The Real Adventure
weight to. When I put out a production under my name, it means it's the
best production I can make with the means I've got. There may be men who
can work differently; but when I have to take a cynical view of it and
try to get by with bad work because most of the people out in front
won't know the difference, I'll retire. I'm only fifty and I've got ten
or fifteen good years in me yet. But before I'll do that, I'll go out to
my little farm on Long Island and raise garden truck."
There was another momentary silence, for the girl made no comment at all
on this statement of his _credo_. But he felt sure, somehow, that she
understood it and there was nothing deprecatory about the tone in which,
presently, he went on speaking.
"Of course a director's got only one weapon to use against the owners of
a show, when it comes down to an issue, and that's a threat to resign
unless they let him have his way. I've used that twice in this
production already, and I can see one or two places coming where I may
have to use it again. So, if there's any way of throwing out those
costumes without giving them their choice between getting new ones or
getting a new director, I'd like to find it. Would it be possible, do
you think, to get better ones that would also be cheaper? That argument
would bring Goldsmith around in a hurry. It's ridiculous, of course, but
that's the trouble with making a production for amateurs. You spend more
time fighting them, than you do producing the show."
"I don't believe," said Rose, "that you could get better ready-made
costumes a lot cheaper; at least, not enough to go around, and in a
hurry. Of course every now and then, you can pick up a tremendous
bargain--some imported model that's a little extreme, or made in trying
colors, that they want to get rid of and will sell almost for whatever
you'll pay. But the two or three we might be able to find, wouldn't help
us much."
"And I suppose," he said dubiously, "it's out of the question getting
them any other way than ready-made; that is, and cheaper too."
The only sign of excitement there was in the girl's voice when she
answered, was a sort of exaggerated matter-of-factness. Oh, yes, there
was besides a wire edge on it, so that the words came to him through the
cold air with a kind of ringing distinctness.
"I could design the costumes and pick out the materials," she said, "but
we'd have to get a good sewing woman--perhaps more than one, to get them
done."
He wasn't greatly surprised. Perhaps the notion that she might suggest
something of the sort was responsible for the tentative dubious way in
which he had said he supposed it couldn't be done.
But Rose, at the sound of her own voice and the extraordinary
proposition it was uttering, was astonished clear through. She hadn't
had the remotest idea of saying such a thing a moment or two before.
What had suggested it, she couldn't have told. That day-dream perhaps,
that she had amused herself with while Mrs. Goldsmith was making up the
tale of her atrocities. Perhaps it had been just the suggestions
speaking in the tone, not the words, of John Galbraith's voice--that he
hoped she'd offer something like that.
Anyway, whatever it was that presented the idea to her, the thing that
seized on it and spoke it aloud was an instinct that didn't need to stop
and think--an instinct that realized indeed, if this isn't too
far-fetched a way of putting it, that its only chance lay in escaping
into the open ahead of the slower-footed processes of thought. If she
hadn't spoken instantly like that, it's perfectly clear she wouldn't
have spoken at all. But, having heard her own voice say the words, she
resolved, in spite of her fright--because she was frightened--to back
them up.
"You've had--experience in designing gowns, have you?" Galbraith asked.
"Only for myself," she admitted. "But I know I can do that part of it."
And she wasn't telling more than the truth! The confident excitement
that possessed her, gave a stronger assurance than any amount of
experience could have done.
"But,"--she reverted to the other part of the plan--"I'm not a good
sewer. I'd have to have somebody awfully good, who'd do exactly what I
told her."
"Oh, that can be managed;" he said a little absently, and with what
struck Rose as a mere man's ignorance of the difficulties of the
situation. Expert sewing women didn't grow on every bush. But at the end
of a silence that lasted while they walked a whole block, he convinced
her that she had been mistaken.
"I was just figuring out the way to work it," he said then, explaining
his silence. "I shall tell Goldsmith and Block (Block was the junior
partner in the enterprise) that I've got hold of a costumer who agrees
to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of say,
twenty per cent less than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out. If they
aren't satisfactory, it's the costumer's loss and we can buy these that
Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as well, at Lessing's.
I think that saving will be decisive with them."
"But do you know a costumer?" Rose asked.
"You're the costumer;" said Galbraith. "You design the costumes, buy the
fabrics, superintend the making of them. As for the woman you speak of,
we'll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe. I happen to know she's
competent, and she's at a loose end just now, because her show is
closing when ours opens. You'll buy the fabrics and you'll pay her. And
what profit you can make out of the deal, you're entitled to. I'll
finance you myself. If they won't take what we show them, why, you'll be
out your time and trouble, and I'll be out the price of materials and
the woman's labor."
