The Camp Fire Girls' Careers

CHAPTER III – Friends and Enemies

Standing outside in the dark passage for a moment, Polly hesitated with her hand on the door-knob, having already opened the door a few inches. From the inside she could plainly hear the voices of the two girls who shared the dressing room with her. Neither one of them had an important place in the cast. They merely came on in one of the scenes as members of a group and without speaking. However, they were both clever, ambitious girls whom Polly liked. Now her attention had been arrested by hearing the sound of her own name.

“Polly O’Neill was a dreadful failure, wasn’t she?” one of them was saying. “Well, I am not in the least surprised. Indeed, it was just what I expected. Of course, she was only given the part of Belinda because of favoritism. Miss Adams is such a great friend of hers!”

Then before Polly could make her presence known the second girl replied:

“So far as I can see, Polly O’Neill has never shown a particle of ability at any of the rehearsals that would justify her being placed over the rest of us. I am sure that either you or I would have done far better. But never mind; perhaps some day we may be famous actresses and she nothing at all, when there is no Miss Adams to help her along.”

But at this same instant Polly walked into the room.

“I am so sorry I overheard what you said, but it was entirely my fault, not yours,” she began directly. “Only please don’t think I intended to be eavesdropping. It was quite an accident my appearing just at the wrong moment. Of course I am hurt by your thinking I acted Belinda so poorly. Perhaps one of you would have been more successful. But do please understand that I realize perfectly that I had the chance given me because of Miss Adams’ friendship and not because of my own talents.” Then, though Polly’s cheeks were flaming during her long speech and her tones not always steady, she smiled at her companions in entire good fellowship.

Immediately the older girl, walking across the floor, laid her hand on Polly’s shoulder. “I am not going to take back all I said a while ago, for I meant a part of it,” she declared half apologetically and half with bravado. “Honestly, I don’t think you were very good as Belinda. But I have seen you act rather well at rehearsals now and then. I think you failed tonight because you suddenly grew so frightened. Don’t be discouraged; goodness knows it has happened to many an actor before who afterwards became famous,” she ended in an effort to be comforting.

“Yes, and it is all very well for us to talk here in our dressing rooms about being more successful than you were,” the second girl added, “but there is no way of our proving that we would not have had even worse cases of stage fright.” She gave Polly’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Of course, you must know we are both jealous of Miss Adams’ affection for you or we would never have been such horrid cats.” The girl blushed. “Do try and forget what we said, it was horrid not to have been kinder and more sympathetic. You may have a chance to pay us back with interest some day. Anyhow, you are a splendid sport not to be angry. I am sure it is the people who take things as you have this who will win out in the end.”

Then no one referred to the subject again. For it was plain that Polly was exhausted and that her nerves had nearly reached the breaking point. Instead, both girls now did their best to assist her in taking off the costume of the ill-fated Belinda and in getting into an ordinary street costume. For Polly was to meet her family and friends in a small reception room adjoining Miss Adams’ dressing room, five minutes after the close of the play. She would have preferred to have marched up to the cannon’s mouth, and she was much too tired at present either for congratulations or censure. She heard Mollie and Betty Ashton coming toward the door to seek for her.

Of course they were both immediately enthusiastic over Polly’s début and were sure that she had been a pronounced success. For in the minds of her sister and friend, Polly was simply incapable of failure. And perhaps they did succeed in making the rest of the evening easier for her. But then all of her old Camp Fire and Woodford friends were as kind as possible. To have one of their own girls acting on a real stage seemed fame enough in itself.

But from two of her friends, from Sylvia Wharton and from Billy Webster, Polly received the truth as they saw it. Sylvia’s came with spoken words, and Billy’s by a more painful silence.

As Polly entered the room, Sylvia came forward, and kissed her solemnly. The two girls had not seen each other for a number of weeks. Sylvia had only arrived in New York a few hours before.

