"Oh, no."
"Then I will tell you about the sad death of young Mr Pilkington."
"What!"
"Well, when I say death, I use the word in a loose sense. The human giraffe still breathes, and I imagine, from the speed with which he legged it back to his hotel when we parted, that he still takes nourishment. But really he is dead. His heart is broken. We had a conference after the dress-rehearsal, and our friend Mr Goble told him in no uncertain words—in the whole course of my experience I have never heard words less uncertain—that his damned rotten high-brow false-alarm of a show—I am quoting Mr Goble—would have to be rewritten by alien hands. And these are them! On the right, alien right hand. On the left, alien left hand. Yes, I am the instrument selected for the murder of Pilkington's artistic aspirations. I'm going to rewrite the show. In fact, I have already rewritten the first act and most of the second. Goble foresaw this contingency and told me to get busy two weeks ago, and I've been working hard ever since. We shall start rehearsing the new version tomorrow and open in Baltimore next Monday with practically a different piece. And it's going to be a pippin, believe me, said our hero modestly. A gang of composers has been working in shifts for two weeks, and, by chucking out nearly all of the original music, we shall have a good score. It means a lot of work for you, I'm afraid. All the business of the numbers will have to be re-arranged."
"I like work," said Jill. "But I'm sorry for Mr Pilkington."
"He's all right. He owns seventy per cent of the show. He may make a fortune. He's certain to make a comfortable sum. That is, if he doesn't sell out his interest in pique—or dudgeon, if you prefer it. From what he said at the close of the proceedings, I fancy he would sell out to anybody who asked him. At least, he said that he washed his hands of the piece. He's going back to New York this afternoon,—won't even wait for the opening. Of course, I'm sorry for the poor chap in a way, but he had no right, with the excellent central idea which he got, to turn out such a rotten book. Oh, by the way!"
"Yes?"
"Another tragedy! Unavoidable, but pathetic. Poor old Freddie! He's out!"
"Oh, no!"
"Out!" repeated Wally firmly.
"But didn't you think he was good last night?"
"He was awful! But that isn't why. Goble wanted his part rewritten as a Scotchman, so as to get McAndrew, the fellow who made such a hit last season in 'Hoots, Mon!' That sort of thing is always happening in musical comedy. You have to fit parts to suit whatever good people happen to be available at the moment. When you've had one or two experiences of changing your Italian count to a Jewish millionaire—invariably against time: they always want the script on Thursday next at noon—and then changing him again to a Russian Bolshevik, you begin to realize what is meant by the words 'Death, where is thy sting?' My heart bleeds for Freddie, but what can one do? At any rate he isn't so badly off as a fellow was in one of my shows. In the second act he was supposed to have escaped from an asylum, and the management, in a passion for realism, insisted that he should shave his head. The day after he shaved it, they heard that a superior comedian was disengaged and fired him. It's a ruthless business."
"The girls were saying that one of us would be dismissed."
"Oh, I shouldn't think that's likely."
"I hope not."
"So do I. What are we stopping for?" Jill had halted in front of a shabby-looking house, one of those depressing buildings which spring up overnight at seashore resorts and start to decay the moment the builders have left them.
"I live here."
"Here!" Wally looked at her in consternation. "But …"
Jill smiled.
"We working-girls have got to economize. Besides, it's quite comfortable—fairly comfortable—inside, and it's only for a week." She yawned. "I believe I'm falling asleep again. I'd better hurry in and go to bed. Good-bye, Wally dear. You've been wonderful. Mind you go and get a good breakfast."
2.
When Jill arrived at the theatre at four o'clock for the chorus rehearsal, the expected blow had not fallen. No steps had apparently been taken to eliminate the thirteenth girl whose presence in the cast preyed on Mr. Goble's superstitious mind. But she found her colleagues still in a condition of pessimistic foreboding. "Wait!" was the gloomy watchword of "The Rose of America" chorus.
The rehearsal passed off without event. It lasted until six o'clock, when Jill, the Cherub, and two or three of the other girls went to snatch a hasty dinner before returning to the theatre to make up. It was not a cheerful meal. Reaction had set in after the overexertion of the previous night, and it was too early for first-night excitement to take its place. Everybody, even the Cherub, whose spirits seldom failed her, was depressed, and the idea of an overhanging doom had grown. It seemed now to be merely a question of speculating on the victim, and the conversation gave Jill, as the last addition to the company and so the cause of swelling the ranks of the chorus to the unlucky number, a feeling of guilt. She was glad when it was time to go back to the theatre.
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 center 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 letter-box 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 tonight, 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.