Blue-grass and Broadway. Maria Thompson Daviess

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ plow when I get all the money? You are the greatest farmer in the world and you only need a little machinery to prove it." Again the young playwright rose to her knees and with letter and sugar in her embrace she entreated to be allowed to spend the money that was to be hers from "The Renunciation of Rosalind," which she did not know was being cast in New York as "The Purple Slipper."

      "Certainly I'll let you help me, Pat. Hasn't what's yours and mine always been ours since we set our first hen together?" laughed Roger, as he rose to his feet and dragged Patricia to hers beside him. "Come on and let's break it to the Major. You may need me to stand by if it hits him on the bias," and they both laughed with a tinge of uneasiness as they went down the long walk of the garden which on both sides was sprouting and leaving and perfuming in a medley of flowers and vegetables.

      As they walked slowly along Roger cast an eye of great satisfaction over the long lines of rapidly maturing peas and beans and heavy-leaved potatoes, and in his mind calculated that a year's food for the small family at Rosemeade was being produced right at their door under his skilful hoe which he wielded at off times when he could leave the negro hands to their work out on Rosemeade, their ancestral five hundred acres of blue-grass meadows and loamy fields. Roger had for the summer quit his slowly growing law practice in Adairville, enlisted as a doughty Captain in the Army of the Furrows and was as proud of his khaki and gingham uniform with their loam smudges as of his diploma from the University of Virginia which hung in the wide old hall, the top one in a succession of five given from father to son of the house of Adair. The whole county was farming under the direction of Roger, and he had been obliged often to work Patricia's garden by moonlight.

      "I'm almost afraid to tell Grandfather," Patricia interrupted his food calculations to say as they came around the corner of the wide-roofed old brick house with its traceries of vines that massed at the eaves to give nesting for many doves, and beheld the Major seated in his arm chair on the porch which was guarded and supported by round, white pillars around which a rose vine festooned itself. A faded, plaid wool rug was across the Major's knees in spite of the fact that the evening was so warm, and about his shoulders was a wide, gray knitted scarf. A bent, white-haired old negro stood beside him filling his pipe for him and serving as a target for the words issuing from beneath his waxed white mustache that gave the impression of crossed white swords.

      "War! What do they know about war, Jeff? We killed our first Yankee before we were seventeen, and now they fight behind guns located six miles away by squinting through double-decker opera glasses. War, I say in these days—"

      "Yes, sir," assented Jeff, in soothing interruption of what he considered debilitating heat in the Major's words. "We whipped them Yankees in no time but they jest didn't find it out in time to stop killing us 'fore it all ended. Now, I'm going to help you to your room and make you comfortable for I—"

      "I see Patricia and Roger approaching and I'll wait to talk to them for a few minutes, Jeff," answered the Major with a slight note of entreaty in his voice.

      "Jess a little while, then, jess a little while," consented the old black comrade nurse as he shuffled into the house and back to his kitchen to complete his preparation of the simple evening meal for his little household. As he crisped his bacon, scrambled his eggs and browned his muffins he muttered to himself:

      "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 assault 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 Association, 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 Association 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 СКАЧАТЬ