For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into
the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing
this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view
remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement
and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from
them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.
Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: _I am
beautiful_.
Her second, not _I love him_, but _He loves me_.
And her third grew out of the second: _I can make him do what pleases
me_.
Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very
self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the
level of humanity!
A fit of petulance, beauty in tears, a whispered word of passion:
strange and strangely simple incantation to have turned a world upside
down! How easily was man suppled to the spell!
The sense of power ran like wine through her being: she felt herself
invincible, an adept of love's alchemy; she had surprised its secret,
and now the world of man's heart lay open to the practices of her
disastrous art. For a moment she experienced an almost terrifying
intimation of empires ripe for conquest that lay beyond Matthias; but
from this she withdrew her troubled gaze; nor would she look again; not
yet....
She considered his mad extravagance of last night--taxicabs, champagne,
tips! Was he, then, able to afford such expenditures? In her
understanding they went oddly with his pretensions to decent poverty. Or
had he merely lost his head under the influence of her charms? This last
theory pleased her; she adopted it with reservations: the question
remained one to be cleared up.
He disapproved of a career upon the stage for her?... Joan smiled
indulgently: that matter would be arranged in good time. She meant to
have her way....
At a tap on her door she changed suddenly from the aloof egoist to a
woman athrill before the veil of portentous mysteries. She sat up in
bed, called out to know who was knocking, gave permission to the
chambermaid to enter, and received a note in the hand of Matthias.
"_Past twelve o'clock_," she read, "_and still no sign of you,
sweetheart. I give you thirty minutes to dress and come to me. If you
don't, I'll come for you. After breakfast, we'll run out of town for the
day--our first day together!_ MATTHIAS."
Half wild with delight, she hurried through her toilet and ran
down-stairs to find her lover waiting in the hallway, watch in hand.
He closed it with a snap, and made her a quaintly ceremonious bow. "In
two minutes more--!" he observed in a tone of grave menace. "But before
we go out, have the kindness to step into my humble study. I have
somewhat to say to you."
She appeared to hesitate, to be reluctant and preoccupied occupied.
"What about?" she demanded distantly.
But her dancing eyes betrayed her.
"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant
universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"
Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by
the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a
charming diffidence.
In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken;
returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first
submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded....
She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and
sweet and nameless longing....
At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans
for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long
Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by
the prospect--the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was
comprised in a few trips to Coney Island--consented with a strange
mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a
conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.
"I didn't know you had an automobile."
"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."
"But ... but ... won't it be awf'ly expensive?"
"Don't worry, dear."
"But, you know, you aren't--rich."
"I'm a magnate of happiness, at all events: and today is _our_ day, the
first of our love, sweetheart. For twelve long hours we're going to
forget everything but our two selfish selves. Why fret about tomorrow?
It always does manage to take care of itself, somehow. And frankly, I
don't care to be reminded of its existence today; for tomorrow I
work...."
A day of quicksilver hours slipping ever from their jealous grasp; of
hours volatile and glamorous: in Joan's half-dazed consciousness, a
delectable pageant of scenes, sensations and emotions no sooner
comprehended than displaced by others no less wonderful....
Abed long after midnight, visions besieged her bewilderingly: a length
of dusty golden highway walled by green forest, with a white bridge
glaring in sunlight at the bottom of a hill; the affrighting onrush of
great motor-cars meeting their own, and the din and dust of their
passage; the bright harbour of Huntington, blue and gold in a frame of
gold and green, viewed from the marble balustrade of the Château des
Beaux Arts; the wrinkled, kindly, comprehending face of a waiter who
served them at dinner; the look in her lover's eyes as she repeated, on
demand, guarded avowals under cover of the motor's rumble; the ardent
face of a boy who had seemed unable to cease staring at her in the
restaurant; silver and purple of the road by night; wheeling ranks of
lights dotting the desolation of suburban Brooklyn; the high-flung span
of Queensboro' Bridge, a web of steel and concrete strung with
opalescent globes; the glare of the city's painted sky; the endless
pulsing of the motor; their last caress on parting at the foot of the
stairs....
