"I just happened to think perhaps you haven't a time-table in your room," said Matthias amiably. "There are several early trains tomorrow, you know. I fancy the eight-seven would suit you as well as any."
He got no answer other than a grunt. Marbridge resumed his deliberate ascent, gained the upper floor, and disappeared.
"Good night!" Matthias called after him, softly; and turned out the light.
X
Monday afternoon found Mr. Matthias back at his desk and in a tolerably unhappy temper, tormented not only by that conscience-stricken sensation of secret guilt inseparable from a return to neglected work, but also by a less reasonable, in fact inexplicable (to him) feeling of discomfort; as though he were a trespasser upon the premises rather than their lawful tenant.
Never before had he felt less at home, never more ill at ease in the homely solitude of his workshop and lodgings.
As for his work… He found page 6 of that promising young first act in the typewriter carriage, precisely as it had been left on his receipt of Helena's peremptory telegram. Removing the sheet, he turned back to the first page, and read what had been written with such high and eager hope; and looked his dashed bewilderment. Knitting portentous brows, sedulously he reconsidered the manuscript at length; then with a groan put it aside, ran fingers through his hair till it rose rampant, and sat scowling darkly at the wall, groping blindly and vainly for the lost ends of that snapped thread of enthusiasm.
The first flush of confidence vanished, what he had written owned heart-rending incoherence in his understanding.
However (he assured himself) it would come back to him in time. Indeed, it was bound to. It wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened to him, nor yet the second: he was no raw novice to cry despair over such an everyday set-back.
But what the devil was the matter with him? All the way to Town he had been full of his theme, as keen-set for work as a schoolboy for a holiday, and hardly less for the well-worn comforts of his abode. And, lo! here sat he with his head as empty as his hands, and that misfit feeling badgering him to exasperation.
Instinctively he consulted a pipe and, through its atmosphere, the view from his windows: the never-failing, tried and true, enheartening monotony of that sun-scorched area of back-yards, grim and unlovely in the happiest weather, cat-haunted and melancholy in all its phases… But today he essayed vainly to distil from contemplation of it any of the rare glamour of yesterday's zeal and faith. It was all gone, all! and the erratic mind of him would persist in trailing off after errant thoughts of Venetia Tankerville.
Surpassing inconsistency of the human heart! Three hours ago, in her company, he had been able to control and to behave himself, to anticipate with pleasure the prospect of returning to his desk after escorting her from the Pennsylvania to the Grand Central Station and putting her aboard the train for Greenwich, whither she was bound for a fortnight's visit. But now – he could think of nothing but Venetia: Venetia's eyes, her scarlet lips, her exquisite hands, her hair of bronze; her moods and whims, her laughter and her pensiveness, alike adorable; Venetia in evening dress on the moon-drenched terrace of Tanglewood; Venetia on the tennis-courts, all in white, glorified by sunlight, an amazingly spirited, victorious figure; Venetia with her hair blown across her eyes, at the wheel of one of Tankerville's racing motor-craft; Venetia in the gloom of the Grand Central Station, lingering to say good-bye to her betrothed…
It required several days for this stupid gentleman to awaken to the fact that the name of his trouble was merely love; that an acknowledged lover is a person vastly different from a diffident and distant worshipper; that, in short, the muse of the creative fancy is a jealous mistress, prone to sulk and deny the light of her countenance to a suitor who thinks to share his addresses with another.
But this illuminating discovery did little to allay his discontent: progress with his work alone could accomplish that; and the work dragged dolefully; he scored only dismal failures in his efforts to produce something to satisfy himself. And he had only six months to prove his worth. The date of their marriage had been fixed for February; every detail of their plans had been worked out under the masterful guidance of Helena; even the steamer upon which they were to sail for Egypt had been selected and their suite reserved.
In short he positively had to win out within the allotted period of grace, who seemed able only to sit there, day in and out, beside his typewriter, with idle hands, or, with a vacant mind, to pace his trail of torment from door to window: getting nowhere, stripped of every vestige of his arduously acquired craftsmanship… It was maddening.
