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 favor.
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 his 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 onto the stage and employing it as a subst.i.tute for the ch.o.r.ea which was Mr.
Miller"s ideal, the dancer-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. "Ex-tremely."
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 battle-field 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 tonight."
"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 her notice this evening," said Jill.
"Well, what about it?"
"We want you to withdraw it."
"Who"s "we"?"
"The other girls and myself."
Mr Goble jerked his head so violently that the Derby hat flew off, to be picked up, dusted, and restored by the stage-director.
"Oh, so you don"t like it? Well, you know what you can do ..."
"Yes," said Jill, "we do. We are going to strike."
"What!"
"If you don"t let Mae go on, we shan"t go on. There won"t be a performance tonight, unless you like to give one without a chorus."
"Are you crazy!"
"Perhaps. But we"re quite unanimous."
Mr Goble, like most theatrical managers, was not good at words of over two syllables.
"You"re what?"
"We"ve talked it over, and we"ve all decided to do what I said."
Mr Goble"s hat shot off again, and gambolled away into the wings, with the stage-director bounding after it like a retriever.
"Whose idea"s this?" demanded Mr Goble. His eyes were a little foggy, for his brain was adjusting itself but slowly to the novel situation.
"Mine."
"Oh, yours! I thought as much!"
"Well," said Jill, "I"ll go back and tell them that you will not do what we ask. We will keep our make-up on in case you change your mind."
She turned away.
"Come back!"
Jill proceeded toward the staircase. As she went, a husky voice spoke in her ear.
"Go to it, kid! You"re all right!"
The head-carpenter had broken his Trappist vows twice in a single evening, a thing which had not happened to him since the night three years ago, when, sinking wearily onto a seat in a dark corner for a bit of a rest, he found that one of his a.s.sistants had placed a pot of red paint there.
4.
To Mr Goble, fermenting and full of strange oaths, entered Johnson Miller. The dance-director was always edgey on first nights, and during the foregoing conversation had been flitting about the stage like a white-haired moth. His deafness had kept him in complete ignorance that there was anything untoward afoot, and he now approached Mr Goble with his watch in his hand.
"Eight twenty-five," he observed. "Time those girls were on stage."
Mr Goble, glad of a concrete target for his wrath, cursed him in about two hundred and fifty rich and well-selected words.
"Huh?" said Mr Miller, hand to ear.
Mr Goble repeated the last hundred and eleven words, the pick of the bunch.
"Can"t hear!" said Mr Miller, regretfully. "Got a cold."
The grave danger that Mr Goble, a thick-necked man, would undergo some sort of a stroke was averted by the presence-of-mind of the stage-director, who, returning with the hat, presented it like a bouquet to his employer, and then his hands being now unoccupied, formed them into a funnel and through this flesh-and-blood megaphone endeavored to impart the bad news.
"The girls say they won"t go on!"
Mr Miller nodded.
"I _said_ it was time they were on."
"They"re on strike!"
"It"s not," said Mr Miller austerely, "what they like, it"s what they"re paid for. They ought to be on stage. We should be ringing up in two minutes."
The stage director drew another breath, then thought better of it. He had a wife and children, and, if dadda went under with apoplexy, what became of the home, civilization"s most sacred product? He relaxed the muscles of his diaphragm, and reached for pencil and paper.
Mr Miller inspected the message, felt for his spectacle-case, found it, opened it, took out his gla.s.ses, replaced the spectacle-case, felt for his handkerchief, polished the gla.s.ses, replaced the handkerchief, put the gla.s.ses on, and read. A blank look came into his face.