“You were dreadfully nervous, Polly, just as I thought you would be,” Sylvia remarked quietly, holding her step-sister’s attention by the intensity and concentration of her gaze behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “Now I am afraid you are fearfully tired and upset. I do wish you would go home immediately and go to bed instead of talking to all these people. But I suppose you have already decided because you did not act as well as you expected this evening that you will never do any better. Promise me to be reasonable this one time, Polly, and may I see you alone and have a talk with you tomorrow?”

Then there was only time for the older girl to nod agreement and to place her hot hand for an instant into Sylvia’s large, strong one, that already had a kind of healing touch.

For Mrs. Wharton was now demanding her daughter’s attention, wishing to introduce her to friends. Since she had finally made up her mind to allow Polly to try her fate as an actress, Mrs. Wharton had no doubt of her ultimate brilliant success.

Five minutes afterwards, quite by accident, Richard Hunt found himself standing near enough to Polly to feel that he must also say something in regard to her début.

“I am glad Belinda did not run away today, Miss Polly,” he whispered. “Do you know I almost believed she intended to for a few moments this morning?” And the man smiled at the absurdity of his idea.

Polly glanced quickly up toward her companion, a warm flush coloring her tired face. “It might have been better for the play if I had, Mr. Hunt, I’m a-thinking,” she answered with a mellow Irish intonation in the low tones of her voice. “But you need not think I did not mean what I said. Don’t tell on me, but I had a ticket bought and my bag packed and all my plans made for running away and then at the last even I could not be quite such a coward.” The girl’s expression changed. “Perhaps, after all, I may yet be forced into using that ticket some day,” she added, half laughing and half serious, as she turned to speak to some one else who had joined them.

For another idle moment the man still thought of his recent companion. How much or how little of her rash statements did the child mean? Yet he might have spared himself the trouble of this reflection, for this question about Polly was never to be satisfactorily answered.

Although by this time the greater number of persons in Margaret Adams’ reception room had spoken to Polly either to say kind things or the reverse, there was, however, one individual who had devoted his best efforts to avoiding her. Yet there had never been such an occasion before tonight. For whether he chanced to be angry with her at the moment or pleased, Billy Webster had always enjoyed the opportunity of talking to Polly, since she always stirred his deepest emotions, no matter what the emotions chanced to be. Tonight he had no desire to repeat the fatal words, “I told you so.”

Of course he had always known that Polly O’Neill would never be a successful actress; she was far too erratic, too emotional. If only she had been sensible for once and listened to him that day in the woods long ago! Suddenly Billy squared his broad shoulders and closed his firm young lips. For, separating herself from every one else, Polly was actually marching directly toward him, and she had ever an uncanny fashion of guessing what was going on in other people’s heads.

Underneath his country tan Billy Webster blushed furiously and honestly.

“You think I was a rank failure, don’t you?” Polly demanded at once.

Still speechless, the young man nodded his head.

“You don’t believe I ever will do much better?” Again Billy nodded agreement.

“And that I had much better have stayed at home in Woodford and learned to cook and sew and – and – well, some day try to be somebody’s wife?” the girl ended a little breathlessly.

This time Billy Webster did not mince matters. “I most assuredly do,” he answered with praiseworthy bluntness.

Now for the first time since her fiasco as Belinda, Polly’s eyes flashed with something of their old fire. And there in the presence of the company, though unheeded by them, she stamped her foot just as she always had as a naughty child.

“I will succeed, Billy Webster, I will, I will! I don’t care how many failures I may make in learning! And just because I want to be a good actress is no reason why I can’t marry some day, if there is any man in the world who could both love and understand me and who would not wish to make me over according to his own particular pattern.” Then Polly smiled. “Thank you a thousand times, though, Billy, for you are the solitary person who has done me any good tonight. It is quite like old times, isn’t it, for us to start quarreling as soon as we meet. But, farewell, I must go home now and to bed.” Polly held out her hand. “You are an obstinate soul, Billy, but I can’t help admiring you for the steadfast way in which you disapprove of me.”

CHAPTER IV – Farewell!