None the less, doggedly, savagely determined to overcome this sentimental handicap, he worked long hours: only to review the outcome of his labours with a sinking heart. For all his knowledge of the stage, for all that a long career of failures and half-hearted successes had taught him, the play that slowly took shape under his modelling lacked vitality – the living fire of drama. Technically he could find no disastrous fault with it; but in his soul he knew it to be as passionless as a proposition in Euclid.
He was a dreamer, but not even the stuff of dreams could dull the clear perceptions of his critical intelligence…
Meantime, the superficial routine of work-a-day life went on much as it had ever since he had set up shop in the establishment of Madame Duprat. His breakfasts were served him in his rooms; for his other meals he foraged in neighbouring restaurants. A definite amount of exercise was required to keep him in working trim. In short, he was in and out of the house several times each day. Inevitably, then, he encountered fellow lodgers, either on the stoop or in the hallway; among them, and perhaps more often and less adventitiously than in other instances, one wistful young woman, shabbily dressed, in whose brown eyes lurked a hesitant appeal for recognition. He grew acquainted with the sight of her, but he was generally in haste and preoccupied, looked over her head if not through her, stepped civilly out of her way and went absently his own, and never once dreamed of identifying her with that dreary and damp creature of the rain-swept night whose necessity had turned him out of his lodgings for a single night.
One day – the second Thursday following his return to Town – he found himself waiting in the lobby of the Knickerbocker, a trifle early for a luncheon engagement with Rideout and his producing manager, Wilbrow: a meeting arranged for the purpose of discussing the forthcoming production of "The Jade God." The day was seasonably insufferable with heat, but there was here a grateful drift of air through open doors and windows. Lounging in an arm-chair, he lazily consumed a cigarette and reviewed the listless ebb and flow of guests with a desultory interest which was presently, suddenly, and rudely quickened.
Marbridge, accompanied by a woman, was leaving the eastern dining-room. They passed so near to Matthias that by stretching forth his foot he could have touched the woman's skirt. But she did not see him; her face was averted as she looked up, faintly smiling, to the face of her companion. Marbridge, on his part, was attending her with that slightly exaggerated attitude of solicitude and devotion which was peculiarly his with all women. If he saw Matthias he made no sign. His dark and boyish eyes ogled his companion; his tone was pitched low to a key of intimacy; he rolled a trifle in his walk, with the insuppressible swagger of the amateur of gallantry.
They passed on and out of the hotel; and Matthias saw the carriage-porter, at a sign from Marbridge, whistle in a taxicab.
He turned away in disgust.
A moment or so later he looked up to find Marbridge standing over him and grinning impudently as he offered a hand.
"Why, how do you do, Matthias, my boy?"
His voice, by no means subdued, echoed through the lobby and attracted curious glances.
Matthias, ignoring the hand, lifted one of his own in a gesture deprecatory.
"Softly!" he begged. "Somebody might hear you."
Unabashed, Marbridge dropped into the chair beside him. "How's that? Why shouldn't they?"
"They might make the mistake of inferring that I liked you," returned Matthias.
Marbridge, on the point of settling back, sat up with a start. A dull colour flushed his plump, dark cheeks. For an instant his hands twitched nervously and his full lips tightened on a retort which he presumably deemed inadvisable; for mastering his impulse, he sank back again, and put a period to the display with a brief but not uneasy chuckle.
"You're all there with the acidulated repartee," he observed appreciatively. "Some class to your work, my boy!" To which, Matthias making no comment, he added with at least some effort toward an appearance of sincerity: "Sorry you feel that way about me."
"Unfortunately, I do."
"Because I wouldn't act on your suggestion about that time-table, eh?"
"Because of the circumstances which moved me to drop that hint."
A brief silence prefaced Marbridge's next remark:
"But damn it! I couldn't. It would've made talk if I'd pulled out when you wanted me to."
"There would have been no occasion for any talk whatever if you'd known how to comport yourself as the guest of decent people."
And still Marbridge husbanded his resentment.
"Oh well!" he said, aggrieved – "women!"
Matthias threw away his cigarette and prepared to rise.
"Hold on a bit," Marbridge checked him. "I want to ask a favour of you… Of course, you're right; I am a bad actor, and all that. I'm sorry I forgot myself at Tanglewood – word of honour, I am!"
"Well?" Matthias suggested with an unmoved face.
"Look here…" Marbridge sat up eagerly. "I think you're a mighty good sort – "
"Thanks!"
