Part 12

But succeeding rehearsals--beginning with the second--corrected this misapprehension. That afternoon developed Wilbrow suddenly into a mild-mannered, semi-apologetic, and humorous tyrant. He discovered an individual comprehension of what was required for the right development of the play, and an invincible determination to get it. He never lost either temper or patience, neither swore nor lifted his voice; but having indicated his desire, wrought patiently with its subject, sometimes for as long as an hour, until he had succeeded in satisfying it. He worked coatless, with his long black hair straggling down over his forehead and across his glasses: an incredibly thin, energetic, and efficient figure, dominated by a penetrating and masterful intelligence. Not infrequently, taking the typed part from the hands of one of his puppets, he would himself give a vivid sketch of its requirements through the medium of intonation, gesture, and action. And to Joan, at least, the effects he created by these means were as striking in the feminine rôles as in the masculine. Utterly devoid of self-consciousness, he had the faculty of seeming for the moment actually to be what he sought to suggest: one forgot the man, saw only what he had in mind.

Another thing that surprised the girl more than a little was the docility with which her associates submitted to his dictation and even invited it. She had heard of actors "creating" rôles; but in this company no one but the producer seemed to be creating anything. The others came to rehearsals with minds so open that they seemed vacuous; not one, whether the star, his leading woman, or any of their supporting players, indicated the least comprehension of what they were required to portray or the slightest symptom of original conception. What Wilbrow told them and then showed them how to do, they performed with varying degrees of success. So that Joan at last came to believe the best actors those most susceptible to domination, least capable of independent thought. As he gradually became acquainted with his lines and the business Wilbrow mapped out for him, the star began to give more compelling impersonations at each rehearsal; but to the girl he never seemed more than a carbon filament of a man, burning bright with incandescence only when impregnated with the fluid genius of a superior mentality. So, likewise, with the leading woman....

As for herself, Joan was hardly happy in her endeavour to please. Having unwisely formed her own premature conception of her part, and lacking totally the technical ability to express it, she ran constantly afoul of Wilbrow's notions. She was called upon first to erase her own personality, next to forget the personality which she had meant to delineate, and finally to substitute for both these one which Wilbrow alone seemed able to see and understand. She strove patiently and without complaint, but in a stupefying welter of confusion. While on the pretended stage she was constantly terrified by Wilbrow's mild but predominant regard, which rendered her only awkward, witless, and ill-at-ease. Then, too, her attempts to imitate his brilliant and colourful acting were received with amusement, not always wholly silent, by the rest of the company. She seemed quite unable to follow his lead; and toward the end of the first week, throughout the whole of which (she was aware from the calm resignation of Wilbrow's attitude) she had improved not one whit, she began to despair.

Inasmuch as she appeared only in the first act, she was customarily excused from attendance at the rest of each rehearsal, and spent this extra time at home, over her typewriter; thus maintaining the fiction of earning her weekly stipend.

On Saturday afternoon, however, as soon as her "bit" had been rehearsed, there occurred one of those quiet, aloof conferences between Wilbrow, Rideout, and Matthias, which she had learned to recognize as presaging a change in the cast. Twice before, such consultations had resulted in the release of subordinate actors who had proved unequal to their parts. Now from the author's uneasy and distressed eye, which alternately sought and avoided her, Joan divined that her own fate was being weighed in the balance. And her heart grew heavy with misgivings. None the less, she was permitted to leave with no other advice than that the rehearsals would resume on the following Monday, at nine in the morning, on the stage of a Broadway theatre.

She hurried home in a mood of wretched anxiety and creeping despair. Wilbrow had indisputable excuse for dissatisfaction with her; Rideout was quite humanly bent on getting the best material his money could purchase--and she was far from that; while Matthias couldn't reasonably protest against her dismissal for manifest incompetency. And dismissal now meant more to Joan than the loss of her coveted chance to appear in a first-class production; it meant not only the loss of the living she earned as typist--and she had been engaged with the understanding, implicit if not explicit, that Matthias had only enough extra work to occupy her until the opening of his play; dismissal from the cast of "The Jade God," in short, meant the loss to her of Matthias.

