Of course there was hearty applause when it was all over, and pretty soon Vernabelle come out again in her kimono. Panting like a tuckered hound she was when the comrades gathered to tell her how wonderful she had been.
"That music tears me," says Vernabelle, putting her hands to her chest to show where it tore. "That last maddening Russian bit--it leaves me like a limp lily!" So she was led to the punch bowl by Comrades Price and Tuttle, with the others pushing after and lighting cigarettes for her.
It was agreed that the evening had been a triumph for Vernabelle's art. Almost every Bohemian present, it seemed, had either been tore or maddened by that last Russian bit.
Vernabelle was soon saying that if she had one message for us it was the sacred message of beauty. Jeff Tuttle says, "You've certainly delivered it, little woman!" Vernabelle says, oh, perhaps, in her poor, weak way--she was being a limp lily against the piano then--but art is a terrible master to serve, demanding one's all. Comrade Price says what more could she give than she has to-night. And then, first thing I know, they're all talking about an intimate theatre.
This was another part of Vernabelle's message. It seems intimate theatres is all the rage in New York, and the Bigler barn is just the place to have one in. Vernabelle says they will use the big part where the hay used to be and paint their own scenery and act their own plays and thus find a splendid means of self-expression the way people of the real sort are doing in large cities.
Everyone is wild about this in a minute, and says how quaint and jolly Bohemian it will be. The Bigler barn is just the place, with no horse there since Metta bought one of the best-selling cars that ever came out of Michigan, and Vernabelle says she has written a couple of stunning little one-act pieces, too powerful for the big theatres because they go right to the throbbing raw of life, and it will be an inspiration and uplift to the community, of which all present can be proud. Lon Price says he will furnish a good drop curtain free, painted with a choice nine-room villa with just a line mentioning Price's Addition to Red Gap, Big Lots, Little Payments. And he's quite hurt when Vernabelle tells him no, that they must keep entirely out of the slime of commercialism. I don't think Lon ever again felt the same toward Vernabelle--calling his business slime, that way.