He laughed uncomfortably: "As bad as all that?"

"It'd make a wonderful chaser," Maizie commented without lifting her eyes from the counterpane.

Quard turned desperately back to Joan. "What do you think of it, Miss Thursday?"

"I think so too," she said with all the animation she could muster. The other women laughed aloud. She flushed and added: "I mean, I think it's wonderful. I don't know what a chaser is."

"A chaser, dearie," Maizie explained in tones of acute commiseration, "is an act put on in the continuous houses to chase out the chair-warmers and make room for more."

"Well," said Quard, shuffling the ma.n.u.script, "I don't care if it is a chaser, so long as it stakes me to the eats till something else turns up."

XII

On that day when she discovered the disappearance of John Matthias, Joan left the house later than had been her wont, and returned earlier, after a faint-hearted and abortive attempt to interview the stage-manager of a new musical production then being a.s.sembled to rehea.r.s.e against an early opening in the Autumn.

The Deans were out. She had no place to go other than to her bare and lonely room, and she felt uncommonly hopeless and friendless.

Subconsciously she had been holding in reserve, as a last hope, an appeal to the generosity of Matthias. He was a playwright, an intimate of managers: surely he would be able to suggest something, no matter how poorly paid or inconspicuous. Now, with the date of his return indefinite, she felt unjustly bereft of that last resource.

She spent two weary, wretched hours on her bed, hara.s.sed by a singularly fresh and clear perception of her unfitness, for the first time made conscious that she had actually possessed no reasonable excuse for her determination to go on the stage. Her qualifications, which hitherto might have been expressed, according to her own estimate, by the algebraic X, now a.s.sumed a value only to be indicated by a cipher. She had a good strong voice, it's true, but no ear whatever for music; she didn't "know steps" (Maizie's term, denoting ability for eccentric dancing) and of the art of acting she was completely ignorant. In fact, her theatrical ambitions had been founded more upon need of money than upon any real or fancied pa.s.sion for the stage. Other girls had done likewise and bettered themselves: Joan knew no reason why she should fall short of their enviable achievements; but she was innocent of dramatic feeling and even of any real yearning for applause. Only her looks, of which she was confident, were to be counted upon to carry her beyond the stage doors.

She thought of her home, of her mother, her father, Edna and Butch, with a dull and temperate regret. Since that first afternoon she had never attempted to revisit them, and she felt now no inclination toward returning. Still, her thoughts yearned back to the miserable flat as to an a.s.sured shelter: there, at least, she had been safe from rude weather and positive hunger.

As things were with her, another week would find her dest.i.tute, but there was still the chance that something would turn up within that week. She felt almost sure that something would turn up. In this incurable optimism resided almost her sole endowment for the career of an actress: this, and a certain dogged temper which wouldn't permit her to acknowledge defeat until every possible expedient had been explored....

Toward evening she heard footsteps on the stairs. To her surprise they paused by her door, upon which fell a confident knock. Jumping up from her bed in a flurry, she answered to find Quard on the threshold.

No one had been farther from her thoughts. She stared, agape and speechless.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Thursday!" said the actor genially. "Can I come in?"

He entered, cast a comprehensive glance round the poor little room, deposited his hat upon the bed and himself beside it. Leaving the door open, and murmuring some inarticulate response, Joan turned back to her one chair.

"Hope I don't intrude," Quard rattled on cheerfully. "The girl told me the Deans was out and you in, so I took a chance and said I'd come right up."

"I--I'm sorry Maizie isn't home," stammered the girl.

"I ain't." Quard's eyes looked her over with open admiration. "I didn't want to see either of 'em, really. What I wanted was a little confab with you."

"With _me_!"

"Surest thing you know. I wanta talk business. I don't guess you've landed anything yet?"

Joan shook her head blankly.

"Well, I got a little proposition to make you. Yunno that sketch I wrote and you liked so much the other night?"

"Yes...."

"Well, I got hold of Schneider yesterday, and read it to him, and he says he can get me four or five weeks' booking at least, if I can put it over at the try-out. How does that strike you?"

"Why--I'm glad," Joan faltered, still mystified. "It must be fine to get something to do."

"Well, I haven't got it yet; and of course, maybe I won't get it. One of the first things you gotta learn in this business is, never spend your pay envelope till you got it in your mitt. And in this case, a lot depends on you."

