Grand Magazine, May 1921
 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE STRICKEN FINANCIER

“ WAIT a minute,” said Wally. “Wait one minute! Bright as it is, that idea is out!”

“What the devil has it got to do with you?”

“Only this, that, if you fire Miss Mariner, I take that neat script which I’ve prepared and I tear it into a thousand fragments. Or nine hundred. Anyway, I tear it. Miss Mariner opens in New York, or I pack up my work and leave.”

Mr. Goble’s green eyes glowed.

“Oh, you’re stuck on her, are you?” he sneered. “I see!”

“Listen, dear heart,” said Wally, gripping the manager’s arm. “I can see that you are on the verge of introducing personalities into this very pleasant little chat. Resist the impulse! Why not let your spine stay where it is instead of having it kicked up through your hat? Keep to the main issue. Does Miss Mariner open in New York or does she not?”

There was a tense silence. Mr. Goble permitted himself a swift review of his position. He would have liked to do many things to Wally, beginning with ordering him out of the theatre, but prudence restrained him. He wanted Wally’s work. He needed Wally in his business: and, in the theatre, business takes precedence of personal feelings.

“All right!” he growled reluctantly.

“That’s a promise,” said Wally. “I’ll see that you keep it.” He looked over his shoulder. The stage was filled with gaily-coloured dresses. The mutineers had returned to duty. “Well, I’ll be getting along. I’m rather sorry we agreed to keep clear of personalities, because I should have liked to say that, if ever they have a skunk-show at Madison Square Garden, you ought to enter and win the blue ribbon. Still, of course, under our agreement my lips are sealed, and I can’t even hint at it. Good-bye. See you later, I suppose?”

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 re-written 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.

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 his troubles. 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 suit-case, took 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!” 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. He staggered into the station.

 

 

CHAPTER XL

A FORTUNE IN IT

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.

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 anyone. 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 sympathise 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 anyone 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.

“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. 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.”

And The Rose of America, after a disheartening Wednesday matinée and a not much better reception on the Wednesday night, packed its baggage and removed to Syracuse, where it failed just as badly. Then for another two weeks it wandered on from one small town to another, 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.

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 on behalf of some client unknown, and was glad to feel that he had saved something out of the wreck.

 

 

CHAPTER XLI

THE CLEVER THING

THE curtain fell on the first act of The Rose of America, and simultaneously tremendous applause broke out from all over the Gotham Theatre, which was crammed from floor to roof with that heterogeneous collection of humanity which makes up the audience of a New York opening performance. The applause continued like the breaking of waves on a stony beach. The curtain rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell again. An usher, stealing down the central aisle, gave to Mr. Saltzburg an enormous bouquet of American beauty roses, which he handed to the prima donna, who took it with a brilliant smile and a bow nicely combining humility with joyful surprise. The applause, which had begun to slacken, gathered strength again. It was a superb bouquet, nearly as big as Mr. Saltzburg himself. It had cost the prima donna close on a hundred dollars that morning at Thorley’s, but it was worth every cent of the money.

The house-lights went up. The audience began to move up the aisles to stretch its legs and discuss the piece during the intermission.

“Otie, darling,” said Mrs. Waddesleigh Peagrim, leaning her ample shoulder on Uncle Chris’s perfectly fitting sleeve and speaking across him to young Mr. Pilkington, “I do congratulate you, dear. It’s perfectly delightful! I don’t know when I have enjoyed a musical piece so much. Don’t you think it’s perfectly darling, Major Selby?”

“Capital!” agreed that suave man of the world, who had been bored as near extinction as makes no matter. “Congratulate you, my boy!”

“You clever, clever thing!” said Mrs. Peagrim, skittishly striking her nephew on the knee with her fan. “I’m proud to be your aunt! Aren’t you proud to know him, Mr. Rooke?”

