Joan Thursday: A Novel

by Louis Joseph Vance

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.

But once with head on pillow, it was not her rôle that she remembered, but the man: his coarsely musical tones, his eloquent white hands, the overt admiration that shone in his eyes whenever he forgot his sketch and remembered momentarily Joan the woman. She felt sure he liked her. And she liked him well. Of the merits of his enterprise she knew nothing, but he had succeeded in inspiring her with confidence that he knew what he was about.

She drifted off into sleep, comforted by the conviction that she had found a friend.

By the time of her return from breakfast, the next morning, Quard was waiting for her at the lodging-house. He had already arranged with Madame Duprat for the use of the front parlour for rehearsals, pending its lease to some fortuitous tenant; and here he proceeded to work out the physical action of the sketch. His gratitude to Joan for knowing her part was almost affecting; he himself was by no means familiar with his own and her prompt response to cues he read from manuscript facilitated his task considerably. When they adjourned for luncheon he announced himself persuaded that they would be ready to "open" within a week.

Within that period Joan learned many things. She was a tractable and docile student, keen-set to profit by the scraps of dramatic chicanery which formed the major part of Quard's stage intelligence. He himself had a very fair memory and had been drilled by more than one competent stage-director whose instructions had stuck in his mind, forming a valuable addition to his professional equipment. Joan soon learned to speak out clearly; to infuse some little semblance of human feeling into several of her turgid lines; to suffer herself to be dragged by one wrist round the room on her knees, by the romantical convict; to time her actions by mental counting; to "feed lines" to her partner in a rapid patter through the passages of putative comedy. She learned also to answer to "dearie" as to her given name, and to submit to being handled in a way she did not like but which, from all that she could observe, was considered neither familiar nor objectionable as between people of the stage. And she learned, furthermore, that May Dean's opinion of the venture was never to be drawn beyond a mildly derisive "My Gawd!" while Maizie's ran to the sense that it was all a chance and Joan a little fool if she didn't grab it—and anyway Joan was old enough to take care of herself with Charlie Quard or any man living!

And it was Maizie who was responsible for insisting that Joan wheedle an advance of ten dollars from Quard, ostensibly toward the purchase of costume and make-up. But when this had been successfully negotiated, the dancers advised Joan to save it against an emergency, and between them provided her with an outfit composed of cast-offs: a black satin décolleté bodice, an accordion-pleated short skirt of the period of 1890, wear-proof silk stockings, a pair of broken-down satin slippers with red heels, a japanned tin make-up box with a broken lock, and a generous supply of cheap grease-paint and cold cream.

Joan's début occurred within the time-limit set by Quard and before an audience of two, not counting a few grinning stage-hands. The two were the agent Schneider, and the manager of a small moving-picture house in the Twenty-third Street shopping district; on the half-lighted stage of which their "try-out" took place at half-past ten of a rainy and disheartening morning. The judges sat in the darkened auditorium, staring apathetically and chewing large cigars. Joan, though a little self-conscious, was not at all nervous, and remembered her lines perfectly; better than this, she looked very fetching indeed in her makeshift costume. Quard forgot several of his speeches, floundered all over the stage, and in a frantic effort to redeem himself clowned his part outrageously. Nevertheless they were engaged.

Convinced of their failure, Joan had only succeeded in removing her make-up and struggling into her shabby street clothing, when Quard knocked at the door of her dressing-room. He had played without make-up, and consequently had been able to catch the manager and agent before they could escape. Lounging in the doorway, he breathed a spirit of congratulation strongly tainted with fumes of whiskey.

"We're on!" he declared exultantly. "What'd I tell you? You needn't have changed, because we're going to stick here, and open today. One of the turns on this week's bill fell down at the last minute, and so we cop this chance to fill in. We go on after the first films—about a quarter of one; and then at four-thirty, seven-thirty, ten-forty-five. Now whadda yunno about that?"