Books: Jill the Reckless)
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Jill the Reckless)
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"Won't you take a seat, Miss . . ."
"Mariner," prompted Jill. "Thank you."
"Miss Mariner. May I introduce Mr Roland Trevis?"
The man at the piano bowed. His black hair heaved upon his skull like
seaweed in a ground swell.
"My name is Pilkington. Otis Pilkington."
The uncomfortable silence which always follows introductions was
broken by the sound of the telephone-bell on the desk. Otis
Pilkington, who had moved out into the room and was nowhere near the
desk, stretched forth a preposterous arm and removed the receiver.
"Yes? Oh, will you say, please, that I have a conference at present."
Jill was to learn that people in the theatrical business never
talked: they always held conferences. "Tell Mrs Peagrim that I shall
be calling later in the afternoon, but cannot be spared just now." He
replaced the receiver. "Aunt Olive's secretary," he murmured in a
soft aside to Mr Trevis. "Aunt Olive wanted me to go for a ride." He
turned to Jill. "Excuse me. Is there anything I can do for you, Miss
Mariner?"
Jill's composure was now completely restored. This interview was
turning out so totally different from anything she had expected. The
atmosphere was cosy and social. She felt as if she were back in
Ovington Square, giving tea to Freddie Rooke and Ronny Devereux and
the rest of her friends of the London period. All that was needed to
complete the picture was a tea-table in front of her. The business
note hardly intruded on the proceedings at all. Still, as business
was the object of her visit, she felt that she had better approach
it.
"I came for work."
"Work!" cried Mr Pilkington. He, too, appeared to be regarding the
interview as purely of a social nature.
"In the chorus," explained Jill.
Mr Pilkington seemed shocked. He winced away from the word as though
it pained him.
"There is no chorus in 'The Rose of America,'" he said.
"I thought it was a musical comedy."
Mr Pilkington winced again.
"It is a musical _fantasy!_" he said. "But there will be no chorus.
We shall have," he added, a touch of rebuke in his voice, "the
services of twelve refined ladies of the ensemble."
Jill laughed.
"It does sound much better, doesn't it!" she said. "Well, am I
refined enough, do you think?"
"I shall be only too happy if you will join us," said Mr Pilkington
promptly.
The long-haired composer looked doubtful. He struck a note up in the
treble, then whirled round on his stool.
"If you don't mind my mentioning it, Otie, we have twelve girls
already."
"Then we must have thirteen," said Otis Pilkington firmly.
"Unlucky number," argued Mr Trevis.
"I don't care. We must have Miss Mariner. You can see for yourself
that she is exactly the type we need."
He spoke feelingly. Ever since the business of engaging a company had
begun, he had been thinking wistfully of the evening when "The Rose
of America" had had its opening performance--at his aunt's house at
Newport last Summer--with an all-star cast of society favorites and
an ensemble recruited entirely from debutantes and matrons of the
Younger Set. That was the sort of company he had longed to assemble
for the piece's professional career, and until this afternoon he had
met with nothing but disappointment. Jill seemed to be the only girl
in theatrical New York who came up to the standard he would have
liked to demand.
"Thank you very much," said Jill.
There was another pause. The social note crept into the atmosphere
again. Jill felt the hostess' desire to keep conversation
circulating.
"I hear," she said, "that this piece is a sort of Gilbert and
Sullivan opera."
Mr Pilkington considered the point.
"I confess," he said, "that, in writing the book, I had Gilbert
before me as a model. Whether I have in any sense succeeded in . . ."
"The book," said Mr Trevis, running his fingers over the piano, "is
as good as anything Gilbert ever wrote."
"Oh come, Rolie!" protested Mr Pilkington modestly.
"Better," insisted Mr Trevis. "For one thing, it is up-to-date."
"I _do_ try to strike the modern tone," murmured Mr Pilkington.
"And you have avoided Gilbert's mistake of being too fanciful."
"He was fanciful," admitted Mr Pilkington. "The music," he added, in
a generous spirit of give and take, "has all Sullivan's melody with a
newness of rhythm peculiarly its own. You will like the music."
"It sounds," said Jill amiably, "as though the piece is bound to be a
tremendous success."
"We hope so," said Mr Pilkington. "We feel that the time has come
when the public is beginning to demand something better than what it
has been accustomed to. People are getting tired of the brainless
trash and jingly tunes which have been given them by men like Wallace
Mason and George Bevan. They want a certain polish. . . . It was just
the same in Gilbert and Sullivan's day. They started writing at a
time when the musical stage had reached a terrible depth of inanity.