Margaret Adams was in her private sitting room in her own home, an old-fashioned red brick house near Washington Square. She had been writing letters for more than an hour and had just seated herself in a big chair and closed her eyes. She looked very young and tiny at this instant to be such a great lady. Her silk morning dress was only a shade lighter than the rose-colored chair.

Suddenly ten fingers were lightly laid over her eyes.

“Guess who I am or I shall never release you,” a rich, soft voice demanded, and Margaret Adams drew the fingers down and kissed them.

“Silly Polly, as if it could be any one else? What ever made you come out in this rain, child? You had a cold, anyway, and it is a perfectly beastly day.”

Instead of replying, Polly sat down in front of a small, open fire, putting her toes up on the fender.

“You are a hospitable lady,” she remarked finally, “but I am not wet specially. I left my damp things down stairs so as not to bring them into this pretty room. It always makes me think of the rose lining to a cloud; one could never have the blues in here.”

The room was charming. The walls were delicately pink, almost flesh color, with a deeper pink border above. A few original paintings were hung in a low line – one of an orchard with apple trees in spring bloom. The mantel was of white Italian marble with a bust of Dante’s Beatrice upon it and this morning it also held a vase of roses. Over near the window a desk of inlaid mahogany was littered with letters, papers, writing materials and photographs. On a table opposite the newest magazines and books were carefully arranged, together with a framed photograph of Polly and Margaret Adams’ taken when they were in London several years before. There was also a photograph of Richard Hunt and several others of distinguished men and women who were devoted friends of the famous actress.

A big, rose-colored divan was piled with a number of silk and velvet cushions of pale green and rose. Then there were other odd chairs and tables and shaded lamps and curtains of rose-colored damask hung over white net. But the room was neither too beautiful nor fanciful to be homelike and comfortable. Two or three ugly things Margaret Adams still kept near her for old associations’ sake and these alone, Polly insisted, made it possible for her to come into this room. For she, too, was an ugly thing, allowed to stay there now and then because of past association.

Polly was not looking particularly well today. She had been acting for ten days in A Woman’s Wit, though that would scarcely explain her heavy eyelids, nor her colorless cheeks. Polly’s eyes were so big in her white face and her hair so black that actually she looked more like an Irish pixie than an ordinary every-day girl.

“You’ll stay to lunch with me, Polly, and I’ll send you home in my motor,” Margaret Adams announced authoritatively. “I suppose your mother and Mollie have gone back to Woodford? I know Betty has returned to Boston, she came in to say good-by and to tell me that she is spending the winter in Boston with her brother, Dr. Ashton, and his wife. Betty is really prettier than ever, don’t you think so? I believe it was you, Polly, who really saved Betty from marrying her German princeling, but what will the child do now without you to look after her?”

Margaret Adams arose and walked across the room, presumably to ring for her maid, but in reality to have a closer look at her visitor. For Polly had not yet answered her idle questions; nor did she even show the slightest interest in the mention of her beloved Betty’s name. Something most unusual must be the matter with her.

“I should like to stay to lunch if no one else is coming,” Polly returned a moment later. “I did not like to disturb you earlier. There is something I want to tell you and so I might as well say it at once. I am not going to try to act Belinda any longer. I am going away from New York tomorrow. Yet you must not think I am ungrateful, even though I am not going to tell you where I am going nor what I intend to do.” Polly clasped her thin arms about her knees and began slowly rocking herself back and forth with her eyes fastened on the fire, as though not daring to glance toward her friend.

At first Margaret Adams made no reply. Then she answered coldly and a little disdainfully: “So you are playing the coward, Polly! Instead of trying each night to do better and better work you are running away. If for an instant I had dreamed that you had so little courage, so little backbone, I never should have encouraged you to enter one of the most difficult professions in the whole world. Come, dear, you are tired and perhaps ill. I ought not to scold you. But I want you to forget what you have just said. Goodness knows, I have not forgotten the bitterly discouraged days I used to have and do still have every now and then. Only somehow I hoped a Camp Fire girl might be different, that her club training might give her fortitude. Remember ‘Wohelo means work. We glorify work because through work we are free. We work to win, to conquer and be masters. We work for the joy of working and because we are free.’ Long ago I thought you and I decided that the Camp Fire rules would apply equally well to whatever career a girl undertook, no matter what she might try to do or be.”

