Joan Thursday: A Novel

Joan smiled and shook hands. "I guess it wasn't worrying you much," she retorted. "If you'd wanted to, you knew where to find me."

Quard needed no more encouragement. Promptly ranging alongside and falling into step: "That's just it," he argued; "I knew where to start looking for you, all right, but I was kinda afraid you might be in when I called, and didn't know whether you'd snap my head off or not."

"That's likely," the girl countered amiably. There was a distinctly agreeable sensation to be derived from this association with one upon whom she could impose her private estimate of herself. "What made you want to see me all of a sudden?"

"Then you ain't sore on me?"

"What for?" she evaded transparently.

"Oh, you know what for, all right. I'm sore enough on myself not to want to talk about it."

"Well," said Joan indifferently, "I guess it's none of my business if you're such a rummy you can't hold onto a job. Only, of course, I don't have to stand for that sort of foolishness more than once."

"You said something then, all right," Quard approved humbly. "I can't blame you for feeling that way about it. But le' me tell you an honest fact: I ain't touched a drop of anything stronger'n buttermilk since that night – so help me Klaw and Erlanger!"

"Why?"

"Well, I guess I must've took a tumble to myself. Anyhow, when I got over the katzenjammer thing, I thought it all out and made up my mind it was up to me to behave for the balance of my sentence."

"Is that so?" Joan asked, pausing definitely on the corner at Forty-fifth Street.

"I know I can," Quard asserted convincingly. "Believe me, Joan, I hate the stuff! I'd as lief stake myself to a slug of sulphuric. No, on the level: I'm booked for the water-tank route for the rest of my natural."

"I'm awful glad," observed the girl maliciously. "It's so nice for your mother. Well … g'dafternoon!"

"Hold on!" Quard protested. "I'll walk down to the house with you."

"No, you won't," she returned promptly.

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to."

"Oh, you don't!" he murmured blankly, pulling down the corners of his wide, expressive mouth.

"So sorry," she parroted. "G'dafternoon."

She was several steps away before the man recovered from this rebuff. Then, with a face of set intent, he gave chase.

"I say – Miss Thursday!"

Joan accepted with a secret smile this sudden change from the off-hand manner of his first addresses. "Miss Thursday, eh?" she said to herself; but halted none the less.

"Well?" – with self-evident surprise.

"Look here —lis'n!" insisted Quard: "I got to have a talk with you."

"What about?"

"Oh, this is no good place. When can I see you?"

"Is it quite necessary, Mister Quard?"

He wagged an earnest head at her: "That's right. What are you doing tonight?"

"Oh, I got an engagement with some friends of mine," she said with spontaneous mendacity.

"Well, then, when?"

"Oh, I don't know; you might as well take your chances – call round sometime – in two or three days."

"And I got to be satisfied with that?"

"Why not?"

Quard shook his head helplessly: "I'd like to know what's come over you…"

"Why, what's the matter?" The temptation to lead him on was irresistible.

"You've changed a lot since I seen you last. What you been doing to yourself?"

She bridled… "Maybe it's you that is changed. Maybe you're seeing things different, now you're sober."

Quard hesitated an instant, his features drawn with anger. Then abruptly: "Plenty!" he ejaculated, and as if afraid to trust himself further, turned and marched back to Broadway.

Smiling quietly, Joan made her way home. On the whole, the encounter had not been unenjoyable. She had not only held her own, she had condescended with striking success.

Later, she repented a little of her harshness; she had been hardly kind, if Quard were sincere in his protestations of reform; and a little tolerance might have earned her an evening less lonely.

It was spent, after a dinner which proved unexpectedly desolate, lacking the companionship to which of late she had grown accustomed, in the back-parlour (to which Matthias had left her the key) and in discontented efforts to fix her interest on a novel. Before ten o'clock she gave it up, and climbed to her room, to lie awake for hours in mute rebellion against her friendless estate. She might, it was true, have kept a promise made to her lover just before his departure, to look up and renew relations with her family. But the more she contemplated this step, the less it attracted her inclination. There'd be another row with the Old Man, most likely and … anyway, there was plenty of time. Besides, they'd want money, if they found out she had any; and while a hundred and fifty was a lot, there was no telling when she'd get more.

