Margaret Vandercook

“ 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.” ”

“ Lifting her eyes at this moment to her companion’s, Polly O’Neill burst into tears.
“I am a hopeless, abject failure, Mr. Hunt, and I shall never, never learn to act in a thousand years. There is no use in your trying to teach me, for if we remain at the theater for the rest of the day I shall make exactly the same mistakes tonight. Oh, how can I possibly play a funny character when my teeth are positively chattering with fright even at a rehearsal? It is sheer madness, my daring to appear with you and Margaret Adams before a first-night New York audience and in a new play. ”

“ The love of man for man,
The love of man for God.”
Betty’s delicate, eyebrows were drawn so close together that they appeared almost heart shaped. “I fear I have only been tending the love of a girl for herself these past few months, so perhaps it is just as well that I should try to reform,” she thought half whimsically and yet with reproach. “Anyhow, I shall telephone Meg Everett this very afternoon, though I am glad Esther does not know the reason Meg and I have been seeing so little of each other lately, and that the fault is mine, not hers.” ”

“ Richard Hunt slipped the girl’s arm inside his. There was something in his face that gave Polly a sense of strength and quiet such as she had never felt in all her restless, ambitious girlhood.
“Yes, I understand,” he answered. “But look there, Polly, isn’t that Sunrise Hill over there and your beloved little cabin in the distance? And aren’t we glad to be alive in this wonderful world?” ”

“ Betty replied quietly.
Polly frowned. “You are not to think of anything or anybody except me today,” 199 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. ”

“ 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 thought perhaps if Betty—Miss Betty, I mean—could see that Meg Everett liked me and was willing to be my intimate friend, that possibly she might forgive me in time. But it has all been of no use, she has simply grown colder and colder. And I fear I only weary Miss Everett in talking of Miss Betty so much of the time. She recently told me that I did.”
Polly’s lips trembled and her shoulders shook. What a perfectly absurd creature a male person was at all times and particularly when under the influence of love! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having finally through years of persuasion and Margaret Adams’ added influence won her mother’s consent to follow the stage for her profession, Polly had come to New York, where she devoted every possible hour of the day and night to her work. There had been hundreds of lessons in physical culture, in learning to walk properly and to sit down. Still more important had been the struggle with the pronunciation of even the simplest words, besides the hundred and one minor lessons of which the outsider never dreams. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Faith was an unusual-looking girl, with the palest gold hair which she wore tied back with a black velvet ribbon. She had a curious, far-away expression in her great blue eyes and the simplicity of a little child. For Faith had never ceased her odd fashion of living in dreams, so that the real world was yet an unexplored country to her. Indeed, in her quaint short-waisted white muslin frock, with a tiny fan and a bunch of country flowers in her hand, she might have sat as one of the models for Arthur Rackham’s spiritual, half-fairy children. ”

“ Meg urged. “You see, Anthony, the Princess and I have always been such intimate friends and I have always admired her more than any of the other girls. I don’t wish her to misunderstand us. She 126 may not be so brilliant as Polly, nor so clever as Sylvia or your sister Nan, but somehow Betty is—well, I suppose she is what a real Princess ought to be. That is what Polly always declared. It is not just because she is pretty and generous, but she is so high-minded. Nothing would make her even appear to take advantage of a friend.” And Meg sighed, her usually happy face clouding. ”

“ Now she made a little grimace at her own image, smiling at almost the same instant.
“My beloved Princess or Mollie, I do wish you could lend me your good looks for the next half hour,” she murmured half aloud. “It is so much easier to be eloquent and convincing in this world when one happens to be pretty. But I, well certainly I would serve as a perfect illustration of ‘a rag and a bone and a hank of hair’ at this moment if at no other.”
Polly glanced down at her costume with more satisfaction than she had found in surveying her face. ”

“ Polly Stopped Shaking to Glance at Her Companion
14
“You are talking wildly and absurdly and like a foolish child instead of a woman,” he said coldly. “Surely you must know that you are having a rare chance tonight because of Miss Adams’ friendship and you must not disappoint her. If you fail to succeed, that will be unfortunate, but if you run away—” Suddenly Richard Hunt laughed. What a ridiculous suggestion! Of course Polly had only been talking in a silly school-girl fashion without any idea of being taken seriously. ”

