Blue-grass and Broadway 3 – Daviess · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 3Chapter 3
18
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 3
Chapter 3
DaviessEnglish
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 assured 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 frappé 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 quantities 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 pass 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. Godfrey 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. Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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. Godfrey Vandeford would never have thought of being on any particular guard against the author of a play in purple ribbons entitled "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 Association," calmly announced the author of "The Purple Slipper," with no sense of embarrassment 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. Godfrey 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 nobleness 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 God, 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--"
"Get to work under your hat, Pops, get to work! The 'Purple Slipper' has got to go on Broadway and go big. I followed that purple hunch for pure cussedness against Violet, and now watch it lead me by the nose. You get Gerald Height on the wire as soon as you can, while I talk to Rooney."
"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is not a Hawtry play, and--"
"Get busy, get busy, Pops! Put a copy of that manuscript on my desk where I can lay hands on it the minute I get a chance. Get everything going for a week later than I first called the show and--"
"Here we are!" exclaimed Mr. Dennis Farraday, as he burst into the outer office, ushering as a wedge before him Miss Patricia Adair and Miss Mildred Lindsey. "Got that hat-check, Pops? Money, I mean, for Miss Lindsey, not a pasteboard for your own lid from some hotel."
For a minute Mr. Vandeford lost himself in the depths of the worshiping, gray eyes that seemed to have been lifted to his for all eternity in that terrible faith and gratitude. Then he went into action as captain of the ship which was to come into the port of Adairville, Kentucky, with all sails set, loaded or bearing his dead body.
"You and Miss Adair extract money from Pops with a can-opener while I discuss a few details with Miss Lindsey, in the office," he commanded coolly, ushered Miss Lindsey into the sanctum and softly closed the door.
"Mr. Vandeford," Miss Lindsey began rapidly, "I knew it wasn't fair to make any definite arrangements with Mr. Farraday, and of course I will take whatever salary you--"
"Where do you live, Miss Lindsey?" Mr. Vandeford interrupted to ask with a totally unwarranted interest on the part of a manager in the affairs of an actor he has engaged. Miss Lindsey, for the second time that day, underpainted her own cheeks and laughed as she answered:
"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me, but I also live at the Y. W. C. A., though I give Mrs. Parkham's as my address for letters and telephone calls. It's cheap and--and I have done dining-room work there for a month, waiting--waiting for--for a part in a play."
"Great guns, how that hunch works!" exclaimed the well-known producer, as he sank into his chair from positive weakness. "You take in this situation, don't you?" he demanded with a quick recovery.
"I think I do," answered Miss Lindsey. Then she lifted her big black eyes, in which shone the psychic hunger, though that of the body had been appeased. "I've got to make good, Mr. Vandeford, and I'll do anything you want me to. I've got every right--to live at the Y. W. C. A., and a right to hand food to--to that child in there. You can trust me."
"I believe I can," Mr. Vandeford answered, after looking at her keenly for a few seconds with the glance with which he had picked his winners or failures in the human comedy for many experienced years. "Stop your dining-room work at the nunnery and see that she has a good time, just you and she together. I'll send you matinée tickets to shows I want her to see, and Mr. Farraday and I'll look after the other amusement. I want her to meet only the people I introduce her to, and the Y. W. C. A. is the best place to live in New York--for her. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Find out how much money she has."
"I know now; she told me. She's got a ticket home, good until October first, and a hundred dollars to last until--until the royalties come in from the play. Those royalties have got to come in, too, or her grandfather--" Miss Lindsey's voice was positively belligerent as she began to put the situation up to Mr. Vandeford, whose heart, as that of a theatrical manager, she felt, must be hard by tradition.
"Yes, I know all about that. You get what money you want from Mr. Meyers out there, and fool her about what things cost as much as you can--until the royalties come in. Let me know when things don't run smoothly for the two of you. Of course, this is worth money to you and--"
"I don't want money for--for--looking after her."
"How much did Mr. Farraday offer you for your part?"
"He doubled it when he saw that I was--was hungry, but I know a hundred and twenty-five is right and that's all I expect."
"The one-fifty stands. If all goes well I'll see you get your chance on Broadway this winter. We understand each other now; don't we?"
