before joan left marbridge, they had arrived at an understanding which was not less complete and satisfactory in that it was largely implicit.
without receiving any definite explanation of the circumstances complicating the production of "mrs. mixer," joan carried away with her a tolerably clear notion thereof, both confirming and supplementing the second-hand information of hattie morrison.
mrs. cardrow owned a heavy interest in the play, joan had gathered; and there existed, as well, a contract between her and arlington which would have to be eliminated before it would be possible to go ahead and make the production with another actress in place of the erstwhile star. some very delicate diplomatic man?uvring was indicated....
interim, joan was to be privately drilled by peter gloucester for some weeks prior to calling together the full company to rehearse for the september production. gloucester was just then out of town, but she would be advised when and where to meet him on his return.
marbridge was to be absent from new york until the middle of september or longer; but he promised to be back a week or two before the opening performance.
there were other promises exchanged....
with her future thus schemed, the girl was very well content, who had attained by easy stages to one of mental development in which those primary moral distinctions upon which she had been reared were no longer perceptible—or, if perceptible, had diminished to purely negligible stature.
it was not in nature for her to disdain or reject her bargain on moral grounds: she knew, or recognized, none that applied.
for over a year during the most impressionable period of her life, joan thursday had breathed the atmosphere of the stage. she had become thoroughly accustomed to recognize without criticism those irregular unions and regular disunions that characterized the lives of her associates. she had observed many an instance where the most steadfast and loyal love existed without bonds of any sort, and as many where it existed in matrimony, and as many again where neither party to a marriage made aught but the barest pretence of fidelity.
she had remarked that material and artistic success seemed to depend upon neither the observance nor the disregard of sexual morality. she knew of husbands and wives against whom scandal uttered no whisper and whose talents were considerable, but who had struggled for years and would struggle until the end without winning substantial recognition. and she knew of the reverse. the one unpardonable sin in her world was the sin of drunkenness, and even it was venial except when it "held the curtain" or prevented its rising altogether.
as far as concerned her attitude toward herself, she considered joan thursday above reproach, seeing that she had withdrawn from her marriage long before even as much as contemplating any man other than her husband. she held that she was now free, at liberty to do as she liked, untrammelled by opinion whether public or private: that she had outgrown criticism.
true, quard might divorce her. but what of that? if he did, joan thursday wouldn't suffer. if he didn't, he himself would be the last to pretend he was leading a life of celibacy because of her defection.
marbridge she really liked; his appeal to her nature was stronger than that of any man she had as yet encountered. he attracted her in every way, and he excited her curiosity as well. he was a new type—but in what respect different from other men? he was famously successful with women: why? he had wealth, cultivation of a certain sort (real or spurious, joan couldn't discriminate) and social position; and this flattered, that such an one should reject the women of his own sphere for joan thursday—late of the stocking counter.
and if she could turn this infatuation of his to material profit, while at the same time satisfying the several appetites marbridge excited in her: why not? other women by the score did as much without censure or obvious cause for regret. why not she?
how many women of her acquaintance—women whose interests, running in grooves parallel to hers, were intelligible to joan—would have refused the chance that was now hers through marbridge? not one; none, at least, who was free as joan was free; not even hattie morrison, whose views upon the subject of such arrangements were strong, whom joan considered straitlaced to the verge of absurdity. hattie, joan believed, would have jumped at the opportunity.
but of course, denied, hattie would be sure to decry it, and with the more bitterness since joan had won it in the wreck of hattie's hopes.
and here was the only shadow upon the fair prospect of joan's contentment. she who had questioned hattie's right to become a party to the conspiracy against mrs. cardrow—how could she ever go home and face the girl, with this treachery on her conscience?
true: hattie didn't know, wouldn't know before morning, might never learn the truth during the term of their association.
none the less, to be with hattie that night would be to sit with a skeleton at the feast of her felicity....
on impulse joan turned to the left on leaving the new york theatre building, and moved slowly, purposelessly, down broadway.
it was an afternoon of withering heat: the pavements burning palpably through the paper-thin soles of her pretty slippers, and the air close with the smell of hot asphaltum. the rays of the westering sun made nothing of the fabric of joan's white parasol, their heat penetrating its sheer shield as though it were glass. mankind in general sought the shadowed side of the street and moved only reluctantly, with its coat over its arm, a handkerchief tucked in between neck and collar—effectually choking off ventilation and threatening "sun-stroke."
waiting upon the northeast corner of forty-second street for the traffic police to check the cross-town tide, joan felt half-suffocated and thought longingly of the seashore....
once across the street, she turned directly in beneath the permanent awning of the knickerbocker hotel, and entered the lobby, making her way round, past the entrance to the bar, to the recess dedicated to the public telephone booths.
a semi-exhausted and apathetic operator looked up reluctantly as joan approached, with one glance appraising her from head to heels. at any other time the dainty perfection of joan's toilet would have roused antagonism in the woman; today she found energy only sufficient for a perfunctory mumble.
"what numba, please?"
joan hesitated, feeling herself suddenly upon the verge of dangerous indiscretion, but stung by the operator's look of jaded disdain, took her courage in hand and pursued her original intention.
"one bryant," she said.
the operator jammed a plug into one of the rows of sockets before her and iterated the number mechanically.
in another moment she nodded, indicating the rank of booths.
"numba five—one bryant," she said.
joan shut herself in with the sliding door and took up the receiver.
"hello—lambs' club?" she enquired.... "is mr. fowey in the club?... will you page him, please.... miss thursday.... yes, i'll hold the wire."
the booth was hermetically sealed. perspiration was starting out all over her body. and somewhere in that airless box, probably at her feet, lurked a long unburied cigar. she thrust the door ajar, but only to close it immediately as fowey's voice saluted her.
