Joan Thursday: A Novel

Once back in her dressing-room (where she was alone, since their act was the last on the bill and the rest of the performers had already left the theatre) Joan gave way to a semi-hysterical tempest of tears. It was her first experience at close quarters with a man in hopeless intoxication, and while Quard's surrender was too abject to terrify, she was faint with disgust of him and incensed beyond measure with him for having subjected her to those terrible five minutes before a howling audience. With this, she was poignantly aware that henceforth their offering was "cold": by morning Quard's name would be upon the black-list and further booking impossible to secure. She might as well count herself once more out of work, and now in even less hopeful circumstances than when first she had struck out for herself; for then she had been buoyed up by the fatuous confidence of complete inexperience, and then she had been comparatively affluent in the possession of twenty-two dollars. Now she knew how desperately hard was the way she must climb, and she had less than five dollars. What little she had been able to set aside out of her weekly wage had gone to purchase some sorely needed supplements to her meagre wardrobe.

It was some time before she could collect herself enough to dabble her swollen eyes with cold water, scrub off her make-up, and change for the street.

She stole away presently across an empty and desolate stage and through the blind, black alley leading from the stage-door to One-hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street. She felt somewhat relieved and comforted by the clean night air and the multitude of lights – the sense of normal life fluent in its accustomed, orderly channels. It seemed, in her excited fancy, like escaping from the foul, choking atmosphere of a madhouse…

The theatre was near Third Avenue, toward which Joan hurried, meaning to board a southbound car and transfer to Forty-second Street. But as she neared the corner she checked sharply, and (simple curiosity proving stronger than her impulse to fly across the street) went more slowly – only a few yards behind a figure that she knew too well – a swaying figure with weaving feet.

Vastly different from the carefully overdressed, dandified person he had been at their first meeting, Quard stumbled on, his hands deep in pockets, head low between his shoulders, a straw hat jammed down over his eyes. Obviously he was without definite notion of either his where-abouts or his destination. Passers-by gave him a wide berth.

He seemed so broken and helpless that pity replaced horror and indignation in the heart of the girl. After all, he hadn't been unkind to her; but for him she would long since have gone to the wall; and ever since their clash on the day of the try-out, he had treated her with a studied respect which had pleased her, apprehensive though she had remained of a renewal of his advances.

Suddenly, and quite without premeditation, she darted forward and plucked Quard by the sleeve just as he was on the point of staggering through the swinging doors of a corner saloon. If her impulse had been at all articulate, she would have said that this was, in such extremity, the least she could do – to try to save him from himself.

"Charlie!" she cried. "No, Charlie – don't be a fool!"

The man halted and, turning, reeled against the door-post. "Wasmasr?" he asked thickly. Then recognition stirred in his bemused brain. "Why, it's lil Joan Thursh'y…"

"Come away," she insisted nervously. "Don't be a fool. Don't go in there. Go home."

He moved his head waggishly. "Thash where 'm goin' – home – soon's I brace up a bit."

"Come away!" Joan repeated sharply, dragging at his cuff. "Do you hear? Come away. A walk'll straighten you out better'n anything else."

"Walk, eh?" Quard lifted his chin and lurched away from the door-post. "Y' wanna take walk with me? All right" – indulgently – "I'll walk with you, lil one, 's far's y' like."

"Come, then!" she persisted. "Hurry – it's late."

He yielded peaceably, with a sodden chuckle; but as he turned the lights of the saloon illumined his face vividly for an instant, and provided Joan with a fresh and appalling problem. The man had forgotten to remove his make-up; his mouth and jaws were plastered with a coat of bluish-grey paint, to suggest a week's growth of beard when viewed across footlights; there were wide blue rings round his eyes, and splashes of some silvery mixture on his dark hair. His face was a burlesque mask, so extravagant that it could not well escape observation in any steady light. It was impossible for Joan to be seen publicly with him – in a street-car, for instance. But now that she had taken charge of him, she couldn't gain her own consent to abandon the man to the potentially fatal whims of his condition. For a moment aghast and hesitant, in another she recognized how unavoidable was the necessity of adopting the suggestion his stupefied wits had twisted out of her pleadings: she would have to walk with him a little way, at least until he could recover to some slight extent.

Indeed, even had she desired to, she would probably have found it difficult to get rid of him just then; for in an attempt to steady himself, Quard grasped her arm just above the elbow; and this grip he maintained firmly without Joan's daring to resent it openly. She was to that extent afraid of his drunkenness, afraid of his uncertain temper.

Submissively, then, she piloted him to the south side of the street, where with fewer lighted shop-windows there was consequently less publicity, and to Lexington Avenue, turning south and then west through the comparative obscurity of One-hundred-and-twenty-fourth Street. Neither spoke until they had traversed a considerable distance and turned south again on Lenox Avenue. The streets were quiet, peopled with few wayfarers; and these few hurried past them with brief, incurious glances if not with that blind indifference which is largely characteristic of the people of New York. Quard suffered himself to be led with a docility as grateful as it had been unexpected. It was apparent to the girl that he was making, subconsciously at least, a strong effort to control his erratic feet. He retained her arm, however, until they were near One-hundred-and-sixteenth Street: when, noticing the lights of a corner drug-store, the girl held back.

