Before Joan left Marbridge, they had arrived at an understanding which
was not less complete and satisfactory in that it was largely implicit.
Without receiving any definite explanation of the circumstances
complicating the production of "Mrs. Mixer," Joan carried away with her
a tolerably clear notion thereof, both confirming and supplementing the
second-hand information of Hattie Morrison.
Mrs. Cardrow owned a heavy interest in the play, Joan had gathered; and
there existed, as well, a contract between her and Arlington which would
have to be eliminated before it would be possible to go ahead and make
the production with another actress in place of the erstwhile star. Some
very delicate diplomatic manoeuvring was indicated....
Interim, Joan was to be privately drilled by Peter Gloucester for some
weeks prior to calling together the full company to rehearse for the
September production. Gloucester was just then out of Town, but she
would be advised when and where to meet him on his return.
Marbridge was to be absent from New York until the middle of September
or longer; but he promised to be back a week or two before the opening
performance.
There were other promises exchanged....
With her future thus schemed, the girl was very well content, who had
attained by easy stages to one of mental development in which those
primary moral distinctions upon which she had been reared were no longer
perceptible--or, if perceptible, had diminished to purely negligible
stature.
It was not in nature for her to disdain or reject her bargain on moral
grounds: she knew, or recognized, none that applied.
For over a year during the most impressionable period of her life, Joan
Thursday had breathed the atmosphere of the stage. She had become
thoroughly accustomed to recognize without criticism those irregular
unions and regular disunions that characterized the lives of her
associates. She had observed many an instance where the most steadfast
and loyal love existed without bonds of any sort, and as many where it
existed in matrimony, and as many again where neither party to a
marriage made aught but the barest pretence of fidelity.
She had remarked that material and artistic success seemed to depend
upon neither the observance nor the disregard of sexual morality. She
knew of husbands and wives against whom scandal uttered no whisper and
whose talents were considerable, but who had struggled for years and
would struggle until the end without winning substantial recognition.
And she knew of the reverse. The one unpardonable sin in her world was
the sin of drunkenness, and even it was venial except when it "held the
curtain" or prevented its rising altogether.
As far as concerned her attitude toward herself, she considered Joan
Thursday above reproach, seeing that she had withdrawn from her marriage
long before even as much as contemplating any man other than her
husband. She held that she was now free, at liberty to do as she liked,
untrammelled by opinion whether public or private: that she had outgrown
criticism.
True, Quard might divorce her. But what of that? If he did, Joan
Thursday wouldn't suffer. If he didn't, he himself would be the last to
pretend he was leading a life of celibacy because of her defection.
Marbridge she really liked; his appeal to her nature was stronger than
that of any man she had as yet encountered. He attracted her in every
way, and he excited her curiosity as well. He was a new type--but in
what respect different from other men? He was famously successful with
women: why? He had wealth, cultivation of a certain sort (real or
spurious, Joan couldn't discriminate) and social position; and this
flattered, that such an one should reject the women of his own sphere
for Joan Thursday--late of the stocking counter.
And if she could turn this infatuation of his to material profit, while
at the same time satisfying the several appetites Marbridge excited in
her: why not? Other women by the score did as much without censure or
obvious cause for regret. Why not she?
How many women of her acquaintance--women whose interests, running in
grooves parallel to hers, were intelligible to Joan--would have refused
the chance that was now hers through Marbridge? Not one; none, at least,
who was free as Joan was free; not even Hattie Morrison, whose views
upon the subject of such arrangements were strong, whom Joan considered
straitlaced to the verge of absurdity. Hattie, Joan believed, would have
jumped at the opportunity.
But of course, denied, Hattie would be sure to decry it, and with the
more bitterness since Joan had won it in the wreck of Hattie's hopes.
And here was the only shadow upon the fair prospect of Joan's
contentment. She who had questioned Hattie's right to become a party to
the conspiracy against Mrs. Cardrow--how could she ever go home and face
the girl, with this treachery on her conscience?
True: Hattie didn't know, wouldn't know before morning, might never
learn the truth during the term of their association.
None the less, to be with Hattie that night would be to sit with a
skeleton at the feast of her felicity....
On impulse Joan turned to the left on leaving the New York Theatre
building, and moved slowly, purposelessly, down Broadway.
It was an afternoon of withering heat: the pavements burning palpably
through the paper-thin soles of her pretty slippers, and the air close
with the smell of hot asphaltum. The rays of the westering sun made
nothing of the fabric of Joan's white parasol, their heat penetrating
its sheer shield as though it were glass. Mankind in general sought the
shadowed side of the street and moved only reluctantly, with its coat
over its arm, a handkerchief tucked in between neck and
collar--effectually choking off ventilation and threatening
"sun-stroke."
Waiting upon the northeast corner of Forty-second Street for the traffic
police to check the cross-town tide, Joan felt half-suffocated and
thought longingly of the seashore....
Once across the street, she turned directly in beneath the permanent
awning of the Knickerbocker Hotel, and entered the lobby, making her way
round, past the entrance to the bar, to the recess dedicated to the
public telephone booths.
A semi-exhausted and apathetic operator looked up reluctantly as Joan
approached, with one glance appraising her from head to heels. At any
other time the dainty perfection of Joan's toilet would have roused
antagonism in the woman; today she found energy only sufficient for a
perfunctory mumble.
"What numba, please?"
Joan hesitated, feeling herself suddenly upon the verge of dangerous
indiscretion, but stung by the operator's look of jaded disdain, took
her courage in hand and pursued her original intention.
"One Bryant," she said.
The operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her
and iterated the number mechanically.
In another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths.