On the morrow she went back to her typewriter like Cinderella to her
kitchen. But what work Matthias was able to invent for her was neither
arduous nor urgent; she was able to take her time on it, and wasted many
an hour in dreaming. Her mind was, indeed, more engaged with thoughts of
new frocks than with the circumstances of her love or her services to
her lover.
She was to receive thenceforward twenty-five instead of ten dollars a
week. Matthias had experienced little difficulty in over-ruling her
faint protestations: they were to be together a great deal, he argued,
and she must be able to dress at least neatly; moreover, by requiring
her promise to marry him at some future time when his fortunes would
permit, he had in a measure made her dependent upon him; she couldn't
reasonably be asked to wait for long on a bare pittance.
His arguments were reinforced by one he knew nothing of, a maxim culled
from the wisdom of Miss Maizie Dean: _It was up to a girl to look out
for herself first, last, and all the time_. The platitude had made an
ineffaceable impression upon Joan's sense of self-preservation. And if
Matthias were able to afford nightly dinners for two at good
restaurants, in addition to theater tickets several times a week, he
ought to be able to afford a decent compensation to his stenographer;
especially when it was his wish that she refrain from attempting to earn
more money on the stage.
It was, however, true that no offer had come to Joan of other theatrical
work, and that the issue of her ambition remained in abeyance, a subject
which she didn't care to raise and which Matthias, since that first
night, had considered settled.
Customarily they met each evening about half-past six at some distance
from their lodgings: a precaution against gossip on the part of the
other inmates of the Maison Duprat. Thence they would go to dine at some
favourite restaurant, where food was good and evening dress not
obligatory--the café of their first supper by preference, or else the
Lafayette, in University Place, the Brevoort House, or one of a few
minor French establishments upon which Matthias had conferred the
approval of a discriminating taste. Thereafter, if he meant to work,
they would take a taxicab for a brief whirl through Central Park or up
Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb and back. Or if he considered attendance
upon some first representation important enough to interfere with his
work, as forming part of the education of a student of contemporaneous
drama, they would go to a theatre, where he always contrived to have
good but inconspicuous seats.
In all, Joan must have attended with him eight or nine first-nights; and
since Matthias refused to waste his time on musical comedy, they
witnessed for the most part plays dealing with one phase or another of
social life in either London or New York. From these Joan derived an
amount of benefit which would have surprised anyone ignorant of the
quickness of perception and intelligent adaptability characteristic of
the American girl, however humble her origin. The poorest plays
furnished her with material for self-criticism and improvement. As
plays, indeed, she was but vaguely interested in them, but as schools
of deportment, they held her breathlessly attentive. She never took her
gaze from the stage so long as there remained upon it an actress
portraying, however indifferently, a woman of any degree of cultivation
whatever. Gestures, postures, vocal inflections, the character of their
gowns and the manner in which they contrived to impart to them something
of their wearer's personality, the management of a tea-cup or a fashion
of shaking hands: all these were registered and stored away in the
girl's memory, to be recalled when alone, reviewed, dissected, modified
to fit her individually, practised, and eventually to be adopted with
varying discretion and success.
She who was to be the wife of a man of position, was determined that his
friends and associates should find little to censure in her manners. For
long Helena Tankerville figured to Joan as an impeccable model of tact,
distinction, taste, and gentlewomanliness. To become as Helena was,
summed up the dearest aspirations of the girl. She began to be very
guarded in her use of English, eschewed as far as her means permitted
the uniform style of costume to which New York women are largely prone,
dressed her hair differently and upon no superstructure other than its
own, and spent long hours manicuring and observing the minor niceties of
the feminine toilet.
Paradoxically, with the obtuseness characteristic of a certain type of
imaginative man, Matthias appreciated and was grateful for the
improvement in his fiancée without realizing it objectively; what
pleased his sensitive tastes, he accepted as normal expressions of
innate good-breeding; what jarred, he glossed with charity. It was
inconceivable that he should love any woman but one instinctively fine:
he endowed Joan with many a grace and many a virtue that she did not
possess; and this implicit assertion of his, that she was all that the
mistress of his heart ought to be, incited her to more determined
efforts to resemble all that by birth and training she was not.
It was some time before the novelty palled and she grew restive under
the strain of it all....
