Chapter XVI

The letter to Mr. Vandeleur was not of course sent that night. Even the fervour of Joan’s renunciation stopped at that. She was too tired to dress again and take it out to the mail box. When the morning came, after an almost sleepless night, she decided to postpone the irrevocable step until the end of the month. This gave her eight days of grace. It was conceivable that something might turn up during that time. In any case the waiting would do no harm. As her grandmother was only giving notice on August 1st, she could not leave Virginia Beach until the 8th, so there would be time for Father to reply before that refuge had to be abandoned.

During the next few days Joan went about with the miserable missive in her pocket and the feeling of a condemned criminal at heart. Perhaps there was a slight mitigation in her previous gloom, for the irresponsibility of despair had seized her. She had done all she could. Now fate must take its course. If the gods made no sign, she told herself dramatically, the letter should be mailed as the clock finished striking midnight on July 31st.

During the two months that Joan worked at the restaurant, no one she even knew by sight had ever come in. Now one evening, the day before the fateful thirty-first, she did see a familiar face. It was the ugly, interesting-looking man who had walked up with her to the nursing home the day following her ‘Vivi’ appearance. Joan felt a distinct pleasure. Although her acquaintance with the man was of the slightest, he somehow, curiously enough, gave her the impression of an old friend. Perhaps, though, she ought to pretend not to know him, she reflected. Should she conceal her identity as she had planned? But after all what did it matter? Joan North, the actress, would soon be dead; it made no difference now her being discovered as a restaurant girl. Besides, in any case, this man would probably not recognize, or even see her.

At this moment the new-comer, who was standing scanning the crowded tables for an empty seat, happened to glance in Joan’s direction. Their eyes met and he evidently did recognize her. An unmistakable pleasure and interest flashed into his face, to be followed by a stare almost of stupefaction. He came over quickly and held out his hand. As Joan was dexterously balancing five ice cream sodas, she naturally could not take it. “Miss North,” he exclaimed, “what in the world are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Joan smiled. She had not smiled for so long that her muscles felt quite unaccustomed. Suddenly her experienced eye caught sight of a chair being vacated. “Look, there’s a seat, if that’s what you want,” she exclaimed, indicating it with a nod of her head. “If you don’t take it quickly, someone will grab it. That is one of my tables, so I will come for your order in a minute.”

The man was sitting obediently in the place when she returned. It was a small table for one only, so talk was not impossible. “Are you playing a waitress next season, that you have taken on this job?” he began with a perceptible shade of anxiety.

“I am playing a waitress now. What can I get you?” Joan firmly proffered the bill of fare. The comedy of the situation began to appeal pleasantly to her theatric instinct.

He disregarded the professional question. “But why are you here, Miss North? Is it just for the experience?” he persisted.

“No, for the dollars--but a waitress mustn’t wait. This is our busy time.” She hurried off to various diners who were sitting before their empty plates, monuments to the amazing patience of America.

The next time she came up, her new friend had his order ready. “Fried chicken and salad,” he started off breathlessly, “but, Miss North, does this mean you have severed your connection with the Hobson management?”

His voice trailed away lugubriously, for Joan had already darted off. To-night she beat even her previous record for celerity. How amusing it was, she was thinking, the man being so anxious to talk to her, and under conditions so farcically adverse. In any case she did not want to discuss her plans. How could she, when she did not know them herself? Or rather she did know them only too fatally well. However, she would not let herself think of that. “Here you are,” she said gaily, as she returned with his order. Unfortunately the course was a substantial one, in which the main plate was circled by several little saucers of ‘trimmings,’ like a planet with its satellites. The man’s dismayed face as he regarded it, nearly made Joan laugh. He was evidently thinking that if he had to consume all this between his sentences, the conversation would not progress far. Other gallants might drink to fair ladies, he had the harder task of eating to one. “But you haven’t told me--you aren’t with another manager?” he asked rapidly.

“Yes, I am--the manager of this buffet.” A bell tinkled her away.

After that the baulked talker was wiser. He warily ordered the lightest items in the menu. “Is your mother with you? Might I call?” he enquired in the next breathless pause.

“No. Impossible--I have got no parlour--You did say sarsaparilla?” Joan again vanished.

After his fifth ice cream soda, the young man gave up the effort. However, as a reward for his gastronomic exertions, a faint lull came in the business, which permitted a little relaxation of Joan’s activity at the moment that she brought him his bill. “I was a good deal surprised to see you here this evening, Miss North,” her customer observed unnecessarily.

“I could see you were!” Joan laughed. She was really enjoying herself. “I suppose you were shocked at my doing work of this sort?”

