§ 1.
Spring, whose coming the breeze had heralded to Wally as he smoked upon
the roof, floated graciously upon New York two mornings later. The city
awoke to a day of blue and gold and to a sense of hard times over and
good times to come. In a million homes, a million young men thought of
sunny afternoons at the Polo Grounds; a million young women of long
summer Sundays by the crowded waves of Coney Island. In his apartment
on Park Avenue, Mr Isaac Goble, sniffing the gentle air from the window
of his breakfast-room, returned to his meal and his _Morning Telegraph_
with a resolve to walk to the theatre for rehearsal: a resolve which
had also come to Jill and Nelly Bryant, eating stewed prunes in their
boarding-house in the Forties. On the summit of his sky-scraper, Wally
Mason, performing Swedish exercises to the delectation of various
clerks and stenographers in the upper windows of neighboring buildings,
felt young and vigorous and optimistic; and went in to his shower-bath
thinking of Jill. And it was of Jill, too, that young Mr Pilkington
thought, as he propped his long form up against the pillows and sipped
his morning cup of tea. He had not yet had an opportunity of inspecting
the day for himself, but his Japanese valet, who had been round the
corner for papers, had spoken well of it; and even in his bedroom the
sunlight falling on the carpet gave some indication of what might be
expected outside. For the first time in several days a certain
moodiness which had affected Otis Pilkington left him, and he dreamed
happy daydreams.
The gaiety of Otis was not, however, entirely or even primarily due to
the improvement in the weather. It had its source in a conversation
which had taken place between himself and Jill’s Uncle Chris on the
previous night. Exactly how it had come about, Mr Pilkington was not
entirely clear, but, somehow, before he was fully aware of what he was
saying, he had begun to pour into Major Selby’s sympathetic ears the
story of his romance. Encouraged by the other’s kindly receptiveness,
he had told him all—his love for Jill, his hopes that some day it might
be returned, the difficulties complicating the situation owing to the
known prejudices of Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim concerning girls who formed
the _personnel_ of musical comedy _ensembles_. To all these outpourings
Major Selby had listened with keen attention, and finally had made one
of those luminous suggestions, so simple yet so shrewd, which emanate
only from your man of the world. It was Jill’s girlish ambition, it
seemed from Major Selby’s statement, to become a force in the
motion-picture world. The movies were her objective. When she had told
him of this, said Uncle Chris, he had urged her, speaking in her best
interests, to gain experience by joining in the humblest capacity the
company of some good musical play, where she could learn from the best
masters so much of the technique of the business. That done, she could
go about her life-work, fortified and competent.
What, he broke off to ask, did Pilkington think of the idea?
Pilkington thought the idea splendid. Miss Mariner, with her charm and
looks, would be wonderful in the movies.
There was, said Uncle Chris, a future for a girl in the movies.
Mr Pilkington agreed cordially. A great future.
“Look at Mary Pickford!” said Uncle Chris. “Millions a year!”
Mr Pilkington contemplated Miss Pickford, and agreed again. He
instanced other stars—lesser luminaries, perhaps, but each with her
thousands a week. There was no doubt about it—a girl’s best friend was
the movies.
“Observe,” proceeded Uncle Chris, gathering speed and expanding his
chest as he spread his legs before the fire, “how it would simplify the
whole matter if Jill were to become a motion-picture artist and win
fame and wealth in her profession. And there can be no reasonable
doubt, my boy, that she would. As you say, with her appearance and her
charm … Which of these women whose names you see all along Broadway in
electric lights can hold a candle to her? Once started, with the proper
backing behind her, her future would be assured. And then. … Of course,
as regards her feelings I cannot speak, as I know nothing of them, but
we will assume that she is not indifferent to you … what then? You go
to your excellent aunt and announce that you are engaged to be married
to Jill Mariner. There is a momentary pause. ‘Not _the_ Jill Mariner?’
falters Mrs Peagrim. ‘Yes, the famous Miss Mariner!’ you reply. Well, I
ask you, my boy, can you see her making an objection? Such a thing
would be absurd. No, I can see no flaw in the project whatsoever.” Here
Uncle Chris, as he had pictured Mrs Peagrim doing, paused for a moment.
“Of course, there would be the preliminaries.”
“The preliminaries?”
Uncle Chris’ voice became a melodious coo. He beamed upon Mr
Pilkington.
“Well, think for yourself, my boy! These things cannot be done without
money. I do not propose to allow my niece to waste her time and her
energy in the rank and file of the profession, waiting years for a
chance that might never come. There is plenty of room at the top, and
that, in the motion-picture profession, is the place to start. If Jill
is to become a motion-picture artist, a special company must be formed
to promote her. She must be made a feature, a star, from the beginning.
That is why I have advised her to accept her present position
temporarily, in order that she may gain experience. She must learn to
walk before she runs. She must study before she soars. But when the
moment arrives for her to take the step, she must not be hampered by
lack of money. Whether,” said Uncle Chris, smoothing the crease of his
trousers, “you would wish to take shares in the company yourself …”
“Oo … !”
“… is a matter,” proceeded Uncle Chris, ignoring the interruption, “for
you yourself to decide. Possibly you have other claims on your purse.
Possibly this musical play of yours has taken all the cash you are
prepared to lock up. Possibly you may consider the venture too
speculative. Possibly … there are a hundred reasons why you may not
wish to join us. But I know a dozen men—I can go down Wall Street
tomorrow and pick out twenty men—who will be glad to advance the
necessary capital. I can assure you that I personally shall not
hesitate to risk—if one can call it risking—any loose cash which I may
have lying idle at my banker’s.”
He rattled the loose cash which he had lying idle in his
trouser-pocket—fifteen cents in all—and stopped to flick a piece of
fluff off his coat-sleeve. Mr Pilkington was thus enabled to insert a
word.
“How much would you want?” he enquired.
