During the next week the "white flame" burned high and bright while the author of "The Purple Slipper" threw herself into her place in the grinding of the machine that was to turn out a perfected play on the following Tuesday night at Atlantic City. Everywhere Mr. Rooney was tightening bolts and polishing surfaces until they glistened while he snapped and tried out all bands.
Miss Lindsey was pale and quiet, but she acted her part to Mr. Rooney's entire satisfaction, though he never said so. Mr. Leigh's feet were still a target, and the glowering girl, Miss Grayson, was always tearful, but constantly improving. When the company was not being ground and polished, Mr. Corbett's tailors and dressmakers were fitting costumes, and the property man was checking over and over each demand of each and every person, from the fresh rose Mr. Kent was to give to Dame Carrington to the mud that was to be splashed every day upon Mr. Gerald Height's riding-boots for his last and triumphant entry. Miss Adair had lost all sense of the play as a whole and only thought of it as distracting and distracted bits. She had, of course, never witnessed the scenes between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Height, as they were still rehearsed in private and would be until the night of the dress rehearsal on Monday at Atlantic City. This was well.
But one thing she kept with her through the whole strain; the sense of being one with Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and that one working for pure joy.
As for Mr. Vandeford, his eyes sank back under his brows, and Mr. Adolph Meyers was with him far into every night.
"How does the booking stand now, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford demanded on the Thursday night before the opening Tuesday.
"Atlantic City next week, Wilmington and New Haven the next if need be, and—it is to Syracuse or Toronto we must jump, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Meyers, with beads of perspiration on his high brow.
"Violet will never make that jump, Pops. Her contract closes the day we open in Atlantic City, and there we'll close, too, if we haven't New York right in sight. What'll we do?"
"It is many a show closed before it opened," Mr. Meyers said, with a wary look at Mr. Vandeford.
"This show is going to open and never close—until it's had a thorough Broadway try-out, Pops," said Mr. Vandeford, quietly. "Anything from Mr. Breit?"
"Nothing to hope for a Broadway opening before November first."