Books: Jill the Reckless)

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"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."

The head carpenter abandoned the silent policy of a lifetime. He felt
impelled to utter. He was a man who, when not at the theatre, spent
most of his time in bed, reading all-fiction magazines: but it so
happened that once, last summer, he had actually seen the sky; and he
considered that this entitled him to speak almost as a specialist on
the subject.

"The sky _is_ blue!" he observed huskily. "Yessir! I seen it!"

He passed into the silence again, and, to prevent a further lapse,
stopped up his mouth with a piece of chewing-gum.

Mr Goble regarded the silver-tongued orator wrathfully. He was not
accustomed to chatter-boxes arguing with him like this. 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 favor.
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 re-arrangement 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 enquire
which of his female chorus could be most easily spared. And, as the
Duchess had a habit of carrying her haughty languor onto the stage
and employing it as a substitute for the chorea which was Mr.
Miller's ideal, the dancer-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
battle-field 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 tonight."

"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 tonight, unless you like to give one without a chorus."

"Are you crazy!"

"Perhaps. But we're quite unanimous."

Mr Goble, like most theatrical managers, was not good at words of
over two syllables.

"You're what?"

"We've talked it over, and we've all decided to do what I said."

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 toward 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 twice in a single
evening, a thing which had not happened to him since the night three
years ago, when, sinking wearily onto 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.

4.

To Mr Goble, fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson
Miller. The dance-director was always edgey on first nights, and
during the foregoing conversation had been flitting about the stage
like a white-haired moth. 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
endeavored 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, civilization'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. A blank look came into
his face.

"Why?" he enquired.

The stage director, with a nod of the head intended to imply that he
must be patient and all would come right in the future, recovered the
paper, and scribbled another sentence. Mr Miller perused it.

"Because Mae D'Arcy has got her notice?" he queried, amazed. "But the
girl can't dance a step."

The stage director, by means of a wave of the hand, a lifting of both
eyebrows, and a wrinkling of the nose, replied that the situation,
unreasonable as it might appear to the thinking man, was as he had
stated and must be faced. What, he enquired--through the medium of a
clever drooping of the mouth and a shrug of the shoulders--was to be
done about it?

Mr Miller remained for a moment in meditation.

"I'll go and talk to them," he said.

He flitted off, and the stage director leaned back against the
asbestos curtain. He was exhausted, and his throat was in agony, but
nevertheless he was conscious of a feeling of quiet happiness. His
life had been lived in the shadow of the constant fear that some day
Mr Goble might dismiss him. Should that disaster occur, he felt,
there was always a future for him in the movies.

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
musician's bolthole to ascertain what was causing the delay.

"What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?" enquired 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."

"Should I speak to Mr Goble?" queried Mr Saltzburg doubtfully.

"Yes, if you don't value your life," returned the stage director.

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 coattails
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 tonight?" 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 tonight 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
down-trodden 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, if you don't mind my quoting
Pollyanna for a moment. I hope it chokes him!"

"You'd better not let him hear you talking like that!"

"An 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 armor, because I don't. I propose to speak
my mind to him. I would beard him in his lair, if he had a beard.
Well, I'll clean-shave him in his lair. That will be just as good.
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!" He winced at a painful
memory. "Miss Trevor stole my baton, and then they all lined up and
sang the 'Star-Spangled Banner'!"

"Not the words?" cried Wally incredulously. "Don't tell me they knew
the words!"

"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 realizes the
impotence of words, dashed off for his favorite 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
tomorrow!"

"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 lot?"

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 gayly-colored
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?"

Mr Goble, giving a creditable imitation of a living statue, was
plucked from his thoughts by a hand upon his arm. It was Mr Miller,
whose unfortunate ailment had prevented him from keeping abreast of
the conversation.

"What did he say?" enquired Mr Miller, interested. "I didn't hear
what he said!"

Mr Goble made no effort to inform him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1.

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

Clothing . . . 187.45

At this Otis Pilkington uttered a stifled cry, so sharp and so
anguished that an old lady in the next seat, who was drinking a glass
of milk, dropped it and had to refund the railway company thirty-five
cents for breakages. For the remainder of the journey she sat with
one eye warily on Mr Pilkington, waiting for his next move.

This misadventure quieted Otis Pilkington down, if it did not soothe
him. He returned blushingly to a perusal of his bill of costs, nearly
every line of which contained some item that infuriated and dismayed
him. "Shoes" ($213.50) he could understand, but what on earth was
"Academy. Rehl. $105.50"? What was "Cuts . . . $15"? And what in the
name of everything infernal was this item for "Frames," in which
mysterious luxury he had apparently indulged to the extent of
ninety-four dollars and fifty cents? "Props" occurred on the list no
fewer than seventeen times. Whatever his future, at whatever
poor-house he might spend his declining years, he was supplied with
enough props to last his lifetime.

Otis Pilkington stared blankly at the scenery that fitted past the
train winds. (Scenery! There had been two charges for scenery!
"Friedmann, Samuel . . . Scenery . . . $3711" and "Unitt and Wickes
. . . Scenery . . . $2120"). He was suffering the torments of the
ruined gamester at the roulette-table. Thirty-two thousand eight
hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents! And he was out of
pocket ten thousand in addition from the check he had handed over two
days ago to Uncle Chris as his share of the investment of starting
Jill in the motion-pictures. It was terrible! It deprived one of the
power of thought.

The power of thought, however, returned to Mr Pilkington almost
immediately: for, remembering suddenly that Roland Trevis had assured
him that no musical production, except one of those elaborate
girl-shows with a chorus of ninety, could possibly cost more than
fifteen thousand dollars at an outside figure, he began to think
about Roland Trevis, and continued to think about him until the train
pulled into the Pennsylvania Station.

For a week or more the stricken financier confined himself mostly to
his rooms, where he sat smoking cigarettes, gazing at Japanese
prints, and trying not to think about "props" and "rehl." Then,
gradually, the almost maternal yearning to see his brain-child once
more, which can never be wholly crushed out of a young dramatist,
returned to him--faintly at first, then getting stronger by degrees
till it could no longer be resisted. 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 suitcase, took a cab to the Grand Central Station
and caught an afternoon train for Rochester, where his recollection
of the route planned for the tour told him "The Rose of America"
would now be playing.

Looking into his club on the way, to cash a check, 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.

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