Jill the Reckless by P. G. Wodehouse (the kiss of deception read online TXT) 📗

to substitute for them a politely conventional agreement. If Mr. Pilkington was feeling like a too impulsive seller of gold mines, Freddie's emotions were akin to those of the Spartan boy with the fox under his vest. Nothing but Winchester and Magdalen could have produced the smile which,[263] though twisted and confined entirely to his lips, flashed on to his face and off again at his hostess' question.

"Oh, rather! Priceless!"

"Wasn't that part an Englishman before?" asked Mrs. Peagrim. "I thought so. Well, it was a stroke of genius changing it. This Scotchman is too funny for words. And such an artist!"

Freddie rose shakily. One can stand just so much.

"Think," he mumbled, "I'll be pushing along and smoking a cigarette."

He groped his way to the door.

"I'll come with you, Freddie my boy," said Uncle Chris, who felt an imperative need of five minutes' respite from Mrs. Peagrim. "Let's get out into the air for a moment. Uncommonly warm it is here."

Freddie assented. Air was what he felt he wanted most.

Left alone in the box with her nephew, Mrs. Peagrim continued for some moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open wound. It struck her from time to time that darling Otie was perhaps a shade unresponsive, but she put this down to the nervous strain inseparable from a first night of a young author's first play.

"Why," she concluded, "you will make thousands and thousands of dollars out of this piece. I am sure it is going to be another 'Merry Widow.'"

"You can't tell from a first night audience," said Mr. Pilkington sombrely, giving out a piece of theatrical wisdom he had picked up at rehearsals.

"Oh, but you can. It's so easy to distinguish polite applause from the real thing. No doubt many of the people down here have friends in the company or other reasons for seeming to enjoy the play, but look how the circle and the gallery were enjoying it! You can't tell me that that was not genuine. They love it. How hard," she proceeded commiseratingly, "you must have worked, poor boy, during the tour on the road to improve the piece so much! I never liked to say so before but even you must agree with me now that that original version of yours, which was done down at Newport, was the most terrible nonsense! And how hard the company must have worked too! Otie," cried Mrs. Peagrim, aglow with the magic of a brilliant idea, "I will tell you what you must really do. You must give a supper and dance to the[264] whole company on the stage to-morrow night after the performance."

"What!" cried Otis Pilkington, startled out of his lethargy by this appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty, nine dollars, sixty-eight cents for "props" and "frames" and "rehl," had sold out for a paltry ten thousand, to be still further victimized?

"They do deserve it, don't they, after working so hard?"

"It's impossible," said Otis Pilkington vehemently. "Out of the question."

"But, Otie, darling, I was talking to Mr. Mason when he came down to Newport to see the piece last summer, and he told me that the management nearly always gives a supper to the company, especially if they have had a lot of extra rehearsing to do."

"Well, let Goble give them a supper if he wants to."

"But you know that Mr. Goble, though he has his name on the programme as the manager, has really nothing to do with it. You own the piece, don't you?"

For a moment Mr. Pilkington felt an impulse to reveal all, but refrained. He knew his Aunt Olive too well. If she found out that he had parted at a heavy loss with this valuable property, her whole attitude towards him would change—or, rather it would revert to her normal attitude, which was not unlike that of a severe nurse to a weak-minded child. Even in his agony there had been a certain faint consolation, due to the entirely unwonted note of respect in the voice with which she had addressed him since the fall of the curtain. He shrank from forfeiting this respect, unentitled though he was to it.

"Yes," he said in his precise voice. "That, of course, is so."

"Well, then!" said Mrs. Peagrim.

"But it seems so unnecessary! And think what it would cost."

This was a false step. Some of the reverence left Mrs. Peagrim's voice, and she spoke a little coldly. A gay and gallant spender herself, she had often had occasion to rebuke a tendency to over-parsimony in her nephew.

"We must not be mean, Otie!" she said.

Mr. Pilkington keenly resented her choice of pronouns.[265] "We" indeed! Who was going to foot the bill? Both of them, hand in hand, or he alone, the chump, the boob, the easy mark who got this sort of thing wished on him!

"I don't think it would be possible to get the stage for a supper-party," he pleaded, shifting his ground. "Goble wouldn't give it to us."

"As if Mr. Goble would refuse you anything after you have written a wonderful success for this theatre! And isn't he getting his share of the profits? Directly after the performance you must go round and ask him. Of course he will be delighted to give you the stage. I will be hostess," said Mrs. Peagrim radiantly. "And now, let me see, whom shall we invite?"

Mr. Pilkington stared gloomily at the floor, too bowed down by his weight of cares to resent the "we," which had plainly come to stay. He was trying to estimate the size of the gash which this preposterous entertainment would cleave in the Pilkington bank-roll. He doubted if it was possible to go through with it under five hundred dollars; and, if, as seemed only too probable, Mrs. Peagrim took the matter in hand and gave herself her head, it might get into four figures.

"Major Selby, of course," said Mrs. Peagrim musingly, with a cooing note in her voice. Long since had that polished man of affairs made a deep impression upon her. "Of course Major Selby, for one. And Mr. Rooke. Then there are one or two of my friends who would be hurt if they were left out. How about Mr. Mason? Isn't he a friend of yours?"

