Grand Magazine, April 1921
 

 

 

CHAPTER XXXIV

“YOURS TO COMMAND”

THE suddenness of it startled Jill into silence. She snatched her hand away and drew back, looking at him in wonderment. She was confusedly aware of a babble of sound—people talking, people laughing, the orchestra playing a lively tune. All her senses seemed to have become suddenly more acute. The whole world condensed itself into two eyes that were fastened upon hers—compelling eyes which she felt a panic desire to avoid.

Other men had asked Jill to marry them—a full dozen of them, here and there in country houses and at London dances, before she had met and loved Derek Underhill: but nothing that she had had in the way of experience had prepared her for Wally. These others had given her time to marshal her forces, to collect herself, to weigh them thoughtfully in the balance. Before speaking, they had signalled their devotion in a hundred perceptible ways—by their pinkness, their stammering awkwardness, by the glassy look in their eyes. They had not shot a proposal at her like a bullet from out of the cover of a conversation that had nothing to do with their emotions at all.

Yet, now that the shock of it was dying away, she began to remember signs she should have noticed, speeches which ought to have warned her. . . .

“Wally!” she gasped.

She found that he affected her in an entirely different fashion from the luckless dozen of those London days. He seemed to matter more, to be more important, almost—though she rebelled at the word—more dangerous.

“Let me take you out of it all! You aren’t fit for this sort of life. I can’t bear to see you . . . .”

Jill bent forward and touched his hand. He started as though he had been burned. The muscles of his throat were working.

“Wally, it’s——” She paused for a word. “Kind” was horrible. It would have sounded cold, almost supercilious. “Sweet” was the sort of thing she could imagine Lois Denham saying to her friend Izzy. She began her sentence again. “You’re a dear to say that, but . . . .”

Wally laughed chokingly.

“You think I’m altruistic? I’m not. I’m just as selfish and self-centred as any other man who wants a thing very badly. I’m as altruistic as a child crying for the moon. I want you to marry me because I love you, because there never was anybody like you, because you’re the whole world, because I always have loved you. I’ve been dreaming about you for a dozen years, thinking about you, wondering about you—wondering where you were, what you were doing, how you looked. I used to think that it was just sentimentality, that you merely stood for a time of my life when I was happier than I have ever been since. I used to think that you were just a sort of peg on which I was hanging a pleasant sentimental regret for days which could never come back. You were a memory that seemed to personify all the other memories of the best time of my life.

“Then I met you in London, and it was different. I wanted you—you! I knew I loved you directly you spoke to me at the theatre that night of the fire. I loved your voice and your eyes and your smile and your courage. And then you told me you were engaged. I might have expected it, but I couldn’t keep my jealousy from showing itself, and you snubbed me as I deserved. But now . . . . things are different now. Everything’s different, except my love.”

Jill turned her face to the wall beside her.

“Wally . . . .” Her voice broke. “It’s impossible.”

There was a silence.

“Because . . .” He seemed to find a difficulty in speaking. “Because of Underhill?”

Jill nodded. She felt wretched. The monstrous incongruity of her surroundings oppressed her. Her heart ached for Wally. She could not look at him, but she knew exactly what she would see if she did—honest, pleading eyes searching her face for something which she could not give.

“Yes,” she said.

The table creaked. Wally was leaning further forward. He seemed like something large and pathetic—a big dog in trouble. She hated to be hurting him. And all the time her foot tapped accompaniment to the rag-time tune.

“But you can’t live all your life with a memory,” said Wally.

Jill turned and faced him. His eyes seemed to leap at her, and they were just as she had pictured them.

“You don’t understand,” she said gently. “You don’t understand.”

“You can’t still love him, after what has happened!”

“I don’t know,” said Jill unhappily.

The words seemed to bewilder Wally as much as they had bewildered Freddie.

“You don’t know!”

Jill shut her eyes tight. Wally quivered. It was a trick she had had as a child. In perplexity, she had always screwed up her eyes just like that, as if to shut herself up in herself.

“Don’t talk for a minute, Wally,” she said. “I want to think.”

Her eyes opened.

“It’s like this,” she said. He had seen her look at him in exactly the same way a hundred times. “I don’t suppose I can make you understand, but this is how it is. Suppose you had a room, and it was full—of things. Furniture. And there wasn’t any space left. You—you couldn’t put anything else in till you had taken all that out, could you? It might not be worth anything, but it would still be there, taking up all the room.”

