Blue-grass and Broadway 5 – Daviess · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 5Chapter 5
18
Literature · Romance
Blue-grass and Broadway 5
Chapter 5
DaviessEnglish
It may be that in the long life of Mr. Godfrey Vandeford he had passed a more perturbed evening than that on which he led his protégé, the author of "The Purple Slipper," to her début under the white lights of Broadway, but he could not recall the occasion. His grilling had begun while he waited for his charge to descend in the lobby of the Y. W. C. A. and it ended--
"We are delighted to have Miss Adair stay with us while her play is being rehearsed," a very pleasant young woman, with a trim figure, kind and wise eyes, and gray-sprinkled hair, remarked to him after she had whistled the fact of his arrival above. "When such men as you, Mr. Vandeford, begin to put on clean historical plays, many of our anxieties will be over. I look on each musical show that appears on Broadway as a personal enemy."
"I am glad indeed, Madam, that we are going to claim you as a friend of 'The Purple Slipper,'" Mr. Vandeford answered, with his most pleasant smile. Somehow the sight and sound of that executive young woman in charge of his young author gave him a calmness that he needed, and his confidence shone in his face.
"We are deeply interested in Miss Adair, for we have had influential letters sent us about her, and of course we are looking forward with eagerness to seeing her play. She is such a dear child!"
The influential letters and the increased warmth in the young woman's tone in speaking about his author drew Mr. Vandeford still nearer to her, both in body and in spirit. He leaned slightly against the desk and smiled again.
"May I send you seats for some night the first week of 'The Purple Slipper'?" he asked, with the greatest deference. And it must be recorded that in making the offer Mr. Vandeford was not bidding for the distinction conferred on him in the next few seconds.
"That will be delightful," exclaimed the young woman. "And, Mr. Vandeford, here is a latch-key to the front door, to use to-night if you and Miss Adair are a little later than midnight in coming home. Remember to give it to her after you have put her inside the door and tell her to hang it on the rack opposite the number of her room. There she comes now!"
Mr. Vandeford accepted the latch-key of the Y. W. C. A. with awe and looked at it as he would have looked at a decoration handed him by the Metropolitan governors. Then he glanced up and beheld Miss Adair displaying herself to his new-found friend.
"You are very pretty, my dear," she was saying with an affectionate smile. "Just let me put a pin here in this fold of lace," and expertly she reefed up the last fold of rose-point that Miss Lindsey had snipped down in a hurried finish of her remodeling. Strange to say Mr. Vandeford felt still more further drawn to his young Christian Association friend.
"Now run along, both of you, and have a pleasant evening," she said to them as she turned to answer the telephone.
"That girl is an extremely delightful person," Mr. Vandeford remarked, while he and Valentine were tucking Miss Adair under the linen robe in the car.
"I'm so glad you are getting used to the Y. W. C. A.," Miss Adair answered, giving him a delighted smile as he seated himself beside her while Valentine started the car up the avenue. "Mr. Height said it was like being forced to go to church in a strange town and getting into somebody's cozy corner by mistake."
"I wish I were married to that girl, to-night," Mr. Vandeford exclaimed out of the sudden rush of anxiety that had overtaken him by this fledgling author's mention of his leading man.
"Then who would be taking me out, out on Broadway?" asked Miss Adair with a little laugh that had a more distinctly friendly note in it than it had before held for him.
"Both of us," replied Mr. Vandeford, with an answering laugh that sounded much too young in his own ears. "You'll need two."
"Am I going to have as many dreadful things happen to me to-night as I was going to have when I met Mr. Corbett and Mr. Benjamin David and Mr. Height and the other theatrical people? Am I being warned again?" Mr. Vandeford accepted the teasing and laughed at himself.
"My wings are up. Go out and scratch for yourself."
"Not very far, though," Miss Adair answered. Mr. Vandeford was not sure that she moved a fraction of an inch nearer to him, but he hoped so. "I feel just the same about you as I do about Roger and I like to be going with you--into--into danger."
"Who's Roger?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.
"He's my brother, who treats me as you do. It's fun for a woman to be frightened dreadfully when she is with a man she likes." Again there was that uncertainty as to whether Miss Adair fluttered a fraction of an inch in his direction, and for the life of him Mr. Vandeford could not say whence had flown all the many ways he would have commanded ordinarily for the finding out if such were the case.
