Blue-grass and Broadway Part 20

"It is three girls now waiting at the office for the night, and a messenger in your hall, Mr. Vandeford, sir," answered Mr. Meyers as he gathered up his annotated pages, put them into a new manila portfolio, and rose to take them to the A. D. T. boy asleep on the floor in the hall.

"We haven't rushed in a ma.n.u.script like this since 'Dear Geraldine,'

have we, Pops?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he picked up the second act.

"It's just nine o'clock, and those girls ought to get through by three A. M. Don't let Steinberg charge up twelve hours on you."

"It will be at eight that they are still working, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and night type-writing means much money," Mr. Meyers answered, as he departed with his package.

"At that we'd better get busy to feed it to 'em," Mr. Vandeford said, as he picked up and began to dig into the pages.

For the three hours ensuing he and his henchman worked with never a hitch in their growls and scratches and muttered exchanges. Then, as they came close to the climax of the last act, Mr. Vandeford sat up from his pillows, which were heated almost beyond endurance with his night lights and his tousled head, and gave forth a roar.

"I'll be hanged if I'll let that scene between Rosalind and her lover go with that filthy twist that Howard has given it! The words are almost the original, but what will Hawtry make of what he's put into it?"

"It will be the worst she makes," answered Mr. Meyers. "But it is for pep very good, Mr. Vandeford, sir, and can be tried out."

"That's right, Pops. I wonder if I am a Broadway producer or--or the czar of a young ladies' seminary," Mr. Vandeford growled as he lay down, and again went to work.

"It is that Miss Adair will not understand it until Miss Hawtry is at work, and before that all may be dead," Mr. Meyers consoled, as he, too, fell upon "The Purple Slipper."

At two-thirty the now soggy A. D. T. received the last manila envelope to deliver to the busy girls down in Mr. Vandeford's office, and that distinguished producer was stretched out on his bed in cool darkness while Mr. Meyers was in a subway nodding his way up to his humble room on One Hundred and Sixteenth Street.

"If I live through seeing her past the reading of the blamed thing to-morrow, I'll be stronger than I think I am," Mr. Vandeford murmured as he felt the calmness of sleep fall upon him.

CHAPTER VI

Rehearsals for "The Purple Slipper" had been called positively for September first, and the response became unanimous at about fifteen minutes to eleven at the Barrett Theater on West Forty-sixth Street; that is, it was unanimous except for the presence of the author and the angel--Miss Adair and Mr. Farraday--and Miss Violet Hawtry, the star, who never came to first readings until the whole cast was a.s.sembled and could be impressed with the fact that she came and went as she listed.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I take it that you all know one another--and Mr.

William Rooney," said Mr. Vandeford, as he took a seat at the left of a table placed in the center of the stage just beyond the footlights. Mr.

Rooney marched to a place beside him, and rapped with a large black pencil for attention from the groups into which the dozen members of the cast had fallen after mutual introductions and greetings.

"Everybody grab a seat that is good enough to glue to for five hours while Fido here gives out your parts," commanded Mr. Rooney, without in any way acknowledging Mr. Vandeford's introduction to the company. Mr.

Rooney's voice was low and rich, and had the precision and decision of a machine-gun in its utterances. With hurried obedience the entire company looked about the stage for seats.

Miss Bebe Herne, though having fifty pounds the advantage of any of the others in avoirdupois, was the first seated. She merely dropped down upon a stout pine bench, the front of which was stuccoed to represent antique marble, and peremptorily motioned Mr. Wallace Kent to that portion of the seat left after she had wedged herself as far to one side as possible. Mr. Kent obeyed immediately, though he had just placed a rickety, stuffed chair beside the gold one occupied by Miss Blanche Grayson, the glowerer. Miss Lindsey sat on the end of an overturned box hedge before a drop curtain of a twilight night, and Mr. Reginald Leigh sat in a wicker chair under a brilliant canvas flowering shrub of no known variety. The rest of the company were soon seated and receiving the small, blue-backed, ma.n.u.script books from the pale young man whom Mr. Rooney always addressed as Fido.

"Everybody here but Miss Hawtry," said Mr. Rooney, and he glared at Mr.

Vandeford as though that gentleman must be concealing the star in the pocket of his gray, silk-crash coat.

"And Miss Hawtry is here also," came in a very beautifully modulated voice from left stage, as the tardy star came down center, and stood directly in front of the table at which sat the producer and his stage-manager. Mr. Vandeford rose immediately and said good-morning; Mr.

Rooney kept his seat and looked Miss Hawtry through and through with a cold reproof.

"Five minutes late," he said with an edge in the words that cut.

"I really beg your pardon, and it shall not happen--" the star was beginning to say in an apologetic tone, which bent under the cold edge of the a.s.sault, as Mr. Vandeford had hoped it would, when Mr. Rooney cut it off with a curt command to pale Fido.

"Give out the Hawtry part."