"I had a talk with Rideout today," he observed during dinner, on an
evening about a fortnight subsequent to the disbanding of "The Jade God"
company. "He's dickering with Algerson--thinks the thing may possibly
come to a deal before long."
"How do you mean?" Joan enquired with quick interest.
"Algerson wants to buy Rideout's interest in the play--at a bargain to
himself, of course. Rideout is holding out for a better offer, but he's
hard pressed, and I rather think he'll close with Algerson within a few
days."
"Who's Algerson?" Joan asked, after an interval devoted to ransacking
her memory for some echo of that name; resulting in the conviction that
she had never heard it before.
"He runs a chain of stock companies out on the Pacific Coast, and now
he's anxious to branch out into the producing business."
"And if he gets 'The Jade God'--when will he put it on?"
"Can't say--haven't seen him. I'm not supposed to know he's interested
as yet; though of course they'll have to come to me before the deal can
be ratified."
"But you'll consent?"
"Rather! Especially if Algerson will take over Rideout's contract as it
stands. It provides for pretty good royalties, and as a prospective
bridegroom I'm very much interested in such sordid matters."
Joan traced a meaningless pattern on the cloth with a tine of her fork;
glanced surreptitiously at Matthias; remembered that toying with the
tableware wasn't good form, and quietly abandoned the occupation.
"I wonder ..." she murmured abstractedly.
"You wonder what--?" Matthias prompted when she failed to round out her
thought.
She laughed uneasily. "I was just wondering if--if he gets the
piece--Algerson would give me a chance at my old part?"
"Not with my consent," said Matthias promptly. "You know I don't want
you to stick at that game."
"But I'm tired doing nothing," she pouted prettily.
Matthias shook his stubborn head. "Besides," he added quickly, "Algerson
will probably try the show out in one of his stock houses before he goes
to the expense of organizing a new and separate production. I mean,
he'll use people already on his pay roll, and not engage outsiders until
he knows pretty well whether he's got a success or a failure on his
hands."
"You think he will produce out West?"
"Probably."
"And will you have to go?"
"I don't know. I shan't unless I get some guarantee of expenses.
Although ... I don't know ... perhaps I ought to. Wilbrow and I are the
only people who know how the thing ought to be done, and Algerson most
certainly won't pay what Wilbrow asks for making a production--and his
expenses to the Coast and back, besides.... It would be a shame to let a
valuable property go smash for want of intelligent supervision."
"Then you may go, after all?"
"I can't say until something definite is arranged. I'll have to think it
over."
Joan sighed.
A week elapsed before the subject came up again.
Matthias had been out all day; Joan, with no typing to engage her, had
sought surcease of ennui with a book and an easy chair in the
back-parlour. But the story was badly chosen for her purpose. Its
heroine, like herself, had in the beginning been merely a girl of the
people, little if any better equipped for the struggle to the top: Joan
could see no reason why she should not rise with a rapidity as
wonderful, given but the chance denied her through the unreasonable
prejudice of her lover.
And presently the book lay open and neglected in her lap, while her
thoughts engaged mutinously with this obstruction to her desires,
seeking a way to circumvent it without imperilling her conquest.
Joan was proud and sure of her power over Matthias, but she realized
that in spite of it she didn't as yet fill his life; there existed in
his nature reticences her imagination might not plumb; and until chance,
or the confidence only to be engendered through long, slow processes of
intimate association, should make these known to her, she hesitated to
join issue with his will.
And yet ... she was continually restless and discontented. Sometimes she
felt that the old order of uncertainty and stifled longings had been
better for her soul; that she couldn't much longer endure the tension of
living up to the rigorous standards of Matthias and his kind; that she
might even be happier as the object of a passion less honourable and
honest than that which he offered her.
But never before this day had she admitted so much to herself, even in
her most secret hours of egoistic self-communion....
Matthias came in briskly, in a glow of high spirits, shortly before
sunset; and immediately, as always, her every doubt and misgiving
vanished like mists in the morning-glow of his love.
Throwing hat and stick upon the couch, he went directly to her chair,
knelt beside it, gathered her to him. She yielded with a sedate yet warm
tenderness perhaps the more sincere today because of a conscience
stricken by the memory of her late disloyalty of thought. And something
of her fond gravity and gentleness penetrated and sobered his own mood.
