As Mrs. Lennox had foretold, the great manager was deeply incensed at
Joan’s defection, and ordered ‘The Combine’ tour to be indefinitely
postponed. But the grandmother did not find herself out of a job as
she had feared. Mr. Hobson had now realized her value as a business
asset, and, as he himself put it, he “wasn’t going to chuck away Miss
West because her girl was a crazy fool.” Indeed there was a part in one
of his New York autumn productions in which he exactly saw her, and
he had already contemplated her withdrawal from ‘The Combine’ if that
shaky piece could possibly be made to run without her. He now wrote
definitely, offering Miss West the new rôle at her last year’s salary.
So tranquillity again reigned at Wood Haven, a tranquillity that was
much enhanced for Mrs. Lennox by the absence of Adam Fletcher. He had
expected to be away a month, but after the Labour Conference there had
sprung up an epidemic of labour unrest, and, as he seemed to think his
presence necessary to every strike, it kept him away almost all the
rest of the summer. Indeed, Mrs. Lennox began to wonder whether the
young man’s devotion towards her granddaughter was as intense as she
had imagined. His absence was quite voluntary, she gathered, and her
lack of sympathy with labour made her feel the cause of it trifling.
Her sense of guilt as to Joan’s treatment of Mr. Fletcher grew
proportionately less. In any case, she felt, with a pleasant relief,
that her granddaughter could no longer be encouraging her suitor if he
was not there to be encouraged.
Thus the grandmother and granddaughter passed the time in the little
woodland home alone together--or rather with Shakespeare as a dominant
third. The girl had, with much difficulty, got from Mrs. Vincent-Dawe
a list of the ten plays that they were to produce. After that, she
went off to the forest each morning with her lunch and her cherished
volume in a basket and did not re-appear until teatime, looking
rather worn, but strangely happy. It had been impossible to find out
the parts in which she would be cast, and so, instead of studying
any particular rôles, she steeped herself in the whole. Mrs. Lennox
declared laughingly that Joan had memorized the entire works of the
Immortal Bard from cover to cover! “Prick her anywhere and she spouts
Shakespeare,” the grandmother told Adam Fletcher on one of his rare
visits.
For on two occasions the harassed young labour leader did manage to
slip in a long week-end at Wood Haven. He looked very tired each time,
and was quite hoarse from open-air speaking. Joan was more concerned
on this last point than her grandmother had ever seen her. “There’s
no earthly reason why you should get hoarse,” she told her friend
severely. “It’s just because you don’t produce your voice properly.
Pitch it lower--get it rounder, more resonant. It makes my throat ache
to hear you. And do, do take breath oftener--you gasp like a fish. You
must make the best of your voice, you know,” she went on with brutal
candour, “when you have so little.”
“Yes, and I have to make the little go a very long way at mass
meetings,” Adam Fletcher croaked. “But we can’t all be great artistes
like you!”
“Now that is hateful of you!” The girl flushed. “Why, I think it is
much greater to stand up and say things out of your own head--however
badly you say them! I can’t imagine how you do it at all! It would
scare me stiff.”
“Scare you!” Mr. Fletcher mocked. “I’d like to see you scared! A poor,
little, trembling violet by the wayside--yes, that’s just my conception
of you!”
For during these brief visits the old, laughing raillery was resumed,
but only in the intervals of hard work. Joan insisted on giving
the young man lessons in elocution--to the immense improvement of
his voice--alternated by the discussion of various knotty points in
Shakespeare’s plays. Here Mr. Fletcher was the teacher, for he was
able to elucidate several of the difficulties, about which, probably
rightly, Joan had felt it useless to consult her grandmother. The
two of them always seemed so absorbed in abstract discussion during
these few days they had together that it even occurred to Mrs. Lennox
to wonder whether she had been altogether wrong about Mr. Fletcher’s
attitude. Could the friendship be platonic on both sides?