Miss Hawtry accepted the little blue booklet handed her by Fido, and also Mr. Vandeford's chair, placed carefully in the center of the stage for her. The first brush between Mr. Rooney and Miss Hawtry had been pulled off and he had won, much to Mr. Vandeford's delight. For "Miss Cut-up" he had had to hire, pay for, and fire, three successive stage-managers, and she had managed all three. Mr. Rooney's boast was that no star had ever managed him and that he had successfully staged every play he had undertaken; hence a spectacular salary. Also he felt that his reputation was at stake in the Hawtry duel, and he was determined to back his own method.

"Scene first, act first; Betty Carrington is discovered on stage. Go to it, Betty!" he commanded as Fido took a seat at the end of the table, opened a copy of the first act, and sat ready for annotations.

"How beautiful the morning is and--" the glowering Miss Blanche Grayson was beginning to read from her cerulean booklet, when an interruption occurred.

Miss Adair and Mr. Farraday entered from the stage door.

Mr. Vandeford looked at Mr. Rooney, and muttered under his breath: "Angel and author, Bill. Easy!"

"Shoot," answered Mr. Rooney, in a mild undertone, though he glared at the company as though in a cold rage.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Miss Adair, the author of our play. You have all of you met Mr. Farraday. Mr. Rooney, our stage-director, Miss Adair and Mr. Farraday." Mr. Vandeford made the introductions as rapidly as possible and in a voice of such coolness that Miss Adair looked at him in astonishment and then at the a.s.sembled company with great timidity. With special trepidation did she regard Mr.

Rooney, who had bobbed his scrubby, black-mopped head at her with no expression at all in his little black eyes, while he refused to see Mr.

Farraday's offered hand.

"Have seats in the left stage-box," he directed them in the same tone of voice with which he had quelled Miss Hawtry. "Now, get going there, Betty Carrington, and open again."

Mr. Vandeford led Miss Adair and Mr. Farraday out into the wings in a roundabout path to the left stage-box, and paused with them out of sight of Mr. Rooney. Then the humanity came back into his face and voice as he spoke to his friends in an undertone.

"Rooney is the genius among stage-directors, but he's the original and genuine Tartar. How are you both?" As he asked the question he held out a hand to each of them, and his smile held the cordiality to which they were both accustomed.

"We had a blow-out on Riverside Drive, and that's what makes us late.

Now I've got to take the car around to the garage," Mr. Farraday apologized, as he rumpled his leonine mane, fanned himself with his hat, and departed.

Miss Adair fairly clung to the hand of friends.h.i.+p offered her, with relief that it had not been withdrawn forever, as she had feared from the coolness of Mr. Vandeford's greeting before the a.s.sembled company of "The Purple Slipper."

"I'm afraid," she murmured with both alarm and amus.e.m.e.nt sparkling in her gray eyes, in which Mr. Vandeford found himself searching for a certain expression with the eagerness with which he always looked for it after even a brief separation from his author. It was there and undimmed. "Let's go sit down where he told us to," Miss Adair whispered.

"Good girl!" laughed Mr. Vandeford as he led the way to the left stage-box to which Mr. Rooney had summarily banished the author and the angel. He seated Miss Adair at the front edge of the box and took the chair close at her left. She was thus bulwarked and b.u.t.tressed for any a.s.sault that might be hurled her way. It came in a very few minutes.

Miss Bebe Herne and Miss Mildred Lindsey were in the midst of reading an animated dialogue on page five by the time Miss Adair's attention was firmly riveted on the stage and the reading in progress. Fortunately the little scene was of her own writing. Mr. Vandeford had put it back into the play instead of the paraphrase Mr. Howard had made of it, and he was surprised to find how deeply grateful he was to himself for having given her this bit as he watched the home-made color rise under the gray eyes as the author sat and heard her written words come to life in a little bit of really sparkling character comedy, which both Miss Lindsey and experienced Bebe were acting as well as reading in such a way as to bring out all the charm of the lines. The happiness of both author and producer lasted about two minutes, then it was broken into by Mr.

William Rooney with a crash.

"Nuff, there, nuff!" he commanded, in the midst of a quaint epigram, which Bebe was delivering with unction. "Audiences don't want to hear smart babble after their seats are all down. They want to see the star and get going. Cut in Miss Hawtry at the second set-to of Harriet and aunt. Take it this way: 'And my dear Rosalind has said, Harriet--' Enter Rosalind with the line you have there."

"Yes, it's time for me to get on and--" Miss Hawtry was agreeing complacently, when she was quickly snapped off in her remark.

"Line, Miss Hawtry, not gab," Mr. Rooney commanded.

Instantly Miss Hawtry was reading from her lines and faithful Fido was making annotations upon his ma.n.u.script with strokes that spelled finality to the stricken author, who raised her protesting eyes to the producer of her play.

"Steady now," Mr. Vandeford whispered. "This is the first reading, and he's setting. We can't side-track him now. Later you can--" but the author's attention was caught by the dialogue between Miss Hawtry and Bebe, which was the first full dose of the Howard fifteen-hundred-dollar, inebriate, but very brilliant and Hawtry-like, "pep."

"Oh, I didn't write that at all!" she whispered, as she fairly shrank against Mr. Vandeford's strength of mind, if not against the strength of his arm that he had laid across the back of her chair.