Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Big, red-headed chap with the show?" Mr. Rooney questioned carelessly.

"Same," admitted the old keeper.

"Cuss her," Mr. Rooney remarked, without either special interest or malice, and took his leisurely way to his hotel.

The star dressing-room at the little Atlantic City theater, in which half the plays produced on Broadway first try out their charm, is larger than the dressing-rooms in most of the modern theaters, and dainty Susette always made any dressing-room which happened to serve Miss Hawtry look more like a boudoir than seemed possible, by taking thought to have silky rose curtains to adjust over costume-racks and windows, with covers to match to be slipped over the couple of rough chairs usually supplied dressing-rooms. A fillet covering large enough for any dressing-table, the silver and ivory of the make-up outfit, and lights shaded with the fillet over rose were about all the equipment that the French girl carried in the top of one of Miss Hawtry's costume trunks, but she managed an effect with them that many a Fifth Avenue decorator might envy. Following instructions, she had put all in exquisite order and left the theater before Miss Hawtry was off the stage. The Violet had been obliged to send her summons to Mr. Dennis Farraday by the old door-keeper; hence his knowledge of her manœuvers.

Miss Hawtry was still encased in the magnificence of the costume for the final scene of "The Purple Slipper," and in the rose light of the little dressing-room she glowed like a fire-hearted opal as Mr. Dennis Farraday entered with the great hesitation of a first appearance in a stage dressing-room. His face was pale and serious. Miss Hawtry had seen that her Maggie Murphy insult to Mr. Vandeford had apparently cut more deeply into the big Jonathan than into Mr. Vandeford himself, and she had realized that she must set her scene well and act quickly and with daring if she accomplished her purposes.

"Forgive me—and comfort me. I have hurt myself more than I have hurt him," she cried out as she turned to him and expelled two sparkling tears from her great blue eyes, and held out bare, white, glorious arms to him, with the sob of a repentant child caught in her throat.

Now, Mr. Dennis Farraday, great gentleman and the son of a line of gentlemen, was in the same state that many another good man and true would be in after witnessing "The Purple Slipper" as played by Miss Hawtry in her compelling animality, and his angry eyes suddenly blazed with another light than anger, as with a hard breath he admitted the big, beautiful, treacherous cat into his arms and allowed her bare arms to coil around his neck and her body to cling to his.

"How could you—how can you?" he asked, and the question on his lips made them cold, and kept them from hers—long enough.

Mr. Vandeford stood in the dressing-room door without so much as rapping for permission to enter, and his face was dead white while his eyes blazed in a great terror. He seemed not to notice the purport of the scene he had interrupted, but his voice cut into the situation like cold steel.

"Denny, we can't find Miss Adair anywhere, and here's a note she left Miss Lindsey. What do you make of it?" He handed Mr. Farraday a sheet of hotel note-paper, which he took with a trembling hand while Miss Hawtry shrank back against her lace-covered dressing-table and gathered her forces to annihilate Mr. Vandeford. This was the note, which Mr. Farraday read with one glance, but failed to read to Miss Hawtry, because its few lines struck all consciousness of her existence entirely from his mind.