"hello?"
"hello, hubert," joan drawled, with a little touch of laughing mockery in her accents.
"is that you, joan—really?" the voice demanded excitedly.
"real-ly!" she affirmed. "what're you doing there, shut up all alone by yourself in that stupid club, hubert?"
prefaced by a brief but intelligible pause, the man's response came briskly: "where are you now, anyway?"
"that doesn't matter," she retorted. she had meant to ask him to meet her at the hotel, but reconsidered, fearing lest marbridge might chance to see them. "what really matters is that this is my birthday and i'm going to give a party. have you got anything better to do?"
"no—"
"then meet me in half an hour on the southbound platform of the sixth avenue l at battery place."
"battery place! what in thunder—"
"never mind—tell you all about it when we meet. will you come?"
"will i! well, rawther!"
"half an hour, then—"
"i'll be there, with bells on!"
"then good-bye for a little—hubert."
"good-bye."
fowey reached the point of assignation only one train later than joan.
as he hurried down the platform, almost stumbling in his impatience to join her, the girl surveyed with sudden dislike and regret his slight, dandified figure fitted with finical precision into clothing so ultra-english in fashion that it might have belonged to his younger brother. and the confident smile that lighted up his pinched, eager countenance seemed little short of offensive. she was sorry now that she had yielded to the temptation to make use of him: he was so insignificant in every way, so violently the opposite in all things of the man who now filled all her thoughts—marbridge; and so transparent that even she could read his mind: he entertained not the least tangible doubt that now, after the manner in which they had last parted, she had at length wakened to appreciation of his irresistible charms, that her requesting him to meet her was but the preface to surrender.
but she permitted nothing of her thoughts to become legible in her manner. after all, she had only wanted an escort for the evening, an excuse to postpone that unavoidable return to the company of the girl she had betrayed; and fowey had seemed the most convenient and the least dangerous man she could think of. if in the inflation of his insufferable conceit he dreamed for an instant another thing.... well, joan promised herself, he'd soon find out his mistake!...
keeping up the fiction of her imaginary birthday, she outlined her plans: they would take one of the iron steamboat company's boats from pier 1, north river—a short walk from the station—to coney island. when that resort palled, they would drive to manhattan beach and dine, perhaps "take in" pain's fireworks; and return to new york by the same route.
fowey's objections were instant and sincere and well-grounded: the boats would be crowded beyond endurance with an unwashed rabble liberally sown with drunks and screaming children. if she would only let him, he'd get a taxicab—or even a touring-car.
quietly but firmly joan overruled him. it must be her party or no party, as she proposed or not at all.
he yielded in the end, but the event proved him right in all he had foretold. joan was very soon made sorry she hadn't suffered herself to be gainsaid.
they had half an hour to wait for the boat, and the waiting-room upon the second-storey of the pier was like an oven, packed with a milling, sweating mob exactly fulfilling fowey's prediction. they were elbowed, shouldered, walked upon, and at one time openly ridiculed by a gang of hooligans, any one of whom would have made short work of fowey had he dared show any resentment.
upon the boat, when at length it turned up tardily to receive them, conditions were little better, save that the open air was an indescribable relief after the reeking atmosphere of the pier. fowey managed to secure two uncomfortable folding stools, upon which they perched, crowded against the rail of the upper deck; a wretched "orchestra" wrung infamous parodies of popular songs from several tortured instruments; children scuffled and howled; burly ruffians in unclean aprons thrust themselves bodily through the throng, balancing dripping trays laden with glasses of lukewarm beer and "soft drinks" and bawling in every ear their seductive refrain—"here's the waiter! want the waiter? who wants the waiter?"—and an alcoholic, planting his chair next to joan's, promptly went to sleep, snoring atrociously, and threatened every instant to topple over and rest his head in her lap.
a single circumstance modified in a way joan's regret that she hadn't heeded fowey's protests.
as the boat swung away from the pier, a larger steamship of one of the coastwise lines, outward bound from its dock farther up the north river, passed with leeway so scant that the dress and features of those upon its decks were clearly to be discerned. and at the moment when the two vessels were nearest, joan discovered one who stood just outside an open cabin door, leaning upon the rail with an impressively nonchalant pose, and smoking a heavy cigar. he wore clothing of a conspicuous shepherd's-plaid, and his pose was an arrested dramatic gesture.
in a moment a woman emerged from the open door behind him and joined him at the rail, placing an intimate hand on his forearm and saying something which won from him a laugh and a look of tender admiration: a handsome, able-bodied woman, expensively but loudly dressed, her connection with the stage as unquestionable as was his.
joan dissembled the odd emotion with which she recognized the man, and turned to fowey.
"what boat is that, do you know, hubert?"
fowey raked her with an indifferent glance, fore and aft. "belongs to the new bedford line," he announced—"can't make out her name—connects at new bedford for the boats to martha's vineyard and nantucket. ever been up that way?"
"no. what's it like?"
"pretty islands. don't know martha's vineyard very well, but nantucket's my old stamping-ground. go up there in the middle of the summer—about now—and you'll find every actor and actress you ever heard of, and then some. great place. wish we were going there."
"don't be silly...."
the boats were drawing apart. joan looked back for the last sight she was ever to have of her husband.
though she couldn't have known this, she sighed a little, in strange depression.
perplexed, she tried vainly to analyze her emotion: was it regret—or jealousy?
of a sudden, in the heart of that immense crowd, with fowey attentive at her elbow, she was conscious of a feeling of intense loneliness.
