Though it was after three in the morning when Joan got home, she wasn't,
as she had thought to be, the only waking person in the house. She had
no sooner entered than, fagged though she was, she grasped this
knowledge with a thrilling heart.
Beneath the door of the back-parlour a thin yellow line of light shone,
as brilliant in the obscurity as the rim of a newly minted coin. She
paused; and there came to her ears the swift staccato chattering of a
typewriter.
Of a sudden she remembered how long it was since John Matthias had been
anything but an abstraction in the background of her consciousness. He
might have been at home for days: she had neither known nor thought of
him, so wrapped up had she been with the routine of her work and the
formless intrigue of emotions stimulated by the personality of Charlie
Quard.
But now Charlie had eliminated himself from her life (she was quite sure
that she would never see him again) while to the man labouring late,
behind that closed door, she must be even more a dim reminiscence than
ever before.
It stung her pride to think that Matthias had been able to forget her so
easily. And she regretted bitterly that she herself had been so ready to
let the image of her absent-minded benefactor fade upon the tablets of
her memory.
By way of mute apology and recompense she hastened to enshrine anew in
her heart her ideal of a gentleman; and it was fashioned in the likeness
of John Matthias. And she resolved not to let another day pass without
approaching him. She was sure he would help her if he could; and she
was very anxious to make him realize her again.
But morning found her in quite another humour, one as diffident as
different. And promptly she made a discovery so infinitely dismaying
that it put the man altogether out of her mind for the time being. The
Deans, she learned, had on the previous day received an offer for an
engagement at a summer park in the Middle West, and had accepted, packed
up and departed, all in an afternoon.
So she was more lonely than ever she had been since leaving home. The
bedroom of the Dancing Deans, that salon where those stars of remote and
lowly constellations had assembled to afford Joan her only glimpses of
social life, was empty, swept and garnished. Those whom she had met
there, and who had been nice to her, those scatter-brained,
kind-hearted, shiftless denizens of the vaudeville half-world, were once
again removed from her reach.
She spent that day and the next on the streets, trudging purposefully
through the withering heat of August, once more a figure of the pageant
which marches that most dolorous way, theatrical Broadway in the
dog-days; one with the groups of idling actors with their bluish jowls
and shabby jauntiness, one with and yet aloof from that drift of
inexplicable creatures of stunted bodies and shoddy finery, less women
than children, wistful of mien, with their strange, foreign faces and
predatory eyes, bold and appealing to men, defiant to women....
Nothing came of it: the agencies took no more interest in her fortunes
than they had before she could truthfully lay claim to stage experience.
Each night she crawled home, faint with fatigue and the burden of the
broiling day, to relish the bitter flavour of the truth that she would
never go far without influence.
The third day she spent at home, resting and furbishing up her wardrobe
to make a good appearance in the evening. Toward nightfall she bathed,
did up her hair in a new and attractive way, shrewdly refrained from
dressing her face with rouge and powder after the fashion the Deans had
taught her, and clothed herself simply and sweetly in her best skirt and
a fresh shirtwaist--both recent purchases.
In the deepening gloom of evening she mounted guard alone upon the
stoop.
Circumstances could not have proved more favourable; and since her eyes
were quick to distinguish the tall and slender figure of Matthias the
moment he turned out of Longacre Square, the length of the block away,
she had ample time to prepare herself. And yet it was with growing
consternation that she watched his approach, and when at last he ran
lightly up the steps, she was so hampered by embarrassment that the
words she had framed to address him went unuttered, and her tentative
movement to rise was barely perceptible--a start, a sinking back. So
that Matthias, in his preoccupation, received only a faint impression
that he had somehow disturbed the girl (whoever _she_ might be) and
lifting his hat, murmured an inarticulate word of apology and brushed
past her into the vestibule. As the door of the back-parlour was noisily
closed, tears of anger and mortification started to Joan's eyes. Then
promptly temper overcame that which had daunted her calmer mood. Before
she knew it she was knocking at Matthias's door.
He answered immediately and in person, with his coat off and his collar
unfastened by way of preparation for a long night's work. Staring
blankly, he said "Oh?" in a mechanical and not at all encouraging
manner.