Eventually she fell asleep while reviewing her meeting with Quard and turning over her hazy impression that it wouldn't hurt her to be less stand-offish with him, next time.

In the morning she settled herself at her typewriter in a fine spirit of determination to keep her mind occupied with the work in hand – and incidentally to rid her conscience of it – until the feeling of loneliness wore off or at least till its reality became a trifle less unpalatable through familiarity. But not two pages had been typed before the call of the sunlit September day proved seductive beyond her will to resist; a much-advertised "Promenade des Toilettes" at a department store claimed the rest of the morning; and after lunch she "took in" a moving-picture show.

But again her evening was forlorn. Theatres allured, but she hardly liked to go alone. In desperation she cast back mentally to the friends of the old days, and after rejecting her erstwhile confidant and co-labourer at the stocking counter, Gussie Innes (who lived too near home, and would tell her father, who would pass it along to the Old Man) Joan settled upon one or two girls, resident in distant Harlem, to be hunted up, treated to a musical comedy, and regaled with a narrative of the rise and adventures of Joan Thursday until their lives were poisoned with corrosive envy.

But the first mail of Wednesday furnished distractions so potent that this project was postponed indefinitely and passed out of Joan's mind, never to be revived. It brought her two letters: manufacturing an event of magnitude in the life of a young woman who had yet to write her first letter and who had thus far received only a few scrappy and incoherent notes from boyish admirers.

There was one from Matthias, posted in Chicago the preceding morning. Her first love letter, it was scanned hurriedly, even impatiently, and put aside in favour of a fat manila envelope whose contents consisted of a type-written manuscript and a note in scrawling long-hand:

"Friend Joan —

"I hope you are not still mad with me and sorry I got hot under the collar Monday only I thought you might of been a little easy on me because, I am strictly on the Water Wagon and this time mean it —

"What I wanted to talk to you about was a Sketch I got hold of a while ago you know you picked the other one only that was punk stuff compared with this I think – Please read this and tell me what you think about it if you like it, I think I will try it out soon, if it's any good it's a cinch to cop out Orpheum time for a Classy Act like this —

"Your true friend —"Chas. H. Quard.

"P.S. of course I mean I want you to act the Womans part it you like the Sketch, what do you think!"

but she hardly liked to go alone. In desperation she cast back mentally to the friends of the old days, and after rejecting her erstwhile confidant and co-labourer at the stocking counter, Gussie Innes (who lived too near home, and would tell her father, who would pass it along to the Old Man) Joan settled upon one or two girls, resident in distant Harlem, to be hunted up, treated to a musical comedy, and regaled with a narrative of the rise and adventures of Joan Thursday until their lives were poisoned with corrosive envy.

But the first mail of Wednesday furnished distractions so potent that this project was postponed indefinitely and passed out of Joan's mind, never to be revived. It brought her two letters: manufacturing an event of magnitude in the life of a young woman who had yet to write her first letter and who had thus far received only a few scrappy and incoherent notes from boyish admirers.

There was one from Matthias, posted in Chicago the preceding morning. Her first love letter, it was scanned hurriedly, even impatiently, and put aside in favour of a fat manila envelope whose contents consisted of a type-written manuscript and a note in scrawling long-hand:

"Friend Joan —

"I hope you are not still mad with me and sorry I got hot under the collar Monday only I thought you might of been a little easy on me because, I am strictly on the Water Wagon and this time mean it —

"What I wanted to talk to you about was a Sketch I got hold of a while ago you know you picked the other one only that was punk stuff compared with this I think – Please read this and tell me what you think about it if you like it, I think I will try it out soon, if it's any good it's a cinch to cop out Orpheum time for a Classy Act like this —

"Your true friend —"Chas. H. Quard.

"P.S. of course I mean I want you to act the Womans part if you like the Sketch, what do you think!"

It was afternoon before she realized the flight of time.

She turned back to Quard's note, a trifle disappointed that he hadn't suggested an hour when he would call for her answer.

Adjusting her hat before the mirror, preparatory to going out to lunch, she realized without a qualm that there was no longer any question of her intention as between Quard's offer and the wishes of Matthias. Whatever the consequences she meant to play that part – but on terms and conditions to be dictated by herself.

