Jill the Reckless Part 39

"Oh, _you_ engaged her?"

He stared again at Jill. The inspection was long and lingering, and affected Jill with a sense of being inadequately clothed. She returned the gaze as defiantly as she could, but her heart was beating fast.

She had never yet been frightened of any man, but there was something reptilian about this fat, yellow-haired individual which disquieted her, much as c.o.c.kroaches had done in her childhood. A momentary thought flashed through her mind that it would be horrible to be touched by him. He looked soft and glutinous.

"All right," said Mr. Goble at last, after what seemed to Jill many minutes. He nodded to Mr. Saltzburg. "Get on with it! And try working a little this time! I don't hire you to give musical entertainments."

"Yes, Mr. Goble, yes. I mean no, Mr. Goble!"

"You can have the Gotham stage this afternoon," said Mr. Goble. "Call the rehearsal for two sharp."

Outside the door, he turned to Mr. Pilkington.

"That was a fool trick of yours, hiring that girl. Thirteen! I'd as soon walk under a ladder on a Friday as open in New York with a chorus of thirteen. Well, it don't matter. We can sack one of 'em after we've opened on the road." He mused for a moment. "Darned pretty girl, that!" he went on meditatively. "Where did you get her?"

"She--ah--came into the office, when you were out. She struck me as being essentially the type we required for our ensemble, so I--er--engaged her. She--" Mr. Pilkington gulped. "She is a charming, refined girl!"

"She's darned pretty," admitted Mr. Goble, and went on his way wrapped in thought, Mr. Pilkington following timorously. It was episodes like the one that had just concluded which made Otis Pilkington wish that he possessed a little more a.s.sertion. He regretted wistfully that he was not one of those men who can put their hat on the side of their heads and shoot out their chins and say to the world "Well, what about it!" He was bearing the financial burden of this production. If it should be a failure, his would be the loss. Yet somehow this coa.r.s.e, rough person in front of him never seemed to allow him a word in the executive policy of the piece. He treated him as a child. He domineered and he shouted, and behaved as if he were in sole command.

Mr Pilkington sighed. He rather wished he had never gone into this undertaking.

Inside the room, Mr. Saltzburg wiped his forehead, his spectacles, and his hands. He had the aspect of one who wakes from a dreadful dream.

"Childrun!" he whispered brokenly. "Childrun! If you please, once more. Act One, Opening Chorus. Come! La-la-la!"

"La-la-la!" chanted the subdued members of the ensemble.

II

By the time the two halves of the company, ensemble and princ.i.p.als, melted into one complete whole, the novelty of her new surroundings had worn off, and Jill was feeling that there had never been a time when she had not been one of a theatrical troupe, rehearsing. The pleasant social gatherings round Mr. Saltzburg's piano gave way in a few days to something far less agreeable and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. n.o.body knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more companies along the rocky road that leads to success than any half-dozen dance-directors in the country, in spite of his handicap in being almost completely deaf. He had an almost miraculous gift of picking up the melodies for which it was his business to design dances, without apparently hearing them. He seemed to absorb them through the pores. He had a blunt and arbitrary manner, and invariably spoke his mind frankly and honestly--a habit which made him strangely popular in a profession where the language of equivoque is cultivated almost as sedulously as in the circles of international diplomacy. What Johnson Miller said to your face was official, not subject to revision as soon as your back was turned, and people appreciated this.

Izzy's willowy friend summed him up one evening when the ladies of the ensemble were changing their practice-clothes after a particularly strenuous rehearsal, defending him against the Southern girl, who complained that he made her tired.

"You bet he makes you tired," she said. "So he does me. I'm losing my girlish curves, and I'm so stiff I can't lace my shoes. But he knows his business and he's on the level, which is more than you can say of most of these guys in the show business."

"That's right," agreed the Southern girl's blonde friend. "He does know his business. He's put over any amount of shows which would have flopped like dogs without him to stage the numbers."

The d.u.c.h.ess yawned. Rehearsing always bored her, and she had not been greatly impressed by what she had seen of "The Rose of America."