"A frightened woman is often rather--rather deadly to a man," he answered before he could stop himself. The habit of speaking out directly to Miss Adair was growing on him, he perceived, and it alarmed him.
"Into what danger are you taking me now?" asked Miss Adair with a fluty, merry laugh.
"We are going with Mr. Farraday and Miss Hawtry to see the Big Show and to the Grove Garden on the roof afterward for supper. Just a slow, usual sort of an evening, but Denny thought it would be fun for you to see the Big Show and the Big Feed and the Big Dance by way of initiation," Mr. Vandeford answered, with an entire lack of enthusiasm.
"I wanted to see what you wanted me to see this first night," Miss Adair said with the affectionate frankness of six years going on seven. "What would that be?"
"We'll see it to-morrow night," Mr. Vandeford answered her, and this time the tenderness in his voice surprised him and he considered it entirely unjustifiable.
"Mr. Height was going to take me to see Maude Adams, but I know he'll put it off again when I tell him that you want me to--"
"No, don't! Let Height get Maude Adams out of his system, for Heaven's sake," snapped Mr. Vandeford, this time in unjustifiable temper.
"Why, what is--" Miss Adair was asking of Mr. Vandeford in positive alarm when Valentine stopped before the blazing doorway of the Big Show. A functionary seven feet tall opened the door of the car and all but literally extracted them by force, for he was anxious to repeat the operation on the occupants of the car chugging behind them.
Now, there are many, many fair women born within the state lines of Old Kentucky who live calm and peaceful lives and die and are buried with no greater contrast of experience than comes from birth and death, love and hate, riches and poverty, and they never know the difference; but occasionally one bursts out of her bonds and flames her beauty over strange worlds, in foreign embassies, in the courts of St. James or Petrograd, or in an opera or theater box in New York. When this eruption occurs many sparks fly. And many sparks from bright eyes were showered on the author of "The Purple Slipper," who sat calmly unaware in the left stage-box of the Big Show that August night beside the notorious Hawtry, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and Mr. Dennis Farraday. And of the sparks no one was more conscious than both Miss Hawtry and Mr. Vandeford, while big Dennis was in a blissfully ignorant state of mind like to that of Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. Though he had been for about forty-eight hours a producer on the rear side of the footlights, Mr. Farraday still had the attitude of mind possessed by one of an audience, and he watched the stage rather than the "front." He thus failed to get the impression created by his guest from Kentucky, and blissfully left Mr. Vandeford to deal with her sensations derived from the show. Mr. Vandeford had his hands full.
To Miss Adair the Big Show was a series of mental and moral and artistic explosions. She sat with delight through the Japanese acrobats and Swiss quartette of yodelers, and she welcomed pretty, pert little Mazie Villines with enthusiasm that gradually faded into horror as that artist flaunted more and more lingerie and "dished the dirt" which the inebriate playwright, at that moment engaged in "putting pep" into Miss Adair's own beloved "Purple Slipper," née "The Renunciation of Rosalind," had supplied. The "dirt" was received by the audience at large with a hilarious joy that entirely justified the managers of the Big Show for keeping Mazie busy "dishing."
However, all things come to an end, and with a last provocative, revealing kick Mazie was allowed to depart and give way to a pair of young dancers who promised to display wares more wholesome.
Without knowing why he did it, Mr. Vandeford leaned forward so that his left ear was within reach of the whisper of Miss Adair's lips as she turned her head and tilted it like a droopy flower toward his.
"I've only seen Sarah Bernhardt and John Drew and Maude Adams and Mansfield and Joe Jefferson and Arliss and the Coburns, up in Louisville," she faltered with her eyes questioning his and wide open with horror.
"These next ones aren't so bad, and we'll go before any more come on that--that you won't like," he whispered in return. He had glanced through the program and seen that the climax would be an exhibition of jungle courtship by one of America's most notorious women and her partner, done to extreme negroid melody.
"Thank you," she murmured as she turned to watch the willowy youth and maid go through some very beautiful movements of the dance that was entirely unobjectionable. In two minutes she had turned her face, beaming with pleasure, so that Mr. Vandeford could see that all was well with her; and ten minutes later she giggled out loud at the repartee of two black-faced artists.
During the respite that his knowledge of the numbers on the program gave him, Mr. Vandeford did more of his peculiar brand of thinking, and reached a diplomatic conclusion. By the intermission, which came just before the jungle "big number" to give late comers time to gather in for their salacious feast, he was ready to act.
