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 debut 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.