Spring, whose coming the breeze had heralded to Wally as he smoked upon the roof, floated graciously upon New York two mornings later. The city awoke to a day of blue and gold and to a sense of hard times over and good times to come. In his apartment on Park Avenue, Mr Isaac Goble, sniffing the gentle air from the window of his breakfast-room, returned to his meal and his Morning Telegraph with a resolve to walk to the theatre for rehearsal: a resolve which had also come to Jill and Nelly Bryant, eating stewed prunes in their boarding-house in the Forties. On the summit of his sky-scraper, Wally Mason, performing Swedish exercises to the delectation of various clerks and stenographers in the upper windows of neighbouring buildings, felt young and vigorous and optimistic, and went in to his shower-bath thinking of Jill. And it was of Jill, too, that young Pilkington thought, as he propped his long form up against the pillows and sipped his morning cup of tea. For the first time in several days a certain moodiness which had affected Otis Pilkington left him, and he dreamed happy day-dreams.
The gaiety of Otis was not, however, entirely or even primarily due to the improvement in the weather. It had its source in a conversation which had taken place between himself and Jill's Uncle Chris on the previous night. Exactly how it had come about, Mr. Pilkington was not entirely clear, but, somehow, before he was fully aware of what he was saying, he had begun to pour into Major Selby's sympathetic ears the story of his romance. Encouraged by the other's kindly receptiveness, he had told him all--his love for Jill, his hopes that some day it might be returned, the difficulties complicating the situation owing to the known prejudices of Mrs. Waddesleigh Peagrim concerning girls who formed the personnel of musical comedy ensembles. To all these outpourings Major Selby had listened with keen attention, and finally had made one of those luminous suggestions, so simple yet so shrewd, which emanate only from your man of the world. It was Jill's girlish ambition, it seemed from Major Selby's statement, to become a force in the motion-picture world. The movies were her objective.
What, he broke off to ask, did Pilkington think of the idea?
Pilkington thought the idea splendid. Miss Mariner, with her charm and looks, would be wonderful in the movies.
There was, said Uncle Chris, a future for the girl in the movies.
Mr. Pilkington agreed cordially. A great future indeed.
"Observe," proceeded Uncle Chris, gathering speed and expanding his chest as he spread his legs before the fire, "how it would simplify the whole matter if Jill were to become a motion-picture artist and win fame and wealth in her profession. You go to your excellent aunt and announce that you are engaged to be married to Jill Mariner. There is a momentary pause. 'Not the Jill Mariner?' falters Mrs. Peagrim. 'Yes, the famous Miss Mariner!' you reply. Well, I ask you, my boy, can you see her making any objection? Such a thing would be absurd. No, I can see no flaw in the project whatsoever." Here Uncle Chris, as he had pictured Mrs. Peagrim doing, paused for a moment. "Of course, there would be the preliminaries."
"The preliminaries?"
Uncle Chris' voice became a melodious coo. He beamed upon Mr. Pilkington.
"Well, think for yourself, my boy! These things cannot be done without money. I do not propose to allow my niece to waste her time and her energy in the rank and file of the profession, waiting years for a chance that might never come. There is plenty of room at the top, and that, in the motion-picture profession, is the place to start. If Jill is to become a motion-picture artist, a special company must be formed to promote her. She must be made a feature, a star, from the beginning. Whether," said Uncle Chris, smoothing the crease of his trousers, "you would wish to take shares in the company yourself...."
"Oo...!"
"... is a matter," proceeded Uncle Chris, ignoring the interruption, "for you yourself to decide. Possibly you have other claims on your purse. Possibly this musical play of yours has taken all the cash you are prepared to lock up. Possibly you may consider the venture too speculative. Possibly ... there are a hundred reasons why you may not wish to join us. But I know a dozen men--I can go down Wall Street to-morrow and pick out twenty men--who will be glad to advance the necessary capital. I can assure you that I personally shall not hesitate to risk--if one can call it risking--any loose cash which I may have lying idle at my banker's."
He rattled the loose cash which he had lying idle in his trouser-pocket--fifteen cents in all--and stopped to flick a piece of fluff off his coat-sleeve. Mr. Pilkington was thus enabled to insert a word.
"How much would you want?" he enquired.
"That," said Uncle Chris meditatively, "is a little hard to say. I should have to look into the matter more closely in order to give you the exact figures. But let us say for the sake of argument that you put up--what shall we say?--a hundred thousand? fifty thousand? ... no, we will be conservative. Perhaps you had better not begin with more than ten thousand. You can always buy more shares later. I don't suppose I shall begin with more than ten thousand myself."