"Miss Adair and I are going to get a breath of air," he announced.
"But the big number is next, and she might miss it," objected Miss Hawtry, with solicitude for Miss Adair's pleasure. Mr. Vandeford had thought past just that objection delivered by Miss Hawtry, and he knew that in no way must he seem to be shielding the author of "The Purple Slipper" from the salaciousness that gave Miss Hawtry great joy. If he went too far in any act of comparative analysis he would bring danger upon "The Purple Slipper," with whose fate Miss Adair's was one.
"We'll be back in plenty of time," he lied.
"Be sure!" Miss Hawtry commanded, and then turned to devote herself to Mr. Farraday, who was laying himself out to salve what he thought must be her pain at the loss of his beloved friend. The Violet had soon caught his attitude toward her, and was encouraging his chivalry in every way possible by the most pensive of poses as the generous deserted. Such a situation is all to a woman's advantage if she knows how to work it, and Miss Hawtry possessed that knowledge.
"Van ought to have a medical degree for operating young girls' eyes open, and making them see rose-colored for a while," she said with a good-humored smile and a soft little sigh, as she raised her Irish eyes in all their softness to Mr. Farraday's.
To this insinuation, founded on an implied lie as far as the Hawtry was concerned, Mr. Farraday made no reply, but turned to greet with fitting applause the great dancer, on whose account one of the American artistic bright lights had been extinguished forever, and in ten seconds was inwardly thanking Vandeford for extracting Miss Adair before she had felt the blighting smirch of the big number. While Mr. Farraday watched the exhibition before him, Mr. Vandeford was amusing the child of their joint solicitude by letting her look at the white lights. While waiting at the curb before the Big Show for the large dignitary in uniform to summon Valentine, he had directed that worthy to have a message sent in to Miss Hawtry that they would join her at supper. Then upon the arrival of his car, he had carefully inserted Miss Adair before he had said to the puzzled Valentine:
"Drive slowly down around the circle and down Broadway, so that you can come back just while the theater crowd is on."
Some instinct had led Mr. Vandeford to choose exactly the panacea to soothe Miss Adair's shock--the lights of Broadway.
"It's like fairy-land," she gasped, as they rolled down past Forty-seventh Street. "Oh, look at the kitten chasing the spool, all in electric lights!"
"Wait a minute, and I'll show you an eagle flop his wings," promised Mr. Vandeford, and he was surprised that he seemed for the first time to feel the actual glory of the electric signs on his great Broadway, which is as much of an all-American institution as the shipyards in Brooklyn.
"All the world is on fire, and everybody is going to it," Miss Adair exclaimed, as Valentine made his return just as the theaters were pouring their crowds out into the seething maelstrom of the great scintillating cañon. She watched as the big car stood motionless before a stream of humanity that poured across its front wheels and then bounded forward as blue-coated arms stemmed the tide on the edges of both sidewalks for a few brief minutes in which they were allowed to progress to a street beyond, where they were again halted, wedged in with other impatient, purring cars.
In a limousine next her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" assiduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his cushions in triumphant inebriety. Also, while she and Vandeford waited, she saw a guardian spinster shoo a bevy of school-girls across in front of the cars, and turn in the middle of the street to reprove a college boy for a laughing word tossed to the combined bevy, while the blue arms on both sidewalks waved her into haste so that they might unleash their restrained monster motors. Everywhere protective men had women's arms fastened within their own and were shoving through the throng, while other men and women jostled along by themselves, or in companies of twos and threes, with laughing good nature. Fakirs were crying many wares, and in and out squirmed newsboys calling war extras in words that seemed to imply that New York was being shelled from the sea, but did not make that exact statement.
"It's all the world, and I'm a part of it," Miss Adair again said, and Mr. Vandeford was again surprised at himself that he was not surprised to find tears glinting in the sea-gray eyes raised to his.
"This is the Big Show," he said with a little answering thrill in his own voice, as the enormity of the scene he had witnessed night after night broke on him for the first time.
"They all live here and sleep here and eat here and work here and--and--love here," she said softly, and smiled, for again the limousine with the embracing lovers had paused by the side of Valentine's car, and the embrace still held.
"No, the sleepers and eaters and workers of New York were in bed long ago. Everybody you see here in this push has his or her vital wires connected up at Squeedunck, Illinois, or Zanesville, Indiana or--"
"Or in Adairville, Kentucky," Miss Adair added with a laugh.