The theatre was given over to burlesques of the most idiotic
description. The public was waiting eagerly to welcome something of a
higher class. It is just the same today. But the managers will not
see it. 'The Rose of America' went up and down Broadway for months,
knocking at managers' doors."
"It should have walked in without knocking, like me," said Jill. She
got up. "Well, it was very kind of you to see me when I came in so
unceremoniously. But I felt it was no good waiting outside on that
landing. I'm so glad everything is settled. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Miss Mariner." Mr Pilkington took her outstretched hand
devoutly. "There is a rehearsal called for the ensemble at--when is
it, Rolie?"
"Eleven o'clock, day after tomorrow, at Bryant Hall."
"I'll be there," said Jill. "Good-bye, and thank you very much."
The silence which had fallen upon the room as she left it, was broken
by Mr Trevis.
"Some pip!" observed Mr Trevis.
Otis Pilkington awoke from day-dreams with a start.
"What did you say?"
"That girl . . . I said she was some pippin!"
"Miss Mariner," said Mr Pilkington icily, "is a most charming,
refined, cultured, and vivacious girl, if you mean that."
"Yes," said Mr Trevis. "That was what I meant!"
2.
Jill walked out into Forty-second Street, looking about her with the
eye of a conqueror. Very little change had taken place in the aspect
of New York since she had entered the Gotham Theatre, but it seemed a
different city to her. An hour ago, she had been a stranger, drifting
aimlessly along its rapids. Now she belonged to New York, and New
York belonged to her. She had faced it squarely, and forced from it
the means of living. She walked on with a new jauntiness in her
stride.
The address which Nelly had given her was on the east side of Fifth
Avenue. She made her way along Forty-second Street. It seemed the
jolliest, alivest street she had ever encountered. The rattle of the
Elevated as she crossed Sixth Avenue was music, and she loved the
crowds that jostled her with every step she took.
She reached the Fifth Avenue corner just as the policeman out in the
middle of the street swung his Stop-and-Go post round to allow the
up-town traffic to proceed on its way. A stream of automobiles which
had been dammed up as far as the eye could reach began to flow
swiftly past. They moved in a double line, red limousines, blue
limousines, mauve limousines, green limousines. She stood waiting for
the flood to cease, and, as she did so, there purred past her the
biggest and reddest limousine of all. It was a colossal vehicle with
a polar-bear at the steering-wheel and another at his side. And in
the interior, very much at his ease, his gaze bent courteously upon a
massive lady in a mink coat, sat Uncle Chris.
For a moment he was so near to her that, but for the closed window,
she could have touched him. Then the polar-bear at the wheel, noting
a gap in the traffic, stepped on the accelerator and slipped neatly
through. The car moved swiftly on and disappeared.
Jill drew a deep breath. The Stop-and-Go sign swung round again. She
crossed the avenue, and set out once more to find Nelly Bryant. It
occurred to her, five minutes later, that a really practical and
quick-thinking girl would have noted the number of the limousine.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1.
The rehearsals of a musical comedy--a term which embraces "musical
fantasies"--generally begin in a desultory sort of way at that
curious building, Bryant Hall, on Sixth Avenue just off Forty-second
Street. There, in a dusty, uncarpeted room, simply furnished with a
few wooden chairs and some long wooden benches, the chorus--or, in
the case of "The Rose of America," the ensemble--sit round a piano
and endeavor, with the assistance of the musical director, to get the
words and melodies of the first-act numbers into their heads. This
done, they are ready for the dance director to instil into them the
steps, the groupings, and the business for the encores, of which that
incurable optimist always seems to expect there will be at least six.
Later, the principals are injected into the numbers. And finally,
leaving Bryant Hall and dodging about from one unoccupied theatre to
another, principals and chorus rehearse together, running through the
entire piece over and over again till the opening night of the
preliminary road tour.
To Jill, in the early stages, rehearsing was just like being back at
school. She could remember her first school-mistress, whom the
musical director somewhat resembled in manner and appearance,
hammering out hymns on a piano and leading in a weak soprano an
eager, baying pack of children, each anxious from motives of pride to
out-bawl her nearest neighbor.
The proceedings began on the first morning with the entrance of Mr
Saltzburg, the musical director, a brisk, busy little man with
benevolent eyes behind big spectacles, who bustled over to the piano,
sat down, and played a loud chord, designed to act as a sort of bugle
blast, rallying the ladies of the ensemble from the corners where
they sat in groups, chatting. For the process of making one another's
acquaintance had begun some ten minutes before with mutual
recognitions between those who knew each other from having been
together in previous productions. There followed rapid introductions
of friends. Nelly Bryant had been welcomed warmly by a pretty girl
with red hair, whom she introduced to Jill as Babe: Babe had a
willowy blonde friend, named Lois: and the four of them had seated
themselves on one of the benches and opened a conversation; their
numbers being added to a moment later by a dark girl with a Southern
accent and another blonde. Elsewhere other groups had formed, and the
room was filled with a noise like the chattering of starlings. In a
body by themselves, rather forlorn and neglected, half a dozen solemn
and immaculately dressed young men were propping themselves up
against the wall and looking on, like men in a ball-room who do not
dance.
