Blue-grass and Broadway Part 28

"Goes!" answered Mr. Vandeford, and steel sparks struck out in his keen eyes as he turned and went rapidly to one of the long-distance telephone booths with which all Atlantic City keeps up its intimate relations with New York. It was also astonis.h.i.+ng how quickly he got his connection with a great New York morning paper and was put on the desk wire of one of the junior editors, who was a good friend in need.

"h.e.l.lo, Curt. G.o.dfrey Vandeford speaking."

"With my show in Atlantic City. Can you get a note across in the morning issue?"

"Good! Spread it that Hawtry is put out of 'The Purple Slipper' cast to give place to a new Pacific Coast star, Mildred Lindsey. Hawtry handed it to Denny and me rotten, but put that under pretty deep, with Lindsey blazed in top lines. I'll have my publicity man send you a special Lindsey Sunday story. Hot stuff."

"Thanks, old man! By!"

Another fifteen minutes was spent in long distance communication with Mr. Meyers, and it was ten minutes after three o'clock in the morning when Mr. Vandeford slipped into his chair beside his author in the little Atlantic City Theater, which Mr. Rooney had induced the old night watchman door-keeper to open up at the hour when all teeming Atlantic City is in the depths of repose. Mr. Rooney had with him the entire cast of "The Purple Slipper," to whom he had just finished explaining the cause of their extraction from their well-earned repose.

"Most of the Sister Harriet scenes are with me," Miss Bebe Herne was saying, with efficient energy fairly radiating from her big body, clothed in a decorous tailor skirt, but with a boudoir jacket serving for blouse. Also two kid curlers showed at the nape of her neck. "I can feed Miss Grayson into Miss Lindsey's part enough to get by to-morrow--to-night I mean. And Wallace can do the same when he's on with her. That ugly white cat Hawtry to double on G.o.dfrey Vandeford after he pulled her out of Weehawken!"

"Get on, get on, everybody, and use your brains until they lather,"

commanded Mr. Rooney as he took his stand beside the left stage box.

"Now, Miss, you gimme lines out of your head or your first draft when I call for 'em, and I'll take 'em or leave 'em as suits me. Then you smooth the ones I hand you into good talk, and we'll have a show here by sun-up that you'll be proud to invite your Christian lady friends to attend. And we'll keep all the 'pep' too, Vandeford, that you paid Howard to write into it, only we'll take the Hawtry dirt out of it. On, Betty Carrington, and the curtain's up."

Then from three o'clock in the morning until almost noon the machinery of "The Purple Slipper" was overhauled and adjusted to the new cog. Mr.

Rooney lashed and rubbed and polished and oiled with never a let-up on anybody, and beside him sat the author, with her head up and the bit in her mouth. For every line that rang untrue in the reconstruction she had a true one or she took a crude bit from Mr. Rooney and polished it into place. Fido sat crouched in a front seat and transcribed every word into his prompt copy so as to be a veritable first aid.

And Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford, experienced show man that he was, felt as if he was witnessing a miracle as he beheld Miss Adair's original "Purple Slipper," with its haphazard amateur charm, again put forth bud and bloom on the branches of Grant Howard's tight-knit, well-constructed, and well-rounded drama. The highly-colored flowers of Hawtry personality Mr. Rooney pruned away and constructed others for Lindsey, and Miss Adair lent them color and perfume in pa.s.sing them to the new star, who was working steadily, slowly, surely, and with great power.

"Don't tell him that his eyes 'burn into yours until your soul is seared.' That's old. We got to get a kind of smile here where Hawtry looked like she was going to do the ham sandwich act to Height and his silk tights." Mr. Rooney stopped the abhorred scene, being acted along about six o'clock in the morning, to demand that it be played in the proper key, up to which he had succeeded in wringing lines from Miss Adair for the first act and most of the second. "What do hearts do to each other that's hot and decent and funny all at once?" Mr. Rooney fired this biological question to the author of "The Purple Slipper,"

and looked at her with a demand for an immediate answer in his little, black, driving eyes.

"She can say 'There's chaff in my heart; guard the fire in yours,'" Miss Adair supplied offhand.

"That hands it to him, and a good double meaning, too," Mr. Rooney approved. "Go ahead, Height, but don't get this lady mixed with the other kind. Remember, she lives at the ladies Christian home." The laugh that greeted this sally was an uproar that added to the dash and quick fire of the big scene, which Miss Adair and Mr. Rooney had so quickly expurgated and reconstructed between them.

At seven o'clock the play had been entirely run through, and Fido had the result in his prompt copy and was beginning to rapidly write it into their lines for each of the cast.

"One half hour to get breakfast and Miss Herne's back hair down," Mr.

Rooney said, with the callousness of a slave-driver. "Then if you run through again fairly well we'll be done by noon, and everybody can hit the hay for six hours."

Mr. Vandeford watched his author's proud little head droop on the box rail in front of her, and with his face very white he motioned Mr.

Farraday to come to her. After his degrading the night before at the hands of Miss Hawtry, he felt that he would be unable to endure the pain of the repulsion he felt sure he would find in her eyes if she ever looked at him again.

But his summons of Mr. Farraday failed in peremptoriness, for that big, bonny gentleman nodded to him, then stood in the wing to catch Miss Lindsey in his arms and bear her away to immediate nourishment. In the excitement of the last few hours a domesticity had grown up between Mr.

