The Girls of Central High on the Stage: or, The Play That Took The Prize

CHAPTER XVIII – THE SKI RUNNERS

The New Year had ushered in the first big fall of snow – and it kept coming. Every few days, for the following fortnight, snow fell until Centerport’s street-cleaning department was swamped, and the drifts lay deep upon the vacant lots and against fences and blind walls.

Skating was done for, for the ice on the lake had become overloaded, and had broken up into a shifting mass of blocks, grinding against each other when the wind blew, and threatening the safety of any craft that tried to put out in it.

So traffic on Lake Luna ceased, and, of course, iceboating was likewise impossible. Chet and Lance Darby, had they not been so extremely busy learning their parts in the new play, could not have used their aero-iceboat during this time. Sleds were out in force, however – bobsleds, double-runners, toboggans, “framers,” and every sort of coasting paraphernalia. Even the Whiffle Street hill was made a coasting place by the young folk of the neighborhood, much to the despair of some grouty people who had forgotten their own youth, and who either telephoned their complaints to the police, or sprinkled ashes on the slide in the early morning hours.

It was at this time, however, that Mrs. Case, the girls’ physical instructor of Central High, took her class in ski running out into the open.

At first the dozen or more girls had practiced on their athletic field, which was now snow-covered, too. It was a particularly odd experience to stand upon narrow boards of ash, some ten feet in length, and then try to shuffle along on them without tipping sideways, or plunging head-first into a drift.

Each ski runner held a pole, with a spike in one end, and this was an aid to balancing, as well as of additional use if one tumbled down. It was no easy task, the girls found, to get up when they had been thrown into a drift.

“My!” commented Bobby Hargrew, “if you cross your feet going down hill on these things, you’re likely to dislocate every joint in your body.”

“Be sure you do not cross your feet, then,” advised Mrs. Case, grimly. “I have shown you all the correct position to stand upon these skis. The professional ski runner does not even use a pole. He will take the steep sides of mountains at a two-mile a minute rate. I have seen them do so in Switzerland and in Sweden and Norway. And they will jump into the air from the verge of high banks, and land on the drift at the bottom with perfect balance.”

“This is going to be no cinch to learn,” pronounced Bobby. “I know it’s going to be some time before I am good enough at it to jump off the top of Boulder Head on Cavern Island – now you see!”

“You would better take a much less difficult jump first,” advised Mrs. Case, smiling. “It will be enough fun for us to learn to travel on the skis without any frills. In Europe – especially on the road between St. Moritz and Celerina – I have often seen ski riders with horses. A horse trots ahead, drawing several riders on skis, who cling together by the aid of a rope fastened to the horse’s collar. Sometimes each rider has a horse, and they race horses just as though they were riding in sleighs.

“It is great sport, but like every other healthful form of athletics, it is often made dangerous and objectionable by those who are reckless, or rough. We will learn to balance ourselves, and to coast down a gentle descent.”

So, the next Saturday, the teacher and more than a dozen girls of Central High piled into a big, straw-filled sleigh, and were whisked out into the hills south of the city. The inn at Robinson’s Woods – a popular picnicking ground in summer – was made their headquarters, and there they left the sleigh and took to the difficult skis.

The climb to the top of the bluff overlooking the speedway, on which everybody – almost – who owned a sleigh was driving that afternoon, was not an easy one for the girls. Mrs. Case, holding her body erect, yet easily, shuffled up the incline with such little apparent effort that some of her pupils were in despair.

“We’ll never be able to run as you do, Mrs. Case!” cried Dora Lockwood. “Never! Why – ouch! There, I came near tumbling down that time.”

“Keep your balance. Use the pole if you have to,” advised the instructor. “It is not a running motion – it is more like a slide.”

“Say!” growled Bobby, who was having trouble, too. “It beats the ‘debutante slink,’ that came in with narrow skirts. I feel as if I was tumbling down every second.”

