Jill the Reckless

P >> P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse >> Jill the Reckless

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"But why? You can't be doing this for fun, surely?"

"Fun!" A pained expression came into Freddie's face. "My idea of fun
isn't anything in which jolly old Miller, the bird with the snowy
hair, is permitted to mix. Something tells me that that lad is going
to make it his life-work picking on me. No, I didn't do this for fun.
I had a talk with Wally Mason the night before last, and he seemed to
think that being in the chorus wasn't the sort of thing you ought to
be doing, so I thought it over and decided that I ought to join the
troupe too. Then I could always be on the spot, don't you know, if
there was any trouble. I mean to say, I'm not much of a chap and all
that sort of thing, but still I might come in handy one of these
times. Keep a fatherly eye on you, don't you know, and what not!"

Jill was touched. "You're a dear, Freddie!"

"I thought, don't you know, it would make poor old Derek a bit easier
in his mind."

Jill froze.

"I don't want to talk about Derek, Freddie, please."

"Oh, I know what you must be feeling. Pretty sick, I'll bet, what? But
if you could see him now...."

"I don't want to talk about him!"

"He's pretty cut up, you know. Regrets bitterly and all that sort of
thing. He wants you to come back again."

"I see! He sent you to fetch me?"

"That was more or less the idea."

"It's a shame that you had all the trouble. You can get messenger-boys
to go anywhere and do anything nowadays. Derek ought to have thought
of that."

Freddie looked at her doubtfully.

"You're spoofing, aren't you? I mean to say, you wouldn't have liked
that!"

"I shouldn't have disliked it any more than his sending you."

"Oh, but I wanted to pop over. Keen to see America and so forth."

Jill looked past him at the gloomy stage. Her face was set, and her
eyes sombre.

"Can't you understand, Freddie? You've known me a long time. I should
have thought that you would have found out by now that I have a
certain amount of pride. If Derek wanted me back, there was only one
thing for him to do--come over and find me himself."

"Rummy! That's what Mason said, when I told him. You two don't realize
how dashed busy Derek is these days."

"Busy!"

Something in her face seemed to tell Freddie that he was not saying
the right thing, but he stumbled on.

"You've no notion how busy he is. I mean to say, elections coming on
and so forth. He daren't stir from the metrop."

"Of course I couldn't expect him to do anything that might interfere
with his career, could I?"

"Absolutely not. I knew you would see it!" said Freddie, charmed at
her reasonableness. All rot, what you read about women being
unreasonable. "Then I take it it's all right, eh?"

"All right?"

"I mean you will toddle home with me at the earliest opp. and make
poor old Derek happy?"

Jill laughed discordantly.

"Poor old Derek!" she echoed. "He has been badly treated, hasn't he?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that," said Freddie doubtfully. "You see, coming
down to it, the thing was more or less his fault, what?"

"More or less!"

"I mean to say...."

"More or less!"

Freddie glanced at her anxiously. He was not at all sure now that he
liked the way she was looking or the tone in which she spoke. He was
not a keenly observant young man, but there did begin at this point to
seep through to his brain-centres a suspicion that all was not well.

"Let me pull myself together!" said Freddie warily to his immortal
soul. "I believe I'm getting the raspberry!" And there was silence for
a space.

The complexity of life began to weigh upon Freddie. Life was like one
of those shots at squash which seem so simple till you go to knock the
cover off the ball, when the ball sort of edges away from you and you
miss it. Life, Freddie began to perceive, was apt to have a nasty
back-spin on it. He had never had any doubt when he had started, that
the only difficult part of this expedition to America would be the
finding of Jill. Once found, he had presumed that she would be
delighted to hear his good news and would joyfully accompany him home
on the next boat. It appeared now, however, that he had been too
sanguine. Optimist as he was, he had to admit that, as far as could be
ascertained with the naked eye, the jolly old binge might be said to
have sprung a leak.

He proceeded to approach the matter from another angle.

"I say!"

"Yes?"

"You do love old Derek, don't you? I mean to say, you know what I
mean, _love_ him and all that sort of rot?"

"I don't know!"

"You don't know! Oh, I say, come now! You must _know_! Pull up your
socks, old thing.... I mean, pull yourself together! You either love a
chappie or you don't."

Jill smiled painfully.

"How nice it would be if everything were as simple and straightforward
as that. Haven't you ever heard that the dividing line between love
and hate is just a thread? Poets have said so a great number of
times."

