She bounced up from her chair, her large face flaming. "Very well, then, all I've got left to say is, I wish you joy of your choice, and--_good_ afternoon!"

"Good afternoon," said Loveland, rising, and walking towards the door.

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Miss Moon, stopping him as he turned the handle. "See here, if you please. You're no gentleman if you play the sneak, and tell."

"I've given you my word not to do that," Loveland a.s.sured her.

"Mind you keep it! I wash my hands of you," cried the angry woman, and thinking that he might as well take this as his cue for exit, Loveland left the room.

"h.e.l.l hath no fury like a woman scorned," he heard her husband quoting with a vicious laugh, before there had been time to shut the door.

Loveland went up to his own room, more than a little troubled. He had learned to like Lillie de Lisle, not only for Bill's sake, but for her own. She was a sweet, bright little creature, a lady by nature, though not by birth or education; and if she had a chance, might even yet--in spite of bad training--become a charming actress. The Moon woman was jealous of the star's youth and prettiness, of course; and now she meant to play her rival a shameful trick, yet he might not warn the poor girl because of that stupid promise he had given.

It was a new thing for Loveland to trouble himself about the affairs of his acquaintances; but he knew too well now what it was like to be deserted by friends, cold-shouldered by the world, not to have learned how to feel for others. He was genuinely uncomfortable about Lillie, but he could only make up his mind to stand by the deposed star whatever happened to her, and to himself. For the present, he did not see what else he could do, bound as he was to silence. But there was one comfort, he consoled himself: a new company could not be formed in a minute. This was Sat.u.r.day. They would all go on to Bonnerstown next day, no doubt; perhaps Mrs. Jacobus would reconsider the spiteful decision to which her henpecked husband agreed with evident reluctance. In any case, there were a few days in which to plan. Loveland hoped that he might hear from England in another week; and at worst, salaries were payable on Sat.u.r.days. He would be the possessor of ten hard earned dollars that night.

Dinner had been at twelve, because of the matinee which would begin at two o'clock. Now it was already after one, and everybody had started for the theatre, except himself, the Jacobuses, and Ed Binney, who was ill with a racking cough, and keeping his room till the last minute.

Loveland went upstairs to see how Ed was feeling, found him ready though coughing hard, and they walked to the Ashville Opera House together.

After all, salaries were not paid that night. J. J. informed the expectant members of the company that business hadn't "run to it." They must wait for their money till next week. Bonnerstown was a bigger place than Ashville, and there was every prospect of better things for the future. Two or three of the actors and actresses wheedled a few dollars out of the manager, to "go on" with; but they were "old fakirs," as they would have said themselves, and knew how to manage such matters.

Loveland, however, took the news quietly, as he had begun to take the various blows which fortune successively dealt him.

In these small towns, the hotel breakfast was from seven till eight, or until eight-thirty by favour; and on Sundays, if one were a quarter of an hour later in coming down, nothing actively unpleasant was said aloud, though there might be mumblings and dark looks. On this Sunday morning Loveland availed himself of the last amount of grace, hurrying down at a quarter to nine lest he should be told, grumpily, that breakfast was cleared away.

Ed Binney was in bed, for his room-mate had volunteered to carry something up, but Lillie de Lisle, "Pa and Ma Winter," and Miss St.

Clare were still at the table.

"Have the others finished and gone already?" asked Loveland, for the two Eccles were usually the last to appear, unless it were "J. J.," who invariably took his wife's breakfast upstairs before beginning his own.

"No. It's queer, none of them have been down yet," replied Mrs. Winter.

"They wrote cards on their doors, saying they weren't to be disturbed or their fires to be made, and didn't want breakfast. The cards are up yet.

It's the first time they've ever done such a thing since I knew 'em; and that's two years."

"I do hope they haven't committed suicide," whispered Miss St. Clare, who battened on detective stories.

Loveland did not offer any opinion, but he flushed slightly on hearing the news, and went on eating his lukewarm breakfast, with eyebrows drawn together in an anxious frown. Could there be any connection between this mysterious and unprecedented conduct on the part of the manager, his wife, and his wife's family, and the secret proposal made yesterday to the juvenile lead?

Loveland had told himself then that the threatening storm would not break until the following week at earliest, but now a disquieting idea had jumped into his head. So disquieting was it, that when he had finished his breakfast he paused before the door of the room occupied by the Eccles brothers, and disregarding the card conspicuously pinned on the panel, knocked very hard.

No answer came, and he knocked again, still harder. Then a third time, so violently that no natural sleep could have resisted the clamour.

By this time the landlord, the landlord's son, the landlord's wife and niece, and several commercial travellers were in the pa.s.sage or on the stairs.

"They're dead drunk, or else they've hooked it," suggested one of the latter.

"Scott! Jacobus ain't paid for his week yet!" exclaimed the landlord, his thin yellow face turning a shade yellower. He rushed to the closed door on the floor below, and pounded furiously with no result.

"The snides! I'm hanged if they ain't gallivanted with my money, and made me the expense of bustin' in my doors and gettin' 'em mended!"

wailed the proprietor of the hotel.

Luckily for his feeling and pocket, one of the commercial travellers was an amateur locksmith, and the door, which hid the secret of the Jacobus family, was soon opened. The bed had not been slept in. The room was clear of all Jacobus's belongings; and the landlord reproached himself for not being "fly enough" to suspect treachery earlier. He had actually seen, with his own eyes, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus carrying bundles to the theatre, when starting for the matinee, and again before the evening performance, but had thought nothing of it, because his acquaintance with Jacobus had extended over several years.

