3.
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 this
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.
"The 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 chatter-boxes 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 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
Duchess had a habit of carrying her haughty languor onto the stage
and employing it as a substitute for the chorea 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 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 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 assistants had placed a pot
of red paint there.