The fourth occupant of the box awoke with a start from the species of stupor into which he had been plunged by the spectacle of the McWhustle of McWhustle in action. Never in his whole career had he experienced such gloom and such sadness as had come to him that evening while watching this unspeakable person in kilts murder the part that should have been his. And the audience, confound them, had roared with laughter at every damn silly thing the fellow had said!

“Eh?” he replied. “Oh, yes, rather, absolutely!”

“We’re all proud of you, Otie, darling,” proceeded Mrs. Peagrim. “The piece is a wonderful success. You will make a fortune out of it. And just think, Major Selby, I tried my best to argue the poor, dear boy out of putting it on! I thought it was so rash to risk his money in a theatrical venture. But then,” said Mrs. Peagrim in extenuation, “I had only seen the piece when it was done at my house at Newport, and of course it really was rather dreadful nonsense then! I might have known that you would change it a great deal before you put it on in New York. As I always say, plays are not written, they are re-written! Why, you have improved this piece a hundred per cent., Otie! I wouldn’t know it was the same play!”

She slapped him smartly once more with her fan, ignorant of the gashes she was inflicting. Poor Mr. Pilkington was suffering twin torments, the torture of remorse and the agonised jealousy of the unsuccessful artist. It would have been bad enough to have to sit and watch a large audience rocking in its seats at the slap-stick comedy which Wally Mason had substituted for his delicate social satire: but, had this been all, at least he could have consoled himself with the sordid reflection that he, as owner of the piece, was going to make a lot of money out of it. Now, even this material balm was denied him. He had sold out.

“Of course,” went on Mrs. Peagrim, “when the play was done at my house it was acted by amateurs. And you know what amateurs are! The cast to-night is perfectly splendid. I do think that Scotchman is the most killing creature! Don’t you think he is wonderful, Mr. Rooke?”

We may say what we will against the upper strata of Society, but it cannot be denied that breeding tells. Only by falling back for support on the traditions of his class and the solid support of a gentle up-bringing was the Last of the Rookes able to crush down the words that leaped to his lips and to substitute for them a politely conventional agreement. If Mr. Pilkington was feeling like a too impulsive seller of gold-mines, Freddie’s emotions were akin to those of the Spartan boy with the fox under his vest. Nothing but Winchester and Magdalen could have produced the smile which, though twisted and confined entirely to his lips, flashed on to his face and off again at his hostess’ question.

“Oh, rather! Priceless!”

“Wasn’t that part an Englishman before?” asked Mrs. Peagrim. “I thought so. Well, it was a stroke of genius changing it. This Scotchman is too funny for words. And such an artist!”

Freddie rose shakily. One can stand just so much.

“Think,” he mumbled, “I’ll be pushing along and smoking a cigarette.”

He groped his way to the door.

“I’ll come with you, Freddie, my boy,” said Uncle Chris, who felt an imperative need of five minutes’ respite from Mrs. Peagrim. “Let’s get out into the air for a moment. Uncommonly warm it is here.”

Freddie assented. Air was what he felt he wanted most.

Left alone in the box with her nephew, Mrs. Peagrim continued for some moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open wound.

“Why,” she concluded, “you will make thousands and thousands of dollars out of this piece. I am sure it is going to be another Merry Widow.”

“You can’t tell from a first night audience,” said Mr. Pilkington sombrely, giving out a piece of theatrical wisdom he had picked up at rehearsals.

“Oh, but you can. It’s so easy to distinguish polite applause from the real thing. And how hard the company must have worked, too! Otie,” cried Mrs. Peagrim, aglow with the magic of a brilliant idea, “I will tell you what you must really do. You must give a supper and dance to the whole company on the stage to-morrow night after the performance.”

“What!” cried Otis Pilkington, startled out of his lethargy by this appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents for “props” and “frames” and “rehl,” had sold out for a paltry ten thousand, to be still further victimised?

“They do deserve it, don’t they, after working so hard?”

