Mr. Vandeford rose to his feet quickly, and a great Broadway star was in closer danger of descending head-first from a six-story window upon that thoroughfare than he ever knew. Then "The Purple Slipper" rose and demanded its chance of success with Gerald Height as "drag" and the tragedy was averted.
"Run along, children, and don"t spill your milk on your bibs," he answered them, with a dissembling smile that would have done credit to Mr. Height himself when upon the boards with Miss Hawtry. They departed in great spirits, and Mr. Vandeford noticed that Mr. Height had not been at all concerned as to how his manager"s inner man would be served.
Thereupon Mr. Vandeford propped his feet upon the desk, got out one of the most evil of the cigars he kept in a drawer of his desk for just such crises, and went into communion with himself for ten minutes. Upon that communion broke Mr. Dennis Farraday, who got the full force of it.
"I came to pick up you and Miss Adair to go out in the park to luncheon.
It"s cooler there. Where is she?" were the words with which Mr.
Vandeford"s partner in the production of "The Purple Slipper" greeted him.
"She has gone out to luncheon with a d.a.m.ned tango lizard," was the disturbed and disturbing answer his courtesy received.
"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Farraday, bristling.
"She met Gerald Height a half-hour ago, here in this office, and then went out to luncheon with him," was Mr. Vandeford"s answer to Mr.
Farraday"s bristling.
"Without consulting you?"
"No! I consented all right enough."
"Why didn"t you tell her if you didn"t want her to go with him?"
"See here, Denny, I want to ask you if anything in my past life makes you think that I am a proper old hen to have a downy little chicken thrust right under my wing for safe keeping, whether I hatched her or not?" Mr. Vandeford demanded, and his rage was so perfectly impersonal and perplexed that Mr. Farraday sat down to go into the matter to his rescue.
"What do you mean, Van?" he asked in a calm voice and manner that were most grateful to Mr. Vandeford.
"Just this: Here"s a girl come up here, from a place where a girl is guarded like a pearl of great price, into the muck and excitement of the getting together of a Broadway production in which she is directly interested. I don"t know what to do. If I spend my time hovering over her, her show will go cold and break her. She"s poor. I told her as much of what she is in for as I dared and still she wants to stay and see it all through, demands to stay and be let in for the whole thing. What"ll we do?"
"Suppose she"d go with me up to visit the mater and be motored down to partic.i.p.ate in--in expurgated moments?" asked Mr. Farraday, as he ruffled his hair into a huge plume on the top of his head.
"She would not. She"s got a taste of it and she"ll thirst for more. And, for all that unsophistication, she is a clever kid. She"ll get Height into a costume play before luncheon is over and that"ll go a long way to cinch a hit for "The Purple Slipper." He"s made a fad of not playing costume, and all the women in New York will flock to see him in velvet and lace. She bargained that fish Corbett out of four hundred dollars in the preliminary costume deal, and if anybody has to send her home it will have to be you. I can"t do it."
"Well, just gently warn her about Height and things of that kind, can"t you?"
"I cannot! Would you tell a woman who is walking a tight rope that the ground sixty feet below her is covered with broken champagne bottles?"
"Then she"s got to go home," decided Mr. Dennis Farraday, positively.
"How"ll you make her?"
"You"ve got to do it. She"s got awe of you planted six feet deep in her soul. Anybody could see that. You"ve got to send her."
"Can"t be done," growled Mr. Vandeford in desperation. "Wish I were married to six respectable women and then I could make "em all chaperon her in turns, while I feed her fool play to the public."
"You"d only have to strike out the syllable "un" before "married" by a little trip to the City Hall to have one mighty fine wife," Mr. Farraday said with a straight look into Mr. Vandeford"s eyes, which was so deeply affectionate that it gave him the privilege of opening the door to any holy of holies.
"Violet and I are all off, Denny, and it ought never to have been on,"
was the straight-out answer he got to his venture, an answer that Miss Hawtry would have felt smoothed greatly the path of her present adventures in life.
"Poor girl! I knew she was hurt somehow, but I thought--forgive me, old man." With a tenderness in his voice that both alarmed and puzzled Mr.
