Blue-grass and Broadway
pounds when in training for the heavy mother," he genially admonished a
very large lady of uncertain age--an age artfully covered with rouge,
powder, pencil, and lip-stick--who sank into the chair facing him with a
pathetic remnant of the former lissome grace which had got her as far as
being a dependable leading woman to any star who could go her a few
points better.
"Well, it's not from living on large salaries from you that I have put
on the pounds, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford!" she answered with a jovial laugh.
"Still eating half of old Wallace Kent's salary checks?" Mr. Vandeford
demanded. This seemed a lack of delicacy to Mr. Dennis Farraday, who
blushed with a color equal to that which rose in the cheeks of the old
beauty as her eyes snapped and she rose to her feet.
"As you know, he's feeding a squab chicken at Rector's to get her into
the broiler class. Good-day, sir," and she prepared to sweep out of the
office with all the fire she had used in many a queenly situation.
"Good old Bebe," Mr. Vandeford said, as he rose and put a restraining
arm around her broad waist. "I was just teasing to see what was
smouldering. How'll seventy-five a week, with costumes of frills and
powdered hair, do you? Thirty sides and the center of the stage four
times." "Sides," meaning single sheets of dialogue, puzzled Mr.
Farraday, but he made a mental note to seek enlightenment.
"I haven't had a part this winter, Godfrey," she laughed, and sobbed on
Mr. Vandeford's shoulder. "I'm living in a suitcase at Mrs. Pinkham's."
"Stop and get a twenty-five check from Dolph, and be on the job Monday
at the Barrett Theatre. Now run!" Mr. Vandeford gave Miss Bebe Herne's
two hundred pounds of avoirdupois a gentle shove toward the door, which
hint she took with an alacrity that had in it a great deal of left-over
grace.
"Supported a lot of big guns for years. Knows her business better than
any actress on Broadway," said Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to his horrified
confrere as the door closed behind the old beauty. "Picked up Wallace
Kent when he was a piffling, faded juvenile, and taught him to be a good
elderly support worth his hundred to any director. He's left her flat
for a pony in the Big Show, old hound!"
"Pretty raw," observed Mr. Dennis Farraday, with a great deal of emotion
very poorly concealed in his sympathetic voice.
"Oh, she's had her fling in life! Dopes a bit, but can be depended upon.
Next!"
This time there entered a husky, young brute of a boy with shoulders
broad enough to run a double-decker plough. His hair was long and
sleeked close to his well-shaped head, but his fine mouth and chin
sagged, and his eyes were bold and sophisticated. In costume he was the
glass and mould of Broadway fashion.
"Reginald Leigh," he announced himself in a nice voice, and, as he
spoke, took from a case a card and laid it on the edge of Mr.
Vandeford's desk.
"Experience, Mr. Leigh?" asked Mr. Vandeford, still standing and with
not an atom of encouragement in his whole body from head to toe.
"College dramatics and last summer in stock at Buffalo. I've worked in
two pictures for the Universal."
"Heavy juvenile at fifty a week," offered Mr. Vandeford, with an
indifferent glance up from the paper in his hand prepared for his
guidance by the indefatigable Mr. Meyers. The word "handsome" was typed
in the offer from which Mr. Vandeford made to Mr. Leigh.
"My price is a hundred, Mr. Vandeford," answered Mr. Leigh, very
pleasantly, and he took a grip on his hat and stick that was meant to
convey the idea of immediate departure.
"Sorry," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a finality that staggered Mr.
Dennis Farraday; for the youngster's looks and charm were so evident
that it pained him to see "The Purple Slipper" lose them. "Costumes
historical, furnished," added Mr. Vandeford, with increased
indifference.
"Oh, in that case--" murmured the boy, almost, but not quite, unleashing
his eagerness.
"Just leave your telephone number with Mr. Meyers in the outer office,
please. Good-morning, Mr. Leigh," was the answer his concession got
along with the dismissal in the "good-morning," which was spoken in such
a tone that it was obeyed in short order.
"That is a find," said Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to the gasping Mr. Dennis
Farraday. "Handsome young chaps who have any kind of manliness are hard
to find these days. Too busy to be actors."
"Why didn't you engage him?" further gasped his partner in the adventure
of "The Purple Slipper."
"I'll let him cool his heels, to get some of the know-it out of his
system. Dolph will make him come around and beg in less than twenty-four
hours."
"See here, Van, these people are artists to whom you are trusting your
money and reputation as a producer, and you treat them like--"
"The foolish children that they are," interrupted Mr. Vandeford. "Next!"
and he pressed a button under his desk that buzzed for Mr. Meyers's ears
alone.
The next three applicants were girls, who respectively giggled,
glowered, and simpered. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford chose the two who glowered
and simpered and got rid of the giggler by referring her telephone
number to Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"That second that you sent away was the prettiest of the bunch,"
commented Mr. Dennis Farraday, with interest that had survived to that
point with undiminished intensity.
"Not at home under that little cocked hat. That giggle was the whole bag
of tricks," instructed Mr. Vandeford. "Got any men out there, Pops?" he
asked through the telephone to Mr. Adolph Meyers.
Immediately there entered a debonair, very handsome, and sleek gentleman
of uncertain age.
"Hello, Kent, want to support Bebe in a costume play for a hundred a
week?" asked Mr. Vandeford, with not an instant's greeting in answer to
that gentleman's cordial good-morning.
"In New York or on the road?" questioned Mr. Kent, with an assurance
that he tried to make bold.