"Oh, poets!" said Freddie, dismissing the genus with a wave of the
hand. He had been compelled to read Shakespeare and all that sort of
thing at school, but it had left him cold, and since growing to man's
estate he had rather handed the race of bards the mitten. He liked
Doss Chiderdoss' stuff in the _Sporting Times_, but beyond that he was
not much of a lad for poets.

"Can't you understand a girl in my position not being able to make up
her mind whether she loves a man or despises him?"

Freddie shook his head.

"No," he said. "It sounds dashed silly to me!"

"Then what's the good of talking?" cried Jill. "It only hurts."

"But--won't you come back to England?"

"No."

"Oh, I say! Be a sport! Take a stab at it!"

Jill laughed again--another of those grating laughs which afflicted
Freddie with a sense of foreboding and failure. Something had
undoubtedly gone wrong with the works. He began to fear that at some
point in the conversation--just where he could not say--he had been
less diplomatic than he might have been.

"You speak as if you were inviting me to a garden-party! No, I won't
take a stab at it. You've a lot to learn about women, Freddie!"

"Women _are_ rum!" conceded that perplexed ambassador.

Jill began to move away.

"Don't go!" urged Freddie.

"Why not? What's the use of talking any more? Have you ever broken an
arm or a leg, Freddie?"

"Yes," said Freddie, mystified. "As a matter of fact, my last year at
Oxford, playing soccer for the college in a friendly game, some
blighter barged into me and I came down on my wrist. But...."

"It hurt?"

"Like the deuce!"

"And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it,
and twist it, and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal?
I won't talk any more about Derek! I simply won't! I'm all smashed up
inside, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get well again, but at
least I'm going to give myself a chance. I'm working as hard as ever I
can and I'm forcing myself not to think of him. I'm in a sling,
Freddie, like your wrist, and I don't want to be prodded. I hope we
shall see a lot of each other while you're over here--you always were
the greatest dear in the world--but you mustn't mention Derek again,
and you mustn't ask me to go home. If you avoid those subjects, we'll
be as happy as possible. And now I'm going to leave you to talk to
poor Nelly. She has been hovering round for the last ten minutes,
waiting for a chance to speak to you. She worships you, you know!"

Freddie started violently.

"Oh, I say! What rot!"

Jill had gone, and he was still gaping after her, when Nelly Bryant
moved towards him--shyly, like a worshipper approaching a shrine.

"Hello, Mr. Rooke!" said Nelly.

"Hullo-ullo-ullo!" said Freddie.

Nelly fixed her large eyes on his face. A fleeting impression passed
through Freddie's mind that she was looking unusually pretty this
morning: nor was the impression unjustified. Nelly was wearing for the
first time a Spring suit which was the outcome of hours of painful
selection among the wares of a dozen different stores, and the
knowledge that the suit was just right seemed to glow from her like an
inner light. She felt happy, and her happiness had lent an unwonted
colour to her face and a soft brightness to her eyes.

"How nice it is, your being here!"

Freddie waited for the inevitable question, the question with which
Jill had opened their conversation; but it did not come. He was
surprised, but relieved. He hated long explanations, and he was very
doubtful whether loyalty to Jill could allow him to give them to
Nelly. His reason for being where he was had to do so intimately with
Jill's most private affairs. A wave of gratitude to Nelly swept
through him when he realized that she was either incurious or else too
delicate-minded to show inquisitiveness.

As a matter of fact, it was delicacy that kept Nelly silent. Seeing
Freddie here at the theatre, she had, as is not uncommon with fallible
mortals, put two and two together and made the answer four when it
was not four at all. She had been deceived by circumstantial evidence.
Jill, whom she had left in England wealthy and secure, she had met
again in New York penniless as the result of some Stock Exchange
cataclysm in which, she remembered with the vagueness with which one
recalls once-heard pieces of information, Freddie Rooke had been
involved. True, she seemed to recollect hearing that Freddie's losses
had been comparatively slight, but his presence in the chorus of "The
Rose of America" seemed to her proof that after all they must have
been devastating. She could think of no other reason except loss of
money which could have placed Freddie in the position in which she now
found him, so she accepted it; and, with the delicacy which was innate
in her and which a hard life had never blunted, decided, directly she
saw him, to make no allusion to the disaster.

Such was Nelly's view of the matter, and sympathy gave to her manner a
kind of maternal gentleness which acted on Freddie, raw from his late
encounter with Mr. Johnson Miller and disturbed by Jill's attitude in
the matter of poor old Derek, like a healing balm. His emotions were
too chaotic for analysis, but one thing stood out clear from the
welter--the fact that he was glad to be with Nelly as he had never
been glad to be with a girl before, and found her soothing as he had
never supposed a girl could be soothing.