Wally nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I see.”

“My heart’s full, Wally dear. I know it’s just lumber that’s choking it up, but it’s difficult to get it out. It takes time getting it out. I put it in, thinking it was wonderful furniture, the most wonderful in the world, and—I was cheated. It was just lumber. But it’s there. It’s still there. It’s there all the time. And what am I to do?”

The orchestra crashed, and was silent. The sudden stillness seemed to break a spell. The world invaded the little island where they sat. A chattering party of girls and men brushed past them.

Wally turned to Jill.

“I understand,” he said. “All this hasn’t happened, and we’re just as good pals as before?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . .” He forced a laugh . . . . “mark my words, a time may come, and then . . . !”

“I don’t know,” said Jill.

“A time may come,” repeated Wally. “At any rate, let me think so. It has nothing to do with me. It’s for you to decide, absolutely. I’m not going to pursue you with my addresses! If ever you get that room of yours emptied, you won’t have to hang out a ‘To Let’ sign. I shall be waiting, and you will know where to find me. And, in the meantime, yours to command, Wallace Mason. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear.” Jill looked at him affectionately. “There’s nobody I’d rather open that room to than you, Wally. You know that.”

“Is that the solemn truth?”

“The solemn truth!”

“Then,” said Wally, “in two minutes you will see a startled waiter. There will be about fourteen dollars change out of that twenty he took away. I’m going to give it all to him.”

“You mustn’t!”

“Every cent!” said Wally firmly. “And the young Greek brigand who stole my hat at the door is going to get a dollar! That, as our ascetic and honourable friend Goble would say, is the sort of little guy I am!”

 

 

CHAPTER XXXV

BABES IN THE WOOD

ON the boardwalk at Atlantic City, that much-enduring seashore resort which has been the birthplace of so many musical plays, there stands an all-day and all-night restaurant. The members of the chorus of “The Rose of America,” dropping in by ones and twos at six o’clock in the morning about two weeks after the events recorded in the last chapter, gave their orders for breakfast.

The dress-rehearsal had just dragged its weary length to a close. It is the custom of the dwellers in Atlantic City, who seem to live entirely for pleasure, to attend a species of vaudeville performance—incorrectly termed a sacred concert—on Sunday nights: and it had been one o’clock in the morning before the concert scenery could be moved out of the theatre and the first act of “The Rose of America” moved in. By six o’clock a complete, if ragged, performance had been given, and the chorus, who had partaken of no nourishment since dinner on the previous night, had limped off round the corner for a bite of breakfast before going to bed.

Conversation broke out with the first sip of coffee, and the calm of the restaurant was shattered. Its day had begun.

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” said the Cherub, hungrily attacking her omelette. “And the wortht is yet to come! I thuppose all you old dears realithe that this show will have to be rewritten from end to end, and we’ll be rehearthing day and night all the time we’re on the road.”

“Why?” Lois Denham spoke with her mouth full. “What’s wrong with it?”

The Duchess took a sip of coffee.

“Don’t make me laugh!” she pleaded. “What’s wrong with it! What’s right with it, one would feel more inclined to ask!”

“Didn’t you thee Wally Mason in front, making notes? They’ve got him down to do the rewriting.”

Jill, who had been listening in a dazed way to the conversation, fighting against the waves of sleep which flooded over her, woke up.

“Was Wally—was Mr. Mason there?”

“Sure. Sitting at the back.”

Jill could not have said whether she was glad or sorry. She had not seen Wally since that afternoon when they had lunched together at the Cosmopolis, and the rush of the final weeks of rehearsals had given her little opportunity for thinking of him. At the back of her mind had been the feeling that sooner or later she would have to think of him, but for two weeks she had been too tired and too busy to re-examine him as a factor in her life. There had been times when the thought of him had been like the sunshine on a winter day, warming her with almost an impersonal glow in moments of depression. And then some sharp, poignant memory of Derek would come to blot him out. Whatever Derek might have done, he was in her heart and she could not get him out. She wondered whether she wanted to get him out. . . .

She came out of her thoughts to find that the talk had taken another turn.

“And the wortht of it is,” the Cherub was saying, “we shall rehearthe all day and give a show every night and work ourselves to the bone, and then, when they’re good and ready, they’ll fire one of us!”