“That,” said Uncle Chris meditatively, “is a little hard to say. I
should have to look into the matter more closely in order to give you
the exact figures. But let us say for the sake of argument that you put
up—what shall we say?—a hundred thousand? fifty thousand?… no, we will
be conservative. Perhaps you had better not begin with more than ten
thousand. You can always buy more shares later. I don’t suppose I shall
begin with more than ten thousand myself.”
“I could manage ten thousand all right.”
“Excellent. We make progress, we make progress. Very well, then. I go
to my Wall Street friends—I would give you their names, only for the
present, till something definite has been done, that would hardly be
politic—I go to my Wall Street friends, and tell them about the scheme,
and say ‘Here is ten thousand dollars! What is your contribution?’ It
puts the affair on a business-like basis, you understand. Then we
really get to work. But use your own judgment my boy, you know. Use
your own judgment. I would not think of persuading you to take such a
step, if you felt at all doubtful. Think it over. Sleep on it. And,
whatever you decide to do, on no account say a word about it to Jill.
It would be cruel to raise her hopes until we are certain that we are
in a position to enable her to realize them. And, of course, not a word
to Mrs Peagrim.”
“Of course.”
“Very well, then, my boy.” said Uncle Chris affably. “I will leave you
to turn the whole thing over in your mind. Act entirely as you think
best. How is your insomnia, by the way? Did you try Nervino? Capital!
There’s nothing like it. It did wonders for _me!_ Good-night,
good-night!”
Otis Pilkington had been turning the thing over in his mind, with an
interval for sleep, ever since. And the more he thought of it, the
better the scheme appeared to him. He winced a little at the thought of
the ten thousand dollars, for he came of prudent stock and had been
brought up in habits of parsimony, but, after all, he reflected, the
money would be merely a loan. Once the company found its feet, it would
be returned to him a hundred-fold. And there was no doubt that this
would put a completely different aspect on his wooing of Jill, as far
as his Aunt Olive was concerned. Why, a cousin of his—young Brewster
Philmore—had married a movie-star only two years ago, and nobody had
made the slightest objection. Brewster was to be seen with his bride
frequently beneath Mrs Peagrim’s roof. Against the higher strata of
Bohemia Mrs Peagrim had no prejudice at all. Quite the reverse, in
fact. She liked the society of those whose names were often in the
papers and much in the public mouth. It seemed to Otis Pilkington, in
short, that Love had found a way. He sipped his tea with relish, and
when the Japanese valet brought in the toast all burned on one side,
chided him with a gentle sweetness which, one may hope, touched the
latter’s Oriental heart and inspired him with a desire to serve this
best of employers more efficiently.
At half-past ten, Otis Pilkington removed his dressing-gown and began
to put on his clothes to visit the theatre. There was a rehearsal-call
for the whole company at eleven. As he dressed, his mood was as sunny
as the day itself.
And the day, by half-past ten, was as sunny as ever Spring day had been
in a country where Spring comes early and does its best from the very
start. The blue sky beamed down on a happy city. To and fro the
citizenry bustled, aglow with the perfection of the weather. Everywhere
was gaiety and good cheer, except on the stage of the Gotham Theatre,
where an early rehearsal, preliminary to the main event, had been
called by Johnson Miller in order to iron some of the kinks out of the
“My Heart and I” number, which, with the assistance of the male chorus,
the leading lady was to render in act one.
On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned—literally, because the stage
was wide and deep and was illumined only by a single electric light:
and figuratively, because things were going even worse than usual with
the “My Heart and I” number, and Johnson Miller, always of an emotional
and easily stirred temperament, had been goaded by the incompetence of
his male chorus to a state of frenzy. At about the moment when Otis
Pilkington shed his flowered dressing-gown and reached for his trousers
(the heather-mixture with the red twill), Johnson Miller was pacing the
gangway between the orchestra pit and the first row of the orchestra
chairs, waving one hand and clutching his white locks with the other,
his voice raised the while in agonized protest.
“Gentlemen, you silly idiots,” complained Mr Miller loudly, “you’ve had
three weeks to get these movements into your thick heads, and you
haven’t done a damn thing right! You’re all over the place! You don’t
seem able to turn without tumbling over each other like a lot of
Keystone Kops! What’s the matter with you? You’re not doing the
movements I showed you; you’re doing some you have invented yourselves,
and they are rotten! I’ve no doubt you think you can arrange a number
better than I can, but Mr Goble engaged me to be the director, so
kindly do exactly as I tell you. Don’t try to use your own
intelligence, because you haven’t any. I’m not blaming you for it. It
wasn’t your fault that your nurses dropped you on your heads when you
were babies. But it handicaps you when you try to think.”
Of the seven gentlemanly members of the male ensemble present, six
looked wounded by this tirade. They had the air of good men wrongfully
accused. They appeared to be silently calling on Heaven to see justice
done between Mr. Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged
young man in faultlessly-fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the
other hand, not so much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now
stepped down to the darkened footlights and spoke in a remorseful and
conscience-stricken manner.
“I say!”
Mr Miller, that martyr to deafness, did not hear the pathetic bleat. He
had swung off at right angles and was marching in an overwrought way up
the central aisle leading to the back of the house, his india rubber
form moving in convulsive jerks. Only when he had turned and retraced
his steps did he perceive the speaker and prepare to take his share in
the conversation.
“What?” he shouted. “Can’t hear you!”
“I say, you know, it’s my fault, really.”
“What?”
“I mean to say, you know …”
“What? Speak up, can’t you?”
Mr Saltzburg, who had been seated at the piano, absently playing a
melody from his unproduced musical comedy, awoke to the fact that the
services of an interpreter were needed. He obligingly left the
music-stool and crept, crablike, along the ledge of the stage-box. He
placed his arm about Mr Miller’s shoulders and his lips to Mr Miller’s
left ear, and drew a deep breath.
“He says it is his fault!”
Mr Miller nodded adhesion to this admirable sentiment.
“I know they’re not worth their salt!” he replied.
Mr Saltzburg patiently took in a fresh stock of breath.
“This young man says it is his fault that the movement went wrong!”