“Oh, I have not forgotten; I think of our old talks very often,” was Polly’s unsatisfactory reply.

A little nearer the fire Margaret Adams now drew her own big chair. It was October and the rain was a cold one, making the blaze comforting. The whole atmosphere of the room was peculiarly intimate and cozy and yet the girl did not appear any happier.

“I wonder if you would like to hear of my early trials, Polly?” Margaret asked. “Not because they were different from other people’s, but perhaps because they were so like. I believe I promised to tell you my history once several years ago.”

The older woman did not glance toward her visitor, as she had no doubt of her interest. Instead she merely curled herself up in her chair like a girl eager to tell a most interesting story.

“You see, dear, I made my début not when I was twenty-one like you are, but when I was exactly seven. Of course even now one does not like to talk of it, but I never remember either my father or mother. They were both actors and died when I was very young, leaving me without money and to be brought up in any way fate chose. I don’t know just why I was not sent at once to an orphan asylum, but for some reason or other a woman took charge of me who used to do all kinds of odd work about the theater, help mend clothes, assist with the dressing, scrub floors if necessary. She was frightfully poor, so of course there is no blame to be attached to her for making me try to earn my own bread as soon as possible. And bread it was actually.” Margaret Adams laughed, yet not with the least trace of bitterness. “A child was needed in a play, one of the melodramas that used to be so popular when I was young, a little half-starved waif. I dare say I had no trouble in looking the part. You see I’m not very big now, Polly, so I must have been a ridiculously thin, homely child, all big staring eyes and straight brownish hair. I was engaged to stand outside a baker’s shop window gazing wistfully in at a beautiful display of shiny currant buns until the heroine appeared. Then, touched by my plight, she nobly presented me with a penny with which I purchased a bun. Well, dear, that piece of bread was all the pay I received for my night’s performance, and it was all the supper I had. One night – funny how I can recall it all as if it were yesterday – coming out of the shop I stumbled, dropped my bun and at the same instant saw it rolling away from me down toward the blazing row of footlights. I had not a thought then of where I was or of anything in all the world but that I was a desperately hungry child, losing my supper. So with a pitiful cry I jumped up and ran after my bread. When I picked it up I think I hugged it close to me like a treasure and kissed it. Well, dear, you can imagine that the very unconsciousness, the genuineness of the little act won the audience. I know a good many people cried that night and afterwards. The reason I still remember the little scene so perfectly was because after that first time I had to do the same thing over and over again as long as the play ran. It was my first ‘hit,’ Polly, though I never understood what it meant for years and years afterwards.”

“Poor baby,” Polly whispered softly, taking her friend’s hand and touching it with her lips. “But I don’t care how or why the thing happened I have always known that you must have been a genius from the very first.”

“Genius?” The older woman smiled, shaking her head. “I don’t think so, Polly; I may have had some talent, although it took me many years to prove it. Mostly it has all been just hard work with me and beginning at seven, you see I have had a good many years. Do you think I became famous immediately after I captured the audience and the bun? My dear, I don’t believe I have ever known another girl as impossible as I was as an actress after I finally grew up. I did not continue acting. My foster mother married and I was then sent to school for a number of years. Finally, when I was sixteen, I came back to the stage, though I did not have a speaking part till five years later. You see, I was not pretty, and I never got very big in spite of the buns. It was not until I played in The Little Curate years after that I made any kind of reputation.”

Margaret Adams leaned over and put both hands on Polly’s thin shoulders.

“Don’t you see, dear, how silly, how almost wicked you will be if you run away from the opportunity I am able to give you. I never had any one to help me. It was all nothing but hard, wearing work and few friends, with almost no encouragement.”

