Jill the Reckless Part 64

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 pa.s.s 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! 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 d.y.k.e's garden-party! On Long Island!"

"It isn't Mrs. Stuyvesant van d.y.k.e 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 ma.s.sacred 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.

II

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 princ.i.p.als 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 princ.i.p.als had had to learn parts in exactly half the time usually given for that purpose, and the chorus, after spending five weeks a.s.similating one set of steps and groupings, had been compelled to forget them and rehea.r.s.e 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 pa.s.s-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 princ.i.p.als whose nerves had become strained by the incessant rehearsing, keeping within bounds Mr. Goble's pa.s.sion 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 gla.s.sy 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 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 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 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 dispa.s.sionately, 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. Why should people flock to pay for seats for what are practically dress-rehearsals of an unknown play? Half the princ.i.p.als 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. 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 b.u.mped 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 princ.i.p.als 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. Princ.i.p.als 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.