Joan Thursday: A Novel

Answering a knock, she threw the door wide. Two porters staggered in, one with the shoulders, one with the feet of Quard. The bell-boy followed. When they had lugged to the bed that inert and insensate thing she had once loved, Joan tipped the men and they departed. The boy lingered.

"Is there anything more I can do, ma'm?"

"Where did you find him?"

"Down on the Coast. I don't know what wouldn't've happened to him if you hadn't sent me after him. He was up an alley – had been stuck up by a couple of strong-arms. I seen 'em making their get-away just as I come in sight."

She uttered a cry of despair: "Robbed – you mean?"

"Yes, ma'm. He ain't got as much's a nickel on him."

Overwhelmed, Joan sank into a chair. The boy avoided her desolate eyes; he was a little afraid she might want part of the five dollars back.

"Hadn't I better send the hotel doctor up, ma'm?"

"Perhaps," she muttered dully.

"Yes, ma'm. And here's the check for your suit-case. Nothing else? Good night, ma'm."

The door closed.

Of a sudden, Joan jumped up and ran to the bed in the alcove.

Quard's condition was pitiable, but in her excited no compassion. His face was pallid as a death-mask save on one cheek-bone, where there was an angry and livid contusion. His hands were scratched, bleeding, and filthy, his clothing begrimed and torn, his pockets turned inside out. He seemed scarcely to breathe, and a thin froth flecked his slack and swollen lips.

With feverish haste she unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and tugged at his undershirt. Then she sobbed aloud, a short, dry sob of relief. She had discovered the money-belt. In another minute she had unbuckled and withdrawn it from his body. She took it to the other room, to the light, and hastily undid its fastenings.

There were perhaps two dozen fresh, new bills, for the most part of large denominations, folded once lengthwise to fit into the narrow silken tube; but someone knocked before she found time to reckon up their sum.

Hastily cramming the money, together with the tell-tale belt, into her handbag, Joan took a deep breath and said "Come in!"

There entered a grave man of middle-age, carrying a physician's satchel.

He said, with a slight inclination of his head: "Mrs. Quard, I believe?"

"Yes," Joan gasped. She nodded toward the alcove: "Your patient's in there."

He murmured some acknowledgment, turning away to the bedside. For several minutes he worked steadily over the drunkard. While she waited, her wits awhirl, Joan mechanically pinned on her hat.

Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat, turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street.

"Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear.

"He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right. But I need your help. You were going out?"

She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held up – all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday."

"I see. And you can do without him?"

"His understudy'll take his part – we'll manage somehow."

"Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance – a trained nurse."

"Do, please, doctor."

"Very well."

He moved toward the telephone.

"I'll be back in about an hour."

"Very well, Mrs. Quard."

He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it…

Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through a side door to the street.

In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry.

Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her transcontinental flight.

XXVII

When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window, began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration.

But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned, discovered only an empty impasse.

Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair, and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up. Curious whim of hers! Curious weather!

Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to investigate these unseasonable phenomena.

In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones, conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow sunlight.

In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.

At an open window across the way a public-spirited and extremely pretty young woman appeared with a towel pinned round her shoulders and let down her hair, a shimmering cascade of gold for the sun's rays to wanton with and, incidentally, to dry.

Somewhere at a distance a cracked old piano-organ was romping and giggling rapturously through the syncopated measures of Tin Pan Alley's latest "rag."

A vision drifted before Matthias' eyes, of the green slopes of Tanglewood, the white château on its windy headland, the ineffable blue of the Sound beyond…

Incredulous, he turned to consult his calendar: the day was Wednesday, the seventeenth of April.

It was true, then: almost without his knowledge the bleak and barren Winter had worn away and Spring had stolen upon Town, flaunting, extravagant, shy and seductive, irresistible Spring…

For a little Matthias held back in doubt, with reluctant thoughts of his work. Then – all in a breath – he caught up hat and stick, slammed the door behind him, and blundered forth to fulfill his destiny…

She was seated on a bench, in a retired spot sheltered from the breeze, open to the sun, when Matthias, having swung round the upper reservoir, came at full stride down the West Drive, his blood romping, his eyes aglow, warm colour in his face: for the first time in half a year feeling himself again, Matthias the lover of the open skies divorced from Matthias of the midnight lamp and the scored and intricate manuscripts – that Matthias whom the world rejected.