Joan Thursday: A Novel

So it seemed that all men were much alike. Joan knew but two types, the man who lived by his brains and the man who lived by his wits, but had no more hesitation in generalizing from these upon masculine society as a whole than a scientist has in constructing a thesis upon the habits of prehistoric mammalia from the skull of a pterodactyl and the thigh-bone of an ichthyosaurus....

They were all much alike: if you knew how to get round one kind, you knew how to win over the other; there was a merely negligible difference in the mode of attack. You appealed to their sympathies, or to their sentiments, or their appetites, and if these failed you appealed to their pride in their self-assumed rôle of the protectors.

It was no great trick, once you had made yourself mistress of it.

By this route Joan achieved the feat of looking down on Matthias; and that was not wholesome for the girl, leaving her world destitute of a single human soul that commanded her respect.

She had needed only to stir up his jealousy of Marbridge and his innate chivalry....

As if she didn't know what Arlington's companies were like! The facts were notorious; nobody troubled to blink them; Arlington's employees least of all. It wasn't their business to blink the facts; a girl without following had as little chance of securing a place in one of his choruses as a girl without a pretty figure.

But, of course, a handsome girl with a good figure....

Joan glanced in a shop window, en passant; but she saw nothing of the display of wares. The plate glass made a darkling mirror for the passers-by: Joan could see that her refurbished travelling suit fitted her becomingly, even though it was a trifle passé.

She hurried home and changed it, and hurried forth again to keep an appointment with Hubert Fowey.

They dined at a pretentious hotel, in an "Orange Garden" whose false moonlight and tinkling, artificial fountain manufactured an alluring simulacrum of romantic night, despite the incessant activities of a ragtime-bitten orchestra and the inability of the ventilating system to infuse a hint of coolness into the heavy, superheated air.

Joan had little appetite—the day had been too over-poweringly hot—but she was very thirsty; and Fowey provided a brand of champagne less sweet and heady than she would have chosen, and consequently more insinuative.

During the meal Billy Salute appeared at a table across the room and invisible to Fowey, whose back was toward it, but still not far enough removed to prevent Joan from recognizing that look in the dancer's eyes which she resented so angrily. She didn't once look at the man; but she never quite lost sight of him, and was well aware that he was ridiculing Fowey to his companion—an actor, by many an indication, but a stranger to Joan.

Provoked, she demonstrated her contempt of Salute by flirting outrageously with Fowey. Unconscious of her motive, that aspiring little dramatic author lost his head to some extent. Now and again his voice trembled when he spoke to her, and once he mumbled something about marriage, but checked at discretion, and let his words trail off inarticulately.

Joan was not to be denied.

"What did you say?" she demanded, with her most distracting smile.

"Oh, nothing of any importance," muttered Fowey, his face reddening.

"But you did say something. I only caught part of it. Hubert, I want to know!"

It was the first time she had used his given name.

"I—I only wondered if you were married," he stammered. "You talk so cursed little about yourself!"

"Does it matter?" she parried, surrender in her eyes.

He choked and gulped on his champagne.

"But you're not, are you?" he persisted.

"What's that to you?"

He hesitated and changed the subject, fearful lest his tongue compromise him.

"What shall we do now? Don't say a roof garden. Let's get out of this infernal smother. I vote for a taxi ride to Manhattan Beach."

Joan assented.

Leaving, they passed Salute's table. Joan gave the dancer a distant and chilling greeting, and swept haughtily past, ignoring his offer to rise. The insolent irony of his eyes was incredibly offensive to her. They said: "I am waiting, I am patient, I make no effort, I am inevitable."

She swore in her soul that she would prove them wrong.

In the taxicab Fowey made some slighting reference to the dancer.

"He's the devil!" Joan declared with profound conviction.

But she wouldn't explain her reasons for so naming him.

When occasion offered, in the more shadowed stretches of their course to the sea, Fowey attempted to kiss her. But she would have none of him then, fending him off by main strength and raillery; and she was pleased with the discovery that she was stronger than he. Yet another evidence of the inferiority of man!