Could Mrs. Lennox--unseen--have accompanied Adam Fletcher and Joan
on their long rambles, she would soon have been undeceived. For the
friendship was far from platonic on either side. Still the grandmother
was right in thinking that impersonal topics did form a large part of
the young people’s conversation. Adam Fletcher could hardly be in the
thick of a labour struggle and not be full of it during these short
holidays. Indeed, one day as they walked along the deserted shore, he
inveighed so vehemently against capitalists that even Joan was moved to
protest. “After all capitalism isn’t a crime,” she suggested.
“Yes, it is. It is a crime against the commonwealth--and that is the
only unpardonable one. To think of men owning millions and not even
ashamed of it! They are like the officers of a shipwrecked crew,
gorging themselves on a ten course dinner while the rest starve.--There
isn’t much chance of a millionaire cropping out in my family history,
but if one did, I’d be almost too ashamed to live!”
The exaggerated words were half in jest, but Joan did not find them
funny. A horrible feeling of apprehension had gripped her. What would
Adam think about her father? Of course, she had often heard him rail
against capitalism in the abstract, but he had never narrowed his
tirades to individuals before. Somehow she had not connected the
question with herself. “But some millionaires are all right--quite good
men in private life,” she urged.
“Well, they may be. Though mostly they don’t seem even capable of that,
judging by what one hears of the Newport crowd. Look at that Vandeleur
woman”--Joan almost jumped--“I mean ‘old John Van’s’ wife, who has been
cropping up in all the papers of late. I don’t hold a brief against
divorce, but it does strike one that after she’d been married to the
old man for twenty years and enjoyed his millions, she might have had
the decency to stick to him to the end. And I’ve always heard the great
Vandeleur is a white man--for a millionaire! Of course, personally,
I don’t feel anyone can make that sort of pile and keep his hands
absolutely clean!”
They had been skirting a little rocky promontory. Now they found
themselves in one of the tiny inlets of this irregular coast. “Shall
we stop a little?” Joan said rather breathlessly, and sat down on one
of the great boulders. “No, you go over there,” she ordered, pointing
to another rock, as her companion prepared to take his seat beside
her. Adam smiled a little, and wondered what was coming. He did not
absolutely obey, for he stretched himself luxuriously on the warm sand
at his companion’s feet, tipping his straw hat over his eyes. There was
a pause.
Joan’s heart was beating fast. Adam Fletcher’s words, and particularly
his startling reference to her mother, made her feel that she must tell
him who she was at once. She had not done so before because she felt,
to a certain extent, under a pledge of secrecy to her father. Besides
it had seemed so unimportant. The old life was done with for ever.
“There is something I want to tell you--a sort of confession,” she
began with a most unusual nervousness.
Adam pushed back his hat very slightly, so that he could see the girl’s
face. “Revelations as to your lurid past?” he suggested.
Joan laughed, but with constraint. “Yes,” she said. Her tone was sober.
Something in her voice rather startled the young man. Of course, he did
not credit a lurid past, but he did think she was going to tell him
that at some time she had been engaged to another man. After all, she
had been on the stage for two seasons; she must have come into contact
with better looking men than himself. Well, he didn’t like the idea,
but it couldn’t be helped. After all, he ought to be thankful that she
wasn’t still engaged to the other fellow. The idea that she might be,
flashed across his mind, but he dismissed it at once. Joan was too
honest to have allowed things to be on their present footing if there
were still complications with someone else. But who would have imagined
she could look so nervous? He didn’t like to see it. “Who is he?” he
asked to put an end to her embarrassment.
The girl started. “How did you know?” she exclaimed.
“Oh, just intuition. Well, tell me about the ‘hated rival.’” For the
life of him he couldn’t make his voice quite as unconcerned as he
intended.
“‘Hated rival’?” The bewilderment on Joan’s face was obvious. “Oh, then
you don’t know--I believe you thought I was going to tell you I was
engaged or something silly like that.”
“Some such idea did cross my mind,” Adam Fletcher admitted. He was
rather abashed by Joan’s scorn, but absurdly relieved.
“It was an idiotic idea!” Joan paused. Then, partly to delay the
dreaded revelation, she observed casually: “Once a man did try to kiss
me, but I knocked him down. There _was_ a crash.”