“Tell him I only signed on this morning, laddie,” urged the tweed-clad
young man.
“He only joined the company this morning!”
This puzzled Mr Miller.
“How do you mean, warning?” he asked.
Mr Saltzburg, purple in the face, made a last effort.
“This young man is new,” he bellowed carefully, keeping to words of one
syllable. “He does not yet know the steps. He says this is his first
day here, so he does not yet know the steps. When he has been here some
more time he will know the steps. But now he does not know the steps.”
“What he means,” explained the young man in tweeds helpfully, “is that
I don’t know the steps.”
“He does not know the steps!” roared Mr Saltzburg.
“I know he doesn’t know the steps,” said Mr Miller. “Why doesn’t he
know the steps? He’s had long enough to learn them.”
“He is new!”
“Hugh?”
“New!”
“Oh, new?”
“Yes, new!”
“Why the devil is he new?” cried Mr Miller, awaking suddenly to the
truth and filled with a sense of outrage. “Why didn’t he join with the
rest of the company? How can I put on chorus numbers if I am saddled
every day with new people to teach? Who engaged him?”
“Who engaged you?” enquired Mr Saltzburg of the culprit.
“Mr Pilkington.”
“Mr Pilkington,” shouted Mr Saltzburg.
“When?”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Last night.”
Mr Miller waved his hands in a gesture of divine despair, spun round,
darted up the aisle, turned, and bounded back. “What can I do?” he
wailed. “My hands are tied! I am hampered! I am handicapped! We open in
two weeks, and every day I find somebody new in the company to upset
everything I have done. I shall go to Mr Goble and ask to be released
from my contract. I shall … Come along, come along, come along now!” he
broke off suddenly. “Why are we wasting time? The whole number once
more. The whole number once more from the beginning!”
The young man tottered back to his gentlemanly colleagues, running a
finger in an agitated manner round the inside of his collar. He was not
used to this sort of thing. In a large experience of amateur
theatricals he had never encountered anything like it. In the
breathing-space afforded by the singing of the first verse and refrain
by the lady who played the heroine of “The Rose of America,” he found
time to make an enquiry of the artist on his right.
“I say! Is he always like this?”
“Who? Johnny?”
“The sportsman with the hair that turned white in a single night. The
barker on the skyline. Does he often get the wind up like this?”
His colleague smiled tolerantly.
“Why, that’s nothing!” he replied. “Wait till you see him really cut
loose! That was just a gentle whisper!”
“My God!” said the newcomer, staring into a bleak future. The leading
lady came to the end of her refrain, and the gentlemen of the ensemble,
who had been hanging about up-stage, began to curvet nimbly down
towards her in a double line; the new arrival, with an eye on his
nearest neighbor, endeavouring to curvet as nimbly as the others. A
clapping of hands from the dark auditorium
indicated—inappropriately—that he had failed to do so. Mr Miller could
be perceived—dimly—with all his fingers entwined in his hair.
“Clear the stage!” yelled Mr Miller. “Not you!” he shouted, as the
latest addition to the company began to drift off with the others. “You
stay!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I shall have to teach you the steps by yourself, or we shall
get nowhere. Go on-stage. Start the music again, Mr Saltzburg. Now,
when the refrain begins, come down. Gracefully! Gracefully!”
The young man, pink but determined, began to come down gracefully. And
it was while he was thus occupied that Jill and Nelly Bryant, entering
the wings which were beginning to fill up as eleven o’clock approached,
saw him.
“Whoever is that?” said Nelly.
“New man,” replied one of the chorus gentlemen. “Came this morning.”
Nelly turned to Jill.
“He looks just like Mr Rooke!” she exclaimed.
“He _is_ Mr Rooke!” said Jill.
“He can’t be!”
“He _is_!”
“But what is he doing here?”
Jill bit her lip.
“That’s just what I’m going to ask him myself,” she said.
§ 2.
The opportunity for a private conversation with Freddie did not occur
immediately. For ten minutes he remained alone on the stage, absorbing
abusive tuition from Mr Miller: and at the end of that period a further
ten minutes was occupied with the rehearsing of the number with the
leading lady and the rest of the male chorus. When, finally, a roar
from the back of the auditorium announced the arrival of Mr Goble and
at the same time indicated Mr Goble’s desire that the stage should be
cleared and the rehearsal proper begin, a wan smile of recognition and
a faint “What ho!” was all that Freddie was able to bestow upon Jill,
before, with the rest of the _ensemble_, they had to go out and group
themselves for the opening chorus. It was only when this had been run
through four times and the stage left vacant for two of the principals
to play a scene that Jill was able to draw the Last of the Rookes aside
in a dark corner and put him to the question.
“Freddie, what are you doing here?”
Freddie mopped his streaming brow. Johnson Miller’s idea of an opening
chorus was always strenuous. On the present occasion, the ensemble were
supposed to be guests at a Long Island house-party, and Mr Miller’s
conception of the gathering suggested that he supposed house-party
guests on Long Island to consist exclusively of victims of St Vitus’
dance. Freddie was feeling limp, battered, and exhausted: and, from
what he had gathered, the worst was yet to come.
“Eh?” he said feebly.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, ah, yes! I see what you mean! I suppose you’re surprised to find
me in New York, what?”
“I’m not surprised to find you in New York. I knew you had come over.
But I am surprised to find you on the stage, being bullied by Mr
Miller.”
“I say,” said Freddie in an awed voice. “He’s a bit of a nut, that lad,
what! He reminds me of the troops of Midian in the hymn. The chappies
who prowled and prowled around. I’ll bet he’s worn a groove in the
carpet. Like a jolly old tiger at the Zoo at feeding time. Wouldn’t be
surprised at any moment to look down and find him biting a piece out of
my leg!”
Jill seized his arm and shook it.
“Don’t _ramble_, Freddie! Tell me how you got here.”