“That’s right!” agreed the Southern girl.

“They couldn’t!” Jill cried.

“You wait!” said the Cherub. “They’ll never open in New York with thirteen girls. Ike’s much too thuperstitious.”

“But they wouldn’t do a thing like that after we’ve all worked so hard!”

There was a general burst of sardonic laughter. Jill’s opinion of the chivalry of theatrical managers seemed to be higher than that of her more experienced colleagues.

“Wait till you’ve been in as many shows as I have,” said Babe, shaking her red locks. “The usual thing is to keep a girl slaving her head off all through the road-tour and then fire her before the New York opening.”

“But it’s a shame! It isn’t fair!”

“If one is expecting to be treated fairly,” said the Duchess with a prolonged yawn, “one should not go into the show-business.”

And, having uttered this profoundly true maxim, she fell asleep again.

The slumber of the Duchess was the signal for a general move, and the company poured out, yawning and chattering, into the sunlight of the empty boardwalk.

Jill detached herself from the group, and made her way to a seat facing the ocean. Tiredness had fallen upon her like a leaden weight, crushing all the power out of her limbs, and the thought of walking to the boarding-house where, from motives of economy, she was sharing a room with the Cherub paralysed her.

If Wally was really going to rewrite the play, they would be thrown together. She would be obliged to meet him, and she was not sure that she was ready to meet him. Still, he would be somebody to talk to on subjects other than the one eternal topic of the theatre, somebody who belonged to the old life. She had ceased to regard Freddie Rooke in this light: for Freddie, solemn with his new responsibilities as a principal, was the most whole-hearted devotee of “shop” in the company. Jill had given him up, and he had paired off with Nelly Bryant. The two were inseparable. Jill had taken one or two meals with them, but Freddie’s professional monologues, of which Nelly seemed never to weary, were too much for her. She was lonely, and, after examining the matter as clearly as her tired mind would allow, she found herself curiously soothed by the thought that Wally would be near to mitigate her loneliness.

“Hullo! Good morning!”

Jill looked up.

“Hullo, Wally!”

“Surprised to see me?”

“No. Milly Trevor said she had seen you at the rehearsal last night.”

Wally came round the bench and seated himself at her side. His eyes were tired, and his chin dark and bristly.

“Had breakfast?”

“Yes, thanks. Have you?”

“Not yet. How are you feeling?”

“Rather tired.”

“I wonder you’re not dead. I’ve been through a good many dress-rehearsals, but this one was the record. Why they couldn’t have had it comfortably in New York, and just have run through the piece without scenery last night, I don’t know, except that in musical comedy it’s etiquette always to do the most inconvenient thing. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“I couldn’t face the walk. I suppose I ought to be going, though.”

She half rose, then sank back again. The glitter of the water hypnotised her. She closed her eyes again. She could hear Wally speaking, then his voice grew suddenly faint and far off, and she ceased to fight the delicious drowsiness.

Jill awoke with a start. She was feeling greatly refreshed. She also discovered that her head was resting on Wally’s shoulder.

“Have I been asleep?”

Wally laughed.

“You have been having what you might call a nap.” He massaged his left arm vigorously. “You needed it. Do you feel more rested now?”

“Good gracious! Have I been squashing your poor arm all the time? Why didn’t you move?”

“I was afraid you would fall over. You just shut your eyes and toppled sideways.”

“What’s the time?”

Wally looked at his watch.

“Just on ten.”

“Ten!” Jill was horrified. “Why, I have been giving you cramp for about three hours! You must have had an awful time!”

“Oh, it was all right. I think I dozed off myself. Except that the birds didn’t come and cover us with leaves, it was rather like the Babes in the Wood.”

“But you haven’t had any breakfast! Aren’t you starving?”

“Well, I’m not saying I wouldn’t spear a fried egg with some vim if it happened to float past. But there’s plenty of time for that. Lots of doctors say you oughtn’t to eat breakfast, and Indian fakirs go without food for days at a time in order to develop their souls. Shall I take you back to wherever you’re staying? You ought to get a proper sleep in bed.”

“Don’t dream of taking me. Go off and have something to eat.”

“Oh, that can wait. I’d like to see you safely home.”

Jill was conscious of a renewed sense of his comfortingness. There was no doubt about it, Wally was different from any other man she had known. She suddenly felt guilty, as if she were obtaining something valuable under false pretences.