At the beach, Fowey ordered a claret cup. Joan demanded an ice and drank sparingly; but when again in the motor-car, homeward-bound, she was abruptly smitten with amazement to find herself in Fowey's arms, submitting to his kisses if not returning them.

For a time she remained so and let him talk love to her.

It was pleasant, to be—wanted....

Arrived at the little flat, she had to prevent Fowey's following her in, again by main strength, slamming the door in his face.

Bolting the door, she turned to a mirror "to see what a fright she must have looked." But it seemed a radiant vision that smiled back at her.

She thought hazily of Hubert Fowey.

"That kid!" she murmured, not altogether in contempt, but almost compassionately.

It was a shame to tease him so....

Not until the next day, that dawned upon her consciousness amid the thunders of a splitting headache, did she appreciate how far the affair had gone.

Penitent, she vowed reformation. She wasn't going to let any man think he could make a fool of her, much less that conceited little whippersnapper.

As it happened, she didn't see the amateur dramatist again for some days. He, too, had vowed reformation, and on much the same moral grounds.

Her appointment with Matthias, for Wednesday at four, Joan failed to keep. And since that was her own affair, and since she had not left him her address, Matthias kept to himself the word that he had for her and, in accordance with his original intention, boarded the Bar Harbor Express that same evening, and forgot New York for upwards of ten weeks.

It had rained all day Tuesday, and Wednesday was overcast but dry and, by contrast with what had been, cool. Dressing for her interview with Matthias, Joan donned a summery gown of lawn, liberally inset with lacework over her shoulders and bosom: a frock for the country-house or the seashore, never for the Broadway pavements. None the less it was quite too pretty to be wasted on Matthias alone. She set out to keep her appointment with an hour to spare, purposing to employ the interval by running, at leisure, the gauntlet of masculine admiration on Broadway as far south as Thirty-eighth Street. For this expedition she would have preferred company; but Hattie, having looked her over, announced that she couldn't dress up to Joan's style, didn't mean to try, and didn't care to be used as a foil; furthermore, it was much more sensible to loaf round the flat in little or no clothing at all, and read up on Pinero.

From the Astor Theatre corner Joan struck across Broadway to the eastern sidewalk, chiefly to avoid the throng of loungers in front of the Bryant Building: it is good to be admired, but Joan had little taste for the form of admiration that becomes vocal at once intimately and publicly.

Half-way down the New York Theatre Building block, she turned abruptly and scuttled like a frightened quail into the lobby, from the back of which, turning, she was able to see, without being seen by, Quard.

Brief as the term of their dissociation was, in mere point of elapsed time, Joan had so completely divorced herself from her husband that she was actually beginning to forget him; physically no less than mentally she was beginning to forget him. An outcast from her life, he no longer had any real existence in her world. By some curious freak of sophistry she had even managed to persuade herself she was never to see him again. Thus it seemed the most staggering shock she had ever experienced, to recognize the man's head and shoulders looming above the throng before the entrance to the moving-picture show, just south of the lobby to the New York Theatre proper.

But Quard hadn't seen her. He was with companions, a brace of vaudeville actors whom Joan knew through him. But while she waited for them to pass, two other friends accosted the three, directly before the lobby entrance, and they paused to exchange greetings. Quard slapped both newcomers on their shoulders, and kept his hand on the last he slapped, bending forward and engaging their interest with some intimate bit of ribaldry. He had been drinking—Joan saw that much at a glance—not heavily, but enough to render his good-fellowship boisterous.

Otherwise he looked well. He was hardly to be identified with that sodden wreck which had been brought from the Barbary Coast back to the woman he had insulted and abused. His colour was good, his poise assured. He was wearing new clothing—a loud shepherd's-plaid effect which Joan couldn't possibly have forgotten. No one could possibly have forgotten it. And he had acquired a dashing Panama hat which at least looked genuine at that slight distance. Useless to have wasted pity on the man: he had fallen, but not far, and he had fallen on his feet.

Joan eyed him with fear, despair, and loathing.

Had he come to render New York too small to contain them both?

