The Camp Fire Girls' Careers
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When after a few moments’ delay the second scene was revealed the ball had already begun. The stage setting was remarkably beautiful, the costumes charming and the dialogue clever. Yet so far the play had no poignant interest, so that now and then Betty found her attention wandering.
What could have made this little play such a pronounced success that the dramatic critics had been almost universal in their praise of it? she wondered. What special charm did it have which crowded the theater every evening as it was crowded tonight? It was only a frivolous society drama of a kind that must have been acted many times before.
Behind her lace handkerchief Betty gracefully concealed a yawn. Then she glanced across the theater toward Margaret Adams’ box, hoping she might catch another smile or nod from the great lady. But Miss Adams was leaning forward with her figure tense with interest and her eyes fastened in eager expectancy upon a door at the rear of the stage. Back of her, and it seemed to Betty even at this distance, that his face looked unusually white and strained, stood Richard Hunt. Assuredly he seemed as intent upon the play as Miss Adams.
Betty stared at the stage again. A dance had just ended, the guests were separating into groups and standing about talking. But a timid knock now sounded on the door which apparently no one heard. A moment later this door is slowly opened. There followed a murmur of excitement, a little electric thrill passing through the audience so that unexpectedly Betty found her own pulses tingling with interest and excitement. What a goose she had been! Surely she had heard half a dozen times at least that the success of this new play was entirely due to the charm and talent of the young actress, Peggy Moore, who took the part of the heroine.
At the open door the newcomer was seen hesitating. No one noticed her, then she walked timidly forward and stood alone in the center of the stage, one of the most appealing, delicious and picturesque of figures in the world of fiction or reality.
The girl was wearing an absurd costume, a bright red blouse, open at the throat, a plaid skirt too short for the slender legs beneath it and a big flapping straw hat decorated with a single rose. In one hand she carried an old-fashioned carpet bag and in the other a tiny Maltese kitten. The girl had two long braids of black hair that hung below her waist, scarlet lips, a white imploring face and wistful, humorous, tender blue eyes.
Betty was growing cold to the tips of her fingers, although her face flushed until it felt almost painful. Then she overheard a queer, half-restrained sound near her and the next instant Mrs. Wharton leaned forward from her place and placed a hand on her arm and on Mollie’s.
“Yes, girls, it is Polly!” she whispered quietly, although with shining eyes. “But please, please don’t stir or do anything in the world to attract her attention. It was Polly’s own idea to surprise you like this, and yet she is dreadfully afraid that the sight of you may make her break down and forget her part. She is simply wonderful!”
Naturally this was a mother’s opinion; however, nothing that Mrs. Wharton was saying was making the slightest impression, for neither Mollie nor Betty had heard a word.
For Moira, the little Irish girl, had begun to speak and everybody on the stage was looking toward her, smiling and shrugging their shoulders, except the two daughters of the house and their fashionable mother.
Moira had asked for her aunt, Mrs. Mulholland. She was not an emigrant maid-of-all-work, as the guests presumed her to be, but a niece of the wealthy household. She had crossed the ocean alone and was expecting a welcome from her relatives.
At this point in the drama the hero came forward to the little Irish maid’s assistance. Then her aunt and cousins dared not display the anger they felt for this undesired guest. Later it was explained that Moira had been sent to New York by her old grandfather, who, fearing that he was about to die, wished the girl looked after by her relatives. Moira’s father had been the son that stayed behind in Ireland. He had been desperately poor and the grandfather was supposed to be equally so. Then, of course, followed the history of the child’s efforts to fit herself into the insincere and unkind household.
Nothing remarkable in the story of the little play, surely, but everything in the art with which Polly O’Neill acted it!
Tears and smiles, both in writing and acting: these are what the artist desires as his true recognition. And Polly seldom spoke half a dozen lines without receiving one or the other. Sometimes the smiles and tears crowded so close together that the one had not sufficient time to thrust the other away.
“I didn’t dream the child had it in her: it is genius!” Margaret Adams whispered to her companion, when the curtain had finally fallen on the second act and she had leaned back in her chair with a sigh of mingled pleasure and relief.
