CHAPTER IV
"I thought of a lot of new things for my characters to say, while I was coming up from Kentucky on the train, and I want to put them in." Miss Adair further tortured Vandeford.
"This morning I am going to talk to the electrician and the costumer and the scene painter." Mr. Vandeford answered by telling her the truth, because, with her very beautiful and candid eyes beaming into his, showing both interest and consideration, he had not the power to make up any kind of lie to put her off the trail of "The Purple Slipper."
"I am so glad that I got up early and am ready to go with you! I can tell them about what my great-grandmother really wore when it all happened, and it will be such a help to them!" Miss Adair exclaimed with great business ac.u.men shining in her eyes. Mr. Vandeford gave up the fight, piloted her into his car, and gave the command, "Office!" to the very decorous, but very much interested Valentine.
As they were skimming back up the avenue and about to turn into Forty-second Street, an inspiration came to Mr. Vandeford.
"Didn"t you keep some of those costumes of the period of the play hid away in an old bra.s.s-nailed leather trunk in your garret?" he asked Miss Adair, with desperate eagerness shining in his eyes.
"Yes," Miss Adair answered readily. Then she hesitated, and the genuine blush rivaled the one in the northeast corner of the bouquet at the waist of the very chic, blue-silk suit. "That is, I did have some--"
"Have they been destroyed?" questioned Mr. Vandeford, with the greatest anxiety.
"No, not exactly," answered Miss Adair, with a distressed tremor at the corner of her curved mouth that rivaled a rose of a deeper hue in the southwest corner of the bouquet.
"I see," answered Mr. Vandeford, with great relief. "You are not just sure where they are. That"s great! You can have a talk with Mr. Corbett, who is to design the costumes, and then hop right back home in a day or two, as soon as you are rested and we"ve had a little bat on Broadway, and find them for him to use in his designs. The management will pay all the expenses and you can--can--"
Mr. Vandeford cast around in his mind for some other business in connection with "The Purple Slipper" that would keep the author thereof busy and contented in Adairville, Kentucky, out of the clutches of Violet and out of the way of his stage director until it all was running smoothly.
"How about your getting a lot of photographs of the house in which it all happened?" he went on. Vaguely he felt photography must be a slow process in Adairville, Kentucky.
Also, in his heart he was forced to acknowledge that his inspiration for getting the author out of the way of her own play while it was being murdered was not entirely original. Tradition had told him, whether truly or not, that at a certain crucial moment in the butchering and rehearsal of "The Great Divide" the poet-author, Moody, had been sent West to hunt a genuine war costume for a great Indian war-chief, his favorite written character, and on his return with the trophy had found the Indian cut entirely and forever from the play.
"Those dresses would be the greatest help you could give us now," he urged with an inward chuckle at the thought of the trick on the great poet, which froze in his heart as he observed two tears balanced on the black lashes of the lovely sea-gray eyes lowered away from his.
"What"s the matter?" he gasped, in desperate fear that the Moody Indian story had penetrated to the wilds of Adairville, Kentucky. "You"d only be gone a few days, and everything could wait until you came back. I wouldn"t turn a wheel without you, and--" he committed himself deeper and deeper at every step.
"I"ve had the dresses all made over, and this is one. I"ve hurt my play just because I wanted to look pretty in New York! I"m humiliated with myself. As if anybody cared how I look; and the play--" The soft little slurs stopped and the beautiful old-blue-silk-clad shoulder trembled slightly against his shoulder as a little ghost of a sob came to the surface and was suppressed while the home-made color faded from beneath two tears that fell from the black lashes.
"Oh, please forgive me, child! It doesn"t matter at all, and--"
"You oughtn"t to forgive me," the voice trembled on. "Miss Hawtry would have been wonderful in that dinner dress my grandmother wore, and I--I"ve had two made out of it! I can give them to her and tell her how to put them together again with--"
"You"ll do nothing of the kind!" fairly snapped Mr. Vandeford. Then he broke the record in his own thinking processes and decided for the second time to tell the whole truth to this country girl with her mixture of hay-seeds and patrician airs. He directed Valentine to Central Park and made a clean breast of it. It is a pleasure to record that at the Moody Indian story Patricia laughed until two other tears ran down her cheeks, but this time they did not wring Mr. Vandeford"s heart, for they coursed over the accustomed roses and were a great pleasure to him.
