The Girls of Central High on the Stage: or, The Play That Took The Prize
TekstCHAPTER XXIV – THE GREAT NIGHT
The event had certainly come to a startling climax. Even Lily herself, writing a dozen “Duchess of Dawnleighs,” could not have imagined quite so serious a situation to balk the determination of her created heroines, as here had arrived to balk herself!
“Well, Lil,” Laura said to her, as the girl got out of the sleigh. “I guess you won’t run away to-day and leave us all in a fix – and spoil Jess’s play. What do you think?”
“Oh, Laura! is poor Mike hurt?” cried the girl, and from that moment Laura thought better of her. For Lil showed she was not entirely heartless. She had thought first of the old coachman who had served her family for so many years, and who was even then probably helping her to get to Keyport and the expected performance of “The Duchess of Dawnleigh,” against his own good sense.
“Here he comes, limping,” said Laura, rather brusquely. “He’s not dead. But how about Plornish?”
“Plornish?” returned Lil, puzzled.
“Pizotti, then, if you prefer his stage name.”
“Is – isn’t Pizotti his name?” demanded Lil, still struggling with her tears.
“His real name is Abel Plornish,” said Laura, bluntly. She saw no use in “letting Lily down easy.” “He has a wife and seven children living down on Governor Street, in a miserable tenement. He neglects them a good deal, I believe. But this time, if he had made what he expected to out of you – By the way, Lil, what were you going to pay him?”
“I – I – For putting me on the stage with his company?” she stammered.
“Is that the way he put it? Well, yes,” said Laura. “It’s the same thing. He was going to star you in your own play, was he?”
“Ye – es,” sobbed Lily. “And now it’s all spoiled! And I was going to take all the money I pawned grandmother’s jewels for – ”
“Goodness me! How much?” snapped Laura.
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Has he got the cash?”
“No,” sobbed Lil.
“All right, then. No harm done. I went to Mr. Monterey and he found out that Plornish had got together no company at all. You were the only person who had learned a part in your play, I guess, Lily. Ah! Chet’s got him.”
Indeed, Chet had stopped the aero-iceboat and run back to the prostrate stage director. Plornish had a broken leg and had to be lifted by both boys into the Pendleton sleigh. Old Michael could manage the horses again and turned them about. Laura elected to go back to Centerport with the injured man and the very-much-disturbed Lily Pendleton.
“Now, just see the sort of a man this fellow is,” said Laura, paying no attention to the groanings of Plornish, “He was intending to get the money from you at Keyport and then disappear. All he spent was merely for the bills put up advertising the show – the show which he never intended would come off, Lil! And you were going down there and leaving us all in the lurch!”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” groaned Lil.
“I hope so. Sorry enough to go home and rest and prepare to play your part in ‘The Spring Road’ to-night,” spoke Laura, tartly.
“Oh, dear me! how can I?” cried the girl.
“If you don’t,” said Laura, frankly, “I won’t keep this affair a secret. You will be the laughing stock of all Central High. I am not going to allow Jess Morse’s play to be spoiled because of you. If you were so jealous and envious that you did not want to see Jess’s play succeed, you could have refused, at least, to be cast for an important part in it. And now,” went on Mother Wit, firmly, “you are going to play that part.”
“Oh, Laura! you are so harsh,” sobbed Lily.
“Much that will hurt you!” sniffed Laura. “We’ll drive around by the hospital and leave this Plornish man. If he dares to open his mouth, we’ll have him punished for trying to swindle you,” and Laura looked sternly at the black-eyed, foreign-looking fellow.
“You see, we know all about you, Mr. Plornish, and you will have to abide by what is done for you. Some of us will help your family while you are helpless. But you’ve got to be good, or even Mr. Vandergriff will forget that you and he used to be boys together. Pah! with your hair dye, and paint and powder, and all! Why, you are nearly fifty years old, so Mr. Vandergriff says, and you act and dress like a silly boy.”
Lily listened to all this, and stopped sobbing. She began to see that there was a chance for her to escape being a butt for her school-fellows’ jokes.
“Can – can you keep Jess and the boys from talking?” she whispered to Laura.
“They’ll be like oysters if I tell them to,” declared Mother Wit.
“Oh, then, I’ll do my best,” agreed the foolish girl. Possibly she was deeply impressed by her escape.
Mother Wit’s plans were carried out to the letter. Plornish was deposited at the hospital, where he would remain for some weeks. The performance of Jess’s play would have to get along without him on this opening night.
And when the hour for the performance arrived, Lily Pendleton was ready, her tears wiped away, glorious in one of her costumes, and “preening like a peacock” – to quote Bobby Hargrew – before one of the long mirrors in the dressing room.
“My, my!” laughed Bobby. “You look as grand as the Duchess of Doosenberry, don’t you, Lil?”
Lily looked at her rather sharply. “I’d really like to know how much that child knows?” the older girl murmured.
But it wasn’t what the shrewd Bobby knew; it was what she suspected!
CHAPTER XXV – GOOD NEWS FOR JESS
Behind the scenes just before the curtain rose upon the first act of “The Spring Road” there was such a bustle, and running about, and whispering, and excited signals and fragmentary talk, that it did look, Jess said, as though matters never would be straightened out.
