Blue-grass and Broadway 4 – Daviess · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 4Chapter 4
18
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 4
Chapter 4
DaviessEnglish
"I thought of a lot of new things for my characters to say, while I was coming up from Kentucky on the train, and I want to put them in." Miss Adair further tortured Vandeford.
"This morning I am going to talk to the electrician and the costumer and the scene painter." Mr. Vandeford answered by telling her the truth, because, with her very beautiful and candid eyes beaming into his, showing both interest and consideration, he had not the power to make up any kind of lie to put her off the trail of "The Purple Slipper."
"I am so glad that I got up early and am ready to go with you! I can tell them about what my great-grandmother really wore when it all happened, and it will be such a help to them!" Miss Adair exclaimed with great business acumen shining in her eyes. Mr. Vandeford gave up the fight, piloted her into his car, and gave the command, "Office!" to the very decorous, but very much interested Valentine.
As they were skimming back up the avenue and about to turn into Forty-second Street, an inspiration came to Mr. Vandeford.
"Didn't you keep some of those costumes of the period of the play hid away in an old brass-nailed leather trunk in your garret?" he asked Miss Adair, with desperate eagerness shining in his eyes.
"Yes," Miss Adair answered readily. Then she hesitated, and the genuine blush rivaled the one in the northeast corner of the bouquet at the waist of the very chic, blue-silk suit. "That is, I did have some--"
"Have they been destroyed?" questioned Mr. Vandeford, with the greatest anxiety.
"No, not exactly," answered Miss Adair, with a distressed tremor at the corner of her curved mouth that rivaled a rose of a deeper hue in the southwest corner of the bouquet.
"I see," answered Mr. Vandeford, with great relief. "You are not just sure where they are. That's great! You can have a talk with Mr. Corbett, who is to design the costumes, and then hop right back home in a day or two, as soon as you are rested and we've had a little bat on Broadway, and find them for him to use in his designs. The management will pay all the expenses and you can--can--"
Mr. Vandeford cast around in his mind for some other business in connection with "The Purple Slipper" that would keep the author thereof busy and contented in Adairville, Kentucky, out of the clutches of Violet and out of the way of his stage director until it all was running smoothly.
"How about your getting a lot of photographs of the house in which it all happened?" he went on. Vaguely he felt photography must be a slow process in Adairville, Kentucky.
Also, in his heart he was forced to acknowledge that his inspiration for getting the author out of the way of her own play while it was being murdered was not entirely original. Tradition had told him, whether truly or not, that at a certain crucial moment in the butchering and rehearsal of "The Great Divide" the poet-author, Moody, had been sent West to hunt a genuine war costume for a great Indian war-chief, his favorite written character, and on his return with the trophy had found the Indian cut entirely and forever from the play.
"Those dresses would be the greatest help you could give us now," he urged with an inward chuckle at the thought of the trick on the great poet, which froze in his heart as he observed two tears balanced on the black lashes of the lovely sea-gray eyes lowered away from his.
"What's the matter?" he gasped, in desperate fear that the Moody Indian story had penetrated to the wilds of Adairville, Kentucky. "You'd only be gone a few days, and everything could wait until you came back. I wouldn't turn a wheel without you, and--" he committed himself deeper and deeper at every step.
"I've had the dresses all made over, and this is one. I've hurt my play just because I wanted to look pretty in New York! I'm humiliated with myself. As if anybody cared how I look; and the play--" The soft little slurs stopped and the beautiful old-blue-silk-clad shoulder trembled slightly against his shoulder as a little ghost of a sob came to the surface and was suppressed while the home-made color faded from beneath two tears that fell from the black lashes.
"Oh, please forgive me, child! It doesn't matter at all, and--"
"You oughtn't to forgive me," the voice trembled on. "Miss Hawtry would have been wonderful in that dinner dress my grandmother wore, and I--I've had two made out of it! I can give them to her and tell her how to put them together again with--"
"You'll do nothing of the kind!" fairly snapped Mr. Vandeford. Then he broke the record in his own thinking processes and decided for the second time to tell the whole truth to this country girl with her mixture of hay-seeds and patrician airs. He directed Valentine to Central Park and made a clean breast of it. It is a pleasure to record that at the Moody Indian story Patricia laughed until two other tears ran down her cheeks, but this time they did not wring Mr. Vandeford's heart, for they coursed over the accustomed roses and were a great pleasure to him.
"I'll go home if you want me to," the talented author of "The Purple Slipper" offered, with a small snap in her eyes, mingled with the accustomed veneration of Mr. Vandeford, her producer. "I don't want to be in anybody's way. I thought I had to come and spend all my money. I want to see the Metropolitan and the Aquarium and Brooklyn Bridge and Trinity Church, ... and ... a Midnight Frolic, because Mamie Lou Whitson, at home, is expecting me to go to one even if Miss Elvira said I ought not to. Can I see just one Frolic before I go home?"