But they gained confidence in time. They reached the top of the bluff and then the long, easy slope, right beside the speedway, spread, spotless, before them. Mrs. Case showed them how to start, and after a fashion several of the bigger girls reached the bottom of the hill, and then panted up again, pronouncing it the best ever!

Bobby would not be outdone, as she said, “by anything in skirts,” and so she ventured. Halfway down the hill one of her skis must have struck something – perhaps the stub of a bush sticking out of the snow. Whew! Bobby turned almost a complete somersault!

She was buried so deep in a drift – and head first, at that – that it took both Laura and Mrs. Case to pull her out.

“Oh-me-oh-my!” cried Bobby, who looked like an animated snow-girl for the moment. “And just as I was getting on so well, too! Wasn’t that mean?”

“Perhaps you’d better not try any more to-day, Clara” said the instructor.

“And let those other girls get ahead of me? Well! I guess not!” declared Miss Hargrew, and she ploughed back to the top of the hill, fastened her feet upon the skis again, and started once more.

Laura and Jess Morse were on the hilltop, looking out upon the white track over which the sleighs were flying.

“Look there!” gasped Jess, seizing her chum’s arm. “Isn’t that the Pendletons’ sleigh?”

“Of course it is. With the big plumes and the pair of dappled grays? And that stiff and starched coachman driving? No mistake,” admitted Laura.

“Who’s in the sleigh with Lil?” demanded Jess.

“As I live!” cried her chum, in a somewhat horrified tone. “It – it is that Pizotti – that man!”

“Can you beat her?” said Jess, shaking her head.

“How foolish!” added Laura. “He is not a good man. He has known her so short a time – and to go sleigh-riding with her. Lil will be talked about, sure enough.”

“Well, I don’t know as we need to worry about her,” said Jess, shrugging her shoulders.

But Laura Belding could not put her schoolmate’s indiscreet actions out of her mind so easily. She wondered if Mrs. Pendleton knew of Lily’s familiarity with the foreign-looking Pizotti. The man might know his business as a stage director; but he certainly was neither of the age, nor the condition in life, to be cultivated as a friend by any young girl.

Lily Pendleton was so foolishly romantic, and so crazy about theatrical matters, that to be noticed by any person connected with the stage, or theatrical affairs, quite turned her head. And then, she still talked a great deal about her own play, “The Duchess of Dawnleigh.” She was sure it had not been given a proper reading – especially by Mr. Monterey. Perhaps, for reasons best known to himself, this stranger, Mr. Pizotti, had promised the foolish girl that he would help her get “The Duchess of Dawnleigh” produced.

CHAPTER XIX – THE FIRST DRESS REHEARSAL

Laura Belding was a particularly frank, outspoken girl, and when she met Lily Pendleton that Saturday night at the rehearsal of Jess’s play, she came out “flat-footed,” as her chum would have said, with the question:

“Who was that in the sleigh with you to-day, Lil?”

Lily flushed instantly, bridled, and smiled. “Who do you s’pose?” she returned.

“I don’t believe your mother knew you had that theatrical man to drive with you,” said Laura, bluntly.

“Why, how you talk! I merely met Signor Pizotti, and took him up – ”

“You don’t know who he is,” spoke Laura.

“Oh, indeed, Miss! And do you?” demanded Lily, rather sharply.

“No, And I don’t want to know him.”

“He is a very scholarly man – and he knows all about staging this play. If it wasn’t for him, I guess, ‘The Spring Road’ would suffer from frost,” said Lily, with an unkind laugh.

“That may be,” said Laura, flushing a little herself, for any slur cast upon her chum’s play hurt her, too. “But his knowledge of how to produce or stage a play does not establish his private character.”

“Pooh! you are interfering in something that you know nothing about,” declared Miss Pendleton, loftily. “And it does not concern you at all.”

“I do not believe your mother would approve,” ventured Laura.

“Never you mind about my mother,” snapped Lily, and turned her back on Mother Wit.

