The Real Adventure
His announcement that Rose was going to be put into the sextette was
entitled to consideration, even though it couldn't be banked on. There
were three mediums and three big girls in the sextette. (Olga Larson was
one of the mediums and so needn't fear replacement by Rose, who was a
big girl.) Besides appearing in two numbers as a background to one of
the principals, they had one all to themselves, a fact which constituted
them a sort of super-chorus. Galbraith used to keep them for endless
drills after the general rehearsal was dismissed.
But the intimation that Rose was to be promoted to this select inner
circle, didn't, as it first came to her, give her any pleasure. Somehow,
as Larson told her about it, she could fairly see the knowing greasy
grin that would have been Dave's comment on this prophecy. And in the
same flash, she interpreted the Larson girl's look, half incredulous,
half satirical, and her, "You've got as good a chance of losing your job
as Galbraith has of losing his."
"I haven't heard anything about being put in the sextette," she said
quietly, "and I don't believe I will be."
"Well, I don't know why not." There was a new warmth in the medium's
voice. Rose had won a victory here, and she knew it. "You've got the
looks and the shape, and you can dance better than any of the big girls,
or us mediums, either. And if he doesn't put that big Benedict lemon
into the back line where she belongs, and give you her place in the
sextette, it will be because he's afraid of her drag."
Rose forbore to inquire into the nature of the Benedict girl's drag.
Whatever it may have been, John Galbraith was evidently not afraid of
it, because as he dismissed that very rehearsal, calling the rest of the
chorus for twelve the following morning, and the sextette for eleven, he
told Rose to report at the earlier hour. And a moment later, she heard
Dave say to the big show girl named Vesta Folsom (some one with a vein
of playful irony must have been responsible for this christening),
"Well, maybe I didn't call that turn."
"You're the original wise guy, all right," Vesta admitted. "You're
Joseph to all the sure things."
Barring Olga Larson, the chorus was probably unanimous, Rose reflected,
in looking at it like that. They accounted for her having got a job in
the first place at Grant's expense, and a promotion so soon thereafter
to the sextette, by assuming that John Galbraith had a sentimental
interest in her. Whether his reward had been collected in advance, or
was still unpaid, was an interesting theme for debate. But that, past or
present, the reward was his actuating motive, it wouldn't occur to
anybody to question.
There was no malice in this. Rose didn't lose caste with any of them on
account of it. But a chorus-girl is the most sentimental person in the
world. If there's anybody who really believes that love makes the world
go round, she is that one. It's love that actuates men to deeds of
heroism or of crime; it's love that makes men invest good money in
musical comedies; love that makes stars out of her undeserving sisters
in the chorus; love that is always waiting round the corner to open the
door to wealth and fame for her.
So when Grant came back and ate her humble pie in vain, and later, when
Benedict was relegated to a place in the back line, the natural
explanation was that Galbraith was crazy about the new girl.
Of course it set Rose all ablaze with wrath when she became aware of
this. It was precisely because she had rebelled against the theory that
love was what made the world go round, that she was here in the chorus.
Had she been content to let it make her world go round, she never would
have left Rodney. The only way she had of refuting the assumption in
this case would be by making good so demonstrably and instantaneously,
that they'd be compelled to see that her promotion had been inevitable.
It was in this spirit, with blazing cheeks and eyes, that she attacked
the next morning's rehearsal. She was only dimly aware of Benedict out
in the hall in front, viperishly waiting for the arrival of one of the
owners to make an impassioned plea for reinstatement. Her tears or her
tantrums were matters of supremely little importance. But that John
Galbraith should see that he had promoted her on merit and on nothing
but merit, mattered enormously.
Lacking the clue, he watched her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way
of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of
carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under
the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the impetus of an
unexpected promotion.
"Don't make such hard work of it, Dane," he said at last. "You're all
right, but have a little fun out of it. There are eight hundred people
out there," he waved his arm out toward the empty hall, "who have paid
their hard-earned money to feel jolly and have a good time. If you go on
looking like that, they'll think this piece was produced by Simon
Legree."
There came the same gleaming twinkle in his eye that had disarmed her
resentment once before, and as before, she found herself feeling rather
absurd. What mattered the microcephalic imaginings of greasy Dave and
his friends among the chorus? John Galbraith wasn't the sort of man to
get infatuated with a chorus-girl. The gleam in his eye was enough, all
by itself, to make that plain.
So, flushing up a little, she grinned back at him, gave him a nod of
acquiescence, and fell back to her place for the beginning of the next
evolution.
"If she smiles like that," thought John Galbraith, "she'll break up the
show." At the end of the rehearsal, he said to her, "You're doing very
well indeed, Dane. If I could have caught you ten years ago, I could
have made a dancer out of you."
