Blue-grass and Broadway
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
canon. 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