Jill the Reckless

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

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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 to-morrow 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 this 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 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?"

Mr. Pilkington snorted. He had endured much and was prepared to endure
more, but he drew the line at squandering his money on the man who had
sneaked up behind his brain-child with a hatchet and chopped its
precious person into little bits.

"He is _not_ a friend of mine," he said stiffly, "and I do not wish
him to be invited!"

Having attained her main objective, Mrs. Peagrim was prepared to yield
minor points.

"Very well, if you do not like him," she said. "But I thought he was
quite an intimate of yours. It was you who asked me to invite him to
Newport last summer."

"Much," said Mr. Pilkington coldly, "has happened since last summer."

"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Peagrim again. "Then we will not include
Mr. Mason. Now, directly the curtain has fallen, Otie dear, pop right
round and find Mr. Goble and tell him what you want."

II

It is not only twin-souls in this world who yearn to meet each other.
Between Otis Pilkington and Mr. Goble there was little in common, yet,
at the moment when Otis set out to find Mr. Goble, the thing which Mr.
Goble desired most in the world was an interview with Otis. Since the
end of the first act, the manager had been in a state of mental
upheaval. Reverting to the gold-mine simile again, Mr. Goble was in
the position of a man who has had a chance of purchasing such a mine
and now, learning too late of the discovery of the reef, is feeling
the truth of the poet's dictum that "of all sad words of tongue or
pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'" The electric
success of "The Rose of America" had stunned Mr. Goble; and realizing,
as he did, that he might have bought Otis Pilkington's share dirt
cheap at almost any point of the preliminary tour, he was having a bad
half hour with himself. The only ray in the darkness which brooded on
his indomitable soul was the thought that it might still be possible,
by getting hold of Mr. Pilkington before the notices appeared, and
shaking his head sadly and talking about the misleading hopes which
young authors so often draw from an enthusiastic first-night reception
and impressing upon him that first-night receptions do not deceive
your expert who has been fifteen years in the show-business and
mentioning gloomily that he had heard a coupla the critics roastin'
the show to beat the band ... by doing all these things, it might
still be possible to depress Mr. Pilkington's young enthusiasm and
induce him to sell his share at a sacrifice price to a great-hearted
friend who didn't think the thing would run a week but was willing to
buy as a sporting speculation, because he thought Mr. Pilkington a
good kid, and after all these shows that flop in New York sometimes
have a chance on the road.

Such were the meditations of Mr. Goble, and, on the final fall of the
curtain, amid unrestrained enthusiasm on the part of the audience, he
had despatched messengers in all directions with instructions to find
Mr. Pilkington and conduct him to the presence. Meanwhile, he waited
impatiently on the empty stage.

The sudden advent of Wally Mason, who appeared at this moment, upset
Mr. Goble terribly. Wally was a factor in the situation which he had
not considered. An infernal, tactless fellow, always trying to make
mischief and upset honest merchants, Wally, if present at the
interview with Otis Pilkington, would probably try to act in restraint
of trade and would blurt out some untimely truth about the prospects
of the piece. Not for the first time, Mr. Goble wished Wally a sudden
stroke of apoplexy.

"Went well, eh?" said Wally amiably. He did not like Mr. Goble, but on
the first night of a successful piece personal antipathies may be
sunk. Such was his effervescent good humour at the moment that he was
prepared to treat Mr. Goble as a man and a brother.

"H'm!" replied Mr. Goble doubtfully, paving the way.

"What are you h'ming about?" demanded Wally, astonished. "The thing's
a riot."

"You never know," responded Mr. Goble in the minor key.

"Well!" Wally stared. "I don't know what more you want. The audience
sat up on its hind legs and squealed, didn't they?"

"I've an idea," said Mr. Goble, raising his voice as the long form of
Mr. Pilkington crossed the stage towards them, "that the critics will
roast it. If you ask _me_," he went on loudly, "it's just the sort of
show the critics will pan the life out of. I've been fifteen years in
the...."

"Critics!" cried Wally. "Well, I've just been talking to Alexander of
the _Times_, and he said it was the best musical piece he had ever
seen and that all the other men he had talked to thought the same."

Mr. Goble turned a distorted face to Mr. Pilkington. He wished that
Wally would go. But Wally, he reflected, bitterly, was one of those
men who never go. He faced Mr. Pilkington and did the best he could.

"Of course it's got a _chance_," he said gloomily. "Any show has got a
_chance_! But I don't know.... I don't know...."

Mr. Pilkington was not interested in the future prospects of "The Rose
of America." He had a favour to ask, and he wanted to ask it, have it
refused if possible, and get away. It occurred to him that, by
substituting for the asking of a favour a peremptory demand, he might
save himself a thousand dollars.