The latter took herself to task later, thinking she had been too presumptuous.

“But really,” she said to Jess, on their way home that evening, “I did not mean to be. Only, the man looks so unreliable. I’m afraid of him.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” said Jess, decidedly. “I only dislike him. But there is no accounting for tastes. My mother knew of a foolish girl who wrote to an opera tenor – one of those handsome, spoiled foreigners, and she sent him her photograph and told him how much she liked his singing – and all that. Just a silly letter, you know. But she didn’t sign her name and she thought he would never learn who she was.

“But he went to the photographer,” continued Jess, “and bribed him to tell who the girl was, and by that time she had written to the man several times, and he had written to her. So then he threatened her that if she did not give him five hundred dollars he would send her letters to her father. And she was in dreadful trouble, for she was afraid of what her father would do.”

“Oh, Lil won’t do anything like that!” gasped Laura. “I don’t believe she even thinks she cares about that Pizotti. It is only his foreign way that makes it appear so. But I believe he is flattering her about her play, and perhaps will get money from her or her mother.”

“Pizotti! Ha!” grunted Jess, before they separated. “I’m like Bobby Hargrew: I don’t believe that’s even his name. It sounds too fancy to be a real name.”

But Mr. Pizotti was an able man in his business. He came from time to time to the M. O. R. house and his advice regarding the play was always practical. He was something of a musician, too, and played the accompaniments for the girls who sang in “The Spring Road.” He suggested improvements in the costumes, too; and Lily Pendleton was entirely guided by his taste in her choice of the gowns she was to wear in the production.

Mrs. Pendleton was a very busy woman in a social way and allowed her daughter to do about as she pleased. Lily aped the manners of girls who had long since graduated from school and were flashy in their dress and manners.

To tell the truth, the after-hour athletics, governed by Mrs. Case, had been the one saving thing in Lily Pendleton’s life for some months. She would have become so enamored of fashion and frivolity, had it not been for the call of athletics, that she would have fallen sadly behind in her school work.

But she liked certain activities enjoyed by those who were attentive to Mrs. Case’s classes; and to gain these privileges one had to stand well in her general studies. Lily was smart enough, was a quick student, and so kept up her school work.

This business of acting appealed to her immensely. She was “just crazy about it,” as she admitted to her particular friend, Hester Grimes.

“I wish my folks were poor, so that I would have to work when I leave school,” she declared. “Then I’d go on the stage myself.”

“You wouldn’t!” exclaimed Hester.

“I would in a minute. And this Signor Pizotti could place me very advantageously – ”

“Pooh! you don’t believe anything that fellow says, do you?” demanded her chum, who was eminently practical and had none of the silly ideas in her head that troubled Lily.

“You don’t know him!” exclaimed Lily.

“Don’t want to,” replied Hester, gruffly.

Preparations for the first dress rehearsal of “The Spring Road” went on apace. But, of course, Bobby Hargrew would have bad luck! She was thrown from Short and Long’s bobsled one night and had to be helped home. The hurt to her foot was a small matter; but the doctor said she would have to wear her arm in a sling for a time.

“And how can I play Arista with my arm strapped to my side?” wailed Bobby, when Jess and Laura came in to commiserate with her over the accident. “Oh, dear me! I am the most unlucky person in the world. If it was raining soup I’d have a hole in my dipper!”

Mr. Monterey, the local manager, came himself to the dress rehearsal. He only sat out front, and watched and listened; and he went away without expressing an opinion to anybody. Yet Jess saw him there and was excited by the possibility of Mr. Monterey’s recognizing the value of the play for professional purposes.

At the Morse domicile things were going better, and the girl’s mind was vastly relieved from present troubles. Yet she was wise enough to see that in the offing the same danger of debt threatened them if they were not very, very careful.