Did this one know his or her part perfectly? Was this dress right? Oh, dear! how can this one be made to look right “from the front?” And a thousand other doubts and queries.
No matter how many times a play is rehearsed, it does seem just before the opening performance as though a dozen things would happen to spoil the effect of the first appearance. And to the author of the play it seems as though every person in that audience is a carping critic!
Jess peered through the peephole in the curtain and saw that the hall was crowded.
“I just know it will be a failure!” she moaned to her chum, Laura Belding. “It will be laughed at. I feel it!”
“Strange how I should feel so differently!” spoke Laura, cheerfully.
“Oh, dear! I’ll never be able to hold up my head again if it’s not liked,” Jess pursued. “It will just kill me.”
“Don’t die so easy, Chum,” said Laura. “You know we’ll need you in the big inter-school meet after Easter.”
“Oh! I’ll never be fit to do anything in athletics again!” gasped Jess.
Which was certainly not borne out by the facts, for Jess Morse took a most important part in the spring meet of the Girls’ Branch Athletic League, as a perusal of the next volume of this series: “The Girls of Central High on Track and Field; Or, The Champions of the School League,” will prove.
At last Miss Gould said all was ready. Really, she did very well without the assistance of the unpleasant, black-eyed, little Pizotti! The signal was given and the curtain rose on the first tableau – and it was a pretty sight! In this allegorical introduction to Jess’s play there were a score of the very prettiest girls of Central High, and they had been dressed and were grouped so artistically that an “Ah!” of admiration burst from the big audience.
The little fantasy unwound the thread of plot which introduced the real play; but when the curtain went down there was no enthusiastic applause. The audience was expectant; but did not wholly understand it. And this was as it should be; the intent of that little prologue was merely to whet the appetite for the real play.
“The Spring Road” ran its three acts through with unvarying success. The applause grew more pronounced; the interest of the audience grew deeper. The fact that a young girl had written the text of the play became harder and harder to believe as the evening lengthened.
At the end – when the general lights went out, one by one upon the stage and left the two principal characters in the radiance of the spot light alone – and when this dimmed slowly and finally went out, the silence of the audience was momentous.
Jess, in the wings, clinging to her chum, waited, scarcely breathing, for the verdict. Had it failed? Had the little lesson she had tried to teach, and the pretty story she had told, failed to “get over?”
Suddenly there was a roar of delight from the back of the hall. Some of the older boys of Central High had managed to get tickets to this first performance, and, led by big Griff, they began to chant the well-known yell of Central High.
But that was not what Jess waited for. That was school loyalty. She had expected that.
As the thunder of the boys’ applause began to wane there was another sound which reached the ears of those listening behind the curtain. A steady, sharp clapping of hands; then joined by a shuffling of feet. The great mass of the audience was applauding.
The curtain went up, and the whole company appeared. It rose and rose again, at last to display only the principals, down to the final two who had closed the play. But that was not enough.
They could hear Dr. Agnew’s heavy voice growling somewhere out in the darkness of the auditorium:
“Author! Author! Bring her out!”
The boys took up the demand. They even called on Jess Morse by name, and hitched that name to the battle cry of their athletic field.
“You’ve got to go!” cried Laura, giving her chum a push. “You’ve got to, Jess!”
And so Jess Morse stepped forward, modestly, bashfully, and faced the great audience. Tears half blinded her, but she bowed as she had been taught. And all the time she tasted the first intoxicating draught of Fame!
But that was not quite the end of it all. Mr. Monterey, of the Centerport Opera House, was in a seat down in front that evening. He never was seen to applaud once; but on Saturday evening, when the play was repeated for the general public to attend, he came again and this time brought a stranger who paid quite as close attention to Jess’s play as did Mr. Monterey himself.
After the performance and before Jess and Laura started for home with their escorts, they heard that the stranger with the local manager was a very famous New York producer. He had come especially to see “The Spring Road.”
And when Jess arrived home she found the gentleman, with Mr. Monterey, conferring with her mother in their little sitting room.
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Morse, proudly, “the play is practically Josephine’s own work. It is her idea, clothed in her own language. I am pleased that you find it so admirable for a child to have written – ”
“It is admirable – in spots – for anybody to have written,” said the New York gentleman. “And this is the young lady?”
Mrs. Morse introduced Jess.
“You are the budding playwright?” suggested the stranger.
“I am not so sure of that,” replied Jess, troubled a little. “I wanted the prize Mrs. Kerrick offered, and I did my best.”
“And your best is very good – remarkably good,” declared the producer. “I have come to see you and your mother about it. I want you to let me have the right to produce the play. Monday I will come with a contract; meanwhile I want Mrs. Morse to accept this check – which Mr. Monterey will endorse for me – to bind the agreement. I take a sort of option on the play, as it were,” he said, and he handed the check to Jess.
“You do not mean it?” gasped the girl.
“I certainly do,” said the other, rising. “Your play is not like the work of a professional playwright; but a professional writer of plays can take your work and whip it into shape – And I am willing to show my confidence in its final success by risking that sum upon it to start with.”
Jess looked then at the check. It was another two hundred dollars. Jess shut her eyes tight for a moment; then she opened them again to be sure she was not dreaming.
When she opened them she really believed she saw Poverty fly out of the window!