"I want the stage after the performance to-morrow night, for a supper
to the company," he said brusquely.

He was shocked to find Mr. Goble immediately complaisant.

"Why, sure," said Mr. Goble readily. "Go as far as you like!" He took
Mr. Pilkington by the elbow and drew him up-stage, lowering his voice
to a confidential undertone. "And now, listen," he said, "I've
something I want to talk to you about. Between you and I and the
lamp-post, I don't think this show will last a month in New York. It
don't add up right! There's something all wrong about it."

Mr. Pilkington assented with an emphasis which amazed the manager. "I
quite agree with you! If you had kept it the way it was
originally...."

"Too late for that!" sighed Mr. Goble, realizing that his star was in
the ascendant. He had forgotten for the moment that Mr. Pilkington was
an author. "We must make the best of a bad job! Now, you're a good kid
and I wouldn't like you to go around town saying that I had let you
in. It isn't business, maybe, but, just because I don't want you to
have any kick coming, I'm ready to buy your share of the thing and
call it a deal. After all, it may get money on the road. It ain't
likely, but there's a chance, and I'm willing to take it. Well,
listen, I'm probably robbing myself, but I'll give you fifteen
thousand if you want to sell."

A hated voice spoke at his elbow.

"I'll make you a better offer than that," said Wally. "Give me your
share of the show for three dollars in cash and I'll throw in a pair
of sock-suspenders and an Ingersoll. Is it a go?"

Mr. Goble regarded him balefully.

"Who told you to butt in?" he enquired sourly.

"Conscience!" replied Wally. "Old Henry W. Conscience! I refuse to
stand by and see the slaughter of the innocents. Why don't you wait
till he's dead before you skin him!" He turned to Mr. Pilkington.
"Don't you be a fool!" he said earnestly. "Can't you see the thing is
the biggest hit in years? Do you think Jesse James here would be
offering you a cent for your share if he didn't know there was a
fortune in it? Do you imagine...?"

"It is immaterial to me," interrupted Otis Pilkington loftily, "what
Mr. Goble offers. I have already sold my interest!"

"What!" cried Mr. Goble.

"When?" cried Wally.

"I sold it half-way through the road-tour," said Mr. Pilkington, "to a
lawyer, acting on behalf of a client whose name I did not learn."

In the silence which followed this revelation, another voice spoke.

"I should like to speak to you for a moment, Mr. Goble, if I may." It
was Jill, who had joined the group unperceived.

Mr. Goble glowered at Jill, who met his gaze composedly.

"I'm busy!" snapped Mr. Goble. "See me to-morrow!"

"I would prefer to see you now."

"You would prefer!" Mr. Goble waved his hands despairingly, as if
calling on heaven to witness the persecution of a good man.

Jill exhibited a piece of paper stamped with the letter-heading of the
management.

"It's about this," she said. "I found it in the box as I was going
out."

"What's that?"

"It seems to be a fortnight's notice."

"And that," said Mr. Goble, "is what it _is_!"

Wally uttered an exclamation.

"Do you mean to say...?"

"Yes, I do!" said the manager, turning on him. He felt that he had
out-manoeuvred Wally. "I agreed to let her open in New York, and
she's done it, hasn't she? Now she can get out. I don't want her. I
wouldn't have her if you paid me. She's a nuisance in the company,
always making trouble, and she can go."

"But I would prefer not to go," said Jill.

"You would prefer!" The phrase infuriated Mr. Goble. "And what has
what you would prefer got to do with it?"

"Well, you see," said Jill, "I forgot to tell you before, but I own
the piece!"

III

Mr. Goble's jaw fell. He had been waving his hands in another spacious
gesture, and he remained frozen with outstretched arms, like a
semaphore. This evening had been a series of shocks for him, but this
was the worst shock of all.

"You--what!" he stammered.

"I own the piece," repeated Jill. "Surely that gives me authority to
say what I want done and what I don't want done."

There was a silence, Mr. Goble, who was having difficulty with his
vocal chords, swallowed once or twice. Wally and Mr. Pilkington stared
dumbly. At the back of the stage, a belated scene-shifter, homeward
bound, was whistling as much as he could remember of the refrain of a
popular song.

"What do you mean you own the piece?" Mr. Goble at length gurgled.

"I bought it."

"You bought it?"

"I bought Mr. Pilkington's share through a lawyer for ten thousand
dollars."

