At this Otis Pilkington uttered a stifled cry, so sharp and so
anguished that an old lady in the next seat, who was drinking a glass
of milk, dropped it and had to refund the railway company thirty-five
cents for breakages. For the remainder of the journey she sat with one
eye warily on Mr Pilkington, waiting for his next move.
This misadventure quieted Otis Pilkington down, if it did not soothe
him. He returned blushingly to a perusal of his bill of costs, nearly
every line of which contained some item that infuriated and dismayed
him. “Shoes” ($213.50) he could understand, but what on earth was
“Academy. Rehl. $105.50”? What was “Cuts … $15”? And what in the name
of everything infernal was this item for “Frames,” in which mysterious
luxury he had apparently indulged to the extent of ninety-four dollars
and fifty cents? “Props” occurred on the list no fewer than seventeen
times. Whatever his future, at whatever poor-house he might spend his
declining years, he was supplied with enough props to last his
lifetime.
Otis Pilkington stared blankly at the scenery that fitted past the
train winds. (Scenery! There had been two charges for scenery!
“Friedmann, Samuel … Scenery … $3711” and “Unitt and Wickes … Scenery …
$2120”). He was suffering the torments of the ruined gamester at the
roulette-table. Thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine
dollars, sixty-eight cents! And he was out of pocket ten thousand in
addition from the check he had handed over two days ago to Uncle Chris
as his share of the investment of starting Jill in the motion-pictures.
It was terrible! It deprived one of the power of thought.
The power of thought, however, returned to Mr Pilkington almost
immediately: for, remembering suddenly that Roland Trevis had assured
him that no musical production, except one of those elaborate
girl-shows with a chorus of ninety, could possibly cost more than
fifteen thousand dollars at an outside figure, he began to think about
Roland Trevis, and continued to think about him until the train pulled
into the Pennsylvania Station.
For a week or more the stricken financier confined himself mostly to
his rooms, where he sat smoking cigarettes, gazing at Japanese prints,
and trying not to think about “props” and “rehl.” Then, gradually, the
almost maternal yearning to see his brain-child once more, which can
never be wholly crushed out of a young dramatist, returned to
him—faintly at first, then getting stronger by degrees till it could no
longer be resisted. True, he knew that when he beheld it, the offspring
of his brain would have been mangled almost out of recognition, but
that did not deter him. The mother loves her crippled child, and the
author of a musical fantasy loves his musical fantasy, even if rough
hands have changed it into a musical comedy and all that remains of his
work is the opening chorus and a scene which the assassins have
overlooked at the beginning of act two. Otis Pilkington, having
instructed his Japanese valet to pack a few simple necessaries in a
suitcase, took a cab to the Grand Central Station and caught an
afternoon train for Rochester, where his recollection of the route
planned for the tour told him “The Rose of America” would now be
playing.
Looking into his club on the way, to cash a check, the first person he
encountered was Freddie Rooke.
“Good gracious!” said Otis Pilkington. “What are you doing here?”
Freddie looked up dully from his reading. The abrupt stoppage of his
professional career—his life-work, one might almost say—had left
Freddie at a very loose end: and so hollow did the world seem to him at
the moment, so uniformly futile all its so-called allurements, that, to
pass the time, he had just been trying to read the _National Geographic
Magazine_.
“Hullo!” he said. “Well, might as well be here as anywhere, what?” he
replied to the other’s question.
“But why aren’t you playing?”
“They sacked me!” Freddie lit a cigarette in the sort of way in which
the strong, silent, middle-aged man on the stage lights his at the end
of act two when he has relinquished the heroine to his youthful rival.
“They’ve changed my part to a bally Scotchman! Well, I mean to say, I
couldn’t play a bally Scotchman!”
Mr Pilkington groaned in spirit. Of all the characters in his musical
fantasy on which he prided himself, that of Lord Finchley was his pet.
And he had been burked, murdered, blotted out, in order to make room
for a bally Scotchman!
“The character’s called ‘The McWhustle of McWhustle’ now!” said Freddie
sombrely.
The McWhustle of McWhustle! Mr Pilkington almost abandoned his trip to
Rochester on receiving this devastating piece of information.
“He comes on in act one in kilts!”
“In kilts! At Mrs Stuyvesant van Dyke’s lawn-party! On Long Island!”
“It isn’t Mrs Stuyvesant van Dyke any longer, either,” said Freddie.
“She’s been changed to the wife of a pickle manufacturer.”
“A pickle manufacturer!”
“Yes. They said it ought to be a comedy part.”
If agony had not caused Mr Pilkington to clutch for support at the back
of a chair, he would undoubtedly have wrung his hands.
“But it _was_ a comedy part!” he wailed. “It was full of the subtlest,
most delicate satire on Society. They were delighted with it at
Newport! Oh, this is too much! I shall make a strong protest! I shall
insist on these parts being kept as I wrote them! I shall … I must be
going at once, or I shall miss my train.” He paused at the door. “How
was business in Baltimore?”
