Blue-grass and Broadway
imported. The flush did not pass unnoticed by Mr. Vandeford, as he
laughed again with a question as to her nourishing.
"I want something that I don't know what the name means," calmly
returned Miss Adair, with delighted excitement at the thought of
adventuring into a land of strange food. "I know steak and ham and eggs
and chicken and turkey."
"Will you trust me?" asked Mr. Vandeford. There was an eagerness in his
voice and smile that again made the Violet glance at him and then at Mr.
Dennis Farraday. The latter was beaming with mirth at the dilemma of
feeding the young author who was so frankly scattering her hay-seeds on
the metropolitan atmosphere. At that instant Miss Hawtry made a
momentous decision.
"Trust Mr. Vandeford and you can't go wrong," she advised with peaches
and cream in her voice, and for some unknown reason Mr. Vandeford would
have been glad to twist the creamy throat from which issued the creamy
voice. Instead, he turned, calmly summoned the head waiter, and went
into a conference with him in a few very discreet words, which the rest
could not hear, though there was no sign of any intention of keeping the
consultation from them.
"I think it will be wonderful not to know until I taste it and maybe not
then!" exclaimed the author, with another of her sea-gray, long-lashed
glances of worshiping admiration at Mr. Vandeford, the eminent Broadway
producer who was putting a great star into her play based on the
adventures of an ancestress.
Of course the situation was dangerous to both Mr. Vandeford and his
author, but who was to blame?
And the jolly, impromptu luncheon-party was not the kind of episode that
could soon be forgotten by any of the guests. The unknown food for the
author was served by the head waiter himself, and he refused to answer
questions as to its origin or component parts, even when urged by Mr.
Dennis Farraday. The expression on Miss Lindsey's face after her
encounter with the steak and mushrooms, served with an exalted baked
potato, was one of decided relaxation. The look of affection in her eyes
as she glanced at the author who had dragged her into this food
situation rivaled the suddenly rooted admiration which beamed in the
eyes of Mr. Dennis Farraday and which put Miss Hawtry alertly on watch,
so much so that Mr. Godfrey Vandeford was privileged to lean back in his
chair behind a mist of cigarette-smoke and let his eyes gleam where they
listed.
"Now tell us just how you happened to think of all the wonderful things
in your play, Miss Adair, specially that dinner situation," Mr. Dennis
Farraday urged. He was lighting Miss Hawtry's cigarette, to the intense,
though concealed, interest and astonishment of Miss Adair of Adairville,
Kentucky. He thus asked sincerely and interestedly the usual question
that the unsophisticated fires at an author at the first opportunity and
which the author, no matter how sophisticated, really enjoys answering.
And thereupon followed the story of the old letters in the trunk, with
the mortgage only so lightly and proudly alluded to that the hearts of
the listeners were decidedly touched, told by the author with the
delighted enthusiasm that their sympathy warranted.
"And so you see, since it couldn't be oil-wells or gold mines it had to
be the play," she ended, quoting herself in her conversation with the
faithful Roger, who was at that moment following his plow with his mind
on the straight furrows and his heart in New York.
"You are a precious darling, and your play _must_ succeed!" said Miss
Lindsey impulsively at the end of the recital, and then she quickly
glanced at Mr. Godfrey Vandeford to see if he resented her taking this
affectionate liberty with his distinguished author. She found that
eminent producer not at home to her glance; he was lost in contemplation
of tears that hung on the long black lashes that veiled Miss Adair's
gray eyes and a little quiver that manifested itself on her red lips.
Then she shook off the tears by lifting those long lashes so that she
could look straight into his eyes with a smile of absolute confidence in
his intention and ability to remove from her life forever all of her
distress, which was alone poverty in the concrete, by being the
successful producer of her wonderful play. Men of Godfrey Vandeford's
type admit many strange fires and their votaries into the outer temple
of their hearts, but they keep the inner shrine tightly surrounded by
asbestos curtains. However, there is always one, and one only, closely
guarded entrance through which the ultimate woman must slip in an
unguarded moment. Mr. Godfrey Vandeford would never have thought of
being on any particular guard against the author of a play in purple
ribbons entitled "The Renunciation of Rosalind," but he knew almost
instantly that something dire had happened to him as he sat and writhed
at the thought of his plans for the extinction of that piece of dramatic
art, which he had not even read. The whole sophisticated world has
decided that there is no such thing as love at first sight, except the
biological scientists and they know and can prove that such a thing does
exist and that it is a worker of wonders. And dire pain is one of its
reactions.
But all agony comes to an end and so did Mr. Vandeford's. Miss Hawtry,
who had been so busy in her own mind with her own schemes that she had
no time to listen to Miss Adair's, picked up her gloves from beside her
final coffee-cup, and pulled the fine-meshed veil down over her
beautiful, though slightly snubbed, nose as a signal for a separation of
the group of feasters.
"May I motor you to your hotel, Miss Adair?" she asked very sweetly. Of
course Patricia did not know that she had got in her invitation at the
first signal of the feasters' disintegration, which she herself had
given, for the purpose of forestalling a similar invitation from Mr.
Farraday, whose Surreness she knew must be moored somewhere near. "Where
are you stopping?" she asked with very little interest, and received an
answer that almost upset her equanimity.
