Joan Thursday Part 31

And yet, oddly enough, it wasn't his memories of Venetia and his regrets and wounded self-esteem that rendered insipid his belated dinner and made him presently abandon it in favour of the distracting throngs of Broadway. They were thoughts of another woman altogether that urged him forth and homeward--a poignant sympathy for Joan Thursday, the friendless and forlorn, whose high antic.i.p.ations had with his own that day gone cras.h.i.+ng to disaster. He couldn't remember what had made him think of her, but now that he did, it was with disturbing interest.

He found himself suddenly very sorry for the girl--much more sorry for her than for himself. What to him was at worst a staggering reverse, to her must seem calamitous beyond repair.

It wasn't hard to conjure up a picture of the child, pitifully huddled upon her bed, in tears, heart-broken, desolate, perhaps (since he had not been home to pay her) supperless and hungry!

Matthias quickened his stride. His suddenly awakened and deep solicitude tormented him. He had received evidence that Joan's was a nature tempestuous and p.r.o.ne to extremes: he didn't like to contemplate the lengths to which despair might drive her.

Through the texture of this new-found care ran a thread of irritation that it should have proved a care to him. He realized that he must of late have been giving a deal of thought to the girl. Formerly he had been aware of her much as he was of Madame Duprat; such kindness as he had shown her had been no greater than, and of much the same order as, he would have shown a stray puppy. Tonight he found himself unable to contemplate her as other than a vital figure in his life--a creature of fire and blood, of spirit and flesh, at once enigmatic and absolute, owning claims upon his consideration no less actual because pa.s.sive. He who had pledged his ability and willingness to find her a foothold on the stage, was responsible for her present distress and disappointment.

And if his good offices had been sought rather than voluntary, still was he responsible; for she wouldn't have dreamed of seeking them if he hadn't in the first place insisted on putting her under obligation to him. He had in a measure bidden her to look to him; now it was his part to look out for her.

Hardly a pleasant predicament: Matthias resented it bitterly, with impatience conceding the weight of that doctrine which teaches the fatal responsibility of man for his hand's each and every idle turn. He had paused to pity a stray child of the town; and because of that, he now found himself saddled with her welfare. A situation exasperating to a degree! And, he argued, it was merely this subconscious sense of duty which had of late held the girl so prominently in his mind--ever since, in fact, that night when she had broken down and impulsively kissed his hand. Just that one hot-headed, frantic, foolish act had primarily brought home to Matthias his obligations as the object of her unsought, unwelcome grat.i.tude....

He found Joan waiting on the stoop: a silent and vigilant figure, aloof from the other lodgers--a woman and two or three men lounging on the steps. And as these moved aside to give Matthias way, Joan rose and slipped quietly indoors, where in the hall she turned back with a gesture that too clearly betrayed the strain and tensity of her emotions; but, to his gratification, she was dry of eye and outwardly composed.

"You were waiting for me?" he asked; and taking a.s.sent for granted rattled on with a show of cheerful contrition: "Sorry I'm late. There were ten dozen stones we had to turn, you know."

Her eyes questioned.

He smiled, apologetic: "No use; Rideout simply can't swing it."

"I've finished type-writing that book," she announced obliquely.

"Have you? That's splendid! Will you bring it to me? And then we can have a little talk."

She nodded--"I'll go fetch it right away"--and scurried hastily up the stairs as he went on to his room.

Leaving the door ajar and lighting his reading-lamp, Matthias closed the shutters at the long windows, adjusting their slats for ventilation.

Then for some minutes he was left to himself. Resting against the edge of his work-table, he studied ruefully a cigarette which he was too indifferent or too distracted to continue smoking. Smouldering between his fingers, its slender stalk of pearly vapour ascended with hardly a waver in the still air, to mushroom widely above his head. It held his eyes and his thoughts in dreaming.

He was thinking, simply and unconsciously, of the Joan he had just realized in the half-light of the hallway: a straight, slim creature with eyes like troubled stars, her round little chin held high as if in mute defiance of outrageous circ.u.mstance; vividly alive; giving a strange impression, as of some half-wild thing, at once timid and spirited, odd and--beautiful.