“It’s impossible,” said Otis Pilkington vehemently. “Out of the question.”

“But, Otie, darling, I was talking to Mr. Mason when he came down to Newport to see the piece last summer, and he told me that the management nearly always gives a supper to the company, especially if they have had a lot of extra rehearsing to do.”

“Well, let Goble give them a supper if he wants to.”

“But you know that Mr. Goble, though he has his name on the programme as the manager, has really nothing to do with it. You own your piece, don’t you?”

For a moment Mr. Pilkington felt an impulse to reveal all, but refrained. He knew his Aunt Olive too well. If she found out that he had parted at a heavy loss with his valuable property her whole attitude towards him would change—or, rather, it would revert to her normal attitude, which was not unlike that of a severe nurse to a weak-minded child. Even in his agony there had been a certain faint consolation, due to the entirely unwonted note of respect in the voice with which she had addressed him since the fall of the curtain. He shrank from forfeiting this respect, unentitled though he was to it.

“Yes,” he said in his precise voice. “That, of course, is so.”

“Well, then!” said Mrs. Peagrim.

“But it seems so unnecessary! And think what it would cost!”

This was a false step. Some of the reverence left Mrs. Peagrim’s voice, and she spoke a little coldly. A gay and gallant spender herself, she had often had occasion to rebuke a tendency to over-parsimony in her nephew.

“We must not be mean, Otie!” she said.

Mr. Pilkington keenly resented her choice of pronouns. “We” indeed! Who was going to foot the bill? Both of them, hand in hand, or he alone, the chump, the fool, the easy mark who got this sort of thing wished on him!

“I don’t think it would be possible to get the stage for a supper-party,” he pleaded, shifting his ground. “Goble wouldn’t give it to us.”

“As if Mr. Goble would refuse you anything after you have written a wonderful success for his theatre! And isn’t he getting his share of the profits? Directly after the performance you must go round and ask him. Of course he will be delighted to give you the stage. I will be hostess,” said Mrs. Peagrim radiantly. “And now, let me see, whom shall we invite?”

Mr. Pilkington stared gloomily at the floor, too bowed down by his weight of cares to resent the “we,” which had plainly come to stay.

“Major Selby, of course,” said Mrs. Peagrim musingly, with a cooing note in her voice. Long since had that polished man of affairs made a deep impression upon her. “Of course Major Selby, for one. And Mr. Rooke. Then there are one or two of my friends who would be hurt if they were left out. How about Mr. Mason? Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

Mr. Pilkington snorted. He had endured much and was prepared to endure more, but he drew the line at squandering his money on the man who had sneaked up behind his brain-child with a hatchet and chopped its precious person into little bits.

“He is not a friend of mine,” he said stiffly, “and I do not wish him to be invited!”

Having attained her main objective, Mrs. Peagrim was prepared to yield minor points.

“Very well, if you do not like him,” she said. “But I thought he was quite an intimate of yours. It was you who asked me to invite him to Newport last summer.”

“Much,” said Mr. Pilkington coldly, “has happened since last summer.”

“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Peagrim again. “Then we will not include Mr. Mason. Now, directly the curtain has fallen, Otie, dear, pop right round and find Mr. Goble and tell him what you want.”

 

 

CHAPTER XLII

“I OWN THE PIECE”

IT is not only twin-souls in this world who yearn to meet each other. Between Otis Pilkington and Mr. Goble there was little in common, yet, at the moment when Otis set out to find Mr. Goble, the thing which Mr. Goble desired most in the world was an interview with Otis. Since the end of the first act the manager had been in a state of mental upheaval. Reverting to the gold-mine simile again, Mr. Goble was in the position of a man who has had a chance of purchasing such a mine and now, learning too late of the discovery of the reef, is feeling the truth of the poet’s dictum that of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these “It might have been.”