"Yes."
"Then get the hat quest going. I'm busy."
"Five dollars is her outside limit."
"Can't you juggle?"
"I'll try, but she's--well, you know what a girl like that is."
"Go to it!" With which command Mr. Vandeford led the way into the outer office. A brief aside put the situation he had just adjusted into the willing ear of his co-producer, who beamed with satisfaction at the idea of the joint nesting of these first two theatrical experiences he had captured at the outset of his quest for adventure in the white lights. He immediately began counting Miss Lindsey's advance into her hand, thus giving Mr. Vandeford a word alone with his eminent author, beside Mr. Adolph Meyers's big window.
"Miss Lindsey tells me that she also lives at the Y. W. C. A.," he said with a curious paternal glow in his solar plexus that he had never experienced before.
"Oh, I'm so glad! I know that is foolish of me, but I am a little frightened. I don't know anybody in New York except you and her and--I've never been in a big city before, and only in Louisville a few times with my aunt. I'll enjoy it if she will take me places and bring me back and forth to rehearsals," and the gray eyes beamed with relief and anticipation of being led forth from the Y. W. C. A. into the gay world by a competent guide. "Can we go to some of the thè dansants in the afternoon, and maybe to the Metropolitan and the Aquarium?"
"Yes, all those places and more," assented Mr. Vandeford, with a suppressed smile at the diversity of amusements his charge had planned in her sallies from the Y. W. C. A. "You see, it is both the duty and the pleasure of a producer of a play to see that his author has a good time while in the city." It was a surprise to Mr. Vandeford to find himself thus stating the case inversely.
"Oh, but I mean to work hard to help with 'The Purple Slipper,' so I'll be too tired to bother you much to take me places. And I know how hard you work, so don't have me on your mind, will you, please, sir?" The lifted curl of the black lashes and the reverential note in the soft, slurring, Blue-grass voice almost upset the staid deference with which Mr. Vandeford was conversing with the author of his new Hawtry play.
"Oh, play producing isn't so hard on the producer and the author, so we'll have lots of time to frolic," he hastened to assure her, though an uneasy little pang shot into his heart as he thought of just what befell the average author at the rehearsals of his or her play, and he took an additional vow of protection. "Shall I come to take you to dinner and to a show to-night?"
"Oh, I'd love it," she answered, and again the color came up under the gray eyes. "It would be wonderful to have you show me Broadway the first time. I could never forget that."
Then a thought delivered a blow that laid the producer of "The Purple Slipper" low. The afternoon was half gone, and there were dozens of wires that he must manipulate since he had had a change of--heart, concerning "The Purple Slipper," and dinner-time and evening were the only hours that some of the most important could be found.
"Oh, but I can't ask you to do that," he exclaimed, and for almost the first time since the day of his graduation he felt color rise up under his own tanned cheeks. "I have to see the stage director and a lot more people about some things connected with your play. Still, I can't bear to have anybody else get that first night on Broadway away from me. I think it is due me." Being herself entirely sincere, Patricia recognized the utter sincerity of the distress in the voice of her producer where any other woman would have been doubtful of the ready excuse coming immediately after the invitation.
"Then I'll just go to bed early and rest up from the trip, so that I can go with you whenever you get the time to take me. You are working for us both about the play, and if you had rather I waited for you, that is only fair," Miss Adair hastened to assure him with a sincerity equal to his own.
"You are one good sport," was the reply that he made her straight from the shoulder, for the thought of a perfectly beautiful girl going to bed in the Y. W. C. A. and covering up her head and ears from the bright lights of her first night in old Manhattan just to give a strange and reverenced man the pleasure of introducing her to the old city made a profound impression upon him. "To-morrow night we'll wake up things on Broadway. I'll telephone you in the morning to let you know how the play is going and to see if there is anything I can do for you. Now you must all go and let me get busy."
"Yes, this is just about the hour that hats begin to bite well," assented Mr. Farraday, as he removed the girls down to his car with no thought or question as to whether his services would be needed in the enterprise in which he had embarked with Mr. Vandeford.