“My dear!” Adam had known Joan over a year, but he felt there was
little danger of her conversation becoming monotonous. He began to
laugh softly. “I didn’t realize how I had been taking my life in my
hands!”
“Oh, of course, you are different. You and I--that’s ‘keeps,’” she said
childishly. Then she broke off, for Adam Fletcher had, not unnaturally,
again taken his life in his hands. “No, sit down right over there,”
she insisted. “That wasn’t what I wanted to tell you. It is something
serious.”
“Fire away.” Adam this time obediently took up his position on the
adjacent rock. Whatever else it might be that she had to say, he felt
he could bear it with equanimity. “Which of the ten commandments is it
that you have broken?”
It gave Joan an unexpected opening. “I suppose it is the fifth,” she
said seriously. “‘Honour thy father and thy mother.’ You have never
asked me about my parents, and I have never told you.”
Poor darling, Adam thought complacently; so this was what she was
worrying over. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve guessed all about
that. At least I imagined your mother must have died when you were a
baby, as Mrs. Lennox told me once she had looked after you then. But
I don’t care a hang if your mother is dead or not, or what she is, or
your father either. So now you can go ahead and tell me he is a street
sweeper or in Sing-Sing. I shan’t turn a hair.”
“Father does not sweep streets, and he isn’t in gaol.” In spite of
herself Joan could not help smiling. “He is something you would
disapprove of much more. And Mother isn’t dead. You were speaking about
her just now. My mother is Mrs. Vandeleur.”
“Good Lord! Do you mean John P. Vandeleur is your father?” As Joan
nodded, Adam Fletcher turned white. For a moment he seemed unable to
speak. “Your parentage is certainly rather startling,” he said at last.
Joan had thought that he would dislike her news, but she had never
imagined that he would be so utterly overwhelmed--and dismayed. Yes,
there had been no mistaking the look on his face when he heard it.
“But Adam,” she almost pleaded, “if you didn’t mind my father being a
criminal, why should you mind his being a capitalist? I am myself all
the same. Millions aren’t a disease that might break out in me!”
The young man tried to smile. “Well, I don’t know--they often are
inherited,” he said.
“Oh, but these millions won’t be. Because Father cut me off when I went
on the stage. And I have heard from him since that his decision is
irrevocable, unless I give up my work, and, of course, I shall never
do that.” She went into fuller particulars. “So you see I am entirely
distinct from the millions, and I can’t think why you should mind them
so much.”
There was a pause. Adam Fletcher felt he could not tell Joan that
her parentage raised a barrier to their marriage, when he had never
yet formally asked her to marry him. He wished now that he had done
so; they could then have discussed the situation more freely. But a
proposal had struck him as an unnecessary and commonplace proceeding:
he had not known how to set about it. And Joan was always so taken
up with her work; he had been quite sure she would not contemplate
marriage at present. Besides she was barely nineteen--ten years his
junior. It was too young, he had felt chivalrously, for a girl to take
such an irrevocable step. But although he had not spoken of marriage,
he certainly had never had the remotest idea of going on always in
their present relation. And now this bombshell had fallen between them;
it turned him cold with fear. For he, as well as Joan, had work to
do in the world. How could he, a labour man, marry John Vandeleur’s
daughter? What sort of confidence would the masses retain in him? He
would lose all the influence he knew he possessed. His position would
be ruined, his power of serving the Cause.--But, of course, if Joan’s
father had finally disowned her, that would make a difference. Well,
one day he would thresh out the subject with her, when the position
between them was on a more definite footing. “I suppose if it really
can be kept secret, it doesn’t make any difference,” he now contented
himself with saying doubtfully.
“Of course it can be kept secret.” Joan’s tone was quite cheerful.
“Why, there is no secret to keep. I am not Miss Vandeleur at all; she
died eighteen months ago. I am Joan North!”
