Pelham Wodehouse - Jill the Reckless

ISAAC GOBLE AND JACOB COHN

PRESENT

THE ROSE OF AMERICA

(A Musical Fantasy)

BOOK AND LYRICS BY OTIS PILKINGTON

MUSIC BY ROLAND TREVIS

Turning her eyes from this, Jill became aware that something was going on at the other side of the desk, and she perceived that a second young man, the longest and thinnest she had ever seen, was in the act of rising to his feet, length upon length like an unfolding snake. At the moment of her entry he had been lying back in an office-chair, so that only a merely nominal section of his upper structure was visible. Now he reared his impressive length until his head came within measurable distance of the ceiling. He had a hatchet face and a receding chin, and he gazed at Jill through what she assumed were the "tortoise-shell cheaters" referred to by her recent acquaintance, Mr. Brown.

"Er...?" said this young man enquiringly in a high, flat voice.

Jill, like many other people, had a brain which was under the alternating control of two diametrically opposite forces. It was like a motor-car steered in turn by two drivers, the one a dashing, reckless fellow with no regard for the speed limits, the other a timid novice. All through the proceedings up to this point the dasher had been in command. He had whisked her along at a break-neck pace, ignoring obstacles and police regulations. Now, having brought her to this situation, he abruptly abandoned the wheel and turned it over to his colleague, the shrinker. Jill, greatly daring a moment ago, now felt an overwhelming shyness.

She gulped, and her heart beat quickly. The thin man towered over her. The black-haired pianist shook his locks at her like Banquo.

"I...." she began.

Then, suddenly, womanly intuition came to her aid. Something seemed to tell her that these men were just as scared as she was. And, at the discovery, the dashing driver resumed his post at the wheel, and she began to deal with the situation with composure.

"I want to see Mr. Goble."

"Mr. Goble is out," said the long young man, plucking nervously at the papers on the desk. Jill had affected him powerfully.

"Out!" She felt she had wronged the pimpled office-boy.

"We are not expecting him back this afternoon. Is there anything I can do?"

He spoke tenderly. This weak-minded young man was thinking that he had never seen anything like Jill before. And it was true that she was looking very pretty, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. She touched a chord in the young man which seemed to make the world a flower-scented thing, full of soft music. Often as he had been in love at first sight before in his time, Otis Pilkington could not recall an occasion on which he had been in love at first sight more completely than now. When she smiled at him, it was as if the gates of heaven had opened. He did not reflect how many times, in similar circumstances, these same gates had opened before; and that on one occasion when they had done so it had cost him eight thousand dollars to settle the case out of court. One does not think of these things at such times, for they strike a jarring note. Otis Pilkington was in love. That was all he knew, or cared to know.

"Won't you take a seat, Miss...."

"Mariner," prompted Jill. "Thank you."

"Miss Mariner. May I introduce Mr. Roland Trevis?"

The man at the piano bowed. His black hair heaved upon his skull like seaweed in a ground swell.

"My name is Pilkington. Otis Pilkington."

The uncomfortable silence which always follows introductions was broken by the sound of the telephone-bell on the desk. Otis Pilkington, who had moved out into the room and was nowhere near the desk, stretched forth a preposterous arm and removed the receiver.

"Yes? Oh, will you say, please, that I have a conference at present." Jill was to learn that people in the theatrical business never talked: they always held conferences. "Tell Mrs. Peagrim that I shall be calling later in the afternoon, but cannot be spared just now." He replaced the receiver. "Aunt Olive's secretary," he murmured in a soft aside to Mr. Trevis. "Aunt Olive wanted me to go for a ride." He turned to Jill. "Excuse me. Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Mariner?"

Jill's composure was now completely restored. This interview was turning out so totally different from anything she had expected. The atmosphere was cosy and social. She felt as if she were back in Ovingdon Square, giving tea to Freddie Rooke and Ronny Devereux and the rest of her friends of the London period. All that was needed to complete the picture was a tea-table in front of her. The business note hardly intruded on the proceedings at all. Still, as business was the object of her visit, she felt that she had better approach it.

"I came for work."

"Work!" cried Mr. Pilkington. He, too, appeared to be regarding the interview as purely of a social nature.

"In the chorus," explained Jill.

Mr. Pilkington seemed shocked. He winced away from the word as though it pained him.

"There is no chorus in 'The Rose of America,'" he said.

"I thought it was a musical comedy."

Mr. Pilkington winced again.

"It is a musical fantasy !" he said. "But there will be no chorus. We shall have," he added, a touch of rebuke in his voice, "the services of twelve refined ladies of the ensemble."

Jill laughed.

"It does sound much better, doesn't it!" she said. "Well, am I refined enough, do you think?"

"I shall be only too happy if you will join us," said Mr. Pilkington promptly.

The long-haired composer looked doubtful. He struck a note up in the treble, then whirled round on his stool.

"If you don't mind my mentioning it, Otie, we have twelve girls already."

"Then we must have thirteen," said Otis Pilkington firmly.

"Unlucky number," argued Mr. Trevis.

"I don't care. We must have Miss Mariner. You can see for yourself that she is exactly the type we need."

He spoke feelingly. Ever since the business of engaging a company had begun, he had been thinking wistfully of the evening when "The Rose of America" had had its opening performance—at his aunt's house at Newport last summer—with an all-star cast of society favourites and an ensemble recruited entirely from debutantes and matrons of the Younger Set. That was the sort of company he had longed to assemble for the piece's professional career, and until this afternoon he had met with nothing but disappointment. Jill seemed to be the only girl in theatrical New York who came up to the standard he would have liked to demand.

"Thank you very much," said Jill.

There was another pause. The social note crept into the atmosphere again. Jill felt the hostess' desire to keep conversation circulating.

"I hear," she said, "that this piece is a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan opera."

Mr. Pilkington considered the point.

"I confess," he said, "that, in writing the book, I had Gilbert before me as a model. Whether I have in any sense succeeded in...."

"The book," said Mr. Trevis, running his fingers over the piano, "is as good as anything Gilbert ever wrote."

"Oh, come, Rolie!" protested Mr. Pilkington modestly.

"Better," insisted Mr. Trevis. "For one thing, it is up-to-date."

"I do try to strike the modern note," murmured Mr. Pilkington.

"And you have avoided Gilbert's mistake of being too fanciful."

"He was fanciful," admitted Mr. Pilkington. "The music," he added, in a generous spirit of give and take, "has all Sullivan's melody with a newness of rhythm peculiarly its own. You will like the music."

"It sounds," said Jill amiably, "as though the piece is bound to be a tremendous success."

"We hope so," said Mr. Pilkington. "We feel that the time has come when the public is beginning to demand something better than what it has been accustomed to. People are getting tired of the brainless trash and jingly tunes which have been given them by men like Wallace Mason and George Bevan. They want a certain polish.... It was just the same in Gilbert and Sullivan's day. They started writing at a time when the musical stage had reached a terrible depth of inanity. The theatre was given over to burlesques of the most idiotic description. The public was waiting eagerly to welcome something of a higher class. It is just the same to-day. But the managers will not see it. 'The Rose of America' went up and down Broadway for months, knocking at managers' doors."