"If you go home now the whole 'Purple Slipper' will go into cold storage until you come back," Mr. Vandeford growled at her, and the effort it took not to hold on to her with bodily fingers was a great strain. "I told you the usual situation because I felt that you were clever enough to make the best of it and help the play a lot. No author ever has seen a play produced as he wrote it, and he has to stand seeing everybody take a whack at it, from the producer to the man who takes the tickets at the front door. I've got a good playwright shut up until Friday rewriting 'The Purple Slipper'; then I'm going to work at it myself and let Miss Hawtry write in all the things she wants to say, and cut out all the things she doesn't. After that, I'm going to turn it over to Bill Rooney, who was born in a barrel down on the wharf and educated in the gutter, but who is the best and highest-priced stage director in New York. He'll do innumerable things to it while he's 'setting it,' as he calls getting it ready for rehearsals. All the actors and actresses will be allowed at times to butcher and scalp their parts and everybody will stab. And if you are a plucky girl you'll sit still and see it done. There will come lots of times that everything you suggest, even very timidly, will be thrust down your throat; but if they are vital they will get under the hide of Bill and opening night you'll see that your pluck has put a lot into the whole thing and that the mutilated and dressed-up play is still your child. Will you trust me and sit in with me and help me make 'The Purple Slipper' go?"
"I do! I will!" answered Miss Adair, with her head in the air and the Adairville roses flaunting themselves in her face. And as she spoke she offered him her slim, long-fingered, white little hand that his completely engulfed as, answering a signal, Valentine turned the car back toward Forty-second Street. "If I've got to have thorns stuck in me and then cut out I'm mighty glad you'll be there."
"Yes, I'll be there," he answered her softly, as he released her hand at least two seconds sooner than he was really obliged to, though he himself could not have said why he did it. He felt like a grown person who frightens a child with a bear tale to make it cuddle to his own strength in the firelight.
Then followed a day in the offices of Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, Theatrical Producer, which, up to that time, could not have been duplicated on Broadway and perhaps never will be, though the results may have the effect of--but that was all in the future of the theatrical business at that time.
"Mr. Meyers," said Mr. Vandeford, as he ushered the author of "The Purple Slipper" into the outer offices, where he found Pops soothing and controlling about seven enraged experts in different lines of dramatic production, "Miss Adair will have the small office from now on to work in when she is not in consultation with me. Please take her in and see that she is made at home while I run through my mail. Yes, Mr. Corbett, I will be ready for you in a few minutes. Sorry to detain you, all of you," with which apology to the body of assembled experts Mr. Vandeford bowed, went into his sanctum, and firmly closed the door, just as Mr. Adolph Meyers bowed the author into her sanctum and as firmly closed her door. Mr. Gerald Height, who had been sitting looking indifferently out of Mr. Meyers' window, looked after the disappearing author as if a perfumed breeze had suddenly blown across his brow, and whistled softly.
"Say, Pops, who, by thunder is--," he was questioning Mr. Meyers with extreme interest, when Mr. Vandeford's buzzer sounded and Mr. Meyers was forced to answer it before he could attend to Mr. Height's question.
Mr. Meyers found Mr. Vandeford pale, but determined.
"Pops," he said, and Mr. Meyers could have sworn that the voice of his beloved chief trembled, "I'm in the devil of a fix, and you have got to throw me a line to pull out; in fact, you'll have to cast in a drag-net if you want to land me."
"If it was a submarine I would make a rescue of you, Mr. Vandeford, sir," the faithful henchman assured the panic-stricken producer.
"She's worse than any submarine ever floated, and I'm rammed--in a corner, Pops. To make a story that is going to be long in acting, short in telling, I've had to put Miss Adair on to what is usually handed out to the authors of plays, and then to stop her wails, offered to let her sit in and watch her play baby hacked up. Her office-hours here and at rehearsals will be from ten mornings to midnight, and what are you going to do about it?" Mr. Vandeford questioned Mr. Meyers with a kind of forlorn hope in his eyes, for Mr. Meyers had often seen him through the crooks of his trade.
"I advise to make it straight to her, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and she will come out all right or otherwise go home. That young lady has the look of a horse on which I won seven hundred at the last Gravesend. Besides, we have not time for play-acting about that 'Purple Slipper.' It is a cold bird and we must be in a hurry about putting pep into it for a success."
"Right-o, Pops! I'll ask her in here, and when I buzz send in Corbett. The poor kiddie!" With which lamentation over the fate he was about to mete out to Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford dismissed Mr. Meyers and opened the door which led from his sanctum into that which had been so recently assigned to the author of "The Purple Slipper."
That eminent playwright was discovered in the height of fascination, looking down upon the uproar of Broadway.
"I saw a taxicab run over a man and not kill him," she exclaimed with both horror and joy. "I started to call you, but it was all over in a second."