“Wally!”

“Hullo?”

“You—you oughtn’t to be so good to me!”

“Nonsense! Where’s the harm in lending a hand—or, rather, an arm—to a pal in trouble?”

“You know what I mean. I can’t . . . . that is to say . . . . it isn’t as though . . . . I mean . . . .”

Wally smiled a tired, friendly smile.

“If you’re trying to say what I think you’re trying to say, don’t! We had all that out two weeks ago. I quite understand the position. You mustn’t worry yourself about it. I know exactly how you feel. We’re old friends, and nothing more. But, as an old friend, I claim the right to behave like an old friend. If an old friend can’t behave like an old friend, how can an old friend behave? And now we’ll rule the whole topic out of the conversation. But perhaps you’re too tired for conversation?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then I will tell you about the sad death of young Mr. Pilkington.”

“What!”

“Well, when I say death, I use the word in a loose sense. The human giraffe still breathes, and I imagine, from the speed with which he legged it back to his hotel when we parted, that he still takes nourishment. But really he is dead. His heart is broken. We had a conference after the dress-rehearsal, and our friend Mr. Goble told him in no uncertain words—in the whole course of my experience I have never heard words less uncertain—that his damned rotten high-brow false-alarm of a show—I am quoting Mr. Goble—would have to be rewritten by alien hands. And these are them! Yes, I am the instrument selected for the murder of Pilkington’s artistic aspirations. I’m going to rewrite the show. In fact, I have already rewritten the first act and most of the second. Goble foresaw this contingency and told me to get busy two weeks ago, and I’ve been working hard ever since. We shall start rehearsing the new version to-morrow and open in Baltimore next Monday with practically a different piece. A gang of composers has been working in shifts for two weeks, and, by chucking out nearly all of the original music, we shall have a good score. It means a lot of work for you, I’m afraid. All the business of the numbers will have to be re-arranged.”

“I like work,” said Jill. “But I’m sorry for Mr. Pilkington.”

“He’s all right. He owns seventy per cent. of the show. He may make a fortune. He’s certain to make a comfortable sum. That is, if he doesn’t sell out his interest in pique—or dudgeon, if you prefer it. From what he said at the close of the proceedings, I fancy he would sell out to anybody who asked him. At least, he said that he washed his hands of the piece. He’s going back to New York this afternoon—won’t even wait for the opening. Of course, I’m sorry for the poor chap in a way, but he had no right, with the excellent central idea which he got, to turn out such a rotten book. Oh, by the way!”

“Yes?”

“Another tragedy! Unavoidable, but pathetic. Poor old Freddie! He’s out!”

“Oh, no!”

“Out!” repeated Wally firmly.

“But didn’t you think he was good last night?”

“He was awful! But that isn’t why. Goble wanted his part rewritten as a Scotchman, so as to get McAndrew, the fellow who made such a hit last season in ‘Hoots, Mon!’ That sort of thing is always happening in musical comedy. You have to fit parts to suit whatever good people happen to be available at the moment. It’s a ruthless business.”

“The girls were saying that one of us would be dismissed.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think that’s likely.”

“I hope not.”

“So do I. What are we stopping for?”

Jill had halted in front of a shabby-looking house, one of those depressing buildings which spring up overnight at seashore resorts and start to decay the moment the builders have left them.

“I live here.”

“Here?” Wally looked at her in consternation. “But . . . .”

Jill smiled.

“We working girls have got to economise. Besides, it’s quite comfortable—fairly comfortable—inside, and it’s only for a week.” She yawned. “I believe I’m falling asleep again. I’d better hurry in and go to bed. Good-bye, Wally dear. You’ve been wonderful. Mind you go and get a good breakfast.”

 

 

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE THIRTEENTH GIRL

THAT evening the blow fell.

The moment Jill and her companions entered the dressing-room, it was made clear to them that the doom had fallen. In a chair in the corner, all her pretence and affectation swept away in a flood of tears, sat the unhappy Duchess, the centre of a group of girls anxious to console but limited in their ideas of consolation to an occasional pat on the back and an offer of a fresh pocket-handkerchief.

“It’s tough, honey!” somebody was saying as Jill came in.

Somebody else said it was fierce, and a third girl declared it to be the limit. A fourth girl, well-meaning but less helpful than she would have liked to be, was advising the victim not to worry.

