Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"That is the proper way for an author to feel about a play one week before the opening," Mr. Vandeford assured her, with a laugh keyed to match her declaration. "It shows an entire sympathy with the poor producer."

"Suppose, just suppose, that the producer had been anybody but you and I had had to stand all—" Words failed Miss Adair in imaging her plight as author to another producer than Mr. Vandeford.

"Any other producer might have done better than I have done for you," Mr. Vandeford answered her, with a sadness in his voice that he himself had never heard before. And as he spoke he resolved to tell her the whole Hawtry situation, which was haunting him day and night; to begin with the purple, letter-manuscript hunch, which he had lightly taken up to spank Miss Hawtry for trying to double-cross him with Weiner about "The Rosie Posie Girl," and end up with the hopeless state of his feelings about herself. Miss Adair herself stemmed the confession which might have altered the fate of that good machine "The Purple Slipper."

"You've made the whole horrible experience worth while to me, and I'm going to be a great playwright yet, just to make you—you proud of me," she assured his sadness in the purple dusk, and this time Mr. Vandeford was so sure of the flutter that he reached out his hand and captured a part of it, a white, slim little hand that nestled into his as though it were not in any way aware of doing so. "I'm going to dinner with Miss Herne to-morrow night, so Mr. Kent can show me what is the matter with part of his costume for the third act, and then I'm going to coax Mr. Corbett to fix it over for him," she continued, speaking of the business of learning to be the great playwright she had promised him to become.

"Er—er, did you say dinner with Bébé and—and Kent?" Mr. Vandeford stammered as a desperate opening for letting his author know just what she was doing in visiting that establishment without-the-law.

"Yes, I know about them; Mildred told me, but I told her that I was going to accept the 'broad standard' that prevailed in my profession. I like both of those people a lot. What business is it of mine if they don't want to get married?" Miss Adair's voice was coolly unconcerned and professional.

"Help!" ejaculated Mr. Vandeford, holding the slim little hand as if drowning. And indeed he did have a sinking sensation, which, strange to say, was relieved by a quick mental vision of the capable young woman at the desk of the great international safety.

"And I know about Mr. Height's three divorces, and I think he is to be pitied instead of criticized for being so unfortunate and lonely. Mildred says she doesn't believe he is as lonely as he tells me he is, but I know he is. I asked Miss Herne to ask him to dinner, too, and she did," Miss Adair continued, thus making little stabs into Mr. Vandeford's vitals.

And right there Mr. Vandeford paid the entire penalty for all his tilts against organized morality by feeling unworthy to take a beautiful, fragrant, adoring, confiding girl in his arms and telling her all he had learned of the tragic results of such tilts. His predicament was tragic, though unique. If he summed up these others, he sized up himself to her, and by what judgment he taught her to judge them she would judge him when the time came. If he taught her to turn from Kent or Height she would turn from him, when she knew him entirely, as she surely would soon. And, forsooth, how would he prove to her that he was a better man than the copper-headed tango lizard, Height, though he knew himself to be? And who was this girl, anyway, to come out of a little back-woods town where the standards of life were so narrow that all who could lived out of them in degrading secrecy, and make him feel himself unworthy when he had lived openly in a way about which his own conscience had not troubled him? Why did he hesitate to tell her about his affair with the Violet and his anxiety about her contract, and why should his face burn at the thought of telling her how he had coolly let his best friend in for the prospect of an affair with the star for the purpose of protecting her and her play? And why should the sex and business standards of his world be entirely different from those of hers or any other world! On the other hand why shouldn't they all double-cross and prey on and defame and applaud each other to their heart's content? Why should they care if they were judged by—? At this part Mr. Vandeford's bitter reflections were suddenly invaded by a perceptible collapse of Miss Adair's soft and proud young body against his, and a round, warm cheek fell against his silk-clad sleeve, as he perceived that his eminent author had plunged suddenly into the depths of healthy and innocent slumber, while he had been moralizing about her and the rest of the universe. He slipped his arm about her with cautious tenderness and made her comfortable, while he muttered to himself:

"She's a white flame and, God willing, I'm going to keep her that!"