Inside the room, Mr Saltzburg wiped his forehead, spectacles, and his hands. He had the aspect of one wakes from a dreadful dream.
"Childrun!" he whispered brokenly. "Childrun! If yoll please, once more. Act One, Opening Chorus. Come! La-la-la!"
"La-la-la!" chanted the subdued members of the ensemble.
2.
By the time the two halves of the company, ensemble and principals, melted into one complete whole, the novelty of her new surroundings had worn off, and Jill was feeling that there had never been a time when she had not been one of a theatrical troupe, rehearsing. The pleasant social gatherings round Mr Saltzburg's piano gave way after a few days to something far less agreeable and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more companies along the rocky road that leads to success than any half-dozen dance-directors in the country, in spite of his handicap in being almost completely deaf. He had an almost miraculous gift of picking up the melodies for which it was his business to design dances, without apparently hearing them. He seemed to absorb them through the pores. He had a blunt and arbitrary manner, and invariably spoke his mind frankly and honestly—a habit which made him strangely popular in a profession where the language of equivoque is cultivated almost as sedulously as in the circles of international diplomacy. What Johnson Miller said to your face was official, not subject to revision as soon as your back was turned: and people appreciated this.
Izzy's willowy friend summed him up one evening when the ladies of the ensemble were changing their practise-clothes after a particularly strenuous rehearsal, defending him against the Southern girl, who complained that he made her tired.
"You bet he makes you tired," she said. "So he does me. I'm losing my girlish curves, and I'm so stiff I can't lace my shoes. But he knows his business and he's on the level, which is more than you can say of most of these guys in the show business."
"That's right," agreed the Southern girl's blonde friend. "He does know his business. He's put over any amount of shows which would have flopped like dogs without him to stage the numbers."
The duchess yawned. Rehearsing always bored her, and she had not been greatly impressed by what she had seen of "The Rose of America."
"One will be greatly surprised if he can make a success of this show! I confess I find it perfectly ridiculous."
"Ithn't it the limit, honetht!" said the cherub, arranging her golden hair at the mirror. "It maketh me thick! Why on earth is Ike putting it on?"
The girl who knew everything—there is always one in every company—hastened to explain.
"I heard all about that. Ike hasn't any of his own money in the thing. He's getting twenty-five per cent of the show for running it. The angel is the long fellow you see jumping around. Pilkington his name is."
"Well, it'll need to be Rockefeller later on," said the blonde.
"Oh, they'll get thomebody down to fixth it after we've out on the road a couple of days," said the cherub, optimistically. "They alwayth do. I've seen worse shows than this turned into hits. All it wants ith a new book and lyrics and a different thcore."
"And a new set of principals," said the red-headed Babe. "Did you ever see such a bunch?"
The duchess, with another tired sigh, arched her well-shaped eyebrows and studied the effect in the mirror.
"One wonders where they pick these persons up," she assented languidly. "They remind me of a headline I saw in the paper this morning—'Tons of Hams Unfit for Human Consumption.' Are any of you girls coming my way? I can give two or three of you a lift in my limousine."
"Thorry, old dear, and thanks ever so much," said the cherub, "but I instructed Clarence, my man, to have the street-car waiting on the corner, and he'll be tho upset if I'm not there."
Nelly had an engagement to go and help one of the other girls buy a Spring suit, a solemn rite which it is impossible to conduct by oneself: and Jill and the cherub walked to the corner together. Jill had become very fond of the little thing since rehearsals began. She reminded her of a London sparrow. She was so small and perky and so absurdly able to take care of herself.
"Limouthine!" snorted the cherub. The duchess' concluding speech evidently still rankled. "She gives me a pain in the gizthard!"
"Hasn't she got a limousine?" asked Jill.
"Of course she hasn't. She's engaged to be married to a demonstrator in the Speedwell Auto Company, and he thneaks off when he can get away and gives her joy-rides. That's all the limousine she's got. It beats me why girls in the show business are alwayth tho crazy to make themselves out vamps with a dozen millionaires on a string. If Mae wouldn't four-flush and act like the Belle of the Moulin Rouge, she'd be the nithest girl you ever met. She's mad about the fellow she's engaged to, and wouldn't look at all the millionaires in New York if you brought 'em to her on a tray. She's going to marry him as thoon as he's thaved enough to buy the furniture, and then she'll thettle down in Harlem thomewhere and cook and mind the baby and regularly be one of the lower middle classes. All that's wrong with Mae ith that she's read Gingery Stories and thinkth that's the way a girl has to act when she'th in the chorus."
"That's funny," said Jill. "I should never have thought it. I swallowed the limousine whole."
The cherub looked at her curiously. Jill puzzled her. Jill had, indeed, been the subject of much private speculation among her colleagues.
"This is your first show, ithn't it?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Thay, what are you doing in the chorus, anyway?"
"Getting scolded by Mr Miller mostly, it seems to me."
"Thcolded by Mr Miller! Why didn't you say 'bawled out by Johnny?' That'th what any of the retht of us would have said."
"Well, I've lived most of my life in England. You can't expect me to talk the language yet."
"I thought you were English. You've got an acthent like the fellow who plays the dude in thith show. Thay, why did you ever get into the show business?"
"Well … well, why did you? Why does anybody?"
"Why did I? Oh, I belong there. I'm a regular Broadway rat. I wouldn't be happy anywhere elthe. I was born in the show business. I've got two thithters in the two-a-day and a brother in thtock out in California and dad's one of the betht comedians on the burlethque wheel. But any one can thee you're different. There's no reathon why you should be bumming around in the chorus."
"But there is. I've no money, and I can't do anything to make it."
"Honetht?"
"Honest."
"That's tough." The cherub pondered, her round eyes searching Jill's face. "Why don't you get married?"
Jill laughed.
"Nobody's asked me."
"Somebody thoon will. At least, if he's on the level, and I think he is. You can generally tell by the look of a guy, and, if you ask me, friend Pilkington's got the license in hith pocket and the ring all ordered and everything."
"Pilkington!" cried Jill, aghast.
She remembered certain occasions during rehearsals, when, while the chorus idled in the body of the theatre and listened to the principals working at their scenes, the elongated Pilkington had suddenly appeared in the next seat and conversed sheepishly in a low voice. Could this be love? If so, it was a terrible nuisance. Jill had had her experience in London of enamoured young men who, running true to national form, declined to know when they were beaten, and she had not enjoyed the process of cooling their ardor. She had a kind heart, and it distressed her to give pain. It also got on her nerves to be dogged by stricken males who tried to catch her eye in order that she might observe their broken condition. She recalled one house-party in Wales where it rained all the time and she had been cooped up with a victim who kept popping out from obscure corners and beginning all his pleas with the words "I say, you know … !" She trusted that Otis Pilkington was not proposing to conduct a wooing on those lines. Yet he had certainly developed a sinister habit of popping out at the theatre. On several occasions he had startled her by appearing at her side as if he had come up out of a trap.