“Oh, that was pretty simple. I had a letter of introduction to this
chappie Pilkington who’s running this show, and, we having got
tolerably pally in the last few days, I went to him and asked him to
let me join the merry throng. I said I didn’t want any money and the
little bit of work I would do wouldn’t make any difference, so he said
‘Right ho!’ or words to that effect, and here I am.”
“But why? You can’t be doing this for fun, surely?”
“Fun!” A pained expression came into Freddie’s face. “My idea of fun
isn’t anything in which jolly old Miller, the bird with the snowy hair,
is permitted to mix. Something tells me that that lad is going to make
it his life-work picking on me. No, I didn’t do this for fun. I had a
talk with Wally Mason the night before last, and he seemed to think
that being in the chorus wasn’t the sort of thing you ought to be
doing, so I thought it over and decided that I ought to join the troupe
too. Then I could always be on the spot, don’t you know, if there was
any trouble. I mean to say, I’m not much of a chap and all that sort of
thing, but still I might come in handy one of these times. Keep a
fatherly eye on you, don’t you know, and what not!”
Jill was touched.
“You’re a dear, Freddie!”
“I thought, don’t you know, it would make poor old Derek a bit easier
in his mind.”
Jill froze.
“I don’t want to talk about Derek, Freddie, please.”
“Oh, I know what you must be feeling. Pretty sick, I’ll bet, what? But
if you could see him now …”
“I don’t want to talk about him!”
“He’s pretty cut up, you know. Regrets bitterly and all that sort of
thing. He wants you to come back again.”
“I see! He sent you to fetch me?”
“That was more or less the idea.”
“It’s a shame that you had all the trouble. You can get messenger-boys
to go anywhere and do anything nowadays. Derek ought to have thought of
that.”
Freddie looked at her doubtfully.
“You’re spoofing, aren’t you? I mean to say, you wouldn’t have liked
that!”
“I shouldn’t have disliked it any more than his sending you.”
“Oh, but I wanted to pop over. Keen to see America and so forth.”
Jill looked past him at the gloomy stage. Her face was set, and her
eyes sombre.
“Can’t you understand, Freddie? You’ve known me a long time. I should
have thought that you would have found out by now that I have a certain
amount of pride. If Derek wanted me back, there was only one thing for
him to do—come over and find me himself.”
“Rummy! That’s what Mason said, when I told him. You two don’t realize
how dashed busy Derek is these days.”
“Busy!”
Something in her face seemed to tell Freddie that he was not saying the
right thing, but he stumbled on.
“You’ve no notion how busy he is. I mean to say, elections coming on
and so forth. He daren’t stir from the metrop.”
“Of course I couldn’t expect him to do anything that might interfere
with his career, could I?”
“Absolutely not. I knew you would see it!” said Freddie, charmed at her
reasonableness. All rot, what you read about women being unreasonable.
“Then I take it it’s all right, eh?”
“All right?”
“I mean you will toddle home with me at the earliest opp. and make poor
old Derek happy?”
Jill laughed discordantly.
“Poor old Derek!” she echoed. “He has been badly treated, hasn’t he?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said Freddie doubtfully. “You see, coming
down to it, the thing was more or less his fault, what?”
“More or less!”
“I mean to say …”
“More or less!”
Freddie glanced at her anxiously. He was not at all sure now that he
liked the way she was looking or the tone in which she spoke. He was
not a keenly observant young man, but there did begin at this point to
seep through to his brain-centers a suspicion that all was not well.
“Let me pull myself together!” said Freddie warily to his immortal
soul. “I believe I’m getting the raspberry!” And there was silence for
a space.
The complexity of life began to weigh upon Freddie. Life was like one
of those shots at squash which seem so simple till you go to knock the
cover off the ball, when the ball sort of edges away from you and you
miss it. Life, Freddie began to perceive, was apt to have a nasty
back-spin on it. He had never had any doubt when he had started, that
the only difficult part of his expedition to America would be the
finding of Jill. Once found, he had presumed that she would be
delighted to hear his good news and would joyfully accompany him home
on the next boat. It appeared now, however, that he had been too
sanguine. Optimist as he was, he had to admit that, as far as could be
ascertained with the naked eye, the jolly old binge might be said to
have sprung a leak.
He proceeded to approach the matter from another angle.
“I say!”
“Yes?”
“You do love old Derek, don’t you? I mean to say, you know what I mean,
_love_ him and all that sort of rot?”
“I don’t know!”
“You don’t know! Oh, I say, come now! You must _know!_ Pull up your
socks, old thing … I mean, pull yourself together! You either love a
chappie or you don’t.”
Jill smiled painfully.
“How nice it would be if everything were as simple and straightforward
as that. Haven’t you ever heard that the dividing line between love and
hate is just a thread? Poets have said so a great number of times.”
“Oh, poets!” said Freddie, dismissing the genus with a wave of the
hand. He had been compelled to read Shakespeare and all that sort of
thing at school, but it had left him cold, and since growing to man’s
estate he had rather handed the race of bards the mitten. He liked Doss
Chiderdoss’ stuff in the _Sporting Times_, but beyond that he was not
much of a lad for poets.
“Can’t you understand a girl in my position not being able to make up
her mind whether she loves a man or despises him?”
Freddie shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It sounds dashed silly to me!”
“Then what’s the good of talking?” cried Jill. “It only hurts.”
“But—won’t you come back to England?”
“No.”
“Oh, I say! Be a sport! Take a stab at it!”
Jill laughed again—another of those grating laughs which afflicted
Freddie with a sense of foreboding and failure. Something had
undoubtedly gone wrong with the works. He began to fear that at some
point in the conversation—just where he could not say—he had been less
diplomatic than he might have been.
“You speak as if you were inviting me to a garden-party! No, I won’t
take a stab at it. You’ve a lot to learn about women, Freddie!”
“Women _are_ rum!” conceded that perplexed ambassador.
Jill began to move away.
“Don’t go!” urged Freddie.
“Why not? What’s the use of talking any more? Have you ever broken an
arm or a leg, Freddie?”
