Blue-grass and Broadway Part 12

"That's good, and I'll tell her that I haven't got any--"

"Tell her that you haven't got any money, as usual," were the words which Mr. Howard's fair lion-tamer used to finish his sentence of appeal to Mr. Vandeford for his co-operation in fraud. She had entered past Mr.

Meyers with his full approval, for he felt a great relief at the sight of her and her guardianship.

"How's Mazie?" asked Mr. Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the ceremony he would have used for a grand d.u.c.h.ess--or Miss Patricia Adair--offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny, good-humored, rather pretty face and her very smart clothes.

"Kicking along, Mr. Vandeford, thank you," was the answer. "Gee, but I did kick the limit to-night, that's sure. I put some shady shines over what Grant wrote into a let-down in my part for me last night in great shape. They et it up, darling." Her naughty face beamed on Howard.

"Hawtry was in a box, left. Had a gink in soup to fish with her that looked like real money. Have you rented her out?"

"You folks get along and stop that taxi meter you've got running on me,"

Mr. Vandeford said, answering the sally with a laugh; but it surprised him that there was a cold s.p.a.ce in his vitals at the insult that the little trollop handed him with such comradery, guiltless of any knowledge that it was an insult.

"What was that about touching pitch?" he asked himself as he walked rapidly up four blocks to the theater where Mazie had told him he would find the Violet with her prey. He was just in time to meet them in the lobby. Denny was in the gorgeousness of his "soup to fish," Mazie's and her world's term for evening attire, and the Violet in every way matched his good looks.

"Why, where is Mademoiselle Innocence?" asked Hawtry, with a little frown, as she perceived that Mr. Vandeford was alone and not in regalia.

"Asleep at the Y. W. C. A.," he answered shortly.

"Sure?" asked the Violet, with a little laugh for which he could have killed her.

"Why, she promised Miss Hawtry to go to supper with us and see a midnight show," Mr. Farraday exclaimed, and there was disappointment in his voice as he looked at Mr. Vandeford.

"I couldn't get away from the office until just this minute, and I didn't think I could get away this soon. Miss Adair sent her apologies to you both, and I came over to bring them."

"Evidently we are not to be trusted with the author, Mr. Farraday,"

laughed Violet, with what good Dennis took as good nature and what Mr.

Vandeford knew to be rage.

"Well, bless the child and her beauty sleep, but don't let that kill our evening joy. Come along, Van, and we'll go some place sufficiently disreputable to admit a crumpled person like yourself if you wash your hands. We can have a good powwow over the play. I want to know what you have been doing while I was off the job chasing a hat for the author."

And the big, stupid Jonathan linked his arm in that of his anxious and hovering David and drew him along towards the Surrenese, which stood across the street, at the same time guiding the steps of the Violet's satin slippers in that direction.

While the three walked across the narrow street Mr. Vandeford made some rapid calculations and a decision in his mind. He saw plainly that he could not undertake to guard Mr. Dennis Farraday from the Violet and at the same time fend Miss Patricia Adair from her wiles. He'd have to choose between them, and in the twinkling of an eye he chose Patricia.

It is said that there is a love between men "that pa.s.ses the love of women," but n.o.body has ever witnessed it.

"You people go on to your show--I'm all in," he capitulated as they stood beside Mr. Farraday's car; and the heart of the Violet rejoiced within her.

"I'm sure Miss Adair is getting caught up on sleep so she can go with you to-morrow night. She's a perfect dear, and we'll put her play across," Hawtry cooed to him in her rich voice, and he knew that she felt she had struck his price and bought him off.

"If Denny falls for her he'll fall far; but I can't help it. A girl's a girl, specially from the country," Mr. Vandeford said to himself, as he stood and watched them drive away into the white-lighted canon of Broadway. Then he went home and to bed.

A man may put out his night light, stretch himself between his sheets with the perfection of fatigue and still not sleep. There are various combinations of reasons that prevent his slumber. Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford was still awake when Mr. Dennis Farraday let himself into his apartment with a key that had been presented to him five years before when Mr.

Vandeford had installed his Lares and Penates in the tall building on Seventy-third Street, some of these Lares and Penates being Mr.

Farraday's extra linen and clothes.

"That you, Denny?" Mr. Vandeford asked as he switched on his light and took a hurried glance at a clock on his mantel which registered the hour of 2 A. M.

"Yes," answered Mr. Farraday, as he came to the door of Mr. Vandeford's sleeping apartment. "A thought suddenly struck me, and I stopped in to explode it at you and sleep here."