"You didn't blow about that business down there – "
"I couldn't very well – could I? – with a woman involved!"
"Oh, you did the white thing: I'm not disputing that. But what I'm worried about now is whether you're as good a sport as you seem."
"Meaning – ?"
Marbridge nodded significantly toward the sidewalk, where he had put his late companion into the cab. "About today: you won't find it necessary to – ?"
"By God!" Matthias's indignation brimmed over. "If you're so solicitous of the woman's good name, why the devil do you allow her to be seen in your company?"
"It isn't that," Marbridge persisted, keeping himself well in hand. "After all, what's a lunch at the Knick?"
"Well – ?"
"The trouble is, she's supposed to be at Newport. Majendie doesn't know – "
"You just can't help being a blackguard, can you, Marbridge?" Matthias enquired curiously. "You ought to have bitten off your tongue before you named a name in a public place like this." He rose, meeting with steady eyes the vicious glare of the other. "One word more: if I hear of your accepting another invitation to Tanglewood, I'll forget to be what you call 'a good sport'."
Marbridge jumped up hotly. "Look here!" he said in accents that, though guarded, trembled, "I've been mighty patient with your insolence, and I'm certainly not going to forget myself here. But if you want to make a book on it, I'll lay you any odds you like that I'll be received at Tanglewood within the year, and you won't say one single damn' word. Do you make me?"
Matthias looked him up and down, smiled quietly, swung on his heel, and moved across the lobby to greet Rideout and Wilbrow.
His instinctive inclination to dismiss altogether from his mind a subject so distasteful was helped out by a conference which outlasted luncheon, involved dinner with the two men of the theatre, and was only concluded in Matthias's rooms shortly after midnight.
Wilbrow, considering the play from the point of view of him upon whom devolved all responsibility for the manner of its presentation (the scene painting alone excepted) and gifted with that intuitive sense du théâtre singular to men of his vocation, who very nearly monopolize the intelligence concerned with the American stage today – Wilbrow had uncovered a slight, by no means damning, flaw in the construction of the third act, and had a remedy to suggest. This, adopted without opposition from the playwright, suggested further alterations which Matthias could not deny were calculated to strengthen the piece. In consequence, when at length they left him, he found himself committed to a virtual rewriting of the last two acts entire.
Groaning in resignation, he resolved to accomplish the revision in one week of solid, uninterrupted labour, and went to bed, rising the next morning to deny himself his correspondence and the newspapers and to make arrangements with Madame Duprat to furnish all his meals until his task was finished. These matters settled, and his telephone temporarily silenced, he began work and, forgetful of the world, plodded faithfully on by day and night until late Thursday afternoon, when he drew the final page from his typewriter, thrust it with its forerunners into an envelope addressed to Rideout, entrusted this last to a messenger, and threw himself upon the couch to drop off instantly into profound slumbers of exhaustion.
At ten o'clock that night he was awakened and sat up, dazed and blinking in a sudden glare of gas-light.
Stupidly, bemused with the slowly settling dust of dreams, he stared, incredulous of the company in which he found himself.
Madame Duprat, having shown his callers in and made a light for them, was discreetly departing. George Tankerville, whose vigorous methods had roused Matthias, stood over him, with a look of deep and sympathetic anxiety clouding his round, commonplace, friendly countenance. Wearing a dinner jacket together with linen motor-cap and duster, oil-stained gauntlets on his hands, with an implacable impatience betrayed in his very pose, he cut a figure sufficiently striking instantly to engage attention – the unexpectedness of his call aside. Furthermore, he was accompanied by his wife: Helena, in a costume as unconventional as her husband's, stood at a little distance, regarding Matthias with much the same look of consternation and care.
"Great Scott!" Matthias exclaimed, pulling his wits together. "You are a sudden pair of people!" With a shrug and a sour smile he deprecated his clothing, which consisted solely of a shirt, linen trousers, and a pair of antiquated slippers. "If you'd only given me some warning, I'd've tried to dress up to your elegance," he went on.
"Damn your clothes!" Tankerville exploded. He dropped a hand on Matthias's shoulder and swung him round to the light. "Tell us you're all right – that's all we want to know!"