She skulked in the farthest corner of the lobby, in shadows, not quite round the corner of the elevator shaft—where she could just see and ran least risk of being seen—and waited. But the group on the sidewalk seemed to have settled down to a protracted session. When Quard had finished talking, and the laughter had quieted down, another fixed the attention of the group with a second anecdote, of what nature Joan could well surmise.

Of course, it was only a question of time before Quard would propose a drink.

Then she would be free to proceed to her appointment.

But through some oversight the suggestion remained temporarily in abeyance; and Joan was unlucky in that none of the policemen appeared, who are assigned to the business of keeping actors moving in that neighbourhood.

After a minute or two Quard shifted his position so that he could, by simply lifting his eyes, have looked directly into the lobby.

At this Joan turned in desperation and entered the cage of an elevator, which happened just then to be waiting with an open gate.

There were several theatrical enterprises with offices on one of the upper floors: no reason why Joan shouldn't wait in one of these until it would be safe to venture forth again. There was Arlington's, for instance.

Joan's was no strange figure there. She had long since made several attempts to see Arlington or one of his lieutenants; but her professional cards, borne in to them by a disillusioned office-boy, had educed no other response than "Mist' Arlington says they's nothin' doin' just' present."

But it was as good a place as any for Joan's purpose, and there could be no harm trying again.

The same world-weary boy received her card when she entered the suite of offices. He considered it, and Joan as well, dispassionately.

"Whoja wanna see?" he mumbled with patent effort.

Joan's prettiest smile was apparently wasted upon the temperament of an anchorite.

"Mr. Arlington, please."

The boy offered to return the card: "He ain't in."

"That's what you always tell me."

"He ain't never in."

"Very well," said Joan sweetly: "I'll wait."

The boy started to say something pointed, hesitated, regarded her with dull suspicion, and suddenly enquired:

"Whaja wanna see 'm 'bout?"

"A matter of private business."

"Ah," drawled the boy with infinite disgust, "tha's what they all say!" An embittered grimace shaped upon his soiled face. "Lis'n!" he said, almost affably—"if yuh'll think up a good one, I'll fetch this inta his sec't'ry. Now cud anythin' be fairer 'n that?"

"I'll go you," Joan retorted, falling in with his spirit. "Tell him a friend of Mr. Marbridge's wants to see him."

She esteemed this a rather brilliant bit of diplomacy, and at the same time considered herself stupid not to have thought of it before. But it failed to move the office-boy. His head signalled a negative.

"Havta do better'n that," he announced. "If I fell for ev'ry wren what claims she's a nintimate frien' of Mista Marbridge—"

"But I am a friend of his—truly I am!" Joan insisted warmly.

The boy rammed a hand into a trouser's-pocket. "Betcha—" he began; but reconsidered. "Yuh never can tell 'bout a skirt," he reminded himself audibly. "But, jus' to prove I'm a sport, I'll go yuh."

Motioning Joan through the door of the reception room, he shambled off with an air of questioning his own sanity.

The reception room was perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen wide: an interior room, lighted, and none too well, by electricity, ventilated, when at all, through the doorways of adjoining offices. A row of cane-seated chairs was aligned against the inner wall. In the middle of the floor stood a broad and substantial table of oak; it was absolutely bare. Here and there a few unhappy lithographs, yellowing "life-size" photographs of dead or otherwise extinguished stars, and a framed play-bill or two of Arlington's earlier ventures, decorated the dingy drab wall. There was no floor-covering of any description.

In this room herded some two-score people of the stage, waiting hopefully for interviews that were, as a rule, granted to not more than one applicant in ten: a heterogeneous assemblage, owning a single characteristic in common: whenever, at the far end of the room, the door opened leading to the offices of the management, every head turned that way, and every voice was hushed in reverence.

Yet it was seldom that the door disclosed anything more unique than a second office-boy, even more dejected than the first, who, peering through, would, after examining the card in his hand for the name of the applicant, painfully recite some stereotyped phrase worn smooth—"Mista Brown? Y'ur party says t' come back next week!" "Miss Holman? Y'ur party's went out 'n' won't be back th'safternoon!" "Miss Em'rson? Mista Arlington says ever'thin's full up just'present. Call 'n ag'in!" or more infrequently: "Mista Grayson's t' step in, please...."