The story of the disaster was brief and easily told. The Duchess, sailing in at the stage-door, had paused at the letter-box to see if Cuthbert, her faithful auto-salesman, had sent her a good-luck telegram. He had, but his good wishes were unfortunately neutralised by the fact that the very next letter in the box was one from the management, crisp and to the point, informing the Duchess that her services would not be required that night or thereafter. It was the subtle meanness of the blow that roused the indignation of the “Rose of America” chorus, the cunning villainy with which it had been timed.

“Poor Mae, if she’d opened to-night, they’d have had to give her two weeks’ notice or her salary. But they can fire her without a cent just because she’s only been rehearsing and hasn’t given a show!”

The Duchess burst into a fresh flood of tears.

“It’s tough!” said the girl who had adopted that form of verbal consolation.

“It’s fierce!” said the girl who preferred that adjective.

The Duchess cried forlornly throughout. She had needed this engagement badly. Chorus salaries are not stupendous, but it is possible to save money by means of them during a New York run, especially if you have spent three years in a milliner’s shop and can make your own clothes, as the Duchess, in spite of her air of being turned out by Fifth Avenue modistes, could and did. She had been looking forward, now that this absurd piece was to be rewritten by someone who knew his business and had a good chance of success, to putting by just those few dollars that make all the difference when you are embarking on married life. Cuthbert, for all his faithfulness, could not hold up the financial end of the establishment unsupported for at least another eighteen months: and this disaster meant that the wedding would have to be postponed again.

Jill had been the only girl in the room who had spoken no word of consolation. This was not because she was not sorry for the Duchess. She had never been sorrier for anyone in her life. The pathos of that swift descent from haughtiness to misery had bitten deep into her sensitive heart. But she revolted at the idea of echoing the banal words of the others. Words were no good, deeds were what she demanded. All her life she had been a girl of impulsive action, and she wanted to act impulsively now. She was in much the same Berserk mood as had swept her, raging, to the defence of Bill the parrot on the occasion of his dispute with Henry of London. The fighting spirit which had been drained from her by the all-night rehearsal had come back in full measure.

“What are you going to do?” she cried. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Do? The members of the “Rose of America” ensemble looked doubtfully at one another. Do? It had not occurred to them that there was anything to be done. These things happened, and you regretted them, but as for doing anything, well, what could you do?

Jill’s face was white and her eyes were flaming. She dominated the roomful of girls like a little Napoleon. The change in her startled them. Hitherto they had always looked on her as rather an unusually quiet girl. She had always made herself unobtrusively pleasant to them all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of possessing this militant quality. Nobody spoke, but there was a general stir. She had flung a new idea broadcast, and it was beginning to take root. Do something? Well, if it came to that, why not?

“We ought all to refuse to go on to-night unless they let her go on!” Jill declared.

The stir became a movement. Enthusiasm is catching, and every girl is at heart a rebel.

“Strike?” quavered somebody at the back.

“Yes, strike!” cried Jill.

She turned to the Duchess, who had been gaping amazedly at the demonstration. She no longer wept, but she seemed in a dream.

“Dress and get ready to go on,” Jill commanded. “We’ll all dress and get ready to go on. Then I’ll go and find Mr. Goble and tell him what we mean to do. And if he doesn’t give in, we’ll stay here in this room, and there won’t be a performance!”

 

 

CHAPTER XXXVII

“WE’RE GOING TO STRIKE!”

MR. GOBLE, with a Derby hat on the back of his head and an unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth, was superintending the erection of the first act set when Jill found him. He was standing with his back to the safety-curtain glowering at a blue canvas, and Jill, coming down stage from the staircase that led to the dressing-room, interrupted his line of vision.

“Get out of the light!” bellowed Mr. Goble, always a man of direct speech, adding “Damn you!” for good measure.

“Please move to one side,” interpreted the stage director. “Mr. Goble is looking at the set.”

The head carpenter, who completed the little group, said nothing. Stage carpenters always say nothing.

“It don’t look right!” said Mr. Goble, cocking his head on one side.

“I see what you mean, Mr. Goble,” assented the stage director obsequiously. “It has perhaps a little too much—er—not quite enough—yes, I see what you mean!”

“It’s too—damn—blue!” rasped Mr. Goble, impatient of this vacillating criticism. “That’s what’s the matter with it.”