This was Adam Fletcher’s last visit to Wood Haven, for soon after Joan
and her grandmother migrated to New York. Mrs. Lennox’s rehearsals
were beginning. Fortunately, Joan’s season opened considerably later,
and so, to her joy, she was first able to establish her grandmother in
New York. They took a little furnished apartment on Riverside Drive,
right up at 122nd Street. It was a long way from the theatre, but
also it was comfortably removed from the millionaire district to the
north-east of Central Park. Mrs. Lennox could go out without the fear
of running into her old acquaintances. The fact that some new friends
they had made at Wood Haven were living near was an additional reason
for the choice. But Joan’s anxiety as to her grandmother feeling lonely
had been much lessened by finding that Mr. Montgomery was playing in
the same production. That kind little man had, at last, achieved the
dream of his life in appearing on Broadway. If the play was a success
he intended to send for his ‘Missis’ and ‘the kids.’ “I guess I’ll fix
them up in your part of the world,” he told Mrs. Lennox. “It’s mighty
pretty up by Riverside, and not so scandalously dear. My! they’ll be
tickled to death at having a season in New York.”
There was a week’s ‘try-out’ at Philadelphia, and then came the New
York opening. This time the play was a success; there seemed little
doubt of its running in the metropolis for the whole season. Two days
later Joan departed for Boston. “I hate to leave you, Granny darling,”
she said. “But you will be ever so careful of yourself, won’t you,
and not get ill? It is most handy Adam Fletcher living in New York. Of
course, he will often be coming in to see you, and I shall tell him to
let me know just exactly how you are looking. So prevarication will
avail you nothing!”
Mrs. Lennox was almost amused. Did Joan really think that Mr. Fletcher
would spend long hours journeying up town on crowded cars or in the
stuffy subway to call on an old woman? Well, if he did come, she
would be able to enjoy his visits with a clear conscience in her
granddaughter’s absence.
And now, here was ‘Frances West’ established in New York for the
first time in her life, and ‘Joan North’ miles away at Boston. Truly
the theatrical life was a strange one, Mrs. Lennox felt. To her
immense surprise, Mr. Fletcher did call on her, as her granddaughter
had foretold, and continued to do so once a week with praiseworthy
regularity. Nor could it be that he came to hear about Joan, for Mrs.
Lennox made a point of not referring to her. Occasionally, of course,
the girl’s name was mentioned--the grandmother was too devoted for
entire abstention. On these occasions it did strike her that the young
man showed a singularly detailed knowledge of Joan’s proceedings. Well,
they wrote to each other, Mrs. Lennox supposed. Indeed, Joan had said
as much. But the grandmother genuinely thought that the unsatisfactory
friendship was dying down. She would have been much surprised, had she
known that the letters were of daily occurrence, and still more at the
phraseology in which they were couched.
Meanwhile, Joan, in Boston, was not merely writing love letters;
she was working harder at her profession than she had ever worked
before. Indeed, after producing two or three plays, she began to find
herself hankering after the much despised star system. It really was
rather exasperating at the end of each fortnight, just when the play
was beginning to get ‘pointed up,’ just when she felt her own part
acquiring a certain roundness and polish, to have to lay it aside.
It worried her, too, to be rehearsing another play, while the one
they were performing was so very far from perfect. Still it could
not be helped, and she was certainly getting an extraordinary range
of experience. Duplicating parts was in itself a liberal education,
with the quick changes of make up, both mental and physical, that it
involved. Indeed, it was rather too ‘acrobatic,’ Joan complained, for
her taste. All the same, she gave some magnificent renderings of the
minor characters, whether duplicated or single. The more intellectual
of the Boston critics began to watch for her performances and to devote
to them a disconcertingly large portion of their notices. Perhaps her
most finished bit of work was the mother in ‘Hamlet.’ This the girl
had studied carefully at Wood Haven, feeling sure that it would fall
to her. The subtlety and strength of her playing quite wiped out Cyril
Mallock, the leading man, and also the unfortunate Mrs. Vincent-Dawe’s
Ophelia. After the performance Joan became conscious of her artistic
mistake. She had no right to eclipse the chief characters, however
poorly they were played. If she did so, it showed that her work,
too, was poor; for the Queen was intended to form more or less of a
background. In order to play her rôle as well as she was able, she must
not play it as well as she was able. The part could not be given for
all it was worth.
