2.
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 superstitious 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 passed off without event. It lasted until six o'clock,
when Jill, the Cherub, and two or three of the other girls went to
snatch a hasty dinner before returning to the theatre to make up. It
was not a cheerful meal. Reaction had set in after the overexertion
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 Duchess, the center 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.
"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 Duchess,
sailing in at the stage-door, had paused at the letter-box 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 Duchess 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 tonight, 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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 Duchess, 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 Duchess, 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 Duchess.
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
banal 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 unobtrusively pleasant to
them all. They all liked her. But they had never suspected her of
possessing this militant quality. Nobody 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 tonight 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 Duchess, 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!"
