GENIUS ARRIVES
BETTY WALES was going home for Christmas--a “ploshkin” income puts life
on such a comfortable financial basis! And between Christmas and New
Year’s Babe was going to be married. That meant coming half-way back
to Harding for the wedding; and it made easier Betty’s sad decision
that since the stocking factory was willing to postpone its Christmas
party till New Year’s, and since most of the Morton Hall girls would
spend their vacations in town, and certainly be very forlorn indeed
unless somebody looked after them, it was the duty of Miss B. Wales,
Secretary, to come back early and lend a hand.
Betty breathed a deep sigh of relief when she had seen Eleanor off to
New York, in the company of Madeline Ayres, who had finished her play
and now flatly refused to delay the putting on of the final touches in
New York for the interests of the Tally-ho’s gift-shop department.
“Why, my dear girls,” she declared tragically, “I’m not half through
yet. I’ve got to see every success on Broadway now, to get into touch
with the season’s fads. Then I shall ‘supe’ a few times, to catch the
right feeling for one or two bare spots in my first act. Finally, I
shall probably hate my play so that I’ll tear it up and take the next
boat for Naples, to be consoled by my Bohemian family, who will laud me
to the skies for tearing up a play because I considered it bad art.”
“Oh, Madeline!” came in horror-struck chorus at this point.
“Well,” Madeline admitted blandly, “I’m willing to confide to friends
that at present my humble effort looks to me like the play of the
year--and I’m fairly stage-wise already. Dick Blake used to advise all
the aspiring dramatic critics he knew to take me along to their big
first nights, because I can always tell by instinct what the audience
is saying to itself. I’m a perfect mirror of public opinion. If I
still believe in my play after I’ve been ’round a little I shall see
Miss Dwight and her manager. After that----” Madeline shrugged her
shoulders, and confided irrelevantly to the resident B. C. A.’s, who
had come down to see the travelers off, that she wanted a black velvet
hat with a white feather.
“And I’m going to have it, what’s more,” she ended. “I wrote dad, and
he just said, ‘It’s lucky you don’t want two white feathers, now isn’t
it?’ And he sent along a munificent check.”
Which proved, Betty said, that genius is not incompatible with
frivolous-mindedness.
Jim sniffled manfully on their arrival, and his carefully marshaled
“features” diverted Eleanor beautifully, especially after she had
been up to Harding once to see Rafael, who, after he began to mend,
progressed with amazing rapidity on the road to recovery. Because she
had dreaded seeing him, she was relieved to get the meeting over, and
much more relieved to find the boy so completely changed. As soon
as it could be managed he had been moved to a hospital, and the new
atmosphere, supplemented by good care and kindness, had done wonders
for him. Before he was well enough to leave, Mr. Thayer declared,
Rafael would be completely Americanized.
He greeted Eleanor with a frank smile above his big bandages.
“I awful silly boy,” he said, holding out a thin hand to her. “I guess
you want laugh at me. I guess you tink I know not how gran’ you live
in this country. Now I know. I know two, tree nurse-lady and many
visitor-lady, looka like you. I like to live here always. I hope I get
well awful slow.”
But, when Eleanor had delivered Jim’s message about Rafael’s going, as
soon as he was strong enough, to a fine trade-school in Philadelphia,
he changed his mind.
“Den I hope I get well awful fast. Before I get old, I know how all de
wheels in dis world go round, mebbe. I think you be mad at me, and now
you do me dis great big splendor.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t ever ‘mad’ at you,” Eleanor explained, “only sorry
you were so silly, and dreadfully frightened when you were so ill the
first week.”
Rafael shrugged his shoulders. “Good ting for me. I come here. I learn
how to be ’Merican man in two, tree weeks. I come here silly lil
foreign boy. I look roun’. I listen hard. I see how you do here in
your gran’ country. And now,” Rafael snuggled into his pillows with
a beatific smile, “I find why all dose wheel go roun’. I maka fine
machine, mebbe. I swear off carry a dagger. And I tank you alla my
life.”
So Eleanor could return to Jim, the bull pup, the suitors, and the
diversions of New York, with the happy assurance that in the end
Rafael’s devotion to her might be the making of him, and at the least
its untoward climax would do him more good than harm. Having nothing
now to worry about, she devoted the journey back to New York to
planning a ravishing new gown for Babe’s wedding. It was to be yellow,
because Dick Blake (who would not be at the wedding) liked yellow gowns
on her best; and very plain, because Dick liked simple lines and no
furbelows. Details might safely be left to Madame Celeste. It would
perhaps be more accurate to say that Eleanor devoted the journey back
to New York to thinking about Dick Blake.
