Books: Jill the Reckless)

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"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 with "frames" and "rehl" in front of them!
He staggered into the station.

"Hey!" cried the taxi-driver.

Otis Pilkington turned.

"Sixty-five cents, mister, if you please! Forgetting I'm not your
private shovoor, wasn't you?"

Mr Pilkington gave him a dollar. Money--money! Life was just one long
round of paying out and paying out.

2.

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 meager first-night house at Rochester had
given the piece a cold reception, which had put the finishing touches
to the depression of the company in spite of the fact that the
Rochester critics, like those of Baltimore, had written kindly of the
play. One of the maxims of the theatre is that "out-of-town notices
don't count," and the company had refused to be cheered by them.

It is to be doubted, however, if even crowded houses would have
aroused much response from the principals and chorus of "The Rose of
America." For two weeks without a break they had been working under
forced draught, and they were weary in body and spirit. The new
principals had had to learn parts in exactly half the time usually
given for that purpose, and the chorus, after spending five weeks
assimilating one set of steps and groupings, had been compelled to
forget them and rehearse an entirely new set. From the morning after
the first performance at Atlantic City, they had not left the theatre
except for sketchy half-hour meals.

Jill, standing listlessly in the wings while the scene-shifters
arranged the second act set, was aware of Wally approaching from the
direction of the pass-door.

"Miss Mariner, I believe?" said Wally. "I suppose you know you look
perfectly wonderful in that dress? All Rochester's talking about it,
and there is some idea of running excursion trains from Troy and
Utica. A great stir it has made!"

Jill smiled. Wally was like a tonic to her during these days of
overwork. He seemed to be entirely unaffected by the general
depression, a fact which he attributed himself to the happy accident
of being in a position to sit back and watch the others toil. But in
reality Jill knew that he was working as hard as any one. He was
working all the time, changing scenes, adding lines, tinkering with
lyrics, smoothing over principals whose nerves had become strained by
the incessant rehearsing, keeping within bounds Mr Goble's passion
for being the big noise about the theatre. His cheerfulness was due
to the spirit that was in him, and Jill appreciated it. She had come
to feel very close to Wally since the driving rush of making over
"The Rose of America" had begun.

"They seemed quite calm tonight," 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 tonight.
The sum was so small that he had to whisper it."

"I'm afraid the piece isn't a success."

"Nonsense! Of course it is! We're doing fine. That brings me to
section (b) of my discourse. I met poor old Pilkington in the lobby,
and he said exactly what you have just said, only at greater length."

"Is Mr Pilkington here?"

"He appears to have run down on the afternoon train to have a look at
the show. He is catching the next train back to New York! Whenever I
meet him, he always seems to be dashing off to catch the next train
back to New York! Poor chap! Have you ever done a murder? If you
haven't, don't! I know exactly what it feels like, and it feels
rotten! After two minutes conversation with Pilkington, I could
sympathize with Macbeth when he chatted with Banquo. He said I had
killed his play. He nearly wept, and he drew such a moving picture of
a poor helpless musical fantasy being lured into a dark alley by
thugs and there slaughtered that he almost had me in tears too. I
felt like a beetle-browed brute with a dripping knife and hands
imbrued with innocent gore."

"Poor Mr Pilkington!"

"Once more you say exactly what he said, only more crisply. I
comforted him as well as I could, told him all 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 tonight,
except to bid him look out to the horizon where the sun will shortly
shine. In other words, I told him that business was about to buck up
and that later on he would be going about the place with a sprained
wrist from clipping coupons. But he refused to be cheered, cursed me
some more for ruining his piece, and ended by begging me to buy his
share of it cheap."

"You aren't going to?"

"No, I am not--but simply and solely for the reason that, after that
fiasco in London, I raised my right hand--thus--and swore an oath
that never, as long as I lived, would I again put up a cent for a
production, were it the most obvious cinch on earth. I'm gun-shy. But
if he does happen to get hold of any one with a sporting disposition
and a few thousands to invest, that person will make a fortune. This
piece is going to be a gold-mine."

Jill looked at him in surprise. With anybody else but Wally she would
have attributed this confidence to author's vanity. But with Wally,
she felt, the fact that the piece, as played now, was almost entirely
his own work did not count. He viewed it dispassionately, and she
could not understand why, in the face of half-empty houses, he should
have such faith in it.

"But what makes you think so? We've been doing awfully badly so far."

Wally nodded.

"And we shall do awfully badly in Syracuse the last half of this
week. And why? For one thing, because the show isn't a show at all at
present. That's what you can't get these fatheads like Goble to
understand. All they go by is the box-office. Why should people flock
to pay for seats for what are practically dress rehearsals of an
unknown play? Half the principals have had to get up in their parts
in two weeks, and they haven't had time to get anything out of them.
They are groping for their lines all the time. The girls can't let
themselves go in the numbers, because they are wondering if they are
going to remember the steps. The show hasn't had time to click
together yet. It's just ragged. Take a look at it in another two
weeks! I _know!_ I don't say musical comedy is a very lofty form of
art, but still there's a certain amount of science about it. If you
go in for it long enough, you learn the tricks, and take it from me
that if you have a good cast and some catchy numbers, it's almost
impossible not to have a success. We've got an excellent cast now,
and the numbers are fine. 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. Detroit will take
anything. So will Washington. Whereas Cincinnati wants something very
special. Where have we been? Atlantic City, Baltimore, and here.
Atlantic City is a great place to play in the summer and for a couple
of weeks round about Easter. Also at Christmas. But for the rest of
the year, no. Too many new shows are tried out there. It makes the
inhabitants wary. Baltimore is good for a piece with a New York
reputation, but they don't want new pieces. Rochester and Syracuse
are always bad. 'Follow the Girl' died a hideous death in Rochester,
and it went on and played two years in New York and one in London. I
tell you--as I tried to tell Pilkington, only he wouldn't
listen--that this show is all right. There's a fortune in it for
somebody. But I suppose Pilkington is now sitting in the smoking-car
of an east-bound train, trying to get the porter to accept his share
in the piece instead of a tip!"