A swift glance roundabout discovered nobody near.

"Where's your handkerchief, Charlie?" she demanded.

"Where's whash? Whashmasser?"

"I say," she repeated impatiently, "where's your handkerchief? Get it out and scrub some of that paint off your face. Do you hear? You look like a fool."

"'M a fool," Quard admitted gravely, fumbling through his pockets.

"Well, I won't be seen with you looking like that. Hurry up!"

Her peremptory accents roused him a little. He found his handkerchief and began laboriously and ineffectually to smear his face with it, with the sole result of spreading the colour instead of removing it. In this occupation, he released her arm. With a testy exclamation, Joan snatched the handkerchief from him and began to scour his cheeks and jaws, heedless whether he liked it or not. To this treatment he resigned himself without protest – with, in fact, almost ludicrous complaisance, lowering his head and thrusting it forward as if eager for the scrubbing.

For all her willingness she could accomplish little without cold cream. When at length she gave it up, his jowls were only a few shades lighter. She shrugged with despair, and threw away the greasy handkerchief.

"It's no use," she said. "It just won't come off! You'll have to go as you are."

"Whash that? Go where?"

"Now listen, Charlie," she said imperatively: "see that drug-store on the corner? You go in there and ask the man to give you something to straighten you out."

Quard nodded solemnly, fixed the lighted show-window with a steadfast glare, and repeated: "So'thin' to straighten m' out."

"That's it. Go on, now. I'll wait here."

He wagged a playful forefinger at her. "Min' y' do," he mumbled, and wandered off.

"And – Charlie! – get him to let you wash your face," she called after the man.

Waiting in the friendly shadow of a tree, she watched him anxiously through the window; saw him turn to the soda-fountain and make his wants known to the clerk, who with a nod of comprehension and a smile of contempt began at once to juggle bottles and a glass.

Singularly enough, it never occurred to the girl to seize this chance to escape. She was now accepting the situation without question or resentment. Quard seemed to her little better than an overgrown, irresponsible child, requiring no less care. Somebody had to serve him instead of his aberrant wits. To leave him to himself would be sheer inhumanity… But she reasoned about his case far less than she felt, and for the most part acted in obedience to simple instinct.

She saw him drain a long draught of some whitish, foaming mixture, pay and reel out of the store. He had, of course, forgotten (if he had heard) her plea to remove the remainder of his make-up. She was angry with him on that account, as angry as she might have been with a heedless youngster. But she did not let this appear. She moved quickly to his side.

"Come on," she said quietly, turning southward; "you've got to walk a lot more."

He checked, mumbled inarticulately, staring at her with glazed eyes, but in the end yielded passively. In silence they continued to One-hundred-and-tenth Street, Joan watching him furtively but narrowly. The drug worked more slowly than she had hoped. Primarily, in fact, it seemed only to thicken the cloud that befogged his wits. But by the time they had gained the last-named street, she noticed that he was beginning to walk with some little more confidence.

He now seemed quite ignorant of her company – strode on without a word or glance aside. They crossed to Central Park and, entering, began to thread a winding path up the wooded rises of its northwestern face. Momentarily, now, there was an increasing assurance apparent in the movements of the man. He trudged along steadily, but with evident effort, like one embarrassed by a heavy weariness. His breathing was quick and stertorous.

The park seemed very quiet. Joan wondered at this, until she remembered that it must have been nearly midnight when they stopped at the drug-store. She had noticed idly that the clerk had interrupted preparations to close in order to wait on Quard.

They met nobody afoot, not even a policeman; but here and there, upon benches protected by umbrageous foliage, figures were vaguely discernible; men and women, a pair to a bench, sitting very near to one another when not locked in bold embraces. Joan heard their voices, gentle, murmurous, fond. These sights and sounds, the intimations they distilled, would at a previous time have moved the girl either to derision or to envy; now she felt only a profoundly sympathetic compassion, new and strange to her, quite inexplicable.

Near the top of the hill they found a bench set in the stark glare of an arc-light, and therefore unoccupied. Upon this Quard threw himself as if exhausted. He said nothing, seemed wholly oblivious of his companion. Immediately he was seated his chin dropped forward on his chest, his hat fell off, his arms and legs dangled inertly. He appeared to sink at once into impregnable slumber; yet Joan was somehow intuitively aware that he wasn't asleep.

She herself was very weary, but she couldn't leave him now, at the mercy of any prowling vagabond of the park. Picking up his hat, she sat down beside him with it in her lap, glad of the chance to rest. She was at once and incongruously not sleepy and thoughtless. Convinced that Quard was coming to himself, she was no longer troubled by solicitude; her wits wandered in a vast vacuity, sensitive only to dull impressions. She felt the immense hush that brooded over the park, a hush that was rendered emphatic by the muffled but audible and fast drumming of the man's over-stimulated heart, straining its utmost to pump and cleanse away the toxic stuff in his blood; the infrequent rumble and grinding of a surface-car on Central Park West seemed a little noise in comparison. Now and again a long thin line of glimmering car-windows would wind snakily round the lofty curve of the Elevated structure at One-hundred-and-tenth Street. Beyond, the great bulk of the unfinished cathedral on Morningside Heights loomed black against a broken sky of clouds.