So a very much more subdued Queen appeared on the stage the following
evening. Still the girl had the approbation of her artistic conscience
and also incidentally of Mrs. Vincent-Dawe. “I did think perhaps you
overplayed it just a little last night, dear,” that lady told her. She
was a pleasant, kind-hearted woman, although not so great an actress
as she imagined herself; a delusion fostered by her husband’s dollars.
However, Joan liked her; indeed, she liked all this enthusiastic, if
rather amateurish, little company.
The next play to be produced was ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ with Joan as
the Nurse. It almost seemed as though Providence meant to reward the
girl for her previous self-denial. For on the Sunday morning--the day
before the opening--Mrs. Vincent-Dawe was pronounced to have influenza.
Possibly a certain nervousness, resulting from their last opening, made
the malady less resistible. It would not do if Juliet’s Nurse somehow
emerged as the heroine in the same unexpected way. She sent for Joan at
once. “The doctor says I mustn’t appear, dear,” she told her feebly.
“Have you ever studied Juliet?”
Joan looked startled. She had, in the past, worked at some of the big
speeches, and at the end of the fortnight’s rehearsals, she always knew
a good deal of the whole play. Still, Juliet was a big undertaking!
However, she had nearly two days and a night. “I’m a very quick study.
I guess I can do it,” she said.
The next afternoon an agitated reply-paid telegram arrived from Adam
Fletcher. It was the first time he had not received his daily letter.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“Playing Juliet to-night,” was the laconic reply. When Joan arrived
at the theatre, another wire was handed her. “You won’t be able to
avoid big success however hard you try.” The message referred to the
struggles over Hamlet’s mother, about which she had told him. It amused
and heartened the girl, a stimulus badly needed. For the sense of
hurried preparation had given Joan over to stage fright for the first
time in her life. Her teeth had been chattering with terror as she
walked down to the theatre.
If Juliet showed a certain ‘raggedness,’ the audience did not seem to
notice it. Certainly, despite the obvious shortcomings, it was far
better than anything Mrs. Vincent-Dawe could have given them. The scene
in Juliet’s chamber was really fine. Possibly yet another telegram
from Adam Fletcher had helped in this result. “Am coming to see you
Saturday, dearest,” Joan had read, brazenly typed on the strip.
The excuse Adam Fletcher had made to himself, and subsequently to Mrs.
Lennox, for going to Boston, was that he was speaking in Albany on
Friday night. Or rather he did not mention to Mrs. Lennox where he was
speaking. He merely told her vaguely, and a trifle unveraciously, that
he had a meeting ‘up Boston way.’ “So I thought I would pay Miss North
a visit,” he said.
Mrs. Lennox looked disturbed. Then she resolved to unburden herself.
“But it is rather awkward, Mr. Fletcher,” she began agitatedly. “I mean
as I am not there and Joan is so young. And that horrid, cheap boarding
house where she insists on living--she _will_ be self-supporting,
although I tell her it is absurd when I am getting a good salary--but
in places like that people gossip so and your name being well
known----” The poor grandmother’s voice was quite tremulous.
Adam Fletcher was touched by the solicitude, although, with the
arrogance of a younger generation, he considered all these conventions
as ridiculous nonsense. “Oh, I will be very discreet, Mrs. Lennox,”
he assured her. “Mrs. Vincent-Dawe is quite a friend of mine, so Miss
North and I can meet at her house. And, in any case, there will be very
little time for gossip, for I have to be back here by Monday.”
He was unable to reach Boston until Saturday evening, just in time to
go down to the theatre. Knowing the house was so small, he had already
asked Joan to have a seat reserved. Now he took it and waited with
growing impatience. Presently the curtain went up. What a lot there was
before Juliet came on! At last the old Nurse called out the familiar
“what, Juliet!” She appeared.
