Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.
"Oh, you won't? Well, I'd like to know how you're going to stop me. I'm
tired slaving behind a counter for a dog's wages--and that eaten up by
fines because I won't go out with the floor-walkers. I'm going to do the
best I can for myself. I'm going to be an actress, so's I can make a
decent living for Edna and ma and myself."
"A decent living!" Thursby mocked without mirth. "You're old enough to
know better than that."
"I'm old enough to know which side my bread's buttered on," the girl
flashed back angrily. "I'm through living in this dirty flat and giving
up every dollar I make to keep us all from starving. God knows what we'd
do if it wasn't for me with a steady job, and Edna working during the
season. You don't do anything to help us out: all _you_ get goes on the
ponies. I don't see any reason why I got to consult you if I choose to
better myself."
She rose the better to end her tirade with a stamp of her foot. Thursby
likewise got up, if more sluggishly, and moved round the table to
confront her.
"You don't go on the stage--no!" he said. "That's settled. Understand?"
"Oh, I get you," she replied, with a flirt of her head, "but I don't
agree with you. I'm going down town first thing tomorrow to try for a
job with--with," she hesitated, "Ziegfield's Follies!"
"You will do nothing of the sort," he insisted fiercely, congested veins
starting out upon his forehead. "You're my daughter, and those are my
orders to you, and you'll obey 'em or I'll know the reason why. You...."
He faltered as if choking. Then he flung out an arm, with a violent
gesture indicating the shrinking woman in the doorway. "You--your mother
was an actress when I married her and took her off the stage.
She--she--"
"Don't you dare say a word against my mother!" Joan screamed
passionately into his louring face. "Don't you dare! You hear me: don't
you dare!"
Her infuriated accents were echoed by a smothered gasp and a spasm of
sobbing from the other room.
Momentarily abashed by the sheer force of this defiance, the father fell
back a pace. An expression of almost ludicrous disconcertion shadowed
his discoloured features. Then slowly, as if thoughtfully, he lifted one
hand and deliberately tore his collar from its fastening and cast it
from him.
At this, hastily jerking his cigarette into the air-shaft, Butch got up,
removed his hat and carefully placed it on the mantel, out of harm's
way.
"You," said Thursby with apparent difficulty, breathing heavily
between his words--"you shan't use that tone to me, young woman, and
live in this house. More than that, you'll leave it this very
night--now!--unless you promise to give up this fool's notion of the
stage."
"Tonight!"
Joan paled; her lips tightened; but the glint in her eyes wasn't one of
fright.
"Tonight!" her father reiterated with malicious pleasure in what he
thought to be evidences of consternation. "And what's more, you're going
to apologize to me now."
"Apologize to you!" Joan caught her breath sharply, and her next words
came without premeditation; she was barely conscious, in her rage, that
she employed them: "I'll be damned if I do!"
With an inarticulate cry, maddened beyond reason, Thursby lifted a heavy
hand and stepped toward her.
Simultaneously Butch sprang forward, seized the menacing fist and
dragged it down and back, with a movement so swift and deft that its
purpose was accomplished and the hand pinned to the small of Thursby's
back actually before he appreciated what was happening.
Even Joan was slow to comprehend the fact of this amazing
intervention....
Nodding emphatically, "Beat it, kid," Butch counselled in a pleasant,
unstrained tone--"beat it while the going's good.... Easy, now, guvner!"
Speechless, Joan slipped out into the hall and slammed the door.
Stumbling blindly in the murk, she was none the less quick to find the
head of the stairway.
On the ground floor, panting and sobbing, she paused to listen. There
came from above no sound of pursuit to speed her on; yet on she went,
out of the house, to scurry away through the midnight hush of the
squalid street like a hunted thing.
There was no sort of coherence in her thoughts, nothing but shreds and
tatters of rage, fear, and despair, all clouded with a faint and vain
regret. She gave no heed to the way she went: impulse controlled and
blind instinct guided her. But at the corner of Park Avenue she was
obliged to pause for breath, and took advantage of that pause to review
her plight and plan her future.
Her first concern must be to find a lodging for the night. Tomorrow
could take care of itself....