“Well, no, a socialist would hardly be shocked--”

Joan interrupted him eagerly. She had often heard her father inveigh against socialism, but she had never, so far as she was aware, met one of its exponents in the flesh before. “Are you really and truly a socialist?” she asked.

It was the man’s turn to laugh. “I guess that’s one over on me, Miss North,” he said good-humouredly. “One crows on one’s own little ash-heap and thinks the whole world is standing still to listen!”

“But I couldn’t know your name as a socialist, because I don’t know your name at all,” Joan retorted. The entry of a new and large party claimed her attention.

When Joan was again free, her friend had gone. She wondered whether she should ever see him again--not that she had much doubt of his soon making his way to the restaurant again, but would she still be there herself? A sudden revulsion of feeling seized her after the last hour of comedy. Never had her future loomed so unutterably black. Her despair seemed an actual weight crushing her down to earth. How she dragged herself through her work during the rest of the evening, she hardly knew. It was only a feeling of its not being fair on the other tired waitresses that kept her from running away. What was it one of them had said only that morning? ‘It’s a dog’s life and I’d as lief be dead.’ Dead! A sudden picture came to Joan of herself lying white and stark on her little lodging house bed. Yes, and how easily it could happen. She had read in newspapers of people committing suicide by turning on the gas. What a simple solution! It involved no pain; everyone would think it an accident. Perhaps then her father would be sorry for his behaviour. Tears came into her eyes at the thought. “My poor child,” he would say as he bent over her straightened corpse, “how I have wronged you.” He would regret then that he had not acceded to her wishes, that he had not helped her a little in her career. Why, he might have bought the best theatre in New York for her and hardly have known it. He might have commissioned the greatest dramatists to write her plays. But now it was too late; now she was lost to him, lost to the world for ever; dead, without ever having had her chance. “Say, Waitress, could you please bring two Vanilla ice creams?” The order jerked her back into life out of the dramatic reverie.

At last nine o’clock came; the attendant began to shut up the buffet. Joan got her hat and started homeward along the gravelled path. Suddenly she found her new friend by her side. “I hope you won’t think it an impertinence, Miss North,” he said, raising his hat, “but there’s some business I want to talk over with you, and this seems the only chance.”

Joan looked at him quickly. Since the episode with Mr. Chalfont she had been on her guard. But it was absolutely impossible to imagine anything of that sort with this man. He was a person of honour, she felt instinctively, as her eyes passed over his lean, irregular face, with its clear, almost boyish, eyes. But what business could he possibly have with her? Did he want to capture her support for the socialist movement? Or, perhaps he kept a restaurant and had been impressed by her powers as a waitress. “What is it?” she asked as they walked along together.

“You said you didn’t know my name--it’s Adam Fletcher. Most likely you still don’t know it, but you will have heard of my play, ‘The Under Dog.’”

Joan stopped short in her amazement. “You don’t mean to say it was you who wrote ‘The Under Dog?’” she gasped. As her companion nodded, she went on excitedly. “But it is quite fine! I thought it was the best modern play I had seen.” She pulled herself up. “Of course you don’t need me to praise it, when it has been such a terrible success. Why, they called it the record breaker in New York, and said there were to be four companies out in it next fall--a whole pack of little underdogs running all over the States! Though that doesn’t mean so much,” she went on meditatively. “A play may be popular and not be any good. But your play is good. If you hadn’t tried too hard to show how badly the underdog had been used, it might have been great.”

Mr. Fletcher had been looking both amused and interested. “That is about the best bit of criticism I have heard,” he said, “and I have heard quite a good deal! But you see, Miss North, I wasn’t out for greatness, but to rub into folks the scandalous unfairness of present conditions. Not that the play has achieved it--perhaps, just because it isn’t great. People crowd to it; they find it new and exciting; but not one of them cares a hang about what I mean underneath.”

“I don’t know. It made _me_ think of things like that for the first time,” Joan told him simply.

Mr. Fletcher looked almost grateful. “Well, you will understand then, Miss North, how I felt at seeing ‘Under Dog’ cigars selling at thirty cents apiece.” There was a slight change in his tone. “They call the play a record-breaker. I call it a failure! I almost hate its running so long.”

“But it wouldn’t be less of a failure from your point of view, if it were more of one from Mr. Hobson’s,” Joan urged. “If the play were not running at all, no one could be improved by it. Besides you must think of your actors.”

“Yes, and that is just what I want to think about. I didn’t come here to talk of that old ‘Dog.’ Hobson is producing a new play of mine in the fall--‘The Combine’ it is called; it deals with a garment workers’ strike. Ever since I saw you in ‘Vivi,’ I have wanted you for the lead.”

