CHAPTER XVI--"Moira

The first scene of the play opened upon a handsome New York drawing room, where preparations were evidently being made for a ball, for the room was filled with flowers, and servants were seen walking in and out, completing the final arrangements. Within a few moments two girls wearing dainty tea gowns, stole quietly down the stairway and stood in the center of the stage, discussing their approaching entertainment. They were both pretty and fashionable young women, evidently about eighteen and twenty-one. From their conversation it soon became evident that they were of plain origin and making a desperate effort to secure a place for themselves among the "smart set" in New York City. Moreover, they were spending more money than they should in the effort. The father had been an Irish politician, but, as he had died several years before, no outsiders knew the extent of the family fortune. Upon the horizon there was a friend upon whom much depended. He was evidently a member of an old New York family and of far better social standing than the rest of their acquaintances; moreover, he was wealthy, handsome and agreeable and had paid the older of the two sisters, Kate, somewhat marked attention.

When after a few moments' delay the second scene was revealed the ball had already begun. The stage setting was remarkably beautiful, the costumes charming and the dialogue clever. Yet so far the play had no poignant interest, so that now and then Betty found her attention wandering.

What could have made this little play such a pronounced success that the dramatic critics had been almost universal in their praise of it? she wondered. What special charm did it have which crowded the theater every evening as it was crowded tonight? It was only a frivolous society drama of a kind that must have been acted many times before.

Behind her lace handkerchief Betty gracefully concealed a yawn. Then she glanced across the theater toward Margaret Adams' box, hoping she might catch another smile or nod from the great lady. But Miss Adams was leaning forward with her figure tense with interest and her eyes fastened in eager expectancy upon a door at the rear of the stage. Back of her, and it seemed to Betty even at this distance, that his face looked unusually white and strained, stood Richard Hunt. Assuredly he seemed as intent upon the play as Miss Adams.

Betty stared at the stage again. A dance had just ended, the guests were separating into groups and standing about talking. But a timid knock now sounded on the door which apparently no one heard. A moment later this door is slowly opened. There followed a murmur of excitement, a little electric thrill passing through the audience so that unexpectedly Betty found her own pulses tingling with interest and excitement. What a goose she had been! Surely she had heard half a dozen times at least that the success of this new play was entirely due to the charm and talent of the young actress, Peggy Moore, who took the part of the heroine.

At the open door the newcomer was seen hesitating. No one noticed her, then she walked timidly forward and stood alone in the center of the stage, one of the most appealing, delicious and picturesque of figures in the world of fiction or reality.

The girl was wearing an absurd costume, a bright red blouse, open at the throat, a plaid skirt too short for the slender legs beneath it and a big flapping straw hat decorated with a single rose. In one hand she carried an old-fashioned carpet bag and in the other a tiny Maltese kitten. The girl had two long braids of black hair that hung below her waist, scarlet lips, a white imploring face and wistful, humorous, tender blue eyes.

Betty was growing cold to the tips of her fingers, although her face flushed until it felt almost painful. Then she overheard a queer, half-restrained sound near her and the next instant Mrs. Wharton leaned forward from her place and placed a hand on her arm and on Mollie's.

"Yes, girls, it is Polly!" she whispered quietly, although with shining eyes. "But please, please don't stir or do anything in the world to attract her attention. It was Polly's own idea to surprise you like this, and yet she is dreadfully afraid that the sight of you may make her break down and forget her part. She is simply wonderful!"

Naturally this was a mother's opinion; however, nothing that Mrs. Wharton was saying was making the slightest impression, for neither Mollie nor Betty had heard a word.

For Moira, the little Irish girl, had begun to speak and everybody on the stage was looking toward her, smiling and shrugging their shoulders, except the two daughters of the house and their fashionable mother.

Moira had asked for her aunt, Mrs. Mulholland. She was not an emigrant maid-of-all-work, as the guests presumed her to be, but a niece of the wealthy household. She had crossed the ocean alone and was expecting a welcome from her relatives.

At this point in the drama the hero came forward to the little Irish maid's assistance. Then her aunt and cousins dared not display the anger they felt for this undesired guest. Later it was explained that Moira had been sent to New York by her old grandfather, who, fearing that he was about to die, wished the girl looked after by her relatives. Moira's father had been the son that stayed behind in Ireland. He had been desperately poor and the grandfather was supposed to be equally so. Then, of course, followed the history of the child's efforts to fit herself into the insincere and unkind household.

Nothing remarkable in the story of the little play, surely, but everything in the art with which Polly O'Neill acted it!

Tears and smiles, both in writing and acting: these are what the artist desires as his true recognition. And Polly seldom spoke half a dozen lines without receiving one or the other. Sometimes the smiles and tears crowded so close together that the one had not sufficient time to thrust the other away.

"I didn't dream the child had it in her: it is genius!" Margaret Adams whispered to her companion, when the curtain had finally fallen on the second act and she had leaned back in her chair with a sigh of mingled pleasure and relief.

"She had my promise to say nothing until tonight. Yes, I have been in the secret since last winter." Richard explained. "It was a blessed accident Polly's finding just this particular kind of play. She could have played no other so well while still so young. You see, she was acting in a cheap stock company when a manager happened quite by chance to discover her. But she will want to tell you the story herself. I must not anticipate."

For a moment, instead of replying, Margaret Adams looked slightly amazed. "I did not know that you and Polly were such great friends, Richard, that she has preferred confiding in you to any one else," she said at length.

Richard Hunt had taken his seat and was now watching the unconcealed triumph and delight among the group of Polly's family and friends in the box across the theater.

"I wasn't chosen; I was an accident," the man smiled. "Last winter in Boston I met Polly--Miss O'Neill," he corrected himself, "and she told me what she was trying to do, fight things out for herself without advice or assistance from any one of us. But, of course, after I was taken into her secret she allowed me to keep in touch with her now and then. The child was lonely and dreadfully afraid you and her other friends would not understand or forgive what she had tried to do."

"Polly is not exactly a child, Richard; she must be nearly twenty-two," Margaret Adams replied quietly.

In the final act the little Irish heroine had her hour of triumph. The hero had fallen in love with her instead of with the fashionable cousin. Yet Moira was not the pauper her relatives had believed her, for the old grandfather had recently died and his solicitor appeared with his will. The Irish township had purchased his acres of supposedly worthless land and Moira was proclaimed an heiress.

At the end Polly was her gayest, most inimitable, laughing self. Half a dozen times Betty, Mollie and Sylvia found themselves forgetting that she was acting at all. How many times had they not known her just as wilful and charming, their Polly of a hundred swift, succeeding moods.

Moira was not angry with any one in the world, certainly not with the cousins who had been almost cruel to her. During her stay among them she had learned of their need of money and was now quick to offer all that she had. She was so generous, so happy, and with it all so petulant and charming, that at last even the stern aunt and the envious cousins succumbed to her.

Then the curtain descended on a very differently clad heroine, but one who was essentially unchanged. Moira was dressed in a white satin made in the latest and most exquisite fashion; and her black hair was beautifully arranged on her small, graceful head. Only the people who loved her could have dreamed that Polly O'Neill would ever look so pretty. And in one hand the girl was holding a single red rose, though under the other arm she was still clutching her beloved Maltese cat.

"Polly will not answer any curtain calls tonight," Mrs. Wharton whispered hurriedly when the last scene was over. "If the others will excuse us she has asked that only Sylvia, Betty and Mollie come to her room. Margaret Adams will be there, but no one else. She is very tired at the close of her performances, but she is afraid you girls may not forgive her long silence and her deception. Will you come this way with me?"