“ With a low curtsey Betty did as she was commanded. She even knelt down on the ground beside the hammock to look the more directly into the eyes of her friend. But as she continued, unexpectedly a slow color crept into her cheeks from her throat upwards until it had flushed her entire face.
“I declare, Polly,” she exclaimed jumping to her feet abruptly and sitting down in her chair again, “you make me feel as though I had committed some offence, though I do assure you I have been as good as gold, so far as I know, for a long, long time.” ”

“ Herr and Frau Krippen had not been able to leave Woodford for this great occasion, since they boasted a very small and very new baby, with hair as red as its father’s and as Esther’s. But otherwise it looked singularly like the first of the Sunrise Hill Camp Fire guardians, the Miss Martha, whom the girls had then believed fore-ordained to eternal old-maidenhood.
So on this eventful night in her career, Polly O’Neill’s old friends and family were certainly well represented. Fortunately, however, she had so far given no thought to their presence. ”

“ Perhaps Richard Hunt was just a moment longer at the window in the performance of so simple a task than one might have expected, but no one observed it. 118
As he took his place again and Betty thanked him she looked at him with a slight frown.
“Did you see a ghost, Mr. Hunt?” she queried. “It is not a comfortable night even for a ghost to be prowling about. It is too lonely an occupation for Christmas eve.” ”

“ Of course it is out of the question for you to see any stranger, child. You have been crying until your face is swollen and your hair is in dreadful confusion,” Mrs. Wharton protested anxiously.
Polly unexpectedly scrambled to her feet. “Ask Mr. Hunt to wait a few minutes, please, mother, and then we will telephone down and tell him to come up. You see I had an engagement with him this afternoon and don’t like to refuse to see him. For once it is a good thing I have no pretensions to beauty like Betty and Mollie. ”

“ Cricket next asked, picking up their visitor’s muff and pressing it close to her face with something like a caress. Then more softly, “I did not mean to be rude.”
Betty nodded. “Of course I’ll come if you wish me. You see, I am a stranger in Boston and lonely. But I’ll never have anything half so interesting to tell you as the history of our club with such girls as Polly O’Neill, Esther and Meg and the rest for heroines. Nothing in my whole life has ever been such fun. ”

“ We must leave the poor child to manage some of her own affairs alone. Anthony seems to be devoting himself to Meg these days. But he will be in Boston at Christmas, so perhaps if it is only a quarrel that has come between them they may make it up. But how do you suppose I am ever going to be able to get through with all my Christmas church music and give a dinner party with Miss Adams and Mr. Hunt present and perhaps have Betty’s Camp Fire girls here for an afternoon? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Betty remarked in a slightly conscience-smitten tone, “but Mollie does so enjoy fussing about getting things ready. And in spite of all my efforts and stern Camp Fire training I shall never be so good a cook as she is. Besides, both Mollie and Cricket informed me politely, after I finished cleaning our rooms and had set the luncheon table, that I was somewhat in the way. I suppose I had best go in, though. Is there anything I can do for you first, Angel? Cricket is beating that cake batter so hard it sounds like a drum.” ”

“ She will save herself a lot of strength if she only finds that out some day. But I’ll leave you together, since my being here only makes her more obstinate than ever.”
As Sylvia was crossing the floor a sofa cushion was thrown violently at her from the apparently grief-stricken figure on the sofa. But while Mrs. Wharton looked both grieved and shocked Sylvia only laughed. Was there ever such another girl as her step-sister? Here she was at one instant weeping bitterly at the wrecking of her career, as she thought, and the next shying sofa cushions like a naughty child. ”

“ The other girl shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t be flattered, she dislikes everybody and won’t have anything to do with the rest of us if she can help it. Yet her name is Angelique, that is all we know. ‘The Angel’ we call her when we wish to make her particularly furious. She is French, and we believe an orphan, because no one comes to see her, though she has letters now and then, which she hides under her pillow,” Cricket concluded almost spitefully, since curiosity was one of her leading traits.
On her way back home, oddly enough, Betty found her attention divided between two subjects. ”