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 "Damn 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 association 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, cocking his head on one side.
"I see what you mean, Mr. Goble," assented the stage-director obsequiously. "It has perhaps a little too much--er--not quite enough--yes, I see what you mean!"
"It's too--damn--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 entitled him to speak almost as a specialist on the subject.
"Ther sky is blue!" he observed huskily. "Yessir! I seen it!"
He passed 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 Duchess had a habit of carrying her haughty languor on to the stage and employing it as a substitute for the chorea 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 hell's Mae D'Arcy?" Mr. Goble broke off to bellow at a scene-shifter who was depositing the wall of Mrs. Stuyvesant van Dyke'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'?"
"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 to-night, 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 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 into a seat in a dark corner for a bit of a rest, he found that one of his assistants had placed a pot of red paint there.