Farraday and Miss Lindsey that it would have taken months to build in a world less hectic than that in which they were then living.

Their courts.h.i.+p had been brief, and consisted in one question, asked by Mr. Farraday while Miss Lindsey stood in the wings waiting for a moderated, impa.s.sioned cue from Mr. Height, and answered by her as she responded to him and the call of her stage lover at the same moment.

"When will you marry me?"

"When 'The Purple Slipper' goes on Broadway."

In the circ.u.mstances it was natural that Mr. Dennis Farraday should take Miss Lindsey for a reminiscent beefsteak and mushrooms during the only free half hour she would have for either him or food in the ensuing day, and to fail to heed Mr. Vandeford's summon.

Thus deserted, Mr. Vandeford was about to steal forth and appeal to some member of the cast of "The Purple Slipper" to come to his rescue in providing refreshment to restore the author during the precious half hour respite when "the chaff in his heart" caught fire and began to burn away forever. Miss Adair raised her eyes to his, with the faith still in their wounded depths, and smiled a wan little smile.

"Please get me a gla.s.s of milk with an egg in it, and some of that brown-bread turkey," she demanded. "I'm dead, but I'll come alive again if I go to sleep a minute. Shake me when you get back with it, but get something for yourself while you are gone."

"The kiddie, the precious, s.p.u.n.ky kiddie," Mr. Vandeford said in his heart over and over as he and the young Italian rushed to the hotel and back with a waiter and a tray of the desired refreshment, to which had been added an iced melon and a couple of bedewed roses.

The shaking had to be literally administered while young Dago Italiana held the tray, and then had to be repeated several times by Mr.

Vandeford, as he almost as literally fed his exhausted author, up until the very minute in which Mr. Rooney rang up the curtain and again called her into action.

Five hours was more than enough for the smooth running of the three-hour "Purple Slipper" show, and at eleven o'clock Mr. Rooney dismissed his jaded cast with this strict command delivered in his rich, deep voice, which held a note of genuine solemnity.

"All of you go to sleep every minute between now and night, and then come back here and make good--for all of us."

With the a.s.sistance of young Dago Italiana, Mr. Vandeford delivered Miss Adair to a hotel maid, who accepted five dollars from him as a fee for putting her to bed, and then he plunged into still greater strenuosities.

He sat for three hours with his skilled young publicity man and advance-agent, and laid out a discreet, dignified, but very interesting, publicity campaign for the new star of "The Purple Slipper." Due importance was to be given in all the notices that "The Purple Slipper"

was to open the New Carnival Theater and in his heart the young advertiser put away the intention of making the fact that Mr. Vandeford had sold Hawtry and "The Rosie Posie Girl" for "The Purple Slipper," his most brilliant reserve story to set all of Broadway, at least, agog for the opening of the expensive new play.

"It puts 'The Purple Slipper' at the big end of the horn, and it's not your fault that there is only the little end of the horn left for 'The Rosie Posie Girl' for the time being," he explained to Mr. Vandeford.

"You see, it is a kind of double-cross that acts both ways. If it goes, people will think it was worth your paying a big price for, and if it fails, they'll think the 'Rosie Posie Girl' couldn't have been much if you traded a chance on such a poor show for it."

"Goes!" said Mr. Vandeford, but he was aware that the smart manoeuver, which would once have delighted his soul, made him intensely weary.

In fact, so fatigued did he feel when he left this young press schemer, that he dropped into his bed for an hour, and had a ma.s.seur come and pound him into condition to go to the train with good Dennis Farraday to meet Mrs. Farraday, Mrs. and Mr. and Miss Van Tyne, who arrived at five o'clock from big Manhattan. Mr. Farraday had had a like operation performed upon himself, and was in such a radiant condition that Mr.

Vandeford felt badly eclipsed beside him.

"What does it all mean about Miss Hawtry and Miss Lindsey and the show, Van?" Mrs. Farraday questioned, with greater anxiety in her face than she had had at any other opening night of her favorite's successful shows. "Are we going to have a terrible time?"

"I'm going to put you in a wheel-chair and let Denny take you up to the north end of the board-walk and tell you all about it while I locate and make comfortable the rest of the folks," Mr. Vandeford answered with a deep relief at her presence in his eyes.

"Where are my girls?" she questioned.

"Both dead--asleep," he answered, as if deeply happy to be able to say it of his star and his author.

His statement was only partly true, for while Miss Adair slept the sleep of the emotionally unanxious, Mildred Lindsey sat crouched by her window, with her eyes looking far out over the Atlantic Ocean, waiting for the result of Mr. Dennis Farraday's talk with his mother at the north end of the board-walk.

There are occasionally mothers who bear sons who can tell them all about things, and Mrs. Farraday really enjoyed the whole story that big, bonnie Dennis poured out to her at the sunset hour by the brink of old ocean, Dago Italiana squatting on his heels out of hearing and basking in inactivity, from the moment of the beefsteak episode in his and Miss Lindsey's acquaintance up to the moment in which Miss Hawtry had established herself in his arms on the occasion of his debut in a stage dressing-room. And even at that stage of the narration she rather astonished Mr. Farraday, who was shamefaced enough at the telling, by saying with soft pity in her motherly voice:

"The poor woman. Of course she couldn't help loving you, and now she's lost both Van and you. Now go on and tell me about Mildred."