"I"ll go home if you want me to," the talented author of "The Purple Slipper" offered, with a small snap in her eyes, mingled with the accustomed veneration of Mr. Vandeford, her producer. "I don"t want to be in anybody"s way. I thought I had to come and spend all my money. I want to see the Metropolitan and the Aquarium and Brooklyn Bridge and Trinity Church, ... and ... a Midnight Frolic, because Mamie Lou Whitson, at home, is expecting me to go to one even if Miss Elvira said I ought not to. Can I see just one Frolic before I go home?"
"If you go home now the whole "Purple Slipper" will go into cold storage until you come back," Mr. Vandeford growled at her, and the effort it took not to hold on to her with bodily fingers was a great strain. "I told you the usual situation because I felt that you were clever enough to make the best of it and help the play a lot. No author ever has seen a play produced as he wrote it, and he has to stand seeing everybody take a whack at it, from the producer to the man who takes the tickets at the front door. I"ve got a good playwright shut up until Friday rewriting "The Purple Slipper"; then I"m going to work at it myself and let Miss Hawtry write in all the things she wants to say, and cut out all the things she doesn"t. After that, I"m going to turn it over to Bill Rooney, who was born in a barrel down on the wharf and educated in the gutter, but who is the best and highest-priced stage director in New York. He"ll do innumerable things to it while he"s "setting it," as he calls getting it ready for rehearsals. All the actors and actresses will be allowed at times to butcher and scalp their parts and everybody will stab. And if you are a plucky girl you"ll sit still and see it done.
There will come lots of times that everything you suggest, even very timidly, will be thrust down your throat; but if they are vital they will get under the hide of Bill and opening night you"ll see that your pluck has put a lot into the whole thing and that the mutilated and dressed-up play is still your child. Will you trust me and sit in with me and help me make "The Purple Slipper" go?"
"I do! I will!" answered Miss Adair, with her head in the air and the Adairville roses flaunting themselves in her face. And as she spoke she offered him her slim, long-fingered, white little hand that his completely engulfed as, answering a signal, Valentine turned the car back toward Forty-second Street. "If I"ve got to have thorns stuck in me and then cut out I"m mighty glad you"ll be there."
"Yes, I"ll be there," he answered her softly, as he released her hand at least two seconds sooner than he was really obliged to, though he himself could not have said why he did it. He felt like a grown person who frightens a child with a bear tale to make it cuddle to his own strength in the firelight.
Then followed a day in the offices of Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford, Theatrical Producer, which, up to that time, could not have been duplicated on Broadway and perhaps never will be, though the results may have the effect of--but that was all in the future of the theatrical business at that time.
"Mr. Meyers," said Mr. Vandeford, as he ushered the author of "The Purple Slipper" into the outer offices, where he found Pops soothing and controlling about seven enraged experts in different lines of dramatic production, "Miss Adair will have the small office from now on to work in when she is not in consultation with me. Please take her in and see that she is made at home while I run through my mail. Yes, Mr. Corbett, I will be ready for you in a few minutes. Sorry to detain you, all of you," with which apology to the body of a.s.sembled experts Mr. Vandeford bowed, went into his sanctum, and firmly closed the door, just as Mr.
Adolph Meyers bowed the author into her sanctum and as firmly closed her door. Mr. Gerald Height, who had been sitting looking indifferently out of Mr. Meyers" window, looked after the disappearing author as if a perfumed breeze had suddenly blown across his brow, and whistled softly.
"Say, Pops, who, by thunder is--," he was questioning Mr. Meyers with extreme interest, when Mr. Vandeford"s buzzer sounded and Mr. Meyers was forced to answer it before he could attend to Mr. Height"s question.
