THE COST OF A ROW
I
Otis Pilkington had left Atlantic City two hours after the conference
which had followed the dress-rehearsal, firmly resolved never to go near
"The Rose of America" again. He had been wounded in his finest feelings.
There had been a moment, when Mr. Goble had given him the choice between
having the piece rewritten and cancelling the production altogether, when
he had inclined to the heroic course. But for one thing Mr. Pilkington
would have defied the manager, refused to allow his script to be touched,
and removed the play from his hands. That one thing was the fact that, up
to the day of the dress-rehearsal, the expenses of the production had
amounted to the appalling sum of thirty-two thousand eight hundred and
fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents, all of which had to come out of Mr.
Pilkington's pocket. The figures, presented to him in a neatly typewritten
column stretching over two long sheets of paper, had stunned him. He had
had no notion that musical plays cost so much. The costumes alone had come
to ten thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty cents, and
somehow that odd fifty cents annoyed Otis Pilkington as much as anything
on the list. A dark suspicion that Mr. Goble, who had seen to all the
executive end of the business, had a secret arrangement with the costumer
whereby he received a private rebate, deepened his gloom. Why, for ten
thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty cents you could
dress the whole female population of New York State and have a bit left
over for Connecticut. So thought Mr. Pilkington, as he read the bad news
in the train. He only ceased to brood upon the high cost of costuming when
in the next line but one there smote his eye an item of four hundred and
ninety-eight dollars for "Clothing." Clothing! Weren't costumes clothing?
Why should he have to pay twice over for the same thing? Mr. Pilkington
was just raging over this, when something lower down in the column caught
his eye. It was the words:--
Clothing .... 187.45
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 adventure 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 flitted past the
train windows. (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 cheque 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. Otis Pilkington, having instructed his Japanese
valet to pack a few simple necessaries in a suit-case, 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 cheque, 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! 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 garden-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.
II
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 meagre 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 to-night," 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 to-night.
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 was 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 to-night,
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. 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. 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.