“She had my promise to say nothing until tonight. Yes, I have been in the secret since last winter.” Richard explained. “It was a blessed accident Polly’s finding just this particular kind of play. She could have played no other so well while still so young. You see, she was acting in a cheap stock company when a manager happened quite by chance to discover her. But she will want to tell you the story herself. I must not anticipate.”
For a moment, instead of replying, Margaret Adams looked slightly amazed. “I did not know that you and Polly were such great friends, Richard, that she has preferred confiding in you to any one else,” she said at length.
Richard Hunt had taken his seat and was now watching the unconcealed triumph and delight among the group of Polly’s family and friends in the box across the theater.
“I wasn’t chosen; I was an accident,” the man smiled. “Last winter in Boston I met Polly – Miss O’Neill,” he corrected himself, “and she told me what she was trying to do, fight things out for herself without advice or assistance from any one of us. But, of course, after I was taken into her secret she allowed me to keep in touch with her now and then. The child was lonely and dreadfully afraid you and her other friends would not understand or forgive what she had tried to do.”
“Polly is not exactly a child, Richard; she must be nearly twenty-two,” Margaret Adams replied quietly.
In the final act the little Irish heroine had her hour of triumph. The hero had fallen in love with her instead of with the fashionable cousin. Yet Moira was not the pauper her relatives had believed her, for the old grandfather had recently died and his solicitor appeared with his will. The Irish township had purchased his acres of supposedly worthless land and Moira was proclaimed an heiress.
At the end Polly was her gayest, most inimitable, laughing self. Half a dozen times Betty, Mollie and Sylvia found themselves forgetting that she was acting at all. How many times had they not known her just as wilful and charming, their Polly of a hundred swift, succeeding moods.
Moira was not angry with any one in the world, certainly not with the cousins who had been almost cruel to her. During her stay among them she had learned of their need of money and was now quick to offer all that she had. She was so generous, so happy, and with it all so petulant and charming, that at last even the stern aunt and the envious cousins succumbed to her.
Then the curtain descended on a very differently clad heroine, but one who was essentially unchanged. Moira was dressed in a white satin made in the latest and most exquisite fashion; and her black hair was beautifully arranged on her small, graceful head. Only the people who loved her could have dreamed that Polly O’Neill would ever look so pretty. And in one hand the girl was holding a single red rose, though under the other arm she was still clutching her beloved Maltese cat.
“Polly will not answer any curtain calls tonight,” Mrs. Wharton whispered hurriedly when the last scene was over. “If the others will excuse us she has asked that only Sylvia, Betty and Mollie come to her room. Margaret Adams will be there, but no one else. She is very tired at the close of her performances, but she is afraid you girls may not forgive her long silence and her deception. Will you come this way with me?”
CHAPTER XVII – A Reunion
Next morning at half past ten o’clock Polly O’Neill was sitting upright in bed in the room at her hotel with Betty on one side, Mollie on the other and Sylvia at the foot, gazing rather searchingly upon the object of their present devotion.
Polly was wearing a pale pink dressing jacket trimmed with a great deal of lace and evidently quite new. Indeed it had been purchased with the idea of celebrating this great occasion. The girl’s cheeks were as crimson as they had been on the stage the night before and her eyes were as shining. She was talking with great rapidity and excitement.
“Yes, it is perfectly thrilling and delightful, Mollie Mavourneen, and I never was so happy in my life, now that you know all about me and are not really angry,” Polly exclaimed gayly. “But I can tell you it wasn’t all honey and roses last winter, working all alone and being lonely and homesick and miserable most of the time. No one praised me or sent me flowers then,” and the girl looked with perfectly natural vanity and satisfaction at the big box of roses that had just been opened and was still lying on her lap. On her bureau there were vases of fresh flowers and several other boxes on a nearby table.
“Well, it must be worth any amount of hard work and unhappiness to be so popular and famous,” Mollie murmured, glancing with heartfelt admiration and yet with a little wistfulness at her twin sister. “Just think, Polly dear, we are exactly the same age and used to do almost the same things; and now you are a celebrated actress and I’m just nobody at all. I am sorry I used to be so opposed to your going on the stage. I think it perfectly splendid now.”