"That's all right. I've seen that hundreds of times, even when they were killed." He reassured her about neglecting to share the excitement with him. "Are you ready to take up the matter of costumes with Corbett?"
"Shall I have to tell him--about my making over--"
"No; just listen to me handle him, and I'll tell you when to break in. I'll give you a lead. Please come into my office." And with coolness of manner, but trepidation of heart, he led her into his office and seated her in a chair beside his at the far side of the desk,--the very chair in which had sat Mr. Dennis Farraday on the day previous, when he had received his initiation into the world of theatricals. Then he buzzed his signal to Mr. Meyers.
Immediately Mr. Corbett entered.
"Morning, Corbett.--Miss Adair, the author of the play I want to talk to you about.--Want to take on a costume play of early Kentucky?" Mr. Vandeford made no pause in which to allow Mr. Corbett to acknowledge his introduction to the author, and Mr. Corbett seemed to bear no resentment for the omission. His astonishment at meeting an author when the costuming of a play was being discussed was profound.
"What date?" he inquired, looking carefully away from Miss Adair.
"What date, Miss Adair?" asked Mr. Vandeford in exactly the same crisp tone in which he was conducting the negotiations with Mr. Corbett.
"1806, I think. It was just before they began to wear--" Miss Adair was beginning to say with a delighted smile that entirely failed to make an impression on Mr. Corbett.
"Good date for costuming," the artist interrupted the author to say, with the easy assurance of a person fully informed. "Styles were distinctive. I dressed 'Lovers' Ends' for E. and K. in 1789, and the costumes kept the piffling play alive for two months. How many dolls and how many boots?"
"How many men and how many ladies in the play, Miss Adair?" Mr. Vandeford questioned her with delight at getting a question to fling to her and also translating for her Mr. Corbett's query.
"Twenty in all," answered Miss Adair. "There are eleven ladies with the--"
"Split even," Mr. Corbett took the words out of her mouth. "Want sole leather or tissue paper, Mr. Vandeford?" Miss Adair caught by psychic sympathy the fact that he was asking if the play was to be costumed as one intended to survive. Consequently her very soul hung on the answer Mr. Vandeford must make to Mr. Corbett's question.
"To play about thirty, I should say," answered Mr. Vandeford after a two minutes' calculating.
"Only a month?" gasped Miss Adair, then colored home-made pink in the height of embarrassment.
"Weeks." Mr. Vandeford answered her gasp without looking at her, but taking the vow gallantly, considering that he felt Mazie Villines to be his sole dependence for a winning manuscript version of "The Purple Slipper."
During this question and answer Mr. Corbett was also calculating.
"About seven thousand if Adelaide makes the Hawtry layout," he finally announced.
"Five hundred advance for the sketches, and a week's option," Mr. Vandeford offered calmly.
"A thousand advance for models of costumes made up," answered Mr. Corbett, just as calmly and firmly. "Have to hunt in museum for materials to go by. Takes experts on fabrics."
"I can give you pieces of silk and things that are cut from the costumes of that period." Miss Adair had learned, and she cut her remark into the conference with precision and decision.
"Genuine?" questioned Mr. Corbett.
"Worn by the characters about whom the play is written."
"Then seven hundred and fifty for made-up models, Mr. Vandeford," Mr. Corbett offered.
"The pieces will be large enough to make the models," Miss Adair said with a curt firmness that was a combination of that used by both Mr. Vandeford and Mr. Corbett and which both startled and delighted the former.
"Six hundred for models, Corbett," he said with finality and with an inward chuckle.
"Six-fifty, Mr. Vandeford," Mr. Corbett answered with equal finality, and for the first time he stole a glance at the author.
"Goes! When?"
"Two weeks?"
"Goes! Good-morning, Mr. Corbett!"
Mr. Corbett's exit was immediate.
"I'm glad Miss Elvira made me put all the pieces of my dresses in my trunk to patch with in case I tore anything. They saved us four hundred dollars, didn't they?" Miss Adair said to Mr. Vandeford with gratified business acumen shining in the sea-gray eyes. "I wasn't much in the way, was I?"
"You were a great help, and that was the first time I ever succeeded in jewing Corbett," answered Mr. Vandeford with satisfactory enthusiasm. Something of relief over the guarding of his author showed in his voice, which second note, however, he sounded too soon as the next ten minutes proved to him. "Now we'll discuss the sets for the production with Lindenberg and then it'll be time for luncheon, and we'll go--"
"Mr. Vandeford, sir, Mr. Height would like to be in next," Mr. Meyers interrupted his chief, just a second too soon, or rather just in time, for if Mr. Vandeford had settled Miss Adair's luncheon plans in that second the fate of "The Purple Slipper" might have been different.
"Show him in, Pops, and have the rest come back at two-thirty," Mr. Vandeford commanded.
Mr. Gerald Height entered.