“Yes,” said Freddie, mystified. “As a matter of fact, my last year at
Oxford, playing soccer for the college in a friendly game, some
blighter barged into me and I came down on my wrist. But …”
“It hurt?”
“Like the deuce!”
“And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it
and twist it and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal? I
won’t talk any more about Derek! I simply won’t! I’m all smashed up
inside, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get well again, but at
least I’m going to give myself a chance. I’m working as hard as ever I
can, and I’m forcing myself not to think of him. I’m in a sling,
Freddie, like your wrist, and I don’t want to be prodded. I hope we
shall see a lot of each other while you’re over here—you always were
the greatest dear in the world—but you mustn’t mention Derek again, and
you mustn’t ask me to go home. If you avoid those subjects, we’ll be as
happy as possible. And now I’m going to leave you to talk to poor
Nelly. She has been hovering round for the last ten minutes, waiting
for a chance to speak to you. She worships you, you know!”
Freddie started violently.
“Oh, I say! What rot!”
Jill had gone, and he was still gaping after her, when Nelly Bryant
moved towards him—shyly, like a worshiper approaching a shrine.
“Hello, Mr Rooke!” said Nelly.
“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” said Freddie.
Nelly fixed her large eyes on his face. A fleeting impression passed
through Freddie’s mind that she was looking unusually pretty this
morning: nor was the impression unjustified. Nelly was wearing for the
first time a Spring suit which was the outcome of hours of painful
selection among the wares of a dozen different stores, and the
knowledge that the suit was just right seemed to glow from her like an
inner light. She felt happy: and her happiness had lent an unwonted
color to her face and a soft brightness to her eyes.
“How nice it is, your being here!”
Freddie waited for the inevitable question, the question with which
Jill had opened their conversation; but it did not come. He was
surprised, but relieved. He hated long explanations, and he was very
doubtful whether loyalty to Jill could allow him to give them to Nelly.
His reason for being where he was had to do so intimately with Jill’s
most private affairs. A wave of gratitude to Nelly swept through him
when he realised that she was either incurious or else too
delicate-minded to show inquisitiveness.
As a matter of fact, it was delicacy that kept Nelly silent. Seeing
Freddie here at the theatre, she had, as is not uncommon with fallible
mortals, put two and two together and made the answer four when it was
not four at all. She had been deceived by circumstantial evidence.
Jill, whom she had left in England wealthy and secure, she had met
again in New York penniless as the result of some Stock Exchange
cataclysm in which, she remembered with the vagueness with which one
recalls once-heard pieces of information, Freddie Rooke had been
involved. True, she seemed to recollect hearing that Freddie’s losses
had been comparatively slight, but his presence in the chorus of “The
Rose of America” seemed to her proof that after all they must have been
devastating. She could think of no other reason except loss of money
which could have placed Freddie in the position in which she now found
him, so she accepted it; and, with the delicacy which was innate in her
and which a hard life had never blunted, decided, directly she saw him,
to make no allusion to the disaster.
Such was Nelly’s view of the matter, and sympathy gave to her manner a
kind of maternal gentleness which acted on Freddie, raw from his late
encounter with Mr Johnson Miller and disturbed by Jill’s attitude in
the matter of poor old Derek, like a healing balm. His emotions were
too chaotic for analysis, but one thing stood out clear from the
welter—the fact that he was glad to be with Nelly as he had never been
glad to be with a girl before, and found her soothing as he had never
supposed a girl could be soothing.
They talked desultorily of unimportant things, and every minute found
Freddie more convinced that Nelly was not as other girls. He felt that
he must see more of her.
“I say,” he said. “When this binge is over … when the rehearsal
finishes, you know, how about a bite to eat?”
“I should love it. I generally go to the Automat.”
“The how-much? Never heard of it.”
“In Times Square. It’s cheap, you know.”
“I was thinking of the Cosmopolis.”
“But that’s so expensive.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Much the same as any of the other places, isn’t it?”
Nelly’s manner became more motherly than ever. She bent forward and
touched his arm affectionately.
“You haven’t to keep up any front with me,” she said gently. “I don’t
care whether you’re rich or poor or what. I mean, of course I’m awfully
sorry you’ve lost your money, but it makes it all the easier for us to
be real pals, don’t you think so?”
“Lost my money!”
“Well, I know you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. I wasn’t going to say
anything about it, but, when you talked of the Cosmopolis, I just had
to. You lost your money in the same thing Jill Mariner lost hers,
didn’t you? I was sure you had, the moment I saw you here. Who cares?
Money isn’t everything!”
Astonishment kept Freddie silent for an instant: after that he
refrained from explanations of his own free will. He accepted the
situation and rejoiced in it. Like many other wealthy and modest young
men, he had always had a sneaking suspicion at the back of his mind
that any girl who was decently civil to him was so from mixed
motives—or more likely, motives that were not even mixed. Well, dash
it, here was a girl who seemed to like him although under the
impression that he was broke to the wide. It was an intoxicating
experience. It made him feel a better chap. It fortified his
self-respect.
“You know,” he said, stammering a little, for he found a sudden
difficulty in controlling his voice. “You’re a dashed good sort!”
“I’m awfully glad you think so.”
There was a silence—as far, at least, as he and she were concerned. In
the outer world, beyond the piece of scenery under whose shelter they
stood, stirring things, loud and exciting things, seemed to be
happening. Some sort of an argument appeared to be in progress. The
rasping voice of Mr Goble was making itself heard from the unseen
auditorium. These things they sensed vaguely, but they were too
occupied with each other to ascertain details.
“What was the name of that place again?” asked Freddie. “The
what-ho-something?”
“The Automat?”
“That’s the little chap! We’ll go there, shall we?”
“The food’s quite good. You go and help yourself out of slot-machines,
you know.”
“My favorite indoor sport!” said Freddie with enthusiasm. “Hullo!
What’s up? It sounds as if there were dirty work at the cross-roads!”
The voice of the assistant stage-manager was calling—sharply excited,
agitation in every syllable.
