Joan Thursday: A Novel. Vance Louis Joseph

passing on over Long Island, leaving in its wake a slackening drizzle amid deep-throated growls at constantly lengthening intervals.

      Half-clothed children were seeping in swelling streams from the tenements as the two – Austin holding the umbrella, Joan with a hand on her escort's arm, her skirts gathered high about her trim ankles – splashed through lukewarm puddles toward Third Avenue. A faint and odorous vapour steamed up from wet and darkly lustrous asphalt.

      They hurried on in silence: Austin dumbly content with his conquest of the aloof tolerance which the girl had theretofore shown him, and planning bolder and more masterful steps; Joan all ecstatic with the prospect of seeing for the first time a "Broadway show"…

      A few minutes before nine they left the cross-town car at Broadway and Forty-second Street.

      Though she had lived all her young years within the boundaries of New York, never before had Joan experienced the sensation of being a unit of that roaring flood of life which nightly scours Longacre Square, with scarce a perceptible change in volume, winter or summer. Yet she accepted it with apparently implacable calm. She felt as if she had been born to this, as if she were coming tardily into her birthright – something of which each least detail would in time become most intimate to her.

      They were already late, and Austin hurried her. A brief, hasty walk brought them to the theatre, where Austin left her in a corner of the lobby with the promise that he would return in a very few minutes: he had to see a friend "round back," he explained in an undertone. But Joan remained a target for boldly enquiring glances for full ten minutes before he reappeared. Even then, with a nod to her to wait, Austin went to the box-office window. She was not deceived as to the general tenor of his fortunes there – saw him place a card on the ledge and confer inaudibly with the ticket-seller, and then reluctantly remove the card and substitute for it two one-dollar bills, for which he received two slips of pasteboard.

      "House 'most sold out," he muttered uncomfortably in her ear as an elevator carried them to the roof. "Best I could get was table seats."

      "They're just as good as any," she whispered, with a look of gratitude that temporarily turned his head.

      The elevator discharged them into a vast hall with walls and a roof of glass. Artificial wistaria festooned its beams and pillars of steel, palms and potted plants lined the walls. A myriad electric bulbs glimmered dimly throughout the auditorium, brilliantly upon the small stage. Deep banks of chairs radiated back from the footlights, to each its tenant staring greedily in one common direction.

      An usher waved the newcomers to the left. Ultimately they found seats at a small table in a far corner of the enclosure.

      Austin was disappointed, and made his disappointment known in a public grumble: the table was too far away; they couldn't see nothin' – might's well not've come. Joan smiled his ill-humour away, insisting that the seats were fine. Mollified, he summoned a waiter and ordered beer for himself, for Joan a glass of lemonade – a weirdly decorated and insipid concoction which, nevertheless, Joan absorbed with the keenest relish.

      In point of fact, the distance from their seats to the stage offered little obstacle to her complete enjoyment: her senses were all youthful and unimpaired; she saw and heard what many another missed of those in their neighbourhood. Furthermore, Joan brought to an entertainment of this character a point of view fresh, virginal, and innocent of the very meaning of ennui. She sat forward on the extreme edge of her chair, imperceptibly a-quiver with excitement, avid of every sight and sound. All that was tawdry, vulgar, and contemptible escaped her: she was sensitive only to the illusion of splendour and magnificence, and lived enraptured by dream-like music, exquisite wit, and the poetic beauty of femininity but half-clothed, or less, and viewed through a kaleidoscopic play of coloured light.

      During the intermission she bent an elbow on the sloppy table-top and chattered at Austin with a vivacity new in his knowledge of her, and for which he had no match…

      At one time during the second part of the performance, the auditorium was suddenly darkened, while attention was held to the stage by the antics of a pair of German comedians. But in the shadows that now surrounded them (quite unconscious that Austin had seized this opportunity to capture her warm young hand) Joan became aware of a number of figures issuing from a side-door to the stage. She saw them marshalled in ranks of two – a long double file, vaguely glimmering through the obscurity. And then the comedians darted into the wings, the lights blazed out at full strength all over the enclosure, and a roll of drums crescendo roused the audience to a tremendous and exhilarating novelty: a procession of chorus girls in hip-tights and hussar tunics who, each with a snare-drum at waist, had stolen down the aisle, into the heart of the auditorium.

      For a long moment they marked time, drumming skilfully, their leader with her polished baton standing beside Joan. Then the orchestra blared out an accompaniment, and they strode away, turning left and marching up the centre aisle to the stage… Joan marked, with pulses that seemed to beat in tune to the drumming, the wistful beauty of many of the painted faces with their aloof eyes and fixed smiles of conscious self-possession, the richness of their uniforms, their bare powdered arms, the pretty legs in their silken casings. Oblivious to the libidinous glances of the goggling men they passed, she envied them one and all – the meanest and homeliest of them even as the most proud and beautiful – this chance of theirs to act, to be admired, to win the homage of the herd…

      She awoke as from idyllic dreams to find herself again in a Third Avenue car, homeward bound. But still her brain was drowsy with memories of the splendour and the glory; fragments of haunting melody ran through her thoughts; and visions haunted her, of herself commanding a similar meed of adoration…

      Austin's arm lay along the top of the seat behind her; his fingers rested lightly against the sleeve of her shirtwaist. She did not notice them. To his clumsily playful advances she returned indefinite, monosyllabic answers, accompanied by her charming smile of a grateful child…

      On the third landing of their tenement they paused to say good night, visible to one another only in a faint light reflected up from the gas-jet burning low in the hall below. The smell of humanity and its food hung in the clammy air they breathed. A hum of voices from the many cells of the hive buzzed in their ears. But Joan forgot them all.

      She hesitated, embarrassed with the difficulty of finding words adequate to express her thanks.

      Austin tried awkwardly to help her out: "Well, I guess it's good night, kid."

      She said, exclamatory: "O Ben! I've had such a good time!"

      "Dja? Glad to hear it. Will you go again – next week? I guess I can work som'other show, all right."

      Compunction smote as memory reminded her. "But – Ben – didn't you have to pay for those tickets?"

      "Oh, that's all right. I couldn't find the fella I was lookin' for, round back."

      "I'm so sorry – "

      "Gwan! It wasn't nothin'. Cheap at the price, if you liked it, little girl."

      "I liked it awfully! But I won't go again, unless you show me the pass first."

      "Wel-l, we'll see about that." He edged a pace nearer.

      Suddenly self-conscious, Joan drew back and offered her hand. "Good night and – thank you so much, Ben."

      He took the hand, but retained it. "Ah, say! is this all I get? I thought you kinda liked me…"

      "I do, Ben, but – "

      "Well, a kiss won't cost you nothin'. It's your turn now."

      "But, Ben – but, Ben – "

      "Oh, well, if that's the way you feel about it – "

      He made as if to relinquish her hand. But to be thought lacking in generosity had stung her beyond endurance. Without stopping to think – blindly and quickly, so that she might not think – she gave herself to his arms.

      "Well," she breathed in a soft voice, "just one…"

      "Just one, eh?" He pressed his lips to hers. "Oh, I don't know about that!"

      He tightened his embrace. Her heart was hammering madly. His mouth hurt