To the sound of a light tap on the open door, the girl herself entered, a mute incarnation of that disturbing memory. She put down the ma.n.u.script before acknowledging his silent and intent regard. But becoming aware of this, her eyes wavered and fell, then again steadied to his. He was vastly concerned with the surprising length of her dark silken lashes and the delicate shadows on her warm, rich flesh. And he was sensitive to the virginal sweetness and fluent grace of her round and slender body. Vaguely he divined that the calm courage of her bearing was merely a nave mask for a nature racked by intense feeling....

"That's the last," she said quietly, indicating the ma.n.u.script. "I finished up this evening," she added, superfluously yet without any evidence of consciousness.

"Thank you. I'm glad to get it." Ransacking his pockets, Matthias found money, and paid her for the week.

"I suppose that'll be all?" she asked steadily. "I mean, you won't want any more type-writing done for a while?"

"I don't know," he said slowly. "We'll have to ... talk things over.

Today has changed everything.... If you don't mind, I'll shut the door: people all the time pa.s.sing through the hall...."

She shook her head slightly to indicate a mild degree of impatience with his punctiliousness about that blessed door. Unconscious of this, having closed it, he returned to her, frowning a little as he reviewed her circ.u.mstances with a mind that seemed suddenly to have lost its customary efficiency of grasp.

He found her eyes and lost them again, glancing aside in inexplicable embarra.s.sment.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, looking down at the ma.n.u.script she had just delivered, and abstractedly disarranging it with thin, long fingers--"awfully sorry about the way things have turned out. I--"

She interrupted him sharply: "O no, you're not!"

He looked up quickly, amazed and disconcerted by the hint of anger in her tone. A little tremor ran through her body and she lifted her chin a trace higher while she met his stare with eyes hot and s.h.i.+ning. Red spots like signals blazed in her either cheek.

Confused, he stammered: "I beg your pardon--!"

"I say you're not sorry. You're glad. You're glad, just like anybody else might be. _I_ don't blame you."

She shot these words at him like bullets, with a disturbing display of pa.s.sionate resentment. He opened his lips to speak, and thinking better of it, or else not thinking at all in his astonishment, gaped witlessly, wholly incapable of conceiving what had got into the girl.

With a flush of scornful satisfaction her eyes remarked these evidences, so easily to be misinterpreted; then quickly she lowered her head and turned away, leaning against the table, her back to the light and face in shadow.

"_I_ don't blame you," she repeated in a sullen murmur.

He demanded blankly: "My dear girl, what _do_ you mean?"

"I mean.... Why, just that you're glad to get rid of me!" she returned, looking away. He noticed the nervous strength with which her hands closed over the edge of the table, the whitening of their small knuckles.... "It's perfectly natural, I guess. I've been a nuisance so long, you've got every right to be tired of having me hang around--"

"But, my dear young woman--!"

She interrupted impatiently: "Oh, don't call me that. It don't mean anything. I guess I know when I'm not wanted. I'll go now and never bother you any more."

Moving a pace or two away, she resumed before Matthias could muster faculties to cope with this emergency:

"All the same, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate how good you've been to me--and patient, and all that. I am grateful--honest'--but I'm not as dumb as you think: I know when I'm in the way, all right!"

"But you entirely misunderstand me--"

"O no, I don't! You've made yourself plain enough, if you didn't think I had sense enough to see. It don't take _brains_ to see through a man who's only trying to be polite and kind--all the time bored--"

"But, Miss Thursday--"

She turned toward the door.

He made a gesture of open exasperation. This was all so unfair! He had only meant to be kind and considerate and--and everything like that! And now she had drawn against him one of those unique and d.a.m.nable indictments which seem to be peculiarly the product of a certain type of feminine mentality, and against which man is const.i.tutionally incapable of setting up any effective defence, reason and logic alike being arbitrarily ruled out of court by the essential injustice of the charge.

She chose to accuse him of having adopted toward her a mental att.i.tude of which he was wholly guiltless; and there was no way by which he might persuade her of his innocence!

And it was so confoundedly clear that she considered herself, temporarily at least, abused and altogether justified of her complaint!

"Please," he begged, "don't go yet. Give _me_ a chance!"

Her hand was on the k.n.o.b. She hesitated, with an air of expectant and generous concession.

"You're really quite unfair," he began; but paused to regain control of himself and to wonder a little, blindly, why it was that he tolerated her impudence--for it couldn't be called anything less. It would be much more sensible and quite just to bow to her construction of their indefinite relations and let her go her ways without more argument.

In spite of everything, he could not refrain from one last attempt to set himself right.

"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've really wanted to help you--"

"Why?"