“All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please! Mr Goble wants
all the chorus—gentlemen on the stage!”
“Well, cheerio for the present,” said Freddie. “I suppose I’d better
look into this.” He made his way onto the stage.
§ 3.
There is an insidious something about the atmosphere of a rehearsal of
a musical play which saps the finer feelings of those connected with
it. Softened by the gentle beauty of the Spring weather, Mr Goble had
come to the Gotham Theatre that morning in an excellent temper, firmly
intending to remain in an excellent temper all day. Five minutes of
“The Rose of America” had sent him back to the normal: and at ten
minutes past eleven he was chewing his cigar and glowering at the stage
with all the sweetness gone from his soul. When Wally Mason arrived at
a quarter past eleven and dropped into the seat beside him, the manager
received him with a grunt and even omitted to offer him a cigar. And
when a New York theatrical manager does that, it is a certain sign that
his mood is of the worst.
One may find excuses for Mr Goble. “The Rose of America” would have
tested the equanimity of a far more amiable man: and on Mr Goble what
Otis Pilkington had called its delicate whimsicality jarred profoundly.
He had been brought up in the lower-browed school of musical comedy,
where you shelved the plot after the opening number and filled in the
rest of the evening by bringing on the girls in a variety of exotic
costumes, with some good vaudeville specialists to get the laughs. Mr
Goble’s idea of a musical piece was something embracing trained seals,
acrobats, and two or three teams of skilled buck-and-wing dancers, with
nothing on the stage, from a tree to a lamp-shade, which could not
suddenly turn into a chorus-girl. The austere legitimateness of “The
Rose of America” gave him a pain in the neck. He loathed plot, and “The
Rose of America” was all plot.
Why, then, had the earthy Mr. Goble consented to associate himself with
the production of this intellectual play? Because he was subject, like
all other New York managers, to intermittent spasms of the idea that
the time is ripe for a revival of comic opera. Sometimes, lunching in
his favorite corner in the Cosmopolis grill-room, he would lean across
the table and beg some other manager to take it from him that the time
was ripe for a revival of comic opera—or more cautiously, that pretty
soon the time was going to be ripe for a revival of comic opera. And
the other manager would nod his head and thoughtfully stroke his three
chins and admit that, sure as God made little apples, the time was
darned soon going to be ripe for a revival of comic opera. And then
they would stuff themselves with rich food and light big cigars and
brood meditatively.
With most managers these spasms, which may be compared to twinges of
conscience, pass as quickly as they come, and they go back to coining
money with rowdy musical comedies, quite contented. But Otis
Pilkington, happening along with the script of “The Rose of America”
and the cash to back it, had caught Mr Goble in the full grip of an
attack, and all the arrangements had been made before the latter
emerged from the influence. He now regretted his rash act.
“Say, listen,” he said to Wally, his gaze on the stage, his words
proceeding from the corner of his mouth, “you’ve got to stick around
with this show after it opens on the road. We’ll talk terms later. But
we’ve got to get it right, don’t care what it costs. See?”
“You think it will need fixing?”
Mr Goble scowled at the unconscious artists, who were now going through
a particularly arid stretch of dialogue.
“Fixing! It’s all wrong! It don’t add up right! You’ll have to rewrite
it from end to end.”
“Well, I’ve got some ideas about it. I saw it played by amateurs last
summer, you know. I could make a quick job of it, if you want me to.
But will the author stand for it?”
Mr Goble allowed a belligerent eye to stray from the stage, and twisted
it round in Wally’s direction.
“Say, listen! He’ll stand for anything I say. I’m the little guy that
gives orders round here. I’m the big noise!”
As if in support of this statement he suddenly emitted a terrific
bellow. The effect was magical. The refined and painstaking artists on
the stage stopped as if they had been shot. The assistant
stage-director bent sedulously over the footlights, which had now been
turned up, shading his eyes with the prompt script.
“Take that over again!” shouted Mr Goble. “Yes, that speech about life
being like a water-melon. It don’t sound to me as though it meant
anything.” He cocked his cigar at an angle, and listened fiercely. He
clapped his hands. The action stopped again. “Cut it!” said Mr Goble
tersely.
“Cut the speech, Mr Goble?” queried the obsequious assistant
stage-director.
“Yes. Cut it. It don’t mean nothing!”
Down the aisle, springing from a seat at the back, shimmered Mr
Pilkington, wounded to the quick.
“Mr Goble! Mr Goble!”
“Well?”
“That is the best epigram in the play.”
“The best what?”
“Epigram. The best epigram in the play.”
Mr. Goble knocked the ash off his cigar. “The public don’t want
epigrams. The public don’t like epigrams. I’ve been in the show
business fifteen years, and I’m telling you! Epigrams give them a pain
under the vest. All right, get on.”
Mr Pilkington fluttered agitatedly. This was his first experience of Mr
Goble in the capacity of stage-director. It was the latter’s custom to
leave the early rehearsals of the pieces with which he was connected to
a subordinate producer, who did what Mr Goble called the breaking-in.
This accomplished, he would appear in person, undo most of the other’s
work, make cuts, tell the actors how to read their lines, and generally
enjoy himself. Producing plays was Mr Goble’s hobby. He imagined
himself to have a genius in that direction, and it was useless to try
to induce him to alter any decision to which he might have come. He
regarded those who did not agree with him with the lofty contempt of an
Eastern despot.
Of this Mr Pilkington was not yet aware.
“But, Mr Goble … !”
The potentate swung irritably round on him.
“What is it? What _is_ it? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“That epigram …”
“It’s out!”
“But … !”
“It’s out!”
“Surely,” protested Mr Pilkington almost tearfully, “I have a voice …”
“Sure you have a voice,” retorted Mr Goble, “and you can use it any old
place you want, except in my theatre. Have all the voice you like! Go
round the corner and talk to yourself! Sing in your bath! But don’t
come using it here, because I’m the little guy that does all the
talking in this theatre! That fellow gets my goat,” he added
complainingly to Wally, as Mr Pilkington withdrew like a foiled python.
