Blue-grass and Broadway
"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,"