There was no longer in her heart any doubt that she loved him. The admiration conceived in her that first night, when he had turned himself out to afford her shelter, had needed only this brief period of propinquity to ripen into something infinitely more deep and strong. And from the first she had been ready and willing to adore his very shadow upon an excuse far less encouraging than his kindly though detached interest in her welfare. In her cosmos Matthias was a being as exotic as a Martian, his intelligence of an order that passed understanding. His thoughts and ways of speech, his interests and amusements (as far as she could divine them) the delicacy of his perceptions, and the very refinements of his mode of life, all new and strange to her, invested him with a mystery as compelling to her imagination as the reticences of a strange and beautiful woman have for the mind of a young man. She worshipped him with a hopeless and inarticulate longing, and was content with this for the present; but hourly she dreamed of a day when through his aid she should have lifted herself to a position in which she would seem something more to him than a mere, forlorn shop-girl out of work and scratching for a living. If only she might hope to become an actress of recognized ability!...

It was a truism in her conception of life that the estate of actress was a loadstone for the hearts of men.

If success were to be denied her!...

In her bedroom, behind a locked door, she hurried to her pillow and to tears. She had known many an hour darkened by the fugitive despairs of youth; but never until this day had she been so despondently sorry for herself.

Later, the banal ticking of her tin alarm-clock penetrated her consciousness, and she remembered that she had work to do--to be finished before evening, if her promise to Matthias were to be kept. She rose, splashed face and eyes with cold water, and went to her typewriter in the adjoining room.

She had really very little to do in order to complete her task--only a few pages of scored and interlined manuscript to reduce to clean copy; but her mind was not with her work. Time and again she found herself sitting with idle hands, thoughts far errant; and now and then she had to dry her eyes before she could proceed: so stubbornly did she cling to the sorry indulgence of self-pity! Once, even, she was so overcome by contemplation of her sufferings that she bowed her head upon the table where the manuscript lay, and wept without restraint for several minutes--without restraint and, toward the last, with kindling interest in the discovery that her tears were bedewing a freshly typed page.

If Matthias were to notice, would he understand? And, understanding, what would he think?...

With shame-faced reluctance she destroyed the blotched page and typed it anew.

It was dark before she finished; and she was glad of this when she gathered up the manuscript to take to her employer. With no light in his room other than that of the reading-lamp with the green shade, her stained and flushed cheeks and swollen eyes would escape detection. It was not that she wouldn't have welcomed sympathetic interest, but a glance in the mirror showed her she had wept too unrestrainedly not to have depreciated the chiefest asset of her charm--her prettiness.

However, she could not well avoid the meeting: the work must be delivered; but if she were lucky she would find him in one of his frequent moods of abstraction, and their interview need only be of the briefest. Nevertheless, she would have sent the work to him by the chambermaid if her week's wage had not been due that night.

She waited a moment, listening at the door to the back-parlour; but there was no sound of voices within; and reassured, she knocked.

His response--"Come in!"--followed with unexpected promptness. She obeyed, though with misgivings amply justified as soon as she found herself in the room, which was for once well-lighted, two gas-jets on the chandelier supplementing the green-shaded lamp.

Matthias was bending over a kit-bag on the couch, hastily packing enough clothing to tide him over Sunday. He threw her an indifferent glance and greeting over his shoulder.

"Hello, Miss Thursday! I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten me. I'm going to run down to Port Madison until Monday morning--last chance I'll have for a day in the country for some time, probably. Chances are, Wilbrow will keep us at work next Sunday. Got that 'script all ready?"

Joan, depositing it on the table, murmured an affirmative in a voice uncontrollably unsteady. Before entering she had been quite sure of her ability to carry off the short interview without betraying her harrowed emotions. But to find the man about whom they centred packing to leave town--to leave her!--added the final touch of misery to her mood. And the inflection of her response could not have failed to strike oddly on his hearing.

