Blue-grass and Broadway Part 25

During the next week the "white flame" burned high and bright while the author of "The Purple Slipper" threw herself into her place in the grinding of the machine that was to turn out a perfected play on the following Tuesday night at Atlantic City. Everywhere Mr. Rooney was tightening bolts and polis.h.i.+ng surfaces until they glistened while he snapped and tried out all bands.

Miss Lindsey was pale and quiet, but she acted her part to Mr. Rooney's entire satisfaction, though he never said so. Mr. Leigh's feet were still a target, and the glowering girl, Miss Grayson, was always tearful, but constantly improving. When the company was not being ground and polished, Mr. Corbett's tailors and dressmakers were fitting costumes, and the property man was checking over and over each demand of each and every person, from the fresh rose Mr. Kent was to give to Dame Carrington to the mud that was to be splashed every day upon Mr. Gerald Height's riding-boots for his last and triumphant entry. Miss Adair had lost all sense of the play as a whole and only thought of it as distracting and distracted bits. She had, of course, never witnessed the scenes between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Height, as they were still rehea.r.s.ed in private and would be until the night of the dress rehearsal on Monday at Atlantic City. This was well.

But one thing she kept with her through the whole strain; the sense of being one with Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford and that one working for pure joy.

As for Mr. Vandeford, his eyes sank back under his brows, and Mr. Adolph Meyers was with him far into every night.

"How does the booking stand now, Pops?" Mr. Vandeford demanded on the Thursday night before the opening Tuesday.

"Atlantic City next week, Wilmington and New Haven the next if need be, and--it is to Syracuse or Toronto we must jump, Mr. Vandeford, sir,"

answered Mr. Meyers, with beads of perspiration on his high brow.

"Violet will never make that jump, Pops. Her contract closes the day we open in Atlantic City, and there we'll close, too, if we haven't New York right in sight. What'll we do?"

"It is many a show closed before it opened," Mr. Meyers said, with a wary look at Mr. Vandeford.

"This show is going to open and never close--until it's had a thorough Broadway try-out, Pops," said Mr. Vandeford, quietly. "Anything from Mr.

Breit?"

"Nothing to hope for a Broadway opening before November first."

"I'll pa.s.s the question up Friday, and then see what I'll do," Mr.

Vandeford said slowly as if turning his back for the moment to something that stared him in the face.

All Friday morning he worked with "The Purple Slipper" machine with a bitter defiance in his eyes that made Miss Adair keep close to his side, though she didn't understand her reason for doing so.

"Is anything the matter?" she questioned, with her gray eyes stricken with alarm. The fear for her play in those gray eyes sent Mr. Vandeford into desperate measures. He asked Miss Hawtry to go to luncheon with him, and she graciously accepted.

"Where do we get in on Broadway after Atlantic City, Van?" she asked as soon as she was served with her iced melon.

"We get in all right," he parried, putting his spoon into his cantaloupe.

"That's fine. I don't mind that Atlantic City week, but I'm glad I'm past ever doing the road again except to the Coast. They'll eat up 'The Rosie Posie Girl' in Chicago and San Francisco." Miss Hawtry was deliberately declaring her intentions to Mr. Vandeford without saying a word about them.

"I'm going to take 'The Purple Slipper' over to London before I take it West." Mr. Vandeford answered her declaration with another not put in words, but so well did he know the workings of her shrewd, small mind that he saw that the game was up unless he did what he must do. During the rest of their luncheon they talked about the Trevors.

Straight from the Astor Mr. Vandeford walked into the office of Mr.

Weiner.

"Weiner," he asked, without any sort of preamble, "will you give a month's try-out of my play, 'The Purple Slipper,' in your New Carnival Theater from October first to November first, with a proper guarantee, and then an option on an unlimited run there if it makes good, for a half-interest in 'The Rosie Posie Girl' _without_ Hawtry?" Mr. Vandeford knew that he was offering Mr. Weiner a good thing, for the rights of "The Rosie Posie Girl" had been hotly contested by all the big theatrical managers on Broadway the winter before, and Mr. Vandeford had got them from Hilliard because of his success with "Dear Geraldine" by the same author. They had all coveted it because it was one of those combinations about the success of which there could be no doubt. In offering Weiner a half-interest Mr. Vandeford was aware that he was offering him at least a hundred thousand dollars, but Mr. Vandeford's hunch about the purple on purple was beginning to cost him dear, though at least a hundred thousand dollars did not seem too much to pay to keep the agony of failure out of a pair of sea-gray eyes that had trusted him the first time they had looked into his.

"With Hawtry it goes; without Hawtry, no, Mr. Vandeford," was the prompt answer.

"With Hawtry six months from now?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.

"It is that I have a weak heart, Mr. Vandeford, and I do not trade in futures," answered Mr. Weiner, with a spark in his black eyes.

"You know my fix, Weiner; now what will you take for the New Carnival October first for my Hawtry show?"

"I will trade that entire 'Rosie Posie Girl' ma.n.u.script, with all rights for that New Carnival Theater on October first, with option for the entire season, Mr. Vandeford," said Mr. Weiner, rolling his big cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

"Without Hawtry?"

"I have a new Hawtry right now--in pickle," Mr. Weiner answered.

