"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 realised 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 the 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 favorite 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 onto the stage.
3.
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 normaclass="underline" 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 favorite 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.