Vandeford his big Jonathan closed the subject and snapped a lock on it.
"Come over to the Astor with me for a cold bite."
"Goes!"
The cool, green-leafed Orangery at the Hotel Astor is the oasis in the desert days of rehearsal for all early fall plays, and beside its tinkling fountain and under its tinkling music can be found at luncheon all of the theatrical profession who are not around the corners at the equally cool, white-tiled Childs restaurants. Beside and around the green wicker tables careers of managers, artists, actors, playwrights, electricians, and scenic artists are made and unmade in the twinkling of some bright or heavy-lidded eye. Each and every feaster watches each and every other feaster with the quick, wary eye of a jungle being consuming its food before it is s.n.a.t.c.hed from him or her; and gossip reigns over all.
"Gee, look at the swell dame Gerald Height has got cornered over there!"
exclaimed Mazie Villines, as she looked up from a frapped melon, which a "heavy" moving picture man was "buying" for her consumption. "The way them society queens do fall fer him!"
"Put your blinkers on, Mazie, put "em on, and don"t take a shy at Height over my knife and fork! Let him eat what he pays for and me the same,"
growled the huge man. "I let you put up that drunk Howard for a week, and that"s rope enough."
"I"d like to feed him the green in his "runny" eggs; it makes me sick to open for him," was the adored Mazie"s way of speaking of her eminent playwright.
"Well, get his wad first," was the heavy"s advice.
Just at this moment Mazie had the delight of seeing Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford enter with his "soup and fish" friend Mr. Dennis Farraday. As they both had to pa.s.s directly by the table at which sat Miss Adair and Mr. Height, of course they both paused for greetings, which included the introduction of Mr. Height to Mr. Farraday.
"I could hardly eat in this beautiful cool place when I thought that maybe you would work on in the hot office with nothing with ice packed around it for your luncheon," said Miss Adair, as she raised her eyes to Mr. Vandeford"s with the adoration still intact after at least three-quarters of an hour a.s.sault upon it by Mr. Gerald Height"s disturbing personality. "I wanted to go back for you, but Mr. Height said that Mr. Meyers fed you cold pie when you were busy, and that you roared dreadfully if anybody interrupted you when you were eating it!"
"He does," Mr. Farraday interjected, smiling down at her in a way that it was unwise to do in the Orangery at noon; and it lighted a fuse he little suspected. Miss Violet Hawtry caught the smile in mid-air and then promptly turned her back and became all charming attention to the gentleman with whom she was having luncheon, who was no other than the celebrated Weiner, who had built three theatres in two years and was building more. He was of the bull-necked type of Hebrew and not of the sensitive, exquisite type of the sons of the House of David to which belong the E. & K."s, and the S. & S., as well as the great B. D.
"When will the new theatre be completed, Mr. Weiner?" Miss Hawtry asked, as she turned over an iced shrimp and tore at a lettuce leaf with her fork.
"October first," answered Mr. Weiner, past a mouthful of Russian herring.
"What will the opening show be?" asked Miss Hawtry, with indifference, though there was a glint under her thick lashes lowered over her snapping Irish eyes.
""The Rosie Posie Girl,"" answered Weiner, and he swallowed his herring and gave her a shrewd glance at the same time.
"Vandeford will never sell it to you," Miss Hawtry announced calmly, as she ate the shrimp and the torn lettuce leaf.
"Maybe!" answered Weiner with equal calmness. "What are his plans for his new show that he is tearing up Forty-second Street about?"
"Road from September fifteenth until New York October first."
"What theater in New York?"
"I don"t know." As she made this answer Miss Hawtry looked up and caught a snap in Weiner"s small black eyes, perched on each side of the hump of his red nose.
"Has the show got goods?" he asked.
"I"m going to put some into it," answered Miss Hawtry calmly.
"Why?"
"I like Mr. Dennis Farraday, who"s Vandeford"s angel. I don"t want to see Van take the money out of his pocket and get away with it." Miss Hawtry was dealing in half-truths to a lie expert.