But in the act of drawing on her gloves, she checked, and for a long time stood fascinated by the beauty and lustre of the diamond on her left hand. A stone of no impressive proportions, but one of the purest and most excellent water, of an exceptional brilliance, it meant a great deal to one whose ingrained passion for such adornments had, prior to her love affair, perforce been satisfied with the cheap, trashy, and perishable stuff designated in those days by the term "French novelty jewellery." Subconsciously she was sensitive to a feeling of kinship with the beautiful, unimpressionable, enigmatic stone: as though their natures were somehow complementary. Actively she knew that she would forfeit much rather than part with that perfect and entrancing jewel. With nothing else in nature, animate or inert, would it have been possible for her to spend long hours of silent, worshipful, sympathetic communion.

If she were to persist in the pursuit of her romantic ambition, it might bring about a pass of cleavage between herself and her lover; it was more than likely, indeed; she knew the prejudices of Matthias to be as strong as his love, and this last no stronger than his sense of honour. Tacitly if not explicitly, she had given him to understand that she would respect his objections to a stage career. He would not forgive unfaith – least of all, such clandestine and stealthy disloyalty as she then contemplated.

The breaking of their engagement would involve the return of the diamond.

Intolerable thought!

And yet…

Staring wide-eyed into her mirror, she saw herself irresolute at crossroads: on the one hand Matthias, marriage, the diamond, a secure and honourable future; on the other, Quard, "The Lie," disloyalty, the loss of the diamond, uncertainty – a vista of grim, appalling hazards…

And yet – she had four weeks, probably six, perhaps eight, in which to weigh the possibilities of this tremendous and seductive adventure. "The Lie" might fail…

In that case, Matthias need never know.

XXII

As she drew near to Longacre Square, Joan saw Quard detach himself from an area-railing against which he had been lounging across the street, and move over to intercept her. Since she had anticipated that he might waylay her in some such manner, if he didn't call at the house, she was not surprised by this manœuvre; but she was a little surprised and not a little amused (if quite privately) to see him throw away his cigar as they drew together, and lift his hat. Such attentions from him were distinctly novel – and gratifying.

Complacent, and at the same time excited beneath a placid demeanour, she greeted him with a cool little nod.

He grinned broadly but nervously.

"I was wondering if you wouldn't happen along soon…"

"Is that so?" Joan returned blandly.

"Mind my walking with you?"

"No-o," the girl drawled.

"Of course, if I'm in the way – "

"Oh, no – I'm just looking for some place to lunch."

"Well, I'm hungry myself. Why not let me set up the eats?"

"All right," she assented indifferently.

"Fine! Where'll we go?"

"Oh, I don't know…"

"Anywheres you say."

"Well, Rector's is right handy."

"That suits me," Quard affirmed promptly.

But Joan's sidelong glance discovered a look of some discomfiture.

"I guess you got my letter, all right?" he pursued as they crossed to the sidewalk of the New York Theatre Building.

"Oh, yes," Joan replied evenly, after a brief pause.

"Wha'd you think of the piece?"

"Oh … the sketch! Why, it seems very interesting. Of course," Joan added in a tone of depreciation, "I didn't have much time – just glanced through it, you know – "

"I felt pretty sure you'd like it!"

"Oh, yes; I thought it quite interesting," said the girl patronizingly.

She seemed unconscious of his quick, questioning glance, and Quard withdrew temporarily into suspicious, baffled silence.

In the pause they crossed Forty-fourth Street and entered the restaurant.

It was rather crowded at that hour, but by good chance they found a table for two by one of the windows; where a heavily-mannered captain of waiters, probably thinking he recognized her, held a chair for Joan and bowed her into it with an empressement that secretly delighted the girl and lent the last effect to Quard's discomfiture.

"Please," she said gravely as the actor, with the captain suave but vigilant at his elbow, knitted expressive eyebrows over the menu – "please order something very simple. I hardly ever have much appetite so soon after breakfast."

"I – ah – how about a cocktail?" Quard ventured, relief manifest in his smoothened brow.

"I thought you – "

"Oh, for you, I mean. Mine's ice'-tea."

"I think," said Joan easily, "I would like a Bronx."

