Jill the Reckless

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

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The moment she and her companions entered the dressing-room, it was
made clear to them that the doom had fallen. In a chair in the corner,
all her pretence and affectation swept away in a flood of tears, sat
the unhappy Duchess, the centre of a group of girls anxious to
console, but limited in their ideas of consolation to an occasional
pat on the back and an offer of a fresh pocket-handkerchief.

"It's tough, honey!" somebody was saying as Jill came in.

Somebody else said it was fierce, and a third girl declared it to be
the limit. A fourth girl, well-meaning but less helpful than she would
have liked to be, was advising the victim not to worry.

The story of the disaster was brief and easily told. The Duchess,
sailing in at the stage-door, had paused at the letterbox to see if
Cuthbert, her faithful auto-salesman, had sent her a good-luck
telegram. He had, but his good wishes were unfortunately neutralized
by the fact that the very next letter in the box was one from the
management, crisp and to the point, informing the Duchess that her
services would not be required that night or thereafter. It was the
subtle meanness of the blow that roused the indignation of "The Rose
of America" chorus, the cunning villainy with which it had been timed.

"Poor Mae, if she'd opened to-night, they'd have had to give her two
weeks' notice or her salary. But they can fire her without a cent just
because she's only been rehearsing and hasn't given a show!"

The Duchess burst into fresh flood of tears.

"Don't you worry, honey!" advised the well-meaning girl who would have
been in her element looking in on Job with Bildad the Shuhite and his
friends. "Don't you worry!"

"It's tough!" said the girl who had adopted that form of verbal
consolation.

"It's fierce!" said the girl who preferred that adjective.

The other girl, with an air of saying something new, repeated her
statement that it was the limit. The Duchess cried forlornly
throughout. She had needed this engagement badly. Chorus salaries are
not stupendous, but it is possible to save money by means of them
during a New York run, especially if you have spent three years in a
milliner's shop and can make your own clothes, as the Duchess, in
spite of her air of being turned out by Fifth Avenue modistes, could
and did. She had been looking forward, now that this absurd piece was
to be rewritten by someone who knew his business and had a good chance
of success, to putting by just those few dollars that make all the
difference when you are embarking on married life. Cuthbert, for all
his faithfulness, could not hold up the financial end of the
establishment unsupported for at least another eighteen months; and
this disaster meant that the wedding would have to be postponed again.
So the Duchess, abandoning that aristocratic manner criticized by some
of her colleagues as "up-stage" and by others as "Ritz-y," sat in her
chair and consumed pocket-handkerchiefs as fast as they were offered
to her.

Jill had been the only girl in the room who had spoken no word of
consolation. This was not because she was not sorry for the Duchess.
She had never been sorrier for any one in her life. The pathos of that
swift descent from haughtiness to misery had bitten deep into her
sensitive heart. But she revolted at the idea of echoing the banal
words of the others. Words were no good, she thought, as she set her
little teeth and glared at an absent management--a management just
about now presumably distending itself with a luxurious dinner at one
of the big hotels. Deeds were what she demanded. All her life she had
been a girl of impulsive action, and she wanted to act impulsively
now. She was in much the same Berserk mood as had swept her, raging,
to the defence of Bill the parrot on the occasion of his dispute with
Henry of London. The fighting spirit which had been drained from her
by the all-night rehearsal had come back in full measure.

"What are you going to _do_?" she cried. "Aren't you going to _do_
something?"

Do? The members of "The Rose of America" ensemble looked doubtfully at
one another. Do? It had not occurred to them that there was anything
to be done. These things happened, and you regretted them, but as for
doing anything, well, what _could_ you do?

Jill's face was white and her eyes were flaming. She dominated the
roomful of girls like a little Napoleon. The change in her startled
them. Hitherto they had always looked on her as rather an unusually
quiet girl. She had always made herself unobtrusively pleasant to them
all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of
possessing this militant quality. Nobody spoke, but there was a
general stir. She had flung a new idea broadcast, and it was beginning
to take root. Do something? Well, if it came to that, why not?

"We ought all to refuse to go on to-night unless they let her go on!"
Jill declared.

The stir became a movement. Enthusiasm is catching, and every girl is
at heart a rebel. And the idea was appealing to the imagination.
Refuse to give a show on the opening night! Had a chorus ever done
such a thing? They trembled on the verge of making history.

"Strike?" quavered somebody at the back.

"Yes, strike!" cried Jill.

"Hooray! That's the thtuff!" shouted the Cherub, and turned the scale.
She was a popular girl, and her adherence to the Cause confirmed the
doubters. "Thtrike!"

"Strike! Strike!"

Jill turned to the Duchess, who had been gaping amazedly at the
demonstration. She no longer wept, but she seemed in a dream.

"Dress and get ready to go on," Jill commanded. "We'll all dress and
get ready to go on. Then I'll go and find Mr. Goble and tell him what
we mean to do. And, if he doesn't give in, we'll stay here in this
room, and there won't be a performance!"

III

Mr. Goble, with a Derby hat on the back of his head and an unlighted
cigar in the corner of his mouth, was superintending the erection of
the first act set when Jill found him. He was standing with his back
to the safety-curtain glowering at a blue canvas, supposed to
represent one of those picturesque summer skies which you get at the
best places on Long Island. Jill, coming down-stage from the staircase
that led to the dressing-room, interrupted his line of vision.

"Get out of the light!" bellowed Mr. Goble, always a man of direct
speech, adding "Damn you!" for good measure.

"Please move to one side," interpreted the stage-director. "Mr. Goble
is looking at the set."

The head carpenter, who completed the little group, said nothing.
Stage carpenters always say nothing. Long association with fussy
directors has taught them that the only policy to pursue on opening
nights is to withdraw into the silence, wrap themselves up in it, and
not emerge until the enemy has grown tired and gone off to worry
somebody else.

"It don't look right!" said Mr. Goble, cocking his head on one side.

"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 the 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.

"Ther 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 chatterboxes 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 favour. 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 this 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 on to the stage
and employing it as a substitute for the chorea which was Mr. Miller's
ideal, the dance-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. "Extremely."

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
battlefield 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 to-night."

"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 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 to-night, 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 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 into 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.

IV

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 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
endeavoured 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 childrun," 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 coat-tails
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 to-night?" 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 to-night 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!"

"_Au 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 armour, 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 favourite 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
to-morrow!"

"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
not?"

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.

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