Part 23

"Oh," said the other girl quietly. "Never done anything much, has he?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know him very well?"

There was a touch of irony in the question that struck sparks from Joan's temper.

"That's my business!"

"I'm sure I _beg_ your pardon," Hattie drawled exasperatingly.

And the incident was considered closed, though it didn't pass without leaving its indelible effect upon their association.

With Joan it had another result: it made her think. Retrospectively examining the contretemps, after she had gone to bed that night, she arrived at the comforting conclusion that she had been a little fool to think that Matthias "held that old ring against her." He hadn't been her lover for several weeks without furnishing the girl with a fairly clear revelation of his character. He was simple-hearted and sincere; she could not remember his uttering one ungenerous word or being guilty of one ungenerous action, and she didn't believe he could make room in his mind for an ungenerous thought.

Now if she were to return it, he would think that fine of her....

Of course, she must take it back in person. If she returned it by registered mail, he would have reason to believe her afraid to meet him--that she had been frightened by his mere glance into sending it back.

Not that she hadn't every right in the world to keep it, if she liked: there was no law compelling a girl to return her engagement ring when she broke with a man.

But Matthias would admire her for it.

Moreover, it was just possible that he hadn't as yet arrived at the stage of complete indifference toward her. And he had "the ear of the managers."

Nerving herself to the ordeal, two days later, she dressed with elaborate care in the suit she had worn on her flight from Quard. Newly sponged and pressed, it was quite presentable, if a little heavy for the season; moreover, it lacked the lustre and style of her later acquisitions. It wouldn't do to seem too prosperous....

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Hattie had taken herself off to a nearby ocean beach for the week-end; something for which Joan was grateful, inasmuch as it enabled her to dress her part without exciting comment.

To her relief, a servant new to the house since her time, answered her ring at the bell of Number 289, and with an indifferent nod indicated the door to the back-parlour.

Behind that portal Matthias was working furiously against time, carpentering against the grain that play to discuss which he had lunched at Shanley's; the managerial personage having offered to consider it seriously if certain changes were made. And the playwright was in haste to be quit of the job, not only because he disapproved heartily of the stipulated alterations, but further because he was booked for some weeks in Maine as soon as the revision was finished.

Humanly, then, he was little pleased to be warned, through the medium of a knock, that his work was to suffer interruption.

He swore mildly beneath his breath, glanced suspiciously at the non-committal door, growled brusque permission to enter, and bent again over the manuscript, refusing to look up until he had pursued a thread of thought to its conclusion, and knotted that same all ship-shape.

And when at length he consented to be aware of the young woman on his threshold, waiting in a pose of patience, her eyes wide with doubt and apprehensions, his mind was so completely detached from any thought of Joan that he failed, at first, to recognize her.

But the alien presence brought him to his feet quickly enough.

"I beg your pardon," he said with an uncertain nod. "You wished to see me about something?"

Closing the door, Joan came slowly forward into stronger light.

"You don't remember me?" she asked, half perplexed, half wistful of aspect. "But I thought--the other day--at Shanley's--"

"But of course I remember you," Matthias interrupted with a constrained smile. "But I wasn't--ah--expecting you--not exactly--you understand."

"Oh, yes," Joan replied in subdued and dubious accents--"I understand."

She waited a moment, watching narrowly under cover of assumed embarrassment, the signs of genuine astonishment which Matthias felt too keenly to think of concealing. Then she added an uneasy:

"Of course...."

"Of course!" Matthias echoed witlessly. "You wanted to see me about something," he iterated, wandering. With an effort he pulled himself together. "Won't you sit down--ah--Joan?"

"Thank you," said the girl. "But I'm afraid I'm in the way," she amended, dropping back into the old, worn, easy-chair.

"Oh, no--I--"

The insincerity of his disclaimer was manifest in an apologetic glance toward the manuscript and a hasty thrust of fingers up through his hair. Joan caught him up quickly.

