Blue-grass and Broadway

"We are delighted to have Miss Adair stay with us while her play is being rehearsed," a very pleasant young woman, with a trim figure, kind and wise eyes, and gray-sprinkled hair, remarked to him after she had whistled the fact of his arrival above. "When such men as you, Mr. Vandeford, begin to put on clean historical plays, many of our anxieties will be over. I look on each musical show that appears on Broadway as a personal enemy."

"I am glad indeed, Madam, that we are going to claim you as a friend of 'The Purple Slipper,'" Mr. Vandeford answered, with his most pleasant smile. Somehow the sight and sound of that executive young woman in charge of his young author gave him a calmness that he needed, and his confidence shone in his face.

"We are deeply interested in Miss Adair, for we have had influential letters sent us about her, and of course we are looking forward with eagerness to seeing her play. She is such a dear child!"

The influential letters and the increased warmth in the young woman's tone in speaking about his author drew Mr. Vandeford still nearer to her, both in body and in spirit. He leaned slightly against the desk and smiled again.

"May I send you seats for some night the first week of 'The Purple Slipper'?" he asked, with the greatest deference. And it must be recorded that in making the offer Mr. Vandeford was not bidding for the distinction conferred on him in the next few seconds.

"That will be delightful," exclaimed the young woman. "And, Mr. Vandeford, here is a latch-key to the front door, to use to-night if you and Miss Adair are a little later than midnight in coming home. Remember to give it to her after you have put her inside the door and tell her to hang it on the rack opposite the number of her room. There she comes now!"

Mr. Vandeford accepted the latch-key of the Y. W. C. A. with awe and looked at it as he would have looked at a decoration handed him by the Metropolitan governors. Then he glanced up and beheld Miss Adair displaying herself to his new-found friend.

"You are very pretty, my dear," she was saying with an affectionate smile. "Just let me put a pin here in this fold of lace," and expertly she reefed up the last fold of rose-point that Miss Lindsey had snipped down in a hurried finish of her remodeling. Strange to say Mr. Vandeford felt still more further drawn to his young Christian Association friend.

"Now run along, both of you, and have a pleasant evening," she said to them as she turned to answer the telephone.

"That girl is an extremely delightful person," Mr. Vandeford remarked, while he and Valentine were tucking Miss Adair under the linen robe in the car.

"I'm so glad you are getting used to the Y. W. C. A.," Miss Adair answered, giving him a delighted smile as he seated himself beside her while Valentine started the car up the avenue. "Mr. Height said it was like being forced to go to church in a strange town and getting into somebody's cozy corner by mistake."

"I wish I were married to that girl, to-night," Mr. Vandeford exclaimed out of the sudden rush of anxiety that had overtaken him by this fledgling author's mention of his leading man.

"Then who would be taking me out, out on Broadway?" asked Miss Adair with a little laugh that had a more distinctly friendly note in it than it had before held for him.

"Both of us," replied Mr. Vandeford, with an answering laugh that sounded much too young in his own ears. "You'll need two."

"Am I going to have as many dreadful things happen to me to-night as I was going to have when I met Mr. Corbett and Mr. Benjamin David and Mr. Height and the other theatrical people? Am I being warned again?" Mr. Vandeford accepted the teasing and laughed at himself.

"My wings are up. Go out and scratch for yourself."

"Not very far, though," Miss Adair answered. Mr. Vandeford was not sure that she moved a fraction of an inch nearer to him, but he hoped so. "I feel just the same about you as I do about Roger and I like to be going with you--into--into danger."

"Who's Roger?" questioned Mr. Vandeford.

"He's my brother, who treats me as you do. It's fun for a woman to be frightened dreadfully when she is with a man she likes." Again there was that uncertainty as to whether Miss Adair fluttered a fraction of an inch in his direction, and for the life of him Mr. Vandeford could not say whence had flown all the many ways he would have commanded ordinarily for the finding out if such were the case.

"A frightened woman is often rather--rather deadly to a man," he answered before he could stop himself. The habit of speaking out directly to Miss Adair was growing on him, he perceived, and it alarmed him.

"Into what danger are you taking me now?" asked Miss Adair with a fluty, merry laugh.

"We are going with Mr. Farraday and Miss Hawtry to see the Big Show and to the Grove Garden on the roof afterward for supper. Just a slow, usual sort of an evening, but Denny thought it would be fun for you to see the Big Show and the Big Feed and the Big Dance by way of initiation," Mr. Vandeford answered, with an entire lack of enthusiasm.

"I wanted to see what you wanted me to see this first night," Miss Adair said with the affectionate frankness of six years going on seven. "What would that be?"

"We'll see it to-morrow night," Mr. Vandeford answered her, and this time the tenderness in his voice surprised him and he considered it entirely unjustifiable.