“I see, Margaret,” Polly returned gravely. Then, getting up, she sat for a few moments on the arm of her friend’s chair. “Yet I must give up the chance you have given me just the same, dear, and I must go away from New York tomorrow. I can’t tell you why I am going or where because I am afraid you might dissuade me. Oh, I suppose it is foolish, even mad, of me, but I would not be myself if I were reasonable, and I am doing what seems wisest to me. I have written to mother and made her understand and to Sylvia because she almost forced me into promising her that I would keep her informed this winter where I was and what I was doing. I am not confiding in any one else in the whole world. But if you think I am ungrateful, Margaret, you think the very wrongest thing in the whole world and I’ll prove it to you one day, no matter what it costs. The most dreadful part is that I am not going to be able to see you for a long time. That is the hardest thing. You will never know what you have meant to me in these last few years when I have been away from home and my old friends. But I believe you are lonely too, dear, now and then in spite of your reputation and money and all the people who would like to know you.” Polly got up now and began walking restlessly about the room, not knowing how to say anything more without betraying her secret.

She glanced at the photograph of Richard Hunt.

“Are you and Mr. Hunt very special friends, Margaret?” Polly asked, an idea having suddenly come into her mind. “I think he is half as nice as you are and that is saying a great deal.”

For a perceptible moment Margaret Adams did not reply and then she seemed to hesitate, perhaps thinking of something else. “Yes, we have been friends for a number of years, sometimes intimate ones, sometimes not,” she returned finally. “But I don’t want to talk about Mr. Hunt. I still want to be told what mad thing Polly O’Neill is planning to do next.”

“And if she can’t tell you?” Polly pleaded.

“Then I suppose I will have to forgive her, because friendship without faith is of very little value.”

And at this instant Margaret Adams’ maid came in to announce luncheon.

CHAPTER V – Other Girls

“No, I am not in the least unhappy or discontented either, Esther; I don’t know how you can say such a thing,” Betty Ashton answered argumentatively. “You talk as though I did not like living here with you and Dick. You know perfectly well I might have gone south with mother for the winter if I had not a thousand times preferred staying with you.” Yet as she finished her speech, quite unconsciously Betty sighed.

She and Esther were standing in a pretty living room that held a grand piano, shelves of books, a desk and reading table; indeed, a room that served all purposes except that of sleeping and dining. For Dick and Esther had taken a small house on the outskirts of Boston and were beginning their married life together as simply as possible, until Dr. Ashton should make a name and fame for himself.

Esther was now dressed for going out in a dark brown suit and hat with mink furs and a muff. Happiness and the fulfilling of her dreams had given her a beauty and dignity which her girlhood had not held. She was larger and had a soft, healthy color. With the becoming costumes which Betty now helped her select her red hair had become a beauty rather than a disfigurement and the content in her eyes gave them more color and depth, while about her always beautiful mouth the lines were so cheerful and serene that strangers often paused to look at her the second time and then went their way with a new sense of encouragement.

Betty had no thought of going out, although it was a brilliant December day. She had on a blue cashmere house dress and her hair was loosely tucked up on her head in a confusion of half-tangled curls. She had evidently been dusting, for she still held a dusting cloth in her hand. Her manner was listless and uninterested, and she was pale and frowning a little. Her gayety and vitality, temporarily at least, were playing truant.

“Still I know perfectly well, Betty dear, that you came to be with Dick and me this winter not only because you wanted to come, but because you knew your board would help us along while Dick is getting his start. So it is perfectly natural that you should be lonely and miss your old friends in Woodford. Of course, Meg isn’t far away here at Radcliffe, but she is so busy with Harvard students as well as getting her degree that you don’t see much of each other. Suppose you come now and take a walk with me, or else you ride with Dick and I’ll go on the street car. I am only going to church for a rehearsal. You know I am to sing a solo on Sunday,” Esther continued in a persuasive tone.