Mr. Pilkington snorted. He had endured much and was prepared to endure more, but he drew the line at squandering his money on the man who had sneaked up behind his brain-child with a hatchet and chopped its precious person into little bits.

"He is not a friend of mine," he said stiffly, "and I do not wish him to be invited!"

Having attained her main objective, Mrs. Peagrim was prepared to yield minor points.

"Very well, if you do not like him," she said. "But I thought he was quite an intimate of yours. It was you who asked me to invite him to Newport last summer."

"Much," said Mr. Pilkington coldly, "has happened since last summer."

"Oh, very well," said Mrs. Peagrim again. "Then we[266] will not include Mr. Mason. Now, directly the curtain has fallen, Otie dear, pop right round and find Mr. Goble and tell him what you want."

II

It is not only twin-souls in this world who yearn to meet each other. Between Otis Pilkington and Mr. Goble there was little in common, yet, at the moment when Otis set out to find Mr. Goble, the thing which Mr. Goble desired most in the world was an interview with Otis. Since the end of the first act, the manager had been in a state of mental upheaval. Reverting to the gold-mine simile again, Mr. Goble was in the position of a man who has had a chance of purchasing such a mine and now, learning too late of the discovery of the reef, is feeling the truth of the poet's dictum that "of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'" The electric success of "The Rose of America" had stunned Mr. Goble; and realizing, as he did, that he might have bought Otis Pilkington's share dirt cheap at almost any point of the preliminary tour, he was having a bad half hour with himself. The only ray in the darkness which brooded on his indomitable soul was the thought that it might still be possible, by getting hold of Mr. Pilkington before the notices appeared, and shaking his head sadly and talking about the misleading hopes which young authors so often draw from an enthusiastic first-night reception and impressing upon him that first-night receptions do not deceive your expert who has been fifteen years in the show-business and mentioning gloomily that he had heard a coupla the critics roastin' the show to beat the band ... by doing all these things, it might still be possible to depress Mr. Pilkington's young enthusiasm and induce him to sell his share at a sacrifice price to a great-hearted friend who didn't think the thing would run a week but was willing to buy as a sporting speculation, because he thought Mr. Pilkington a good kid, and after all these shows that flop in New York sometimes have a chance on the road.

Such were the meditations of Mr. Goble, and, on the final fall of the curtain, amid unrestrained enthusiasm on the part of the audience, he had despatched messengers in all directions with instructions to find Mr. Pilkington and[267] conduct him to the presence. Meanwhile, he waited impatiently on the empty stage.

The sudden advent of Wally Mason, who appeared at this moment, upset Mr. Goble terribly. Wally was a factor in the situation which he had not considered. An infernal, tactless fellow, always trying to make mischief and upset honest merchants, Wally, if present at the interview with Otis Pilkington, would probably try to act in restraint of trade and would blurt out some untimely truth about the prospects of the piece. Not for the first time, Mr. Goble wished Wally a sudden stroke of apoplexy.

"Went well, eh?" said Wally amiably. He did not like Mr. Goble, but on the first night of a successful piece personal antipathies may be sunk. Such was his effervescent good humour at the moment that he was prepared to treat Mr. Goble as a man and a brother.

"H'm!" replied Mr. Goble doubtfully, paving the way.

"What are you h'ming about?" demanded Wally, astonished. "The thing's a riot."

"You never know," responded Mr. Goble in the minor key.

"Well!" Wally stared. "I don't know what more you want. The audience sat up on its hind legs and squealed, didn't they?"

"I've an idea," said Mr. Goble, raising his voice as the long form of Mr. Pilkington crossed the stage towards them, "that the critics will roast it. If you ask me," he went on loudly, "it's just the sort of show the critics will pan the life out of. I've been fifteen years in the...."

"Critics!" cried Wally. "Well, I've just been talking to Alexander of the Times, and he said it was the best musical piece he had ever seen and that all the other men he had talked to thought the same."

Mr. Goble turned a distorted face to Mr. Pilkington. He wished that Wally would go. But Wally, he reflected, bitterly, was one of those men who never go. He faced Mr. Pilkington and did the best he could.

"Of course it's got a chance," he said gloomily. "Any show has got a chance! But I don't know.... I don't know...."

Mr. Pilkington was not interested in the future prospects of "The Rose of America." He had a favour to ask, and he[268] wanted to ask it, have it refused if possible, and get away. It occurred to him that, by substituting for the asking of a favour a peremptory demand, he might save himself a thousand dollars.

"I want the stage after the performance to-morrow night, for a supper to the company," he said brusquely.

He was shocked to find Mr. Goble immediately complaisant.

"Why, sure," said Mr. Goble readily. "Go as far as you like!" He took Mr. Pilkington by the elbow and drew him up-stage, lowering his voice to a confidential undertone. "And now, listen," he said, "I've something I want to talk to you about. Between you and I and the lamp-post, I don't think this show will last a month in New York. It don't add up right! There's something all wrong about it."

Mr. Pilkington assented with an emphasis which amazed the manager. "I quite agree with you! If you had kept it the way it was originally...."

"Too late for that!" sighed Mr. Goble, realizing that his star was in the ascendant. He had forgotten for the moment that Mr. Pilkington was an author. "We must make the best of