With a laugh that had a slight quaver in it Polly threw an arm about her sister and hugged her close. “You silly darling, how you have always flattered me and how dearly I do love it!” she returned, looking with equal admiration at the soft roundness of Mollie’s girlish figure and the pretty dimples in her delicately pink cheeks. “I am not a celebrated actress in the least, sister of mine, just because I have succeeded in doing one little character part so that a few people, just a few people, like it. I do wonder what Margaret Adams thought of me. She did not say much last night. She is coming to see me presently, so I am desperately nervous over what she will say. One swallow does not make a career any more than it makes a summer. And as for daring to say you are nobody, Mollie O’Neill, I never heard such arrant nonsense in my life. For you know perfectly well that you are a thousand times prettier, more charming and more popular than I am, and everybody knows it except you. But, of course, you never have believed it in your life, you blessed little goose!” and Polly pinched her sister’s soft arm appreciatively. “I wish there was as much of me as there is of you for one thing, Mollie darling, your figure is a perfect dream and I’m nothing in the world but skin and bones,” Polly finished at last, drawing her dressing jacket more closely about her with a barely concealed shiver.
From the foot of the bed Sylvia was eyeing her severely. “Yes, we had already noticed that without your mentioning it, Polly,” she remarked dryly.
Her only answer was a careless shrugging of her thin shoulders, as Polly turned this time toward Betty.
“What makes you so silent, Princess? You are not vexed with me and only said you were not angry last night to spare my feelings?” Polly asked more seriously than she had yet spoken. Even though Polly might believe that she loved her sister better, yet she realized that they could never so completely understand each other and never have perhaps quite the same degree of spiritual intimacy as she had with her friend.
Betty took Polly’s outstretched hand and held it lightly.
“I was only thinking of something; I beg your pardon, dear,” Betty replied quietly.
Polly frowned. “You are not to think of anything or anybody except me today,” she demanded jealously. “You have had months and months to think about other people. This is the best of what I have been working for – just to have you girls with me like this, and have you praise me and make love to me as Mollie did. Yes, I understand I am being desperately vain and self-centered, Princess; so you may think it your duty to take me to task for it. But it is only because I have always been such a dreadful black sheep among all the other Camp Fire girls. Then I suppose it is also because we have been separated so long. Pretty soon I’ll have to go back to the work-a-day, critical old world where nobody really cares a thing about me and where ‘my career,’ as Mollie calls it, has scarcely begun. But please don’t make me do all the talking, Betty, it is so unlike me and I can see that Sylvia thinks I am saying far too much.” Here Polly’s apparently endless stream of conversation was interrupted by a fit of coughing, which took all the color from her cheeks, brought there by the morning’s excitement, and left her huddled up among her pillows pale and breathless, with Sylvia’s light blue eyes staring at her with a somewhat enigmatic expression.
Betty smiled, however, pulling at one of the long braids of black hair with some severity. Last night it had seemed to her that Polly O’Neill was quite the most wonderful person in the world and that she could never feel exactly the same toward her, but must surely treat her with entirely new reverence and respect. Yet here she was, just as absurd and childish as ever and pleading for compliments as a child for sweets. No one could treat Polly O’Neill with great respect, though love her one must to the end of the chapter. She had a thousand faults, yet Betty knew that vanity was not one of them. It was simply because of her affection for her friends that she wished to find them pleased with her. In her heart of hearts no one was humbler than Polly. Betty at least understood that her ambition would never leave her satisfied with one success.
“But I was thinking of you, my ridiculous Polly!” Betty answered finally. “I regret to state, however, that I was not for the moment dwelling on your great and glorious career. Naturally no other Sunrise Hill Camp Fire girl may ever hope to aspire so high. I was wondering whether your mother allowed you to wander around by yourself last winter, and, if she did, how you ever managed to take proper care of yourself.”