It was true that scarcely half the prize money had been spent; yet Mrs. Morse’s regular work on the Courier barely fed them; and her success with the popular magazines was but fitful. Sometimes two months passed without her mother receiving even a ten-dollar check from her fugitive work.

Oh, if she could only find somebody who would take the play – after the M. O. R.’s had made use of it – and whip it into shape for professional use, and give her a part of the proceeds!

That was the thought continually knocking at the door of Jess Morse’s mind. It was “too good to be true,” yet she kept thinking about it, and hoping for the impossible, and dreaming of it.

However, the dress rehearsal of “The Spring Road” was pronounced by the teachers and Mr. Pizotti as eminently satisfactory. Bobby was letter-perfect in her part, if she did have “a damaged wing,” as she said. And most of the other important roles were well learned.

The very prettiest girl of Central High had been chosen for the chief female character, and in this case prettiness went with brains. She had learned her part, and was natural and graceful, and was altogether a delight.

As for Launcelot Darby, he was the most romantic looking Truant Lover that could have been found. And he played with feeling, too, although his mates were making a whole lot of fun of him on the side. But Laura had urged him to do his best, and Lance would have done anything in his power to please Mother Wit.

Chet Belding, as a peasant, “made up” well, and was letter perfect, too, in his part, if a little awkward. But that did not so much matter, considering the character he had to portray. And, of course, he would do nothing to belittle Jess’s play. His whole heart was in his work, too.

So, after that first dress rehearsal, the committee and Jess were hopeful of success. The time for the production of the play was set, the tickets printed, and out of school hours everything was in a bustle of preparation for the great occasion.

CHAPTER XX – “MR. PIZOTTI”

“Listen to this!”

Bobby Hargrew, her arm still in a sling, seized Jess Morse by the wrist and “tiptoed” along the corridor of the second wing of Central High, where the small offices were located, and with tragic expression pointed to a certain door that stood ajar.

Jess, amazed, did not speak, but listened. Out of the room came a muffled voice, but the words spoken were these:

“Unhand me! Nay, keep your distance, Count Mornay! I am no peasant wench to be charmed either by your gay coat or your gay manner. Ah! your villainies are known to me, nor can you hide the cloven hoof beneath the edge of Virtue’s robe.”

“Ha! ha!” chuckled Bobby, almost strangling with laughter. “He ought to have worn boots and so hidden his ‘cloven hoof.’ Come away, Jess, or I shall burst! Did you ever hear the like?”

“Why – why, what is it?” demanded Jess, mystified.

“Oh, don’t! Wait till I laugh!” chuckled Bobby, when they were around the corner of the corridor again. “Isn’t that rich?”

“Who was it talking?” asked Jess.

“Talking! Didn’t you recognize that oration?”

“I did not. Mother doesn’t allow me to read any penny-dreadful story papers, magazines or books.”

“Oh, ho! Wait!” gasped Bobby. “That’s Lil.”

“Lily Pendleton?”

“You evidently haven’t heard any of the ‘Duchess of Dusenberry’ before. That’s it!”

“Not part of her play?”

“That is one of the melodramatic bits,” said Bobby, weakly, leaning against the wall for support. “Yes, really, Jess. That is in her play. I’ve heard her recite it before.”

“My goodness me!” gasped Jess.

“It’s not all so bad, I guess. But when she gets flowery and romantic she just tears off such paragraphs as that. ‘Nor can you hide the cloven hoof beneath the edge of Virtue’s robe.’ Isn’t that a peach?”

“Bobby!” exclaimed Jess, breathless herself by now, “you use the worst slang of any girl in Central High.”

“That’s all right. But Lil’s using worse language than I ever dreamed of,” laughed Bobby. “I’ve heard her spouting that sort of stuff time and time again. When she shuts herself up, presumably to study her part in your play, half the time she is reciting her own lines. She likes the sound of ’em. And she had that Pizotti fellow backed in a corner of the front hall at the M. O. R. house the other afternoon, reciting that same sort of stuff to him.

“Repeating her play?”