"Ten thousand dollars! Where did you get ten thousand dollars?" Light
broke upon Mr. Goble. The thing became clear to him. "Damn it!" he
cried. "I might have known you had some man behind you! You'd never
have been so darned fresh if you hadn't had some John in the
background, paying the bills! Well, of all the...."

He broke off abruptly, not because he had said all that he wished to
say, for he had only touched the fringe of his subject, but because at
this point Wally's elbow smote him in the parts about the third button
of his waistcoat and jarred all the breath out of him.

"Be quiet!" said Wally dangerously. He turned to Jill. "Jill, you
don't mind telling me how you got ten thousand dollars, do you?"

"Of course not, Wally. Uncle Chris sent it to me. Do you remember
giving me a letter from him at Rochester? The cheque was in that."

Wally stared.

"Your uncle! But he hasn't any money!"

"He must have made it somehow."

"But he couldn't! How could he?"

Otis Pilkington suddenly gave tongue. He broke in on them with a loud
noise that was half a snort and half a yell. Stunned by the
information that it was Jill who had bought his share in the piece,
Mr. Pilkington's mind had recovered slowly and then had begun to work
with a quite unusual rapidity. During the preceding conversation he
had been doing some tense thinking, and now he saw all.

"It's a swindle! It's a deliberate swindle!" shrilled Mr. Pilkington.
The tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. "I've been made a
fool of! I've been swindled! I've been robbed!"

Jill regarded him with wide eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean!"

"I certainly do not! You were perfectly willing to sell the piece."

"I'm not talking about that! You know what I mean! I've been robbed!"

Wally snatched at his arm as it gyrated past him in a gesture of
anguish which rivalled the late efforts in that direction of Mr.
Goble, who was now leaning against the safety-curtain trying to get
his breath back.

"Don't be a fool," said Wally curtly. "Talk sense! You know perfectly
well that Miss Mariner wouldn't swindle you."

"She may not have been in it," conceded Mr. Pilkington. "I don't know
whether she was or not. But that uncle of hers swindled me out of ten
thousand dollars! The smooth old crook!"

"Don't talk like that about Uncle Chris!" said Jill, her eyes
flashing. "Tell me what you mean."

"Yes, come on, Pilkington," said Wally grimly. "You've been scattering
some pretty serious charges about. Let's hear what you base them on.
Be coherent for a couple of seconds."

Mr. Goble filled his depleted lungs.

"If you ask me...." he began.

"We don't," said Wally curtly. "This has nothing to do with you.
Well," he went on, "we're waiting to hear what this is all about."

Mr. Pilkington gulped. Like most men of weak intellect who are preyed
on by the wolves of the world, he had ever a strong distaste for
admitting that he had been deceived. He liked to regard himself as a
shrewd young man who knew his way about and could take care of
himself.

"Major Selby," he said, adjusting his spectacles, which emotion had
caused to slip down his nose, "came to me a few weeks ago with a
proposition. He suggested the formation of a company to start Miss
Mariner in the motion-pictures."

"What!" cried Jill.

"In the motion-pictures," repeated Mr. Pilkington. "He wished to know
if I cared to advance any capital towards the venture. I thought it
over carefully and decided that I was favourably disposed towards the
scheme. I...." Mr. Pilkington gulped again. "I gave him a cheque for
ten thousand dollars!"

"Of all the fools!" said Mr. Goble with a sharp laugh. He caught
Wally's eye and subsided once more.

Mr. Pilkington's fingers strayed agitatedly to his spectacles.

"I may have been a fool," he cried shrilly, "though I was perfectly
willing to risk the money had it been applied to the object for which
I gave it. But when it comes to giving ten thousand dollars just to
have it paid back to me in exchange for a very valuable piece of
theatrical property ... my own money ... handed back to me...!"

Words failed Mr. Pilkington.

"I've been deliberately swindled!" he added, after a moment, harking
back to the main motive.

Jill's heart was like lead. She could not doubt for an instant the
truth of what the victim had said. Woven into every inch of the
fabric, plainly hall-marked on its surface, she could perceive the
signature of Uncle Chris. If he had come and confessed to her himself,
she could not have been more certain that he had acted precisely as
Mr. Pilkington had charged. There was that same impishness, that same
bland unscrupulousness, that same pathetic desire to do her a good
turn however it might affect anybody else which, if she might compare
the two things, had caused him to pass her off on unfortunate Mr.
Mariner of Brookport as a girl of wealth with tastes in the direction
of real estate.

Wally was not so easily satisfied.

"You've no proof whatever...."

Jill shook her head.

"It's true, Wally. I know Uncle Chris. It must be true."

"But, Jill...!"