Uttering a wondering "_Hello!_" he straightened up and swung round to look at her. And a glance sufficed: his smile faded, was replaced by a pucker of sympathy between his brows.

"Why, what's the trouble?"

Joan averted her face. "N-nothing," she faltered. Her lip trembled, her eyes filled anew. She dabbed at them with a wadded handkerchief.

Matthias hesitated. He drew down the corners of his mouth, elevated his brows, and scratched a temple slowly with a meditative forefinger. Then he nodded sharply and, crossing to the door, closed it.

"Tell me about it," he said, coming back to the girl. "Things not going to suit you, eh?"

She shook her head, looking away. "I--I--!" she stammered--"_I_ can't act!"

"O nonsense!" he interrupted with kindly impatience. "You mustn't get discouraged so easily. Naturally it comes hard at first, but you'll catch on. Everything of this sort takes time. I was saying the same thing to Wilbrow today."

"Yes," she mumbled, gulping--"I--I know. I was watching you. H-he and Mr. Rideout wanted to fire me, didn't they?"

"What? Oh, no, no!" Matthias lied unconvincingly. "They--they were just wondering.... I assured them--"

"But you hadn't any right to!" the girl broke in passionately. "I can't act and--and I know it, and you know it, as well as they do. I can't--I just can't! It's no use.... I'm no good...."

Of a sudden she flopped into a chair, rested her head on arms folded on the table, and sobbed aloud.

Matthias shook his head and (since she could not see him) permitted himself a gesture of impotent exasperation. This was really the devil of a note! Women were incomprehensible: you couldn't bank on 'em, ever. Here was he preparing to catch a train, and not too much time at that....

But a glance at the clock reassured him slightly; he had still a little leeway. All the same, he didn't much relish the prospect of being compelled to invest his spare minutes in attempting to comfort a silly, emotional girl. And, besides, somebody in the hallway might hear her sobbing....

This last consideration took him somewhat reluctantly to her side. "There, there!" he pleaded, intensely irritated by that feeling of helplessness which always afflicts man in the presence of a weeping woman, whether or not he has the right to comfort her. "There--don't cry, please, Miss--ah--Thursday. You're all right--really, you are. You--you're--ah--doing all this quite needlessly, I give you my word."

He might as well have attempted to stem a mountain torrent.

"I wish I could make you understand this is all quite unnecessary," he groaned.

"I--I'm so mis'able!" came a wail from the huddled figure.

"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably--"awfully sorry, truly. But you--I'm not afraid you won't make good, and I don't intend to let you go until you've had every chance in the world. That's a promise."

He ventured to give her quaking shoulder a light, encouraging pat or two, and rested his hand upon the corner of the table.

"Come, now--brace up--please. I--"

With a strangled sob Joan sat up, caught his hand and carried it to her lips. Before he could recover from his astonishment it was damp with her tears and kisses.

Instantly he snatched it away.

"You--you're so good to me!" she cried.

Matthias, horrified, stepped back a pace or two, as if to insure himself against a repetition of her offence, and quite mechanically dried his hand with a handkerchief. And then, in a flash, he lost his temper.

"What the devil do you mean by doing that to me?" he demanded harshly. "Look here--you stop this nonsense. I won't have it. I--why--it's outrageous! What right have you got to--to do anything like that?"

The shock of his anger brought the girl to her senses. Her tears ceased in an instant, as if automatically. She rose, mopping her face with her handkerchief, swallowed one last sob, and moved sullenly toward the door.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I--you've been very kind to me--I forgot myself. I'm sorry."

"Well ..." he said grudgingly, in his irritation. "But don't let it happen again."

"There's no chance of that," the girl retorted with a brief-lived flash of spirit. "Good night."

"Good night," he returned.

She was gone before he recovered; and then compunction smote him, and he followed her as far as the hallway.