The electric success of The Rose of America had stunned Mr. Goble; and, realising, as he did, that he might have bought Otis Pilkington’s share dirt cheap at almost any point of the preliminary tour, he was having a bad half-hour with himself. The only ray in the darkness which brooded on his indomitable soul was the thought that it might still be possible, by getting hold of Mr. Pilkington before the notices appeared and shaking his head sadly and talking about the misleading hopes which young authors so often draw from an enthusiastic first-night reception, and mentioning gloomily that he had heard a couple of critics roastin’ the show to beat the band—it might still be possible to depress Mr. Pilkington’s young enthusiasm and induce him to sell his share at a sacrifice price to a great-hearted friend who didn’t think the thing would run a week, but was willing to buy as a sporting speculation.

Such were the meditations of Mr. Goble, and, on the final fall of the curtain amid unrestrained enthusiasm on the part of the audience, he had despatched messengers in all directions with instructions to find Mr. Pilkington and conduct him to the presence. Meanwhile, he waited impatiently on the empty stage.

The sudden advent of Wally Mason, who appeared at this moment, upset Mr. Goble terribly. Wally was a factor in the situation which he had not considered. An infernal, tactless fellow, always trying to make mischief and upset honest merchants. Wally, if present at the interview with Otis Pilkington, would probably try to act in restraint of trade and would blurt out some untimely truth about the prospects of the piece.

“Went well, eh?” said Wally amiably. He did not like Mr. Goble, but on the first night of a successful piece personal antipathies may be sunk. Such was his effervescent good-humour at the moment that he was prepared to treat Mr. Goble as a man and a brother.

“H’m!” replied Mr. Goble doubtfully, paving the way.

“What are you h’ming about?” demanded Wally, astonished. “The thing’s a riot.”

“I’ve an idea,” said Mr. Goble, raising his voice as the long form of Mr. Pilkington crossed the stage towards them, “that the critics will roast it. If you ask me,” he went on loudly, “it’s just the sort of show the critics will pan the life out of. I’ve been fifteen years in the——”

“Critics!” cried Wally. “Well, I’ve just been talking to Alexander of The Times, and he said it was the best musical piece he had ever seen, and that all the other men he had talked to thought the same.”

Mr. Goble turned a distorted face to Mr. Pilkington. He wished that Wally would go. But Wally, he reflected bitterly, was one of those men who never go. He faced Mr. Pilkington and did the best he could.

“Of course it’s got a chance,” he said moodily. “Any show has got a chance! But I don’t know—I don’t know——”

Mr. Pilkington was not interested in the future prospects of The Rose of America.

“I want the stage after the performance to-morrow night for a supper to the company,” he said brusquely.

He was shocked to find Mr. Goble immediately complaisant.

“Why, sure,” said Mr. Goble readily. “Go as far as you like!” He took Mr. Pilkington by the elbow and drew him up-stage, lowering his voice to a confidential undertone. “And now, listen,” he said, “I’ve something I want to talk to you about. Between you and I and the lamp-post, I don’t think this show will last a month in New York. It don’t add up right! There’s something all wrong about it.”

Mr. Pilkington assented with an emphasis which amazed the manager. “I quite agree with you! If you had kept it the way it was originally——”

“Too late for that!” sighed Mr. Goble, realising that his star was in the ascendant. He had forgotten for the moment that Mr. Pilkington was an author. “We must make the best of a bad job! Now, you’re a good kid and I wouldn’t like you to go around town saying that I had let you in. It isn’t business, maybe, but I’m ready to buy your share of the thing and call it a deal. After all, it may get money on the road. It ain’t likely, but there’s a chance, and I’m willing to take it. Well, listen, I’m probably robbing myself, but I’ll give you fifteen thousand if you want to sell.”

A hated voice spoke at his elbow.

“I’ll make you a better offer than that,” said Wally. “Give me your share of the show for three dollars in cash and I’ll throw in a pair of sock-suspenders and an Ingersoll. Is it a go?”

