As soon as the porter had made up the lower berth in the section Joan
had reserved for her sole accommodation--in spite of the strain of
thrift ingrained in her nature--she retired to it, buttoned securely the
heavy plush portieres, and prepared for rest by reducing herself to that
state of semi-undress in which she had learned to travel by night. Then,
by the light of the small electric lamp above her pillow, she turned out
the contents of her handbag and counted the money she had stolen from
Quard.
The sum of it, more than twenty-one hundred dollars, staggered her. She
hadn't dreamed that Quard possessed so much ready cash.
Carefully folding the bills of larger denomination into a neat, flat
packet, she wrapped them in a handkerchief and hid them in the hollow of
her bosom, secured by a safety-pin to her ribbed silk undervest. The
remainder, more than enough to cover all ordinary expenses en route to
New York, she disposed of more accessibly, half in her handbag, half in
one of her stockings.
Then extinguishing the light, she lay back, but not to sleep. The
pressure of her emotions was too strong to let her lose touch with
consciousness. As a general rule, sleeping-cars had no terrors for Joan;
never a nervous woman, her thoroughly sound and healthy organization
permitted her to sleep almost at will, even under such discouraging
circumstances as those provided by modern railway accommodations. But
that night she lay awake till dawn flushed the windows with its wash of
grey, awake and staring wide of eye into the gloom of her section,
listening to the snores of conscienceless neighbours, and thinking,
thinking--thinking endlessly and acutely.
But they were thoughts singularly uncoloured by remorse for what she had
done or fear of its consequences.
She was not in the least sorry she had taken Quard's money; she was
glad. The mere amount of it was proof enough for Joan that her husband
had lied to her about the earnings of the sketch, had lied from the very
beginning; otherwise he could by no means have laid by so much in the
term of their booking to date. And for that, he deserved to suffer. She
was only sorry he might not be made to understand how heavily he was
paying for those months of deception. But that was something Quard would
never know: with the story of the bell-boy he must be content; he must
go through life placing the blame of his misfortune upon the heads of
those nameless "stick-up men" of the Barbary Coast.
Nor was he likely to suffer otherwise. Joan was confident the man would
manage somehow to find his feet financially, almost as soon as
physically. A telegram to his agent, Boskerk, would bring him aid if all
else failed; the play was too constant an earner of heavy commissions
for Boskerk to let it fall by the wayside for lack of a few hundred
dollars. So was it too strong a "draw" on the vaudeville circuits to be
blacklisted and barred by managers because of the temporary break-down:
something which Quard would readily explain and excuse (and Joan could
imagine how persuasively) with his moving yarn of foot-pads and
knock-out drops. Nor would it be more than a temporary break-down; with
Quard restored to his senses, the absence of the leading woman would
prove merely a negligible check. Joan entertained no illusions as to her
indispensability: once, in Denver, when she had been out of the cast for
two consecutive performances, suffering with an ulcerated tooth, another
actress had gone on and actually read the part from manuscript without
materially lessening the dramatic effect of the playlet as a whole.
Other women by the score could be found to fill her place acceptably
enough, if few as handsomely (Joan soothed her pride with this
reservation). "The Lie" would go on its conquering way without
her--never fear!
And Quard? Joan curled a lip: _he_ wouldn't pine away for her. She had
come to know too well his shallow bag of tricks; and life to him was not
life if he lacked one before whose dazzled vision he could air his
graces and accomplishments--strut and crow and trail a handsome wing in
the dust. Looking back she could see very clearly, now, how love had
waned as soon as lust was sated in the man. That night in Cincinnati had
been the turning point: he had refrained from drink only as long as his
wife continued to intoxicate his senses.
And Joan?... In the stifling gloom of her curtained section the girl
stretched luxuriously, breathed deep, and smiled a secret, enigmatic
smile. No more than he, would she waste herself away with grief and
longing. She was no longer another's but now her own mistress: a free
adventurer, by the gold band upon her finger licensed to cruise with
letters of marque.
Shortly before sunrise she fell asleep, still smiling, and slept on
sweetly well into mid-morning. Then, rising, she refreshed herself in
the wash-room, and went to a late breakfast with countenance as clear
and firm and bright as if she had never known a wakeful hour.
The eyes of men followed her wherever she moved, and when she was seated
alone in her section, dreaming over a magazine or gazing pensively out
of the window, men discovered errands that took them to and fro in her
vicinity more often than was warranted by any encouragement she gave
them. For she gave them none, she ignored them every one. She was
through with Man for good and all!
It was a brand new rôle, and to play it diverted her immensely for the
time being....
She spent the greater part of her waking hours, during the next few
days, planning what she would do with all that money. Clothes, of
course, figured ever first in these projections, and then a suite of
rooms at some ostentatious hotel, and taxicabs when she went out to call
on managers. How many times hadn't she heard Maizie Dean solemnly affirm
that "a swell front does more to put you in _right_ than anything else,
with them lowlifers"?
And again she was pleasurably diverted by a vision of herself,
extravagantly gowned, returning to recount her Odyssey to an admiring
audience composed of Ma, Edna, and, perhaps, Butch; at the close of
which she would distribute largesse, not forgetting to return Butch's
loan with open-handed interest, and go on her way rejoicing, pursued by
envious benedictions....