“For the lead?” They had just reached one of the frequent seats along the path. Joan sank down on it; she felt herself trembling all over. A realization came to her of what these three words meant. She need not post the letter to Father. She could go on with her own work. Granny could live in comfort. Suddenly, to her surprise and dismay, she began to cry. “It’s too much. I can’t help it,” she sobbed.

Mr. Fletcher stood looking at her. “What a blamed fool I am,” he muttered. Then with a tact, for which Joan was infinitely grateful, he murmured something about seeing whether the ships were lit up to-night, and strolled to the next corner.

When he came back, the girl had got herself in hand. He sat down beside her. “Do you want to discuss it all now or wait till to-morrow, when you aren’t so tired?” he asked. She eagerly said now, so he began again. “I wrote Mr. Hobson about your playing the part the day after I had seen your performance at Norfolk.”

“But I have heard nothing from Mr. Hobson, nothing at all,” Joan protested doubtfully. “He can’t be willing for me to play it.”

“That’s where I’ve been such a fool. Mr. Hobson answered me in his own hand. He’s been motoring around the Desert of Sahara or some such place all his vacation, so he couldn’t trail his typist after him. Well, Mr. Hobson’s handwriting at any time is like a cuneiform inscription, but this letter was the limit. I made out something about writing to Miss North, and I thought for sure he’d written you direct, but now I guess he meant me to do it. Indeed, if I’d had any sense I might have concluded that that would be more probable, for Mr. Hobson hates letter writing like poison. Poor Walker nearly goes out of his mind every summer!”

“But Mr. Hobson was to return at the beginning of July, four weeks ago,” Joan still demurred. She dared not let herself believe the good news and then find it untrue.

“Oh no, Mr. Hobson only got back a couple of days since. He’s been running round Italy after Duse, trying to book her for an American tour, Walker said. I was at the office myself only last week slamming Walker for not knowing what had been fixed up with regard to you. And now it seems I am the culprit. I don’t know how to apologize enough, Miss North.”

“Nothing matters if I get the part. Do you really think I will?” Her voice was tense with anxiety.

“Well, I don’t promise Mr. Hobson will engage you straight away without hearing you read the part, but after your ‘Vivi,’ I can’t imagine there is much doubt.” There was an unexpected gentleness in the young man’s tone. Apart from Miss North’s tears, he could realize from her patched boots, her shabby gloves, from the whole situation in which he had found her, what this would mean to her. “Any way, _I_ feel you can do it, and what I say goes for something. When a play has made as much money as ‘The Under Dog’ these people get a new respect for an author. You take it from me, Miss North, it is all right.”

Joan had taken a letter out of her pocket, and was meditatively tearing it into very small pieces. Now she stood up, and, in reckless defiance of the many notices, flung the fragments into the water at her feet. “Only my acceptance of another engagement,” she told her companion. It was getting near closing time, so they walked towards the nearest exit. “Can I see the script of your play?” she asked.

“I’ll bring it to your restaurant to-morrow--that is if you promise not to make me eat another sixty course dinner.” It was arranged that he should come at three o’clock. “We might run through an act or two together,” he suggested, when he heard that she then had an hour off.

“Yes, but tell me more about it now. I can’t wait.” Nothing loth, Mr. Fletcher began. With the ardour of a creator or a lover, he expatiated upon his heroine ‘Sue.’ “It sounds a great part,” Joan said at last with a sigh of rapture, as Mr. Fletcher left her at her humble door.

The remarks that Adam Fletcher addressed over the ’phone to Mr. Hobson the following morning were both free and forcible. When America did produce a dramatic genius, he observed scathingly, it was odd that no better use could be found for her than washing up dishes in a popular restaurant. He guessed the girl was starving, he informed the astonished manager--indeed, Mr. Hobson had more reason for astonishment than the indignant young man realized.--Anyway, her clothes were worn out, and he was certain she hadn’t a cent. A little more and she’d be dead and off Mr. Hobson’s hands for ever.

This outburst, the exaggeration of which was due as much to Fletcher’s chivalrous anger with himself as with Mr. Hobson, resulted in a telegram--in length a letter--being immediately dispatched to Joan from the New York office. As her address seemed uncertain, it was sent care of Mr. Fletcher. He brought the missive in his pocket when he came to the restaurant that afternoon.