And then, while Quard was distracted by the importance of his order, she removed her gloves and, with her hands in her lap hidden beneath the table, slipped off the ring and put it away in her wrist-bag: looking about the room the while with a boldness which she could by no means have mustered a month earlier, in such surroundings.

Distrustful of her cocktail, when served, for all her impudence in naming it, she merely sipped a little and let it stand.

The mystery of the change in her worked a trace of exasperation into Quard's humour. He eyed her narrowly, with misgivings.

"I guess you ain't lost much sleep since we blew up," he hazarded abruptly.

"Whatever do you mean?" drawled Joan.

"You look and act's if you'd come into money since I saw you last."

"Perhaps I have," she said with provoking reserve.

"Meaning – mind my own business," he inferred morosely.

"Well, now, what do you think?"

"I – well, I'd be sorry to think what some folks might," he blundered.

Joan's eyes flashed ominously. "Suppose you quit worrying about me; I guess I can take care of myself."

"I guess you can," he admitted heavily. "Excuse me."

"That's all right – and so'm I." Joan relented a little; lied: "I have come into some money – not much." Her gaze was as clear and straightforward as though her mouth had been the only authentic well-spring of veracity. "Let it go at that."

"That's right, too." His face cleared, lightened. "Le's get down to brass tacks: how about that sketch?"

"Didn't I say it seemed very interesting?"

He nodded with impatience. "But you ain't said how my proposition strikes you. That's what I want to know."

"You haven't made me any proposition."

"Go on! Didn't you read my note?"

"Sure I did; but you only said you wanted me for the woman's part."

"Ain't that enough?"

She shook her head with a pitying smile. "You got to talk regular business to me. I ain't as easy as I was once; I know the game better, and I don't need a job so bad. How much will you pay?"

He hesitated: named reluctantly a figure higher than that which he had had in mind: "Thirty-five dollars…"

"Nothing doing," said Joan promptly.

"But look here: you're only a beginner – "

"It's lovely weather we're having, for September, isn't it?"

"I'd offer you more if I could afford it, but – "

"Have you heard anything from Maizie since she left town?"

"Damn Maizie! How much do you want, anyhow?"

"Fifty – and transportation on the road."

He checked; whistled guardedly and incredulously; changed his manner, bending confidentially across the table: "Listen, girlie, yunno I'd do anything in the world for you – "

"Fifty and transportation!"

"But I had to pay the guy what wrote this piece fifty for a month's option. If I take it up I gotta slip him a hundred more and twenty-five a week royalty as long's we play it: and there's three others in the cast, outsida you and me. David'll want fifty at least, and the Thief thirty-five and the servant twenty-five: there's a hundred and thirty-five already, including royalty. Add fifteen for tips and all that: a hundred and fifty; fifty to you, two-hundred. The best I can hope to drag down is three, and Boskerk'll want ten per cent commission for booking us, leaving only seventy for my bit – and I'm risking all I got salted away to try it out."

He paused with an air of appeal to which Joan was utterly cold.

"It's a woman's piece," she said tersely; "if you get a sure-'nough actress to play it, she'll want a hundred at least, if she's any good at all. You're saving fifty if you get me at my price."

This was so indisputably true that Quard was staggered and temporarily silenced.

"And," Joan drove her argument shrewdly home with unblushing mendacity – "Tom Wilbrow says it's only a question of time before I can get any figure I want to ask, in reason."

Quard's eyes started. "Tom Wilbrow!" he gasped.

"He rehearsed me in 'The Jade God' before Rideout went broke. I guess you heard about that."

The actor nodded moodily. "But I didn't know you was in the cast… Look here: make it – "

"Fifty or nothing."

After another moment of hesitation, Quard gave in with a surly "All right."

At once, to hide his resentment, he attacked with more force than elegance the food before him.

Joan permitted herself a furtive and superior smile. The success of her tactics proved wonderfully exhilarating, even more so than the prospect of receiving fifty dollars a week; she would have accepted fifteen rather than lose the opportunity. She had demonstrated clearly and to her own complete satisfaction her ability to manage men, to bend them to her will…

There was ironic fatality in the accident which checked this tide of gratulate reflection.