At one time a policeman passed them, strolling lazily, helmet in hand while he mopped his brow. His stare was curious for the two silent and ill-assorted figures on the bench. Joan returned it with insolent and aggressive interest, as if to demand what business it was of his. He grinned indulgently, and passed on.

She had lost track of time entirely when Quard stirred, sighed, lifted his head and sat up with a gesture of deep despondency. The movement roused her from a dull, lethargic, waking dream.

"Feeling better, Charlie?" she asked with assumed lightness.

He nodded and groaned, without looking at her.

"Able to go home yet?"

"In a minute," he said drearily.

"Where do you live?" she persisted.

He waved a hand indifferently westward. "Over there – Ninety-sixth Street."

"Think you'll be able to walk it?"

"Oh, I'm all right now." He groaned again, and leaned forward, elbow on knee, forehead in his hand. "I feel like hell," he muttered.

"The best thing for you is to get to bed and get some sleep," said the girl, stirring restlessly.

He snapped crossly: "Wait a minute, can't you?"

She subsided.

"I guess you know I've gummed this thing all up, don't you?" he asked at length.

"Yes, I guess you have," she replied, listless.

"And, of course" – bitterly – "it's all my fault…"

To this she answered nothing.

"Well, I'm sorry," he pursued in a sullen voice. "I guess I can't say any more'n that."

She sighed: "I guess it can't be helped."

He leaned back again, explored a pocket, brought to light a roll of money, with shaking hands stripped off four bills. "Well, anyway, there's your bit."

Taking the bills, she examined them carefully. "That's a whole week," she said, surprised.

"All right; it's coming to you."

With neither thanks nor further protest, she put the money away in her pocket-book.

"You've acted like a brick to me," he continued.

"Don't let's talk about that now – "

"I don't want you should think I don't appreciate it. If it hadn't been for you, I don't know when I'd've got home – chances are, not till tomorrow night, anyway. The old woman'd've been half crazy."

Joan kept silence.

"My mother," he amended, with a sidelong glance. "There's only the two of us."

"Well," said the girl rising, "if that's so, you'd better get home to her; she won't be any too happy until she sees you – and not then."

Reluctantly he got to his feet. "She thinks I'm a great actor," he observed bitterly; "and I'm nothing but a damn' drunken – "

Joan interrupted roughly: "Ah, can that bunk: it'll keep till tomorrow – and maybe you'll mean it then."

He subsided into silence, whether offended or penitent she neither knew nor cared. She gave him his hat, avoiding his look, and without further speech they found their way out to the gate at One-hundred-and-third Street. Here Joan paused to await an Eighth Avenue car.

"You'd better walk all the way home, even if you don't feel like it," she advised Quard brusquely. "It won't do you any harm, and that mop of yours is a sight."

"All right," he assented. He moved tentatively a foot or so away, checked, turned back. "I suppose this is good-bye – ?" he said, offering his hand.

"I guess it is," she agreed without emotion. Barely touching his clammy and tremulous fingers, she hastily withdrew her own.

A southbound car was swinging down to them, not a block distant. Quard eyed it with morose disfavour.

"At that," he said suddenly, "maybe this wouldn't've happened if you hadn't been so stand-offish. I only wanted to be friends – "

In her exasperation Joan gave an excellent imitation of Miss May Dean's favourite ejaculation. "My Gawd!" she said scornfully – "if you can't think of any better excuse for being a souse than to blame it on me… Good night!"

The car pulled up for her. She climbed aboard – left him staring.

XIV

Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't, as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this knowledge with a thrilling heart.

Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone, as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a typewriter.

Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie Quard.

But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late, behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than ever before.

It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of her memory.

By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she was very anxious to make him realize her again.

But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed up and departed, all in an afternoon.

So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained, kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once again removed from her reach.

She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women…

Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience. Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would never go far without influence.

The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed, did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and a fresh shirtwaist – both recent purchases.

In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the stoop.

Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away, she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative movement to rise was barely perceptible – a start, a sinking back. So that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever she might be) and lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.

He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging manner.

"Mr. Matthias – " Joan began with a slight, determined nod.

"Oh – good evening," he stammered.

Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a cool smile.

He shook his head slowly: "So sorry – I've got a shocking memory. It'll come back to me in a minute. Won't you – ah – come in?"

Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday," she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.

"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday – of course! Won't you sit down?"

Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue to the identity of Joan Thursday.

"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said, choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to go, and you let me stay here – "

"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now. Joan Thursday – to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've often wondered what became of you."

"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."

"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before this, if that's the case."

"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."

"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that could have happened – !"

"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."

"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did you? At least, I seem to remember you – ah – weren't in very good form, financially, that night we met."

"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs – the Deans, you know."

"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any – the Deans didn't – at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."