"No, you belong--anywhere. Creative people ought to have no--no home wires," Mr. Vandeford answered, and there was a queer sadness in his voice that he did not himself understand. "People with messages must have masses to hand them to. That's why you came, and, I suppose, must stay."
"Yes," answered Miss Adair, "I want to stay--if you'll let me."
"I can't do otherwise," Mr. Vandeford answered her. Then he turned and looked her full in her serious eyes. "But if you stay you will have to accept broad standards, or suffer."
"That Mazie woman?"
"Maybe worse."
She sat silent until, a few moments later, Valentine drew up again at the curb before the Big Show, which had been out long enough to disperse most of its crowd, and was now receiving supper guests for the Garden Grove above.
"I'm going to stay--with you--and 'The Purple Slipper,'" she announced, as he reached into the car for her and swung her to the pavement.
"Goes!" he answered, with mingled emotions, which he could not have analyzed.
Miss Adair was as good as her word. She accepted the reveling crowd of the garden, looked upon the abandon of drinking women and men, with only a slightly hunted expression in her eyes, and with her slim white hands applauded Simone when that artist made most audacious slings of her supple body in its scant clothing. She beamed upon the dancer when, as Mrs. Trevor, she came, at Mr. Farraday's invitation, to have a glass of champagne with them, and she quailed only once, when a band of extremely young girls, clothed in filmy garments, took tiny search-lights and went merrily hunting among the tables of laughing men and women after the lights had been put out for the sport. Her horror at observing Mr. Vandeford, who sat between her and the narrow aisle take various moneys from his pocket to defend himself from successive hunters, made her pale, and the moment the lights were flashed on again she rose to go.
"Wonder what they'll do next," muttered Mr. Farraday, as he helped her into her wrap. Mr. Vandeford was not looking at his author or speaking. Once when he had put his hand in his pocket to get out a coin for one of the teasing girls with her search-light he had felt the Y. W. C. A. latch-key there, and it had short-circuited him entirely.
"I know you are tired. It takes some time to get the New York pace, but you'll strike it. I think I'll stay to see the next Folly with Mr. Farraday," he heard the Violet saying to Miss Adair, and still short-circuited, he went with his calm young author down to the car. The hour was one-thirty, and a moon had climbed the heights of the Broadway cañon. Valentine, with some sort of psychic direction, went across Central Park and down wide, clean, silent, and dimly lighted Fifth Avenue. Both Mr. Vandeford and Miss Adair were silent, and he was not aware that she was crying until just before they turned into her side street.
"They were so young, those girls, and they--they didn't want to--to do that," she said with little catches in her beautiful, slurring, Blue-grass voice.
"Maybe they didn't; but they wouldn't go back now, not one," he answered her.
She was silenced, and stood quiet beside him as he opened the door of the big, gloomy, protective building, with the key the woman of another world than his had intrusted to him.
"I know," she said at last, as she held out her hand to him. And because it trembled ever so slightly and was cold, he put his warm lips to it for a second before he handed her into a great international safety. He remembered the key, but he didn't give it to her. Somehow he wanted it himself. He liked the feel of it in his pocket.
"Wish I had Denny locked up in the Christian association!" he growled to himself as Valentine whirled him home.
Just at that exact moment Mr. Dennis Farraday sat in Miss Violet Hawtry's Louis Quinze parlor at the Claridge, engaged in tenderly and awkwardly patting that star's sobbing white shoulder, as she lay on just such a couch as Manon Lescaut probably had had for just such scenes.
"I don't blame him at all," sobbed Miss Hawtry, provocatively, with the art of long practice both on the stage and off. "My kind always loses to hers when the time comes."
"Don't!" pleaded Mr. Farraday. It was all he could or was willing to plead at that moment.
"But I want to make good in this play for him and her--and you--before I go out of his life forever. I want to repay him with--with both money and happiness. He made me an artist." With these words Miss Hawtry made an acknowledgment of the truth that she herself really believed to be untrue, because she saw that to praise Mr. Vandeford was the best way to blind Mr. Farraday while she approached him in that blindness. She knew that his loyalty to his David would be a barrier unless she used it as a ladder.
"My God! How--how great women are!" was the immediate and hoped-for response she drew from the big Jonathan.