For five successive seasons on Broadway, with brief dazzling flights into the provincial towns of Chicago, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia, Mr. Gerald Height had been the reigning beauty, and he well deserved it. He was both slender and broad, with the grace of a faun in young manhood, and with the deviltry of a satyr of more advanced age in his yellow-green eyes, which tilted under high black brows that were arched penciled bows across his forehead. His lips were full and red, but chiseled like a youth's on a Greek frieze and they were mobile and tender and hard by turns. His red-gold hair clung to his head in burnished waves, and this head was set upon his broad, strong shoulders as a flower is set on its parent plant, and his smile was a conquering triumph. He poured it all over Miss Adair as Mr. Vandeford introduced them, and took the chair opposite the producer and the author, with the light from the window fully revealing all of his charms.
"New Hawtry play on, Height, by Miss Adair." Mr. Vandeford began the conversation with his usual directness, and somehow his voice was crisper than usual, for he seemed to get a shock from the radiance of the stage beauty before him that pushed him, with his white-tinged black hair, well forward into middle age.
"Dolph was telling me, and I ran through a synopsis he had on the machine. Powder and furbelows!" As he spoke Mr. Height smiled at Miss Adair with appreciation of herself and got in return a smile of the same degree of appreciation of himself, both smiles not at all lost on the psychologically aging Mr. Vandeford.
"That clause in your contract that lets you out of all costume plays is perfectly good, you know," Mr. Vandeford heard himself saying when he had intended to bluster that same clause aside if the favorite had tried to stand on it, because he well knew that to see Gerald Height in silk stockings and lace ruffles a quarter of a million women might be counted upon to pay two dollars per capita and so assure at least a fifteen per cent. certainty to the box-office receipts of "The Purple Slipper," whose fate had mysteriously come in the last few hours to mean so much to him. "Mr. Meyers has a youngster that we can whip into lead, I think. Now thank me for letting you out, and run along."
"Oh," ejaculated Miss Patricia Adair, and the little exclamation of dismay hit both men at once and made them both sit up straight in their chairs. Also they both looked for a long minute at Miss Adair, and both were aware of the other's scrutiny. Mr. Height broke the tension.
"I might see how buckskins and powdered wig would go," he said, with a tentative glance across the table, which began with Mr. Vandeford and ended with Miss Adair.
"I think you would be perfectly beautiful, and I hope--" Miss Adair paused, and Mr. Height was as competent as either Miss Hawtry or Miss Lindsey had been to judge of the home-made color under the gray eyes. Also he was as much, perhaps more, affected by it, though in the presence of Mr. Vandeford he was wise enough to dissemble his delight.
"Want me to try, Mr. Vandeford?" he questioned with greater deference than he had ever shown a mere manager in the last five years of his triumphant career.
"Of course, it would be a fifteen-per cent. drag if you are willing," answered Mr. Vandeford with managerial delight and manly rage.
"Can I have until to-morrow to decide?" asked Mr. Height. "You see, I haven't read the play or heard the layout," he added to the author of "The Purple Slipper," with deference in his rich voice that had thrilled its millions.
"Could you make it this afternoon if Mr. Meyers goes into it with you? My other man has a big picture offered him at a good figure," Mr. Vandeford answered, with both fear and joy at the prospect of pressing the star into retreat.
"Dolph has told me all he knows about it, which is nothing. He hasn't taken out any parts and seems to have lost the manuscript forever. I hope you kept a copy, Miss Adair." And again the two young things smiled at each other to Mr. Vandeford's devastation.
"Why couldn't I tell Mr. Height about the play while you see the electrician and the other people, Mr. Vandeford?" Miss Adair questioned, her candid gray eyes shining with such a sincere desire to be useful in the crisis that Mr. Vandeford could not suspect her of any adventurous motive. "We could go over in--into my office and you can call me any minute if you need me."
"Great!" exclaimed Mr. Height. "Then I could let you know right away if I thought I could do the part justice, Mr. Vandeford."
"Goes!" answered Mr. Vandeford, as he motioned them into the inner office, which had been conferred upon the author of "The Purple Slipper," and rang his buzzer for Mr. Meyers.
"Find Mr. Farraday and ask him to come around here immediately if he is anywhere near, or to come at four if he can't get here in ten minutes," he commanded. "Heard from Mazie?"
"Mr. Howard is in a good working soak, is her report, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and I have the wire that Mr. Farraday is on his way here," was the double answer Mr. Meyers returned to Mr. Vandeford.
"Good! Give me my letters to sign," Mr. Vandeford answered.
Mr. Meyers brought in a sheaf of letters, and Mr. Vandeford was in the act of setting pen to paper when the door of the inner office opened after a gentle knock and Miss Adair entered, followed by Mr. Height.
Mr. Vandeford looked up quickly and found Miss Adair close beside his chair, looking down upon him with her beautiful reverence and confidence in him entirely unimpaired.
"Mr. Height wants me to go and have luncheon with him and tell him about the play. He's hungry, and so am I. Can you spare me if I'm working while I'm eating? May I go?"