"It must be. How else could Uncle Chris have got the money?"

Mr. Pilkington, much encouraged by this ready acquiescence in his
theories, got under way once more.

"The man's a swindler! A swindler! He's robbed me! I have been robbed!
He never had any intention of starting a motion-picture company. He
planned it all out...!"

Jill cut into the babble of his denunciations. She was sick at heart,
and she spoke almost listlessly.

"Mr. Pilkington!" The victim stopped. "Mr. Pilkington, if what you say
is true, and I'm afraid there is no doubt that it is, the only thing I
can do is to give you back your property. So will you please try to
understand that everything is just as it was before you gave my uncle
the money. You've got back your ten thousand dollars and you've got
back your piece, so there's nothing more to talk about."

Mr. Pilkington, dimly realizing that the financial aspect of the
affair had been more or less satisfactorily adjusted, was nevertheless
conscious of a feeling that he was being thwarted. He had much more to
say about Uncle Chris and his methods of doing business, and it irked
him to be cut short like this.

"Yes, but I do not think.... That's all very well, but I have by no
means finished...."

"Yes, you have," said Wally.

"There's nothing more to talk about," repeated Jill. "I'm sorry this
should have happened, but you've nothing to complain about now, have
you? Good night."

And she turned quickly away, and walked towards the door.

"But I hadn't _finished_!" wailed Mr. Pilkington, clutching at Wally.
He was feeling profoundly aggrieved. If it is bad to be all dressed up
and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to have
no one to talk it to. Otis Pilkington had at least another twenty
minutes of speech inside him on the topic of Uncle Chris, and Wally
was the nearest human being with a pair of ears.

Wally was in no mood to play the part of confidant. He pushed Mr.
Pilkington earnestly in the chest and raced after Jill. Mr.
Pilkington, with the feeling that the world was against him, tottered
back into the arms of Mr. Goble, who had now recovered his breath and
was ready to talk business.

"Have a good cigar," said Mr. Goble, producing one. "Now, see here,
let's get right down to it. If you'd care to sell out for twenty
thousand...."

"I would _not_ care to sell out for twenty thousand!" yelled the
overwrought Mr. Pilkington. "I wouldn't sell out for a million! You're
a swindler! You want to rob me! You're a crook!"

"Yes, yes," assented Mr. Goble gently. "But, all joking aside, suppose
I was to go up to twenty-five thousand...?" He twined his fingers
lovingly in the slack of Mr. Pilkington's coat. "Come now! You're a
good kid I Shall we say twenty-five thousand?"

"We will _not_ say twenty-five thousand! Let me go!"

"Now, now, _now_!" pleaded Mr. Goble. "Be sensible! Don't get all
worked up! Say, _do_ have a good cigar!"

"I _won't_ have a good cigar!" shouted Mr. Pilkington.

He detached himself with a jerk, and stalked with long strides up the
stage. Mr. Goble watched him go with a lowering gaze. A heavy sense of
the unkindness of fate was oppressing Mr. Goble. If you couldn't gyp a
bone-headed amateur out of a piece of property, whom could you gyp?
Mr. Goble sighed. It hardly seemed to him worth while going on.

IV

Out in the street Wally had overtaken Jill, and they faced one another
in the light of a street lamp. Forty-first Street at midnight is a
quiet oasis. They had it to themselves.

Jill was pale, and she was breathing quickly, but she forced a smile.

"Well, Wally," she said. "My career as a manager didn't last long, did
it?"

"What are you going to do?"

Jill looked down the street.

"I don't know," she said. "I suppose I shall have to start trying to
find something."

"But...."

Jill drew him suddenly into the dark alley-way leading to the
stage-door of the Gotham Theatre's nearest neighbour, and, as she did
so, a long, thin form, swathed in an overcoat and surmounted by an
opera-hat, flashed past.

"I don't think I could have gone through another meeting with Mr.
Pilkington," said Jill. "It wasn't his fault, and he was quite
justified, but what he said about Uncle Chris rather hurt."

Wally, who had ideas of his own similar to those of Mr. Pilkington on
the subject of Uncle Chris and had intended to express them, prudently
kept them unspoken.

"I suppose," he said, "there is no doubt...?"

"There can't be. Poor Uncle Chris! He is like Freddie. He means well!"

There was a pause. They left the alley and walked down the street.

"Where are you going now?" asked Wally.

"I'm going home."

"Where's home?"

"Forty-ninth Street. I live in a boarding-house there."

A sudden recollection of the boarding-house at which she had lived in
Atlantic City smote Wally, and it turned the scale. He had not
intended to speak, but he could not help himself.

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