“He said he wanted to be there to keep an eye on me.”
Gravity is infectious. Wally’s smile disappeared. He, too, had been recalled to thoughts which were not pleasant.
Wally crumbled his roll. There was a serious expression on his face.
“Freddie was quite right. I didn’t think he had so much sense.”
“Freddie was not right,” flared Jill. The recollection of her conversation with that prominent artist still had the power to fire her independent soul. “I’m not a child. I can look after myself. What I do is my own business.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to find that your business is several people’s business. I am interested in it myself. I don’t like your being on the stage. Now bite my head off!”
“It’s very kind of you to bother about me —”
“I said ‘Bite my head off!’ I didn’t say ‘Freeze me!’ I take the license of an old friend who in his time has put worms down your back, and I repeat—I don’t like your being on the stage.”
“I shouldn’t have thought you would have been so”—Jill sought for a devastating adjective—“so mid-Victorian!”
“As far as you are concerned, I’m the middest Victorian in existence. Mid is my middle name.” Wally met her indignant gaze squarely. “I-do-not-like-your-being-on-the-stage! Especially in any company which Ike Goble is running.”
“Why Mr Goble particularly?”
“Because he is not the sort of man you ought to be coming in contact with.”
“What nonsense!”
“It isn’t nonsense at all. I suppose you’ve read a lot about the morals of theatrical managers —”
“Yes. And it seemed to be exaggerated and silly.”
“So it is. There’s nothing wrong with most of them. As a general thing, they are very decent fellows,—extraordinarily decent if you think of the position they are in. I don’t say that in a business way there’s much they won’t try to put over on you. In the theatre, when it comes to business, everything goes except biting and gouging. ‘There’s never a law of God or man runs north of fifty-three.’ If you alter that to ‘north of Forty-first Street,’ it doesn’t scan as well, but it’s just as true. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Golden Rule is suspended there. You get used to it after you have been in the theatre for awhile, and, except for leaving your watch and pocketbook at home when you have to pay a call on a manager and keeping your face to him so that he can’t get away with your back collar-stud, you don’t take any notice of it. It’s all a game. If a manager swindles you, he wins the hole and takes the honor. If you foil him, you are one up. In either case, it makes no difference to the pleasantness of your relations. You go on calling him by his first name, and he gives you a couple of cigars out of his waistcoat pocket and says you’re a good kid. There is nothing personal in it. He has probably done his best friend out of a few thousand dollars the same morning, and you see them lunching together after the ceremony as happily as possible. You’ve got to make allowances for managers. They are the victims of heredity. When a burglar marries a hat-check girl, their offspring goes into the theatrical business automatically, and he can’t shake off the early teaching which he imbibed at his father’s knee. But morals —”
Wally broke off to allow the waiter to place a fried sole before him. Waiters always select the moment when we are talking our best to intrude themselves.
“As regards morals,” resumed Wally, “that is a different matter. Most managers are respectable, middle-aged men with wives and families. They are in the business to make money, and they don’t want anything else out of it. The girls in their companies are like so many clerks to them, just machines that help to bring the money in. They don’t know half a dozen of them to speak to. But our genial Ike is not like that.” Wally consumed a mouthful of sole. “Ike Goble is a bad citizen. He paws! He’s a slinker and a prowler and a leerer. He’s a pest and a worm! He’s fat and soft and flabby. He has a greasy soul, a withered heart, and an eye like a codfish. Not knocking him, of course!” added Wally magnanimously. “Far be it from me to knock anyone! But, speaking with the utmost respect and viewing him in the most favorable light, he is a combination of tom-cat and the things you see when you turn over a flat stone! Such are the reasons why I am sorry that you are in his company.”