"Numba five--One Bryant," she said.
Joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver.
"Hello--Lambs' Club?" she enquired.... "Is Mr. Fowey in the club?... Will
you page him, please.... Miss Thursday.... Yes, I'll hold the wire."
The booth was hermetically sealed. Perspiration was starting out all
over her body. And somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet,
lurked a long unburied cigar. She thrust the door ajar, but only to
close it immediately as Fowey's voice saluted her.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Hubert," Joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery
in her accents.
"Is that you, Joan--really?" the voice demanded excitedly.
"Real-ly!" she affirmed. "What're you doing there, shut up all alone by
yourself in that stupid club, Hubert?"
Prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came
briskly: "Where are you now, anyway?"
"That doesn't matter," she retorted. She had meant to ask him to meet
her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest Marbridge might chance
to see them. "What really matters is that this is my birthday and I'm
going to give a party. Have you got anything better to do?"
"No--"
"Then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the Sixth
Avenue L at Battery Place."
"Battery Place! What in thunder--"
"Never mind--tell you all about it when we meet. Will you come?"
"Will I! Well, rawther!"
"Half an hour, then--"
"I'll be there, with bells on!"
"Then good-bye for a little--Hubert."
"Good-bye."
Fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than Joan.
As he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to
join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight,
dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so
ultra-English in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger
brother. And the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager
countenance seemed little short of offensive. She was sorry now that she
had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so
insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of
the man who now filled all her thoughts--Marbridge; and so transparent
that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible
doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had
at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her
requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.
But she permitted nothing of her thoughts to become legible in her
manner. After all, she had only wanted an escort for the evening, an
excuse to postpone that unavoidable return to the company of the girl
she had betrayed; and Fowey had seemed the most convenient and the least
dangerous man she could think of. If in the inflation of his
insufferable conceit he dreamed for an instant another thing.... Well,
Joan promised herself, he'd soon find out his mistake!...
Keeping up the fiction of her imaginary birthday, she outlined her
plans: they would take one of the Iron Steamboat Company's boats from
Pier 1, North River--a short walk from the station--to Coney Island.
When that resort palled, they would drive to Manhattan Beach and dine,
perhaps "take in" Pain's Fireworks; and return to New York by the same
route.
Fowey's objections were instant and sincere and well-grounded: the boats
would be crowded beyond endurance with an unwashed rabble liberally sown
with drunks and screaming children. If she would only let him, he'd get
a taxicab--or even a touring-car.
Quietly but firmly Joan overruled him. It must be her party or no party,
as she proposed or not at all.
He yielded in the end, but the event proved him right in all he had
foretold. Joan was very soon made sorry she hadn't suffered herself to
be gainsaid.
They had half an hour to wait for the boat, and the waiting-room upon
the second-storey of the pier was like an oven, packed with a milling,
sweating mob exactly fulfilling Fowey's prediction. They were elbowed,
shouldered, walked upon, and at one time openly ridiculed by a gang of
hooligans, any one of whom would have made short work of Fowey had he
dared show any resentment.
Upon the boat, when at length it turned up tardily to receive them,
conditions were little better, save that the open air was an
indescribable relief after the reeking atmosphere of the pier. Fowey
managed to secure two uncomfortable folding stools, upon which they
perched, crowded against the rail of the upper deck; a wretched
"orchestra" wrung infamous parodies of popular songs from several
tortured instruments; children scuffled and howled; burly ruffians in
unclean aprons thrust themselves bodily through the throng, balancing
dripping trays laden with glasses of lukewarm beer and "soft drinks" and
bawling in every ear their seductive refrain--"Here's the waiter! Want
the waiter? _Who_ wants the waiter?"--and an alcoholic, planting his
chair next to Joan's, promptly went to sleep, snoring atrociously, and
threatened every instant to topple over and rest his head in her lap.
A single circumstance modified in a way Joan's regret that she hadn't
heeded Fowey's protests.
As the boat swung away from the pier, a larger steamship of one of the
coastwise lines, outward bound from its dock farther up the North River,
passed with leeway so scant that the dress and features of those upon
its decks were clearly to be discerned. And at the moment when the two
vessels were nearest, Joan discovered one who stood just outside an open
cabin door, leaning upon the rail with an impressively nonchalant pose,
and smoking a heavy cigar. He wore clothing of a conspicuous
shepherd's-plaid, and his pose was an arrested dramatic gesture.
In a moment a woman emerged from the open door behind him and joined him
at the rail, placing an intimate hand on his forearm and saying
something which won from him a laugh and a look of tender admiration: a
handsome, able-bodied woman, expensively but loudly dressed, her
connection with the stage as unquestionable as was his.
Joan dissembled the odd emotion with which she recognized the man, and
turned to Fowey.
"What boat is that, do you know, Hubert?"
Fowey raked her with an indifferent glance, fore and aft. "Belongs to
the New Bedford Line," he announced--"can't make out her name--connects
at New Bedford for the boats to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Ever
been up that way?"
"No. What's it like?"
"Pretty islands. Don't know Martha's Vineyard very well, but Nantucket's
my old stamping-ground. Go up there in the middle of the summer--about
now--and you'll find every actor and actress you ever heard of, and then
some. Great place. Wish we were going there."
"Don't be silly...."
The boats were drawing apart. Joan looked back for the last sight she
was ever to have of her husband.
Though she couldn't have known this, she sighed a little, in strange
depression.
Perplexed, she tried vainly to analyze her emotion: was it regret--or
jealousy?
Of a sudden, in the heart of that immense crowd, with Fowey attentive at
her elbow, she was conscious of a feeling of intense loneliness.