They talked desultorily of unimportant things, and every minute found
Freddie more convinced that Nelly was not as other girls. He felt that
he must see more of her.

"I say," he said. "When this binge is over ... when the rehearsal
finishes, you know, how about a bite to eat?"

"I should love it. I generally go to the Automat."

"The how-much? Never heard of it."

"In Times Square. It's cheap, you know."

"I was thinking of the Cosmopolis."

"But that's so expensive."

"Oh, I don't know. Much the same as any of the other places, isn't
it?"

Nelly's manner became more motherly than ever. She bent forward and
touched his arm affectionately.

"You haven't to keep up any front with me," she said gently. "I don't
care whether you're rich or poor or what. I mean, of course I'm
awfully sorry you've lost your money, but it makes it all the easier
for us to be real pals, don't you think so?"

"Lost my money?"

"Well, I know you wouldn't be here if you hadn't. I wasn't going to
say anything about it, but, when you talked of the Cosmopolis, I just
had to. You lost your money in the same thing Jill Mariner lost hers,
didn't you? I was sure you had, the moment I saw you here. Who cares?
Money isn't everything!"

Astonishment kept Freddie silent for an instant: after that he
refrained from explanations of his own free will. He accepted the
situation and rejoiced in it. Like many other wealthy and modest young
men, he had always had a sneaking suspicion at the back of his mind
that any girl who was decently civil to him was so from mixed
motives--or, more likely, motives that were not even mixed. Well, dash
it, here was a girl who seemed to like him although under the
impression that he was broke to the wide. It was an intoxicating
experience. It made him feel a better chap. It fortified his
self-respect.

"You know," he said, stammering a little, for he found a sudden
difficulty in controlling his voice. "You're a dashed good sort!"

"I'm awfully glad you think so."

There was a silence--as far, at least, as he and she were concerned.
In the outer world, beyond the piece of scenery under whose shelter
they stood, stirring things, loud and exciting things, seemed to be
happening. Some sort of an argument appeared to be in progress. The
rasping voice of Mr. Goble was making itself heard from the unseen
auditorium. These things they sensed vaguely, but they were too
occupied with each other to ascertain details.

"What was the name of that place again?" asked Freddie. "The
what-ho-something?"

"The Automat?"

"That's the little chap! We'll go there, shall we?"

"The food's quite good. You go and help yourself out of slot-machines,
you know."

"My favourite indoor sport!" said Freddie with enthusiasm. "Hullo!
What's up? It sounds as if there were dirty work at the cross-roads!"

The voice of the assistant stage-manager was calling, sharply excited,
agitation in every syllable.

"All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please! Mr. Goble wants
all the chorus-gentlemen on the stage!"

"Well, cheerio for the present," said Freddie. "I suppose I'd better
look into this."

He made his way on to the stage.

III

There is an insidious something about the atmosphere of a rehearsal of
a musical play which saps the finer feelings of those connected with
it. Softened by the gentle beauty of the Spring weather, Mr. Goble had
come to the Gotham Theatre that morning in an excellent temper, firmly
intending to remain in an excellent temper all day. Five minutes of
"The Rose of America" had sent him back to the normal; and at ten
minutes past eleven he was chewing his cigar and glowering at the
stage with all the sweetness gone from his soul. When Wally Mason
arrived at a quarter past eleven and dropped into the seat beside him,
the manager received him with a grunt and even omitted to offer him a
cigar. And when a New York theatrical manager does that, it is a
certain sign that his mood is of the worst.

One may find excuses for Mr. Goble. "The Rose of America" would have
tested the equanimity of a far more amiable man: and on Mr. Goble what
Otis Pilkington had called its delicate whimsicality jarred
profoundly. He had been brought up in the lower-browed school of
musical comedy, where you shelved the plot after the opening number
and filled in the rest of the evening by bringing on the girls in a
variety of exotic costumes, with some good vaudeville specialists to
get the laughs. Mr. Goble's idea of a musical piece was something
embracing trained seals, acrobats, and two or three teams of skilled
buck-and-wing dancers, with nothing on the stage, from a tree to a
lamp-shade, which could not suddenly turn into a chorus-girl. The
austere legitimateness of "The Rose of America" gave him a pain in the
neck. He loathed plot, and "The Rose of America" was all plot.