Mr. Vandeford rose to his feet quickly, and a great Broadway star was in closer danger of descending head-first from a six-story window upon that thoroughfare than he ever knew. Then "The Purple Slipper" rose and demanded its chance of success with Gerald Height as "drag" and the tragedy was averted.
"Run along, children, and don't spill your milk on your bibs," he answered them, with a dissembling smile that would have done credit to Mr. Height himself when upon the boards with Miss Hawtry. They departed in great spirits, and Mr. Vandeford noticed that Mr. Height had not been at all concerned as to how his manager's inner man would be served.
Thereupon Mr. Vandeford propped his feet upon the desk, got out one of the most evil of the cigars he kept in a drawer of his desk for just such crises, and went into communion with himself for ten minutes. Upon that communion broke Mr. Dennis Farraday, who got the full force of it.
"I came to pick up you and Miss Adair to go out in the park to luncheon. It's cooler there. Where is she?" were the words with which Mr. Vandeford's partner in the production of "The Purple Slipper" greeted him.
"She has gone out to luncheon with a damned tango lizard," was the disturbed and disturbing answer his courtesy received.
"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Farraday, bristling.
"She met Gerald Height a half-hour ago, here in this office, and then went out to luncheon with him," was Mr. Vandeford's answer to Mr. Farraday's bristling.
"Without consulting you?"
"No! I consented all right enough."
"Why didn't you tell her if you didn't want her to go with him?"
"See here, Denny, I want to ask you if anything in my past life makes you think that I am a proper old hen to have a downy little chicken thrust right under my wing for safe keeping, whether I hatched her or not?" Mr. Vandeford demanded, and his rage was so perfectly impersonal and perplexed that Mr. Farraday sat down to go into the matter to his rescue.
"What do you mean, Van?" he asked in a calm voice and manner that were most grateful to Mr. Vandeford.
"Just this: Here's a girl come up here, from a place where a girl is guarded like a pearl of great price, into the muck and excitement of the getting together of a Broadway production in which she is directly interested. I don't know what to do. If I spend my time hovering over her, her show will go cold and break her. She's poor. I told her as much of what she is in for as I dared and still she wants to stay and see it all through, demands to stay and be let in for the whole thing. What'll we do?"
"Suppose she'd go with me up to visit the mater and be motored down to participate in--in expurgated moments?" asked Mr. Farraday, as he ruffled his hair into a huge plume on the top of his head.
"She would not. She's got a taste of it and she'll thirst for more. And, for all that unsophistication, she is a clever kid. She'll get Height into a costume play before luncheon is over and that'll go a long way to cinch a hit for 'The Purple Slipper.' He's made a fad of not playing costume, and all the women in New York will flock to see him in velvet and lace. She bargained that fish Corbett out of four hundred dollars in the preliminary costume deal, and if anybody has to send her home it will have to be you. I can't do it."
"Well, just gently warn her about Height and things of that kind, can't you?"
"I cannot! Would you tell a woman who is walking a tight rope that the ground sixty feet below her is covered with broken champagne bottles?"
"Then she's got to go home," decided Mr. Dennis Farraday, positively.
"How'll you make her?"
"You've got to do it. She's got awe of you planted six feet deep in her soul. Anybody could see that. You've got to send her."
"Can't be done," growled Mr. Vandeford in desperation. "Wish I were married to six respectable women and then I could make 'em all chaperon her in turns, while I feed her fool play to the public."
"You'd only have to strike out the syllable 'un' before 'married' by a little trip to the City Hall to have one mighty fine wife," Mr. Farraday said with a straight look into Mr. Vandeford's eyes, which was so deeply affectionate that it gave him the privilege of opening the door to any holy of holies.
"Violet and I are all off, Denny, and it ought never to have been on," was the straight-out answer he got to his venture, an answer that Miss Hawtry would have felt smoothed greatly the path of her present adventures in life.
"Poor girl! I knew she was hurt somehow, but I thought--forgive me, old man." With a tenderness in his voice that both alarmed and puzzled Mr. Vandeford his big Jonathan closed the subject and snapped a lock on it. "Come over to the Astor with me for a cold bite."
"Goes!"
The cool, green-leafed Orangery at the Hotel Astor is the oasis in the desert days of rehearsal for all early fall plays, and beside its tinkling fountain and under its tinkling music can be found at luncheon all of the theatrical profession who are not around the corners at the equally cool, white-tiled Childs restaurants. Beside and around the green wicker tables careers of managers, artists, actors, playwrights, electricians, and scenic artists are made and unmade in the twinkling of some bright or heavy-lidded eye. Each and every feaster watches each and every other feaster with the quick, wary eye of a jungle being consuming its food before it is snatched from him or her; and gossip reigns over all.
"Gee, look at the swell dame Gerald Height has got cornered over there!" exclaimed Mazie Villines, as she looked up from a frappéd melon, which a "heavy" moving picture man was "buying" for her consumption. "The way them society queens do fall fer him!"