"Oh, but I know I am, so I shan't stay," she said, settling herself comfortably. "I only ask a minute or two of your time. You don't mind?"

"Mind? Why, I--certainly not."

She looked down as if disconcerted by his honest, perplexed, questioning eyes.

"I was afraid you might, after--after what's happened--"

He fumbled for a cigarette, beginning to feel more calm, less nervous than annoyed. The fact of her unruffled self-possession had at length penetrated his understanding.

"No," he said slowly, rolling the cigarette between his palms, "I don't mind in the least, if I can be of service to you."

"But I was very foolish," Joan persisted, "and--and unkind. I've been sorry ever since...."

"Don't be," Matthias begged, his tone so odd that she looked up swiftly and coloured.

Thus far everything had gone famously, quite as rehearsed in the theatre of her optimistic fancy; but the new accent in his voice made her suddenly fear lest, after all, the little scene might not play itself out as smoothly as it had promised to.

"Don't be," Matthias repeated coolly. "It's quite all right. Take my word for it: as far as I'm concerned you've nothing at all to reproach yourself with."

Her flush deepened. "You mean you didn't care--!"

Matthias smiled, but not unkindly. "I mean," he said slowly--"neither of us really cared."

"Speak for yourself--" Joan cut in with a flash of temper; but he obtained her silence with a gentle gesture.

"Please ... I mean, we both lost our heads for a time. That was all there was to it, I think. Naturally it couldn't last. You were wise enough to see that first and--ah--did the only thing you decently could, when you threw me over. I understood that, at once."

"But I," she began in a desperate effort to regain lost ground--"I was afraid you'd hate and despise me--"

"Not a bit, Joan--believe me, not for an instant. When I had had time to think it all out, I was simply grateful. I could never have learned to hate or despise you--as you put it--whatever happened; but if you hadn't been so sensible and far-sighted, the affair might have run on too far to be remedied. In which case we'd both have been horribly unhappy."

This was so far from the attitude she had believed he would adopt, that Joan understood her cause to be worse than forlorn: it was lost; lost, that is, unless it could be saved by her premeditated heroic measure.

Fumbling in her bag, she found his ring.

"Perhaps you're right," she said with a little sigh. "Anyhow, it's like you to put it that way.... But what I really came for, was to return this."

She offered the ring. He looked, startled, from it to her face, hesitated, and took it. "O--thanks!" he said, adding quite truthfully: "I'd forgotten about that"; and tossed it carelessly to his work-table where, rolling across the face of a manuscript, it oscillated momentarily and settling to rest, seemed to wink cynically at its late possessor.

Joan blinked hastily in response: there was a transient little mist before her eyes; and momentarily her lips trembled with true emotion. The scene was working out more painfully than she had ever in her direst misgivings dreamed it might.

Deep in her heart she had all along nursed the hope that he would insist on her retaining the ring. That would have been like the Matthias of her memories!

But now he seemed to think that she ought to be glad thus to disburden her conscience and by just so much to modify her indebtedness to him!

Struck by this thought, Joan gasped inwardly, and examined with startled eyes the face of Matthias. It was her first reminder of the fact that he had left her one hundred and fifty unearned dollars. She had forgotten all about that till this instant. Otherwise, she would have hesitated longer about calling. She wondered if he were thinking of the same thing; but his face afforded no index to his thoughts. He wasn't looking at her at all, in fact, but down, in abstraction, studying the faded pattern of the carpet at his feet.

She wondered if perhaps it would advance her interests to offer to return the money, to pay it back bit by bit--when she found work. But wisely she refrained from acting on this suggestion.

"I'm sorry I was so long about bringing it back," she resumed with an artificial manner. "I was always meaning to, you know, and always kept putting it off. You know how it is when you're on the road: one never seems to have any time to one's self."

"I quite understand," Matthias assured her gravely.

She grew sensitive to the fact that he was being patient with her.