“Yep. The silly! And he pretending that it was great, and applauding her. I’ll wager that he sees a way to make money out of Lil Pendleton, or he wouldn’t stand for it.”

Jess carried this idea in her mind, although she was not as much troubled by her schoolmate’s foolishness as was Mother Wit. There was a loyalty among the girls of Central High, however, that few ignored. Despite the fact that Jess had never especially liked Lily Pendleton, she would have done anything in her power to help her.

So, that very evening, when she was marketing, she chanced to see something that brought Lil’s affairs into her mind again. She was going into Mr. Vandergriff’s store when she saw a man, bundled in a big ulster, talking with the proprietor.

Griff came forward to wait on Jess, and the girl might not have noticed the man by the desk a second time had she not overheard Mr. Vandergriff say:

“You take advantage of my good nature, Abel. Because I knew you in the old country, you come here and plead poverty. I can’t see your family suffer, for your wife is a nice woman, if you are a rascal!”

“Hard words! Hard words, Vandergriff,” muttered the other.

Jess saw that he was a little man, and the high ulster collar muffled the lower part of his face. But as he turned toward the door she caught a glimpse of a glossy black mustache, and two beady black eyes.

It was Mr. Pizotti!

The girl was so astonished, for the man was shabbily dressed, and shuffled out with several bundles under his arm, that she could scarcely remember what else she wanted to buy when Griff asked her.

“Oh, I say, Griff!” she demanded, breathlessly, and in a whisper. “Who was that man who just went out?”

“Why – oh, that was only Abel Plornish.”

“Abel Plornish!”

“Yep. Poor, useless creature,” said the boy, with disgust. “Or, so father says. He knew Abel in England. You know, father came from London before he was married,” and Griff smiled.

“But this man – are you sure his name is Plornish?”

“Quite, Jess. Why, he plays the violin, or the piano, in some cheap moving picture place, I believe.”

“Then he is a musician?” demanded Jess, breathlessly.

“And a bad one, I reckon. But he has done other things. He’s been on the stage. And he’s even worked in the Centerport Opera House, I believe.”

“And that is really his name?” asked Jess.

“It’s an awful one, isn’t it? Plornish! Nothing very romantic or fancy about that,” laughed Griff. “Now, what else, Jess?”

Jess was so disturbed by this discovery that she could only think to ask Griff one more question. That related to where Plornish lived.

“Somewhere on Governor Street. I think it’s Number 9. Tenement house. Oh, they’re poor, and I believe when he gets any money he spends it on himself. I saw him once on Market Street dressed like a dandy. But when his wife and children come in here they look pretty shabby.”

It wasn’t very late, and, anyway, Jess couldn’t have slept that night without talking the matter over with Mother Wit. She left her basket in the kitchen, saw that her mother was busy at her desk, and ran up Whiffle Street hill to the Belding house.

“Is dat suah yo’, Miss Jess?” asked Mammy Jinny, peering out of the side door when Jess rang the bell. “Come right erlong in, honey. Yo’s jes’ as welcome as de flowers in de Maytime. B-r-r! ain’t it cold?”

“It is cold, Mammy,” said Jess to the Beldings’ old serving woman. “Where’s Laura?”

“She’s done gone up to her room ter listen ter Mars’ Chet an’ dat Lance Darby boy orate dem pieces dey is goin’ to recite in school nex’ week.”

“They are going to act in my play, Mammy!” cried Jess.

“Mebbe so. Mebbe so. But it’s all recitationin’ ter me. Dat leetle Bobby Hargrew was in here and she say it’s jes’ like w’en you-all useter recite at de Sunday night concerts in de Sunday school room. An’ dem pieces yo’ orated den was a hull lot nicer dan w’at Mars’ Chet is sayin’. ’Member how you recited dat ‘Leetle drops o’ water, leetle grains o’ sand’ piece, Miss Jess? Dat was suah a nice piece o’ po’try.”