He held her very close for many minutes. But when he drew back at
arm's-length to worship her with his eyes, she turned her head aside
quickly, if not quickly enough to deceive him. He was instant to detect
the glimmer of tears in her long lashes, the childish tremor of her
sweet lips, and again drew her to him.
"My dearest one!" he whispered with infinite gentleness and solicitude.
"What is it? Tell me."
"Nothing," she breathed brokenly in return. "Nothing--only--I guess--I'm
a little blue--lonely without you, dear. I'm afraid I need either to be
at work or--with you always."
"Then be comforted, sweetest girl; the time won't be long, now--I
believe in my very soul."
"Till when--?" She leaned back in her chair, examining his face with
eyes that shone with infectious fire of his confident excitement. "Till
when? What do you mean? Something has happened!"
"You're right," he laughed exultantly: "two big things have happened to
me today. Wylie has accepted 'Tomorrow's People': we signed the contract
this afternoon; he's to put it on about the first of the year."
"Oh, I'm so glad!"
"But that isn't all: Algerson has bought Rideout's contract and is to
produce 'The Jade God' in Los Angeles as soon as it can be got ready."
"Dearest!"
There was an interval....
"Only," he said presently, "it's going to mean a little real loneliness
for you, dear--not more than a few weeks--"
"Why?" she demanded sharply.
"Because I've promised Algerson to superintend the rehearsals. I
couldn't well refuse. You know how much it means to us, dear heart."
"When do you leave?"
"Monday--the Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago then on to Los
Angeles."
"And you'll be gone, altogether, how long?" Joan persisted tensely.
"With good luck, about a month. If we strike a snag, of course, I may
have to stop over a week or so longer. It's hard to say."
"Then I'm to be left--here--alone--with nothing to do but wait--perhaps
more than a month!"
"I'm afraid so, dear. It's for both of our sakes. So much depends--"
"Jack!" Placing her hands on his shoulders, Joan held him off. "Take me
with you," she pleaded earnestly.
"Think a moment, sweetheart. You must see how impossible it is. For one
thing, it wouldn't--O it's all very well to say 'Conventions be hanged!'
but--it wouldn't look right. We're not married."
"Take me with you, Jack," she repeated stubbornly.
He shook his head. "And, fairly and squarely, dear, I can't afford it. I
haven't got enough money. Even if we were married, I'd have to leave you
here."
For a moment longer the girl kept her hands upon his shoulders,
exploring his face with eyes that seemed suddenly to have been robbed of
much of their girlishness. Then: "Very well," she said coldly, and
releasing him, she sat back and averted her countenance.
Matthias got up, distressed and perplexed.
"You can't mean your love won't stand the strain of a few weeks'
separation, Joan!"
She made no answer. He shrugged, moved to the work-table, found a
cigarette and lighted it.
"Surely you can wait that long--"
"I'll do my best," she interrupted almost impatiently. "If it can't be,
it can't. So don't let's talk any more about it."
"I'd give a good deal to be able to arrange things the way you wish," he
grumbled. "But I don't see...."
She was silent. He paced the worn path on the carpet for a few moments,
then turned aside to his desk and stood idly examining a little
collection of correspondence which had been delivered in his absence.
One or two letters he opened, skimmed through without paying much
attention to their contents, and tossed aside. A third brought from him
an exclamation: "Hello!"
"What is it?" Joan enquired indifferently.
"What do you say to running down to Tanglewood over Sunday?"
"Tanglewood?"
"My Aunt Helena's home--down at Port Madison, Long Island, you know. She
has just written, asking us. It would be rather fun. Would you like to
go?"
A blunt negative was barely suppressed. Curiosity made Joan hesitate,
and temporarily to forego further petulance.
"I've got nothing to wear," she doubted uncertainly.
"Rot: you don't need anything but shirtwaists and skirts. There won't be
anybody but you, Helena, George Tankerville and myself." Matthias leaned
over the back of her chair and caught her face between his hands. "It'll
be a splendid holiday for us, before I start. Say yes--sweetheart!"
Joan turned up her face to his, lifting her arms to encircle his neck.
She nodded consent as he bent his lips to hers.