"I'm staying at the Young Women's Christian Association," calmly
announced the author of "The Purple Slipper," with no sense of
embarrassment in either voice or manner. "Thank you for offering to take
me there, but Mr. Farraday is going to take Miss Lindsey and me to buy a
hat at a place which Miss Lindsey knows of. She is going to buy one,
too, now that she is going to play in our play."
"The Y. W. C. A.! Great guns!" muttered Mr. Vandeford under his breath,
while the Violet leaned back in her chair and fanned herself.
Then very suddenly Mr. Vandeford sat up and looked at Miss Mildred
Lindsey keenly for half a second.
"We'll have to go back to the office to get that check for Miss Lindsey
before we go hat-hunting," announced good Dennis, with a calmness that
made Mr. Vandeford suspect that he had met the fact of the eminent
author's abiding-place before and had got used to it. "You and Miss
Hawtry going over to the office, Van, or will you come with us, if she
has other folderols to follow in a different direction?"
"I am to see Adelaide about my costumes for 'The Purple Slipper' at
two-twenty, so must forego the pleasure of--of hat-hunting this
afternoon," Violet murmured faintly. "But I know Mr. Vandeford will
adore going with you." Miss Hawtry felt that safety lay in numbers, and
she preferred to leave the unsophistication of Miss Adair with both Mr.
Godfrey Vandeford and Mr. Dennis Farraday than with either of them
alone.
"I wish I could get out after the hat, but you people must remember that
I am putting on 'The Purple Slipper,' and I have to be about Miss
Adair's business while old Denny buzzes about hat roses, free and equal
with her," answered Mr. Vandeford. His envy, apparent in his voice, of
the care-free state of Mr. Farraday was very real, though none of the
others could guess its meaning. "I'll see all of you later. By!" and
with a sign to the head waiter, which tied tight Mr. Farraday's
purse-strings, Mr. Vandeford left them while the going was good. So
determined was his exit that Miss Hawtry could not keep him back for the
finish of the fight.
And Mr. Vandeford was in a mortal hurry. He had much to do and undo. He
arrived at his office, three squares away, slightly out of breath.
"Did you see her, Pops?" he demanded of Mr. Adolph Meyers.
"I did, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and here is a carbon of the letter I sent
her, not with any encouragement to come to New York at all," and in
self-defense he handed out to Mr. Vandeford a copy of the letter Roger
had delivered to Patricia among her roses and young onions and
string-beans.
"Take it away," commanded Mr. Vandeford, seating himself at his desk and
wildly shunting papers and letters about.
"Mr. Vandeford, sir, I am sorry for that young lady and I ask you to
have a heart," Mr. Meyers ventured to say to his chief with a boldness
which he himself could not understand, but with which Mr. Vandeford was
strangely patient. He ended with, "It will be a nobleness for you to not
produce a cold show for her, but pay a small damage sum for such a
beautiful lady and call it all off."
"My God, Pops, I'd give half the 'Rosie Posie' to be able to do it! But
Denny and Violet and that girl they engaged for support have already
filled her full of success dope about the play, and if I call it off
arbitrarily, where shall I stand with her?" Ignorance of the
completeness of his own capitulation to the faith and tears in the
sea-gray eyes, and the genuine, grown-on-the-spot blush from Adairville,
Kentucky, showed in the consternation with which he asked the question
of his henchman.
"'Stand with her'!" repeated Mr. Meyers, with a consternation that
matched his chief's, but was of different origin. "You had no such fear
when you called off from rehearsals in the second week the comedy of Mr.
Hinkle, and a fourth of the damages paid to him will to her be--"
"Get to work under your hat, Pops, get to work! The 'Purple Slipper' has
got to go on Broadway and go big. I followed that purple hunch for pure
cussedness against Violet, and now watch it lead me by the nose. You
get Gerald Height on the wire as soon as you can, while I talk to
Rooney."
"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is not a Hawtry play, and--"
"Get busy, get busy, Pops! Put a copy of that manuscript on my desk
where I can lay hands on it the minute I get a chance. Get everything
going for a week later than I first called the show and--"
* * * * *
"Here we are!" exclaimed Mr. Dennis Farraday, as he burst into the outer
office, ushering as a wedge before him Miss Patricia Adair and Miss
Mildred Lindsey. "Got that hat-check, Pops? Money, I mean, for Miss
Lindsey, not a pasteboard for your own lid from some hotel."
For a minute Mr. Vandeford lost himself in the depths of the worshiping,
gray eyes that seemed to have been lifted to his for all eternity in
that terrible faith and gratitude. Then he went into action as captain
of the ship which was to come into the port of Adairville, Kentucky,
with all sails set, loaded or bearing his dead body.
"You and Miss Adair extract money from Pops with a can-opener while I
discuss a few details with Miss Lindsey, in the office," he commanded
coolly, ushered Miss Lindsey into the sanctum and softly closed the
door.
"Mr. Vandeford," Miss Lindsey began rapidly, "I knew it wasn't fair to
make any definite arrangements with Mr. Farraday, and of course I will
take whatever salary you--"
"Where do you live, Miss Lindsey?" Mr. Vandeford interrupted to ask with
a totally unwarranted interest on the part of a manager in the affairs
of an actor he has engaged. Miss Lindsey, for the second time that day,