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 institution. 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, nobody 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 scrapes 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."