Why, then, had the earthy Mr. Goble consented to associate himself
with the production of this intellectual play? Because he was subject,
like all other New York managers, to intermittent spasms of the idea
that the time is ripe for a revival of comic opera. Sometimes,
lunching in his favourite corner in the Cosmopolis grill-room, he
would lean across the table and beg some other manager to take it from
him that the time was ripe for a revival of comic opera--or, more
cautiously, that pretty soon the time was going to be ripe for a
revival of comic opera. And the other manager would nod his head and
thoughtfully stroke his three chins and admit that, sure as God made
little apples, the time was darned soon going to be ripe for a revival
of comic opera. And then they would stuff themselves with rich food
and light big cigars and brood meditatively.

With most managers these spasms, which may be compared to twinges of
conscience, pass as quickly as they come, and they go back to coining
money with rowdy musical comedies, quite contented. But Otis
Pilkington, happening along with the script of "The Rose of America"
and the cash to back it, had caught Mr. Goble in the full grip of an
attack, and all the arrangements had been made before the latter
emerged from the influence. He now regretted his rash act.

"Say, listen," he said to Wally, his gaze on the stage, his words
proceeding from the corner of his mouth, "you've got to stick around
with this show after it opens on the road. We'll talk terms later. But
we've got to get it right, don't care what it costs. See?"

"You think it will need fixing?"

Mr. Goble scowled at the unconscious artists, who were now going
through a particularly arid stretch of dialogue.

"Fixing! It's all wrong! It don't add up right! You'll have to rewrite
it from end to end."

"Well, I've got some idea about it. I saw it played by amateurs last
summer, you know. I could make a quick job of it, if you want me to.
But will the author stand for it?"

Mr. Goble allowed a belligerent eye to stray from the stage, and
twisted it round in Wally's direction.

"Say, listen! He'll stand for anything I say. I'm the little guy that
gives orders round here. I'm the big noise!"

As if in support of this statement he suddenly emitted a terrific
bellow. The effect was magical. The refined and painstaking artists on
the stage stopped as if they had been shot. The assistant
stage-director bent sedulously over the footlights, which had now been
turned up, shading his eyes with the prompt script.

"Take that over again!" shouted Mr. Goble. "Yes, that speech about
life being like a water-melon. It don't sound to me as though it meant
anything." He cocked his cigar at an angle, and listened fiercely. He
clapped his hands. The action stopped again. "Cut it!" said Mr. Goble
tersely.

"Cut the speech, Mr. Goble?" queried the obsequious assistant
stage-director.

"Yes. Cut it. It don't mean nothing!"

Down the aisle, springing from a seat at the back, shimmered Mr.
Pilkington, wounded to the quick.

"Mr. Goble! Mr. Goble!"

"Well?"

"That is the best epigram in the play."

"The best what?"

"Epigram. The best epigram in the play."

Mr. Goble knocked the ash off his cigar. "The public don't want
epigrams. The public don't like epigrams. I've been in the show
business fifteen years, and I'm telling you! Epigrams give them a pain
under the vest. All right, get on."

Mr. Pilkington fluttered agitatedly. This was his first experience of
Mr. Goble in the capacity of stage-director. It was the latter's
custom to leave the early rehearsals of the pieces with which he was
connected to a subordinate producer, who did what Mr. Goble called the
breaking-in. This accomplished, he would appear in person, undo most
of the other's work, make cuts, tell the actors how to read their
lines, and generally enjoy himself. Producing plays was Mr. Goble's
hobby. He imagined himself to have a genius in that direction, and it
was useless to try to induce him to alter any decision to which he
might have come. He regarded those who did not agree with him with the
lofty contempt of an Eastern despot.

Of this Mr. Pilkington was not yet aware.

"But, Mr. Goble ...!"

The potentate swung irritably round on him.

"What is it? What _is_ it? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"That epigram...."

"It's out!"

"But ...!"

"It's out!"

"Surely," protested Mr. Pilkington almost tearfully, "I have a
voice...."

"Sure you have a voice," retorted Mr. Goble, "and you can use it any
old place you want, except in my theatre. Have all the voice you like!
Go round the corner and talk to yourself! Sing in your bath! But don't
come using it here, because I'm the little guy that does all the
talking in this theatre! That fellow makes me tired," he added
complainingly to Wally, as Mr. Pilkington withdrew like a foiled
python. "He don't know nothing about the show business, and he keeps
butting in and making fool suggestions. He ought to be darned glad
he's getting his first play produced and not trying to teach me how to
direct it." He clapped his hands imperiously. The assistant
stage-manager bent over the footlights. "What was that that guy said?
Lord Finchley's last speech. Take it again."