Jill listened to the conversation without taking any great part in it
herself. She felt as she had done on her first day at school, a
little shy and desirous of effacing herself. The talk dealt with
clothes, men, and the show business, in that order of importance.
Presently one of the young men sauntered diffidently across the room
and added himself to the group with the remark that it was a fine
day. He was received a little grudgingly, Jill thought, but by
degrees succeeded in assimilating himself. A second young man drifted
up; reminded the willowy girl that they had worked together in the
western company of "You're the One"; was recognized and introduced;
and justified his admission to the circle by a creditable imitation
of a cat-fight. Five minutes later he was addressing the Southern
girl as "honey," and had informed Jill that he had only joined this
show to fill in before opening on the three-a-day with the swellest
little song-and-dance act which he and a little girl who worked in
the cabaret at Geisenheimer's had fixed up.
On this scene of harmony and good-fellowship Mr Saltzburg's chord
intruded jarringly. There was a general movement, and chairs and
benches were dragged to the piano. Mr Saltzburg causing a momentary
delay by opening a large brown music-bag and digging in it like a
terrier at a rat-hole, conversation broke out again.
Mr Saltzburg emerged from the bag, with his hands full of papers,
protesting.
"Childrun! Chil-_drun!_ If you please, less noise and attend to me!"
He distributed sheets of paper. "Act One, Opening Chorus. I will play
the melody three--four times. Follow attentively. Then we will sing
it la-la-la, and after that we will sing the words. So!"
He struck the yellow-keyed piano a vicious blow, producing a tinny
and complaining sound. Bending forward with his spectacles almost
touching the music, he plodded determinedly through the tune, then
encored himself, and after that encored himself again. When he had
done this, he removed his spectacles and wiped them. There was a
pause.
"Izzy," observed the willowy young lady chattily, leaning across Jill
and addressing the Southern girl's blonde friend, "has promised me a
sunburst!"
A general stir of interest and a coming close together of heads.
"What! Izzy!"
"Sure, Izzy."
"Well!"
"He's just landed the hat-check privilege at the St Aurea!"
"You don't say!"
"He told me so last night and promised me the sunburst. He was,"
admitted the willowy girl regretfully, "a good bit tanked at the
time, but I guess he'll make good." She mused awhile, a rather
anxious expression clouding her perfect profile. She looked like a
meditative Greek Goddess. "If he doesn't," she added with maidenly
dignity, "it's the las' time _I_ go out with the big stiff. I'd tie a
can to him quicker'n look at him!"
A murmur of approval greeted this admirable sentiment.
"Childrun!" protested Mr Saltzburg. "Chil-drun! Less noise and
chatter of conversation. We are here to work! We must not waste time!
So! Act One, Opening Chorus. Now, all together. La-la-la . . ."
"La-la-la . . ."
"Tum-tum-tumty-tumty . . ."
"Tum-tum-tumty . . ."
Mr Saltzburg pressed his hands to his ears in a spasm of pain.
"No, no, no! Sour! Sour! Sour! . . . Once again. La-la-la . . ."
A round-faced girl with golden hair and the face of a wondering
cherub interrupted, speaking with a lisp.
"Mithter Thalzburg."
"Now what is it, Miss Trevor?"
"What sort of a show is this?"
"A musical show," said Mr Saltzburg severely, "and this is a
rehearsal of it, not a conversazione. Once more, please . . ."
The cherub was not to be rebuffed.
"Is the music good, Mithter Thalzburg?"
"When you have rehearsed it, you shall judge for yourself. Come, now
. . ."
"Is there anything in it as good as that waltz of yours you played us
when we were rehearthing 'Mind How You Go?' You remember. The one
that went . . ."
A tall and stately girl, with sleepy brown eyes and the air of a
duchess in the servants' hall, bent forward and took a kindly
interest in the conversation.
"Oh, have you composed a varlse, Mr Saltzburg?" she asked with
pleasant condescension. "How interesting, really! Won't you play it
for us?"
The sentiment of the meeting seemed to be unanimous in favor of
shelving work and listening to Mr Saltzburg's waltz.
"Oh, Mr Saltzburg, do!"