“He don’t know nothing about the show business, and he keeps butting in
and making fool suggestions. He ought to be darned glad he’s getting
his first play produced and not trying to teach me how to direct it.”
He clapped his hands imperiously. The assistant stage-manager bent over
the footlights. “What was that that guy said? Lord Finchley’s last
speech. Take it again.”
The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English
character actor who specialized in London “nuts,” raised his eyebrows,
annoyed. Like Mr Pilkington, he had never before come into contact with
Mr Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver methods of
his native land, he was finding the experience trying. He had not yet
recovered from the agony of having that water-melon line cut out of his
part. It was the only good line, he considered, that he had. Any line
that is cut out of an actor’s part is always the only good line he has.
“The speech about Omar Khayyam?” he enquired with suppressed
irritation.
“I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It’s Omar _of_
Khayyam.”
“I think you will find that Omar Khayyam is the—ah—generally accepted
version of the poet’s name,” said the portrayer of Lord Finchley,
adding beneath his breath. “You silly ass!”
“You say Omar _of_ Khayyam,” bellowed Mr Goble. “Who’s running this
show, anyway?”
“Just as you please.”
Mr Goble turned to Wally.
“These actors …” he began, when Mr Pilkington appeared again at his
elbow.
“Mr Goble! Mr Goble!”
“What is it _now?_”
“Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet. His name was Khayyam.”
“That wasn’t the way _I_ heard it,” said Mr Goble doggedly. “Did
_you?_” he enquired of Wally. “I thought he was born at Khayyam.”
“You’re probably quite right,” said Wally, “but, if so, everybody else
has been wrong for a good many years. It’s usually supposed that the
gentleman’s name was Omar Khayyam. Khayyam, Omar J. Born 1050 A.D.,
educated privately and at Bagdad University. Represented Persia in the
Olympic Games of 1072, winning the sitting high-jump and the
egg-and-spoon race. The Khayyams were quite a well-known family in
Bagdad, and there was a lot of talk when Omar, who was Mrs Khayyam’s
pet son, took to drink and writing poetry. They had had it all fixed
for him to go into his father’s date business.”
Mr Goble was impressed. He had a respect for Wally’s opinion, for Wally
had written “Follow the Girl” and look what a knock-out that had been.
He stopped the rehearsal again.
“Go back to that Khayyam speech!” he said, interrupting Lord Finchley
in mid-sentence.
The actor whispered a hearty English oath beneath his breath. He had
been up late last night, and, in spite of the fair weather, he was
feeling a trifle on edge.
“‘In the words of Omar of Khayyam’…”
Mr Goble clapped his hands.
“Cut that ‘of,’” he said. “The show’s too long, anyway.”
And, having handled a delicate matter in masterly fashion, he leaned
back in his chair and chewed the end off another cigar.
For some minutes after this the rehearsal proceeded smoothly. If Mr
Goble did not enjoy the play, at least he made no criticisms except to
Wally. To him he enlarged from time to time on the pain which “The Rose
of America” caused him.
“How I ever came to put on junk like this beats me,” confessed Mr Goble
frankly.
“You probably saw that there was a good idea at the back of it,”
suggested Wally. “There is, you know. Properly handled, it’s an idea
that could be made into a success.”
“What would you do with it?”
“Oh, a lot of things,” said Wally warily. In his younger and callower
days he had sometimes been rash enough to scatter views on the
reconstruction of plays broadcast, to find them gratefully absorbed and
acted upon and treated as a friendly gift. His affection for Mr Goble
was not so overpowering as to cause him to give him ideas for nothing
now. “Any time you want me to fix it for you, I’ll come along. About
one and a half per cent of the gross would meet the case, I think.”
Mr Goble faced him, registering the utmost astonishment and horror.
“One and a half per cent for fixing a show like this? Why, darn it,
there’s hardly anything to do to it! It’s—it’s—in!”
“You called it junk just now.”
“Well, all I meant was that it wasn’t the sort of thing I cared for
myself. The public will eat it! Take it from me, the time is just about
ripe for a revival of comic opera.”
“This one will want all the reviving you can give it. Better use a
pulmotor.”
“But that long boob, that Pilkington … he would never stand for my
handing you one and a half per cent.”
“I thought _you_ were the little guy who arranged things round here.”
“But he’s got money in the show.”
“Well, if he wants to get any out, he’d better call in somebody to
rewrite it. You don’t have to engage me if you don’t want to. But I
know I could make a good job of it. There’s just one little twist the
thing needs and you would have quite a different piece.”
“What’s that?” enquired Mr Goble casually.
“Oh, just a little … what shall I say?… a little touch of
what-d’you-call-it and a bit of thingummy. You know the sort of thing!
That’s all it wants.”
Mr Goble gnawed his cigar, baffled.
“You think so, eh?” he said at length.
“And perhaps a suspicion of je-ne-sais-quoi,” added Wally.
Mr Goble worried his cigar, and essayed a new form of attack.
“You’ve done a lot of work for me,” he said. “Good work!”
“Glad you liked it,” said Wally.
“You’re a good kid! I like having you around. I was half thinking of
giving you a show to do this Fall. Corking book. French farce. Ran two
years in Paris. But what’s the good, if you want the earth?”
“Always useful, the earth. Good thing to have.”
“See here, if you’ll fix up this show for half of one per cent, I’ll
give you the other to do.”
“You shouldn’t slur your words so. For a moment I thought you said
‘half of one per cent.’ One and a half of course you really said.”
“If you won’t take half, you don’t get the other.”
“All right,” said Wally. “There are lots of other managers in New York.
Haven’t you seen them popping about? Rich, enterprising men, and all of
them love me like a son.”
“Make it one per cent,” said Mr Goble, “and I’ll see if I can fix it
with Pilkington.”
“One and a half.”
“Oh, damn it, one and a half, then,” said Mr Goble morosely. “What’s
the good of splitting straws?”