Joan found a vacant chair.

She had no hope whatever of being admitted to the Presence, despite the unexpected condescension of the office-boy. Marbridge's name might prove the Open Sesame; but she doubted that vaguely: "it wouldn't be her if that happened!"

The atmosphere was stifling with heat complicated by stale human breath and the reek of perfumery, all stratified with layers of tobacco smoke which entered over the transoms of the communicating offices. Above the muted murmurings of the unemployed's apprehensive voices could be heard the brisk chattering of two or three type-writing machines; and telephone bells rang incessantly, near and far, one taking up the tune as soon as another ended. The throng of applicants shuffled their feet uneasily, expectantly, morosely.

Joan was so uncomfortable and oppressed that she was tempted to rise and go without waiting for the discounted answer. Only dread of encountering Quard restrained her. The longer she delayed, the slighter the chance of finding him still in front of the theatre....

Her thoughts drifted into reverie dully coloured with misgivings. She thought of Charlie Quard as a bird of ill-omen whose appearance could presage nothing but suffering and disaster; ignoring altogether the truth, that through his good offices alone, however tainted with self-interest, she had been suffered to enter into the profession whose ranks she had elected to adorn; with that other truth, that she owed him for the clothing she wore, the food she ate, the very roof that sheltered her—and meant never to repay....

The voice of the second office-boy chanted her name twice before she heard it.

"Miss Thursd'y?... Miss Joan Thursd'y?"

Joan started to her feet.

"Yes—?"

"Th' party you ast for says please t' step this way!"

Between gratification and misgivings, Joan followed her guide in a flutter of emotion. When intending nothing more than to provide an excuse for using the anteroom as a temporary refuge, she hadn't for an instant questioned her right to use Marbridge's name. But now that it appeared she was to gain thereby the boon of an audience with Arlington, she was torn by doubts.

After all, her acquaintance with Marbridge had been one of the most tenuous description. True, the man had seemed attracted by her at the time; but that was many months ago; and only recently he had looked her fair in the face without knowing her. She had really gained her advantage through false pretences. And when Marbridge learned of this, would he not resent it? Had she not, through her presumption, put herself in the way of defeating her own ends?

She brought up before a closed door in a state of nervousness not natural with her.

"You're to wait a minute," her guide advised.

She was thankful he wasn't the guardian of the outer defences: just at present she was in no fit mood to bandy persiflage successfully.

But she was uncomfortably conscious that this present boy eyed her curiously as he threw open the office door.

She entered, and he closed it after her.

The room was untenanted, but a haze of cigar smoke in the air indicated that it had been only recently vacated. It was handsomely furnished, carpeted and decorated. The broad, flat-topped desk in one corner boasted an elaborate display of ornate desk hardware. In the middle of the blotting-pad a sheaf of letters lay beneath a bronze paperweight of unique design. All in all, an office owning little in common with the generality of those to which Joan had theretofore penetrated....

She sat herself down uneasily.

A door communicating with the adjoining office, though a solid door of oak, was an inch or so ajar. Through it penetrated sounds of masculine voices in conversation—but nothing distinguishable.

Five minutes passed. Then the conference in the next room broke up amid laughter; the doorknob rattled; and Joan rose automatically.

Marbridge entered.

For a moment, in her surprise and consternation, Joan could only stare and stammer. But obvious though her agitation was, Marbridge ignored it gracefully. Shutting the door tight, he advanced with an outstretched hand and a smile there was no resisting—with, in short, every normal evidence of friendly pleasure in their meeting.

"Well, Miss Thursday!" he said, gratification in his carefully modulated voice. "This is public-spirited of you!"

Joan shook hands limply, her face crimson beneath his pardonably admiring stare.

"I—thank you—but—"

"Really," he went on smoothly, "I consider it mighty nice of you to look me up. Fancy your remembering me! Do sit down. We must have a chat. Fortunately, you've caught me in an off-hour."

Retaining her hand coolly enough, he introduced the girl to a capacious lounge-chair beside the desk, then settled himself behind it.

Joan shook her wits together.