New York received her like a bridegroom, clothed in April sunshine as in
a suit of golden mail, amazingly splendid and joyous. After that weary
grind of inland towns and cities, differing one from another only in
degrees of griminess, greyness, and dullness, New York seemed Paradise
Regained to Joan. She had not believed it could seem so beautiful, so
magnificent, so sensuously seductive.
In the exaltation of that delirious hour she plunged madly into a
department store near the Pennsylvania Station, even before securing
lodgings, and bought herself a pair of cheap white kid gloves, simply
for the sheer voluptuousness of possessing once again something newly
purchased in New York.
It was the beginning of an orgy. Joan hadn't thought how shabby and
travel-worn she must seem until she donned those fresh and staring
gloves and saw them in relief against the wrinkled and dusty garments
she had worn across the continent.
Thoughtful, she sought a nearby mirror and looked herself over, then
shook her head and turned away to check her suit-case at the parcels
desk and surrender herself body and mind to the sweet dissipation of
clothing herself afresh from top to toe....
But first of all she visited the hairdressing and manicuring department:
she meant to be altogether spick-and-span before venturing forth to woo
and win anew this old and misprized lover, her New York.
It was the head saleswoman of the suit department whose remote disdain
led Joan deeper into extravagance.
The girl had selected a taffeta costume which, while by no means the
most expensive or the handsomest in stock, possessed the advantage of
fitting well her average figure, requiring no alterations. On paying for
it she announced her desire to put it on at once and have her old suit
sent home.
"Reully?" drawled the saleswoman, disappointed in her efforts to induce
the girl to buy a higher-priced suit which did require alterations.
Conjuring a pencil from the fastnesses of her back-hair, she produced an
order pad. "Miss--what did you say? Ah, Thursday! Thanks. What numba,
please? _Is_ it in the city?"
Joan flushed, but controlled her impulse to wither and blast this
insolent animal.
"The Waldorf-Astoria," she said quietly--though never once had she
ventured within the doors of that establishment--and withdrew in triumph
to make her change of clothing.
And having committed herself to this extent, she enjoyed ordering
everything sent to that hotel, which in her as yet somewhat naïve
understanding was synonymous with the last word in the sybaritism of
metropolitan life.
Her long experience on the road had served thoroughly to break her in to
the ways of hotels, however, and she betrayed no diffidence in the
matter of approaching the room-clerk for accommodations. Nor did she,
apparently, find anything dismaying in the price she was asked to pay
for a bedroom with private bath. It was only when, at length relieved
of the attentions of the bell-boy whose unconcealed admiration alone was
worth the quarter Joan gave him as a tip, she had inspected first her
new quarters and then herself in a pier-glass, that the girl gave
herself over to alternate tremors of self-approval and trepidation.
These last were only increased when she reckoned up the money she had
left, and appreciated how much she had spent in that one wild afternoon
of shopping.
On the other hand, she reminded herself, a complete new wardrobe was a
necessity to one whose former outfit was lost beyond recall. Quard would
never have forwarded the clothing she had left behind in San Francisco,
even if she could have found the effrontery to write and demand it. And
if she had expended upwards of five hundred dollars since reaching New
York, there was less extravagance in that than might have been
suspected; she had purchased cannily in almost every instance and, at
worst, but few things that she could well have done without in that
sphere of life to which she felt herself called.
The excitement of unwrapping those parcels which began presently to
arrive in shoals, and of reviewing such purchases as she had not worn to
the hotel on her back, in time completely reassured her. It was with the
composure of restored self-confidence and esteem that she presently went
down to dinner.
Conscious that she was looking her handsome best in a modish afternoon
gown, she was able to receive the attentions of the head-waiter with
just the proper degree of indifference, to order a simple meal and
consume it appreciatively without seeming aware that she dined in
strange surroundings.
But all the while she was consumed with admiration of herself for her
audacity, as well as with not a little awe-stricken wonder at the child
of fortune, who in the space of one brief year--of less, indeed, than
that full period--had risen from the stocking-counter of a department
store and the squalor and poverty of East Seventy-sixth Street to the
dignity of a leading woman and the affluence of lodging at the Waldorf!
True, she now lacked an engagement; but she had to support her demands
for new employment the prestige of a successful season with "The
Lie"--"the vaudeville sensation of the year," as Quard had truthfully
described it.
Need she fret herself with vain questionings of an inscrutable future,
who had made such amazing progress in so short a time?
Surely she was justified in assuming that the end for her was not yet,
that she was dedicated to some far richer and more gorgeous destiny than
any she had ever conceived in her most wild imaginings.
She had only to watch herself: she was her own sole enemy, with her
fondness for the admiration of men and their society. Let them realize
that weakness, and she was lost, doomed to the way too many capable
girls had gone, to the end of infamy and despair. But if only she had
the wit and art to make men think her weakness theirs....
And that much Joan was sure she possessed: she believed she had learned
to know Man better than herself.
She meant to go far, now, a great deal farther than she had ever thought
to go in those quaint, far-off days when the crown of her ambition had
been to paint her pretty face, wear silken tights upon her pretty legs,
and beat a drum in the chorus of Ziegfield's Follies.