“Forgotten Sports of the Past—Splitting the Straw. All right. If you
drop me a line to that effect, legibly signed with your name, I’ll wear
it next my heart. I shall have to go now. I have a date. Good-bye. Glad
everything’s settled and everybody’s happy.”
For some moments after Wally had left, Mr Goble sat hunched up in his
orchestra-chair, smoking sullenly, his mood less sunny than ever.
Living in a little world of sycophants, he was galled by the off-hand
way in which Wally always treated him. There was something in the
latter’s manner which seemed to him sometimes almost contemptuous. He
regretted the necessity of having to employ him. There was, of course,
no real necessity why he should have employed Wally. New York was full
of librettists who would have done the work equally well for half the
money, but, like most managers, Mr Goble had the mental processes of a
sheep. “Follow the Girl” was the last outstanding musical success in
New York theatrical history: Wally had written it: therefore nobody but
Wally was capable of rewriting “The Rose of America.” The thing had for
Mr Goble the inevitability of Fate. Except for deciding mentally that
Wally had swelled head, there was nothing to be done.
Having decided that Wally had swelled head and not feeling much better,
Mr Goble concentrated his attention on the stage. A good deal of action
had taken place there during recently concluded business talk, and the
unfortunate Finchley was back again, playing another of his scenes. Mr
Goble glared at Lord Finchley. He did not like him, and he did not like
the way he was speaking his lines.
The part of Lord Finchley was a non-singing role. It was a type part.
Otis Pilkington had gone to the straight stage to find an artist, and
had secured the not uncelebrated Wentworth Hill, who had come over from
London to play in an English comedy which had just closed. The
newspapers had called the play thin, but had thought that Wentworth
Hill was an excellent comedian. Mr Hill thought so too, and it was
consequently a shock to his already disordered nerves when a bellow
from the auditorium stopped him in the middle of one of his speeches
and a rasping voice informed him that he was doing it all wrong.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Hill, quietly but dangerously, stepping
to the footlights.
“All wrong!” repeated Mr Goble.
“Really?” Wentworth Hill, who a few years earlier had spent several
terms at Oxford University before being sent down for aggravated
disorderliness, had brought little away with him from that seat of
learning except the Oxford manner. This he now employed upon Mr Goble
with an icy severity which put the last touch to the manager’s
fermenting state of mind. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me
just how you think that part should be played?”
Mr Goble marched down the aisle.
“Speak out to the audience,” he said, stationing himself by the
orchestra pit. “You’re turning your head away all the darned time.”
“I may be wrong,” said Mr Hill, “but I have played a certain amount,
don’t you know, in pretty good companies, and I was always under the
impression that one should address one’s remarks to the person one was
speaking to, not deliver a recitation to the gallery. I was taught that
that was the legitimate method.”
The word touched off all the dynamite in Mr Goble. Of all things in the
theatre he detested most the “legitimate method.” His idea of producing
was to instruct the cast to come down to the footlights and hand it to
’em. These people who looked up stage and talked to the audience
through the backs of their necks revolted him.
“Legitimate! That’s a hell of a thing to be! Where do you get that
legitimate stuff? You aren’t playing Ibsen!”
“Nor am I playing a knockabout vaudeville sketch.”
“Don’t talk back at me!”
“Kindly don’t shout at _me!_ Your voice is unpleasant enough without
your raising it.”
Open defiance was a thing which Mr Goble had never encountered before,
and for a moment it deprived him of breath. He recovered it, however,
almost immediately.
“You’re fired!”
“On the contrary,” said Mr Hill, “I’m resigning.” He drew a
green-covered script from his pocket and handed it with an air to the
pallid assistant stage-director. Then, more gracefully than ever
Freddie Rooke had managed to move downstage under the tuition of
Johnson Miller, he moved upstage to the exit. “I trust that you will be
able to find someone who will play the part according to your ideas!”
“I’ll find,” bellowed Mr Goble at his vanishing back, “a chorus-man
who’ll play it a damned sight better than you!” He waved to the
assistant stage-director. “Send the chorus-men on the stage!”
“All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please!” shrilled the
assistant stage-director, bounding into the wings like a retriever.
“Mr Goble wants all the chorus-gentlemen on the stage!”
There was a moment, when the seven male members of “The Rose of
America” ensemble lined up self-consciously before his gleaming eyes,
when Mr Goble repented of his brave words. An uncomfortable feeling
passed across his mind that Fate had called his bluff and that he would
not be able to make good. All chorus-men are exactly alike, and they
are like nothing else on earth. Even Mr Goble, anxious as he was to
overlook their deficiencies, could not persuade himself that in their
ranks stood even an adequate Lord Finchley. And then, just as a cold
reaction from his fervid mood was about to set in, he perceived that
Providence had been good to him. There, at the extreme end of the line,
stood a young man who, as far as appearance went, was the ideal Lord
Finchley,—as far as appearance went, a far better Lord Finchley than
the late Mr Hill. He beckoned imperiously.
“You at the end!”
“Me?” said the young man.
“Yes, you. What’s your name?”
“Rooke. Frederick Rooke, don’t you know.”
“You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Eh? Oh, yes, absolutely!”
“Ever played a part before?”
“Part? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, in amateur theatricals, you know,
and all that sort of rot.”
His words were music to Mr Goble’s ears. He felt that his Napoleonic
action had justified itself by success. His fury left him. If he had
been capable of beaming, one would have said that he beamed at Freddie.
“Well, you play the part of Lord Finchley from now on. Come to my
office this afternoon for your contract. Clear the stage. We’ve wasted
enough time.”
Five minutes later, in the wings, Freddie, receiving congratulations
from Nelly Bryant, asserted himself.
“_Not_ the Automat today, I _think_, what! Now that I’m a jolly old
star and all that sort of thing, it can’t be done. Directly this is
over we’ll roll round to the Cosmopolis. A slight celebration is
indicated, what? Right ho! Rally round, dear heart, rally round!”