"Mr. Matthias--" Joan began with a slight, determined nod.
"Oh--good evening," he stammered.
Seeing him more at loss than herself, her self-confidence returned in
some measure. "You don't remember me, Mr. Matthias," she asserted with a
cool smile.
He shook his head slowly: "So sorry--I've got a shocking memory. It'll
come back to me in a minute. Won't you--ah--come in?"
Joan said "Thanks," in a low voice, and entered. "I am Joan Thursday,"
she added with a hint of challenge in voice and glance.
"Oh, yes, Miss Thursday--of course! Won't you sit down?"
Matthias offered her an easy chair, but the girl was quite aware, as she
accepted it, that he was still vainly racking his memory for some clue
to the identity of Joan Thursday.
"You were very kind to me one night about six weeks ago," she said,
choosing her words carefully in order not to offend his fastidious
taste. "Don't you remember? It was a rainy night, and I had nowhere to
go, and you let me stay here--"
"Oh!" he exclaimed, his face lighting up. "Of course, I remember now.
Joan Thursday--to be sure! You left me a little note of thanks. I've
often wondered what became of you."
"I've been living here, right in this house, ever since."
"You don't mean it. How very odd! I should think we'd have met before
this, if that's the case."
"You've had plenty of chances," she laughed, feeling a little more at
ease. She rested her head against the back of the chair and regarded him
through half-lowered lashes, conscious that the lamplight was doing full
justice to her prettiness. "I've seen you dozens of times."
"That's funny!" he observed, genuinely perplexed. "I don't see how that
could have happened--!"
"You were always too busy thinking about something else to look at poor
me," she returned; and then, intuitively sensitive to the affectation of
the adjective "poor" (a trick picked up from one of Maizie's women
friends) she amended it hastily: "at me, I mean."
"Well, I don't understand it, but I apologize for my rudeness, just the
same," he laughed; and sat down, understanding that the girl wanted
something and meant to stay until she got it, wondering what it could
be, and a little annoyed to have his working time thus gratuitously
interrupted. "So," he ventured, "you fixed things up to stop here, did
you? At least, I seem to remember you--ah--weren't in very good form,
financially, that night we met."
"Yes," she said, "I fixed it up all right. I'd lost my money, but the
next day I found it again, and I came back here because I didn't know
where else to go, and besides there was my friends upstairs--the Deans,
you know."
"Oh, yes, to be sure. And did they help you find work on the stage? You
did want to go on the stage, if I'm not mistaken."
"Yes; that's why I left home, you know. But they didn't help me any--the
Deans didn't--at least, not exactly; though it was through them I met a
fellow who took me on for a vaudeville turn."
"Why, that's splendid!" said Matthias, affecting an enthusiasm which he
hardly felt. "And--you made good--eh?"
"Well"--she laughed a little consciously--"I guess I did make good. But
he didn't. He was a boozer, and they threw us out of the bill last
Wednesday."
"That's too bad," said Matthias sympathetically. "I see."
And truly he did begin to see: she was out of a job and wanted
assistance to another. It wasn't the first time--nor yet merely the
hundredth--that he had been approached on a similar errand. People
seemed to think that--simply because he wrote plays which, if produced
at all, scored nothing more than indifferent successes at best!--he
could wheedle managers into providing berths for every sorry incompetent
who caught the footlight fever. It was very annoying. Not that he
wouldn't be glad to place them all, given time and influence; but he
had neither.
Joan, watching him closely, saw his face darken, guessed cunningly the
cause. And suddenly the buoyant assurance which had been hers up to this
stage in their interview deserted her utterly. No longer enheartened by
faith in the potency of her good looks and the appeal of her necessity,
she became again the constrained and timid girl of unreasonable and
inarticulate demands.
After a brief silence, Matthias looked up with a smile.
"I don't suppose you have anything else in sight?"
Joan shook her head.
"And you need a job pretty hard--eh?"
"Oh, I do!" she cried. "I haven't hardly any money, and the Deans have
gone away, and the agencies won't pay any attention to me--"
"I understand," he interrupted. "Half a minute: I'll try to think of
something."
Unconsciously he began to pace the way his feet had worn from door to
window.
"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.