Mr. Goble regarded him balefully.

“Who told you to butt in?” he enquired sourly.

“Conscience!” replied Wally. “Old Henry W. Conscience! I refuse to stand by and see the slaughter of the innocents. Why don’t you wait till he’s dead before you skin him!” He turned to Mr. Pilkington. “Don’t you be a fool!” he said earnestly. “Can’t you see the thing is the biggest hit in years? Do you think he would be offering you a cent for your share if he didn’t know there was a fortune in it? Do you imagine——?”

“It is immaterial to me,” interrupted Otis Pilkington loftily, “what Mr. Goble offers. I have already sold my interest!”

“What!” cried Mr. Goble.

“I sold it half-way through the road-tour,” said Mr. Pilkington, “to a lawyer, acting on behalf of a client whose name I did not learn.”

In the silence which followed this revelation, another voice spoke.

“I should like to speak to you for a moment, Mr. Goble, if I may.”

It was Jill, who had joined the group unperceived.

Mr. Goble glowered at Jill, who met his gaze composedly.

“I’m busy!” snapped Mr. Goble. “See me to-morrow!”

“I would prefer to see you now.”

“You would prefer!” Mr. Goble waved his hands despairingly, as if calling on heaven to witness the persecution of a good man.

Jill exhibited a piece of paper stamped with the letter-heading of the management.

“It’s about this,” she said. “I found it in the box as I was going out.”

“What’s that?”

“It seems to be a fortnight’s notice.”

“And that,” said Mr. Goble, “is what it is!”

Wally uttered an exclamation.

“Do you mean to say——?”

“Yes, I do!” said the manager, turning on him. He felt that he had out-manœuvred Wally. “I agreed to let her open in New York, and she’s done it, hasn’t she? Now she can get out. I don’t want her. I wouldn’t have her if you paid me. She’s a nuisance in the company, always making trouble, and she can go.”

“But I would prefer not to go,” said Jill.

“You would prefer!” The phrase seemed to infuriate Mr. Goble. “And what has what you would prefer got to do with it?”

“Well, you see,” said Jill, “I forgot to tell you before, but I own the piece!”

 

 

CHAPTER XLIII

JUST AROUND THE CORNER

MR. GOBLE’S jaw fell.

“You—what!” he stammered.

“I own the piece,” repeated Jill. “Surely that gives me authority to say what I want done and what I don’t want done.”

There was a silence. Mr. Goble, who was having difficulty with his vocal chords, swallowed once or twice. Wally and Mr. Pilkington stared dumbly.

“What do you mean, you own the piece?” Mr. Goble at length gurgled.

“I bought Mr. Pilkington’s share through a lawyer for ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars! Where did you get ten thousand dollars?” Light broke upon Mr. Goble. “Damn it!” he cried. “I might have known you had some man behind you! You’d never have been so darned fresh if you hadn’t had some John in the background paying the bills! Well, of all the . . .”

“Be quiet!” said Wally dangerously. He turned to Jill. “Jill, you don’t mind telling me how you got ten thousand dollars, do you?”

“Of course not, Wally. Uncle Chris sent it to me. Do you remember giving me a letter from him at Rochester? The cheque was in that.”

Wally stared.

“Your uncle! But he hasn’t any money!”

Otis Pilkington suddenly gave tongue. He broke in on them with a loud noise that was half a snort and half a yell. Stunned by the information that it was Jill who had bought his share in the piece, Mr. Pilkington’s mind had recovered slowly and then had begun to work with a quite unusual rapidity.

“It’s a swindle! It’s a deliberate swindle!” shrilled Mr. Pilkington. The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. “I’ve been made a fool of! I’ve been swindled! I’ve been robbed!”

Jill regarded him with wide eyes.

“What do you mean? You were perfectly willing to sell the piece.”

“I’m not talking about that! You know what I mean! I’ve been robbed!”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Wally curtly. “Talk sense! You know perfectly well that Miss Mariner wouldn’t swindle you.”

