“Scanlon the actor?”
“Yes. The author of your song.”
Miss Rogers was tearfully uncertain, as she went on to respond to an encore, whether she had done right or wrong. She sang “In It” and the “Latch Key in the Door.” Then Scanlon was brought back to us and Miss Rogers was introduced to him.
“I want to thank you,” he said simply. “I felt as I used to, you know. Some day I will sing it again. You are very pretty and you sing well.”
If there was one man in the audience blind to the pathos of the scene which had just occurred it was Harry Kernell, the comedian. He had looked on quietly, his face impassive, his hands clasped loosely over one knee. He smiled when Scanlon came back to the seat just in front of him; then his face became fixed and vacant as before.
Kernell raised his face again as his wife who had been sitting beside him, left her seat. He seemed to have forgotten her, and to be hearing nothing and seeing nothing, when I announced the next number on the programme.
“We have a pleasant surprise for you,” I said, smiling in anticipation. “Mrs. Kernell is here; she came up to see her husband, my old friend, and we wouldn’t let her refuse to sing for you.”
But Kernell did not look up until his wife, Queenie Vassar, began singing. The little woman watched him tenderly. The poor fellow understood. After that, no lover could have been more appreciative than he was. It was the one voice in all the world that could move him. Scanlon turned and whispered to him, but Kernell’s soul was in the song. Quickly he looked ten years younger than he does ordinarily. He seemed grateful for the applause, and eager for another song, and another, so Mrs. Kernell sang “Peggy Cline,” “Sligo” and “The Bowery.”