“Rotten!” said Freddie, and returned to his _National Geographic
Magazine_.
Otis Pilkington tottered into his cab. He was shattered by what he had
heard. They had massacred his beautiful play, and, doing so, had not
even made a success of it by their own sordid commercial lights.
Business at Baltimore had been rotten! That meant more expense, further
columns of figures with “frames” and “rehl” in front of them! He
staggered into the station.
“Hey!” cried the taxi-driver.
Otis Pilkington turned.
“Sixty-five cents, mister, if _you_ please! Forgetting I’m not your
private shovoor, wasn’t you?”
Mr Pilkington gave him a dollar. Money—money! Life was just one long
round of paying out and paying out.
§ 2.
The day which Mr Pilkington had selected for his visit to the provinces
was a Tuesday. “The Rose of America” had opened at Rochester on the
previous night, after a week at Atlantic City in its original form and
a week at Baltimore in what might be called its second incarnation.
Business had been bad in Atlantic City and no better in Baltimore, and
a meager first-night house at Rochester had given the piece a cold
reception, which had put the finishing touches to the depression of the
company in spite of the fact that the Rochester critics, like those of
Baltimore, had written kindly of the play. One of the maxims of the
theatre is that “out-of-town notices don’t count,” and the company had
refused to be cheered by them.
It is to be doubted, however, if even crowded houses would have aroused
much response from the principals and chorus of “The Rose of America.”
For two weeks without a break they had been working under forced
draught, and they were weary in body and spirit. The new principals had
had to learn parts in exactly half the time usually given for that
purpose, and the chorus, after spending five weeks assimilating one set
of steps and groupings, had been compelled to forget them and rehearse
an entirely new set. From the morning after the first performance at
Atlantic City, they had not left the theatre except for sketchy
half-hour meals.
Jill, standing listlessly in the wings while the scene-shifters
arranged the second act set, was aware of Wally approaching from the
direction of the pass-door.
“Miss Mariner, I believe?” said Wally. “I suppose you know you look
perfectly wonderful in that dress? All Rochester’s talking about it,
and there is some idea of running excursion trains from Troy and Utica.
A great stir it has made!”
Jill smiled. Wally was like a tonic to her during these days of
overwork. He seemed to be entirely unaffected by the general
depression, a fact which he attributed himself to the happy accident of
being in a position to sit back and watch the others toil. But in
reality Jill knew that he was working as hard as any one. He was
working all the time, changing scenes, adding lines, tinkering with
lyrics, smoothing over principals whose nerves had become strained by
the incessant rehearsing, keeping within bounds Mr Goble’s passion for
being the big noise about the theatre. His cheerfulness was due to the
spirit that was in him, and Jill appreciated it. She had come to feel
very close to Wally since the driving rush of making over “The Rose of
America” had begun.
“They seemed quite calm tonight,” she said. “I believe half of them
were asleep.”
“They’re always like that in Rochester. They cloak their deeper
feelings. They wear the mask. But you can tell from the glassy look in
their eyes that they are really seething inwardly. But what I came
round about was—(a)—to give you this letter …”
Jill took the letter, and glanced at the writing. It was from Uncle
Chris. She placed it on the axe over the fire-buckets for perusal
later.
“The man at the box-office gave it to me,” said Wally, “when I looked
in there to find out how much money there was in the house tonight. The
sum was so small that he had to whisper it.”
“I’m afraid the piece isn’t a success.”
“Nonsense! Of course it is! We’re doing fine. That brings me to section
(b) of my discourse. I met poor old Pilkington in the lobby, and he
said exactly what you have just said, only at greater length.”
“Is Mr Pilkington here?”
“He appears to have run down on the afternoon train to have a look at
the show. He is catching the next train back to New York! Whenever I
meet him, he always seems to be dashing off to catch the next train
back to New York! Poor chap! Have you ever done a murder? If you
haven’t, don’t! I know exactly what it feels like, and it feels rotten!
After two minutes conversation with Pilkington, I could sympathize with
Macbeth when he chatted with Banquo. He said I had killed his play. He
nearly wept, and he drew such a moving picture of a poor helpless
musical fantasy being lured into a dark alley by thugs and there
slaughtered that he almost had me in tears too. I felt like a
beetle-browed brute with a dripping knife and hands imbrued with
innocent gore.”
“Poor Mr Pilkington!”
“Once more you say exactly what he said, only more crisply. I comforted
him as well as I could, told him all for the best and so on, and he
flung the box-office receipts in my face and said that the piece was as
bad a failure commercially as it was artistically. I couldn’t say
anything to that, seeing what a house we’ve got tonight, except to bid
him look out to the horizon where the sun will shortly shine. In other
words, I told him that business was about to buck up and that later on
he would be going about the place with a sprained wrist from clipping
coupons. But he refused to be cheered, cursed me some more for ruining
his piece, and ended by begging me to buy his share of it cheap.”