"Fire away!"

"My mater is coming to town the first of the week to have her gla.s.ses changed, and I'm going to telephone out to her to-morrow and ask her to write Miss Adair to have dinner with us informally at the town house while she is here. You know mater's mother was from old Kentucky, and she'll adore the child. Think that's good thinking?"

"Fine," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a glow under his ribs about which he said nothing. Men are vastly inarticulate, but they have various means of communication, and Mr. Vandeford now felt that in his care of his author Mr. Dennis Farraday would understand.

"You know I am on new ground, old chap, but--but how about asking Miss Lindsey, too?" Mr. Farraday questioned, with great diffidence.

"Fine!" agreed Mr. Vandeford, with accelerated glow under his ribs that Miss Lindsey had been proposed when Miss Hawtry might have been invited.

"Get to bed, can't you, you Indian, you? Night!"

"Good-night!" answered Mr. Farraday, as he departed to his own room.

And still Mr. Vandeford did not sleep.

Flat upon his back he lay and faced, a.n.a.lyzed, and card-indexed his situation and himself.

"Five years of myself given to that gutter girl and I never even cared; let her annex me for purposes of parade and publicity, and thought it funny sport. Wasted? Something to be deducted for pleasure in artistic success of "Dear Geraldine," but what will it cost me if I have to stand by and see her make old Denny hate himself as I do myself, or worse?

She'll not stop short with him, and how do I know what he'll do? The money don't matter, but the--cleanliness does. If I go in to save him, she gave me notice to-night that she would go for that gray-eyed girl.

What can she do to her? First, kill her play, no matter what I do to build up a success for the kiddie to cancel that mortgage. Second: do something, say something that will kill that look in those gray eyes when they lift to me. Never! Take Denny, Violet, and the Lord help him; I can't. You've bought me. Washing her hair in the Y. W. C. A.! G.o.d bless that inst.i.tution and--"

At last Mr. G.o.dfrey Vandeford slept.

After his ten o'clock awakening Mr. Vandeford displayed a marked eccentricity in his demeanor. That morning was unlike any morning he had ever experienced, and his conduct surprised himself. A daybreak shower had fallen on the hot and baked city, and it was as fresh as a suburb.

Arrayed in the coolest of white silk, linen, and suede, Mr. Vandeford had his chauffeur drive him not to the whirling office but to the most sophisticated Fifth Avenue florist, where he purchased the most unsophisticated bunch of flowers at the highest price to be obtained in New York.

"The Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation," he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the young Frenchman hesitated.

"I don't know where it is--Find out," commanded Mr. Vandeford, and again he had the foreign experience of feeling the blood burn the under side of the tan on his cheeks.

Valentine consulted the tall man in uniform at the door of the flower shop, and this menial consulted some one within, who must have consulted a directory, judging from the time it took to obtain the correct address. With his eyes straight in front of him, as a chauffeur's eyes should always be, he then drove rapidly down the avenue.

And on that beautiful morning Mr. Vandeford's luck was with him.

Valentine whirled expertly up to the curb in front of the large, hospitable building which had emblazoned over its door the impressive Y.

W. C. A. letters, letters that send a beacon all over the known world as they did to Mr. Vandeford in little and unimportant New York. Mr.

Vandeford got out of the car with hurried grace in his long limbs and, with actual trepidation, went in through the door, into a world he had never even thought of before. He had entered many an African lion jungle with less fear. He glanced with awe at the natty young woman in white linen who presided at the desk, and wanted intensely to put his flowers behind him and back out of the door rather than approach and ask for the lady to whom he wished to donate them. In fact, he might have accomplished such a retreat if again luck had not come his way.

"Oh, Mr. Vandeford, how glad I am that you got here before we went out to the museum," exclaimed a fluty, slurring young voice just behind him, and he found that the gray eyes with the black lashes were just as unusual as he had decided they could not possibly be in the interval that had elapsed since he had looked into them. "Oh, how lovely!"

The last exclamation was made over the edge of the bouquet, which he had tendered Miss Adair as silently as a school-boy hands out his first bunch of b.u.t.tercups to the lady for whom he has picked them.

"Did you come for me to go to help work on the play?" was the energetic question that brought him out of his trance.

"No, not right now," he answered haltingly, and when he realized how many times he would have to put her off with words to that same effect, his trance became a panic.

"When are you going to need me?" Miss Adair asked him with a direct and business-like look right to his eyes. "I am ready for work now."

"Now what'll I do?" he demanded of himself.