"Put your blinkers on, Mazie, put 'em on, and don't take a shy at Height over my knife and fork! Let him eat what he pays for and me the same," growled the huge man. "I let you put up that drunk Howard for a week, and that's rope enough."
"I'd like to feed him the green in his 'runny' eggs; it makes me sick to open for him," was the adored Mazie's way of speaking of her eminent playwright.
"Well, get his wad first," was the heavy's advice.
Just at this moment Mazie had the delight of seeing Mr. Godfrey Vandeford enter with his "soup and fish" friend Mr. Dennis Farraday. As they both had to pass directly by the table at which sat Miss Adair and Mr. Height, of course they both paused for greetings, which included the introduction of Mr. Height to Mr. Farraday.
"I could hardly eat in this beautiful cool place when I thought that maybe you would work on in the hot office with nothing with ice packed around it for your luncheon," said Miss Adair, as she raised her eyes to Mr. Vandeford's with the adoration still intact after at least three-quarters of an hour assault upon it by Mr. Gerald Height's disturbing personality. "I wanted to go back for you, but Mr. Height said that Mr. Meyers fed you cold pie when you were busy, and that you roared dreadfully if anybody interrupted you when you were eating it!"
"He does," Mr. Farraday interjected, smiling down at her in a way that it was unwise to do in the Orangery at noon; and it lighted a fuse he little suspected. Miss Violet Hawtry caught the smile in mid-air and then promptly turned her back and became all charming attention to the gentleman with whom she was having luncheon, who was no other than the celebrated Weiner, who had built three theatres in two years and was building more. He was of the bull-necked type of Hebrew and not of the sensitive, exquisite type of the sons of the House of David to which belong the E. & K.'s, and the S. & S., as well as the great B. D.
"When will the new theatre be completed, Mr. Weiner?" Miss Hawtry asked, as she turned over an iced shrimp and tore at a lettuce leaf with her fork.
"October first," answered Mr. Weiner, past a mouthful of Russian herring.
"What will the opening show be?" asked Miss Hawtry, with indifference, though there was a glint under her thick lashes lowered over her snapping Irish eyes.
"'The Rosie Posie Girl,'" answered Weiner, and he swallowed his herring and gave her a shrewd glance at the same time.
"Vandeford will never sell it to you," Miss Hawtry announced calmly, as she ate the shrimp and the torn lettuce leaf.
"Maybe!" answered Weiner with equal calmness. "What are his plans for his new show that he is tearing up Forty-second Street about?"
"Road from September fifteenth until New York October first."
"What theater in New York?"
"I don't know." As she made this answer Miss Hawtry looked up and caught a snap in Weiner's small black eyes, perched on each side of the hump of his red nose.
"Has the show got goods?" he asked.
"I'm going to put some into it," answered Miss Hawtry calmly.
"Why?"
"I like Mr. Dennis Farraday, who's Vandeford's angel. I don't want to see Van take the money out of his pocket and get away with it." Miss Hawtry was dealing in half-truths to a lie expert.
"Hooked Farraday yet?"
"Not quite."
"No use bargaining with a woman when she's fishing for a man, but if he slips the hook come to me and I'll show you a new bait. When do you open?"
"Twenty-third of September, at Atlantic City."
"I'll be there."
"I hope you will, and--" but the rest of Miss Hawtry's remark was cut off by Mr. Dennis Farraday's genial greeting, backed by Mr. Vandeford's more restrained pleasure at happening upon her and her co-plotter, to whom she introduced Mr. Farraday.
The exchange of amenities was as brief as it was cordial, but as Mr. David Vandeford and Mr. Jonathan Farraday passed on to a table which the discreet head waiter had reserved in case of the unexpected and tardy arrival of just such personages as Mr. Godfrey Vandeford and his friend, Mr. Farraday, Miss Hawtry had answered a low-voiced question from Mr. Farraday with a sadly tender smile and the words:
"At eight?"
"The Claridge got me a box for the Big Show and a table at the Grove Garden for to-night, Van," remarked Mr. Farraday, as he unfolded his napkin. "It is the coolest place in town, and we might as well let the kid get just one good peep before she goes back into the shell ... if she goes. I'll take Miss Hawtry on and leave the box number for you and Miss Adair."
"Right-o," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a growl. For the life of him he could not understand just why Mr. Gerald Height should have the privilege of feeding his author alone, while he seemed to be always forced to enjoy her company in the presence of others. He looked across the room, met the gray eyes laughing at him over a glass that was plainly iced tea, and was forced to exchange smiles with his downy little chicken, who was delightedly peeping out of her shell.
"I think Mr. Vandeford is the most wonderful man I ever met," confided Miss Adair to Mr. Height, with no suspicion of the incitation such a remark would be to the ardor of the beloved of many women.
