Joan Thursday: A Novel

Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of earning her weekly stipend.

On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed, there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow, Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the stage of a Broadway theatre.

She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair. Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could purchase – and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she earned as typist – and she had been engaged with the understanding, implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of "The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.

There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress of recognized ability!..

It was a truism in her conception of life that the estate of actress was a loadstone for the hearts of men.

If success were to be denied her!..

In her bedroom, behind a locked door, she hurried to her pillow and to tears. She had known many an hour darkened by the fugitive despairs of youth; but never until this day had she been so despondently sorry for herself.

Later, the banal ticking of her tin alarm-clock penetrated her consciousness, and she remembered that she had work to do – to be finished before evening, if her promise to Matthias were to be kept. She rose, splashed face and eyes with cold water, and went to her typewriter in the adjoining room.

She had really very little to do in order to complete her task – only a few pages of scored and interlined manuscript to reduce to clean copy; but her mind was not with her work. Time and again she found herself sitting with idle hands, thoughts far errant; and now and then she had to dry her eyes before she could proceed: so stubbornly did she cling to the sorry indulgence of self-pity! Once, even, she was so overcome by contemplation of her sufferings that she bowed her head upon the table where the manuscript lay, and wept without restraint for several minutes – without restraint and, toward the last, with kindling interest in the discovery that her tears were bedewing a freshly typed page.

If Matthias were to notice, would he understand? And, understanding, what would he think?..

With shame-faced reluctance she destroyed the blotched page and typed it anew.

It was dark before she finished; and she was glad of this when she gathered up the manuscript to take to her employer. With no light in his room other than that of the reading-lamp with the green shade, her stained and flushed cheeks and swollen eyes would escape detection. It was not that she wouldn't have welcomed sympathetic interest, but a glance in the mirror showed her she had wept too unrestrainedly not to have depreciated the chiefest asset of her charm – her prettiness.

However, she could not well avoid the meeting: the work must be delivered; but if she were lucky she would find him in one of his frequent moods of abstraction, and their interview need only be of the briefest. Nevertheless, she would have sent the work to him by the chambermaid if her week's wage had not been due that night.

She waited a moment, listening at the door to the back-parlour; but there was no sound of voices within; and reassured, she knocked.

His response – "Come in!" – followed with unexpected promptness. She obeyed, though with misgivings amply justified as soon as she found herself in the room, which was for once well-lighted, two gas-jets on the chandelier supplementing the green-shaded lamp.

Matthias was bending over a kit-bag on the couch, hastily packing enough clothing to tide him over Sunday. He threw her an indifferent glance and greeting over his shoulder.

"Hello, Miss Thursday! I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten me. I'm going to run down to Port Madison until Monday morning – last chance I'll have for a day in the country for some time, probably. Chances are, Wilbrow will keep us at work next Sunday. Got that 'script all ready?"

Joan, depositing it on the table, murmured an affirmative in a voice uncontrollably unsteady. Before entering she had been quite sure of her ability to carry off the short interview without betraying her harrowed emotions. But to find the man about whom they centred packing to leave town – to leave her! – added the final touch of misery to her mood. And the inflection of her response could not have failed to strike oddly on his hearing.

Uttering a wondering "Hello!" he straightened up and swung round to look at her. And a glance sufficed: his smile faded, was replaced by a pucker of sympathy between his brows.

"Why, what's the trouble?"

Joan averted her face. "N-nothing," she faltered. Her lip trembled, her eyes filled anew. She dabbed at them with a wadded handkerchief.

Matthias hesitated. He drew down the corners of his mouth, elevated his brows, and scratched a temple slowly with a meditative forefinger. Then he nodded sharply and, crossing to the door, closed it.

"Tell me about it," he said, coming back to the girl. "Things not going to suit you, eh?"

She shook her head, looking away. "I – I – !" she stammered – "I can't act!"

"O nonsense!" he interrupted with kindly impatience. "You mustn't get discouraged so easily. Naturally it comes hard at first, but you'll catch on. Everything of this sort takes time. I was saying the same thing to Wilbrow today."

"Yes," she mumbled, gulping – "I – I know. I was watching you. H-he and Mr. Rideout wanted to fire me, didn't they?"

"What? Oh, no, no!" Matthias lied unconvincingly. "They – they were just wondering… I assured them – "

"But you hadn't any right to!" the girl broke in passionately. "I can't act and – and I know it, and you know it, as well as they do. I can't – I just can't! It's no use… I'm no good…"

Of a sudden she flopped into a chair, rested her head on arms folded on the table, and sobbed aloud.

Matthias shook his head and (since she could not see him) permitted himself a gesture of impotent exasperation. This was really the devil of a note! Women were incomprehensible: you couldn't bank on 'em, ever. Here was he preparing to catch a train, and not too much time at that…

But a glance at the clock reassured him slightly; he had still a little leeway. All the same, he didn't much relish the prospect of being compelled to invest his spare minutes in attempting to comfort a silly, emotional girl. And, besides, somebody in the hallway might hear her sobbing…

This last consideration took him somewhat reluctantly to her side. "There, there!" he pleaded, intensely irritated by that feeling of helplessness which always afflicts man in the presence of a weeping woman, whether or not he has the right to comfort her. "There – don't cry, please, Miss – ah – Thursday. You're all right – really, you are. You – you're – ah – doing all this quite needlessly, I give you my word."

He might as well have attempted to stem a mountain torrent.

"I wish I could make you understand this is all quite unnecessary," he groaned.

"I – I'm so mis'able!" came a wail from the huddled figure.

"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably – "awfully sorry, truly. But you – I'm not afraid you won't make good, and I don't intend to let you go until you've had every chance in the world. That's a promise."

He ventured to give her quaking shoulder a light, encouraging pat or two, and rested his hand upon the corner of the table.

"Come, now – brace up – please. I – "

With a strangled sob Joan sat up, caught his hand and carried it to her lips. Before he could recover from his astonishment it was damp with her tears and kisses.

Instantly he snatched it away.

"You – you're so good to me!" she cried.

Matthias, horrified, stepped back a pace or two, as if to insure himself against a repetition of her offence, and quite mechanically dried his hand with a handkerchief. And then, in a flash, he lost his temper.

"What the devil do you mean by doing that to me?" he demanded harshly. "Look here – you stop this nonsense. I won't have it. I – why – it's outrageous! What right have you got to – to do anything like that?"

The shock of his anger brought the girl to her senses. Her tears ceased in an instant, as if automatically. She rose, mopping her face with her handkerchief, swallowed one last sob, and moved sullenly toward the door.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I – you've been very kind to me – I forgot myself. I'm sorry."

"Well …" he said grudgingly, in his irritation. "But don't let it happen again."

"There's no chance of that," the girl retorted with a brief-lived flash of spirit. "Good night."

"Good night," he returned.

She was gone before he recovered; and then compunction smote him, and he followed her as far as the hallway.

In the half-light of the flickering gas-jet, he saw her only as a shadow slowly mounting the staircase. And a glance toward the front door discovered indistinct shapes of lodgers on the stoop.