Joan Thursday: A Novel

"But…"

"Isn't that enough?"

"But I am – only me: nothing: a girl who dares to love you."

"Could any man ask more?"

"You… What will your friends say?.. You'll be ashamed of me."

"Hush! That's treason."

"But you will – you won't be able to help it – "

A faint, half-hearted cry of protest: words indistinguishable, silenced by lips on lips; a space of quiet…

"How shall I make myself worthy of you?"

"Love me always."

"How shall I dare to meet your family, your friends – ?"

"You will be my wife."

"But that won't be for a long time…"

"Yes, we must wait – be patient, Joan." She lifted her head, wondering. "But don't fear; love will sustain us."

"I will be patient. You'll have to give me time to learn how not to disgrace you – "

"What nonsense!"

"I mean it. I must be somebody. I'm nobody now."

"You are my dearest love."

"I must be more, to be your wife. Give me time to learn to act. When I am a success – "

"No more of that!" There was definite resolution in the interruption. "You must give up all thought of the stage."

"But I want to – "

"It's not the place for you – for my wife that is to be."

"But we're not to be married for a long time, you say."

"I'm a poor man, dear – I have enough for one, not enough for two. It may be only weeks, it may be months or years before my work begins to pay."

"But meantime I must live – support myself, somehow."

"You will leave that to me?"

"I must do something – be independent – "

"Won't you leave it all to me? I will arrange everything – "

"I'll do whatever you wish me to."

"And forget the stage – ?"

"I don't know – I'll try, Jack."

"You must, dear one."

It was not a time for disagreements. Joan clung more closely to him. The issue languished in default, was forgotten for the time…

Transports ebbed: the faintest premonitory symptoms of a return to something resembling sanity made their appearance; of a sudden Matthias remembered the hour.

"Do you know," he said with tender gravity, having consulted his watch, "it's after eleven?"

"It doesn't seem possible," she laughed happily.

"And I'm hungry," he announced. "Aren't you?"

She dared to be as frank as he: "Famished!"

"Come along, then! Run, get your hat. It gives us an excuse for at least two hours more…"

By the time she had repaired the damage this miracle had wrought with her appearance, Matthias had walked to the Astor and brought back a taxicab. The attention affected Joan with a poignant and exquisite sense of happiness.

It was only her second ride in a motor vehicle. The top being down, they sat very circumspectly apart; but Matthias captured her hand and eye spoke to eye with secret laughter of delight, each reading the other's longing thought. The speed of the cab and its sudden slackening as it picked its path down Broadway, the flow of cool air against her face, the swimming maze of lights through which they sped, the sense of luxury and protection, added the last touch of delirious pleasure to Joan's mood.

Matthias had chosen the café of "Old Martin's," at Twenty-sixth Street, the first place that suggested itself as one where they could sup without the girl being made to feel out of place in her modest work-a-day attire; but his thoughtfulness was misapplied: Joan was exalted beyond such annoyances; and those feminine glances which she detected, of pity, disdain, and jealousy, she took complacently as envious tributes to her prettiness and her conquest.

From a seat against the wall, in a corner, she reviewed the other patrons of the smoke-wreathed room with a hauteur of spirit that would have seemed laughable had it been suspected. She thought of herself as the handsomest woman there, and the youngest, of Matthias as the most distinguished man and – the luckiest. The circumstances of the place and her partner enchanted her to distraction.

The food Matthias ordered she devoured heedlessly; but there was a delicious novelty in the experience of sipping her first glass of champagne. It was, for that matter, the first time she had ever tasted good wine, or any kind of alcoholic drink other than an occasional glass of lukewarm beer, cheap and nasty to begin with and half-stale at best, and that poisonous red wine of the Italian boarding-house to which Charlie Quard had introduced her. She had never dreamed of anything so delicious as this dry and exhilarating draught with its exotic bouquet and aromatic bubbles.

With a glowing face and dancing eyes she nodded to Matthias over the rim of her goblet.

"When we are rich," she laughed softly, "I'm never going to drink anything else!"

He smiled quietly, enjoying her enjoyment; but, when emptied, the half-bottle he had ordered was not renewed.