"I don't get you," Joan returned frankly. "What've I got to do with it?"

Quard smiled indulgently, offered her a cigarette, which she refused, and lighted one for himself.

"If I can't get you to play the woman's part," he said, spurting twin jets of smoke through his nostrils, "it's all up--unless I can hitch up with summonelse just like you."

"You mean--you want _me_ to--to act--?"

"Right, the very first time outa the box! Yunno, it's this way with these cheap houses: they can't afford to pay much for a turn, even a good one--and this one of ours is going to be about as b.u.m as any act that ever broke through: take that from me. So it's up to me to find somebody who'll work with me for little enough money to leave something for myself, after I've squared up with the agent and stage-hands, and all that. You make me now?"

"Yes; but I haven't any experience--"

"That's just it: if you had, I couldn't afford you. But you gotta start sometime, and it won't do you no harm to get wise to what little I can teach you. Now the most I can count on dragging down for this act is sixty a week. I want twenty-five of that for myself. Fifteen, more will fix the agent and the rest. That leaves twenty for you. It ain't much, but it's a long sight better than nothing."

"But--how do you know I can do it?"

"That'll be all right. I know all about acting--anyway, I know enough to show you how to put across anything you'll have to do in this piece. Now how about it?"

"Why, I'll be glad--"

"Good enough. Now here: I've had this dope type-written, and here's your copy. Let's run through it now, and tonight you can start in learning.

Tomorrow we'll have a rehearsal, and just as soon's we got our lines pat, we'll let Schneider have a pipe at it. Don't worry. It ain't going to be hard."

Thus rea.s.sured, but still a trifle dubious, Joan accepted a duplicate of the ma.n.u.script, and composed herself to follow to the best of her ability Quard's second reading.

This time he took less pains with his enunciation, scanned the lines more rapidly, and frequently interrupted himself in order to explain a trick of stage-craft or to detail with genuine gusto some bit of business which he counted upon to prove especially telling.

In consequence of this exposition, Joan acquired a much clearer understanding of the nature of the sketch. It concerned two persons only: a remarkably successful stage dancer, to be played by Joan; her convict husband, fresh from the penitentiary, by Quard. _Scene_: the dressing-room of the dancer. _Time_: just after the dancer's "turn."

Joan, discovered "on", informs the audience of her fortunate circ.u.mstances through the medium of a brief soliloquy. _Enter_ Quard (shambling gait, convict pallor, etc.) to inform her that she has been living in the lap of luxury during the eight years that he has been serving time: "I'm goin' to have my share now!" Comedy business: humorously brutal att.i.tude toward wife; slangy description of prison life. ("They'll simply eat that up!"--_Quard._) More comedy business involving a gratuitous box of property cigars and a cuspidor. Suddenly and without shadow of excuse, husband accuses wife of infidelity.

Indignant denials; wife exhibits portrait of child born after commitment of husband, and of whose existence he has heretofore been ignorant: "It was for him I fought my way to the top of the ladder: he has _your_ eyes!" Incontinently husband experiences change of heart; kisses photograph; snuffles into cap crushed between hands; slavers over wife's hand; refuses her offer of a.s.sistance; announces he will go West to "make a _man_ of myself!" before returning to claim his wife and child.

And the _Curtain_ falls upon him in the act of going out, all broken up.

"Of course," Quard admitted, "it's bunk stuff, but we can put it across all right. I'm going to call it _The Convict's Return_ and bill it as by _Charles D'Arcy and Company_. You'll be the company. I don't want to use my name, because it ain't going to do me any good to have it known I've taken to this graft, and if I'm lucky no one's going to spot me through my make-up."

Suddenly apprised by the failing light that the hour was growing late, he pocketed the ma.n.u.script and rose.

"Come on out and eat--business dinner. We'll talk things over, and I'll fetch you home early, so's you can start getting up on your lines."

They dined again at the Italian boarding-house. Quard drank but sparingly, considerably to the relief of Joan....

She was home by half-past eight, her head buzzing with her efforts to remember all he had told her, and sat up till three in the morning, conning the inhuman speeches of her part until she had them by rote; no very wonderful accomplishment, considering that the sketch was to play less than fifteen minutes, and that two-thirds of its lines were to be delivered by Quard.