XI

For several days the girl had haunted the stairs, the hall, and

door-step, alert to waylay Matthias, before suddenly she became aware

that it was long since she had either caught a glimpse of him or heard

the syncopated murmuring of the typewriter behind the closed door to his

back-parlour.

It required the lapse of another day or two before she found courage to

question (with laboured indifference) the dilapidated chambermaid who

sedulously neglected her room for lack of a tip. From this far from

garrulous source she learned that Matthias had packed up and gone out of

town very suddenly, without mentioning where he might be addressed

during his absence.

Alone at the window of her tiny cell, Joan stared down at the

uninspiring vista of back-yards and disconsolately recapitulated her

sorry fortunes.

She was now close upon the end of the fortnight's residence in the hall

bedroom; before long she would have to surrender another four dollars--a

week's rent in advance. Of the twenty-two dollars she had received from

Butch, eight remained in her purse. By dint of adhering to a diet

largely vegetarian, she had managed without serious discomfort to keep

within an expenditure of four dollars per week for food. And twice

Maizie Dean had saved her the cost of an evening meal by inviting her to

dine out--at the expense of friends in "the profession." But a

continuance of such favours was not to be counted upon; and the problem

of living a fourth week away from home was one serious and

importunate--always assuming she should fail to secure work before her

money ran out. She had no resources in any degree dependable: Butch,

even if willing, would probably not be able to extend her another loan;

she possessed nothing worth pawning; and Maizie Dean had taken prompt

occasion to make it clear that, while she was willing to do anything

inexpensive for a budding sister _artiste_, her tolerance would stop

short of financial aid.

"Take it from me, dear," she announced soon after their first meeting:

"there ain't no people in the world quicker to slip you a live tip than

folks in the business; but you gotta make up your mind to pay your own

keep. They work too hard for their coin to give up any without a howl

you could hear from here to Hollum; and anyway, everybody's always broke

in the summer. If you don't land somewhere before your cash runs low,

you might just's well make up your mind to slip back into the chain-gang

behind the counter."

She had developed--or changed--amazingly in the brief period of her

public career. Joan experienced difficulty in recognizing in her the

warm-hearted Irish girl who had initiated her into the duties of

saleswoman in the stocking department. She had hardened more than

superficially; she was now as artificial as her make-up, as the hue of

her ashen hair. The world to her was a desert threaded by "circuits,"

life an arid waste of "open time" punctuated with oases of "booking";

and the fountainhead of temporal power was located in the innermost

sanctum of the United Booking Offices.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she crossed her knees frankly, sucked

thoughtfully at a cigarette, and waved an explanatory hand:

"Here's me and Mame, thinking we was all fixed for the nex' six weeks,

and then somethin' puts a crimp into our bookin' and we're out for Gawd

knows how long--till next Fall, sure. That's unless we want to take a

trip over the meal-ticket circuit--fillin' in between filums, yunno. And

if we do that it's goin' to crab us with the Orpheum people, sure; we'd

never get back into the real money class. So we gotta hold onto what

little we got until we kin see more time headed our way...."

On the other hand, she had been liberal with sage and trustworthy

counsel as to the best way to go about "breaking into the game." It was

thanks to her that Joan was now able to enter a theatrical employment

agency without fear and trembling, and to back her application for

chorus work with a glib and unblushing statement that she had had

experience "in summer stock out on the Coast." And to the Sisters Dean,

likewise, Joan owed her growing acquaintance with the intricate

geography of the theatrical districts of New York, her ability to

discriminate between players "resting" and the average run of Broadway

loungers who cluttered the shady side of that thoroughfare, from

Twenty-fifth Street north to Forty-seventh, those shimmering summer

afternoons, and her slowly widening circle of nodding acquaintances

among the lesser peoples of the vaudeville world.

As a rule she was awake before anybody else in the establishment of

Madame Duprat; not yet could she slough the habit of early rising. Her

breakfast she was accustomed to get at the same dairy restaurant which

had supplied her first meal away from home, and at the same moderate

expense--ten cents. By ten o'clock she would be on Broadway, beginning

her round of the agencies: a courageous, shabby figure in the withering

sun-blast, patient and indomitable through long hours of waiting in

crowded anterooms, undiscouraged by the brevity and fruitlessness of the

interviews with which her persistence was sometimes rewarded, ignoring

disappointment with the same studied calm with which she had long since

learned to ignore the advances of loafers of the streets.

Her lunches she would purchase wherever she might happen to be at the

noon hour--or go without. By five o'clock at the latest--frequently much

earlier--she would turn back to West Forty-fifth Street. For dinner she

sought again the establishment that provided her breakfast. Her idle

hours, both day and evening, she grew accustomed to waste in the double

bedroom ("second floor front") occupied by the Dancing Deans.

