"Why?"
He was unmoved by the flash of hostility in Joan's manner.
"I guess," he said after a deliberate pause, "we don't have to go into
that. Anyway, I got other plans for Edna. She's goin' to the country,
up-State, to spend the summer on a farm--family of a fellow I know.
After that, if she's strong enough, she can come back and keep house for
me, if she wants to, or go to work any way she chooses--that's not my
business. Only--understand me--she isn't going to go into the chorus
until she's old enough to know what she's doin', and strong enough to
stand the racket. That's settled."
Rising, he jerked the stub of his cigarette through the air-shaft
window, and slowly drew on his gauntlets.
"You do what packin' you wanta, kid," he advised Edna, "before three
o'clock thisaft'noon. I'll be back for you then. Your train leaves at
four. You'll travel along with the mother of this friend of mine--Mrs.
Simmons, her name is."
As he had said, the matter was settled. Joan conceded the point without
bickering, with indeed a feeling of mean relief. Moreover, she was
afraid of Butch....
The flat in Fiftieth Street had gained associations insufferably
hateful. She returned to it only long enough to pack up and move out.
Incidentally she found, read, and destroyed without answering, a note
from Fowey suggesting an assignation. Her paradoxical dislike for the
man had deepened into detestation. She both hoped and intended never to
see him again.
She moved before nightfall, leaving no address, and established herself
in an inexpensive but reputable boarding establishment, little
frequented by the class of theatrical people with which she was
acquainted, and where a repetition of her escapade was impossible. On
the third day following she began rehearsing privately with Gloucester,
and threw into the work all she could muster of strength, patience, and
intelligence, leaving herself, at the end of each day's work, too
exhausted in mind and body to indulge in any of the pleasures to which
her tastes inclined.
Fowey, unable to trace her and seeing nothing of the girl in those
restaurants and places of amusement she had been wont to frequent, in
time gave up the chase; and before the first presentation of "Mrs.
Mixer" the newspapers supplied Joan with the news of his clandestine
marriage and subsequent flight to Europe with a widow whose fortune
doubtless promised compensation for the fact that she had a son nearly
as old as her latest husband.