Joan did not get it at once, for Mr. Fletcher was thoughtfully afraid that she might again break down. Naturally he did not know how exceptional the last night’s scene had been. Indeed, that Joan should have cried before a stranger was the strongest testimony to the severity of the ordeal through which she had been passing. So he suggested their finding a secluded corner in the Exhibition grounds, where he could start reading his play. Only when they were established on a quiet seat under some trees did he produce the dispatch.

Joan opened the envelope without a tremor, although her heart was beating fast. Her life had been passed in an atmosphere of copious telegraphing, so she was not surprised at there being several pages, although she would have preferred a terser fate. As she read, she gathered that Mr. Fletcher had been right; Mr. Hobson did not positively commit himself. But she was asked to come to New York at once, all her travelling expenses being paid. If they did not think her suitable for ‘The Combine,’ some other opening would be offered her, either in New York or in a touring company. And--at last here was something definite--she was guaranteed a salary for three months of not less than a hundred dollars a week. Further an advance of five hundred dollars should be wired her immediately on receipt of her exact address.

Joan felt a little breathless--almost as though she had been running. Perhaps that was why she handed the dispatch to her companion without comment. “I must wire to my mother,” she said presently, when he had finished it. This name for Mrs. Lennox now came almost naturally to her lips.

At the telegraph office she found that she had only a dime in her pocket, the solitary tip she had so far received. Indeed, Tuesday usually found her penniless, for on that morning she paid her weekly bill for rent, breakfasts and laundry. Mr. Fletcher lent her the necessary sum on her laughing security of the managerial advance. “I guess we’ll wire Mr. Hobson your address right away, so that you get that advance to-day--then I’ll be sure of my money!” he told her with a serious concern underlying his pretended rapacity.

There was only time left for the first few pages of ‘The Combine.’ “But why can’t you cut the restaurant from now on?” Mr. Fletcher suggested. “Let us go round and hand in your ‘walking papers.’ Then we can come back here and I’ll be able to read you the whole play. Afterwards we would have dinner--at some other restaurant! We might take a boat for a bit, too; it would be good and cool on the water. You are looking about used up, you know, Miss North, and I can’t have that for my heroine. The author’s stage direction is ‘Sue assumes an attitude of complete repose.’”

It was very tempting. For a moment Joan hesitated. But perhaps from her father she had inherited a certain respect for a contract, even an unwritten one. On the Street ‘old John Van,’ although hard, was noted for never going back on a deal. “No, I can’t,” she said. “Of course I’ll give in my notice to-day, but I must stop till the end of the week--that is the rule. Besides, it would not be fair on the others; you don’t know how hard we are worked! What about Sue’s principles?” she went on with rather a weary smile. Had not Mr. Fletcher told her that the play was to preach the strength of union to working women? “I have got to live up to your ‘Combine.’”

“I don’t know but what you’re right,” Mr. Fletcher agreed regretfully. He looked at the girl with a new respect. His approval even made him lend her the manuscript of the play, despite its being his cherished and only script.

Although Joan had been honest in her unselfish desire not to leave until a substitute could be found, it was doubtful whether her services for the rest of the week were of very much value. From the star waitress she became one of the worst, indeed almost a ‘chaser.’ Oblivious of hungry, fidgeting customers, she would stand in a sort of trance, her lips moving and an ecstatic smile on her white face. Remarks addressed to her passed unheeded, unless they came from a certain fellow-waitress hailing from a Pittsburg shirtwaist factory. To this very ordinary girl Joan accorded an attention so rapt that it was almost painful to witness, and certainly bewildering to its recipient. In reply to the many enquiries as to why she was giving up the restaurant work, Joan stated that she was becoming a garment worker; her tone of hushed awe as she said it, seemed to confer on that humble pursuit the sanctity of a consecrated mission. At last a general opinion became current that poor Miss North was ‘going woozy in the head.’ “I always told her something would happen to her if she would fly around all the time the way she did,” one of the girls deplored almost tearfully.

“Oh, she’s all right.” This was the opinion of an older and more perspicacious waitress. “She’s going to get married; that’s what’s the matter with her. The garment worker lay is just to kid us. Ain’t you seen her beau--that long, lean feller that’s been hanging round all the week?”