"My art must fill my life now. Only there will be--friendship. You make me see that by the comfort of your kindness." Miss Hawtry laid her flushed cheek in the hollow of good Dennis's big warm hand. The moment was tense, but Hawtry had timed her line a little too far ahead, and it failed to get across. The prey was as embarrassed as a girl and, with another brotherly pat, arose to go.
"You'll always let me do anything I can, won't you?" he asked as he looked down upon her for a second, then took a considerate departure.
"Boob!" muttered Hawtry to herself, as she rose and rang for Susette.
There are in this little old world many men like Dennis Farraday; only none of its inhabitants admit their existence.
After the evening of the introduction of its author to Broadway, things spun fast and furiously in the business of producing "The Purple Slipper," and during the whirlwind of the day Miss Adair sat either in her own private office or in the chair beside Mr. Vandeford, and reveled in the excitement, and in the evenings did other revelings. She had her evening with Mr. Height under the spell of Barrie and Maude Adams, and Mr. Vandeford swore under his breath when she reported to him that they had gone to the concert on the roof of the Waldorf for an hour, and had got back to her abiding-place in time not to need the latch-key, which still reposed in his pocket. He knew Gerald Height, and he was puzzled and alarmed at this wary approach.
Mrs. Farraday came to town, and the dinner-party in her staid, old Washington Square home, with himself and Miss Lindsey and Miss Adair as guests, was like a day's vacation for Mr. Vandeford. Also, he got a complete off-guard picture of Miss Adair as he would see her in Adairville, Kentucky, for she and the beautiful and stately Mrs. Farraday spoke the same language and had the same forms.
"My dear child, you positively must come up to Westchester for this week-end! Matilda Van Tyne is going to come for the first blooming of the rhododendrons in the West Marsh, and I feel sure that she must have known your mother in some of her visits to Lexington. She must see you and hear all about the play. Now, Dennis, make all the arrangements." Mrs. Farraday gave her commands as a queen is accustomed to deliver them.
"May I go?" Miss Adair asked of Mr. Vandeford, her shining gray eyes raised to his with deference and confidence as usual.
"You may," answered Mr. Vandeford, aware that Mrs. Farraday's keen eyes of the world were fixed upon him in a speculative way. "The rehearsals will begin at eleven on Monday, and you can be back in plenty of time."
"And, Miss Lindsey, will you come, too, with Miss Adair?" Mrs. Farraday surprised both her son and Mr. Vandeford by asking the young Westerner with the greatest graciousness. It was evident that the young leading lady had put herself across with the grand dame, and both Mr. Vandeford and Mr. Farraday rejoiced.
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Farraday, but I have made a professional engagement for Saturday evening. I am going to do a monologue stunt to fill in at the Colonial," Miss Lindsey answered, with pleasure at the invitation shining in her dark eyes.
"Then Dennis can drive down on Sunday and bring you back in time for tea and to see the sunset on the rhododendrons." Mrs. Farraday further surprised her son and Mr. Vandeford by giving this command the imperiousness with which she was accustomed to issue her much-sought-after invitations.
"Great!" exclaimed Mr. Farraday, with the same sort of eager kindness shining in his eyes as Miss Lindsey had met when he had asked her if beefsteak and mushrooms would be the thing for her starvation. The memory of that day made Miss Lindsey's eyes dim as she accepted the invitation, though she had had hope of a last minute chance to do a little Sunday "stunt" for Keith somewhere in subway New York. And Miss Lindsey needed the money, for a hundred dollars doesn't go far in New York even when carried in the pocket of a gown donned in the Y. W. C. A.; but she needed the rhododendrons and the tea more than she needed the material things that the extra fifty picked up at Keith's would have purchased.
"Thank you, Mrs. Farraday, it would be--be 'great' to come that way," Miss Lindsey answered. Both Mr. Vandeford and Mr. Farraday, as well as Miss Adair, were struck with the sudden beauty that illumined Miss Lindsey's dark face as she smiled and quoted Mr. Farraday in her acceptance of his mother's invitation.
"Is or is not little Lindsey a beauty, Denny?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as they drove up-town in the Surreness after depositing the girls at their nunnery.
"I was just wondering," answered Mr. Farraday. "I'm mighty glad she made such a hit with the mater."
"And I'm mighty glad I'm going to lose the author of 'The Purple Slipper' into the wilds of Westchester and the rhododendrons, while I extract her play from Howard and slash it myself and help Rooney to mutilate it further," said Mr. Vandeford.