“She may not have been in it,” conceded Mr. Pilkington. “I don’t know whether she was or not. But that uncle of hers swindled me out of ten thousand dollars! The smooth old crook!”

“Don’t talk like that about Uncle Chris!” said Jill, her eyes flashing. “Tell me what you mean.”

“Yes, come on, Pilkington,” said Wally grimly. “You’ve been scattering some pretty serious charges about. Let’s hear what you base them on. Be coherent for a couple of seconds.”

Mr. Pilkington gulped. Like most men of weak intellect who are preyed on by the wolves of the world, he had ever a strong distaste for admitting that he had been deceived.

“Major Selby,” he said, adjusting his spectacles, which emotion had caused to slip down his nose, “came to me a few weeks ago with a proposition. He suggested the formation of a company to start Miss Mariner in the motion-pictures.”

“What!” cried Jill.

“In the motion-pictures,” repeated Mr. Pilkington. “He wished to know if I cared to advance any capital towards the venture. I thought it over carefully and decided that I was favourably disposed towards the scheme. I . . .” Mr. Pilkington gulped again. “I gave him a cheque for ten thousand dollars!”

Jill’s heart was like lead. She could not doubt for an instant the truth of what the victim had said. Woven into every inch of the fabric, plainly hall-marked on its surface, she could perceive the signature of Uncle Chris. If he had come and confessed to her himself she could not have been more certain that he had acted precisely as Mr. Pilkington had charged. There was that same impishness, that same bland unscrupulousness, that same pathetic desire to do her a good turn however it might affect anybody else which, if she might compare the two things, had caused him to pass her off on unfortunate Mr. Mariner of Brookport as a girl of wealth with tastes in the direction of real estate.

Wally was not so easily satisfied.

“You’ve no proof whatever . . . .”

Jill shook her head.

“It’s true, Wally. I know Uncle Chris. It must be true.”

“The man’s a swindler! A swindler! He’s robbed me! I have been robbed! He never had any intention of starting a motion-picture company. He planned it all out. . . . !”

Jill cut into the babble of his denunciations. She was sick at heart, and she spoke almost listlessly.

“Mr. Pilkington!” The victim stopped. “Mr. Pilkington, if what you say is true—and I’m afraid there is no doubt that it is—the only thing I can do is to give you back your property. So, will you please try to understand that everything is just as it was before you gave my uncle the money. You’ve got back your ten thousand dollars and you’ve got back your piece, so there’s nothing more to talk about.”

“Yes, but I do think . . . That’s all very well, but I have by no means finished . . .”

“Yes, you have,” said Wally.

“There’s nothing more to talk about,” repeated Jill. “I’m sorry this should have happened, but you’ve nothing to complain about now, have you? Good-night.”

And she turned quickly away, and walked towards the door.

“But I hadn’t finished!” wailed Mr. Pilkington, clutching at Wally.

Wally was in no mood to play the part of confidant. He pushed Mr. Pilkington earnestly in the chest and raced after Jill.

 

OUT in the street they faced one another in the light of a street-lamp.

Jill was pale, and she was breathing quickly, but she forced a smile.

“Well, Wally,” she said. “My career as a manager didn’t last long, did it?”

“What are you going to do?”

Jill looked down the street.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I shall have to start trying to find something.”

“But. . . .”

Jill drew him suddenly into the dark alley-way leading to the stage-door of the Gotham Theatre’s nearest neighbour: and, as she did so, a long, thin form, swathed in an overcoat and surmounted by an opera-hat, flashed past.

“I don’t think I could have gone through another meeting with Mr. Pilkington,” said Jill. “It wasn’t his fault, and he was quite justified, but what he said about Uncle Chris rather hurt.”

There was a pause. They left the alley and walked down the street.

“Where are you going now?” asked Wally.

“Forty-ninth Street. I live in a boarding-house there.”

