"Have I been asleep?"
Wally laughed.
"You have been having what you might call a nap." He ma.s.saged his left arm vigorously. "You needed it. Do you feel more rested now?"
"Good gracious! Have I been squashing your poor arm all the time? Why didn"t you move?"
"I was afraid you would fall over. You just shut your eyes and toppled sideways."
"What"s the time?"
Wally looked at his watch.
"Just on ten."
"Ten!" Jill was horrified. "Why, I have been giving you cramp for about three hours! You must have had an awful time!"
"Oh, it was all right. I think I dozed off myself. Except that the birds didn"t come and cover us with leaves; it was rather like the "Babes in the Wood.""
"But you haven"t had any breakfast! Aren"t you starving?"
"Well, I"m not saying I wouldn"t spear a fried egg with some vim if it happened to float past. But there"s plenty of time for that. Lots of doctors say you oughtn"t to eat breakfast, and Indian fakirs go without food for days at a time in order to develop their souls. Shall I take you back to wherever you"re staying? You ought to get a proper sleep in bed."
"Don"t dream of taking me. Go off and have something to eat."
"Oh, that can wait. I"d like to see you safely home."
Jill was conscious of a renewed sense of his comfortingness. There was no doubt about it, Wally was different from any other man she had known. She suddenly felt guilty, as if she were obtaining something valuable under false pretences.
"Wally!"
"Hullo?"
"You--you oughtn"t to be so good to me!"
"Nonsense! Where"s the harm in lending a hand--or, rather, an arm--to a pal in trouble?"
"You know what I mean. I can"t ... that is to say ... it isn"t as though ... I mean...."
Wally smiled a tired, friendly smile.
"If you"re trying to say what I think you"re trying to say, don"t! We had all that out two weeks ago. I quite understand the position. You mustn"t worry yourself about it." He took her arm, and they crossed the boardwalk. "Are we going in the right direction? You lead the way.
I know exactly how you feel. We"re old friends, and nothing more. But, as an old friend, I claim the right to behave like an old friend. If an old friend can"t behave like an old friend, how _can_ an old friend behave? And now we"ll rule the whole topic out of the conversation.
But perhaps you"re too tired for conversation?"
"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 d.a.m.ned 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 to-morrow 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. 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 pa.s.sion 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 seash.o.r.e 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."
II
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 superst.i.tious 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 pa.s.sed off without event. It lasted until six o"clock, when Jill, the Cherub, and two or three of the other girls went to s.n.a.t.c.h a hasty dinner before returning to the theatre to make up. It was not a cheerful meal. Reaction had set in after the over-exertion 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 d.u.c.h.ess, the centre 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.