“Dear me, hasn’t mother told you? Why of course I had a chaperon, child! Mollie, please ring the bell for me. She is a dear and is dreadfully anxious to meet all of you,” Polly explained. “But Sylvia took care of me too – would you mind not staring at me quite so hard all the time, Sylvia? I know I am better looking behind the footlights,” Polly now urged almost plaintively, for her younger sister was making her decidedly nervous by her continued scrutiny. “Betty, even you will hardly place me at the head of the theatrical profession at present,” she continued. “Though I am quite green with jealousy, I must tell you that Sylvia Wharton has stood at the head of her class in medicine, male and female, during this entire year and is confidently expected to come out first in her final examinations. I am abominably afraid that Sylvia may develop into a more distinguished Camp Fire girl in the end than I ever shall.”
There was no further opportunity at present for further personal discussion, for at this instant a tall, dark-haired woman with somewhat timid manners entered the room, where she stood hesitating, glancing from one girl’s face to the other.
“You know Sylvia, Mrs. Martins, so this is Mollie, whom you may recognize as being a good-looking likeness of me,” Polly began. “Of course this third person is necessarily Betty Ashton.”
From her place on the bed Sylvia had smiled her greeting, but Mollie and Betty of course got up at once and walked forward to shake hands with the newcomer.
Then unexpectedly and to Betty’s immense surprise, she found both of her hands immediately clasped in an ardent embrace by the stranger, while the woman gazed at her with her lips trembling and the tears streaming unchecked down her face.
“How shall I ever thank you or make you understand?” she said passionately. “All my life long I can never repay what you have done for me, but at least I shall never forget it.”
Betty pressed the newcomer’s hand politely, turning from her to Polly, hoping that she might in her friend’s expression find some clue to this puzzling utterance. Polly appeared just as rapt and mysterious.
“You are awfully kind and I am most happy to meet you,” Betty felt called on to reply, “but I am afraid you must have mistaken me for some one else. It is I who owe gratitude to you for having taken such good care of Polly.”
The Princess was gracious and sweet in her manner, but she could hardly be expected not to have drawn back slightly from such an extraordinary greeting from a stranger.
“Oh, my dear, I ought to have explained to you. You must forgive me, it is because I feel so deeply and that the people of my race cannot always control their emotions so readily,” the older woman protested. “It is my little girl, for whom you have done such wonderful things. She has written me that she is almost happy now that you have become her fairy princess. And in truth you are quite lovely enough,” the stranger continued, believing that at last she was making herself clear.
“I? Your little girl?” Betty repeated stupidly. “You don’t mean you are Angelique’s mother? But of course you are. Now I can see that you look like each other and your name is ‘Martins.’ It is curious, but I paid no attention to your name at first and never associated you with my little French girl.” Now it was Betty’s turn to find her voice shaking, partly from pleasure and also from embarrassment. “It was a beautiful accident, wasn’t it, for Angelique and I, and you and Polly to find each other? But you have nothing to thank me for, Mrs. Martins. Angel has given me more pleasure than I can ever give her. She has been so wonderful since she found something in life to interest her. Won’t you come to the cabin with me right away and see her? Mollie and Mrs. Wharton can surely look after Polly for a few days; besides she never does what any one tells her.”
Suddenly Betty let go her companion’s hand, swinging around toward the elfish figure in the bed. For Polly did look elfish at this moment, with her knees huddled up almost to her chin and her head resting on her hand. Her eyes were almost all one could see of her face at present, they looked so absurdly large and so darkly blue.
Betty seized the girl by both shoulders, giving her a tiny shake.
“Polly O’Neill, did you write me those anonymous letters about Angel last winter? Oh, of course you did! But what a queer muddle it all is! I don’t understand, for Angel told me that she had never heard of Polly O’Neill in her entire life until I spoke of you.”
“And no more she has, Princess,” returned Polly smiling. “Everybody sit down and be good, please, while I explain things as far as I understand them. You see Mrs. Martins and I met each other at the theater one evening where she had come to do some wonderful sewing for some one. Well, of course my clothes were in rags, for with all our Camp Fire training I never learned much about the gentle art of stitching. So Mrs. Martins promised to do some work for me and by and by we got to knowing each other pretty well. One day I found her crying, and then she told me about her little girl. A friend had offered to send Angelique to this hospital in Boston and Mrs. Martins felt she must let her go, as she could not make enough money to keep them comfortable. Besides Angelique needed special care and treatment. Of course she realized it was best for her little girl, yet they were horribly grieved over being separated.