"He's a great producer; had three big hits hand-running and fell down on 'Miss Cut-up' because he wouldn't stand up to Hawtry, and let her cop the whole show," answered Mr. Height with great generosity, for in reality Mr. Height had the very poor opinion of Mr. Vandeford that it is the custom of all actors to hold in regard to their respective managers. However, he was sugar-coating the pill he was determined to administer to Miss Adair without delay. "He ought to marry Hawtry and get a bit in her mouth and the spurs on."
"Is--is he in love with Miss Hawtry?" asked the author of "The Purple Slipper" with great interest, and the home-made color rose several degrees, that were not warranted by the calm gossip of the situation.
"That's the noise he makes, but who can tell?" answered Mr. Height, reveling in the Adairville roses and no more aware of their origin than was their owner. "He meets bills, but nobody gets in behind his window-boxes." And Mr. Height raised his glass of Tom Collins, perfectly contented with the thought that he had enlightened Miss Adair about the private life of Mr. Vandeford. As a matter of fact he had failed utterly to do so, as she had not understood a word of his Broadway patois. "There's the great B. D. and beloved son-in-law," and Mr. Height nodded and smiled at a white-haired man and his companion who were seating themselves at the table next to them.
"B. D.?" questioned Miss Adair.
"Benjamin David," answered Mr. Height. "He and his son-in-law are putting on a great new show. Offered me a lead and--but I think I'll stick by 'The Purple Slipper.'" His eyes were so ardent as slightly to disturb Miss Adair and very greatly disturb Mr. Vandeford, who caught the warmth across several tables, and ground his teeth.
However, Miss Patricia Adair was fully capable of handling such a situation, for ardor is ardor, whether encountered on Broadway in New York or Adairville in Kentucky, and Miss Adair had met it many times--and parried it.
"I've really got to leave this perfectly lovely place and hurry down to the Y. W. C. A., to get some costume samples for Mr. Corbett," she said calmly, as she began to draw on her gloves and pull down the veil that reefed in the narrow brim of the jaunty hat Miss Lindsey and she had by a great stroke of luck discovered on a side street the day before.
"Y. W. C. A.?" questioned Mr. Height, in stupefaction.
"Everybody looks that way when I say it!" laughed Miss Adair, with a dimple flaunting above the left corner of her mouth. "Will you take me there or put me on something or in something that will let me off very near?"
"I'll take you," answered Mr. Height tenderly and heroically, as he held the blue-silk coat for her to slip into.
As the two of them stood together the great Dean of American Producers looked upon them with interest, and rose and offered his hand to Mr. Height.
"Well, how about it?" he asked, with a smile under his beetling white brows.
"Mr. David, please meet Miss Adair, the author of Mr. Vandeford's new Hawtry play," Mr. Height said by way of beginning an answer to the question put to him. "At last I'm going into wig and ruffles; the play is of colonial Kentucky."
"I am delighted to meet you, Miss Adair," said the Broadway Maximus, "and you are fortunate to have Mr. Height for your play. I covet him, but I'll wait until next time."
"Oh, thank you for not taking him away!" said Miss Adair, with a displaying of the roses which the great B. D. noted with pleasure. "Will you come and see our play and tell us what you think about it?" Miss Adair made her request, which was against the traditions of conventions on Broadway, with the unabashed air with which she had invited the reigning Governor of Kentucky to have dinner with her and Major Adair at the state fair the year before.
"Ask Mr. Vandeford to invite me to a dress rehearsal," answered the great one, and Gerald Height beamed with pride, while Miss Adair displayed only gratitude and delight as they took their departure.
In their exit they passed Mr. Vandeford's table and stopped to speak to him and Mr. Farraday.
"That's Benjamin David Mr. Height introduced to me, and he's coming to help us at the dress rehearsals of 'The Purple Slipper.' It's wonderful!" Miss Adair exclaimed, as Mr. Vandeford rose and stood beside her. "Mr. Height is going down to the Y. W. C. A. with me, and we'll be right back to the office with those pieces of silk for the costumes. Mr. David wants him for lead, but he's going to be in 'The Purple Slipper' and go to Mr. David next. Isn't that fine?" and without waiting for an answer to her question the busy playwright departed on important business connected with the costuming of her play.
"Somehow, Van, I don't see why we should worry," Mr. Farraday said, as he looked at the retreating figures of the pair whose beauty was attracting no little attention in the feasting Orangery. "She's getting along all right, eh?"
"Remember you've been in the business about forty-eight hours, Denny, and never forget that every knife here is sheathed in a smile and everybody carries a rubber stamp with double X on it," answered Mr. Vandeford, with gloom, as he pushed back his coffee-cup. "She's tasted blood now and that ends it. She's with us, and the Lord help her! I can't!"
"Well, come on and let's get to the office," answered Mr. Farraday, with a cheerful lack of sympathy with his friend's anxiety for the talented budding playwright.