“And you don’t care for the parts you have heard of my play, Mammy?” asked Jess, much amused.

“Suah ’nuff, now! Did you make up disher play dey is goin’ ter act?” demanded Mammy Jinny.

“I certainly did.”

“Wal, I hates ter hu’t yo’ feelin’s, Miss Jess,” said Mammy, gravely, “but dat ‘Leetle drops o’ water’ po’try was a hull lot better – ter my min’! Ya’as’m! yo kin’ go right up. Yo’ll hear dem-all a-spoutin’ – spoutin’ jes’ like whales!”

And so she did. Chet was reading his lines with much unction while striding up and down Laura’s pretty little room. Lance and Mother Wit were his audience.

“For goodness sake, Chet!” cried Jess, breaking in. “Who told you your part was tragic, and that ‘The Spring Road’ was tragedy?”

“Huh?” questioned Chet, stopping short and blinking at her.

“Do read the lines naturally. Don’t be ‘orating,’ as Mammy Jinny calls it. I guess she’s right. ‘Little drops of water’ is better than all that bombastic stuff. Do, do, my dear, speak it naturally.”

“Hear her!” growled Chet “And she wrote it!”

“I never really meant it to sound like that, Chet,” declared Jess, shaking her head. “I really didn’t. Why! it sounds almost as bad as ‘The Duchess of Dawnleigh.’”

“Wha – what’s that?” demanded Lance.

“Not Lil’s play?” cried Laura. “Have you heard it?”

Jess told what she had heard at the door of the recitation room that afternoon, and they laughed over it.

“Yet I can see very well,” continued Jess, “that you actors can make my words sound just as absurd if you want to. Do, do be natural.”

“That’s what I tell them,” sighed Laura. “I am glad you heard Chet spouting here. One would think he was playing ‘Hamlet,’ or ‘Richard III.’”

Chet was a little miffed. But he soon “came out of it,” as Lance said, and he was so fond of Jess anyway that he would have tried his best to please her.

He grew more moderate in his “orating” and the girls, as critics, were better pleased. Lance took a leaf out of his chum’s book, too, and when he declaimed his lines he succeeded in pleasing Jess and Laura the first time. Besides, Lance was naturally a better actor than Chet.

Mr. Pizotti had taught them how to enter properly, and how to take their cues; but to Jess’s mind he was not the man to train amateurs to speak their parts with naturalness. If Miss Gould had not given so much time to the rehearsals of “The Spring Road” the play would have not been half the success it promised to be. And, of course, the Central High teacher gave her attention mainly to the girls in the cast of characters.

When Lance and Chet lounged off to the latter’s den Jess instantly poured into Laura’s ears her discovery of the identity of “Mr. Pizotti.”

“Well, even at that he may be a man trying to earn his living. Many stage people change their names for business reasons. ‘Plornish’ is not an attractive name, you must admit,” said Laura, smiling. “‘Pizotti’ fits his foreign look.”

“But what is he trying to get out of Lil Pendleton?” demanded Jess, bluntly.

“That’s what troubles me,” admitted Mother Wit. “I believe he is trying to get money out of Lily, or from her folks. And it has to do with Lil’s play. You can see that she believes her play was slighted and that it is a great deal better than yours, Jess.”

“I guess she has a good opinion of it,” returned Jess, laughing.

“Well, suppose this fellow tells her she is right, and that he can get it produced, if she will put up the money?” suggested Mother Wit. “I – I wish Lil would place confidence in me.”

“Tell her mother.”

“No use,” sighed Laura. “I doubt if she would even listen to me. She wouldn’t want to be bothered. You know very well the kind of woman Mrs. Pendleton is.”

“Well, I don’t suppose it is any of our business, anyway,” spoke Jess.

“It is. Lil is one of us – one of the girls of Central High. We have a deep interest in anything that concerns her. The only trouble is,” sighed Laura, “I don’t know just what is best to do.”