Joan Thursday: A Novel

"Bon jour, madame."

This form of salutation was invariable between them; but the French of Matthias rarely withstood much additional strain. He lapsed now into English, cocking an eye alight with whimsical intelligence at the face of the landlady. Madame possessed the gift (as it were an inheritance from the estate of her late husband) of creating an atmosphere at will, when and where she would. That which her demeanour now created within the four walls of the chamber of Monsieur Matthias was rather electrical.

"Something's happened to disturb madame?" he hazarded. "What's the row? Have we discharged our chef? Is it that the third-floor front is behindhand with his rent? Or has Achilles – that dachshund of Heaven! – turned suffragette – and proved it with pups?"

"The row, monsieur," madame checked him coldly, "has to do only with the conduct of monsieur himself?"

"Eh?" Matthias queried blankly.

"You ask me what?" The hands of madame were vivid with exasperation. "Is it that monsieur is not aware he entertained a young woman in this room last night?"

"Oh – that!" The cloud passed from monsieur's eyes. He smiled cheerfully. "But it was quite proper, indeed, madame. Believe me, I – "

"Proper! And what is propriety to me, if you please – at my age?" madame demanded indignantly. "Am I not aware that monsieur left my house almost immediately after entering it and spent the night elsewhere? Did I not from my window see him running up the street with his handbag through the rain? But am I to figure as the custodian of my lodgers' morals?" The thought perished, annihilated by an ample gesture. "My quarrel with monsieur is that he left the young woman here alone!"

Matthias found the vernacular the only adequate vehicle of expression: "I've got to hand it to you, Madame Duprat; your point of view is essentially Gallic."

"But what is the explanation of this conduct, monsieur? Am I to look forward to future escapades of the same nature? Do you intend to make of my house a refuge for all the stray unfortunates of New York? Am I, and my guests, to be left to the mercies of God-knows-who, simply because monsieur has a heart of pity?"

"Oh, here!" Matthias broke in with some impatience. "It wasn't as bad as that. It's not likely to happen again … and besides, the girl was a perfectly good, nice, respectable girl. Madame should know that I wouldn't take any chances with people I didn't know all about."

"Monsieur knew the young woman, then?"

"Oh, yes; assuredly yes," Matthias lied nonchalantly.

By the happiest of accidents, his glance, searching the table for a box of matches wherewith to relight his pipe, encountered a sheet of typewriter paper on which a brief message had been scrawled in a formless, untrained hand:

"Dear Sir," he read with relief, "thank you – Your friend, Joan Thursby."

He found the matches and used one before looking up.

"Miss Thursby," he said coolly, "is the daughter of an eminently respectable family in reduced circumstances. Thinking to better her condition, she proposed to become an actress, but met with such violent opposition on the part of her father – a bigot of a man! – that she was obliged to leave her home in order to retain her self-respect. Quite naturally she thought first of her only friend in the profession, Miss Maizie Dean, and came here to find her. The rest you may imagine. Was I to turn her out to wander through the rain – at two o'clock in the morning? Madame discredits her heart by suggesting anything of the sort!"

Madame's expression of contrition seemed to endorse this reproof. She hesitated with a hand on the doorknob.

"Monsieur is prepared to vouch for the young woman?"

"Certainly," he assented, with an imperturbable countenance masking a creepy, crawly feeling that perhaps he might be letting himself in for more than he bargained.

"Very good. I go, with apologies." Madame opened the door. "Thursday, you said?"

He repeated without bothering to correct her: "Joan Thursday."

"Barbarous names of these mad Americans!"

The door, closing, totally eclipsed the grenadier.

With thoughtful deliberation Matthias (smiling guiltily) tore Joan's note into minute bits and, dropping them in a waste-basket, dismissed her message and herself entirely from his mind.

Five minutes later the typewriter was rattling cheerily.

But its staccato chattering continued without serious interruption only for the time required to cover two pages and part of a third. Then came a long interval of smoke-soothed meditation, which ended with the young man cheerfully placing fresh paper in the machine and starting all over again. This time he worked more slowly, weighing carefully the value of lines already written before recasting and committing them to paper; but the third sheet was covered without evident error, and a fourth, and then a fifth. Indeed the type-bars were drumming heartily on the last quarter of page 6, when suddenly the young man paused, scowled, thrust back his chair and groaned from his heart.

He sat for a space, teetering on the rear legs of his chair, his lips pursed, forehead deeply creased from temple to temple. Then in a sepulchral tone uttering the single word "Snagged!" he rose and began to pace slowly to and fro between the door and the windows.

