Jill turned to the Duchess, who had been gaping amazedly at the demonstration. She no longer wept, but she seemed in a dream.
“Dress and get ready to go on,” Jill commanded. “We’ll all dress and get ready to go on. Then I’ll go and find Mr Goble and tell him what we mean to do. And, if he doesn’t give in, we’ll stay here in this room, and there won’t be a performance!”
Mr Goble, with a Derby hat on the back of his head and an unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth, was superintending the erection of the first act set when Jill found him. He was standing with his back to the safety-curtain glowering at a blue canvas, supposed to represent one of those picturesque summer skies which you get at the best places on Long Island. Jill, coming down stage from the staircase that led to the dressing-room, interrupted his line of vision.
“Get out of the light!” bellowed Mr Goble, always a man of direct speech, adding “Damn you!” for good measure.
“Please move to one side,” interpreted the stage-director. “Mr Goble is looking at the set.”
The head carpenter, who completed the little group, said nothing. Stage carpenters always say nothing. Long association with fussy directors has taught them that the only policy to pursue on opening nights is to withdraw into the silence, wrap themselves up in it, and not emerge until the enemy has grown tired and gone off to worry somebody else.
“It don’t look right!” said Mr Goble, cocking his head on one side.
“I see what you mean, Mr Goble,” assented the stage-director obsequiously. “It has perhaps a little too much—er—not quite enough—yes, I see what you mean!”
“It’s too—damn—BLUE!” rasped Mr Goble, impatient of this vacillating criticism. “That’s what’s the matter with it.”
The head carpenter abandoned the silent policy of a lifetime. He felt impelled to utter. He was a man who, when not at the theatre, spent most of his time in bed, reading all-fiction magazines: but it so happened that once, last summer, he had actually seen the sky; and he considered that this entitled him to speak almost as a specialist on the subject.
“Ther sky _is_ blue!” he observed huskily. “Yessir! I seen it!”
He passed into the silence again, and, to prevent a further lapse, stopped up his mouth with a piece of chewing-gum.