In the half-light of the flickering gas-jet, he saw her only as a shadow slowly mounting the staircase. And a glance toward the front door discovered indistinct shapes of lodgers on the stoop.

"Miss Thursday!" he called in a guarded voice.

She heard, hesitated a single instant, then with quickened steps resumed the ascent.

He called once again, but she refused to listen, and he returned to his study in a state of insensate rage; which, however, had this time himself for its sole object--Joan's transgression quite lost sight of in remorse for his brutality. He could not remember ever having spoken to any woman in such wise: no man had any right to speak to any woman in such a manner, for any cause, however exasperating.

Tremendously disgusted with himself, and ashamed, he tramped the floor so long, trying to quiet his conscience, and made so many futile attempts to apologize to the girl by word of hand--one and all either too abject or too constrained--that he had lost his train before he produced the lame and halting effort with which he was at length fain to be content.

A later train was bearing him under the East River to Long Island when Joan read his message.

A servant had taken it to the girl's room and, knocking without receiving an answer, concluded that Joan was out and slipped it under the door.

When the descending footsteps were no longer audible, Joan rose from the bed, lighted the gas, and with blurred vision deciphered the lines:

"DEAR MISS THURSDAY:--Please forgive me for my unmannerly exhibition of temper. I regret exceedingly my inability to make you understand how sorry I am to have hurt your feelings.

"And do please understand that there is no grave dissatisfaction with your work at rehearsals. Remember that you have two weeks more in which to show what you can do.

"I shall hope that you are not too deeply offended to overlook my loss of temper and to continue typing my book; if possible I'd like to have another chapter by Monday night.

"Sincerely yours,

"JOHN MATTHIAS."

"P. S.--I enclose--what I'd completely forgotten--the regular weekly amount--$10."

She fell asleep, at length, with this note crushed between her pillow and her cheek.

XVI

Her work proved invaluable distraction for the greater part of that long and lonely Sunday. When not at her typewriter she was tormented by alternate fits of burning chagrin and of equally ardent gratitude toward Matthias. Had this last been in town and chanced to meet her, she must either have quitted him definitely or have betrayed her passion unmistakably even to the purblind eyes of a dreaming dramatist. As it was, the girl had time to calm down, to recognize at once his disinterestedness and her own folly. If her infatuation did but deepen in contemplation of his generosity, she none the less regained poise before bedtime and with it her determination to succeed in spite of her stupidity, if only to justify his kindness.

But the morning that took her back to rehearsals found her in a mood of dire misgivings. She would have forfeited much--anything other than their further association--to have been spared the impending encounter with Matthias. And although the author was not present when she reached the theatre, her embarrassment hampered her to a degree that rendered her attempts to act more than ever farcical.

Wilbrow, seated in a chair on the "apron" of the stage, his back to the lifeless footlights, did not interrupt her once; but despair was patent in his attitude, and despair informed his eyes, and not long after her scene was finished the producer for the first time betrayed indications of temper.

"Blaine!" he said abruptly in a chilling voice to one of the minor actors--"don't you _know_ there's a window over there--up left centre?"

The player thus addressed, who had been idling purposelessly near the centre of the stage, looked up with a face of blank surprise.

"Sure," he said--"sure I know it."

"That's something, at least!" Wilbrow commented acidly. "I'm glad you remember it. If I'm not mistaken, I've reminded you of that window twice every day since Monday."

"Yes," agreed the other with a look of painful concentration; "I guess that's right, too."

"And yet you can't remember what I've told you just as often--that I want you to be up there, looking out of the window, when _Sylvia_ enters!"

The actor turned out expostulatory palms. "But, Mr. Wilbrow, what for? I don't see--"

"Because," the producer interrupted incisively, "the stage directions indicate it; because the significance of this scene requires you to be there, looking out, unaware of _Sylvia's_ entrance; because you look better there; because it dresses the stage; because you're in the way anywhere else; because I--God help me!--because _I--want--you--to--be--there_!"