"Now for it, Pops!" said Mr. Vandeford as the door closed behind his co-workers in the production of "The Purple Slipper," whose work at that moment was to play at a distance from his labor. "I'm going to read that play, and nothing short of something that will injure its prospects if neglected by me must disturb me. When I'm done I'll make plans with you. It will take me several hours, and you stand by every second of the time. Get me?"
"Yes, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, and he shut his door into the outer office just as Mr. Vandeford closed his own with a bang.
Then for three hours or more, while the sun sank behind the Palisades and the white lights flashed up from Broadway beneath his window like bits of futile challenges to the dying light of day, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went through the supreme agony of a long life on Broadway, and was paid in full for every double-cross he had administered to a confrère. He read "The Purple Slipper" and groaned aloud from page to page. He began its perusal sitting erect in his chair, and he ended it hunched over its pages spread on his desk with his head in his hands, his fingers desperately clutching his shock of gray-sprinkled hair. Then in a complete collapse he flung himself back in his chair, elevated his feet to the edge of the desk, and began literally to devour the smoke of a small black cigar. For half an hour he sat motionless, as was his habit when fighting all preliminary battles, and his eyes seemed to be seeing the big old monster city open its thousand gleaming eyes and change its roar of the day to an incessant purr of a night-stalking beast, but in reality he was seeing and hearing a month into the future, and the spectacle thus pre-visioned was the first night of "The Purple Slipper" on Broadway. Then very suddenly he came back into his conscious self and went into action. He rang the buzzer for Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Pops, get Grant Howard on the wire and ask him to come around here as quick as he can make it. If he talks straight wait an hour for him, if he's thick-tongued go after him yourself. Get him! Now put me on the wire with Rooney if you can find him, and make appointments with Lindenberg for scenery at eleven in the morning. Ask Corbett to send an artist to talk costumes for a period play at eleven-thirty, and have Gerald Height here at twelve sharp. Don't forget to engage that good-looking youngster--Leigh, I think is the name--even if you have to give him a hundred advance. That's all for the present. Get Rooney for me." Mr. Vandeford turned to his desk and began making rapid notes on a pad with a huge, black, press pencil. For five minutes he spread his thoughts upon the paper in great smudges; then his telephone rang, and he took up the receiver:
"Yes, this is Mr. Vandeford speaking. Hello, Billy!"
"That new Hawtry play is beginning to promise something. I'm delaying it a week, and I want you to come into it with your sleeves rolled up. We may make a sure-fire hit of it."
"Oh, no, I'll keep right on getting 'The Rosie Posie Girl' in shape, and shunt Hawtry into it as soon as she cinches the public in this play--or fails."
"That was just what I was going to hand you--you get four hundred a week for this show, but you'll have to go in and earn it. It's a departure, and you may not like it. You'll have to hammer it a lot, but I'm not signing a single 'Rosie Posie' contract until I see this in shape."
"I mean it. A stage manager has to take my stuff all hot even if he thinks some of it is cold. Get me?"
"That's good. I'll give you the completed manuscript Saturday so you can pound and set it for Monday next."
"That's good. By!"
With which short, but sure, wire-pulling Mr. Vandeford opened his campaign to double-cross his own original plans. He had hardly stopped fixing Mr. William Rooney when Pops looked in upon him and announced Mr. Grant Howard, the eminent playwright.
"Hello, Grant," was Mr. Vandeford's short and unenthusiastic greeting to the small, black-haired person with weak, pink-rimmed, blue eyes, who sauntered into the sanctum and dropped sadly into a chair with his back to the light. A cigarette hung from the left corner of his upper lip, and his hands trembled. "Been hitting 'em up?"
"Yes," answered the playwright, laconically.
"Broke?"
"Pretty bad."
"Want to doctor a play for Hawtry for me by Friday next for a thousand dollars cash?"
"Cash now?"
"Cash Friday."
"Would have to lock myself up in my apartment to do it; but Mazie's been crying for gold-uns for a week."
"Send Mazie to me, and I'll fix that, and hand you the thousand on Friday. Here, take this manuscript over in my other office and be ready to talk it over with me by ten o'clock. I'll see Mazie in the meantime." Mr. Vandeford placed the precious "Purple Slipper" in the hands of a man who at that very moment had two successful plays running on Broadway, his interest in both of which he had sold out for a mess of pottage to be consumed in the company of Miss Mazie Villines of the "Big Show."