If Otis Pilkington was not actually doing that, he was doing
something like it. Sunk in gloom, he bumped up and down on an
uncomfortable seat, wondering why he had ever taken the trouble to
make the trip to Rochester. He had found exactly what he had expected
to find, a mangled caricature of his brain-child playing to a house
half empty and wholly indifferent. The only redeeming feature, he
thought vindictively, as he remembered what Roland Trevis had said
about the cost of musical productions, was the fact that the new
numbers were undoubtedly better than those which his collaborator had
originally supplied.

And "The Rose of America," after a disheartening Wednesday matinee
and a not much better reception on the Wednesday night, packed its
baggage and moved to Syracuse, where it failed just as badly. Then
for another two weeks it wandered on from one small town to another,
up and down New York State and through the doldrums of Connecticut,
tacking to and fro like a storm-battered ship, till finally the
astute and discerning citizens of Hartford welcomed it with such a
reception that hardened principals stared at each other in a wild
surmise, wondering if these things could really be: and a weary
chorus forgot its weariness and gave encore after encore with a snap
and vim which even Mr Johnson Miller was obliged to own approximated
to something like it. Nothing to touch the work of his choruses of
the old days, of course, but nevertheless fair, quite fair.

The spirits of the company revived. Optimism reigned. Principals
smiled happily and said they had believed in the thing all along. The
ladies and gentlemen of the ensemble chattered contentedly of a
year's run in New York. And the citizens of Hartford fought for
seats, and, if they could not get seats, stood up at the back.

Of these things Otis Pilkington was not aware. He had sold his
interest in the piece two weeks ago for ten thousand dollars to a
lawyer acting for some client unknown, and was glad to feel that he
had saved something out of the wreck.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1.

The violins soared to one last high note: the bassoon uttered a final
moan: the pensive person at the end of the orchestra-pit, just under
Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's box, whose duty it was to slam the drum at
stated intervals, gave that much-enduring instrument a concluding
wallop; and, laying aside his weapons, allowed his thoughts to stray
in the direction of cooling drinks. Mr Saltzburg lowered the baton
which he had stretched quivering towards the roof and sat down and
mopped his forehead. 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. There
was a general babble of conversation. Here, a composer who had not
got an interpolated number in the show was explaining to another
composer who had not got an interpolated number in the show the exact
source from which a third composer who had got an interpolated number
in the show had stolen the number which he had got interpolated.
There, two musical comedy artistes who were temporarily resting were
agreeing that the prima donna was a dear thing but that, contrary as
it was to their life-long policy to knock anybody, they must say that
she was beginning to show the passage of the years a trifle and ought
to be warned by some friend that her career as an ingenue was a thing
of the past. Dramatic critics, slinking in twos and threes into dark
corners, were telling each other that "The Rose of America" was just
another of those things but it had apparently got over. The general
public was of the opinion that it was a knock-out.

"Otie darling," said Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim, leaning her ample
shoulder on Uncle Chris' 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. There had been other dark moments
in Freddie's life. Once, back in London, Parker had sent him out into
the heart of the West End without his spats and he had not discovered
their absence till he was half-way up Bond Street. On another
occasion, having taken on a stranger at squash for a quid a game, he
had discovered too late that the latter was an ex-public-school
champion. He had felt gloomy when he had learned of the breaking-off
of the engagement between Jill Mariner and Derek Underhill, and sad
when it had been brought to his notice that London was giving Derek
the cold shoulder in consequence. But 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 rewritten!
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 agonized 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, and he was feeling like the man who
parts for a song with shares in an apparently goldless gold mine,
only to read in the papers next morning that a new reef has been
located. Into each life some rain must fall. Quite a shower was
falling now into young Mr. Pilkington's.

"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 tonight 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 upbringing 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 onto 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. It struck her from time to time that darling Otie was perhaps
a shade unresponsive, but she put this down to the nervous strain
inseparable from a first night of a young author's first play.

"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. No doubt many of the people down here have friends in
the company or other reasons for seeming to enjoy the play, but look
how the circle and the gallery were enjoying it! You can't tell me
that that was not genuine. They love it. How hard," she proceeded
commiseratingly, "you must have worked, poor boy, during the tour on
the road to improve the piece so much! I never liked to say so
before, but even you must agree with me now that that original
version of yours, which was done down at Newport, was the most
terrible nonsense! 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 tomorrow 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 victimized?

"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 the 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 this 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 boob, 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 now by his
weight of cares to resent the "we," which had plainly come to stay.
He was trying to estimate the size of the gash which this
preposterous entertainment would cleave in the Pilkington bank-roll.
He doubted if it was possible to go through with it under five
hundred dollars; and, if, as seemed only too probable, Mrs Peagrim
took the matter in hand and gave herself her head, it might get into
four figures.

"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?"

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