“Just at this time, Miss Brown, whom mother had persuaded to travel with me all winter, got terribly tired of her job. So I asked Mrs. Martins if she cared to come with me. When she and mother learned to know and like each other things were arranged.
“Afterwards the heavenly powers must have sent you to that hospital, Betty dear, otherwise there is no accounting for it. Pretty soon after your first visit Angel wrote her mother describing a lovely lady with auburn hair, gray eyes and the most charming manner in the world, who had been to the hospital to see them, but had only said a few words to her. Yes, I know you think that is queer, Betty, but please remember that though Angelique knew her mother was traveling with an eccentric young female, she did not know my real name. I was Peggy Moore to her always, just as I was to you until last night. Can’t you understand? Of course I knew you were in Boston with Esther and Dick, and besides there could be only one Betty Ashton in the world answering to your description. Then, of course, Mrs. Martins and I both wanted to write and explain things to you dreadfully, yet at the same time I did not wish you to guess where I was or what I was doing. So I persuaded Mrs. Martins to wait; at the same time I did write you these silly anonymous letters, for I was so anxious for you to be particularly interested in Angel. I might have known you would have been anyway, you dearest of princesses and best,” whispered Polly so earnestly that Betty drew away from her friend’s embrace, her cheeks scarlet.
“I am going to another room with Mrs. Martins to have a long talk, Polly, while you rest,” Betty answered the next moment. “Mrs. Wharton said that we were not to stay with you but an hour and a half and it has been two already. You will want to be at your best when Margaret Adams comes to see you this afternoon.”
“If you mean in the best of health, Betty,” Sylvia remarked at this instant, as she got down somewhat awkwardly from her seat on the bed, “then I might as well tell you that Polly O’Neill is far from being even ordinarily well. She has not been well all winter; but now, with the excitement and strain of her first success, she is utterly used up. All I can say is that if she does not quit this acting business and go somewhere and have a real rest, well, we shall all be sorry some day,” and with this unexpected announcement Sylvia stalked calmly out of the room, leaving three rather frightened women and one exceedingly angry one behind her.
CHAPTER XVIII – Home Again
“But, my beloved mother, you really can’t expect such a sacrifice of me. There isn’t anything else in the world you could ask that I would not agree to, but even you must see that this is out of the question.”
It was several days later and Polly was in her small sitting room with her mother and Sylvia.
“Besides it is absurd and wicked of Sylvia to have frightened you so and I shan’t forgive her, even if she has been good as gold to me all her life. How can I give up my part and go away from New York just when I am beginning to be a tiny bit successful?” Then, overcome with sympathy for herself, Polly cast herself down in a heap upon a small sofa and with her face buried in the sofa cushions burst into tears.
Mrs. Wharton walked nervously up and down the room.
“I know it is dreadfully hard for you, dear, and I do realize how much I am asking, even if you don’t think so, Polly,” she replied. “Besides you must not be angry with Sylvia. Of course I have not taken the child’s opinion alone, clever as she is. Two physicians have seen you in the last few days, as you know, and they have both given me the same opinion. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. If you will give up now it may not be serious, but if you will insist upon going on with your work no one will answer for the consequences. It is only a matter of a few weeks, my dear. I have seen your manager and he is willing to agree to your stopping as long as it is absolutely necessary. Perhaps you may be well enough to start in again in the fall. Isn’t it wiser to stop now for a short rest than to have to give up altogether later on?” she urged consolingly.
As there was no answer from Polly, Mrs. Wharton’s own eyes also filled with tears. At the same moment Sylvia came up to her step-mother and patted her comfortingly on the shoulder. It was odd, but Sylvia rarely expressed affection by kissing or the embraces common among most girls. Yet in her somewhat shy caresses there was fully as deep feeling.