Babe’s wedding was to be a grand society function.
“To please John’s father and my mother,” Babe wrote to her friends
of 19--; “John and I are resigned, because a wedding only lasts for
one evening, and after that we can shut ourselves up in our regular
castle of a house, with only the people we want, and everything you can
think of in your wildest dreams to amuse ourselves with. So one little
evening isn’t much to sacrifice. Mother says we owe it to our social
position. She doesn’t know that we have decided not to have any social
position. We’re just going to have a good time and try to make some
good times for other people. An impromptu wedding would have been lots
more fun, but you must all come, just the same.”
Babe’s sister was to be maid of honor, Bob and Babbie, Betty and
Roberta Lewis were to be bridesmaids, and the other “Merry Hearts”
would sit together in a front pew, and be considered just as much in
the wedding party as if they were bridesmaids also. Jasper J. Morton
was coming up the night of the wedding in his private car. He had
meant to come the day before “to help you entertain Miss B. A. and her
friends,” he wrote Babe, but there were important directors’ meetings
to keep him at the last minute. He wrote Babe not to worry about him.
“I shall charter a special train if necessary--and don’t I always
arrive on time as a matter of principle?”
But when Babe left the house for the church he had not appeared, and
after they had kept people waiting and wondering half an hour, and Babe
was so nervous that she declared she should cry in one more minute it
was decided to go on without him.
The reception was half over when he appeared, looking very meek and
sheepish. He kissed Babe on both cheeks, shook John’s hand till it
ached, and despatched Babbie to “find those reporter fellows and tell
’em I’m not smashed up anywhere between here and New York, and I don’t
withhold my blessing from the happy couple. Tell ’em I was accidentally
detained, and if they want to know how say it was on a private matter
that is none of their business.”
“And add some characteristic remarks about the ridiculous apes who try
to run our railroads,” put in John with a chuckle.
“No, sir,” said Jasper J. Morton, with emphasis, “not this trip. Pretty
nearly every mile was a record, and I’ve recommended that engineer to
run the road’s Lightning Limited at a big increase over his present
pay. The reason I didn’t get here was personal--purely personal.”
Later in the evening he got Babe and John and Betty into a corner, and
told them all about it. “Miss B. A.’s to blame, as usual,” he began.
“You see my train went out just ten minutes behind the Lightning
Limited, with no stop till Albany and the track clear all the way west.
I was hurrying through the station to get on, when I nearly ran down a
pretty little woman who was crying so hard she didn’t see me coming.
She’d lost the Lightning Limited, and her husband was dying in a little
place just beyond Albany where he’d gone on business and been taken
suddenly sick. There was a slow train in an hour, but that would be too
late, she said.
“Naturally I told her to come with me to Albany. And then of course I
couldn’t leave her there to hunt up her connection alone, and have to
waste time waiting, maybe. So I arranged for a stop at the town she
was going to, and then,” Jasper J. Morton flushed shamefacedly, “when
nobody met her, we side-tracked our outfit and I drove up to the hotel
with her. She was barely in time, the doctor said. They’d been married
just a year to-day, she told me. I guess if ever you two are in a tight
place you’ll be thankful to anybody who misses his boy’s wedding to
help you out. But I wouldn’t have those reporters out there know what
a soft-hearted old auntie I’m getting to be, not for anything. Miss B.
A., you’ll be the ruin of me yet, with all your theories about looking
out for the other fellow.”
“We’ll be married all over again if you’d like us to, Father Morton,”
Babe offered gallantly, although she had assured John after the
ceremony that she wouldn’t ever have promised to marry him if she bad
realized the queer feelings you have while you are doing it.
But Mr. Morton refused her generous offer. “I’m satisfied,” he said,
“as long as John’s got you for a wife and I’ve got you for a daughter.
My seeing it done wouldn’t have made any big difference to you----”
“Oh, yes, it would,” broke in Babe kindly.
“Not the difference it made to that poor little crying lady to see
her husband,” pursued Mr. Morton. Then he chuckled merrily as Babbie
appeared, looking very angry and quite absurdly pretty in consequence.
“Were those reporters inquisitive?” he demanded.
“They did think you stayed away on purpose,” declared Babbie
indignantly. “As if any one could possibly disapprove of Babe! I
told them you were just as fond of her as John is. And now they’re
discussing what effect your being late will have on Wall Street. They
said to tell you that, and to ask you please to come out and talk
to them, if you didn’t want the market to collapse to-morrow like a
pricked balloon. They laughed right in my face when I said it was a
‘private affair’ that kept you.”