"You're awf'ly kind—"

"I—kind?" Marbridge denied the implication with an indulgent smile. "My dear Miss Thursday, if you get to know me well—and I sincerely hope you will some day—you'll find there's not a spark of human generosity in my system. I think only of my own pleasure. How can there be kindness to you in my seizing this chance to improve our acquaintance? I declare, I thought you'd forgotten me!"

"Oh, no!" Joan protested.

"Really? That's charming of you. But tell me about yourself. How long have you been back?"

"Not long," Joan replied instinctively to the first stock question that marks every other similar meeting in the theatrical district of New York. "That is—I mean—a couple of months."

"Oh, then you didn't stay with 'The Lie'?"

"You knew about that?"

Marbridge nodded briskly. "Indeed, I did! Pete Gloucester told me all about you—how splendidly you were doing at rehearsals—and then, one afternoon in Chicago, I saw the sketch billed and dropped in at the theatre for the sole purpose of seeing you. And if I hadn't had a train to catch, I'd have come right round back to congratulate you. Fact! You were wonderful. You were more than wonderful: you were downright adorable, and no mistake!"

Under the tonic stimulus of his flattery, Joan recovered her self-possession with surprising readiness—so swiftly that she almost forgot to cover the phenomenon with prolonged evidences of pretty confusion.

She looked down, her colour high, and smiling traced with a gloved forefinger an invisible seam in her skirt; and then, looking up shyly, she appraised Marbridge with one quick, shrewd, masked glance.

Her instinct had not misled her: this man esteemed her at a high value.

"It's awf'ly kind of you to say so," she murmured demurely.

Marbridge bent forward, leaning on the desk, his gaze ardent.

"I only say what I think, Miss Thursday. I watched you act that afternoon—and so far as I was concerned, you were the whole sketch!—and made up my mind then and there you were a girl with a great big future."

"Oh, but really, Mr. Marbridge—"

"Give you my word! I said to myself then and there: 'Here's a little woman worth watching, and if ever I get a chance to lend her a helping hand and don't do it, I'd better quit fussing with this theatrical game.' And that was the effect of seeing you play just once, mind you!"

"I'm afraid you're a dreadful kidder, Mr. Marbridge."

His injured look was eloquent of the injustice that she did him.

"You don't believe me? Very well, Miss Thursday—wait! Some day I'll surprise you." He swung back in his chair, smiling genially. "Some one of these days you'll set your heart on something I have the say in—and then you'll be able to judge of my sincerity."

"If I dared believe you," Joan told him boldly, "I might put you to the test sooner than you think."

"Well, and why not? I'm ready."

But as Joan would have gone on, the desk-telephone rang sharply, and Marbridge, excusing himself with a mumbled apology, turned to the instrument and lifted the receiver to his ear.

"Hello.... Who?... Oh, send her in to see Mr. Arlington.... Oh, he did, eh?... Well, say I'm not in either.... Yes, gone for the day."

Replacing the instrument, he swung round again. "There's proof already," he informed her cheerfully. "That was Nella Cardrow—one of the biggest propositions on our list—star of 'Mrs. Mixer.' And I'm putting her off solely to show you how sincerely I'm interested in what you have to say to me." He bent forward again, confidentially. "Now tell me: what can I do for you?"

"Give me a job," Joan informed him honestly. "That's all I want just now—work—a part in anything you have influence with."

"Then you have left 'The Lie'?" Marbridge persisted incredulously.

Joan nodded. "I had to. I couldn't stand it any longer."

"But—without you—why, I don't know what they were thinking of, to let you go!"

"I just couldn't get along with the star, and that's all there was to it," Joan declared. "He was a boozer and—well, I had to quit."

"And the sketch—"

"Oh, it went on, all right, I guess."

"Without you! Well, that's hard to credit. However...." Marbridge leaned back and for a moment stared thoughtfully out of the window. "I really can't think of anything we've got open just now that's good enough to offer you."

"Please don't think of me that way, Mr. Marbridge," Joan pleaded earnestly, more than half deceived. "I'm ready for anything, to get a chance to show these people what I can do. Anything—however small—just so it gives me a show—I don't care what!"