Mr. Meyers found Mr. Vandeford pale, but determined.
"Pops," he said, and Mr. Meyers could have sworn that the voice of his beloved chief trembled, "I"m in the devil of a fix, and you have got to throw me a line to pull out; in fact, you"ll have to cast in a drag-net if you want to land me."
"If it was a submarine I would make a rescue of you, Mr. Vandeford, sir," the faithful henchman a.s.sured the panic-stricken producer.
"She"s worse than any submarine ever floated, and I"m rammed--in a corner, Pops. To make a story that is going to be long in acting, short in telling, I"ve had to put Miss Adair on to what is usually handed out to the authors of plays, and then to stop her wails, offered to let her sit in and watch her play baby hacked up. Her office-hours here and at rehearsals will be from ten mornings to midnight, and what are you going to do about it?" Mr. Vandeford questioned Mr. Meyers with a kind of forlorn hope in his eyes, for Mr. Meyers had often seen him through the crooks of his trade.
"I advise to make it straight to her, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and she will come out all right or otherwise go home. That young lady has the look of a horse on which I won seven hundred at the last Gravesend. Besides, we have not time for play-acting about that "Purple Slipper." It is a cold bird and we must be in a hurry about putting pep into it for a success."
"Right-o, Pops! I"ll ask her in here, and when I buzz send in Corbett.
The poor kiddie!" With which lamentation over the fate he was about to mete out to Miss Adair, Mr. Vandeford dismissed Mr. Meyers and opened the door which led from his sanctum into that which had been so recently a.s.signed to the author of "The Purple Slipper."
That eminent playwright was discovered in the height of fascination, looking down upon the uproar of Broadway.
"I saw a taxicab run over a man and not kill him," she exclaimed with both horror and joy. "I started to call you, but it was all over in a second."
"That"s all right. I"ve seen that hundreds of times, even when they were killed." He rea.s.sured her about neglecting to share the excitement with him. "Are you ready to take up the matter of costumes with Corbett?"
"Shall I have to tell him--about my making over--"
"No; just listen to me handle him, and I"ll tell you when to break in.
I"ll give you a lead. Please come into my office." And with coolness of manner, but trepidation of heart, he led her into his office and seated her in a chair beside his at the far side of the desk,--the very chair in which had sat Mr. Dennis Farraday on the day previous, when he had received his initiation into the world of theatricals. Then he buzzed his signal to Mr. Meyers.
Immediately Mr. Corbett entered.
"Morning, Corbett.--Miss Adair, the author of the play I want to talk to you about.--Want to take on a costume play of early Kentucky?" Mr.
Vandeford made no pause in which to allow Mr. Corbett to acknowledge his introduction to the author, and Mr. Corbett seemed to bear no resentment for the omission. His astonishment at meeting an author when the costuming of a play was being discussed was profound.
"What date?" he inquired, looking carefully away from Miss Adair.
"What date, Miss Adair?" asked Mr. Vandeford in exactly the same crisp tone in which he was conducting the negotiations with Mr. Corbett.
"1806, I think. It was just before they began to wear--" Miss Adair was beginning to say with a delighted smile that entirely failed to make an impression on Mr. Corbett.
"Good date for costuming," the artist interrupted the author to say, with the easy a.s.surance of a person fully informed. "Styles were distinctive. I dressed "Lovers" Ends" for E. and K. in 1789, and the costumes kept the piffling play alive for two months. How many dolls and how many boots?"
"How many men and how many ladies in the play, Miss Adair?" Mr.
Vandeford questioned her with delight at getting a question to fling to her and also translating for her Mr. Corbett"s query.
"Twenty in all," answered Miss Adair. "There are eleven ladies with the--"
"Split even," Mr. Corbett took the words out of her mouth. "Want sole leather or tissue paper, Mr. Vandeford?" Miss Adair caught by psychic sympathy the fact that he was asking if the play was to be costumed as one intended to survive. Consequently her very soul hung on the answer Mr. Vandeford must make to Mr. Corbett"s question.