“I’ll settle them,” said Jasper J. Morton, and went off muttering
something about “those chimpanzees that run the newspapers.”
Whereat John looked relieved. “First time he’s acted natural
to-night,” he said. “If he hadn’t gone up in the air pretty soon, I
should have telegraphed his doctor. But now we can start on our wedding
trip feeling perfectly safe about him.”
Madeline couldn’t come to the wedding. She had sent her play to Miss
Dwight’s manager, and now she was exerting all her ingenuity to get a
personal interview with Miss Dwight herself.
“Her present play isn’t going well, and she’s as cross as a bear,”
Madeline wrote Babe. “Dick Blake knows her--had dinner with her just
before I came down. She said that night that she believed in her play,
and if it failed she should lose all faith in American audiences, buy a
lake in Maine and a river in Florida, and retire from the stage. Dick
says she will never do that, but he thinks it’s no use talking my play
to her in her present mood. He got the manager of the Lyric Repertoire
Theatre to say he’d read the manuscript, and now he’s perfectly furious
with me because I persist with Miss Dwight. ‘Agatha or nobody’ is my
war-cry! If she’d only read my play or talk to me, one or the other,
I know there wouldn’t be any more trouble. That play fits her like a
glove, and it will take--oh, how it will take!”
When college opened again Madeline was still on Miss Dwight’s trail,
but almost ready to give up and let the Lyric manager, or anybody
else who wanted it, take her play. Miss Dwight’s manager had made no
sign. Miss Dwight herself, piqued by her first failure, had entrenched
herself behind unassailable barriers.
“I’ve tried everything,” wrote Madeline despairingly. “I got ‘The
Sentinel’ to send me to interview her, and she wouldn’t let me in. The
Enderbys gave a dinner for her; she accepted and then sent word she
was ill. Dick Blake relented and tried to introduce the subject of his
talented young friend, and she would hear none of me.
“To-night I’m playing my last card. If it doesn’t take the trick, why,
I’ve lost, that’s all. Rumor says that her manager has had six hundred
plays sent him this last week--of course he won’t find mine under that
pile.”
[Illustration: JUST AS THEY HAD GIVEN HER UP]
For two weeks thereafter the pen of the aspiring playwright was silent.
Betty and Mary Brooks decided that she was busy getting her play out
from under the pile of other manuscripts, in order to send it to the
despised manager of the Lyric. So they were surprised and delighted
when Betty received a rapturous, incoherent scrawl, announcing complete
success.
“She took it. She’s rehearsing it now. The part does fit her, just as
I said it would. She’s coming up with me soon to see Harding.
“With love from the happiest girl in New York,
MAD.
“P. S.--Plan a B. C. A. tea-party for to-morrow. I can’t wait any
longer to tell you all about it.”
The B. C. A.’s assembled joyously, and just as they had given her up
Madeline appeared, trying hard to act offhand and unconcerned, and
managing it about as badly as might have been expected of a young
person whose first play was being rehearsed with much enthusiasm by
Agatha Dwight, and advertised far and wide by her manager as the play
of the year.
The B. C. A.’s plied her with tea, muffins, and jam, which she
despatched promptly, and with questions, which she totally ignored,
giving them all sorts of irrelevant information about Eleanor’s
music, Jim’s dog, and Dick’s splendid serial, by a “dark horse” in
fiction-writing, which was doing wonders for the subscription list and
the standing of “The Quiver.” When she had finished three cups of tea
and uncounted muffins, she settled back in a corner of the Tally-ho
stall with a sigh of complete satisfaction.
“Now,” she said, “I’ll tell you all about it. It’s much too good a
story to mix up with crumpets and tea, like ordinary conversation. And
don’t interrupt, or I shall be sorry I came.”
Awestruck silence met this dire announcement, and Madeline began.
“I wrote you about the interview I couldn’t get, the dinner Miss Dwight
wouldn’t come to, the time she snapped Dick off so short, and all that.
There were other things of the same kind--a reception the Woman’s
College Club gave for her, when she swept in looking like a princess,
made a funny, fascinating little speech, and swept out again. Well, I
was to have introduced her to people that afternoon, and I’d counted
on making her notice me and so getting my chance. I didn’t get it that
way, but I made a discovery.
“I found that a girl who had a walking part in the first act of her
play and another in the last, and who was down on the bills as Annette
Weeks for one and Felicia Trench for the other, was a Harding girl
named plain Mary Smith. That is, she didn’t graduate, but was here a
year or two just before our time. Well, I went to that ridiculous play
every night for a week, until I knew every bit of the Weeks-Trench
business as well as Mary Smith herself. Then I waited for her at the
stage door after a matinée, took her for tea somewhere, told her what I
wanted, and begged her to play sick and let me do her part for a week
or two.