From some point in the restaurant behind Joan's back, three men who had finished their lunch rose and filed toward the Broadway entrance. Passing the girl, one of these looked back curiously, paused, turned, and retraced his steps as far as her table. His voice of spirited suavity startled her from a waking dream of power tempered by policy, ambitions achieved through adulation of men…

"Why, Miss Thursday, how do you do?"

Flashing to his face eyes of astonishment, Joan half started from her chair, automatically thrust out a hand of welcome, gasped: "Mr. Marbridge!"

Quard looked up with a scowl. Marbridge ignored him, having in a glance measured the man and relegated him to a negligible status. He had Joan's hand and the knowledge, easily to be inferred from her alarm and hesitation, that she remembered and understood the scene of last Sunday, and was at once flattered and frightened by that memory. His handsome eyes ogled her effectively.

"Please don't rise. I just caught sight of you and couldn't resist stopping to speak. How are you?"

"I" – Joan stammered – "I'm very well, thanks."

"As if one look at you wouldn't have told me you were as healthy as happy – more charming than both! You are – eh – not lonesome?"

His intimate smile, the meaning flicker of his eyes toward Quard, exposed the innuendo.

"Oh, no, I – "

"Venetia was saying only yesterday we ought to look you up. She wants to call on you. Where do you put up in town?"

Almost unwillingly the girl gave her address – knowing in her heart that the truth was not in this man.

"And, I presume, you're ordinarily at home round four in the afternoon?" She nodded instinctively. "I'll not forget to tell Venetia. Two-eighty-nine west Forty-fifth, eh? Right-O! I must trot along. So glad to have run across you. Good afternoon…"

Regaining control of her flustered thoughts, Joan found Quard eyeing her with odd intentness.

"Friend of yours?" he demanded with a sneer and a backward jerk of his head.

"Yes – the husband of a friend of mine," she replied quickly.

The actor digested this information grimly. "Swell friends you've got, all right!" he commented, not without a touch of envy. "Now I begin to understand… What's Marbridge going to do for you?"

"Do for me? Mr. Marbridge? Why, nothing," she answered blankly, in a breath. "I don't know what you mean."

"That's all right then. But take a friendly tip, and give him the office the minute he begins to talk about influencing managers to star you. I've heard about that guy, and he's a rotten proposition – grab it from me. He's Arlington's silent partner – and you know what kind of a rep. Arlington's got."

"No, I don't," Joan challenged him sharply. "What's more, I don't care. Anyway, I don't see what Arlington's reputation's got to do with my being a friend of Marbridge's wife."

"No more do I," grumbled Quard – "not if Marbridge believes you are."

XXIII

Before leaving the restaurant Quard outlined in detail his plans for producing "The Lie" for vaudeville presentation. He named the other two actors, spoke of hiring a negro dresser who would double as the servant, and indicated his intention of engaging a producing director of the first calibre who, he said, thought highly of the play.

Joan was a little overcome. Peter Gloucester was a producer quite worthy to be named in the same breath with Wilbrow.

"Well, he believes in the piece," Quard explained – "the same as me – and he says he'll give us ten afternoon rehearsals for a hundred and fifty. It'll be worth it."

"You must think so," said Joan, a little awed.

"You bet I do. This means a lot to me, anyway; I gotta do something to keep my head above out-of-town stock – or the movies again." Mentioning his recent experience, he shuddered realistically. "But if this piece ain't actor-proof, I'm no judge. Gloucester says so, too. And to have him tune it up into a reg'lar classy act will be worth … something, I tell you!"

His hesitation was due to the fact that Quard was secretly counting on the representations of his agent, Boskerk, who insisted that, properly presented, the sketch would earn at least four hundred and fifty dollars a week, instead of the sum he had named to Joan.

But Joan overlooked this lamely retrieved slip; she was all preoccupied with a glowing sense of gratification growing out of this endorsement of her first surmise, that Quard had only waited on her consent to go ahead. The thought was unctuous flattery to her conceit, inflating it tremendously even in the face of a shrewd suspicion that it was sentiment more than an exaggerated conception of her ability that made Quard reckon her coöperation indispensable. That the man was infatuated with her she was quite convinced; on the other hand, she didn't believe him sufficiently blinded by passion to imperil the success of his venture by giving her the chief part unless he believed she could play it – "actor-proof" or no.