"Of course you are going to the mater's with Miss Lindsey and me for tea, per usual?" asked Mr. Farraday.
"Can't do it. Got to work on 'The Purple Slipper' while you people frolic. Good-night!" With which refusal and taunt Mr. Vandeford left Mr. Farraday at the door of his apartment-house.
Mr. Farraday looked at his watch as he started away from the curb, found the hour to be eleven o'clock, wabbled the machine first to the right and then to the left, and finally turned down-town, in which direction the Claridge reared its twelve stories of masonry at the corner of Forty-fourth and Sixth.
At about that minute these were the remarks exchanged through the open door that connected two little cell-like rooms at the Y. W. C. A.:
"Aren't you going to bed right away? I'm so sleepy that I'm brushing my face instead of my hair," Miss Adair called to Miss Lindsey. A desperate and continual desire for sleep is the pest that haunts the rural visitor to New York and Miss Adair's young health was easily its prey. She did not readily learn to run on nerves.
"You go to bed; but I've got to let the hem of my tailored linen down two inches, so it will brush against those rhododendrons as a lady's should, and sew up the opening in the neck of my chiffon blouse an inch and a half, so I won't spill any of Mrs. Farraday's tea down it. Good-night!" It goes to say that when Greek meets Vandal or the East meets the West, dents occur.
And, as Mrs. Farraday had commanded, the rhododendron party at West Marsh came to pass, to the vast enjoyment of all present, though Mr. Vandeford's absence was a deprivation to the entire company. And that night their friendly hearts would have ached if they had been able to get a vision of his strenuosity. Godfrey Vandeford, Theatrical Producer, was in full action, and chips from "The Purple Slipper" were flying in all directions.
In his bedroom in the Seventy-third Street apartment, Mr. Vandeford was stripped for the fray--to his silk pajamas--and he lay stretched upon his fumed-oak bed, with both reading-lights turned on full blaze. In his hands was the manuscript of "The Purple Slipper," which Mazie Villines had literally torn from under the hands of Grant Howard to deliver to Mr. Vandeford on Saturday afternoon, just a day later than the time set for its deliverance.
"My check and Grant's down, or no play," she had said upon entering Mr. Vandeford's apartment at about the setting of the Saturday sun. "He's off for a two week's d.t., and I gotter take care of him. Twelve-fifty is the way to write it."
"Six hundred, and not a cent more without Grant's signature," answered Mr. Vandeford. Mr. Adolph Meyers, who was listening to the conversation from the hall from which he had ushered Miss Villines into Mr. Vandeford's library, set a spring-lock on the entrance door of the apartment, and entered the library unobtrusively.
"Twelve-fifty, you old dollar-skinner!" averred the vaudeville star, with a nasty little laugh.
"Don't try to pull off a hold-up, Mazie. It won't work. It's Grant's money," said Mr. Vandeford, with an icy calmness in his voice. And as she spoke he looked at Mr. Adolph Meyers, who answered the look with perfect comprehension.
"Then you'll get the manuscript when hell freezes over or your wad loosens," she again laughed, and this time turned toward the door with the square manila portfolio under her arm.
An interested spectator could not have said afterward just how it did happen that in half a second the manila portfolio was in the hands of Mr. Adolph Meyers, who also bore upon his left cheek a long and profusely bleeding scratch.
"Here's your check, child, and keep a good grip on Grant, so he can't get started toward East River as he did last time," Mr. Vandeford said as he handed an already prepared check to the enraged girl. She was dumb for a second, no longer.
"I was going to leave it for five hundred, you old white-skinned bluffer with your goose-grease, strong arm," she finally blurted out, and in a twinkling of her bright eyes her good-nature had returned. "Say, that is some play now, and I wish you'd let me play a dance girl at that dinner-party. I'd do it refined." There was a queer little appeal in the mobile young face. "I'd like to doll up like a lady."
"I'll think that over, Mazie," answered Mr. Vandeford. "A song and dance from you might go all right."
"Gimme a call, will you? I'll be on the job with my guzzler for a week now. I got to get him past, for he's some meal-ticket when times is dull." As Mazie disposed of the check in her stocking, a degree of affectionate anxiety for the condition of Mr. Grant Howard showed in her face for the fraction of a second, then disappeared as she looked at Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"Come on and get my wad from where I've put it, if you dare, Dolph," she challenged, then laughed, as the imperturbable Mr. Meyers both ignored and showed her to the door with all courtesy.