"All right?" Matthias looked from one to the other, deeply perplexed. "Why, of course I'm all right. Why not?"
With a little gasp of relief, Helena dropped into a chair. Tankerville removed his hand and leaned against the table, smiling foolishly.
"That's all right, then," he said. "We tried to get you on the telephone all afternoon, failed, were afraid you'd done something foolish, and took a run in to town to make sure."
"What the dickens are you driving at?" Matthias demanded. "I had my telephone cut off the other day because I was working and didn't want to be interrupted. I do that frequently. Why not? What's got into you two, anyway? Have you gone dotty?"
"No," Helena replied with a grim, pale smile; "We're sane enough – and thank Heaven you are! But Venetia – "
"Venetia!" Matthias cried. "What about Venetia?"
Tankerville avoiding his eye, it devolved upon Helena to respond to Matthias's frantic and imperative look.
"Venetia," she said reluctantly – "Venetia eloped with Marbridge day before yesterday – Tuesday. She came in town in the morning to do some shopping, met him and was married to him at the City Hall. They sailed on the Mauretania yesterday. The papers didn't get hold of it —we knew nothing! – till this afternoon. I was afraid she might have written you and you – in despair – "
Her voice broke.
After a little, Matthias turned to a heap of unopened correspondence on a side table and ran rapidly through it, examining only the addresses.
"No," he said presently, in a level tone: "no – she didn't trouble to write me."
XI
For several days the girl had haunted the stairs, the hall, and door-step, alert to waylay Matthias, before suddenly she became aware that it was long since she had either caught a glimpse of him or heard the syncopated murmuring of the typewriter behind the closed door to his back-parlour.
It required the lapse of another day or two before she found courage to question (with laboured indifference) the dilapidated chambermaid who sedulously neglected her room for lack of a tip. From this far from garrulous source she learned that Matthias had packed up and gone out of town very suddenly, without mentioning where he might be addressed during his absence.
Alone at the window of her tiny cell, Joan stared down at the uninspiring vista of back-yards and disconsolately recapitulated her sorry fortunes.
She was now close upon the end of the fortnight's residence in the hall bedroom; before long she would have to surrender another four dollars – a week's rent in advance. Of the twenty-two dollars she had received from Butch, eight remained in her purse. By dint of adhering to a diet largely vegetarian, she had managed without serious discomfort to keep within an expenditure of four dollars per week for food. And twice Maizie Dean had saved her the cost of an evening meal by inviting her to dine out – at the expense of friends in "the profession." But a continuance of such favours was not to be counted upon; and the problem of living a fourth week away from home was one serious and importunate – always assuming she should fail to secure work before her money ran out. She had no resources in any degree dependable: Butch, even if willing, would probably not be able to extend her another loan; she possessed nothing worth pawning; and Maizie Dean had taken prompt occasion to make it clear that, while she was willing to do anything inexpensive for a budding sister artiste, her tolerance would stop short of financial aid.
"Take it from me, dear," she announced soon after their first meeting: "there ain't no people in the world quicker to slip you a live tip than folks in the business; but you gotta make up your mind to pay your own keep. They work too hard for their coin to give up any without a howl you could hear from here to Hollum; and anyway, everybody's always broke in the summer. If you don't land somewhere before your cash runs low, you might just's well make up your mind to slip back into the chain-gang behind the counter."
She had developed – or changed – amazingly in the brief period of her public career. Joan experienced difficulty in recognizing in her the warm-hearted Irish girl who had initiated her into the duties of saleswoman in the stocking department. She had hardened more than superficially; she was now as artificial as her make-up, as the hue of her ashen hair. The world to her was a desert threaded by "circuits," life an arid waste of "open time" punctuated with oases of "booking"; and the fountainhead of temporal power was located in the innermost sanctum of the United Booking Offices.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she crossed her knees frankly, sucked thoughtfully at a cigarette, and waved an explanatory hand:
"Here's me and Mame, thinking we was all fixed for the nex' six weeks, and then somethin' puts a crimp into our bookin' and we're out for Gawd knows how long – till next Fall, sure. That's unless we want to take a trip over the meal-ticket circuit – fillin' in between filums, yunno. And if we do that it's goin' to crab us with the Orpheum people, sure; we'd never get back into the real money class. So we gotta hold onto what little we got until we kin see more time headed our way…"
On the other hand, she had been liberal with sage and trustworthy counsel as to the best way to go about "breaking into the game." It was thanks to her that Joan was now able to enter a theatrical employment agency without fear and trembling, and to back her application for chorus work with a glib and unblushing statement that she had had experience "in summer stock out on the Coast." And to the Sisters Dean, likewise, Joan owed her growing acquaintance with the intricate geography of the theatrical districts of New York, her ability to discriminate between players "resting" and the average run of Broadway loungers who cluttered the shady side of that thoroughfare, from Twenty-fifth Street north to Forty-seventh, those shimmering summer afternoons, and her slowly widening circle of nodding acquaintances among the lesser peoples of the vaudeville world.
