The Girls of Central High on the Stage/Chapter 20
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 of 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 May-time. 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 demall 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."