The appointment was to take place at the home of Meg, whose Professor father was one of the most prominent men in the village and Polly was told to bring a chaperon, so from the standpoint of propriety she was committing no offence. She had not seen Meg for a week and so could ask her no questions, and as Betty was the only person who could be relied upon in the emergency, to Betty she confided the whole situation, not in the least asking her advice, since this was not the way with Mistress Polly, but begging Betty to be present with her during the call. If Betty demurred at first, suggesting Miss Dyer, Miss McMurtry, Miss Mary Adams, as more suitable chaperons, she did finally agree. So early on Friday afternoon the two girls started into town in their best clothes, saying that they were going in on an errand. Betty was driving Fire Star and Polly carrying a volume of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.” The note had suggested that since Miss Margaret Adams had had no opportunity to hear Miss O’Neill recite, the writer would be interested to know what she could do.
Polly was cold with nervous excitement all the way into town. She was not in the least sure whether she did not dread the coming interview more than anything that had ever happened to her in her life and she also had very uncomfortable twinges of conscience, since this venture of hers had no grown-up sanction. There had been no time as yet to write her mother about it and she had not confided in Mollie, who once had known all her secrets. Indeed, had she not even felt glad that Mollie had decided not to return to the cabin after school that day but to remain in town with a friend, so that no uncomfortable family questions could be raised.
By special request Betty was invited not to talk on the journey in, so that Polly could have the opportunity for repeating to herself the poems she had made up her mind to recite and go once more over Juliet’s famous lament.
The hall at the Professor’s was unusually dark when Meg herself, to the girls’ delight, opened the front door. Polly was by this time in too agitated a condition to stop for asking questions, but although Betty was not, Meg did not seem willing to answer them. Instead she kept shaking her head and pointing mysteriously toward their drawing room door. “The stranger was already in there, yes, her father knew him, Polly must not mind that the visitor had his wife with him, she was also an actress upon whose judgment he placed the greatest reliance, but the girls were not to do more than bow to her, as it bored her to meet people.”
If the hall was dark the drawing room was even darker, but then before joining the Camp Fire club Meg had been a proverbially poor housekeeper, so she probably had neglected to open the drawing room shutters and, as it was a dark February afternoon, the light that came through the slats was not sufficient. Betty felt most distinctly that she was not going to enjoy the approaching interview, that there was already something odd and uncomfortable about it, but she had no opportunity for confiding her views and Polly was not in a critical humor. As for the darkness Polly was decidedly grateful for it. If she had to get up and recite before Meg and Betty and the two strangers it would be far easier to be in the half shadow than to have their critical glances full upon her. This drawing room recitation before so small an audience did not appeal to Polly anyhow, certainly it held none of the glamour of the stage, the music, the footlights, the feeling that you were no longer your real self but a performer in some other drama in some different world.
Betty sat down at once in a far corner, as she saw no notice was to be taken of her, but Polly felt herself having her hand shaken coldly by a tall, broad-shouldered, middle-aged man wearing glasses, with an iron gray, pointed beard and iron gray hair pulled low down over his forehead. He seemed, however, not to have the least desire for conversation, for waving Polly toward the center of the room, he at once asked her to show what she could do, without introducing his wife nor making the least satisfactory explanation of his own presence in Woodford, his acquaintance with Miss Margaret Adams, nor his right to have solicited this meeting with Polly.
However, none of these points weighed upon the girl’s mind at the time. The man looked just as she expected an actor-manager might look, and as for his wife, she could see nothing of her but a figure dressed in a long traveling coat and wearing a hat and heavy veil, who had not even deigned to glance in her direction.
“What—what shall I begin with?” Polly inquired anxiously. “Miss Adams, our teacher of elocution at the High School, says that young girls should try simple recitations, that it is absurd for us to attempt to reveal the great emotions such as one finds in Shakespeare’s plays, or Ibsen’s or Maeterlinck’s, that we must wait until we know something more of life for them. I did not feel sure what you would think about it, but I know some English poems, very famous and very beautiful, perhaps you would like me to begin with one of them?”
There was a slight hesitation in Polly’s voice because personally she found the simple poems much more difficult than the big ones and her taste did not incline toward Whitcomb Riley, or Eugene Field, toward any of the simple character work, which would have been the best possible training for her at the present time.
But the critic fortunately agreeing with Polly’s point of view shook his head gravely over her suggestion of English verses.