself.
Then very suddenly Mr. Vandeford sat up and looked at Miss Mildred Lindsey keenly for half a second.
"We"ll have to go back to the office to get that check for Miss Lindsey before we go hat-hunting," announced good Dennis, with a calmness that made Mr. Vandeford suspect that he had met the fact of the eminent author"s abiding-place before and had got used to it. "You and Miss Hawtry going over to the office, Van, or will you come with us, if she has other folderols to follow in a different direction?"
"I am to see Adelaide about my costumes for "The Purple Slipper" at two-twenty, so must forego the pleasure of--of hat-hunting this afternoon," Violet murmured faintly. "But I know Mr. Vandeford will adore going with you." Miss Hawtry felt that safety lay in numbers, and she preferred to leave the unsophistication of Miss Adair with both Mr.
G.o.dfrey Vandeford and Mr. Dennis Farraday than with either of them alone.
"I wish I could get out after the hat, but you people must remember that I am putting on "The Purple Slipper," and I have to be about Miss Adair"s business while old Denny buzzes about hat roses, free and equal with her," answered Mr. Vandeford. His envy, apparent in his voice, of the care-free state of Mr. Farraday was very real, though none of the others could guess its meaning. "I"ll see all of you later. By!" and with a sign to the head waiter, which tied tight Mr. Farraday"s purse-strings, Mr. Vandeford left them while the going was good. So determined was his exit that Miss Hawtry could not keep him back for the finish of the fight.
And Mr. Vandeford was in a mortal hurry. He had much to do and undo. He arrived at his office, three squares away, slightly out of breath.
"Did you see her, Pops?" he demanded of Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"I did, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and here is a carbon of the letter I sent her, not with any encouragement to come to New York at all," and in self-defense he handed out to Mr. Vandeford a copy of the letter Roger had delivered to Patricia among her roses and young onions and string-beans.
"Take it away," commanded Mr. Vandeford, seating himself at his desk and wildly shunting papers and letters about.
"Mr. Vandeford, sir, I am sorry for that young lady and I ask you to have a heart," Mr. Meyers ventured to say to his chief with a boldness which he himself could not understand, but with which Mr. Vandeford was strangely patient. He ended with, "It will be a n.o.bleness for you to not produce a cold show for her, but pay a small damage sum for such a beautiful lady and call it all off."
"My G.o.d, Pops, I"d give half the "Rosie Posie" to be able to do it! But Denny and Violet and that girl they engaged for support have already filled her full of success dope about the play, and if I call it off arbitrarily, where shall I stand with her?" Ignorance of the completeness of his own capitulation to the faith and tears in the sea-gray eyes, and the genuine, grown-on-the-spot blush from Adairville, Kentucky, showed in the consternation with which he asked the question of his henchman.
""Stand with her"!" repeated Mr. Meyers, with a consternation that matched his chief"s, but was of different origin. "You had no such fear when you called off from rehearsals in the second week the comedy of Mr.
Hinkle, and a fourth of the damages paid to him will to her be--"