"Mr. Height was going to take me to see Maude Adams, but I know he'll put it off again when I tell him that you want me to--"

"No, don't! Let Height get Maude Adams out of his system, for Heaven's sake," snapped Mr. Vandeford, this time in unjustifiable temper.

"Why, what is--" Miss Adair was asking of Mr. Vandeford in positive alarm when Valentine stopped before the blazing doorway of the Big Show. A functionary seven feet tall opened the door of the car and all but literally extracted them by force, for he was anxious to repeat the operation on the occupants of the car chugging behind them.

Now, there are many, many fair women born within the state lines of Old Kentucky who live calm and peaceful lives and die and are buried with no greater contrast of experience than comes from birth and death, love and hate, riches and poverty, and they never know the difference; but occasionally one bursts out of her bonds and flames her beauty over strange worlds, in foreign embassies, in the courts of St. James or Petrograd, or in an opera or theater box in New York. When this eruption occurs many sparks fly. And many sparks from bright eyes were showered on the author of "The Purple Slipper," who sat calmly unaware in the left stage-box of the Big Show that August night beside the notorious Hawtry, Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and Mr. Dennis Farraday. And of the sparks no one was more conscious than both Miss Hawtry and Mr. Vandeford, while big Dennis was in a blissfully ignorant state of mind like to that of Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky. Though he had been for about forty-eight hours a producer on the rear side of the footlights, Mr. Farraday still had the attitude of mind possessed by one of an audience, and he watched the stage rather than the "front." He thus failed to get the impression created by his guest from Kentucky, and blissfully left Mr. Vandeford to deal with her sensations derived from the show. Mr. Vandeford had his hands full.

To Miss Adair the Big Show was a series of mental and moral and artistic explosions. She sat with delight through the Japanese acrobats and Swiss quartette of yodelers, and she welcomed pretty, pert little Mazie Villines with enthusiasm that gradually faded into horror as that artist flaunted more and more lingerie and "dished the dirt" which the inebriate playwright, at that moment engaged in "putting pep" into Miss Adair's own beloved "Purple Slipper," nee "The Renunciation of Rosalind," had supplied. The "dirt" was received by the audience at large with a hilarious joy that entirely justified the managers of the Big Show for keeping Mazie busy "dishing."

However, all things come to an end, and with a last provocative, revealing kick Mazie was allowed to depart and give way to a pair of young dancers who promised to display wares more wholesome.

Without knowing why he did it, Mr. Vandeford leaned forward so that his left ear was within reach of the whisper of Miss Adair's lips as she turned her head and tilted it like a droopy flower toward his.

"I've only seen Sarah Bernhardt and John Drew and Maude Adams and Mansfield and Joe Jefferson and Arliss and the Coburns, up in Louisville," she faltered with her eyes questioning his and wide open with horror.

"These next ones aren't so bad, and we'll go before any more come on that--that you won't like," he whispered in return. He had glanced through the program and seen that the climax would be an exhibition of jungle courtship by one of America's most notorious women and her partner, done to extreme negroid melody.

"Thank you," she murmured as she turned to watch the willowy youth and maid go through some very beautiful movements of the dance that was entirely unobjectionable. In two minutes she had turned her face, beaming with pleasure, so that Mr. Vandeford could see that all was well with her; and ten minutes later she giggled out loud at the repartee of two black-faced artists.

During the respite that his knowledge of the numbers on the program gave him, Mr. Vandeford did more of his peculiar brand of thinking, and reached a diplomatic conclusion. By the intermission, which came just before the jungle "big number" to give late comers time to gather in for their salacious feast, he was ready to act.

"Miss Adair and I are going to get a breath of air," he announced.

"But the big number is next, and she might miss it," objected Miss Hawtry, with solicitude for Miss Adair's pleasure. Mr. Vandeford had thought past just that objection delivered by Miss Hawtry, and he knew that in no way must he seem to be shielding the author of "The Purple Slipper" from the salaciousness that gave Miss Hawtry great joy. If he went too far in any act of comparative analysis he would bring danger upon "The Purple Slipper," with whose fate Miss Adair's was one.

"We'll be back in plenty of time," he lied.

"Be sure!" Miss Hawtry commanded, and then turned to devote herself to Mr. Farraday, who was laying himself out to salve what he thought must be her pain at the loss of his beloved friend. The Violet had soon caught his attitude toward her, and was encouraging his chivalry in every way possible by the most pensive of poses as the generous deserted. Such a situation is all to a woman's advantage if she knows how to work it, and Miss Hawtry possessed that knowledge.

"Van ought to have a medical degree for operating young girls' eyes open, and making them see rose-colored for a while," she said with a good-humored smile and a soft little sigh, as she raised her Irish eyes in all their softness to Mr. Farraday's.