Joan Thursday: A Novel

Were they truly different, Matthias and that other one? Or were they merely old enemies in new masks? How was one to know?..

A noise in the basement, the rattle of a kitchen range being shaken clear of ashes, startled the girl to her feet in a twinkling. However sharp her inquisitiveness and her desire to see and to know more of this man, she entertained no idea of lingering to be found there by him…

After bolting the door and before surrendering her tired body to the invitation of the couch, she had yielded to the temptation to make a brief tour of enquiry. The result had satisfied her that Matthias had lied in one particular, at least: unquestionably this was his work-room, but no less surely the man lived as well as worked in it, much if not all of the time. In its eastern wall Joan found a door opening into a small bedroom furnished with almost soldierly simplicity. And there were two large closets in the southern wall of the chamber; in one she found his wardrobe, a staggering array of garments, neatly arranged in sharp contrast to the confusion of his desk; the other was a bathroom completely equipped, a dazzling luxury in her eyes, with its white enamel, nickel-plate, glass and porcelain fittings.

She refreshed herself there after rising – not without a guilty sensation of trespass – returning to the larger room to complete her dressing; no great matter, since she had merely laid aside skirt, coat, and shirtwaist, and loosened her corsets before lying down. In a very little time then, she was ready for the street; but with her hands on the doorknob and bolt, she hesitated, looking back, reluctant to go a thankless guest.

Slowly she moved back to the centre-table, touching with diffident fingers its jumble of manuscripts, typewriter-paper, memoranda, and correspondence. There were letters in plenty, a rack stuffed with them, others scattered like leaves hither and yon, one and all superscribed with the name of John Matthias, Esq., many in the handwriting of women, a few scented, but very faintly. Joan wondered about these women and his relations with them. Was he greatly loved and by many? It would not be strange, she thought, if he were…

Her temper curiously unsettled by these reflections, she stood for a long time, staring and thinking. Then a renewed disturbance in the lower regions of the house sent her packing – but not until she had left an inadequate scrawl of thanks, whose poverty and crudity she felt keenly. Why had she never learned to write a hand of delicately angular distinction to bear comparison with the hands that had addressed those impeccably "correct" notes?..

The hallway was deserted. She let herself hastily out, believing she had escaped detection.

Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.

Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. A clock in the window of a delicatessen shop told her the hour was half-past seven, while the sight of the food unattractively displayed proved a sharper reminder of breakfast-time. She had no other concern in the world just then. It would be hours before she could accomplish anything toward establishing her independence; and what steps she was to take toward that consummation remained altogether nebulous in her understanding.

She had not gone far before a dairy lunch settled the question as to where she was to breakfast.

It was a small, shabby, dingy place, its walls plastered with white tiling and mirrors. Joan's order comprised a cup of brownish-yellow liquid, which was not coffee, and three weighty cakes known as "sinkers." These last might have been crude, childish models in putty of the popular American "hot biscuit," but were larger and slightly scorched on top and bottom, and when pried open revealed a composition resembling aerated clay. Joan anointed them generously with butter and consumed them with evident relish. Her powers of digestion were magnificent. The price of the meal was ten cents. She went away with a sense of repletion and seventy-two cents.

She turned northward again. An empty day of arid hours confronted her perturbed and questioning imagination. She was still without definite plans or notion which way to turn for shelter. She knew only that everything must be settled before nightfall: she dared not trust to find another John Matthias, she could not sleep in the streets or parks, and return to East Seventy-sixth Street she would not. She had her own exertions to rely upon – and seventy-two cents: the one as woefully inadequate as the other.

Near Columbus Circle she bought a copy of the New York World for the sake of its "Help Wanted" advertisements, and strolled on into Central Park.

Here she found some suggestion of nature rising refreshed from its over-night bath to bask in sunlight. The grass was nowhere scorched, and in shadowed spots still sparkled with rain-drops. The air was still, steamy, and heady with fragrance of vegetation. Upon this artificial, rectangular oasis a sky of robin's-egg blue smiled benignly. A sense of peace and friendly fortunes impregnated the girl's being. Somehow she felt serenely sure that nothing untoward could happen to her. The world was all too beautiful and kindly…

She discovered a remote bench and there unfolded her newspaper and ran hastily through its advertising columns, finding one reason or another for rejecting every opening that seemed to promise anything in the nature of such employment as she had theretofore known. There were no cards from theatrical firms in need of chorus-girls, and nothing else interested her. She was now obsessed by two fixed ideas, as they might have been the poles of her world: she was going on the stage; she was not going back behind a counter.