He would probably have said something momentous and crushing, but at this point Jill intervened.

“Mr. Goble.”

The manager swung round on her.

“What is it?”

It is sad to think how swiftly affection can change to dislike in this world. Two weeks before, Mr. Goble had looked on Jill with favour. She had seemed good in his eyes. But that refusal of hers to lunch with him, followed by a refusal some days later to take a bit of supper somewhere, had altered his views on feminine charm. If it had been left to him, as most things were about his theatre, to decide which of the thirteen girls should be dismissed, he would undoubtedly have selected Jill. But at this stage in the proceedings there was the unfortunate necessity of making concessions to the temperamental Johnson Miller. Mr. Goble was aware that the dance director’s services would be badly needed in the rearrangement of the numbers during the coming week or so, and he knew that there were a dozen managers waiting eagerly to welcome him if he threw up his present job, so he had been obliged to approach him in quite a humble spirit and inquire which of his female chorus could be most easily spared. And, as the Duchess had a habit of carrying her haughty languor on to the stage and employing it as a substitute for the chorea which was Mr. Miller’s ideal, the dance director had chosen her. To Mr. Goble’s dislike of Jill, therefore, was added now something of the fury of the baffled potentate.

“ ’Jer want?” he demanded.

“Mr. Goble is extremely busy,” said the stage director. “Ex-tremely.”

A momentary doubt as to the best way of approaching her subject had troubled Jill on her way downstairs, but, now that she was on the battlefield confronting the enemy, she found herself cool, collected, and full of a cold rage which steeled her nerves without confusing her mind.

“I came to ask you to let Mae D’Arcy go on to-night.”

“Who the hell’s Mae D’Arcy?” Mr. Goble broke off to bellow at a scene-shifter who was depositing the wall of Mrs. Stuyvesant van Dyke’s Long Island residence too far down stage. “Not there, you fool! Higher up!”

“You gave her her notice this evening,” said Jill.

“Well, what about it?”

“We want you to withdraw it.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The other girls and myself.”

Mr. Goble jerked his head so violently that the Derby hat flew off, to be picked up, dusted, and restored by the stage director.

“Oh, so you don’t like it? Well, you know what you can do . . . .”

“Yes,” said Jill, “we do. We are going to strike.”

“What?”

“If you don’t let Mae go on, we shan’t go on. There won’t be a performance to-night, unless you like to give one without a chorus.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Perhaps. But we’re quite unanimous.”

Mr. Goble’s hat shot off again, and gambolled away into the wings, with the stage director bounding after it like a retriever.

“Whose idea’s this?” demanded Mr. Goble. His eyes were a little foggy, for his brain was adjusting itself but slowly to the novel situation.

“Mine.”

“Oh, yours! I thought as much!”

“Well,” said Jill, “I’ll go back and tell them that you will not do what we ask. We will keep our make-up on in case you change your mind.”

She turned away.

“Come back!”

Jill proceeded towards the staircase. As she went, a husky voice spoke in her ear.

“Go to it, kid! You’re all right!”

The head carpenter had broken his Trappist vows, a thing which had not happened to him since the night three years ago, when, sinking wearily on to a seat in a dark corner for a bit of a rest, he found that one of his assistants had placed a pot of red paint there.

To Mr. Goble, fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson Miller. His deafness had kept him in complete ignorance that there was anything untoward afoot, and he now approached Mr. Goble with his watch in his hand.

“Eight twenty-five,” he observed. “Time those girls were on stage.”

Mr. Goble, glad of a concrete target for his wrath, cursed him in about two hundred and fifty rich and well-selected words.

“Huh?” said Mr. Miller, hand to ear.

Mr. Goble repeated the last hundred and eleven words, the pick of the bunch.

“Can’t hear!” said Mr. Miller regretfully. “Got a cold.”

The grave danger that Mr. Goble, a thick-necked man, would undergo some sort of a stroke was averted by the presence of mind of the stage director, who, returning with the hat, presented it like a bouquet to his employer, and then, his hands being now unoccupied, formed them into a funnel and through this flesh-and-blood megaphone endeavoured to impart the bad news.

“The girls say they won’t go on!”

Mr. Miller nodded.

“I said it was time they were on.”

“They’re on strike!”