Good heavens, how beautiful she was! Adam Fletcher sat staring in
absolute bewilderment. The fact was, he had never seen Joan at one of
her ‘moments.’ The everyday Joan was sometimes pretty, sometimes almost
plain, but always just a simple girl, simply dressed. In ‘The Combine’
she had been a poor garment-worker, rather handsome, rather rough. Vivi
was a made-up society woman, good-looking but past her first youth. But
now, now in her clinging, rich white gown--it was her coming-out dress,
had he known it--with her dark hair falling on her shoulders, her
great, starry, dark eyes, why, she was superb, wonderful! It took away
his breath. It almost frightened him. The house broke into its usual
burst of applause.
As Joan came forward, she glanced once or twice across the footlights.
Darling, she must be looking for him! The colour came to Adam
Fletcher’s face; he could hardly keep still in his seat. But their eyes
did not meet, and then she obviously forgot everything but her part.
Well, that was all right, he told himself. At any rate he could see her
and hear her beautiful voice. But as the play went on, he found to his
genuine surprise, that it was not giving him as much satisfaction as he
had anticipated. The only words in the balcony scene with which he felt
in complete accord were, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” But it was when
they came to Juliet’s chamber that a sudden rush of primitive jealousy
almost overmastered him. It was absurd, he told himself angrily. If
Joan were playing Lady Macbeth, he would not want to shout for the
police, nor try and clap her into the crazy-house at Bloomingdale as
Ophelia. “If I am going to get worked up every time she has a love
scene on the stage, I had better cut my throat and have done with it,”
he reflected.
After that he kept himself better in hand. Joan was playing so very
well, that, for a time, he almost forgot it was Joan. He even almost
began to sympathise in the lovers’ classic tragedy. A storm of applause
at the end of the play, surprisingly loud in such a miniature house,
showed that he was not alone in his admiration.
Yes, there was no doubt about it, Joan was a great actress, Adam
Fletcher told himself. He felt humble and extraordinarily proud of her.
Yet he could not but realize that personally his evening’s pleasure had
been somewhat doubtful. It was anxiety to escape from Juliet, as much
as desire to see Joan, that made him hurry round to the back as soon
as the curtain was finally down. She was standing on the stage in her
white robe. Her face lit up radiantly as she saw him--yes, _him_, not
that blamed Romeo!
Other people stood round, so the greeting could only be conventional.
“Now I must introduce you to some of the company,” she told him.
“They are quite excited to meet the author of ‘The Under Dog.’ Oh,
Mr. Mallock”--the hated Romeo came forward. “Let me present you to
Mr. Fletcher.” Joan then turned to a plump, fair-haired girl, who was
standing near. “Mr. Fletcher, Miss Rachel--my Nurse, you know, and Mrs.
Mallock in private life.”
Adam Fletcher pressed the hand of the blushing little Mrs. Mallock with
unaccustomed fervour. Why, she must be almost a bride, he thought.
Well, if she could stand that Romeo and Juliet business every night,
he certainly ought not to grumble. Aloud he only murmured that he was
delighted to meet her.
The Mallocks lived in the same boarding house as Joan. Presently they
were all four walking up together. Partly out of gratitude for her
existence, and partly out of deference to Mrs. Lennox’s instructions,
Adam Fletcher devoted himself largely to Mrs. Mallock. Indeed, he was
so attentive that she privately told her husband, Mr. Fletcher might be
homely, but he was one of the loveliest men she had ever met. By the
end of the evening the initial position was reversed, for Cyril Mallock
had begun to feel distinctly jealous of the well-known dramatist, who
was thus absorbing his wife.
In spite of his attentions to Mrs. Mallock, Adam Fletcher had managed
to secure a few minutes’ talk with Joan. Remembering his promise to
Mrs. Lennox, he suggested a discreet meeting the next morning at Mrs.
Vincent-Dawe’s.
Joan was obviously surprised. “Oh, but we can’t go there, because she’s
got ‘the grip,’” she explained. “Didn’t I tell you that is why I am
playing Juliet? And my boarding house is too horrid. Why can’t we go
into the country for a walk like at Wood Haven?”
