Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"I'll be back at four-forty-five," Mr. Vandeford answered him, and with no further good-by took his departure.

Arriving at his office, Mr. Vandeford directed Mr. Meyers that he was to have half an hour entirely undisturbed, entered his own office, and after a second's pause went into the little office that had been assigned to Miss Adair, the author, and sat down in the chair she very seldom occupied, but which was hers by tenancy. On the desk were a pair of silk gloves she had left there the day before, and in a blue vase were several roses in a good state of preservation, which he recognized as having come from a bunch Miss Adair had been wearing after having had luncheon with Mr. Gerald Height on Monday. These objects disturbed Mr. Vandeford vaguely. He put them out of his mind roughly and went into conference with himself sternly. Literally he was weighing the question.

On one side of the balance he laid "The Rosie Posie Girl," which, with Hawtry, was sure to run on Broadway for at least two seasons and make for him a fortune that was indefinitely large and sure. Beside this, its production would insure him a position among the country's really great producers. The show was big enough in conception to admit of a spectacularly artistic treatment, which he had intended to give it so that it would place musical comedy on a plane upon which it had never stood before. He knew himself well enough to know that a real triumph of that kind once accomplished, he would want to turn to other fields of endeavor, and he could see his greater self standing patiently waiting for his lesser to be liberated by the process of climbing out of the very top of the theatrical profession.

Sternly he turned from himself to the filling of the other pan of the scales in which he was weighing the question. He looked for something to put in to over-balance the certainty of "The Rosie Posie Girl," and found nothing but a vast uncertainty with many potentialities. "The Purple Slipper" was a play of no known classification, and with Hawtry in it was still less fish, flesh, fowl, or good red herring. And there was added the uncertainty of that week from the twenty-third to the first during which he had no legal hold on the fair Violet. He felt reasonably sure that the announcement that "The Purple Slipper" would open the big new Weiner theater, with all the clash of publicity which he could give to it, would hold her steady on her job, but as he laid it down on the scales, it had to be classed as an uncertainty. The fifteen per cent. seat sales based on Mr. Gerald Height's appearance in silk tights, velvet, and lace was about the only positive he had to lay in the scales, and that, of course, failed to tip them to any degree. For about fifteen minutes he sat perfectly rigid. Then he gently laid on the uncertain side of the scales the positive and concrete faith in a pair of sea-gray eyes, jeweled with tears, and watched "The Rosie Posie Girl" rise high as "The Purple Slipper" sank down heavily.

After this he took a rose from the green vase, stuck it in his buttonhole, and went forth—into his own office. He there rang his buzzer for Mr. Meyers, and seated himself with the air of a man who has had a burden lifted off his shoulders rather than with the air of one about to give away half a million dollars.

"Pops, 'The Rosie Posie Girl' is sold, lock, stock, and barrel, to Weiner for a month's try-out of 'The Purple Slipper' at the New Carnival Theater, good guarantee for that month, and an option on a run to the limit for eight-thousand-a-week houses. Get Lusky over the 'phone, and you and he have the contracts drawn as tight as wax by four-thirty."

"But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, I must have a say that—"

"No, Pops, don't say anything."

"With a pardon it is that I think that Miss Adair is a very fine lady, and so also 'The Purple Slipper.'" With this incoherent pronouncement of sympathy and encouragement, though devastated at the loss of "The Rosie Posie Girl," upon which he had already spent many creative days, Mr. Meyers departed into the outer office.

For a long minute Mr. Vandeford glared at the unoffending rose in his buttonhole, then smiled, ran his hands through his hair, turned to the telephone, and plunged into the last lap of the race of "The Purple Slipper." Until four o'clock he was closeted with the most brilliant theatrical publicity man in New York City; then he took his contracts and went over to Weiner's office and sacrificed "The Rosie Posie Girl" to—