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.”