"But I really mustn't keep you from your work," she said, rising. "You--you knew I was working, didn't you?"

"I heard," Matthias evaded--"in a roundabout way--that you were playing in vaudeville."

The girl nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes; I was all over, playing the lead in a sketch called 'The Lie.' It was a regular knock-out. You ought to have seen how it got over. It's still playing, somewhere out West, I guess."

"You left it, then?" Matthias asked, bored, heartily wishing her out of the house.

She was aching to know if he had learned of her marriage. But then she felt sure he couldn't possibly have heard about it. Still, she wondered, if he did know, would it modify his attitude toward her in any way?

"Yes," she resumed briskly, to cover her momentary hesitation, "I left it the week we played 'Frisco. I had to. The star and I couldn't seem to hit it off, somehow. You know how that is."

"And yet you must have managed to agree with him pretty well, from all I hear."

"What did you hear?"

(Did he really know, then?)

"Why," Matthias explained ingeniously, "you must have been with the sketch for several months, by your own account. You couldn't have been bickering all that time."

Confidence returned.... "Oh, that! Yes, of course. But I could see it coming a long ways ahead. So I quit, and came back to look for another engagement. You--"

She broke off, stammering.

"Beg pardon?" Matthias queried curiously.

Joan flushed again. "You don't know of anything I could do, just now, I suppose?"

He shook his head. "Not at present, I'm afraid."

"If you should hear of anything, it would be awful' good of you to let me know."

"Depend upon me, I shall."

"Care of The Dramatic Mirror will always get me."

"I shan't forget."

"Well...." She offered him her hand with a splendidly timid smile. "I suppose it's good-bye for good this time."

Matthias accepted her hand, shook it without a tremor, and released it easily.

"I've a notion it is, Joan," he admitted.

She turned toward the door, advanced a pace or two, and paused.

"They say Arlington's going to make a lot of new productions next Fall...."

"Yes?"

"Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind putting in a good word for me."

"I would be glad to, but unfortunately I don't know Mr. Arlington."

"But you know Mr. Marbridge, and everybody says he's Arlington's silent partner."

Matthias looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

"I am not sure that is true," he said slowly, "and--well, to tell the truth, Marbridge and I aren't on the best of terms. I'm afraid I couldn't influence him in any way--except, perhaps, to prejudice him."

"Oh!" Joan said blankly....

It came to her, in a flash, that the two men might have quarrelled about her, thanks to the obvious fascination she had exerted over Marbridge, that age-old day at Tanglewood.

"I suppose," she ventured pensively, "I might go to see him--Mr. Marbridge--myself--?"

"I'm afraid I can't advise you."

This time the accent of finality was unmistakable. Joan bridled with resentment. After all, he'd no real call to be so uppish, simply because she hadn't let him stand between her and her career....

"You don't really think I ought to go and see him, do you?"

"I wish you wouldn't ask me, Joan."

"But I've got no one to advise me.... If you don't think it wise, I wish you'd say so. I thought perhaps it was a chance...."

Matthias shrugged, excessively irritated by her persistence. "I can only say that I wouldn't advise any woman to look to Marbridge for anything honourable," he said reluctantly.

"Oh!" the girl said in a startled tone.

"But--I'm sorry you made me say that. It's none of my affair. Please forget I said it."

"But you make it so hard for me."

"I?" he cried indignantly--"_I_ make it hard for you!"

"Well, I come to you for advice--friendly advice--and you close in my very face the only door I can see to any sort of work. It's--it's pretty hard. I can act, I know I can act! I guess I proved that when I was with Charlie--Mr. Quard--the star of 'The Lie,' you know. I couldn't've stuck as long as I did if I hadn't had talent.... But back here in New York, all that doesn't seem to count. Here I've been going around for two months, and all they offer me is a chorus job with some road company. But Arlington ... he employs more girls than anybody in the business. I know he'd give me a chance to show what I can do, if I could only get to him. And then you tell me not to try to get to him the only way I know."