It would have been considered still more certain that matrimony was in question had the girls known that Joan was taking Mr. Fletcher to Virginia Beach on Sunday to introduce him to Mrs. Lennox. Not that they were travelling down together, for Joan had asked the dramatist to tea, while she herself was going in the morning by a nine-thirty train. It necessitated a very early rise, for she had her things to pack and a final settling up with the kindly old landlady. On Tuesday she and her grandmother were going to New York, and for the two intervening nights, she had been hospitably invited by Mrs. Lennox’s ‘family.’ How delicious it would be to sleep again in a comfortable, and a fairly cool room, she told herself. The weather for the last few days had not been quite so unendurably hot, but her lodging appeared to have a private calorimotor of its own and had gone on simmering tropically. However, to her surprise, when the moment came to leave the bare, little room for ever, Joan found herself looking round it quite affectionately. Indeed, she almost resented the presence of her big trunk that stood ostentatiously in the centre ready strapped for the expressmen. How unhappy she had been here, she felt, but also how happy! These last nights, too hot for easy sleep, had been spent chiefly in an ecstasy of work. ‘Sue’ had begun to take life and shape; it was the birthplace of her first real part. The fact cast a glamour over the varnished pine walls, the carpetless floor, the scanty, ill-made furniture of the sweltering attic.

When the girl arrived at Virginia Beach, her grandmother was shocked at her appearance. She had the same abstracted, inhuman look, as when she had been studying ‘Vivi’ at Albany, but now it was even more pronounced. Her eyes were sunk with fatigue, and her face colourless. “My dear,” Mrs. Lennox exclaimed, “it is splendid about the play, but how dreadfully ill you look!”

“No, I am not ill--only tired. But to-night I am going to sleep and sleep. And, oh, Granny, I have got such an idea--it’s just immense! There’s a part in ‘The Combine’ that you would do absolutely perfectly. It might have been written on purpose. One of the garment women is much older than the rest; she has got a sick husband and a whole tribe of children. So when Sue calls the strike--that’s me, you know--this woman turns blackleg; she just can’t bear to hear the children crying with hunger. She and Sue have a scene together; I think it’s the biggest thing in the play. Oh, Granny, do you think you would be strong enough to do it?”

Mrs. Lennox’s face had flushed. She looked ten years younger. “I guess I would,” she said slowly, “especially as they are opening in New York. It isn’t like tearing around the country on tour.” Then she gave herself a little shake. “But what a ridiculous way we are talking! As though I could pick and choose. Why, my even asking for the part might be bad for your chance. Mr. Hobson would think it an imposition; he didn’t like my suggesting such a thing before.”

“But that’s where my idea comes in.” Joan gurgled joyfully. “It is going to be Mr. Fletcher who does the suggesting. You know I am going to read the play through with him when he comes here this afternoon. Well, I am going to remark, quite casually, that perhaps you would be kind enough to read one or two of the parts. As I am Sue, the old woman would naturally fall to you, and then--But let us start in, Granny. We shall have about three hours altogether and we must work hard.” They sat down on the couch, side by side, as in the girl’s school-days, and began to read the scenes together--only now it was Joan that gave the advice and Mrs. Lennox who accepted it.

At about four o’clock Mr. Fletcher arrived; after tea the play was brought out. Joan innocently observed that her mother was longing to hear it--might she be present at the reading? All unsuspecting, the young man agreed, both to that, and to the further suggestion that Miss West should take one of the parts. As Miss North’s mother began, he looked surprised; there was an unmistakable professional note in her voice. “I had forgotten you had been on the stage too,” he said pleasantly at the first pause. “Miss Frances West, isn’t it? Yes, I remember now; I suppose Miss North inherits her talent.”

During the first scene Joan had been feeling tired, perhaps anxious; she could not warm into it. Adam Fletcher was not disappointed; at this early reading he did not expect more. Now the girl suddenly took fire. Both the author and her grandmother stared at her. How had she had the time, they both were thinking, to bring her work up to this level? It had the effect of lifting Mrs. Lennox up too. The old garment worker had not yet spoken. When she did, Mrs. Lennox knew that she was reading it well--better than she would have imagined it possible. Presently there came the big scene. Joan had evidently already got her words. Almost unconsciously, it seemed, she started from the chair and began to act. She was upbraiding the elder woman for betraying the Cause. Mrs. Lennox’s defence, her description of the hungry children, was very tender and pitiful. The two played together admirably. “I had given them all there was in the house. We had no more. I could not see them suffer,” wailed the elder woman. “Even those we love must suffer for the future happiness of humanity,” the inexorable ‘Sue’ decreed. With a sudden inspiration, Mrs. Lennox staggered forward, evidently fainting. Was it not probable that she would do so? She had given her own breakfast, most of her meals for many days, to feed her hungry brood. ‘Sue’ caught the tottering, feeble figure as it fell and sustained it in her strong, young arms. She seemed the triumphant embodiment of the cause that Adam Fletcher was trying to preach.

The author got up. “I guess I’ll wire Hobson that both these parts are filled,” he said quietly.