“At first she laughed at me--said she might play sick all she could,
but I wouldn’t get the place. Besides, I was taller than she. What
would I do for clothes? Before I could get the dresses made the play
would be done for. For a minute I was stumped by that--I hadn’t thought
of clothes. Then I remembered Eleanor’s super-elegant wardrobe, and
I knew she’d lend me some things under the circumstances. And I saw
that Mary Smith was in the same mood as Miss Dwight,--discouraged over
the play and worried at being left in mid-season without a part. So
I talked hard, all about my play and the honor of Harding, and the
college girl’s elevating the stage by writing as well as by acting.
And then I put it to her: ‘You’ve got nothing much to lose, and I’ve
got everything to gain. Can you act?’ She shook her head. ‘Miss Dwight
took me on because she wants to encourage nice girls to go on the
stage. There’s a walking part in nearly every play, so she’s kept me.’
‘There’s a walking part in my play,’ I told her, ‘and if this one isn’t
good for over two weeks you can rest and go to the theatre and save
your dresses for another part.’ ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Of course you
get the salary,’ I said. ‘Give me a pencil,’ she said, ‘and I’ll write
you the reference.’ That’s how I landed in Agatha Dwight’s company,
exactly two weeks ago to-night.”
Madeline paused dramatically. Mary Brooks opened her mouth to ask a
question, and closed it again hastily, gasping like a fish. Helen
Chase Adams got as far as the initial “burble” of “but,” and stopped
spasmodically. Madeline had impressed them all with the importance of
obeying the rules of the occasion.
“That,” she said, looking around the circle with a pleased smile, “is
chapter one. The next thing was to get Her Highness to notice me. The
first night, as she swept by me on her way to her car, she inquired for
the girl I’d ousted, and said it was refreshing to find an understudy
who didn’t need breaking in. After that she never looked at me for four
days except in the scenes, and then with a vacant sort of a stare and
a stage smile. But the next night she turned giddy in the first act,
and I managed to improvise a parlor story that fitted well enough into
the scene while she snuffed smelling-salts and pulled herself together,
so that the audience never guessed that anything was wrong. She looked
awfully angry--at herself or me, I couldn’t tell which. But the manager
patted me on the back, and perhaps because he told her to she sent for
me to come to her in the long intermission. And I went, of course, and
she asked me all about myself, and she liked my answers. So I plunged
right in. The manager spent the night finding my play for her, and she
spent the morning reading it and the afternoon talking to me about it,
and the next day they began rehearsals--with the walking lady back
in her part. I explained about her, and Miss Dwight thought it was a
lovely story. She’s got a real Harding sense of humor; and she’s coming
up here before long to see the place. That’s all.” Madeline leaned
forward to reach for the muffin plate, and perceiving it to be empty
hastily leaned back again.
Mary summoned Nora. “More muffins, please,” she ordered, “and don’t
look so reproachful, Nora, please, over our appetites. Miss Madeline
has been too busy lately proving that she’s a genius to take time to
eat. Now she’s making up for it.”
“Oh, and is that what’s to pay?” said Nora, smiling comprehensively at
the B. C. A.’s. “Provin’ anything is hard worrk. I could never prove
me sums at school. That’s because they was generally wrong. It’s awful
hard to prove what ain’t so, ain’t it now, Miss Madeline?” And Nora
departed amiably for more muffins, ignoring the bursts of laughter that
followed her. Nora had long since ceased to attach any significance to
the laughter of the Harding girls. They laughed just as other people
breathed. It was as unaccountable as the enormous number of muffins
they consumed.
They were still laughing when Nora came back with Mary’s order. They
sent her off again for hot tea, and they drank Madeline’s health in
it, and Miss Dwight’s, and the health of the Walking Lady who had
helped Madeline to play out her trump card. They congratulated Madeline
riotously, they made wonderful plans for Miss Dwight’s visit to
Harding, and others for seeing the first night of the play.
“We are at last justified in the eyes of the wide, wide world,”
declaimed Mary pompously. “We’ve been called the cleverest crowd in
college, and now we’ve shown ’em. A well-kept husband like mine and a
well-kept tea-room like Betty’s are nice little features, but a play
for Agatha Dwight is the real thing. And the moral of that is: Look
out for a genius, and the grand-stand play will look out for itself.”
“And the moral of that,” said little Helen Chase Adams primly, “is that
it’s time for faculty wives to dress for dinner.”
“Also campus faculty,” added Rachel hastily, and the most exciting B.
C. A. tea-drinking of the season reluctantly dispersed.