"Dolph had better order me up a little cold wine to start on," said Mr. Howard, as he rose languidly to incarcerate himself at the bidding of Mr. Vandeford. The same scene had been enacted between the two bright lights of American drama several times before with very good results. Mr. Howard's brain was of that peculiar caliber which does not originate an idea, but which inserts a solid bone construction as well as keen little sparklets into the fabric of another's labor, and makes the whole translucent where before it may have been opaque. On Broadway he was called a play doctor, and Mr. Vandeford was not the first manager who had shut him up with quarts of refreshment to tinker on the play of many a literary, dramatic, bright light.
"Dolph will give you scotch and soda to your limit, no further," answered Mr. Vandeford, without graciousness. "I'll be here waiting for your talk-over at ten-thirty o'clock."
"All right. Have Mazie come for me after her show?"
"Yes."
With which the eminent playwright betook himself to a small private office which opened into the lair of Mr. Adolph Meyers. After he had entered that retreat Mr. Meyers softly rose from his typing machine and as softly locked him in. Then he proceeded to hunt for Miss Mazie Villines until he got her into conversational connection with Mr. Vandeford. They conversed in these words with great cordiality:
"Want to earn a nice little two hundred for keeping Grant Howard working at doctoring a play by next Friday for me?"
"I'm giving him a thousand if it's delivered Friday."
"Two hundred to you."
"Not three!"
"There's Claire Furniss. Grant had her at supper last night at Rector's. She's a beauty, you know."
"Two fifty."
"Goes!"
"Good! Come get him here at my office at eleven-fifteen. Get a taxi by the hour at your stage-door--on me--and come by for him."
"Good girl! By!"
"What a life!" Mr. Vandeford muttered to himself, then rang his buzzer for Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Pops, it's eight o'clock. Go get us a couple of slabs of pie at the automat, and then I'll go over to see Breit at the booking office."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Vandeford," Mr. Meyers acquiesced, and departed in search of provender for the lion and himself. Left to himself, Mr. Vandeford fell into another trance, from which he was dragged by another tinkle of his telephone.
"There'll be a wireless to my grave," he muttered as he took down the receiver and snapped into it:
"This is Mr. Vandeford talking."
"Oh, Miss Adair. Anything the matter?"
"Speak a little closer into the phone. Miss Hawtry has asked you to supper to-night? Mr. Farraday? And myself?"
"Did she say I was to come for you?"
"Do you know, I feel like a brute, but I'm going to tell you to go to bed as per promise. I've got two big guns from Broadway putting licks on the production of 'The Purple Slipper' until the small hours to-night, right here in the office. I'll tell Miss Hawtry about it, and you can--go to bed."
"Oh, yes, she'll understand. It's her play too, you see."
"No, you can't help me to-night, thank you just the same. How's Miss Lindsey? Would you like me to send my car to take you girls for a little spin in the park to cool off before you go to bed?"
"Her hair's wet? And so is yours? I didn't know it was raining."
"Oh, a mutual shampoo? Bless you both!"
"No, you don't interrupt me when you call me. You are to call me any time you are willing to do it, if it is every five minutes."
"No, I mean it."
"Very well then--good-night and good dreams."
"Can you beat it?" Mr. Vandeford smiled to himself as he hung up the receiver. "Those two peachy girls washing each other's hair in the Y. W. C. A., within ten blocks of the 'Follies' is to laugh--or cry. Good little Lindsey! I wager she could have got 'em both forty-seven-eleven dates." Then a thought delivered a blow just above his belt in the region of his heart. "So it's Violet's game to use her as a decoy-duck for Denny?" he questioned himself, then gave his own answer in a soft voice under his breath. "Damn her!"
Furthermore he did not communicate with Miss Hawtry to give her Miss Adair's answer to her invitation. He answered it in person, but only after much had happened in the three hours intervening.