Uttering a low cry of dismay, the girl clutched at the handbag swinging
by its strap from her wrist: its latch was broken, its wide jaws yawned.
In a breath she had grasped the empty substance of her most dire
apprehensions: the slender fold of bills, handed her when she left the
store for the last time that evening, was gone. Whether some sneak-thief
had robbed her on a surface-car or in the Broadway rabble, or whether
the lock had been broken, releasing its poor treasure, during her
struggle with Austin on the stairs--or afterwards or before--she could
not guess. But she was swift to recognize in its bitter fulness the
heart-rending futility of retracing her steps to search for the vanished
money--even though it was all that had stood between her and the world,
between a common room with food for a week or two and starvation
and--the streets.
It was a fact, established and irrefutable in her understanding, that
she could never go back....
Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of
small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers--eighty-seven
cents wherewith to face the world!
Further rummaging educed a handful of odds and ends, from which, by the
light of a corner lamp, she presently succeeded in sorting out a folded
scrap of paper bearing a pencilled memorandum, faint almost to
illegibility, so that only with some difficulty could Joan decipher its
legend: "_Maizie Dean_ (_Lizzie Fogarty_) 289 W. 45 St."
Slowly conning the address with mute, moving lips, until she had it by
heart, the girl trudged on to Madison Avenue and there signalled and
boarded a southbound surface-car. It carried few passengers. She had a
long seat all to herself, and about fifteen minutes wherein to debate
ways and means....
She reckoned it several years since Lizzie Fogarty (predecessor of
faithless Gussie Inness, both at the stocking counter and in Joan's
confidence) suddenly, and with no warning or explanation, had left the
department store and for fully eight months thereafter had kept her
where-abouts a mystery to her erstwhile associates--though rumours were
not lacking in support of a shrewd suspicion that she had "gone on the
stage." The truth only transpired when, one day, she drifted languidly
up to the counter behind which she had once served, haughtily inspected
and selected from goods offered her by a stupefied and indignant Gussie,
and promptly broke down, confessing the truth amid giggles not guiltless
of a suspicion of tears. Lizzie was in "vodeveal," partner in a
"sister-act"--witness her card--"_The Dancing Deans, Maizie & May_."
Beyond shadow of doubt she had prospered. Not only was she amazingly and
awfully arrayed, but there was in evidence an accomplishment believed to
be singular to people of great wealth, an "English accent"--or what Joan
and Gussie ingenuously accepted as such. As practised by Miss Maizie
Dean this embellishment consisted merely in broadening every A in the
language (when she didn't forget) and speaking rapidly in a high,
strained voice. Its effect upon her former associates was to render the
wake she ploughed through their ranks phosphorescent with envy.
Departing in good time to spare the girls the censure of the
floor-walker, she had left with Joan the pencilled address and this
counsel: "If ever you _dream_ of goin' into the business, my deah, don't
do anythin' before you see _me_. That ad-dress will always make me, no
mattah wheah 'm woikin': and I'd do _anythin'_ in the woild for you. I
know you'd make good _anywheres_--with that _shape_ and them _eyes_!..."
Of such stuff as this had Joan fashioned her dreams. Confident in the
generosity of Lizzie Fogarty, she relied implicitly upon the willingness
of Miss Maizie Dean to help her into the magic circle of "the
profession." She had no more doubt that Maizie would make it her
business, even at cost of personal inconvenience, to secure her an
engagement, than she had that tomorrow's sun would rise upon a world
tenanted by one Joan Thursby. Or if such doubt entered her mind by
stealth, she fought it down and cast it forth with all the power of her
will. For in Miss Dean, née Fogarty, now resided her sole immediate hope
of friendly aid and advice....
Alighting at Forty-fifth Street, Joan hastened westward, past Fifth
Avenue and Sixth to Longacre Square. Here on the corner, she paused to
don her coat; for the low-swinging draperies of the painted skies had
begun to distil upon the city a gentle drizzle, soft and warm.
Only two hours ago a vortex of vivid animation, the Square now presented
a singular aspect of sleepy emptiness. With its high glittering walls of
steel and glass, its polished black paving like moiré silk, its blushing
canopy of cloud, its air filled with an infinity of globular atoms of
moisture, swirling and weltering in a shimmer of incandescence: it was
like a pool of limpid light, deep and still. Few moving things were
visible: now and again a taxicab, infrequently a surface-car, here and
there, singly, a few prowling women, a scattering of predacious men.
