Margaret Vandercook - The Camp Fire Girls' Careers

His cue had been called and Miss Adams was already on the stage. In a quarter of an hour when Belinda was summoned by her mistress, he would know whether or not Polly had feigned illness or whether she had kept her threat and ignominiously run away.

The moment came. A door swung abruptly forward at the rear of the stage and through it a girl entered swiftly. She was dressed in a tight-fitting gray frock with black silk stockings and slippers. There was a tiny white cap on her head and she wore a small fluted apron. She looked very young, very clever and graceful. And it was Polly O’Neill, and Polly at her best!

For the briefest instant Richard Hunt and Margaret Adams exchanged glances. It was obvious that Margaret Adams had also been uneasy over her favorite’s début. For her eyes brightened and she nodded encouragingly as the little maid set down the tray she was carrying with a bang and then turned saucily to speak to her master. A laugh from the audience followed her first speech.

The Polly of the morning had completely vanished. This girl’s cheeks were crimson, her eyes danced with excitement and vivacity. She was fairly sparkling with Irish wit and grace and, best of all, she appeared entirely unafraid.

It was not alone Polly O’Neill’s two comparatively new friends upon the stage with her, who now felt relieved from anxiety by her clever entrance. More than a dozen persons in the audience forming a large theater party occupying the sixth and seventh rows in the orchestra chairs, breathed inaudible sighs of relief.

There sat Betty Ashton and Dick and Esther, who had come down from Boston to New York City for Polly’s début. Next Betty was a handsome, grave young man, who had only a few days before been elected to the New Hampshire Legislature by the residents of Woodford and the surrounding country, Anthony Graham. On his other side eat his sister, Nan, a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl with a quiet, refined manner. Near by and staring straight ahead through a pair of large, gold-rimmed spectacles was another girl with sandy hair, light blue eyes, a square jaw and a determined, serious expression. Nothing did Sylvia Wharton take lightly, and least of all the success or failure tonight of her adored step-sister. For Sylvia’s ardent affection for Polly had never wavered since the early Camp Fire days at Sunrise Hill. And while she often disapproved of her and freely told her so, as she had then, still Polly knew that Sylvia could always be counted on through good and ill.

So far as the younger girl’s own work was concerned there was little doubt of her success. Each year she had been at the head of her class in the training school for nurses and had since taken up the study of medicine. For Sylvia had never cared for frivolities, for beaus or dancing or ordinary good times. Polly often used to say that she would like to shake her younger step-sister for her utter seriousness, yet Sylvia rarely replied that she might have other and better reasons for administering the same discipline to Polly.

Back of this party of six friends Mr. and Mrs. Wharton, Polly’s mother and stepfather, her sister Mollie and Billy Webster were seated. Billy, however, was no longer called by this youthful title except by his most intimate friends. He had never since the day Polly had teased him concerning it, asking him how it felt to be a shadowy imitation of a great man, used the name of Daniel. He was known to the people in Woodford and the neighborhood as William Webster, since Billy’s father had died a year before and he now had the entire management of their large and successful farm. Indeed, the young man was considered one of the most expert of the new school of scientific farmers in his section of the country. And although Billy undoubtedly looked like a country fellow, there was no denying that he was exceedingly handsome. He was six feet tall, with broad shoulders and an erect carriage; his skin was tanned by the sun and wind, making his eyes appear more deeply blue and his hair almost the color of copper. Now seated next to Mollie he was endeavoring to make her less nervous, although any one could have seen he was equally nervous himself.

Frank Wharton and Eleanor Meade, who were to be married in a few months, were together, and next came yellow-haired Meg and her brother, John. Then only a few places away Rose and Dr. Barton and Faith, the youngest of the former group of Sunrise Hill Camp Fire girls, who had been adopted by her former guardian and now was known by Dr. Barton’s name. 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. Tonight she was even more quiet than usual, since this was the first time she had ever been inside a theater in her life. And had it not been for the reality of Polly O’Neill’s presence, one of her very own group of Camp Fire girls, she must have thought herself on a different planet.

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.

Now Belinda must rush frantically about on the stage, making a pretext of dusting the while she is eagerly listening to the conversation taking place between her master and mistress. Then in another moment they both leave the stage and Polly at last has her real opportunity. For with Margaret Adams present, naturally the chief attention of the audience would be concentrated upon her with her talent, her magnetism and her great reputation.

Yet as Miss Adams slipped away with a fleeting and encouraging lifting of her eyebrows toward her little maid, suddenly Polly O’Neill felt that the hour of her final reckoning had come. Curiously, until now she had not been self-conscious nor frightened; not for an instant had she been pursued by the terrors that had so harassed her all day that she had made a dozen plans to escape. Yet with the attention of the large audience suddenly riveted upon her alone, they were returning like a thousand fiends.

Polly felt like an atom surrounded by infinite space, like a spot of light in an eternity of darkness. Her voice had gone, her limbs were stiff, yet automatically she continued her dusting for a moment longer, hoping that a miracle might turn her into a human being again. Useless: her voice would never return, her legs felt as if they belonged to a figure in Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks.

One could not devote the entire evening polishing the stage furniture! Already she could hear the agonized voice of the prompter whispering her lines, which he naturally supposed her to have forgotten.

In some fashion Polly must have dragged herself to the spot on the stage where she had been previously instructed to stand, and there somehow she must have succeeded in repeating the few sentences required of her, although she never knew how she did the one or the other; for soon the other players made their proper entrances and the unhappy Belinda was allowed to withdraw.

Yet although Polly could never clearly recall the events on the stage during these few moments, of one thing she was absolutely conscious. By some wretched accident she had glanced appealingly down, hoping to find encouragement in the face of her mother, sister, or Betty Ashton. Instead, however, she had caught the blue eyes of her old antagonist, Billy Webster, fixed upon her with such an expression of consternation, sympathy and amusement that she was never to forget the look for the rest of her life.