I
Jerome gradually learned the ways of the formidable box office, and took
charge of the General Ledger. Thus his time was abundantly filled: during
the day hustling around with brokers in the interest of cargo shipments,
and at night helping check up with the house manager. As a matter of
fact, the company treasurer, whose real and legitimate profession was
selling life insurance, had been approached with an attractive offer by a
local insurance branch and at the end of the present engagement the main
brunt of the financial responsibility would rest with Jerome—a rather
vaster contract than the stool-pigeon job at Oaks, Ferguson & Whitley’s.
He found being connected with a theatre very delightful—the contacts, the
excitement, the sense of privilege he felt early in the evening standing
out in the lobby between a glaring poster that announced the night’s
attraction and a huge frame within which were arranged the pictures of
all the principal songbirds. He would watch the people stream in, then
would himself slip inside until the curtain had gone up, after which he
would go behind and absorb more and more of the mysterious atmosphere
which the audience was denied. Here he could chat in the wings with his
new friends, and hold long, important tête-à-têtes with Lili during
periods of idleness when she wasn’t “on.”
The first popular-priced Saturday night, with the _Bohemian Girl_ in
progress, these two young persons might have been discovered leaning
up against a fragment of some palace or other, engaged in a more than
usually earnest conversation.
“Don’t get so excited, old dear,” cautioned the girl, beaming upon him at
the same time, however, and letting her eyes slowly open wider and wider.
“But why _won’t_ you marry me?” he persisted. It was the old, old
urge—and seemed, indeed, about the only aspect of his former self that
hadn’t been outgrown.
“Hear him rave!” she giggled. “You don’t seem to realize, Jerry, what it
means to get married!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied in an indefinite but lofty tone.
“Come on,” she coaxed, “let’s both be sensible. Aren’t we all right as we
are?”
“What’s the idea?” he pressed on doggedly. “You admit you love me. Isn’t
that enough?”
She looked at him in her simple yet unfathomable way, her smooth brow, so
seldom fretted, showing faint furrows of honest perplexity, as upon the
night her challenged little soul strove to appreciate the wonder of the
lighted sky. And she said: “This is a time when I wish I had some one to
tell me what to do!” It was a little mysterious, indeed, though her eyes
twinkled just perceptibly.
He gazed at her. “I’m telling you what to do, Lili!”
“You don’t understand,” she smiled. “I mean some one....” It trailed off.
On the stage a barytone was beginning that famous soliloquy, the _Heart
Bowed Down_. Lili looked all at once a bit weary. She sighed and slumped
against the scenery, resting her cheek on a convenient brace.
“Listen, Jerry,” she coaxed, half dreamily, “I love you an awful lot.
You’re a nice boy. But let’s don’t talk about getting married—please
let’s don’t.”
“If you love me,” he insisted, “there’s no reason why we shouldn’t.”
She shook her head, yet in a vaguely undecided way which encouraged him
to press his point. “I don’t see how it can be money that’s holding you
back. Two can live cheaper than one—everybody says so who’s tried it.”
“You mean two can live together cheaper than single, don’t you?” she
laughed.
“You know it’s true!” he cried. “And if it’s only because you don’t want
to give up hopes of being a prima donna, why you don’t have to. You’d
still have your job, and I’d have mine.”
“But just supposing,” she rambled perversely, “I’d want to leave the
stage some day and have swell things and an auto? What then, mister?”
“By that time,” he assured her, “I’ll be making enough for two myself. I
hope you don’t think I’m never going to do anything bigger than this!” He
spoke magnificently.
“Rich man, poor man,”—the girl gently enumerated the buttons down the
front of his coat, holding her head playfully first on one side and then
on the other.
“I’m crazy about you, Lili!” he said, somewhat thickly, grasping her
hands but not otherwise knowing exactly what to do with such very strong
emotion as this.
“I’m crazy about you too, Jerry,” she giggled. “They all laugh at us for
a couple of love-sick prunes, but that don’t bother me. When I’m crazy
about a man I’m _going_ to be, that’s all. Don’t you love the way he
holds onto that last note? Yes, I knew he’d get a hand! It always gets
a hand when you hold on that way.” And she sighed. “I wish I could ever
draw a real song like that. Do you think I’m satisfied with the bits I
do? I _am_ not!”
And then she had to hurry away, which really left them about where they
had begun, so far as their curious little lagging love affair went.