There was without that enough intoxication in his fondness, in the simulacrum of gaiety manufactured by the lights, the life, the laughter, and in the muted, interweaving strains of music. Joan felt that she was living wonderfully and intensely, a creature of an existence transcendent and radiant.

It was after one when another taxicab whisked them homeward through the quieting streets. She sat as close as could be to her lover and would not have objected on the grounds of "people looking" had he put an arm round her. Though he didn't, she was not disappointed, sharing something of his mood of sublimely sufficient contentment. But when he bade her good night at the foot of the stairs in the deserted and poorly lighted hallway, she gave herself to his caresses with a passion and abandon that startled and sobered Matthias, and sent him off to his room and bed in a thoughtful frame of mind.

Lying awake in darkness until darkness was dimly tempered by the formless dusk that long foreruns the dawn, he communed gravely with his troubled heart.

"Things can't go on this way – as they've started. There's got to be sanity… It's myself I've got to watch, of course," he said with stubborn loyalty to his ideal. "I mustn't forget I'm a man – nine years older – nearly ten… Why, she's hardly more than a kiddie… She doesn't know… I've got to watch myself…"

And in her room, four floors above, Joan sat as long before her bureau, chin cradled on her slim, laced fingers, eyeing intently the face shown her by gas-light in the one true patch of the common, tarnished mirror.

When at length she rose, suddenly conscious of a heavy weariness, she lingered yet another long moment for one last fond look.

"It's true," she told herself with a little nod of conviction; "I am beautiful. She said I was … he thinks I am … I must be…"

XIX

For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.

Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: I am beautiful.

Her second, not I love him, but He loves me.

And her third grew out of the second: I can make him do what pleases me.

Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the level of humanity!

A fit of petulance, beauty in tears, a whispered word of passion: strange and strangely simple incantation to have turned a world upside down! How easily was man suppled to the spell!

The sense of power ran like wine through her being: she felt herself invincible, an adept of love's alchemy; she had surprised its secret, and now the world of man's heart lay open to the practices of her disastrous art. For a moment she experienced an almost terrifying intimation of empires ripe for conquest that lay beyond Matthias; but from this she withdrew her troubled gaze; nor would she look again; not yet…

She considered his mad extravagance of last night – taxicabs, champagne, tips! Was he, then, able to afford such expenditures? In her understanding they went oddly with his pretensions to decent poverty. Or had he merely lost his head under the influence of her charms? This last theory pleased her; she adopted it with reservations: the question remained one to be cleared up.

He disapproved of a career upon the stage for her?.. Joan smiled indulgently: that matter would be arranged in good time. She meant to have her way…

At a tap on her door she changed suddenly from the aloof egoist to a woman athrill before the veil of portentous mysteries. She sat up in bed, called out to know who was knocking, gave permission to the chambermaid to enter, and received a note in the hand of Matthias.

"Past twelve o'clock," she read, "and still no sign of you, sweetheart. I give you thirty minutes to dress and come to me. If you don't, I'll come for you. After breakfast, we'll run out of town for the day – our first day together! Matthias."

Half wild with delight, she hurried through her toilet and ran down-stairs to find her lover waiting in the hallway, watch in hand.

He closed it with a snap, and made her a quaintly ceremonious bow. "In two minutes more – !" he observed in a tone of grave menace. "But before we go out, have the kindness to step into my humble study. I have somewhat to say to you."

She appeared to hesitate, to be reluctant and preoccupied occupied.

"What about?" she demanded distantly.

But her dancing eyes betrayed her.

"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"

Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a charming diffidence.

In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken; returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded…

She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and sweet and nameless longing…

At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by the prospect – the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was comprised in a few trips to Coney Island – consented with a strange mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.

"I didn't know you had an automobile."

"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."

"But … but … won't it be awf'ly expensive?"

"Don't worry, dear."

"But, you know, you aren't – rich."