"One will be greatly surprised if he can make a success of _this_ show! I confess I find it perfectly ridiculous."

"Ithn't it the limit, honetht!" said the cherub, arranging her golden hair at the mirror. "It maketh me thick! Why on earth ith Ike putting it on?"

The girl who knew everything--there is always one in every company--hastened to explain.

"I heard all about that. Ike hasn't any of his own money in the thing.

He's getting twenty-five per cent of the show for running it. The angel is the long fellow you see jumping around. Pilkington his name is."

"Well, it'll need to be Rockefeller later on," said the blonde.

"Oh, they'll get thomebody down to fixth it after we've been out on the road a couple of days," said the cherub, optimistically. "They alwayth do. I've seen worse shows than this turned into hits. All it wants ith a new book and lyrics and a different thcore."

"And a new set of princ.i.p.als," said the red-headed Babe. "Did you ever see such a bunch?"

The d.u.c.h.ess, with another tired sigh, arched her well-shaped eyebrows and studied the effect in the mirror.

"One wonders where they pick these persons up," she a.s.sented languidly. "They remind me of a headline I saw in the paper this morning--'Tons of Hams Unfit for Human Consumption.' Are any of you girls coming my way? I Can give two or three of you a lift in my limousine."

"Thorry, old dear, and thanks ever so much," said the cherub, "but I instructed Clarence, my man, to have the street-car waiting on the corner, and he'll be too upset if I'm not there."

Nelly had an engagement to go and help one of the other girls buy a Spring suit, a solemn rite which it is impossible to conduct by oneself: and Jill and the cherub walked to the corner together. Jill had become very fond of the little thing since rehearsals began. She reminded her of a London sparrow. She was so small and perky and so absurdly able to take care of herself.

"Limouthine!" snorted the cherub. The d.u.c.h.ess' concluding speech evidently still rankled. "She gives me a pain in the gizthard!"

"Hasn't she got a limousine?" asked Jill.

"Of course she hasn't. She's engaged to be married to a demonstrator in the Speedwell Auto Company, and he thneaks off when he can get away and gives her joy-rides. That's all the limouthine she's got. It beats me why girls in the show business are alwayth tho crazy to make themselves out vamps with a dozen millionaires on a string. If Mae wouldn't four-flush and act like the Belle of the Moulin Rouge, she'd be the nithest girl you ever met. She's mad about the fellow she's engaged to, and wouldn't look at all the millionaires in New York if you brought 'em to her on a tray. She's going to marry him as thoon as he's thaved enough to buy the furniture, and then she'll thettle down in Harlem thomewhere and cook and mind the baby and regularly be one of the lower middle cla.s.ses. All that's wrong with Mae ith that she's read Gingery Stories and thinkth that's the way a girl has to act when she'th in the chorus."

"That's funny," said Jill. "I should never have thought it. I swallowed the limousine whole."

The cherub looked at her curiously. Jill puzzled her. Jill had, indeed, been the subject of much private speculation among her colleagues.

"This is your first show, ithn't it?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Thay, what are you doing in the chorus, anyway?"

"Getting scolded by Mr. Miller mostly, it seems to me.

"Thcolded by Mr. Miller! Why didn't you say 'bawled out by Johnny'?

That'th what any of the retht of us would have said."

"Well, I've lived most of my life in England. You can't expect me to talk the language yet."

"I thought you were English. You've got an acthent like the fellow who plays the dude in thith show. Thay, why did you ever get into the show business?"

"Well ... well, why did you? Why does anybody?"

"Why did I? Oh, I belong there. I'm a regular Broadway rat. I wouldn't be happy anywhere elthe. I was born in the show business. I've got two thithters in the two-a-day and a brother in thtock in California and dad's one of the betht comedians on the burlethque wheel. But any one can thee you're different. There's no reathon why you should be sticking around in the chorus."

"But there is. I've no money, and I can't do anything to make it."

"Honetht?"

"Honest."

"That's tough." The cherub pondered, her round eyes searching Jill's face. "Why don't you get married?"

Jill laughed.