At the end of an hour he was still patrolling this well-worn beat – his way of torment by day and by night, if the threadbare length of carpet were to be taken as a reliable witness. And there's no telling how long he might have continued the exercise had not Madame Duprat knocked once again at his door.

Roused by that sound, he came suddenly out of profound speculations. Stopping short and bidding Madame enter, he waited with hands thrust deep in his trouser-pockets and shoulders hunched high toward his ears, a cloud of annoyance darkening his countenance.

Madame Duprat came in with a "Pardon, monsieur," and a yellow envelope. Placing this last upon the table, she announced with simple dignity, "A telegram, if you please," and retired.

Matthias strode to the table and with an air of some surprise and excitement tore open the message. He found its import unusual in more than one respect: it was not a "day-letter," and it had been written with a fine, careless extravagance of emotion that recked naught whatever of the ten-word limit.

He conned its opening aloud: "'Beast animal coward ingrate poltroon traitor beast' – "

At this point he broke off to glance at the signature and observe thoughtfully: "If Helena's going in for this sort of thing, I really must buy her a thesaurus: she's used 'beast' twice in two lines…"

He continued: "'How dared you run away last night? You promised. I was counting on you. I am disgusted with you and never want to see your face again. Return at once. Perhaps you won't be too late after all. Imperative. I insist that you return.'"

The signature was simply: "Helena."

He said with considerable animation: "But – damn it! – I don't want to get married yet! I don't see what I've done…"

Throwing back his shoulders and lifting a defiant chin, he announced with invincible determination: "I won't go. That's all there is about it. I will – not – go!..

"Besides," he argued plaintively, "I couldn't travel like this – clothes all out of shape from that drenching last night – no time to change – !"

Consultation of his watch gave flat contradiction to this assertion.

"And besides, I'm just getting this thing started nicely!" This with reference to the play.

With another groan even more soulful than the first he sat down at the table, seized the telephone in a savage grasp, and in prematurely embittered accents detailed a suburban number to the inoffensive central operator. In the inevitable three minutes' wait for the connection to be put through he found ample opportunity to lash himself to a frenzy of exasperation.

"Hello!" he roared suddenly. "Hel-lo, I say!.. Who is this?.. Oh, you, eh, Swinton? This is Mr. Matthias… No – I say, no! Don't call Mrs. Tankerville. Haven't time… Just tell her I'm coming down on the six-thirty… Yes… And send something to meet me at the station… Yes. Good-bye."

VI

Joan's was an awakening of another order; like the thoroughly healthy animal she was, the moment her eyes opened she was vividly and keenly alive, completely acquainted with her situation, in full command of every faculty.

With no means of determining the time save by instinct, she was none the less sure that the hour wasn't late: not late, at all events, for people who didn't have to be behind counters by half-past eight. So she lay still for many minutes, on the worn leather couch, listening intently. There was a great hush in the lodging-house: not a foot-fall, not a sound. Yet it was broad daylight – a clear and sunny morning.

Her quick eyes, reviewing the room in this new light, realized the substance of a dream come true. She liked it all: the high and dusty ceiling, the immense and gloomy bookcases, the disorderly writing-table, the three sombre and yellowing steel engravings on the walls, the bare, beaten path that crossed the carpet diagonally from door to window, the roomy and dilapidated chairs, even the faint, intangible, ineradicable smell of tobacco that haunted the air, even the generous cushion beneath her head.

Against this last she cuddled her cheek luxuriously, a shadowy smile softening her lips, her lashes low. She was enchanted by the novel atmosphere of this roomy chamber, an atmosphere of studiousness and clear thinking. And her thoughts focussed sharply upon her memories of the early morning hours, especially those involving the man who had put himself out to shelter her. She was consumed with curiosity about him and all that concerned him. In her inexperience she found it rather more than difficult to associate his courtesy, his solicitude and generosity with his aloofness, abstraction and detachment: the type was new and difficult to classify.

Was it true, then, that Man – flesh-and-blood Man as differentiated from the romantic abstractions that swaggered through the chapters of the ten-cent weekly libraries – could be disinterested with Woman, content to serve rather than be served, to give rather than take?

On the one side stood That One of the taxicab adventure, together with John Matthias: arrayed against these, a host composed of Ben Austins and Mr. Winters and men with knees – beasts of prey who stalked or lay in ambush along all the trails that webbed her social wilderness.