A sudden recollection of the boarding-house at which she had lived in Atlantic City smote Wally, and it turned the scale. He had not intended to speak, but he could not help himself.

“Jill!” he cried. “It’s no good. I must say it! I want to get you out of all this. I want to take care of you. Why should you go on living this sort of life, when. . . . Why won’t you let me . . . ?”

He stopped. Even as he spoke he realised the futility of what he was saying. Jill was not a girl to be won with words.

She was looking straight in front of her. Her voice was troubled.

“Wally, you wouldn’t want me to marry you if you knew you weren’t the only man in the world that mattered to me, would you?”

“No!” he said.

For an instant, Jill could not have said whether the feeling that shot through her like the abrupt touching of a nerve was relief or disappointment. Then suddenly she realised that it was disappointment. It was absurd of her to feel disappointed, but at that moment she would have welcomed a different attitude in him. If only this problem of hers could be taken forcefully out of her hands, what a relief it would be. If only Wally, masterfully insistent, would batter down her hesitations and grab her, knock her on the head and carry her off like a caveman, care less about her happiness and concentrate on his own, what a solution it would be. . . . But then he wouldn’t be Wally. . . .

“No!” said Wally again. There had been the faintest suggestion of a doubt when he had spoken the word before, but now it shot out like a bullet. “And I’ll tell you why. I want you—and, if you married me feeling like that, it wouldn’t be you. I want Jill, the whole Jill, and nothing but Jill. I believe you wish sometimes—not often, perhaps, but when you’re feeling lonely and miserable—that I would pester and bludgeon you into marrying me. . . . What’s the matter?”

Jill had started. It was disquieting to have her thoughts read with such accuracy.

“Nothing,” she said.

“It wouldn’t be any good,” Wally went on, “because it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t keep that attitude up, and I know I should hate myself for ever having tried it. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to help you, though I know it’s no use offering to do anything. You’re a fighter, and you mean to fight your own battle. It might happen that, if I kept after you and badgered you and nagged you, one of these days, when you were feeling particularly all alone in the world and tired of fighting for yourself, you might consent to marry me. But it wouldn’t do. Much better to have you go on regarding me as a friend . . . knowing that, if ever your feelings do change, that I am right there, waiting . . .”

“You’ll meet some other girl. . . .”

“I’ve met every girl in the world! None of them will do!” The lightness came back into Wally’s voice. “I’m sorry for the poor things, but they won’t do! Take ’em away! Well, there it is. I’m not going to bother you. We’re pals! And, as a pal, may I offer you my bank-roll?”

“No!” said Jill. She smiled up at him. “I believe you would give me your coat if I asked you for it!”

Wally stopped.

“Do you want it? Here you are!”

“Wally, behave! There’s a policeman looking at you!”

“Oh, well, if you won’t! It’s a good coat, all the same.”

They turned the corner, and stopped before a brown-stone house.

“Good night,” said Wally. “Jill! I know it’s not worth mentioning, but you do understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, Wally, dear, I understand.”

“I’m round the corner, you know, waiting! And if you ever do change, all you’ve got to do is just to come to me and say ‘It’s all right!’ . . .”

Jill laughed a little shakily.

“That doesn’t sound very romantic!”

“Not sound romantic! If you can think of any three words in the language that sound more romantic, let me have them! Well, never mind how they sound, just say them, and watch the result! But you want to get to bed. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Wally.”

She passed in through the dingy door. It closed behind her, and Wally stood for some moments staring at it with a gloomy repulsion. He thought he had never seen a dingier door.

(To be concluded)

 

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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. 315b, had «Salzburg» twice; corrected to «Saltzburg» as in previous parts and as in all other versions.
Magazine, p. 317a, had an extraneous paragraph break in «vehemently. “Out».
Magazine, p. 320b, had an incomplete ellipsis (only two periods) in «finished . . .”»

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