Blue-grass and Broadway
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!"
CHAPTER V
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 protege, the author
of "The Purple Slipper," to her debut 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