At such times the _soi-disant_ sisters were rarely without company. They

were lively and agreeable creatures, by no means unattractive, and so

thoroughly theatric in every effect of manner, speech, gesture, person,

and thought, that the most case-hardened member of the profession could

not but feel at home in their company. Consequently, they were popular

with both sexes of their associates. Seldom did a day pass but they

entertained several callers, with all of whom they seemed to be on terms

of the most candid intimacy.

So Joan grew accustomed to being hailed, whenever she opened the door of

the sisters' room, with a formula that varied little with repetition:

"Why, if it _ain't_ the kid! Hello, dearie--come right in and stop

awhile. Say, lis'n: I want you to shake hands with my friend, Charlie

Quard. I guess you know who Charlie is, all right; you must of seen him

of'n--played leading juveniles with the Spangler Stock, I dunno how

long. Charlie, this is my little friend, Miss Thursday."

"In the business, I trust?"

"Goin' to be before long. Just lookin' round."

"Well, I wish you luck, Miss Thursday. This is the rottenest season _I_

ever struck. There's eighty people for every job that blooms. Why,

yunno, Maizie, I was talking only yesterday to Percy Williams, and Percy

said--"

At about this point Joan would ordinarily be forgotten, and the gossip

would rattle on through a stifling cloud of cigarette smoke, while she

sat and listened with grave, if not always comprehending, attention.

And in this manner she met and grew familiar with the personalities of

an astonishing crew of minor vaudeville folk, jugglers, dancers, patter

comedians, balladists, coon shouters, performers on weird musical

instruments, monologists, and an unclassified host of others, including

a liberal sprinkling of plain actors and actresses, the pendulums of

whose life alternated between small parts in popular-price stock

companies and smaller parts in so-called dramatic sketches presented in

vaudeville houses.

To them all (if they remembered her at all) she was Joan Thursday. The

translation from Thursby had been almost inevitable. Thursday was by far

the easier word to remember; Joan soon grew tired of correcting the

friends of the Dancing Deans; and accepted the change the more readily

since it provided her with a real "stage name", and so, in some measure,

identified her with the business to which her every aspiration was

devoted.

Of all the population of this new world, perhaps the most prominent in

her eyes, aside from the saltatory sisters, was Mr. Quard; or, to give

him the fullest benefit of the printed cards which (detaching them

dexterously from the perforated edges by which they were held in an

imitation-leather cover) he distributed regardless of expense:

_Mr. Chas. Harborough Quard_

Spangler Stock Co. Variety Artists Club

Brooklyn New York

He was a long, rangy animal, robustious, romantical; with a taste in the

question of personal decoration that created compelling effects. His

face was large, open, boldly featured, his smile genial, his laugh

constant and unctuous. Something less than thirty, he had been on the

stage since childhood; with the training of an actor of the old school,

he combined immense vitality, an ample, dashing air, enviable

self-sufficiency, the temperament of a tom-cat.

Any competent stage-director could have made much of him; but in an age

when managers cast their productions with types who "look" their parts

in preference to players who can act them, he found few chances to

demonstrate his ability outside the cheaper stock organizations; for

the only character he was physically fitted to portray was that of an

actor.

An ill-starred impulse had led him to resign his latest stock connection

in order to adventure in vaudeville with a one-act sketch written to his

order by a hack manufacturer of such trash. Its "try-out week" in a

provincial town had elicited no offers from other managers, and in the

meantime his place in the stock company had been filled. At present he

had a little money saved up, no immediate prospects of an engagement,

good-humour, no illusions whatever.

"It's no good," he informed Miss May Dean on the occasion of their first

meeting: "I know where I get off, all right. I can play anything they

slip me, but these Broadway guys can't see my kind of actor. Give me a

part I can sink my teeth into, and I'll shake it until the house climbs

on the seats and howls. But that ain't what they're after, these days."

"The movies'll get you, if you don't watch out," May suggested

cheerfully.

"That's right; and I'd be a knock-out in a film gang, too; I'm just

their kind. That's what's become of all the old boys who still think

Fourteenth Street's the Rialto, yunno. But me, I'm too strong for the

noise an audience makes when they like you, or don't: I'd just as

lief be hissed as get every hand in the house. Don't believe I could

stand acting for a one-eyed box that didn't say anything but

'_clickety-click_.' I'd rather travel with the Uncle Tommers--honest'."

He was publicly morose for a moment or two. Then he roused: "Cheer up!

The worst is yet to come. Maybe I can stick out till next spring, when

Grady makes his next all-star revival. Wonder what he'll exhume this

time? If it's only something like 'The Silver King,' or 'East Lynne,' I

may yet cop out a chance to play to a two-dollar house.... Now, lis'n:

I'm going down on the stoop and smoke a cigarette while you girls

colour your maps for artificial light. The eats are on me tonight."

"Does that take in my little friend?" demanded Maizie, with a nod toward

Joan.