As a rule she was awake before anybody else in the establishment of Madame Duprat; not yet could she slough the habit of early rising. Her breakfast she was accustomed to get at the same dairy restaurant which had supplied her first meal away from home, and at the same moderate expense – ten cents. By ten o'clock she would be on Broadway, beginning her round of the agencies: a courageous, shabby figure in the withering sun-blast, patient and indomitable through long hours of waiting in crowded anterooms, undiscouraged by the brevity and fruitlessness of the interviews with which her persistence was sometimes rewarded, ignoring disappointment with the same studied calm with which she had long since learned to ignore the advances of loafers of the streets.
Her lunches she would purchase wherever she might happen to be at the noon hour – or go without. By five o'clock at the latest – frequently much earlier – she would turn back to West Forty-fifth Street. For dinner she sought again the establishment that provided her breakfast. Her idle hours, both day and evening, she grew accustomed to waste in the double bedroom ("second floor front") occupied by the Dancing Deans.
At such times the soi-disant sisters were rarely without company. They were lively and agreeable creatures, by no means unattractive, and so thoroughly theatric in every effect of manner, speech, gesture, person, and thought, that the most case-hardened member of the profession could not but feel at home in their company. Consequently, they were popular with both sexes of their associates. Seldom did a day pass but they entertained several callers, with all of whom they seemed to be on terms of the most candid intimacy.
So Joan grew accustomed to being hailed, whenever she opened the door of the sisters' room, with a formula that varied little with repetition:
"Why, if it ain't the kid! Hello, dearie – come right in and stop awhile. Say, lis'n: I want you to shake hands with my friend, Charlie Quard. I guess you know who Charlie is, all right; you must of seen him of'n – played leading juveniles with the Spangler Stock, I dunno how long. Charlie, this is my little friend, Miss Thursday."
"In the business, I trust?"
"Goin' to be before long. Just lookin' round."
"Well, I wish you luck, Miss Thursday. This is the rottenest season I ever struck. There's eighty people for every job that blooms. Why, yunno, Maizie, I was talking only yesterday to Percy Williams, and Percy said – "
At about this point Joan would ordinarily be forgotten, and the gossip would rattle on through a stifling cloud of cigarette smoke, while she sat and listened with grave, if not always comprehending, attention.
And in this manner she met and grew familiar with the personalities of an astonishing crew of minor vaudeville folk, jugglers, dancers, patter comedians, balladists, coon shouters, performers on weird musical instruments, monologists, and an unclassified host of others, including a liberal sprinkling of plain actors and actresses, the pendulums of whose life alternated between small parts in popular-price stock companies and smaller parts in so-called dramatic sketches presented in vaudeville houses.
To them all (if they remembered her at all) she was Joan Thursday. The translation from Thursby had been almost inevitable. Thursday was by far the easier word to remember; Joan soon grew tired of correcting the friends of the Dancing Deans; and accepted the change the more readily since it provided her with a real "stage name", and so, in some measure, identified her with the business to which her every aspiration was devoted.
Of all the population of this new world, perhaps the most prominent in her eyes, aside from the saltatory sisters, was Mr. Quard; or, to give him the fullest benefit of the printed cards which (detaching them dexterously from the perforated edges by which they were held in an imitation-leather cover) he distributed regardless of expense:
Mr. Chas. Harborough Quard
Spangler Stock Co. Variety Artists Club
Brooklyn New York
He was a long, rangy animal, robustious, romantical; with a taste in the question of personal decoration that created compelling effects. His face was large, open, boldly featured, his smile genial, his laugh constant and unctuous. Something less than thirty, he had been on the stage since childhood; with the training of an actor of the old school, he combined immense vitality, an ample, dashing air, enviable self-sufficiency, the temperament of a tom-cat.
