Louis Vance - Joan Thursday - A Novel

Beyond shadow of doubt she had prospered. Not only was she amazingly and awfully arrayed, but there was in evidence an accomplishment believed to be singular to people of great wealth, an "English accent" – or what Joan and Gussie ingenuously accepted as such. As practised by Miss Maizie Dean this embellishment consisted merely in broadening every A in the language (when she didn't forget) and speaking rapidly in a high, strained voice. Its effect upon her former associates was to render the wake she ploughed through their ranks phosphorescent with envy.

Departing in good time to spare the girls the censure of the floor-walker, she had left with Joan the pencilled address and this counsel: "If ever you dream of goin' into the business, my deah, don't do anythin' before you see me . That ad-dress will always make me, no mattah wheah 'm woikin': and I'd do anythin' in the woild for you. I know you'd make good anywheres – with that shape and them eyes !.."

Of such stuff as this had Joan fashioned her dreams. Confident in the generosity of Lizzie Fogarty, she relied implicitly upon the willingness of Miss Maizie Dean to help her into the magic circle of "the profession." She had no more doubt that Maizie would make it her business, even at cost of personal inconvenience, to secure her an engagement, than she had that tomorrow's sun would rise upon a world tenanted by one Joan Thursby. Or if such doubt entered her mind by stealth, she fought it down and cast it forth with all the power of her will. For in Miss Dean, née Fogarty, now resided her sole immediate hope of friendly aid and advice…

Alighting at Forty-fifth Street, Joan hastened westward, past Fifth Avenue and Sixth to Longacre Square. Here on the corner, she paused to don her coat; for the low-swinging draperies of the painted skies had begun to distil upon the city a gentle drizzle, soft and warm.

Only two hours ago a vortex of vivid animation, the Square now presented a singular aspect of sleepy emptiness. With its high glittering walls of steel and glass, its polished black paving like moiré silk, its blushing canopy of cloud, its air filled with an infinity of globular atoms of moisture, swirling and weltering in a shimmer of incandescence: it was like a pool of limpid light, deep and still. Few moving things were visible: now and again a taxicab, infrequently a surface-car, here and there, singly, a few prowling women, a scattering of predacious men.

Of these latter, one who had been skulking beneath the shelter of the New York Theatre fire-escapes strolled idly out toward Joan and addressed her in a whisper of loathly intimacy. Fortunately she did not hear what he said. Even as he spoke she slipped away from the curb and like a haunted shadow darted across the open space and into the kindly obscurity of the side-street.

Number 289 reared its five-storey brown-stone front on the northern side of the street, hard upon Eighth Avenue. Joan inspected it doubtfully. Its three lower tiers of windows were all dark and lightless, but on the fourth floor a single oblong shone with gas-light, while on the fifth as many as three were dully aglow. The outer doors, at the top of the high, old-style stoop, were closed, and even the most hopeful vision could detect no definite illumination through the fan-light.

Into the heart of Joan a wretched apprehension stole and there abode, cold and crawling. From something in the sedate aspect of the house she garnered grim and terrible forebodings.

Nevertheless she dared not lose grasp on hope. Mounting the stoop, she sought the bell-pull, and found it just below a small strip of paper glued to the stone; frayed and weatherbeaten, it published in letters in faded ink scrawled by an infirm hand the information: " Rooms to let furnished ."

For some reason which she did not stop to analyze, this announcement spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought lustily at the bell.

It evoked no sound that she could hear. Trembling with expectancy, she waited several minutes, then pulled again, and once more waited while the cold of dread spread from her heart to chill and benumb her hands and feet. She heard never a sound. It was no use – she knew it – yet she rang again and again, frantically, with determination, in despair. And once she vainly tried the door.

The drizzle had developed into a fine, driving rain that swept aslant upon the wings of a new-sprung breeze.

A great weight seemed to be crushing her: a vast, invisible hand relentlessly bearing her down to the earth. Only vaguely did she recognize in this the symptoms of immense physical fatigue added to those of intense emotional strain: she only knew that she was all a-weary for her bed.

Of a sudden, hope and courage both deserted her. Tears filled her eyes: she was so lonely and forlorn, so helpless and so friendless. Huddled in the shallow recess of the doorway, she fought her emotions silently for a time, then broke down altogether and sobbed without restraint into her handkerchief. Moments passed uncounted, despair possessing her utterly.

The street was all but empty. For some time none remarked the disconsolate girl. Then a man, with a handbag but without an umbrella, appeared from the direction of Longacre Square, walking with a deliberation which suggested that he was either indifferent to or unconscious of the rain. Turning up the steps of Number 289, he jingled absently a bunch of keys. Not until he had reached the platform of the stoop did he notice the woman in the doorway.

Promptly he halted, lifting his brows and pursing his lips in a noiseless whistle – his head cocked critically to one side.

Then through the waning tempest of her grief, Joan heard his voice:

"I say! What's the matter?"

Gulping down a sob and dabbing hastily at her eyes with a sodden wad of handkerchief, she caught through a veil of tears a blurred impression of her interrogator. A man… She ceased instantly to cry and shrank hastily out of his way, into the full swing of wind and rain. She said nothing, but eyed him with furtive distrust. He made no offer to move.

"See here!" he expostulated. "You're in trouble. Anything I can do?"

Joan felt that she was regaining control of herself. She dared to linger and hope rather than to yield to her primitive instinct toward flight.

"Nothing," she said with a catch in her voice – "only I – I wanted to see Miss Dean; but nobody answered the bell."

"Oh!" he said thoughtfully – "you wanted to see Miss Dean – yes!" – as though he considered this a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. "But Madame Duprat never does answer the door after twelve o'clock, you know. She says people have no right to call on us after midnight. There's a lot in that, too, you know." He wagged his head earnestly. "Really!" he concluded with animation.

His voice was pleasant, his manner sympathetic if something original. Joan found courage to enquire:

"Do you think – perhaps – she might be in?"

"Oh, she never leaves the house. At least, I've never seen her leave it. I fancy she thinks one of us might move it away if she got out of sight for a minute or so."

Puzzled, Joan persisted: "You really think Miss Dean is in?"

"Miss Dean? Oh, beg pardon! I was thinking of Madame Duprat. Ah … Miss Dean … now … I infer you have urgent business with her – what?"

"Yes, very!" the girl insisted eagerly. "If I could only see her … I must see her!"

"I'm sure she's in, then!" the man declared in accents of profound conviction. "Possibly asleep. But at home. O positively!" He inserted a key in the lock and pushed the door open. "If you don't mind coming in – out of the weather – I'll see."

Joan eyed him doubtfully. The light was indifferent, a mere glimmer from the corner lamp at Eighth Avenue; but it enabled her to see that he was passably tall and quite slender. He wore a Panama hat with dark clothing. His attitude was more explicitly impersonal than that of any man with whom she had as yet come into contact: she could detect in it no least trace either of condescension or of an ingratiating spirit. He seemed at once quite self-possessed and indefinitely preoccupied, disinterested, and quite agreeable to be made use of. In short, he engaged her tremendously.