"I could manage ten thousand all right."
"Excellent. We make progress, we make progress. Very well, then. I go to my Wall Street friends and tell them about the scheme, and say 'Here is ten thousand dollars! What is your contribution?' It puts the affair on a business-like basis, you understand. Then we really get to work. But use your own judgment, my boy, you know. Use your own judgment. I would not think of persuading you to take such a step, if you felt at all doubtful. Think it over. Sleep on it. And, whatever you decide to do, on no account say a word about it to Jill. It would be cruel to raise her hopes until we are certain that we are in a position to enable her to realize them. And, of course, not a word to Mrs. Peagrim."
"Of course."
"Very well, then, my boy," said Uncle Chris affably. "I will leave you to turn the whole thing over in your mind. Act entirely as you think best. How is your insomnia, by the way? Did you try Nervino? Capital! There's nothing like it. It did wonders for me! Good night, good night!"
Otis Pilkington had been turning the thing over in his mind, with an interval for sleep, ever since. And the more he thought of it, the better the scheme appeared to him. He winced a little at the thought of the ten thousand dollars, for he came of prudent stock and had been brought up in habits of parsimony, but, after all, he reflected, the money would be merely a loan. Once the company found its feet, it would be returned to him a hundred-fold. And there was no doubt that this would put a completely different aspect on his wooing of Jill, as far as Aunt Olive was concerned. Why, a cousin of his--young Brewster Philmore--had married a movie-star only two years ago, and nobody had made the slightest objection. Brewster was to be seen with his bride frequently beneath Mrs. Peagrim's roof. Against the higher strata of Bohemia Mrs. Peagrim had no prejudice at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. She liked the society of those whose names were often in the papers and much in the public mouth. It seemed to Otis Pilkington, in short, that Love had found a way. He sipped his tea with relish, and when the Japanese valet brought in the toast all burned on one side, chided him with a gentle sweetness which, one may hope, touched the latter's Oriental heart and inspired him with a desire to serve his best of employers more efficiently.
At half-past ten, Otis Pilkington removed his dressing-gown and began to put on his clothes to visit the theatre. There was a rehearsal-call for the whole company at eleven. As he dressed, his mood was as sunny as the day itself.
And the day, by half-past ten, was as sunny as ever Spring day had been in a country where Spring comes early and does its best from the very start. The blue sky beamed down on a happy city. To and fro the citizenry bustled, aglow with the perfection of the weather. Everywhere was gaiety and good cheer, except on the stage of the Gotham Theatre, where an early rehearsal, preliminary to the main event, had been called by Johnson Miller in order to iron some of the kinks out of the "My Heart and I" number, which, with the assistance of the male chorus, the leading lady was to render in Act One.
On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned--literally, because the stage was wide and deep and was illumined only by a single electric light; and figuratively, because things were going even worse than usual with the "My Heart and I" number, and Johnson Miller, always of an emotional and easily stirred temperament, had been goaded by the incompetence of his male chorus to a state of frenzy. At about the moment when Otis Pilkington shed his flowered dressing-gown and reached for his trousers (the heather-mixture with the red twill), Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit and the first row of the orchestra chairs, waving one hand and clutching his white locks with the other, his voice raised the while in agonized protest.
"Gentlemen, you silly idiots," complained Mr. Miller loudly, "you've had three weeks to get these movements into your thick heads, and you haven't done a damn thing right! You're all over the place! You don't seem able to turn without tumbling over each other like a lot of Keystone Kops! What's the matter with you? You're not doing the movements I showed you; you're doing some you have invented yourselves, and they are rotten! I've no doubt you think you can arrange a number better than I can, but Mr. Goble engaged me to be the director, so kindly do exactly as I tell you. Don't try to use your own intelligence, because you haven't any. I'm not blaming you for it. It wasn't your fault that your nurses dropped you on your heads when you were babies. But it handicaps you when you try to think."
Of the seven gentlemanly members of the male ensemble present, six looked wounded by this tirade. They had the air of good men wrongfully accused. They appeared to be silently calling on Heaven to see justice done between Mr. Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged young man in faultlessly fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the other hand, not so much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now stepped down to the darkened footlights and spoke in a remorseful and conscience-stricken manner.
"I say!"
Mr. Miller, that martyr to deafness, did not hear the pathetic bleat. He had swung off at right angles and was marching in an overwrought way up the central aisle leading to the back of the house, his india-rubber form moving in convulsive jerks. Only when he had turned and retraced his steps did he perceive the speaker and prepare to take his share in the conversation.