"I was a crazy loon to think he was all right," the defrauded man groaned. "And then, business was A 1 the whole week, so I wasn't keepin'

my eyes peeled for any larks. I'm big enough, and old enough, and ought to o' known better. But the rest o' ye ain't goin' to take a shine out o' me like that. I keep your hotel luggage till you hand over every red cent of your board, and I wish to goodness the law wasn't too cranky to give me holt o' your theatre trunks, too."

"I can't believe they've really gone and left us like this," pleaded the little Star, wide-eyed and pale, though unnaturally composed. "Let's wait and see, before we think the worst. Somebody'd better run over to the Opera House and find out if their things are there. If they've sneaked them away in the night, why--then I'll _have_ to believe; but I won't before."

"I guess my son's there and half-way back by this time," growled the landlord. "Meanwhile, I'll just have a go at t' other lock."

He had the go, and by the time the opening door had revealed emptiness, bad news had come back from the theatre. The worst had happened. With incredible stealth and cunning, the manager and his family had slipped away in the night, leaving nothing behind them but a stranded, broken, and penniless company.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Marooned

After consultation in the room of the Star, it appeared that the funds of the deserted six amounted to exactly six dollars, or, if equally divided, one dollar apiece.

Lillie, who had been--more or less regularly--in the enjoyment of thirteen dollars a week, was in the habit of sending all she could spare out of her salary to a bedridden sister in a semi-charitable inst.i.tution. Pa and Mrs. Winter were suspected of having "something up their sleeves," but they produced only two dollars to match Lillie's two--and after all, their joint earnings were but ten dollars a week. As for Ed Binney, he supported parents, one of whom was almost blind, the other nearly crippled with rheumatism. Besides this regular call upon his purse, he was obliged reluctantly, from time to time, to buy a tonic which might keep his delicate chest in working order. Miss St. Clare was chronically penniless; and everybody knew that Gordon had received no salary yet.

The landlord, disappointed at finding very little of value in the rooms of the actors (with whom it was a cautious habit to safeguard their most cherished possessions in their theatre trunks), had threatened in the first outburst of anger to turn them all into the street; but Loveland and Lillie de Lisle argued that he would lose nothing by waiting an hour or two, until matters had been discussed and something of advantage to everybody perhaps arranged.

But, at the end of a long and gloomy talk, n.o.body had found anything brilliant to suggest. There was too little money to be of any use, said Pa Winter, who was by nature a pessimist; and for his part he didn't see what was to become of them all, unless they went to the poor-house, and waited for something to turn up, or induced the town authorities to organise a subscription.

"I won't go to the poor-house, and I won't be an object of charity,"

exclaimed Lillie, pluckily. "I've been in bad sc.r.a.pes before, and got out of 'em somehow, and I bet we all have, unless it's Gordon--so I guess we can again."

Relieved by Mr. Jacobus's treachery, of his obligation to be silent, Val repeated his conversation with Mrs. Jacobus yesterday, adding that he had been very far from suspecting her real intention.

"That's because you're an amatoor, dear boy," said Binney, coughing harshly. "If they'd let out as much to one of _us_--but they'd have had too much gumption. If only you could have put us wise we'd o' been on the watch; but don't think we're blamin' you, for we ain't. You did the straight thing, accordin' to your lights. Full Moon was always green jealous of Miss de Lisle, but after you joined the show, if she'd been a cat with four legs instead of two, she'd o' spit and scratched. As it was, she did the next best thing--tried to take you away under her arm, and spite Lillie. For the rest of us she didn't care a tinker's dash, one way or another. Then, when you turned on her, and blurted out just what you thought of her and her schemes, and how you meant to stand by Miss de Lisle, she was as sour on you as she had been sweet. I bet she's chucklin' this minute, thinkin' of our plight. It'll be nuts to her."

"Can't we get at them and punish them somehow?" Loveland wanted to know.

"Takes money to do that sort of thing, even if we could. It would cost the boss of the hotel more than Jacobus owes him for us all, to go to law, now they've vamoosed, out of the state, too. As for us, we're not _in_ it--except the soup. They had plenty of money, too, the beasts, for Full Moon's a regular oof bird, with 'most a thousand dollars of her own over and above what J. J. has 'blowed,' and the Ashville business _has_ been jolly good, I don't care how they tried to stuff you up. They must have lit out with a pretty penny--to say nothing of all the company's scenery, paper, and MS. plays. We're stripped clear of everything but our theatre trunks, and they'd have taken them if they'd dared."

But Loveland had not even a theatre trunk.

"If we could get up some kind of a benefit performance, those that are left of us," he suggested, after thinking very hard for a few heavy minutes, "we might make enough to go--somewhere."

"Good idea, if we had a play," said Eddy. "But we--no, by Jinks, we _have_ got one!"

"What one?" asked Lillie de Lisle, clasping her hands.

"Sidney Cremer's 'Lord Bob.' Old J. J. gave me the MS. to copy into parts only three days ago, and I was too seedy to hustle much with it.

He said if the parts were ready to distribute Monday it would do, and I was going to finish by then, sure. I suppose he dasn't ask me for the MS. back, for fear I'd smell a rat--or else he forgot. Anyhow, I've got the play, and half the parts are done."