Of these latter, one who had been skulking beneath the shelter of the
New York Theatre fire-escapes strolled idly out toward Joan and
addressed her in a whisper of loathly intimacy. Fortunately she did not
hear what he said. Even as he spoke she slipped away from the curb and
like a haunted shadow darted across the open space and into the kindly
obscurity of the side-street.
Number 289 reared its five-storey brown-stone front on the northern side
of the street, hard upon Eighth Avenue. Joan inspected it doubtfully.
Its three lower tiers of windows were all dark and lightless, but on the
fourth floor a single oblong shone with gas-light, while on the fifth as
many as three were dully aglow. The outer doors, at the top of the
high, old-style stoop, were closed, and even the most hopeful vision
could detect no definite illumination through the fan-light.
Into the heart of Joan a wretched apprehension stole and there abode,
cold and crawling. From something in the sedate aspect of the house she
garnered grim and terrible forebodings.
Nevertheless she dared not lose grasp on hope. Mounting the stoop, she
sought the bell-pull, and found it just below a small strip of paper
glued to the stone; frayed and weatherbeaten, it published in letters in
faded ink scrawled by an infirm hand the information: "_Rooms to let
furnished_."
For some reason which she did not stop to analyze, this announcement
spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought lustily at the bell.
It evoked no sound that she could hear. Trembling with expectancy, she
waited several minutes, then pulled again, and once more waited while
the cold of dread spread from her heart to chill and benumb her hands
and feet. She heard never a sound. It was no use--she knew it--yet she
rang again and again, frantically, with determination, in despair. And
once she vainly tried the door.
The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant
upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.
A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand
relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. Only vaguely did she
recognize in this the symptoms of immense physical fatigue added to
those of intense emotional strain: she only knew that she was all
a-weary for her bed.
Of a sudden, hope and courage both deserted her. Tears filled her eyes:
she was so lonely and forlorn, so helpless and so friendless. Huddled in
the shallow recess of the doorway, she fought her emotions silently for
a time, then broke down altogether and sobbed without restraint into
her handkerchief. Moments passed uncounted, despair possessing her
utterly.
The street was all but empty. For some time none remarked the
disconsolate girl. Then a man, with a handbag but without an umbrella,
appeared from the direction of Longacre Square, walking with a
deliberation which suggested that he was either indifferent to or
unconscious of the rain. Turning up the steps of Number 289, he jingled
absently a bunch of keys. Not until he had reached the platform of the
stoop did he notice the woman in the doorway.
Promptly he halted, lifting his brows and pursing his lips in a
noiseless whistle--his head cocked critically to one side.
Then through the waning tempest of her grief, Joan heard his voice:
"I say! What's the matter?"
Gulping down a sob and dabbing hastily at her eyes with a sodden wad of
handkerchief, she caught through a veil of tears a blurred impression of
her interrogator. A man.... She ceased instantly to cry and shrank
hastily out of his way, into the full swing of wind and rain. She said
nothing, but eyed him with furtive distrust. He made no offer to move.
"See here!" he expostulated. "You're in trouble. Anything I can do?"
Joan felt that she was regaining control of herself. She dared to linger
and hope rather than to yield to her primitive instinct toward flight.
"Nothing," she said with a catch in her voice--"only I--I wanted to see
Miss Dean; but nobody answered the bell."
"Oh!" he said thoughtfully--"you wanted to see Miss Dean--yes!"--as
though he considered this a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. "But
Madame Duprat never does answer the door after twelve o'clock, you know.
She says people have no right to call on us after midnight. There's a
lot in that, too, you know." He wagged his head earnestly. "Really!" he
concluded with animation.
His voice was pleasant, his manner sympathetic if something original.
Joan found courage to enquire:
"Do you think--perhaps--she might be in?"
"Oh, she never leaves the house. At least, I've never seen her leave it.
I fancy she thinks one of us might move it away if she got out of sight
for a minute or so."