"Please!"
"Some one told me it was a pipterino!"
"I cert'nly do love waltzes!"
"Please, Mr Saltzburg!"
Mr Saltzburg obviously weakened. His fingers touched the keys
irresolutely.
"But, childrun!"
"I am sure it would be a great pleasure to all of us," said the
duchess graciously, "if you would play it. There is nothing I enjoy
more than a good varlse."
Mr Saltzburg capitulated. Like all musical directors he had in his
leisure moments composed the complete score of a musical play and
spent much of his time waylaying librettists on the Rialto and trying
to lure them to his apartment to listen to it, with a view to
business. The eternal tragedy of a musical director's life is
comparable only to that of the waiter who, himself fasting, has to
assist others to eat, Mr Saltzburg had lofty ideas on music, and his
soul revolted at being compelled perpetually to rehearse and direct
the inferior compositions of other men. Far less persuasion than he
had received today was usually required to induce him to play the
whole of his score.
"You wish it?" he said. "Well, then! This waltz, you will understand,
is the theme of a musical romance which I have composed. It will be
sung once in the first act by the heroine, then in the second act as
a duet for heroine and hero. I weave it into the finale of the second
act, and we have an echo of it, sung off stage, in the third act.
What I play you now is the second-act duet. The verse is longer. So!
The male voice begins."
A pleasant time was had by all for ten minutes.
"Ah, but this is not rehearsing, childrun!" cried Mr Saltzburg
remorsefully at the end of that period. "This is not business. Come
now, the opening chorus of act one, and please this time keep on the
key. Before, it was sour, sour. Come! La-la-la . . ."
"Mr Thalzburg!"
"Miss Trevor?"
"There was an awfully thweet fox-trot you used to play us. I do wish
. . ."
"Some other time, some other time! Now we must work. Come! La-la-la
. . ."
"I wish you could have heard it, girls," said the cherub regretfully.
"Honetht, it wath a lalapalootha!"
The pack broke into full cry.
"Oh, Mr Saltzburg!"
"Please, Mr Saltzburg!"
"Do play the fox-trot, Mr Saltzburg!"
"If it is as good as the varlse," said the duchess, stooping once
more to the common level, "I am sure it must be very good indeed."
She powdered her nose. "And one so rarely hears musicianly music
nowadays, does one?"
"Which fox-trot?" asked Mr Saltzburg weakly.
"Play 'em all!" decided a voice on the left.
"Yes, play 'em all," bayed the pack.
"I am sure that that would be charming," agreed the duchess,
replacing her powder-puff.
Mr Saltzburg played 'em all. This man by now seemed entirely lost to
shame. The precious minutes that belonged to his employers and should
have been earmarked for "The Rose of America" flitted by. The ladies
and gentlemen of the ensemble, who should have been absorbing and
learning to deliver the melodies of Roland Trevis and the lyrics of
Otis Pilkington, lolled back in their seats. The yellow-keyed piano
rocked beneath an unprecedented onslaught. The proceedings had begun
to resemble not so much a rehearsal as a home evening, and grateful
glances were cast at the complacent cherub. She had, it was felt,
shown tact and discretion.
Pleasant conversation began again.
". . . And I walked a couple of blocks, and there was exactly the same
model in Schwartz and Gulderstein's window at twenty-six fifty . . ."
". . . He got on at Forty-second Street, and he was kinda fresh from
the start. I could see he was carrying a package. At Sixty-sixth he
came sasshaying right down the car and said 'Hello, patootie!' Well,
I drew myself up . . ."
". . . 'Even if you are my sister's husband,' I said to him. Oh, I
suppose I got a temper. It takes a lot to arouse it, y'know, but I
c'n get pretty mad . . ."
". . . You don't know the half of it, dearie, you don't know the half
of it! A one-piece bathing suit! Well, you could call it that, but
the cop on the beach said it was more like a baby's sock. And when . . ."
". . . So I said 'Listen, Izzy, that'll be about all from you! My
father was a gentleman, though I don't suppose you know what that
means, and I'm not accustomed . . .'"
"Hey!"
A voice from the neighborhood of the door had cut into the babble
like a knife into butter; a rough, rasping voice, loud and
compelling, which caused the conversation of the members of the
ensemble to cease on the instant. Only Mr Saltzburg, now in a perfect
frenzy of musicianly fervor, continued to assault the decrepit piano,
unwitting of an unsympathetic addition to his audience.
"What I play you now is the laughing trio from my second act. It is a
building number. It is sung by tenor, principal comedian, and
soubrette. On the second refrain four girls will come out and two
boys. The girls will dance with the two men, the boys with the
soubrette. So! On the encore, four more girls and two more boys.