Marbridge preserved admirably his look of intent gravity. "Let me think a moment," he requested, pursing his full lips.

Joan watched him closely through that brief silence, her mood one of curious texture, compounded in almost equal parts of hope and doubt, of wonder and misgivings, of appreciation of her own courage and shrewdness, and of admiration for Marbridge.

He was by no means what she would have termed handsome, but he was uncommonly individual, a personality that left an ineffaceable impression of strength and masculinity; and with this he had an air of being finished and complete, as though he not only knew better than most how to take care of himself in all ways, but slighted himself in none. She thought his mode of dress striking, combining distinction and taste to an extraordinary degree.... And when in his abstraction he pinched his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, she was impressed with the discovery that a man's hand could be at once well-manicured and muscular....

He turned back abruptly with a sparkle of enthusiasm in his bold and prominent eyes.

"By George, I think I have it!..."

"Yes—?" she breathed excitedly.

He considered an instant longer, shook his head, and jumped up. "I must consult Arlington first," he declared. "I wouldn't care to commit him without his consent. No—don't get up. Just excuse me one minute. I'll be right back."

And before she could protest—had she entertained the faintest idea of doing anything of the sort—he left the room by the same door which had admitted him.

Immediately she was again aware of a rumble of voices in the next office, but now it was even more indefinite.

And again she waited a full five minutes alone....

When Marbridge rejoined her, it was with an air apologetic and disappointed.

"It's too bad," he announced, aggrieved, "but it seems Arlington has really gone for the day. I shan't see him before evening, likely, possibly not until tomorrow. So I must ask you to trouble yourself to come back, if you don't mind."

"Mind!" Joan laughed, rising. "Oh, I guess not."

"Well," Marbridge assured her, "I don't think you'll have any wasted time to regret. But I can't promise anything until I'm sure Arlington hasn't made other arrangements, or until I've managed to put a crimp into 'em if he has."

"But you mustn't do that—"

"Hush!" Marbridge paused to chuckle infectuously. "There's one trouble," he amended, more gravely, "and that is, I haven't got any too much time. I'm booked to sail for Europe Saturday, and have got so many little things to attend to, I'm running round in circles. But don't you fret: I've got this matter right next to my heart, Miss Thursday, and I'm going to put it through if it humanly can be done. Now let me think when I can ask you to call again."

"Any time that suits your convenience, Mr. Marbridge."

"Well, it's a question. I'd like mighty well to have you lunch with me before I go, but.... The truth is, I haven't got hardly a minute unengaged. You just happened to catch me right, today.... I wonder if you could call in Friday, say, about half-past three?"

"Of course I can, but I don't want you to—"

"Didn't I tell you, hush!" Marbridge interrupted, mock-impatient. "Not another word. Remember what I told you about how I felt that day I saw you act, out in Chicago. The time's coming when I'm going to be powerful' glad you gave me this chance to give you a lift, Miss Thursday. And then"—he paused in the act of opening the door, and took Joan's hand, subjecting it to a firm, friendly pressure before continuing—"and then, perhaps, I'll be coming round and begging favours of you."

For an instant Joan's eyes endured, without a tremor, the quick searching probe of the man's.

She nodded quietly, saying in a grave voice: "I guess you won't have to beg very hard—not for anything I could ever do for you, Mr. Marbridge."

His smile was as spontaneous and bright as a child's. "It's a bargain!" he declared spiritedly. "And you can bet your life I won't forget my end of it!... Good afternoon, Miss Thursday. Remember—Friday at three-thirty...."

As one result of her interview with Marbridge, Joan returned to her quarters in a state of thoughtfulness which was responsible not only for her forgetting the appointment with Matthias and the risk she ran of encountering Quard at every corner, but also for her unquestioning acceptance of Hattie's absence from the flat in the face of her expressed determination not to go out that afternoon.

Hattie, however, was nothing loath to explain her change of mind when she blew in cheerfully shortly before dinner-time.

"Hello!" she exclaimed, tossing her hat one way and her parasol another. "Did you miss me?"

Joan looked up blankly from the depths of her musing. "No," she said dully. "Why?"

