Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

Miss Adair rose and stole from the box to the stage-door, and looked up and down the street to see if Mr. Vandeford was approaching. She felt that she could not stand more alone. He was nowhere in sight, and she decided to walk around the block and see if the sun at ninety degrees would warm her chill. After this journey she returned to her post and found the box still empty. Mr. Vandeford had not arrived nor had Mr. Farraday, but she seated herself resolutely. She was just in time to witness a pitched battle between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Rooney.

"If you are determined to walk through the scenes, Miss Hawtry, do it awake and not asleep!" stormed Mr. Rooney.

"Very well," answered Miss Hawtry, but Miss Adair's heart warmed to her as she noted the contemptuousness in her manner directed toward her stage-manager.

"Now see here, Height, you know that you want to get away with this woman before her husband gets back. You can't do it with kid gloves on. Spit on your hands, man, and grab her by the hair. You say: 'Rosalind, a strong man's love is a weapon which a woman can easily turn against herself with deadly outcome,' like you were begging her to go with you over to Ligget's for an ice-cream soda with crushed strawberries. Say it this way." And as she sat astounded Miss Adair heard a line that she had written in a sympathetic fervor of imagination and which was perhaps her favorite in the whole play, uttered by Mr. William Rooney with the most exquisite and manly feeling, while his homely, vulgar face and body were transformed into the same exquisiteness. A breathless happiness descended upon her, and she waited in it to hear the beautiful Mr. Gerald Height give utterance to it with the same art. Miss Hawtry brought her to earth.

"Mr. Rooney," she said with an utter lack of appreciation or comprehension of the bit of high art that had flashed upon her, "it is in my contract with Mr. Vandeford that I rehearse my scenes alone with my support until the dress rehearsal."

"Yes, I might have judged that from 'Miss Cut-up,'" Mr. Rooney answered her with a blow straight from his shoulder. "Give little sister her cue, Height, and let her run on to rescue you. God knows you need it!"

"Mr. Rooney, I'll have you understand—" Miss Hawtry came to the center to continue her tirade, when Mr. Rooney struck the decisive blow.

"Everybody on and begin the scene over!" he commanded right past the enraged star. "Take it up, Kent, with Miss Herne at 'I will write the message to your son,' and get her going, get her going!"

At this forceful command the machinery of "The Purple Slipper" was set in motion, and swept Miss Hawtry off center and into her place for the time being.

And despite herself Miss Adair was fascinated in watching the machine grind away, with now and then a spark from Mr. Rooney that took fire in the very core of her heart or brain or solar plexus—wherever "The Renunciation of Rosalind" had been conceived. Miss Adair did not know what it was that thus affected her, but she had got hold of her end of the psychic cord along which the author feeds the hostile stage-manager in such a manner that on the first night of a successful play they can say to each other with clasped hands and wet eyes, "Well done!"