“You aren’t going to?”
“No, I am not—but simply and solely for the reason that, after that
fiasco in London, I raised my right hand—thus—and swore an oath that
never, as long as I lived, would I again put up a cent for a
production, were it the most obvious cinch on earth. I’m gun-shy. But
if he does happen to get hold of any one with a sporting disposition
and a few thousands to invest, that person will make a fortune. This
piece is going to be a gold-mine.”
Jill looked at him in surprise. With anybody else but Wally she would
have attributed this confidence to author’s vanity. But with Wally, she
felt, the fact that the piece, as played now, was almost entirely his
own work did not count. He viewed it dispassionately, and she could not
understand why, in the face of half-empty houses, he should have such
faith in it.
“But what makes you think so? We’ve been doing awfully badly so far.”
Wally nodded.
“And we shall do awfully badly in Syracuse the last half of this week.
And why? For one thing, because the show isn’t a show at all at
present. That’s what you can’t get these fatheads like Goble to
understand. All they go by is the box-office. Why should people flock
to pay for seats for what are practically dress rehearsals of an
unknown play? Half the principals have had to get up in their parts in
two weeks, and they haven’t had time to get anything out of them. They
are groping for their lines all the time. The girls can’t let
themselves go in the numbers, because they are wondering if they are
going to remember the steps. The show hasn’t had time to click together
yet. It’s just ragged. Take a look at it in another two weeks! I
_know!_ I don’t say musical comedy is a very lofty form of art, but
still there’s a certain amount of science about it. If you go in for it
long enough, you learn the tricks, and take it from me that if you have
a good cast and some catchy numbers, it’s almost impossible not to have
a success. We’ve got an excellent cast now, and the numbers are fine.
The thing can’t help being a hit.
“There’s another thing to think of. It so happens that we shall go into
New York with practically nothing against us. Usually you have half a
dozen musical successes to compete with, but just at the moment there’s
nothing. But the chief reason for not being discouraged by bad houses
so far is that we’ve been playing bad towns. Every town on the road has
its special character. Some are good show-towns, others are bad. Nobody
knows why. Detroit will take anything. So will Washington. Whereas
Cincinnati wants something very special. Where have we been? Atlantic
City, Baltimore, and here. Atlantic City is a great place to play in
the summer and for a couple of weeks round about Easter. Also at
Christmas. But for the rest of the year, no. Too many new shows are
tried out there. It makes the inhabitants wary. Baltimore is good for a
piece with a New York reputation, but they don’t want new pieces.
Rochester and Syracuse are always bad. ‘Follow the Girl’ died a hideous
death in Rochester, and it went on and played two years in New York and
one in London. I tell you—as I tried to tell Pilkington, only he
wouldn’t listen—that this show is all right. There’s a fortune in it
for somebody. But I suppose Pilkington is now sitting in the
smoking-car of an east-bound train, trying to get the porter to accept
his share in the piece instead of a tip!”
If Otis Pilkington was not actually doing that, he was doing something
like it. Sunk in gloom, he bumped up and down on an uncomfortable seat,
wondering why he had ever taken the trouble to make the trip to
Rochester. He had found exactly what he had expected to find, a mangled
caricature of his brain-child playing to a house half empty and wholly
indifferent. The only redeeming feature, he thought vindictively, as he
remembered what Roland Trevis had said about the cost of musical
productions, was the fact that the new numbers were undoubtedly better
than those which his collaborator had originally supplied.
And “The Rose of America,” after a disheartening Wednesday matinee and
a not much better reception on the Wednesday night, packed its baggage
and moved to Syracuse, where it failed just as badly. Then for another
two weeks it wandered on from one small town to another, up and down
New York State and through the doldrums of Connecticut, tacking to and
fro like a storm-battered ship, till finally the astute and discerning
citizens of Hartford welcomed it with such a reception that hardened
principals stared at each other in a wild surmise, wondering if these
things could really be: and a weary chorus forgot its weariness and
gave encore after encore with a snap and vim which even Mr Johnson
Miller was obliged to own approximated to something like it. Nothing to
touch the work of his choruses of the old days, of course, but
nevertheless fair, quite fair.
The spirits of the company revived. Optimism reigned. Principals smiled
happily and said they had believed in the thing all along. The ladies
and gentlemen of the ensemble chattered contentedly of a year’s run in
New York. And the citizens of Hartford fought for seats, and, if they
could not get seats, stood up at the back.
Of these things Otis Pilkington was not aware. He had sold his interest
in the piece two weeks ago for ten thousand dollars to a lawyer acting
for some client unknown, and was glad to feel that he had saved
something out of the wreck.