It is but fair to say that Adam Fletcher hesitated. He hesitated so
long that Joan looked still more surprised and even hurt. This decided
him. “I don’t care. I must see you,” he said passionately.
“Well, isn’t that what I am suggesting?” Joan asked, with puzzled
impatience.
The next morning they took a street car vaguely to its termination.
Fortunately it landed them at the beginning of quite pretty country. It
was a perfect winter’s day--frosty and with dazzling sunshine. Joan’s
cheeks glowed like the rose that peeped out of her fur; she almost
danced as she walked beside him. “Well, did you like Juliet?” she
demanded eagerly. “Of course it needs a heap more work, especially the
balcony part. But I’ve got the bedchamber scene pretty right.”
“Horribly right,” Adam groaned. “I wanted to kill Romeo.”
Once more Joan looked surprised; then she laughed, but a little
tremulously. “How absurd! Why, of course, I was feeling it was you.”
Adam glanced round. There was no one in sight along the little country
road. “There’s a lot more satisfaction in not doing it vicariously,” he
presently observed.
They walked on again, talking hard. The young man’s eyes caught sight
of the roses that Joan was wearing. “Are those part of that bumper
bouquet I was made to struggle along with last night?” he asked.
“Yes, aren’t they beautiful? And do you know a bunch like that has
come for me every evening this week? I have been giving them to every
solitary soul I know in Boston, and yet my room is a perfect bower.
There is never any card--the donor is anonymous.”
“I guess he won’t be anonymous long,” her companion assured her a
trifle glumly.
They had lunch at a little inn they found; it was not a good lunch, but
they thought it delicious. Afterwards Adam Fletcher observed that they
would not see each other for some time. He had to go West--a labour
leader’s life was not a restful one. It would be two or three months
before he could be back.
“Oh, but that is too long,” Joan almost faltered. “I thought you would
be coming to Boston again sooner than that.”
“Joan, when are we going to get married?” Adam Fletcher suddenly felt
that the present position was intolerable. “I suppose you do mean to
marry me some day?”
“Why, of course; you must have known that. But not for ages and ages.”
It was much the answer he had expected; indeed, it was because he had
expected it, that he had never before asked the question. But her
obvious dismay at his going away, had broken through his restraint.
“When should I possibly have time to get married?” Joan went on.
“Oh, I don’t know; getting married doesn’t take such a lot of time,”
her companion urged cheerfully. “Ten minutes off the dinner hour one
day would do it.”
In spite of herself, Joan laughed. “No, I can’t get married,” she
repeated. “I always told you that my work had to come first. ‘I could
not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not drama more.’ After all,
Adam, there are plenty of people to get married and there aren’t
plenty of me. Anyway, I am not going even to think about it until I am
a star.” Her voice was decided--almost irritated. “Yes, I have got to
be a ‘head-liner’ first and have ‘Joan North’ written up on Broadway in
electric lights.”
“Why, I thought you didn’t care about the star business?” This Adam had
not expected; he was surprised, even pained. “You always told me it was
art for art’s sake and so forth.”
“So it is really.” Joan dropped her lighter tone. “But you see,
dearest, I feel somehow that I must have the outward sign too, the hall
mark of success. I expect it is the dreadful Vandeleur secret that
weighs on me. It makes me always afraid of slipping down into something
wealthy and amateur. But if my dramatic position is settled beyond any
possibility of doubt, then I shall be safer. So, before anything else,
I must be a star--a fixed star.”
“If that is the case, I guess I was the biggest kind of fool to
encourage you to leave the Hobson management.” Adam Fletcher felt
suddenly that he had more to be jealous of than he had realized. It
was not any individual Romeo that stood between him and Joan, but
Shakespeare himself, the whole dramatic art. Well, he must make up his
mind to it. As a playwright himself, he should be the last to complain.
Whenever she did come to him, it would mean more than the uninterrupted
love of the ordinary girl. Presently he kissed her again--at any rate
she allowed that. “The desire of the moth for the star,” he quoted half
humorously, half sadly.