And as he lay on his bed reading over the Howard manuscript of "The Purple Slipper," which had just returned to him after a twenty-four hour overhauling and annotation for action by Mr. William Rooney, the stage director with the top price, Mr. Vandeford said to Mr. Adolph Meyers, who sat at a table beside the bed, taking down and inserting notes into the manuscript as they sprang from Mr. Vandeford's brain, almost before they got past his lips:
"No wonder Mazie could see herself in this show, Pops! Grant has pepped it up almost to her standard. Whee-ugh!" With this whistle Mr. Vandeford turned page twenty of the first act and handed it over to Mr. Meyers, who began to devour it with eyes that took in almost the whole page at a glance.
"It is a snap-shot of Miss Hawtry he has made, Mr. Vandeford, sir. Mr. Howard has never done better."
"Yes, that's what he intended to do, but I'm going to clean it out a bit. Run an insert of the scene on page five to seven and a half out of Miss Adair's manuscript. It is just as good and a little--little more--say, Pops, cut out seven lines on page fourteen from the second down, and take this from me instead." Mr. Vandeford closed his eyes and dictated a bit of dialogue between two of the minor characters of "The Purple Slipper," which cleared up a point Mr. Howard and Mr. Rooney and the original author had all left at loose ends. As he dictated, Mr. Meyers wrote on the blank page opposite the lines, and made some cabalistic signs for insertion.
Slowly they progressed through the first act, Mr. Vandeford reading from two manuscripts and reconciling Mr. Howard's shaky, pen annotations, Mr. Rooney's blue-pencil, action directions, and Miss Adair's original wanderings from the point with many brilliant returns in quaint dialogue.
"That child has got more brains and uses them less than would seem possible," growled Mr. Vandeford, as he with a few deft lines near the close of the second act got the heroine off the stage and out of an impossible situation in which Miss Adair had involved her.
"It is that her characters talk with interest, but act in awkwardness, Mr. Vandeford, sir. Another good play can be written by Miss Adair," Mr. Meyers said as he put in two lines and a cross star sign.
"God forbid!" ejaculated Mr. Vandeford, in all sincerity. "Here, Pops, get this first act down to those girls waiting in the office. Did you get two for all night, so one could get out the parts? You know Rooney will expect a reading to-morrow before he begins rehearsals."
"It is three girls now waiting at the office for the night, and a messenger in your hall, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Meyers as he gathered up his annotated pages, put them into a new manila portfolio, and rose to take them to the A. D. T. boy asleep on the floor in the hall.
"We haven't rushed in a manuscript like this since 'Dear Geraldine,' have we, Pops?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he picked up the second act. "It's just nine o'clock, and those girls ought to get through by three A. M. Don't let Steinberg charge up twelve hours on you."
"It will be at eight that they are still working, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and night type-writing means much money," Mr. Meyers answered, as he departed with his package.
"At that we'd better get busy to feed it to 'em," Mr. Vandeford said, as he picked up and began to dig into the pages.
For the three hours ensuing he and his henchman worked with never a hitch in their growls and scratches and muttered exchanges. Then, as they came close to the climax of the last act, Mr. Vandeford sat up from his pillows, which were heated almost beyond endurance with his night lights and his tousled head, and gave forth a roar.
"I'll be hanged if I'll let that scene between Rosalind and her lover go with that filthy twist that Howard has given it! The words are almost the original, but what will Hawtry make of what he's put into it?"
"It will be the worst she makes," answered Mr. Meyers. "But it is for pep very good, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and can be tried out."
"That's right, Pops. I wonder if I am a Broadway producer or--or the czar of a young ladies' seminary," Mr. Vandeford growled as he lay down, and again went to work.
"It is that Miss Adair will not understand it until Miss Hawtry is at work, and before that all may be dead," Mr. Meyers consoled, as he, too, fell upon "The Purple Slipper."
At two-thirty the now soggy A. D. T. received the last manila envelope to deliver to the busy girls down in Mr. Vandeford's office, and that distinguished producer was stretched out on his bed in cool darkness while Mr. Meyers was in a subway nodding his way up to his humble room on One Hundred and Sixteenth Street.
"If I live through seeing her past the reading of the blamed thing to-morrow, I'll be stronger than I think I am," Mr. Vandeford murmured as he felt the calmness of sleep fall upon him.