"Well, you went off half-peeved because I wouldn't go trapesing with you—and then I went out after all."

"Oh—I'd forgotten," Joan admitted without much interest.

"Well, I didn't mean to go out, but Billy Emerson sent me a tip and ... I bet you can't guess who I've seen."

Joan shook her head.

"Arlington!"

"Arlington!" Joan exclaimed.

"Well, and why not?"

"Nothing—only I thought you weren't looking for anything in musical shows."

"No more am I, and it wasn't a musical show I went to see him about. Billy sent me a card of introduction with the tip, and Arlington saw me and—well, I guess it's just about settled. I'm to understudy Nella Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Arlington wouldn't promise, but told me to come in Saturday morning, and the understanding is he'll have contracts ready to sign then. I do believe my luck's turned at last!"

"But," Joan argued, perplexed, "I don't understand.... Of course, it's fine to get the job, and all that—and I'm awf'ly glad for you, Hattie—but you act as excited as if it was the title rôle you expected to play."

"Maybe I do," Hattie retorted. "That's what an understudy's for, isn't it—to play the star part in case of an emergency?"

"Yes, but—"

"Anyhow, I don't mind telling you that's what I'm looking forward to."

"You mean you think Mrs. Cardrow—?"

"Now don't you ask me any questions; I can't tell you what I think; it's a secret." Having made this statement, Hattie sat down on the edge of the bed, lighted a cigarette, vacillated one second, and proceeded to divulge the secret: "You see, I called around to thank Billy Emerson, after my talk with Arlington, and he told me the whole story in confidence. Nobody's to know it yet, so you mustn't breathe a word to anybody; but the thing's all fixed, and Nella Cardrow's never going to play 'Mrs. Mixer' before a Broadway audience. She couldn't play it anyhow—'s just a plain-boiled dub—never did anything before she persuaded Marbridge to put her on in this show. It's his money that's behind it, mostly—Arlington's too wise to risk much on an uncertain proposition like the Cardrow. Marbridge just hides behind Arlington."

"What for?"

"Well, I guess he figures home would be none the happier if Friend Wife knew he was footing the bills for Nella Cardrow's show. He and Cardrow, Billy Emerson says, are just about as friendly as the law allows—and that isn't all."

"But," Joan persisted stupidly, "if that's the case, I don't see what makes you think he'll throw her down to give you the part—"

"If they ever caught anybody on Broadway as innocent as you pretend to be," Hattie commented with a scorn for grammar as deep as for Joan's obtuseness—"they'd arrest 'em, that's all! Who ever told you Marbridge was the kind of a guy to stick to a woman forever—not to say when she's losing money for him? Billy Emerson saw the show when they put it on up in Buffalo, a while ago, and he says the play's a wonder but Cardrow can't even look the part, much less act it. He says if they ever let her loose on the stage of a Broadway theatre—well, Marbridge and Arlington can just kiss their investment a fond farewell. For reasons of his own, Marbridge isn't ready to break with Cardrow yet, but he knows he's got a big success on his hands in this 'Mrs. Mixer' with her out of it. So they're going right ahead, just as if she was to be the star, but when the show opens it'll be little Miss Understudy who'll do all the acting."

The actress tossed aside her cigarette and bent forward, regarding Joan with mock solicitude.

"Does it begin to penetrate, dearie?"

"It sounds to me like a pretty mean trick to play on Mrs. Cardrow," Joan suggested.

"Don't you worry about her. She'll survive, all right. And anyhow, when you've been as long in this game as I have, you'll realize that the motto of the profession is 'Everybody for himself and the devil take the hindermost'! I've waited seven years for this chance, and I'm not going to let it get past me through any sentimental considerations, not if I know myself. And you'd do just the same thing in my place, too."

"I don't see what right you've got to say that—"

"Then you don't know yourself as well as I know you," Hattie laughed. "But listen: I oughtn't to have told you all this. You won't say anything, will you, dear?"

"No, I won't say anything...."