The hours from eight to nearly ten Mr. Vandeford spent in slowly munching the refreshment retrieved from the automat by Mr. Adolph Meyers and thinking out loud to that dignitary who took down his thoughts on paper in cabalistic signs of shorthand. They were all notes of what could and must be done in the next few days in the fight for the good fate of "The Purple Slipper."
"I want to see that fellow Reid about that new lighting he provided for the new Sauls show in May. I liked it in some ways and--" Mr. Vandeford was saying when a banging on the door of the private office in which was incarcerated the eminent playwright interrupted him.
"Did you give him the right amount of booze, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford asked.
"Entirely right," answered Mr. Meyers, with his pencil still poised over his pad. The knocking continued.
"See what he wants, Pops, and give him a little more if you have to," decided Mr. Vandeford, as he lit a new cigar and turned to the whirlpool of his desk while he waited for Mr. Meyers's return.
"Say, do you expect me to cast a Sunday School charade into a play in six days, Vandeford?" was the storm of words hurled at him as the released and infuriated doctor of plays hurled himself and his sheaf of manuscript into the door ahead of Mr. Meyers.
"Is that what you think of it?" calmly questioned Mr. Vandeford, as he swung around in his chair. "Sit down and tell me what you intend to do for it."
"I'm going to rewrite the whole blamed mess for fifteen hundred dollars, that's what I'm going to do," announced Mr. Howard with both belligerence and excitement in his voice and in the flash of his sick little eyes.
"Is it as good--or as bad--as all that--money?" questioned Mr. Vandeford. "You'll have to show me," he added calmly, though in the vitals of his heart he was relieved that Howard still spoke of "The Purple Slipper" as a carcass on which to operate.
"It's got a perfectly ripping, basic, sex-comedy idea that climaxes the third act; the rest is piffle."
"I thought some of the character drawing, and one or two of the sentimental bits were--actable," Mr. Vandeford ventured, determined to save as much of the hair and hide of Miss Adair's child as possible, enough at least to help her to recognize and claim it later.
"Oh, we can leave enough bits to anchor the author's name, if that is what you mean," the playwright admitted impatiently. "How about fifteen hundred? I won't do it for less."
"Goes," answered Mr. Vandeford, with the greatest ease with which he had ever dispensed five hundred dollars in all his life. "Now shoot me your layout of the whole thing before Mazie gets here to take you and lock you up."
"I'm going to take that dinner scene where the wife holds her husband's enemies and her lover at bay to see if he gets back home on a sporting-chance bet with lover, and write Hawtry both back and front of it; write her in as the virago she is and give her a chance to act herself for once."
"Good idea," admitted Mr. Vandeford. "But you'll have a hard time writing a gutter girl into a grand dame, won't you?"
"Women are all alike, and the worst viragos are the grand dames. It takes a gutter girl to play one let loose, as they do only on rare occasions. I've got 'em in my own family. That's the reason I'm a black sheep turned out. Got a sister that's worse than me, only respectable and fashionable. See?"
"Yes, I see," again admitted Mr. Vandeford. "You'll keep all the atmosphere and minor stabs in, you say?"
"Sure. They are pretty good staggers, some of the minor stuff. Lots of it is good talk--only wandering. That woman may write something some day if she breaks loose and goes to the devil for a while."
"She won't," said Mr. Vandeford, positively.
"Never can tell," answered Mr. Howard, with indifference. "What did Mazie say?"
"She's due here for you now," answered Mr. Vandeford, looking at his watch.
"Great girl, Mazie. Cooks me dandy rice and runny eggs, and sits on the neck of every bottle in New York while I dig. Couldn't do without her. Say, tell her you are just giving me five hundred, will you?"
"She knows it's a thousand," answered Mr. Vandeford, truthfully. "But I'll keep the extra five hundred you are extracting dark for you."
"That's good, and I'll tell her that I haven't got any--"
"Tell her that you haven't got any money, as usual," were the words which Mr. Howard's fair lion-tamer used to finish his sentence of appeal to Mr. Vandeford for his co-operation in fraud. She had entered past Mr. Meyers with his full approval, for he felt a great relief at the sight of her and her guardianship.
"How's Mazie?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the ceremony he would have used for a grand duchess--or Miss Patricia Adair--offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny, good-humored, rather pretty face and her very smart clothes.