A smothered giggle broke from a group of players technically off-stage. Wilbrow glared icily toward that quarter.

"Yes, I know," Blaine agreed intelligently. "But how do I _get_ there?"

The front legs of Wilbrow's chair rapped the boards smartly as he jumped up. In silence, he grasped Blaine's arm and with a slightly exaggerated melodramatic stride propelled him to the indicated spot, released him, and stood back.

"Walk!" he announced with an inimitable gesture of tolerant contempt; and went back to his chair. Not a line of his face had changed. He sat down, nodded to the leading woman.

"All right, Mary," he said; and to another actor: "Now, the cue for _Sylvia_, please!"

Joan shivered a little.

Matthias did not come in until after the girl had finished her part in the afternoon rehearsal. She caught sight of him in the darkened auditorium just as she went off; and hurried from the house in tremulous dread.

But a meeting was inevitable; and that evening, just before the dinner hour, found her reluctantly knuckling the door of the back-parlour. The voice of Matthias bade her enter, and she drew upon all her scant store of courage as she turned the knob. To her immense relief he was not alone. Rideout and Moran, the scene painter, were in consultation with Matthias over two small model stages set with painted pasteboard scenery.

Matthias greeted her with a preoccupied smile and nod.

"Oh, good evening, Miss Thursday. More 'script, eh? Thank you."

Silently Joan gave him the manuscript and left the room. But the door had no sooner closed than it was re-opened and again closed. She turned to face this dreaded crisis.

His smile was friendly and pleasant if a trace uncertain. He made as if to offer his hand, and thought better of it.

"Oh, Miss Thursday.... I sent you a note...."

She nodded, timid eyes avoiding his.

"Am I forgiven?"

"I--I--if you'll forgive me--" she faltered.

"Then that's all right!" he cried heartily. "I'm glad," he added with unquestionable sincerity--"and sorry I was such a brute. I ought to have understood what a strain you'd been under. Shall we say no more about it?"

She nodded again: "Please...."

"Good!" He offered his hand frankly, subjected hers to a firm, cool pressure, and moved back to his study door. "Good night."

She whispered her response, and ran upstairs to her room, almost beside herself with delight.

It was all right!

Best of all, the advances had come from him; he it was who had sued for pardon where the fault was hers--clear proof that he thought enough of her to wish to retain her friendship!

With a glad and comforted heart she settled down to attack anew the vexatious problem of her rôle in "The Jade God."

But for all her worry and good will, the next morning's rehearsal of her scenes passed off in the same terrible silence as had marked Monday's. And in the same afternoon the storm broke.

After plodding through her first scene, Joan was about to go off when Wilbrow called her.

"Miss Thursday," he said quietly, "one of three things has got to happen--_now_: either you'll follow my instructions, or you'll quit, or I will. I've told you what I want so many times that I'm tired repeating myself. Now we're going to go over that scene again and again, if it takes all afternoon to get what I'm after. _But_, before we start, I will ask you to bear one thing in mind: this isn't an ingénue part; there's no excuse for acting it like a petulant school-girl. Even pretty stenographers are business-like in real life--sometimes--and we're trying to secure some semblance of real life in this production. In other words, I want you to forget Billie Burke and try to act like a human being who's a little sore on her job and her employer, but not sore enough to chuck it just yet. Now, if you please--begin right at the beginning."

For an instant Joan stood hesitant, on the verge of refusing. There seemed to be no satisfying this man: he either didn't or wouldn't understand; she tried desperately to please him--and her sole reward was to be held up to the derision of the entire company! It was intolerable! And of a sudden she hated Wilbrow with every atom of her being. But ... if she were to talk back or refuse to go on, Matthias would be forfeited from her life.

She choked down her chagrin, resisted the temptation to wither Wilbrow with a glare, and sulkily resumed her place in the chair beside another chair that was politely presumed to be her typewriter desk.