Third encore, solo-dance for specialty dancer, all on stage beating
time by clapping their hands. On repeat, all sing refrain once more,
and off-encore, the three principals and specialty dancer dance the
dance with entire chorus. It is a great building number, you
understand. It is enough to make the success of any musical play, but
can I get a hearing? No! If I ask managers to listen to my music,
they are busy! If I beg them to give me a libretto to set, they
laugh--ha! ha!" Mr Saltzburg gave a spirited and lifelike
representation of a manager laughing ha-ha when begged to disgorge a
libretto. "Now I play it once more!"
"Like hell you do!" said the voice. "Say, what is this, anyway? A
concert?"
Mr Saltzburg swung round on the music-stool, a startled and
apprehensive man, and nearly fell off it. The divine afflatus left
him like air oozing from a punctured toy-balloon, and, like such a
balloon, he seemed to grow suddenly limp and flat. He stared with
fallen jaw at the new arrival.
Two men had entered the room. One was the long Mr Pilkington. The
other, who looked shorter and stouter than he really was beside his
giraffe-like companion, was a thickset, fleshy man in the early
thirties with a blond, clean-shaven, double-chinned face. He had
smooth yellow hair, an unwholesome complexion, and light green eyes,
set close together. From the edge of the semi-circle about the piano,
he glared menacingly over the heads of the chorus at the unfortunate
Mr Saltzburg,
"Why aren't these girls working?"
Mr Saltzburg, who had risen nervously from his stool, backed away
apprehensively from his gaze, and, stumbling over the stool, sat down
abruptly on the piano, producing a curious noise like Futurist music.
"I--We--Why, Mr Goble . . ."
Mr Goble turned his green gaze on the concert audience, and spread
discomfort as if it were something liquid which he was spraying
through a hose. The girls who were nearest looked down flutteringly
at their shoes: those further away concealed themselves behind their
neighbors. Even the duchess, who prided herself on being the
possessor of a stare of unrivalled haughtiness, before which the
fresh quailed and those who made breaks subsided in confusion, was
unable to meet his eyes: and the willowy friend of Izzy, for all her
victories over that monarch of the hat-checks, bowed before it like a
slim tree before a blizzard.
Only Jill returned the manager's gaze. She was seated on the outer
rim of the semi-circle, and she stared frankly at Mr Goble. She had
never seen anything like him before, and he fascinated her. This
behavior on her part singled her out from the throng, and Mr Goble
concentrated his attention on her.
For some seconds he stood looking at her; then, raising a stubby
finger, he let his eye travel over the company, and seemed to be
engrossed in some sort of mathematical calculation.
"Thirteen," he said at length. "I make it thirteen." He rounded on Mr
Pilkington. "I told you we were going to have a chorus of twelve."
Mr Pilkington blushed and stumbled over his feet.
"Ah, yes . . . yes," he murmured vaguely. "Yes!"
"Well, there are thirteen here. Count 'em for yourself." He whipped
round on Jill. "What's _your_ name? Who engaged you?"
A croaking sound from the neighborhood of the ceiling indicated the
clearing of Mr Pilkington's throat.
"I--er--_I_ engaged Miss Mariner, Mr Goble."
"Oh, _you_ engaged her?"
He stared again at Jill. The inspection was long and lingering, and
affected Jill with a sense of being inadequately clothed. She
returned the gaze as defiantly as she could, but her heart was
beating fast. She had never yet beer frightened of any man, but there
was something reptilian about this fat, yellow-haired individual
which disquieted her; much as cockroaches had done in her childhood.
A momentary thought flashed through her mind that it would be
horrible to be touched by him. He looked soft and glutinous.
"All right," said Mr Goble at last, after what seemed to Jill many
minutes. He nodded to Mr Saltzburg. "Get on with it! And try working
a little this time! I don't hire you to give musical entertainments."
"Yes, Mr Goble, yes. I mean no, Mr Goble!"
"You can have the Gotham stage this afternoon," said Mr Goble. "Call
the rehearsal for two sharp."
Outside the door, he turned to Mr Pilkington.
"That was a fool trick of yours, hiring that girl. Thirteen! I'd as
soon walk under a ladder on a Friday as open in New York with a
chorus of thirteen. Well, it don't matter. We can fire one of 'em
after we've opened on the road." He mused for a moment. "Darned
pretty girl, that!" he went on meditatively. "Where did you get
her?"
"She--ah--came into the office, when you were out. She struck me as
being essentially the type we required for our ensemble, so
I--er--engaged her. She--" Mr Pilkington gulped. "She is a charming,
refined girl!"
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