"Kicking along, Mr. Vandeford, thank you," was the answer. "Gee, but I did kick the limit to-night, that's sure. I put some shady shines over what Grant wrote into a let-down in my part for me last night in great shape. They et it up, darling." Her naughty face beamed on Howard. "Hawtry was in a box, left. Had a gink in soup to fish with her that looked like real money. Have you rented her out?"
"You folks get along and stop that taxi meter you've got running on me," Mr. Vandeford said, answering the sally with a laugh; but it surprised him that there was a cold space in his vitals at the insult that the little trollop handed him with such comradery, guiltless of any knowledge that it was an insult.
"What was that about touching pitch?" he asked himself as he walked rapidly up four blocks to the theater where Mazie had told him he would find the Violet with her prey. He was just in time to meet them in the lobby. Denny was in the gorgeousness of his "soup to fish," Mazie's and her world's term for evening attire, and the Violet in every way matched his good looks.
"Why, where is Mademoiselle Innocence?" asked Hawtry, with a little frown, as she perceived that Mr. Vandeford was alone and not in regalia.
"Asleep at the Y. W. C. A.," he answered shortly.
"Sure?" asked the Violet, with a little laugh for which he could have killed her.
"Why, she promised Miss Hawtry to go to supper with us and see a midnight show," Mr. Farraday exclaimed, and there was disappointment in his voice as he looked at Mr. Vandeford.
"I couldn't get away from the office until just this minute, and I didn't think I could get away this soon. Miss Adair sent her apologies to you both, and I came over to bring them."
"Evidently we are not to be trusted with the author, Mr. Farraday," laughed Violet, with what good Dennis took as good nature and what Mr. Vandeford knew to be rage.
"Well, bless the child and her beauty sleep, but don't let that kill our evening joy. Come along, Van, and we'll go some place sufficiently disreputable to admit a crumpled person like yourself if you wash your hands. We can have a good powwow over the play. I want to know what you have been doing while I was off the job chasing a hat for the author." And the big, stupid Jonathan linked his arm in that of his anxious and hovering David and drew him along towards the Surrenese, which stood across the street, at the same time guiding the steps of the Violet's satin slippers in that direction.
While the three walked across the narrow street Mr. Vandeford made some rapid calculations and a decision in his mind. He saw plainly that he could not undertake to guard Mr. Dennis Farraday from the Violet and at the same time fend Miss Patricia Adair from her wiles. He'd have to choose between them, and in the twinkling of an eye he chose Patricia. It is said that there is a love between men "that passes the love of women," but nobody has ever witnessed it.
"You people go on to your show--I'm all in," he capitulated as they stood beside Mr. Farraday's car; and the heart of the Violet rejoiced within her.
"I'm sure Miss Adair is getting caught up on sleep so she can go with you to-morrow night. She's a perfect dear, and we'll put her play across," Hawtry cooed to him in her rich voice, and he knew that she felt she had struck his price and bought him off.
"If Denny falls for her he'll fall far; but I can't help it. A girl's a girl, specially from the country," Mr. Vandeford said to himself, as he stood and watched them drive away into the white-lighted cañon of Broadway. Then he went home and to bed.
A man may put out his night light, stretch himself between his sheets with the perfection of fatigue and still not sleep. There are various combinations of reasons that prevent his slumber. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford was still awake when Mr. Dennis Farraday let himself into his apartment with a key that had been presented to him five years before when Mr. Vandeford had installed his Lares and Penates in the tall building on Seventy-third Street, some of these Lares and Penates being Mr. Farraday's extra linen and clothes.
"That you, Denny?" Mr. Vandeford asked as he switched on his light and took a hurried glance at a clock on his mantel which registered the hour of 2 A. M.
"Yes," answered Mr. Farraday, as he came to the door of Mr. Vandeford's sleeping apartment. "A thought suddenly struck me, and I stopped in to explode it at you and sleep here."
"Fire away!"
"My mater is coming to town the first of the week to have her glasses changed, and I'm going to telephone out to her to-morrow and ask her to write Miss Adair to have dinner with us informally at the town house while she is here. You know mater's mother was from old Kentucky, and she'll adore the child. Think that's good thinking?"