"What?" he shouted. "Can't hear you!"
"I say, you know, it's my fault, really."
"What?"
"I mean to say, you know...."
"What? Speak up, can't you?"
Mr. Saltzburg, who had been seated at the piano, absently playing a melody from his unproduced musical comedy, awoke to the fact that the services of an interpreter were needed. He obligingly left the music-stool and crept, crab-like, along the ledge of the stage-box. He placed his arm about Mr. Miller's shoulders and his lips to Mr. Miller's left ear, and drew a deep breath.
"He says it is his fault!"
Mr. Miller nodded adhesion to this admirable sentiment.
"I know they're not worth their salt!" he replied.
Mr. Saltzburg patiently took in a fresh stock of breath.
"This young man says it is his fault that the movement went wrong!"
"Tell him I only signed on this morning, laddie," urged the tweed-clad young man.
"He only joined the company this morning!"
This puzzled Mr. Miller.
"How do you mean, warning?" he asked.
Mr. Saltzburg, purple in the face, made a last effort.
"This young man is new," he bellowed carefully, keeping to words of one syllable. "He does not yet know the steps. He says this is his first day here, so he does not yet know the steps. When he has been here some more time he will know the steps. But now he does not know the steps."
"What he means," explained the young man in tweeds helpfully, "is that I don't know the steps."
"He does not know the steps!" roared Mr. Saltzburg.
"I know he doesn't know the steps," said Mr. Miller. "Why doesn't he know the steps? He's had long enough to learn them."
"He is new!"
"Hugh?"
"New!"
"Oh, new?"
"Yes, new!"
"Why the devil is he new?" cried Mr. Miller, awaking suddenly to the truth and filled with a sense of outrage. "Why didn't he join with the rest of the company? How can I put on chorus numbers if I am saddled every day with new people to teach? Who engaged him?"
"Who engaged you?" enquired Mr. Saltzburg of the culprit.
"Mr. Pilkington."
"Mr. Pilkington," shouted Mr. Saltzburg.
"When?"
"When?"
"Last night."
"Last night."
Mr. Miller waved his hands in a gesture of divine despair, spun round, darted up the aisle, turned, and bounded back.
"What can I do?" he wailed. "My hands are tied! I am hampered! I am handicapped! We open in two weeks and every day I find somebody new in the company to upset everything I have done. I shall go to Mr. Goble and ask to be released from my contract. I shall.... Come along, come along, come along now!" he broke off suddenly. "Why are we wasting time? The whole number once more. The whole number once more from the beginning!"
The young man tottered back to his gentlemanly colleagues, running a finger in an agitated manner round the inside of his collar. He was not used to this sort of thing. In a large experience of amateur theatricals he had never encountered anything like it. In the breathing-space afforded by the singing of the first verse and refrain by the lady who played the heroine of "The Rose of America," he found time to make an enquiry of the artist on his right.
"I say! Is he always like this?"
"Who? Johnny?"
"The sportsman with the hair that turned white in a single night. The barker on the sky-line. Does he often get the wind up like this?"
His colleague smiled tolerantly.
"Why, that's nothing!" he replied. "Wait till you see him really cut loose! That was just a gentle whisper!"
"My God!" said the newcomer, staring into a bleak future.
The leading lady came to the end of her refrain, and the gentlemen of the ensemble, who had been hanging about up-stage, began to curvet nimbly down towards her in a double line; the new arrival, with an eye on his nearest neighbour, endeavouring to curvet as nimbly as the others. A clapping of hands from the dark auditorium indicated--inappropriately--that he had failed to do so. Mr. Miller could be perceived--dimly--with all his fingers entwined in his hair.
"Clear the stage!" yelled Mr. Miller. "Not you!" he shouted, as the latest addition to the company began to drift off with the others. "You stay!"
"Me?"
"Yes, you. I shall have to teach you the steps by yourself, or we shall get nowhere. Go up-stage. Start the music again, Mr. Saltzburg. Now, when the refrain begins, come down. Gracefully! Gracefully!"
The young man, pink but determined, began to come down gracefully. And it was while he was thus occupied that Jill and Nelly Bryant, entering the wings which were beginning to fill up as eleven o'clock approached, saw him.
"Whoever is that?" said Nelly.
"New man," replied one of the chorus gentlemen. "Came this morning."
Nelly turned to Jill.
"He looks just like Mr. Rooke!" she exclaimed.
"He is Mr. Rooke!" said Jill.
"He can't be!"
"He is!"
"But what is he doing here?"
Jill bit her lip.
"That's just what I'm going to ask him myself," she said.