Any competent stage-director could have made much of him; but in an age when managers cast their productions with types who "look" their parts in preference to players who can act them, he found few chances to demonstrate his ability outside the cheaper stock organizations; for the only character he was physically fitted to portray was that of an actor.
An ill-starred impulse had led him to resign his latest stock connection in order to adventure in vaudeville with a one-act sketch written to his order by a hack manufacturer of such trash. Its "try-out week" in a provincial town had elicited no offers from other managers, and in the meantime his place in the stock company had been filled. At present he had a little money saved up, no immediate prospects of an engagement, good-humour, no illusions whatever.
"It's no good," he informed Miss May Dean on the occasion of their first meeting: "I know where I get off, all right. I can play anything they slip me, but these Broadway guys can't see my kind of actor. Give me a part I can sink my teeth into, and I'll shake it until the house climbs on the seats and howls. But that ain't what they're after, these days."
"The movies'll get you, if you don't watch out," May suggested cheerfully.
"That's right; and I'd be a knock-out in a film gang, too; I'm just their kind. That's what's become of all the old boys who still think Fourteenth Street's the Rialto, yunno. But me, I'm too strong for the noise an audience makes when they like you, or don't: I'd just as lief be hissed as get every hand in the house. Don't believe I could stand acting for a one-eyed box that didn't say anything but 'clickety-click.' I'd rather travel with the Uncle Tommers – honest'."
He was publicly morose for a moment or two. Then he roused: "Cheer up! The worst is yet to come. Maybe I can stick out till next spring, when Grady makes his next all-star revival. Wonder what he'll exhume this time? If it's only something like 'The Silver King,' or 'East Lynne,' I may yet cop out a chance to play to a two-dollar house… Now, lis'n: I'm going down on the stoop and smoke a cigarette while you girls colour your maps for artificial light. The eats are on me tonight."
"Does that take in my little friend?" demanded Maizie, with a nod toward Joan.
Quard threw Joan a kindly glance: "Sure. Now, get a hustle on."
"But I can't," Joan protested. "I'm sorry – I'd love to – but I've got nothing fit to wear."
"You look pretty good to me as you stand," returned Quard. "Forget it, kid, and kick in."
"That's right," Maizie insisted. "Besides, I'll lend you a hat and a fresh fichu; you don't need any coat tonight, it's too rotten warm."
"Anyway," Quard said over his shoulder as he left the room, "we ain't booked for Sherry's."
In witness whereof, he introduced the girls to an obscure Italian boarding-house in Twenty-seventh Street, the proprietress of which admitted them only after examination through a grille in the front door. Quard explained to Joan that this precaution was necessary because the house served "red ink" with the meals and without benefit of a liquor license; hence, only friends could be admitted.
They dined by gas-light in the back-yard, under an awning which served the double purpose of excluding observation from the neighbouring dwellings and compressing the heated air. Perhaps two dozen tables crowded the enclosure. The male guests by common consent removed their coats and hung them on nails in the fence. The ladies emulated by discarding hats and all conventionalities of a nature to impede free expression of their temperaments. Maizie Dean even did without her English accent.
The meal was of a sort only to be consumed with impunity by optimists and Italians: a heavy soup, and all one could eat of it, spaghetti without end, a minute section of lukewarm blotting paper with a remote flavour of chicken, a salad, cheese and coffee, a half-bottle of atrocious red wine. Joan enjoyed it immensely; it has been said that her powers of digestion were exceptional.
Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Conversation was free between tables. Personalities were bandied back and forth amid intense glee. Quard, consuming enormous quantities of wine, proved himself a general favourite, a leading spirit. After dinner he called for a virulent green cordial (which Joan tasted but could not drink) and later returned to the wine. Before the end of the evening he became semi-maudlin, and on leaving exploited a highly humorous inability to walk a straight line. On the corner of Broadway he halted suddenly, bade the three women a slurred good night, and without other ceremony swung himself aboard a Broadway car.