"To the devil if I send you there," was the answer he got straight off
the bat.
"A hundred with costumes?"
"With costumes."
"Done."
"See Dolph; but not over ten-dollar advance to save your hide."
"He's giving fifty."
"To whom?"
"Bebe."
"He did that because he knew that you'd get half of what he gave her.
Ten's your limit."
"All right. Good-morning!"
"Barrett on Monday morning."
"All right!"
With which Mr. Kent rapidly made his exit.
"Old reprobate! But he does feed the lines to his opposite, and Bebe
happy is worth twice Bebe in a grouch. You see what the whole blamed
thing is like and--" Mr. Vandeford was interrupted by the tinkle of the
telephone at his elbow.
. . . . . .
"Godfrey Vandeford speaking."
. . . . . .
"When did you get in?"
. . . . . .
"Not busy at all."
. . . . . .
"The Claridge?"
. . . . . .
"Right away."
. . . . . .
"Haven't seen or heard from him in two days."
. . . . . .
"Right over. By!"
. . . . . .
From overhearing, as he was forced to do, this one-sided conversation,
how could Mr. Dennis Farraday imagine that Violet Hawtry had come into
sultry New York seeking him to devour and that his keeper was rushing
away from his presence to his defense?
"You and Pops engage the rest, Denny. You see the trick now. Nothing
left important but what Dolph puts down on this paper as 'woman support
for character parts with looks.' Try your hand, old man, and if you pick
a flivver there are plenty more to cast in and her out. By!" And before
Mr. Farraday could protest he was left alone in the inquisition-room.
And as Mr. Godfrey Vandeford went down in an elevator on his way to the
Claridge to deliver the next instalment of the spanking of Miss Violet
Hawtry, he passed a live wire going up opposite him and met one walking
down Forty-second Street, neither of which he could be expected to
recognize, as he had never seen either.
The first of the two dynamos walked into the office of the Vandeford
Producing Company and failed to thrill Mr. Adolph Meyers in the least, a
fact for which he could never afterward account. He motioned her into
the inner office, and left her to her fate and Mr. Dennis Farraday.
"Good-morning, Mr. Vandeford," she said in a queer, throaty kind of
voice that had in it a "come hither" of unusual quality, which
suggested that in her production a Romney woman might have loved a Greek
dancer well. She stood at ease before the long desk with a grace that
was unmistakably that of complete assurance.
"I'm not Mr. Vandeford, but his--his partner, Dennis Farraday. Er--er,
won't you be seated?" and with the happy, considerate manner of his that
he had always used to all women, he offered her his own chair and
appropriated the one of authority that Mr. Vandeford always occupied.
"Thank you," answered the young woman, with an ease equal to his own.
And then they both waited while regarding each other seriously. Finally
the tension relaxed and Dennis Farraday gave a big, jovial laugh while
he made his admission:
"I don't know a thing about the play business. I'm just sitting in with
Mr. Vandeford for the fun of it."
"An angel?" asked the girl, with a laugh that somehow accorded with
his.
"That's it. He's gone out and left me to--to cut my eye teeth."
"On me?"
"Looks that way," and again they both laughed.
"Maybe I can help you," volunteered the girl, after the laugh. "I am
Mildred Lindsey, and Mr. Chambers sent me in to see if I could support
Miss Hawtry."
"Er--er, what experience?" Mr. Dennis Farraday managed to ask by fishing
into his impressions of the last two hours.
"Five years in stock on the Pacific coast, two years in towns between,
and two weeks in a flivver here on Broadway early in the spring. Dead
broke, hungry, and about ready to make good for some manager." As the
answer was fired point-blank at him, Mr. Dennis Farraday seemed to see a
fire of psychic hunger blaze as high as that of wolfish, physical agony
in the girl's eyes.
Mr. Dennis Farraday eagerly searched on the paper of guidance in casting
made out by Mr. Adolph Meyers for the benefit of Mr. Vandeford and
found "woman support," and opposite the item of salary, seventy-five
dollars. He doubled.
"How would a hundred and fifty a week with costumes do for salary? You
can have a couple of weeks advance right now if you like," he said in an
easy, nonchalant manner as much like that of Mr. Vandeford as he could
muster, for those fires of hunger in the girl's eyes were searching
holes in Mr. Dennis Farraday's pocket.
"It would save my life--but--but could you tell me a little about the
part? I might not be able to play it." There were both hope and fear in
her compelling voice.
The question found Mr. Dennis Farraday unprepared by any precedent
established in the two foregoing hours, for between the artists and Mr.
Vandeford there had been alone the matter of salary to be settled and
not one of them had inquired whether they were being engaged to play a
Billy Sunday or an Ethiopian slave. But in another way it found him
better prepared than would have been Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. He had read
the manuscript of "The Purple Slipper" and Mr. Vandeford had not.
"Well, to my uninitiated way of thinking, the supporting part is about
as good as the leading one," said Mr. Dennis Farraday, and forthwith he
launched out on an eager, enthusiastic resume of the plot and
atmosphere, even quoting lines of "The Purple Slipper." And as he talked
Mildred Lindsey leaned across the table toward him and fairly drank in
his words.
"I see--it's wonderful how she keeps his enemies at bay during the first
half of the banquet--while she waits. It's great!" Her enthusiasm
expressed in her wonderful voice urged Mr. Dennis Farraday on and on to
a fuller exposition of the play and its beauties.