Joan Thursday: A Novel

At a word, her companion rose and moved to intercept him; and at the sound of his name, Matthias paused, wondering who she could be, this strange, sweet-faced woman, plainly dressed.

"Yes?" he said, lifting his hat. "I am Mr. Matthias – yes – "

"Mrs. Marbridge would like to speak to you."

His gaze veered quickly in the direction indicated by her brief nod. He saw Venetia waiting, and immediately went to her, in his surprise forgetful of the woman who had accosted him. This last moved slowly in the other direction and sat down out of earshot.

"This is awfully good of you, Venetia," he said, bending over her hand. "I didn't see you, of course – was thinking of something else – "

"But I was thinking of you," she said. "I've been wanting to see you for a long time, Jack."

"Surely Helena could have told you where to find me…"

"I knew we'd run across one another, somehow, somewhere, sometime – today or tomorrow, without fail. So I was content to do without the offices of Helena. Do sit down. I want so much to talk to you."

"Most completely yours to command," he said lightly, and took the place beside her.

But his heart was on his lips and in his eyes, and Venetia was far from blind.

"Then tell me about yourself," she asked. "It's been so long since I've had any news!"

"Is it possible? I should have imagined my doting aunt – "

She interrupted with a slight, negative smile and shake of her head: "Helena doesn't approve of me, you know, and of late there has been a decided coolness between the families. I'm afraid George fell out with Vincent for some reason – not too hard to guess, perhaps."

He looked away, colouring with embarrassment.

"So," she pursued evenly – "about yourself: are you married yet?"

Matthias started, laughed frankly. "You didn't know about that, either?.. Well, it's true even Helena couldn't have told you much, for I told her nothing… No, I'm neither married, nor like to be."

"She was so very sweet and pretty – "

"Joan was wholly charming," he agreed gravely, "but – well, I fancy it was inevitable. We were lucky enough to be obliged to endure a separation of some weeks before, instead of after, marriage; and so we had time to think. At least, she must have foreseen the mistake we were on the point of making, for the break was her own doing – not mine."

"You think it would have been a mistake?"

"Oh, unquestionably. I confess I'd not have known it, probably, until too late, if she hadn't made me think when she threw me over. I hope it doesn't sound caddish – but I was conscious of a distinct sense of relief when I got back from California and found she'd cleared out without leaving me a line."

"I think I understand. And did you never hear from her?"

"Not from – by accident, of her. She was predestined for the stage – I can see that clearly now, though I objected then. She was offered a chance during my absence, jumped at it, and made a sort of a half-way hit in a very successful sketch which, oddly enough, I happened to have written – under a pseudonym. It had been kicking round my agent's office for a year; he didn't believe in it any more than I did; and I disbelieved in it hard enough to be ashamed to put my own name to it. That's often the way with a fellow's work; one always believes in the cripples, you know… Well, some actor chanced to get hold of the 'script one day, fell in love with it and put it on with Joan as his leading woman. If it had been anybody else's sketch, I'd never have known what became of her, probably. As it was, I knew nothing until I got back from the Coast… I believe they got married very shortly after it was produced; and now they're playing it all over the country. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," Venetia smiled. "And so your heart wasn't broken?"

He shook his head and laughed: "No!"

But a spasm of pain shot through his eyes and deceived the woman a little longer.

"And what have you been doing?" she pursued, meaning to distract him. "I mean, your work?"

He shrugged. "Oh, I've had an average luckless year. To begin with, Rideout fell down on his production of 'The Jade God' – the only time it ever had a chance to get over – and a man named Algerson bought his contract and put it on at his stock theatre in Los Angeles. That's why I went out there – to see it butchered."

"It failed?"

"Extravagantly!"

"But didn't you once have a great deal of confidence in it?"

"Every play is a valuable property until it's produced," he answered, smiling. "This one was killed by its production. Nothing was right: it needed scenery, and what they gave it had served a decade in stock; it needed actors, and what actors were accidentally permitted to get into the cast got the wrong rôles; finally, it needed intelligent stage direction, and that was supplied by the star, whose idea of a good play is one in which he speaks everybody's lines and his own. Then they rewrote most of the best scenes and botched them horribly."

"You couldn't stop them?"

"When I attempted to interfere, I was told civilly to go to the devil. Under my contract, I could have stopped them: but that meant suing out an injunction, which in turn meant putting up a bond, and – I didn't have the money."

"I'm so sorry, Jack!"

"Oh, it's all in the game. I learned something, at least. But the greatest harm it did me was to sap the faith of managers here. One man – Wylie – who was under contract to produce my 'Tomorrow's People,' paid me on January first a forfeit of five hundred dollars rather than run the risk after 'The Jade God.'"

"And so you lost both plays?"

"Oh, no; I still have 'Tomorrow's People,' and only a short time ago signed up with a manager who isn't afraid of his shadow. We'll put it on next Autumn."

"And you believe in that, too?"

"I know it will go," Matthias asserted with level confidence. "It's only a question of intelligence at the producing end – and I've arranged to get that."

"And meanwhile – you've been working?"

"Oh" – he spread out his hands – "one doesn't stop, you know. It's too interesting!"

And then he laughed again. "But, you see, you flatter a fellow into talking his head off about himself! Forgive me, and let me do a little cross-examining. How are you? And what have you been doing? You – you know, Venetia – you're looking more exquisitely pretty than ever!"

And so she was – more strangely lovely than ever in all the long span of their friendship: with a deeper radiance in her face, a clearer, more translucent pallor, in her eyes a splendour that lent new dignity to their violet-shadowed mystery.

"I'm glad of that," she said quietly. She folded listless hands in her lap, her eyes seeking distances. "I'm going to be very happy … I think…"

He looked up sharply.

That she wasn't happy now, he could well understand: that Marbridge was behaving badly was something rather too broadly published by the very publicity of his methods. Marriage had not been permitted to interfere – at least, not after his return from Europe – with the ordinary tenor of his bachelor ways. Matthias himself had seen him not infrequently in theatres and restaurants, but only once in company with Venetia – most often he had been dancing attendance upon a Mrs. Cardrow: she who had given her lips to Matthias, thinking him Marbridge, that long-ago night at Tanglewood. She was said to be stage-struck; and Marbridge was rumoured to be deeply, though quietly, involved in the financing of certain theatrical enterprises.

Surely, then, Venetia must know what everybody knew, and be unhappy in that knowledge.

But now she was so calmly confident that she was "going to be happy"!

He wondered if she were contemplating divorce…

And then in a flash he understood. That woman who had stopped him was not of Venetia's caste; if he guessed not wildly, she was a nurse. And Venetia afoot instead of in her limousine…