The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English
character actor who specialized in London "nuts," raised his eyebrows,
annoyed. Like Mr. Pilkington, he had never before come into contact
with Mr. Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver
methods of his native land, he was finding the experience trying. He
had not yet recovered from the agony of having that water-melon line
cut out of his part. It was the only good line, he considered, that he
had. Any line that is cut out of an actor's part is always the only
good line he has.

"The speech about Omar Khayyam?" he enquired with suppressed
irritation.

"I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It's Omar _of_
Khayyam."

"I think you will find that Omar Khayyam is the--ah--generally
accepted version of the poet's name," said the portrayer of Lord
Finchley adding beneath his breath. "You silly ass!"

"You say Omar _of_ Khayyam," bellowed Mr. Goble. "Who's running this
show, anyway?"

"Just as you please."

Mr. Goble turned to Wally.

"These actors...." he began, when Mr. Pilkington appeared again at his
elbow.

"Mr. Goble! Mr. Goble!"

"What is it _now_?"

"Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet. His _name_ was Khayyam."

"That wasn't the way _I_ heard it," said Mr. Goble doggedly. "Did
_you_?" he enquired of Wally. "I thought he was born at Khayyam."

"You're probably quite right," said Wally, "but, if so, everybody else
has been wrong for a good many years. It's usually supposed that the
gentleman's name was Omar Khayyam. Khayyam, Omar J. Born A.D. 1050,
educated privately and at Bagdad University. Represented Persia in the
Olympic Games of 1072, winning the sitting high-jump and the
egg-and-spoon race. The Khayyams were quite a well-known family in
Bagdad, and there was a lot of talk when Omar, who was Mrs. Khayyam's
pet son, took to drink and writing poetry. They had had it all fixed
for him to go into his father's date business."

Mr. Goble was impressed. He had a respect for Wally's opinion, for
Wally had written "Follow the Girl" and look what a knock-out that had
been. He stopped the rehearsal again.

"Go back to that Khayyam speech!" he said interrupting Lord Finchley
in mid-sentence.

The actor whispered a hearty English oath beneath his breath. He had
been up late last night, and, in spite of the fair weather, he was
feeling a trifle on edge.

"' In the words of Omar of Khayyam'...."

Mr. Goble clapped his hands.

"Cut that 'of,'" he said. "The show's too long, anyway."

And, having handled a delicate matter in masterly fashion, he leaned
back in his chair and chewed the end off another cigar.

For some minutes after this the rehearsal proceeded smoothly. If Mr.
Goble did not enjoy the play, at least he made no criticisms except to
Wally. To him he enlarged from time to time on the pain which "The
Rose of America" caused him.

"How I ever came to put on junk like this beats me," confessed Mr.
Goble frankly.

"You probably saw that there was a good idea at the back of it,"
suggested Wally. "There is, you know. Properly handled, it's an idea
that could be made into a success."

"What would you do with it?"

"Oh, a lot of things," said Wally warily. In his younger and callower
days he had sometimes been rash enough to scatter views on the
reconstruction of plays broadcast, to find them gratefully absorbed
and acted upon and treated as a friendly gift. His affection for Mr.
Goble was not so overpowering as to cause him to give him ideas for
nothing now.

"Any time you want me to fix it for you, I'll come along. About one
and a half per cent of the gross would meet the case, I think."

Mr. Goble faced him, registering the utmost astonishment and horror.

"One and a half per cent for fixing a show like this? Why, darn it,
there's hardly anything to do to it! It's--it's _in_!"

"You called it junk just now."

"Well, all I meant was that it wasn't the sort of thing I cared for
myself. The public will eat it. Take it from me, the time is just
about ripe for a revival of comic opera."

"This one will want all the reviving you can give it. Better use a
pulmotor."

"But that long boob, that Pilkington ... he would never stand for my
handing you one and a half per cent."

"I thought _you_ were the little guy who arranged things round here."

"But he's got money in the show."

"Well, if he wants to get any out, he'd better call in somebody to
rewrite it. You don't have to engage me if you don't want to. But I
know I could make a good job of it. There's just one little twist the
thing needs and you would have quite a different piece."

"What's that?" enquired Mr. Goble casually.

"Oh, just a little ... what shall I say? ... a little touch of
what-d'you-call-it and a bit of thingummy. You know the sort of thing!
That's all it wants."

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