"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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 d.u.c.h.ess.
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 ba.n.a.l 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 un.o.btrusively pleasant to them all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of possessing this militant quality. n.o.body 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 "d.a.m.n 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 a.s.sociation 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, c.o.c.king his head on one side.
"I see what you mean, Mr. Goble," a.s.sented the stage-director obsequiously. "It has perhaps a little too much--er--not quite enough--yes, I see what you mean!"
"It"s too--d.a.m.n--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 ent.i.tled him to speak almost as a specialist on the subject.
"Ther sky _is_ blue!" he observed huskily. "Yessir! I seen it!"
He pa.s.sed 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 d.u.c.h.ess had a habit of carrying her haughty languor on to the stage and employing it as a subst.i.tute for the ch.o.r.ea 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 h.e.l.l"s Mae D"Arcy?" Mr. Goble broke off to bellow at a scene-shifter who was depositing the wall of Mrs. Stuyvesant van d.y.k.e"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"?"