"Everything all O. K., Mazie?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he passed the table where the Miss Villines and the heavy movie man were finishing their bottles of cold beer.
"Soused and scribbling," answered Mazie, cheerfully.
"Remember, Friday."
"Remember your check-book."
"Goes!"
Shortly after Mr. Vandeford and Mr. Farraday reached the office of Mr. Vandeford, Miss Adair, accompanied by Mr. Height, appeared with a neat little parcel in their possession. Also Miss Adair had another, very conventional, corsage bouquet in the place of the one Mr. Vandeford had given her in the morning and which at luncheon had begun to look the worse for wear.
"Now what shall I do?" she asked Mr. Vandeford, with great energy.
"Go right down and get in my car and go back to the Y. W. C. A., to take a long nap. I'll call for you for that Broadway eye-opener at eight o'clock to-night, so get 'em well rested," he answered, and he smiled when he noted that the expression in her eyes that he had begun to look for with desperate eagerness still held. Mr. Meyers had engaged Mr. Height with a contract, and Mr. Farraday had been an interested spectator to the tussle. Producer and author were alone.
"Mr. Height asked me to go to see Maude Adams, but I told him I couldn't go anywhere at night until you could take me," said Miss Adair with sparks of joy in the sea-gray eyes. "I'm so glad it is to-night."
"Did you really tell Height that?" demanded Mr. Vandeford, with youth swelling through his arteries.
"Yes."
"Go, child, go and get a nap," Mr. Vandeford laughed, as he opened the door for her and started out to descend and deliver her into the keeping of faithful Valentine.
"I'll put her into the car, Van," offered Mr. Farraday. "They need you here in this fight."
And again his author was snatched out of Mr. Vandeford's clutches.
Several hours later a very interesting scene was enacted in two tiny adjoining rooms under the roof of the Y. W. C. A., with Miss Adair and Miss Lindsey as the principals.
"If you take away all that net there won't be any waist left to the dress. Don't!" pleaded Miss Adair, as Miss Lindsey stood over her with determined scissors.
"I'm making it absolutely perfect, and you can't tell by looking down on it. You'll have to trust me," answered Miss Lindsey, with pins in her mouth, as she snipped away a funny little tucker of common new net with which Miss Elvira Henderson of Adairville, Kentucky, had for the sake of her spinster convictions ruined a triumph she had accomplished directly out of "Feminine Fashions" and the ancestral trunk.
"Will it be--be modest?" demanded Miss Adair.
"A lot more modest than having that ugly mosquito netting telling everybody that you are not willing to have them see your marvelous neck and arms except through its meshes. Nobody will think you know you've got 'em, if you show them like everybody else; but they'll think you think you are a peep-show if you cover them half up." And as she spoke Miss Lindsey gave another daring rip and snip. Her philosophy struck home.
"That's every word true," agreed Miss Adair, with relief. "I'll just forget about my skin there, as I do about that on my face and hands and nobody will notice me at all."
"That's it. Skin is no treat to New York, and nobody will look at you twice." Miss Lindsey had a struggle to keep her voice and manner unconcerned enough, as she surveyed her finished product and saw that from under her hands would go forth a sensation. In the old ivory satin with its woven rosebuds and cream rose-point, above which rose pearly shoulders and a neck bearing a small, proud head, with close waves of heavy black hair, Miss Adair was like a dainty, luscious, tropical fruit that is more beautiful than its own flower. "How an old maid in a country town made that dress I don't see!" Miss Lindsey added reflectively.
"It was you, who unmade it," answered Miss Adair with gratitude. "I wish you were going, too," she added as she nestled to the taller girl for a perfumed second.
"I'm going to luncheon with you and Mr. Farraday to-morrow," answered Miss Lindsey, with a pleased laugh at Miss Adair's sudden clinging that indicated her sincerity in not wishing to leave her alone.
"Oh, lovely! And Mr. Height will be with us too, for I promised to have luncheon with him again," she exclaimed, as Miss Lindsey began to insert her into an evening wrap made of a priceless old Paisley shawl which "Fashions" had also tempted Miss Elvira to desecrate with her scissors.
"Gerald Height?" asked Miss Lindsey, and her eyes first snapped and then smouldered. "Where did he get in on--where did you meet him? Does Mr. Vandeford know about it and--"
"I met him in Mr. Vandeford's office. He's in 'The Purple Slipper,' and I went to luncheon with him to-day. I meant to tell you about it, and meeting Mr. David, but Mr. Vandeford told me to get a nap and I thought I--"
Here the speaking-trumpet in the hall informed Miss Lindsey that Mr. Vandeford was waiting for Miss Adair below, and she had to let her treasure depart from her.
"I wonder just how straight Godfrey Vandeford is," she mused, as she picked up the discarded tucker of coarse netting. "The poor kid! I wish she was at home hidden behind Miss Elvira's skirts. Hawtry and a girl like that! Damn men!"
