Joan Thursday: A Novel

by Louis Joseph Vance

The company assembled for the first time on a mid-August morning, in the author's study. There were present eight men, aside from Matthias and the manager, his producing director and his press agent, and four women, including Joan. After brief introductions, the gathering disposed itself to attention, and Matthias, rocking nervously in his revolving desk-chair, read the play aloud. To most of those present the work was new and unfamiliar; they listened with intense interest, keenly alive to the possibilities of the various parts for which they had been cast.

But Joan was not of these; she had typed all the parts and knew not only the story but her own slight though significant rôle (as she would have said) "backwards." Sitting in a shadowed corner, she devoted herself to studying those with whom her lines were to be cast.

The leading lady was an actress who, after several attempts to star at the head of her own company, was reduced to playing second to the young and handsome matinée hero of several seasons ago, planning to return in triumph to the stage after an unsuccessful effort to retire from it into the contented estate of well-financed matrimony. Through their widely published photographs Joan was familiar with the features of both.

She thought the star charming; good-humoured, good-looking, well-mannered, slight and graceful, he had all the assurance of a Charlie Quard and none of his vain swagger.

But Joan decided on sight to detest the leading woman. She was a pale, ashen blonde, with a skin as colourless as snow, level dark brows, sharp blue eyes set close to the bridge of her pointed nose, and a thin-lipped, violent mouth. The first impression she conveyed was one of dangerous temper; the second, that she had been happy in her choice of photographers. Throughout the reading, she sat negligently on the arm of a chair, swinging a foot and staring out of the window with an air of immitigable disdain.

Of the other women, one was a grey-haired, sweet-faced lady of perhaps fifty years, whose eyes softened winningly whenever they encountered Joan's, the other an unlovely creature of middle-age and long stage experience, who seemed to have no interest in life aside from her unfolding part. The remainder of the company, of a caste hall-marked by the theatre, offered nothing novel to Joan's eyes—aside from a fat, red-faced lump of a youth who was to act a thick-witted, sentimental office-boy, in love with the stenographer (Joan). This one she decided to tolerate on suspicion; he resembled a type which she had found difficult, apt to impertinence and annoying attentions.

Rideout, the man financially responsible for the production, was an English actor of reputation and considerable ability. Carrying his stoutish body with an ease that almost suggested slenderness: with his plump, blowsy face, twinkling eyes and fat nose of a comedian: the insuppressible staginess of his gesture would have betrayed his calling anywhere. Now and again Joan surprised an anxious expression lurking beneath his humorous smile; she had inferred from some casual remark made by Matthias that Rideout was staking all he possessed on the success of this play.

The producing manager, Wilbrow, was a short, lean-bodied American, with lantern jaws, large intent eyes, and a nervous frown. Joan was impressed with the aloof pleasantness of his manner: she was to know him better.

The reading over, the company was dismissed with instructions to report at ten the next morning at an obscure dance-hall masquerading under the name of an opera house, situate in the immediate neighbourhood, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several lingered to affix signatures to contracts—Joan of their number; and when these were gone, there remained in conference the star, the leading woman, Matthias, Rideout, and Wilbrow.

Going out to dinner that night, Joan passed Matthias bidding good-bye to the leading woman in the hallway. He seemed tired and wore a harassed look; and later, when the girl delivered the outcome of her day's copying, he had a manner new to her, of weary brusqueness.