Nor did Joan consider it necessary to repay confidence with confidence by confessing the fact of her coincidental interview with Marbridge. The reflection that they must have been in adjoining offices at much the same time, in spite of Marbridge's assertion that Arlington was out, counselled reticence, even if envy hadn't served to impose silence upon Joan. And she was profoundly envious of Hattie's good fortune.

Why could it not have been her own, instead?

If Marbridge honestly esteemed her abilities one-half as highly as he had pretended to, why could he not have seen to it that Joan Thursday rather than Hattie Morrison was selected for Mrs. Cardrow's understudy?

Still, the matter was not yet definitely settled. Hattie's contract remained a thing of the future, and she might be congratulating herself prematurely.

Struck by this reflection, Joan withdrew even more jealously into her reserve....

But she anticipated her appointment for Friday afternoon with an impatience that lent each hour the length of three, and when the time drew near prepared herself for it with such exacting attention to the minutiæ of her toilet that a final survey in a cheval-glass sent her forth radiant with consciousness that she had never looked more charming.

To her surprise and somewhat to her disappointment, Marbridge didn't receive her alone. She was shown into Arlington's office, finding there Marbridge in company with the great man himself.

Entrenched behind his desk, Arlington didn't move when she entered, and only when Marbridge formally presented Joan deigned to rise half out of his chair and extend to her, across the mahogany barrier, a hand almost effeminately white, soft, and bedizened with rings.

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Thursday, I'm sure," he drawled, his clasp as languid as the glance with which he looked Joan over; and sank wearily back into his chair. "I've been hearing wonderful things about you—ah—from Mr. Marbridge."

"He's very kind," said Joan in her best manner.

"Not at all," Marbridge protested. "I've only been describing how splendid your work was in 'The Lie.' But Mr. Arlington is the original of the gentleman from Missouri: you've got to show him. However, I know you can—so that's all right."

"Oh, I hope so," Joan replied with becoming diffidence—"if I ever get a chance."

"You'll get that, never fear," Arlington observed dispassionately. "Marbridge has fixed it all up for you. It's a risk, a pretty big risk to take with an actress of your—ah—comparative inexperience, but as a rule I find it advisable to give Marbridge his head when he sets his heart on anything."

"You're awf'ly good," Joan murmured.

"Don't think it," Arlington returned in a tone of remote amiability, teetering in his chair. "I've nothing whatever to do with it, beyond engaging you and being responsible for your salary. It's all Marbridge's doing."

He examined with a perplexed air his highly polished fingernails....

"You're to have a small part in a new comedy we're putting on next September," he announced, "and at the same time you will understudy the star—Nella Cardrow in 'Mrs. Mixer.' Your salary will be sixty a week unless through some accident you're called upon to play the title rôle regularly—and accidents will happen in the best regulated theatrical enterprises. In which case you'll draw one-hundred a week for the first season. There are some details which Marbridge will explain to you—and if you'll drop in any time Monday and ask for Mr. Grissom he will have your contracts ready. And now if you'll excuse me, I've an appointment."

Consulting his watch, he rose and moved round from behind his desk. "Good day, Miss Thursday," he said with a shadow of a formal smile. "I shall see much of you, no doubt, when the rehearsals begin."

"Oh, thank you—thank you!" Joan cried.

Arlington disclaimed title to her gratitude with a weary gesture. "Don't thank me, please—thank Marbridge.... You won't be long, Vin?" he added, at the door.

"I'll be with you in ten minutes."

"Right you are. Good afternoon, Miss—ah—Thursday...."

Alone with Marbridge, Joan began impulsively to protest her thanks, but on glancing up, fell silent, abashed by an expression that glowed in the man's eyes like a reflection of firelight.

She lowered demure lashes to cloak her confusion, a smile about her lips at once sophisticated and timid: a distractingly pretty woman fully conscious of her allure and of his attraction for her: a vision of provoking promise.

Marbridge drew a deep breath.

"If you persist in looking like that," he said in a voice that trembled between laughter and a sigh—"don't blame me if I forget myself and take you in my arms and kiss you. There are limits to my endurance...."

Joan looked up, smiling.

"Well—" she said with a little nervous laugh—"Well, what of it?"

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 manœuvring 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!...