Yet she must find a way to live until the stage should open its jealous doors to her…

The morning hours ebbed slowly, with increasing heat. From time to time Joan, for one reason or another, would drift idly on to another bench.

Once, as she sat dreaming with vacant eyes, she was roused by the quick beating of muffled hoofs, and looked up in time to see a woman on horseback pass swiftly along a bridle-path, closely pursued by a man, likewise mounted. The face of the horsewoman burned bright with pleasure and excitement and her eyes shone like stars as she glanced over-shoulder at her distanced escort. She rode well and looked very trim and well turned out in her habit of light-coloured linen. Joan thought her charming – and unspeakably blessed.

Later they returned; but now their horses walked sedately side by side; and the woman was smiling softly, with her eyes downcast, as she listened to her companion, who bent eagerly close to her and spoke in a low and intimate voice.

For hours afterwards Joan was haunted by the memory, and rent with envious longing. A hundred times she pictured herself in the place of the horsewoman; and the man at her side wore always the manner and the aspect of John Matthias…

About two o'clock in the afternoon she lunched meagrely on crackers-and-milk at another dairy establishment on Columbus Avenue – reducing her capital to sixty-one cents. Then, recrossing the park, she made her way back through the sweltering side-streets toward her late home. She arrived in time to see her father's burly figure lumbering heavily up the street. His gaze was to the sidewalk, his mind upon the poolrooms, his thick, pendulous lower lip quivered with incessant, inaudible repetition of race-track names and records. He would not have recognized Joan had he looked directly at her. And he didn't look.

She was safe, now, to make her final visit to the flat. Thursby could be counted on not to return before six o'clock. She hastened across the street and up the narrow, dark and noisome stairway…

Seated at the dining-table, over an array of dishes discoloured with the residue of the mid-day stew, her mother, seemingly more immaterial than ever, merely lifted shadowed and apathetic eyes to Joan's face as she entered. Edna, on the contrary, jumped up with a hushed cry of surprise not untouched by alarm.

"Joan!"

The girl assumed a confident swagger. It was borne in upon her, very suddenly, that she must prove a ready liar in answer to the storm of questions that was about to break.

"Hello, people!" she cried cheerfully. "How's everything?"

"Didn't the Old Man meet you on the stairs?" demanded Edna in a frightened breath.

"Nope: I waited till he'd turned the corner," Joan returned defiantly. "Anyway I ain't afraid of him. What'd he say, last night, after I was gone?"

Edna started to speak, stammered and fell still, turning a timid gaze to her mother.

"No more'n he said before you went out," said the latter listlessly. "He won't hear of your coming back – "

"A lot I care!" Joan retorted with a fling of her head. "All I'm after's my things. I've done enough for this family… Now I'm going to look out for Number One."

The mother made no response. She seemed no longer to see Joan, whose bosom swelled and palpitated with a suddenly-acquired sense of personal grievance.

"I've done enough!" she repeated mutinously.

Edna said in a tremulous voice: "I don't know what we'll do without you – "

"Do as I done!" Joan broke in hotly. "Go out and get a job and slave all day long so's your father won't have to support his family. Go on and try it: I'm sick and tired of it!"

She turned and strode angrily into the front rooms. Edna followed, awed but inquisitive.

Pulling their bed out from the wall, Joan disentangled from the accumulation of odds and ends beneath it a small suit-case of matting, in which she began to pack her scanty store of belongings: all in embittered silence, ignoring her sister.

"Where'd you stay last night?" Edna ventured, at length.

"With a friend of mine," Joan answered brusquely.

"Who?" the other persisted.

Joan hesitated not one instant; the lie was required to save her face.

"Maizie Dean, if you got to know."

"Who's Maizie Dean? I never heard you speak of her – "

"Lizzie Fogarty, then," said Joan roughly. "She used to work with me at the stocking counter. Then she went on the stage. Now she's making big money."

"Is she going to get you a job?"

"Of course – foolish!"

"Where's she live?"

"Down in Forty-fifth Street, near Eighth Avenue."

"What's the number of the house?"

"What do you want to know for?"