Joan Thursday Part 5

Diligently exploring the bag, she brought to light a scanty store of small change: three quarters, a nickel, seven coppers--eighty-seven cents wherewith to face the world!

Further rummaging educed a handful of odds and ends, from which, by the light of a corner lamp, she presently succeeded in sorting out a folded sc.r.a.p of paper bearing a pencilled memorandum, faint almost to illegibility, so that only with some difficulty could Joan decipher its legend: "_Maizie Dean_ (_Lizzie Fogarty_) 289 W. 45 St."

Slowly conning the address with mute, moving lips, until she had it by heart, the girl trudged on to Madison Avenue and there signalled and boarded a southbound surface-car. It carried few pa.s.sengers. She had a long seat all to herself, and about fifteen minutes wherein to debate ways and means....

She reckoned it several years since Lizzie Fogarty (predecessor of faithless Gussie Inness, both at the stocking counter and in Joan's confidence) suddenly, and with no warning or explanation, had left the department store and for fully eight months thereafter had kept her where-abouts a mystery to her erstwhile a.s.sociates--though rumours were not lacking in support of a shrewd suspicion that she had "gone on the stage." The truth only transpired when, one day, she drifted languidly up to the counter behind which she had once served, haughtily inspected and selected from goods offered her by a stupefied and indignant Gussie, and promptly broke down, confessing the truth amid giggles not guiltless of a suspicion of tears. Lizzie was in "vodeveal," partner in a "sister-act"--witness her card--"_The Dancing Deans, Maizie & May_."

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 a.s.sociates was to render the wake she ploughed through their ranks phosph.o.r.escent 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, nee 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 gla.s.s, its polished black paving like moire 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.n.a.lyze, this announcement spelled encouragement to Joan. She wrought l.u.s.tily 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ked 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sably tall and quite slender. He wore a Panama hat with dark clothing. His att.i.tude 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.

But what more specifically prepossessed her in his favour, and what in the end influenced her to repose some slight confidence in the man, was a quality with which the girl herself endowed him: she chose to be reminded in some intangible, elusive fashion, of that flower of latter-day chivalry who had once whisked her out of persecution into his taxicab and to her home. In point of fact, the two were vastly different, and Joan knew it; but, at least, she argued, they were alike in this: both were _gentlemen_--rare visitants in her cosmos.

It was mostly through fatigue and helpless bewilderment, however, that she at length yielded and consented to precede him into the vestibule.

Here he opened the inner doors, ushering Joan into a hallway typical of an old order of dwelling, now happily obsolescent. The floor was of tiles, alternately black and white: a hideous checker-board arrangement.

A huge hat-rack, black walnut framing a morbid mirror, towered on the one hand; on the other rose a high arched doorway, closed. And there was a vast and gloomy stairway with an upper landing lost in shadows impenetrable to the feeble illumination of the single small tongue of gas flickering in an old-fashioned bronze chandelier.

Listening, Joan failed to detect in all the house any sounds other than those made by the young man and herself.

"If you'll be good enough to follow me--"

He led the way to the rear of the hall, where, in the shadow of the staircase, he unlocked a door and disappeared. The girl waited on the threshold of a cool and airy chamber, apparently occupying the entire rear half of the ground floor. At the back, long windows stood open to the night. The smell of rain was in the room.

"Half a minute: I'll make a light."

He moved through the darkness with the a.s.surance of one on old, familiar ground. In the middle of the room a match spluttered and blazed: with a slight _plup!_ a gas drop-light with a green shade leapt magically out of the obscurity, discovering the silhouette of a tall, spare figure bending low to adjust the flame; which presently grew strong and even, diffusing a warm and steady glow below the green penumbra of its shade.

The man turned back with his quaint air of deference. "Now, if you don't mind sitting down and waiting a minute, I'll ask Madame Duprat about Miss--ah--your friend--"

"Miss Dean--Maizie Dean."

"Thank you."

With this he left the girl, and presently she heard his footsteps on the staircase.

She found a deeply cushioned arm-chair, and subsided into it with a sigh. The intensity of her weariness was indeed a very serious matter with her. Her very wits shirked the labour of grappling with the problem of what she should do if Maizie Dean were not at home....