Abruptly Joan ceased, breathing heavily after that long and, even to her, unexpected speech. But it had been well delivered: she could feel that. She clenched her hands at her sides in a gesture plagiarized from a soubrette star in one of her infrequent scenes of stage excitement; and stood regarding Matthias with wide, accusing eyes.

His own were blank....

He was trying to account to himself for the fact that this girl seemed to have the knack of making him feel a heartless scoundrel, even when his stand was morally impregnable, even though it were unassailable.

Here was this girl, evidently convinced that he had not dealt squarely with her, believing that he deliberately withheld--out of pique, perhaps--aid in his power to offer her....

He passed a hand wearily across his eyes, and turned back toward his work-chair.

"You'd better sit down," he said quietly, "while I think this out."

Without a word the girl returned to the arm-chair and perched herself gingerly upon the edge of it, ready to rise and flee (she seemed) whenever it should pardonably suggest itself to Matthias that the only right and reasonable thing for him to do was to rise up and murder her....

On his part, sitting, he rested elbows upon the litter of manuscript, and held his head in his hands.

He was sorry now that he had yielded to the temptation to be plain-spoken about Arlington and Marbridge. But she had driven him to it; and she was an empty-headed little thing and ought really to be kept out of _that_ galley. On the other hand, he was afraid that if he allowed himself to be persuaded to help her find a new engagement, she would misunderstand his motives one way or another--most probably the one. He couldn't afford to have her run away with the notion that his affection for her had been merely hibernating. He had not only himself, he had Venetia to think of, now. To her he had dedicated his life, to a dumb, quixotic passion. Some day she might need him; some day, it seemed certain, she would need him. She was presently to have a child; and Marbridge was going on from bad to worse; things could not forever endure as they were between those two. And then she would be friendless, a woman with a child fighting for the right to live in solitary decency....

But Joan!... If she were headed that way, toward the Arlington wheel within the wheel of the stage, even at risk of blame and misunderstanding Matthias felt that he ought to do what could be done to set her back upon the right road. It was too bad, really. And it was none of his business. The girl had given herself to the theatre of her own volition, after all. Or had she? Had the right of choice been accorded her? Or was it simply that she had been designed by Nature especially for that business, to which women of her calibre seemed so essential? Was she, after all, simply life-stuff manufactured hastily and carelessly in an old, worn mould, because destined solely to be fed wholesale into the insatiable maw of the stage?

He shook his head in weary doubt, and sighed.

"Probably," he said, fumbling with a pen and avoiding her eyes--"I presume--you'd better come back in a day or two--say Tuesday. That will give me time to look round and see what I can scare up for you. Or perhaps Wednesday would be even better...."

He dropped the pen and rose, his manner inviting her to leave.

"Wednesday?" she repeated, reluctantly getting up again.

"At four, if that's convenient."

"Yes, indeed, it is. And ... thank you so much ... Jack."

"No, no," Matthias expostulated wearily.

"No, I mean it," she insisted. "You're awf'ly sweet not to be--unkind to me."

"Believe me, I could never be that."

"Then--g'dafternoon."

"Good afternoon, Joan."

But as he moved to open the door, his eyes were caught by the flash from a facet of the diamond; and the thought came to him that its presence there assorted ill with his latest assurance to the girl. Catching it up, he offered it to Joan as she was about to go.

"And this," he said, smiling--"don't forget it, please."

Automatically her hand moved out to take it, but was stayed. Her eyes widened with true consternation, and she gasped faintly.

"You--you don't mean it?"

"Oh, yes, I do. Please take it. I've really no use for it, Joan, and--well, you and I know what professional life means." He grinned awry. "It might be of service to you some day."

With a cry of gratitude that was half a sob, but with no other acknowledgment, the girl accepted the gift, stumbled through the door in a daze, and so from the house.

XXXI

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....