"I'm a magnate of happiness, at all events: and today is our day, the first of our love, sweetheart. For twelve long hours we're going to forget everything but our two selfish selves. Why fret about tomorrow? It always does manage to take care of itself, somehow. And frankly, I don't care to be reminded of its existence today; for tomorrow I work…"

A day of quicksilver hours slipping ever from their jealous grasp; of hours volatile and glamorous: in Joan's half-dazed consciousness, a delectable pageant of scenes, sensations and emotions no sooner comprehended than displaced by others no less wonderful…

Abed long after midnight, visions besieged her bewilderingly: a length of dusty golden highway walled by green forest, with a white bridge glaring in sunlight at the bottom of a hill; the affrighting onrush of great motor-cars meeting their own, and the din and dust of their passage; the bright harbour of Huntington, blue and gold in a frame of gold and green, viewed from the marble balustrade of the Château des Beaux Arts; the wrinkled, kindly, comprehending face of a waiter who served them at dinner; the look in her lover's eyes as she repeated, on demand, guarded avowals under cover of the motor's rumble; the ardent face of a boy who had seemed unable to cease staring at her in the restaurant; silver and purple of the road by night; wheeling ranks of lights dotting the desolation of suburban Brooklyn; the high-flung span of Queensboro' Bridge, a web of steel and concrete strung with opalescent globes; the glare of the city's painted sky; the endless pulsing of the motor; their last caress on parting at the foot of the stairs…

On the morrow she went back to her typewriter like Cinderella to her kitchen. But what work Matthias was able to invent for her was neither arduous nor urgent; she was able to take her time on it, and wasted many an hour in dreaming. Her mind was, indeed, more engaged with thoughts of new frocks than with the circumstances of her love or her services to her lover.

She was to receive thenceforward twenty-five instead of ten dollars a week. Matthias had experienced little difficulty in over-ruling her faint protestations: they were to be together a great deal, he argued, and she must be able to dress at least neatly; moreover, by requiring her promise to marry him at some future time when his fortunes would permit, he had in a measure made her dependent upon him; she couldn't reasonably be asked to wait for long on a bare pittance.

His arguments were reinforced by one he knew nothing of, a maxim culled from the wisdom of Miss Maizie Dean: It was up to a girl to look out for herself first, last, and all the time. The platitude had made an ineffaceable impression upon Joan's sense of self-preservation. And if Matthias were able to afford nightly dinners for two at good restaurants, in addition to theater tickets several times a week, he ought to be able to afford a decent compensation to his stenographer; especially when it was his wish that she refrain from attempting to earn more money on the stage.

It was, however, true that no offer had come to Joan of other theatrical work, and that the issue of her ambition remained in abeyance, a subject which she didn't care to raise and which Matthias, since that first night, had considered settled.

Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not obligatory – the café of their first supper by preference, or else the Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work, they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have good but inconspicuous seats.

In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with varying discretion and success.

She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact, distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was, summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone, dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of the feminine toilet.

Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the improvement in his fiancée without realizing it objectively; what pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine: he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.

It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under the strain of it all…

"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God" company. "He's dickering with Algerson – thinks the thing may possibly come to a deal before long."

"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.

"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play – at a bargain to himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few days."

"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that she had never heard it before.

"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."

"And if he gets 'The Jade God' – when will he put it on?"

"Can't say – haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can be ratified."

"But you'll consent?"

"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."

Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork; glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.

"I wonder …" she murmured abstractedly.

"You wonder what – ?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her thought.

She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if – if he gets the piece – Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"

"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want you to stick at that game."

"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.

Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean, he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his hands."

"You think he will produce out West?"

"Probably."

"And will you have to go?"

"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses. Although … I don't know … perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production – and his expenses to the Coast and back, besides… It would be a shame to let a valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."

"Then you may go, after all?"

"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it over."

Joan sighed.

A week elapsed before the subject came up again.

Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable prejudice of her lover.

And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires, seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.

Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance, or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to join issue with his will.

And yet … she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and honest than that which he offered her.

But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion…

Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.

Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair, knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood. He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her sweet lips, and again drew her to him.

"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude. "What is it? Tell me."

"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing – only – I guess – I'm a little blue – lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be at work or – with you always."

"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now – I believe in my very soul."

"Till when – ?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"

"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."

"Dearest!"

There was an interval…

"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness for you, dear – not more than a few weeks – "

"Why?" she demanded sharply.

"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."