"Will the New Carnival certainly be finished October first?"

"Yes, to a certainty of a large guarantee."

"How long will you give me to answer?" asked Mr. Vandeford.

"I have made an appointment with S. & K. to talk that New Carnival Theater for a show at five o'clock to-day, Mr. Vandeford. I will call it six o'clock for you," answered Weiner, as he turned the screw with all show of consideration for his fellow producer.

"I'll be back at four-forty-five," Mr. Vandeford answered him, and with no further good-by took his departure.

Arriving at his office, Mr. Vandeford directed Mr. Meyers that he was to have half an hour entirely undisturbed, entered his own office, and after a second's pause went into the little office that had been a.s.signed to Miss Adair, the author, and sat down in the chair she very seldom occupied, but which was hers by tenancy. On the desk were a pair of silk gloves she had left there the day before, and in a blue vase were several roses in a good state of preservation, which he recognized as having come from a bunch Miss Adair had been wearing after having had luncheon with Mr. Gerald Height on Monday. These objects disturbed Mr.

Vandeford vaguely. He put them out of his mind roughly and went into conference with himself sternly. Literally he was weighing the question.

On one side of the balance he laid "The Rosie Posie Girl," which, with Hawtry, was sure to run on Broadway for at least two seasons and make for him a fortune that was indefinitely large and sure. Beside this, its production would insure him a position among the country's really great producers. The show was big enough in conception to admit of a spectacularly artistic treatment, which he had intended to give it so that it would place musical comedy on a plane upon which it had never stood before. He knew himself well enough to know that a real triumph of that kind once accomplished, he would want to turn to other fields of endeavor, and he could see his greater self standing patiently waiting for his lesser to be liberated by the process of climbing out of the very top of the theatrical profession.

Sternly he turned from himself to the filling of the other pan of the scales in which he was weighing the question. He looked for something to put in to over-balance the certainty of "The Rosie Posie Girl," and found nothing but a vast uncertainty with many potentialities. "The Purple Slipper" was a play of no known cla.s.sification, and with Hawtry in it was still less fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring. And there was added the uncertainty of that week from the twenty-third to the first during which he had no legal hold on the fair Violet. He felt reasonably sure that the announcement that "The Purple Slipper" would open the big new Weiner theater, with all the clash of publicity which he could give to it, would hold her steady on her job, but as he laid it down on the scales, it had to be cla.s.sed as an uncertainty. The fifteen per cent. seat sales based on Mr. Gerald Height's appearance in silk tights, velvet, and lace was about the only positive he had to lay in the scales, and that, of course, failed to tip them to any degree. For about fifteen minutes he sat perfectly rigid. Then he gently laid on the uncertain side of the scales the positive and concrete faith in a pair of sea-gray eyes, jeweled with tears, and watched "The Rosie Posie Girl" rise high as "The Purple Slipper" sank down heavily.

After this he took a rose from the green vase, stuck it in his b.u.t.tonhole, and went forth--into his own office. He there rang his buzzer for Mr. Meyers, and seated himself with the air of a man who has had a burden lifted off his shoulders rather than with the air of one about to give away half a million dollars.

"Pops, 'The Rosie Posie Girl' is sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to Weiner for a month's try-out of 'The Purple Slipper' at the New Carnival Theater, good guarantee for that month, and an option on a run to the limit for eight-thousand-a-week houses. Get Lusky over the 'phone, and you and he have the contracts drawn as tight as wax by four-thirty."

"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, I must have a say that--"

"No, Pops, don't say anything."

"With a pardon it is that I think that Miss Adair is a very fine lady, and so also 'The Purple Slipper.'" With this incoherent p.r.o.nouncement of sympathy and encouragement, though devastated at the loss of "The Rosie Posie Girl," upon which he had already spent many creative days, Mr. Meyers departed into the outer office.

For a long minute Mr. Vandeford glared at the unoffending rose in his b.u.t.tonhole, then smiled, ran his hands through his hair, turned to the telephone, and plunged into the last lap of the race of "The Purple Slipper." Until four o'clock he was closeted with the most brilliant theatrical publicity man in New York City; then he took his contracts and went over to Weiner's office and sacrificed "The Rosie Posie Girl"

to--

An hour later he had told his partner, Mr. Dennis Farraday, all about it, and showed him the deeds of execution.

"You ought not to have done it, Van. It was too big a price to pay," Mr.

Farraday declared, with his mane rumpled on high.

"No," answered Mr. Vandeford, in happy calmness. "'The Purple Slipper'

will pay it all out--one way or another."

"It must," declared Mr. Farraday, with helpless energy. "What can I do?"

"Oh, be the usual ray of suns.h.i.+ne around the place and--and keep the Violet happy and busy until we land on Broadway." Mr. Vandeford said this with a coldness in tone and voice that he had to force hard. His att.i.tude was that he had had to sacrifice himself so why not sacrifice Mr. Farraday also? And he hated himself for that att.i.tude.

"I understand, and you can count on me," answered Mr. Farraday, with such an innocently happy face that Mr. Vandeford groaned inwardly at the fact that he did not understand, and would surely be made to soon if his calculations on the intentions of Miss Hawtry were correct.