“It’s not,” said Mr. Miller austerely, “what they like, it’s what they’re paid for. They ought to be on stage. We should be ringing up in two minutes.”

The stage director drew another breath, then thought better of it. He had a wife and children, and, if dadda went under with apoplexy, what became of the home, civilisation’s most sacred product? He relaxed the muscles of his diaphragm, and reached for pencil and paper.

Mr. Miller inspected the message, felt for his spectacle case, found it, opened it, took out his glasses, replaced the spectacle case, felt for his handkerchief, polished the glasses, replaced the handkerchief, put the glasses on, and read.

He remained for a moment in meditation.

“I’ll go and talk to them,” he said.

 

 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE DOWNTRODDEN AND OPPRESSED

SCARCELY had Mr. Miller disappeared on his peace-making errand when there was a noise like a fowl going through a quickset hedge, and Mr. Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor’s chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musicians’ bolt-hole to ascertain what was causing the delay.

“What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?” inquired Mr. Saltzburg. “I wait and wait and wait and wait and wait . . . . We cannot play the overture again. What is it? What has happened?”

Mr. Goble, that overwrought soul, had betaken himself to the wings, where he was striding up and down with his hands behind his back, chewing his cigar. The stage director braced himself once more to the task of explanation.

“The girls have struck!”

Mr. Saltzburg blinked through his glasses.

“The girls?” he repeated blankly.

“Oh, damn it!” cried the stage director, his patience at last giving way. “You know what a girl is, don’t you?”

“They have what?”

“Struck! Walked out on us! Refused to go on!”

Mr. Saltzburg reeled under the blow.

“But it is impossible! Who is to sing the opening chorus?”

In the presence of one to whom he could relieve his mind without fear of consequences, the stage director became savagely jocular.

“That’s all arranged,” he said. “We’re going to dress the carpenters in skirts. The audience won’t notice anything wrong.”

Mr. Saltzburg pondered.

“I will go and speak to the children,” he said. “I will talk to them. They know me! I will make them be reasonable.”

He bustled off in the direction taken by Mr. Miller, his coat-tails flying behind him. The stage director, with a tired sigh, turned to face Wally, who had come in through the iron pass-door from the auditorium.

“Hullo!” said Wally cheerfully. “Going strong? How’s everybody at home? Fine! So am I! By the way, am I wrong or did I hear something about a theatrical entertainment of some sort here to-night?” He looked about him at the empty stage. In the wings, on the prompt side, could be discerned the flannel-clad forms of the gentlemanly members of the male ensemble, all dressed up for Mrs. Stuyvesant van Dyke’s tennis party. One or two of the principals were standing perplexedly in the lower entrance. The O.P. side had been given over by general consent to Mr. Goble for his perambulations. Every now and then he would flash into view through an opening in the scenery. “I understood that to-night was the night for the great revival of comic opera. Where are the comics, and why aren’t they opping?”

The stage director repeated his formula once more.

“The girls have struck!”

“So have the clocks,” said Wally. “It’s past nine.”

“The chorus refuse to go on.”

“No, really! Just artistic loathing of the rotten piece, or is there some other reason?”

“They’re sore because one of them has been given her notice, and they say they won’t give a show unless she’s taken back. They’ve struck. That Mariner girl started it.”

“She did!” Wally’s interest became keener. “She would!” he said approvingly. “She’s a heroine!”

“Little devil! I never liked that girl!”

“Now there,” said Wally, “is just the point on which we differ. I have always liked her, and I’ve known her all my life. So, shipmate, if you have any derogatory remarks to make about Miss Mariner, keep them where they belong—there!” He prodded the other sharply in the stomach. He was smiling pleasantly, but the stage director, catching his eye, decided that his advice was good and should be followed. It is just as bad for the home if the head of the family gets his neck broken as if he succumbs to apoplexy.

“You surely aren’t on their side?” he said.

“Me!” said Wally. “Of course I am. I’m always on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed. If you know of a dirtier trick than firing a girl just before the opening, so that they won’t have to pay her two weeks’ salary, mention it. Till you do, I’ll go on believing that it is the limit. Of course I’m on the girls’ side. I’ll make them a speech if they want me to, or head the procession with a banner if they are going to parade down the boardwalk. I’m for ’em, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand strong. And then a few! If you want my considered opinion, our old friend Goble has asked for it and got it. And I’m glad—glad—glad.”