"I don't think it would be fair," she said, and she found difficulty in
speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of her teeth to
chatter--"I don't think it would be fair for me to take all the profit
and you take all the risk."
"Well, I can't take any profit, that's clear enough," he said; and she
noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice. "You see, I'm retained,
body and soul, to put this production over. I can't make money out of
those fellows on the side. But you're not retained. You're employed as a
member of the chorus. And so far, you're not even being paid for the
work you're doing. As long as you work to my satisfaction there on the
stage, nothing more can be asked of you. As for the risk, I don't
believe it's serious. I don't think you'll fall down on the job, and I
don't believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some
money."
At the end of another silence, for Rose was speechless here, he went on
expanding the plan a little further. And if the assurances he gave her
were essentially mendacious, he himself wasn't exactly aware that they
were. It had often happened in productions of his, he said--and this
much was true--that to save time or to accomplish some result he wanted,
he put up a little of his own money for something and trusted to a
prosperous event for getting it back. It was clearly for the good of the
show that the costumes for the sextette should be better than the ones
Mrs. Goldsmith had picked out. The only alternative way of getting them,
to a knock-down and carry-away fight with Goldsmith and Block, which,
even if it were successful, would weaken the effect of his next
ultimatum, was the plan he now proposed to Rose. She needn't regard the
money he put up as in any sense a personal loan to her. They were simply
cooperating for the good of the enterprise. If her work turned out to be
valuable, it was only right she should be paid for it.
And then he pressed her for an immediate decision. The job would be a
good deal of a scramble at best, as the time was short. If she agreed to
it, he'd get in touch with the wardrobe mistress at the Globe, to-night.
As for the money, he had a hundred dollars or so in his pocket, which
she could take to start out with.
Of course the only lie involved in all this was the warp of the whole
fabric; that he was doing it, impersonally, for the success of the show.
And that might well enough have been true. Only in this case, it
definitely wasn't. He was doing it because it would establish a personal
connection, the want of which was becoming so tormenting a thing to his
soul, between himself and this girl whom he had to order about on the
stage and call by her last name, or rather by a last name that wasn't
hers--an imagination-stirring, question-compelling, warm human creature,
who, up to now, had been as completely shut away from him as if she had
been a wax figure in a show-window.
They had reached the Randolph Street end of the avenue, and a policeman,
like Moses cleaving the Red Sea, had opened the way through the tide of
motors for a throng of pedestrians bound across the viaduct to the
Illinois Central suburban station.
"Come across here," said Galbraith taking her by the arm and stemming
this current with her. "We've got to have a minute of shelter to finish
this up in," and he led her into the north lobby of the public library.
The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it
was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in
here, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the
staircase.
Rose unpinned her veil and, to his surprise, because of course she was
going out in a minute, put it into her ulster pocket. But, curiously
enough, the sight of her face only intensified an impression that had
been strong on him during the last part of their walk--the impression
that she was a long way off. It wasn't the familiar contemplative brown
study, either. There was an active eager excitement about it that made
it more beautiful than ever he had seen it before. But it was as if she
were looking at something he couldn't see--listening to words he
couldn't hear.
"Well," he said a little impatiently, "are you going to do it?"
At that the glow of her was turned fairly on him. "Yes," she said, "I'm
going to do it. I suppose I mustn't thank you," she went on, "because
you say it isn't anything you're doing for me. But it is--a great thing
for me--greater than I could tell you. And I won't fail. You needn't be
afraid."
Inexplicably to him (the problem wouldn't have troubled James Randolph)
the very completeness with which she made this acknowledgment--the very
warmth of the hand-clasp with which she bound the bargain, vaguely
disappointed him--left him feeling a little flat and empty over his
victory.
He found his pocketbook and counted out a hundred and twenty dollars,
which he handed over to her. She folded it and put it away in her
wrist-bag. The glow of her hadn't faded, but once more it was turned on
something--or some one--else. It wasn't until he rose a little abruptly
from the marble bench, that she roused herself with a shake of the head,
arose too, and once more faced him.
"You're right about our having to hurry," she said. "Don't you suppose
that some of the department stores on the west side of State Street
would still be open--on account of Christmas, you know?"
"I don't know," he said. "Very likely. But look here!" He pulled out his
watch. "It's after seven already. And rehearsal's at eight-thirty.
You've got to get some dinner, you know."
"Dinner doesn't take long at the place where I go," she reminded him.
"But if I can get one or two things now--I don't mean the
materials--why, I can get a start to-night after the rehearsal's over."
"I don't like it," he said glumly. "Oh, I know, it's a rush job and
you'll have to work at it at all sorts of hours. If only you ... If I
could just ease up a bit on your rehearsals! Only, you see, the sextette
would he lost without you. Look here! There's nothing life or death