"Fine," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a glow under his ribs about which he said nothing. Men are vastly inarticulate, but they have various means of communication, and Mr. Vandeford now felt that in his care of his author Mr. Dennis Farraday would understand.
"You know I am on new ground, old chap, but--but how about asking Miss Lindsey, too?" Mr. Farraday questioned, with great diffidence.
"Fine!" agreed Mr. Vandeford, with accelerated glow under his ribs that Miss Lindsey had been proposed when Miss Hawtry might have been invited. "Get to bed, can't you, you Indian, you? Night!"
"Good-night!" answered Mr. Farraday, as he departed to his own room.
And still Mr. Vandeford did not sleep.
Flat upon his back he lay and faced, analyzed, and card-indexed his situation and himself.
"Five years of myself given to that gutter girl and I never even cared; let her annex me for purposes of parade and publicity, and thought it funny sport. Wasted? Something to be deducted for pleasure in artistic success of "Dear Geraldine," but what will it cost me if I have to stand by and see her make old Denny hate himself as I do myself, or worse? She'll not stop short with him, and how do I know what he'll do? The money don't matter, but the--cleanliness does. If I go in to save him, she gave me notice to-night that she would go for that gray-eyed girl. What can she do to her? First, kill her play, no matter what I do to build up a success for the kiddie to cancel that mortgage. Second: do something, say something that will kill that look in those gray eyes when they lift to me. Never! Take Denny, Violet, and the Lord help him; I can't. You've bought me. Washing her hair in the Y. W. C. A.! God bless that institution and--"
At last Mr. Godfrey Vandeford slept.
After his ten o'clock awakening Mr. Vandeford displayed a marked eccentricity in his demeanor. That morning was unlike any morning he had ever experienced, and his conduct surprised himself. A daybreak shower had fallen on the hot and baked city, and it was as fresh as a suburb. Arrayed in the coolest of white silk, linen, and suede, Mr. Vandeford had his chauffeur drive him not to the whirling office but to the most sophisticated Fifth Avenue florist, where he purchased the most unsophisticated bunch of flowers at the highest price to be obtained in New York.
"The Young Women's Christian Association," he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the young Frenchman hesitated.
"I don't know where it is--Find out," commanded Mr. Vandeford, and again he had the foreign experience of feeling the blood burn the under side of the tan on his cheeks.
Valentine consulted the tall man in uniform at the door of the flower shop, and this menial consulted some one within, who must have consulted a directory, judging from the time it took to obtain the correct address. With his eyes straight in front of him, as a chauffeur's eyes should always be, he then drove rapidly down the avenue.
And on that beautiful morning Mr. Vandeford's luck was with him. Valentine whirled expertly up to the curb in front of the large, hospitable building which had emblazoned over its door the impressive Y. W. C. A. letters, letters that send a beacon all over the known world as they did to Mr. Vandeford in little and unimportant New York. Mr. Vandeford got out of the car with hurried grace in his long limbs and, with actual trepidation, went in through the door, into a world he had never even thought of before. He had entered many an African lion jungle with less fear. He glanced with awe at the natty young woman in white linen who presided at the desk, and wanted intensely to put his flowers behind him and back out of the door rather than approach and ask for the lady to whom he wished to donate them. In fact, he might have accomplished such a retreat if again luck had not come his way.
"Oh, Mr. Vandeford, how glad I am that you got here before we went out to the museum," exclaimed a fluty, slurring young voice just behind him, and he found that the gray eyes with the black lashes were just as unusual as he had decided they could not possibly be in the interval that had elapsed since he had looked into them. "Oh, how lovely!"
The last exclamation was made over the edge of the bouquet, which he had tendered Miss Adair as silently as a school-boy hands out his first bunch of buttercups to the lady for whom he has picked them.
"Did you come for me to go to help work on the play?" was the energetic question that brought him out of his trance.
"No, not right now," he answered haltingly, and when he realized how many times he would have to put her off with words to that same effect, his trance became a panic.
"When are you going to need me?" Miss Adair asked him with a direct and business-like look right to his eyes. "I am ready for work now."