It was a very real, unqualified compliment, and as such Rose understood
it. Because, by a dancer, he meant something very different from a
prancing chorus-girl. The others giggled and exchanged glances with Dave
at the piano. They didn't understand. To them, the compliment seemed to
have been delivered with the left hand. And somehow, an amused
recognition of the fact that they didn't understand, as well as of the
fact that she did, flashed across from John Galbraith's eyes to hers.
"Just a minute," he said as they all started to leave the stage, and
they came back and gathered in a half-circle around him. "We'll rehearse
the first act to-night with the principals. You six girls are supposed
to be young millionairesses, very up-to-date-bachelor-girl type,
intimate friends of the leading lady, who is a multi-millionairess
that's run away from home. You've all got a few lines to say. Go to Mr.
Quan and get your parts and have them up by to-night."
At half past four that afternoon, when the regular chorus rehearsal was
over, Rose asked John Galbraith if she might speak to him for a minute.
He had one foot on a chair and was in the act of unlacing his dancing
shoes, so he seemed to be, for him, comparatively permanent. He had a
disconcerting way, she had noticed, of walking away on some business of
his own in the middle of other people's sentences, intending to come
back, no doubt, in time to hear the end of them, but forgetting to.
"Fire away," he said, looking around at her over his shoulder. Then,
with reference to the blue-bound pair of sides she held in her hand,
"What's the matter? Isn't the part fat enough for you?"
"Fat enough?" Rose echoed inquiringly. "Oh, you mean long enough." She
smiled in good-humored acknowledgment of his joke, and let that do for
an answer.
John Galbraith hadn't been sure that it would be a joke to Rose. He'd
been a musical-comedy producer so long that no megalomaniacal absurdity
could take him by surprise. There were chorus-girls no doubt in this
very company, who, on being promoted to microscopic parts, would be
capable of complaining because they weren't bigger.
"All the same," said Rose, "I'm afraid I've got to tell you that I can't
take this, and to ask you to put me back into the regular chorus."
He wasn't immune to surprise after all, it seemed. He straightened up in
a flash and stared at her. "What on earth are you talking about?" he
asked.
"If I have words to say, even only a few, wouldn't anybody who happened
to be in the audience, know who I was?--I mean if they knew me already."
"Of course they would. What of it?"
"I told you," said Rose, "the day you gave me a job, that it wasn't a
lark. I had to begin earning my own living suddenly, and without any
training for it at all, and this seemed to be the best way. That's--all
true, and it's true that no one could come and, as you say, lead me away
by the ear. Nobody's responsible for me but myself. But there are people
who'd be terribly shocked and hurt if they found out I'd gone on the
stage. They know I'm earning my own living, but they don't know how I'm
doing it. I thought that as just one of the chorus, made up and all, I'd
be safe. But with these lines to say ..."
"Now listen to me," said John Galbraith; "listen as hard as you can.
Because when I've done talking, you will have to make up your mind. In
the first place you wouldn't be 'safe,' as you said, even in the chorus.
A make-up isn't a disguise. You will be rouged and powdered, your
eyelashes blackened, your lips reddened and so on, not to make you look
different, but to keep you looking the same under the strong lights.
You're not the sort of person to escape notice. That's the reason I made
up my mind to hire you before I knew you could dance. I saw you standing
back there in the doorway. You've got the quality about you that makes
people see you. That's one of your assets.
"So, if you're ashamed of being recognized in this business, you'd
better get out of it altogether. On the other hand, it seems to me that
if you've got to earn your living, it's nobody's business but your own
how you do it. You're the one who'll go hungry if you don't earn it, not
these friends of yours. So, if it seems a legitimate way of earning a
living to you, if you don't feel disgraced or degraded by being in it,
you'd better forget your friends and go ahead. You've made an excellent
start; you've earned a legitimate promotion. It will mean that instead
of getting twenty dollars a week when the show opens, you will get
twenty-five. It's a long time since I've given a person without
experience a chance like that. I gave it to you because you seemed
ambitious and intelligent--the sort who'd see me through. But if you
aren't ambitious, if the game doesn't look worth playing to you, and you
aren't willing to play it for all it's worth--why, good as you are, I
don't want you at all. So that's your choice!"
His manner wasn't quite so harsh as his words, but it convinced her that
he meant every one of them right to the foot of the letter.
She couldn't answer for a moment. She hadn't guessed that the choice he
was going to offer her would be between taking the little part he had
given her and playing it for all it was worth, defiant of Rodney's
feelings and of the scandal of the Lake Shore Drive--and going back to
her three-dollar room this afternoon, out of a job and without even a
glimmering chance of finding another.
"Take your time," he said. "I don't want to be a brute about it, but
look here! Try to see it my way for a minute. Here are my employers, the
owners of this piece. They're putting thousands of dollars into the
production of it. They've hired me to make that production a success.
Well, I don't know about other games, but this game's a battle. If we
win, it will be because we put every bit of steam and every bit of
confidence we've got into it and _make_ it win. That goes for me, and