“You’d better not let him hear you talking like that!”

“Au contraire, as we say in the Gay City, I’m going to make a point of letting him hear me talk like that! Adjust the impression that I fear any Goble in shining armour, because I don’t. I propose to speak my mind to him. I would beard him in his lair, if he had a beard. But hist! whom have we here? Tell me, do you see the same thing I see?”

Like the vanguard of a defeated army, Mr. Saltzburg was coming dejectedly across the stage.

“Well?” said the stage director.

“They would not listen to me,” said Mr. Saltzburg brokenly. “The more I talked, the more they did not listen. Mr. Miller is still up there, arguing with them. But it will be of no use. What shall we do?” asked Mr. Saltzburg helplessly. “We ought to have rung up half an hour ago. What shall we do-oo-oo?”

“We must go and talk to Goble,” said Wally. “Something has got to be settled quick. When I left the audience was getting so impatient that I thought he was going to walk out on us. He’s one of those nasty, determined-looking men. So come along!”

Mr. Goble, intercepted as he was about to turn for another walk up-stage, eyed the deputation sourly and put the same question that the stage director had put to Mr. Saltzburg.

“Well?”

Wally came briskly to the point.

“You’ll have to give in,” he said, “or else go and make a speech to the audience, the burden of which will be that they can have their money back by applying at the box-office. These Joans of Arc have got you by the short hairs!”

“I won’t give in!”

“Then give out!” said Wally. “Or pay out, if you prefer it. Trot along and tell the audience that the four dollars fifty in the house will be refunded.”

Mr. Goble gnawed his cigar.

“I’ve been in the show business fifteen years. . . .”

“I know. And this sort of thing has never happened to you before. One gets new experiences.”

Mr. Goble cocked his cigar at a fierce angle, and glared at Wally. Something told him that Wally’s sympathies were not wholly with him.

“They can’t do this sort of thing to me!” he growled.

“Well, they are doing it to someone, aren’t they,” said Wally, “and, if it’s not you, who is it?”

“I’ve a damned good mind to fire them all!”

“A corking idea! I can’t see a single thing wrong with it except that it would hang up the production for another five weeks and lose you your bookings and cost you a week’s rent of this theatre for nothing, and mean having all the dresses made over, and lead to all your principals going off and getting other jobs. These trifling things apart, we may call the suggestion a bright one.”

“You talk too damn much!” said Mr. Goble, eyeing him with distaste.

“Well, go on, you say something. Something sensible.”

“It is a very serious situation . . . .” began the stage director.

“Oh, shut up!” said Mr. Goble.

The stage director subsided into his collar.

“I cannot play the overture again,” protested Mr. Saltzburg. “I cannot!”

At this point Mr. Miller appeared. He was glad to see Mr. Goble. He had been looking for him, for he had news to impart.

“The girls,” said Mr. Miller, “have struck! They won’t go on!”

Mr. Goble, with the despairing gesture of one who realises the impotence of words, dashed off for his favourite walk up-stage. Wally took out his watch.

“Six seconds and a bit,” he said approvingly, as the manager returned. “A very good performance. I should like to time you over the course in running kit.”

The interval for reflection, brief as it had been, had apparently enabled Mr. Goble to come to a decision.

“Go,” he said to the stage director, “and tell ’em that fool of a D’Arcy girl can play. We’ve got to get that curtain up.”

“Yes, Mr. Goble.”

The stage director galloped off.

“Get back to your place,” said the manager to Mr. Saltzburg, “and play the overture again.”

“Again!”

“Perhaps they didn’t hear it the first two times,” said Wally.

Mr. Goble watched Mr. Saltzburg out of sight. Then he turned to Wally.

“That damned Mariner girl was at the bottom of this! She started the whole thing! She told me so. Well, I’ll settle her! She goes to-morrow!”

(To be continued.)

 

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Notes:
Compare this with the American serialization in Collier’s Weekly.

Note that the chapter divisions and their titles and numbering are different in this edition than in other versions of the novel. A table of correspondences (opens in a new browser window or tab) is on this site.

Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 215a, had «too—dam—blue»; corrected to «too—damn—blue» as in all other versions
Magazine had «Salzburg» many times, corrected to «Saltzburg» as in previous parts and as in all other versions: four times on p. 216b, once on 217a, four times on 217b, three times on 218b.

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