Joan Thursday: A Novel. Vance Louis Joseph

She wanted frantically to get away, to regain possession of herself; and wanted it the more because, dimly through the tumult of thought and emotion, she was conscious of the fact that she rather liked it.

      "Joan…" Austin murmured in a tone that, soft with the note of wooing, was yet vibrant with the elation of the conqueror, "Joan…"

      One arm shifted up from her waist and his big hand rested heavily over her heart.

      For a breath she seemed numb and helpless, suffocating with the tempest of her senses. Then like lightning there pierced her confusion the memory of the knee that had driven her from the car, only that afternoon: symbolic of the bedrock beastliness of man. With a quick twist and wrench she freed herself and reeled a pace or two away.

      "Ben!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anger. "You – you brute – !"

      "Why, what's the matter?"

      "What right had you to – to touch me like that?" she panted, retreating as he advanced.

      He paused, realizing that he had made a false move which bade fair to lose him his prey entirely. Only by elaborate diplomacy would he ever be able to reëstablish a footing of friendship; weeks must elapse now before he would gain the advantage of another kiss from her lips. He swore beneath his breath.

      "I didn't mean nothin'," he said in a surly voice. "I don't see as you got any call to make such a fuss."

      "Oh, don't you?.. Don't you!" She felt as if she must choke if she continued to parley with him. "Well, I do!" she flashed; and turning, ran up the fourth flight of steps.

      He swung on his heel, muttering; and she heard him slam the door to his flat.

      She continued more slowly, panting and struggling to subdue the signs of her emotion. But she was poisoned to the deeps of her being with her reawakened loathing of Man. On the top landing she paused, blinking back her tears, digging her nails into her palms while she fought down a tendency to sob, then drew herself up, took a deep breath, and advancing to the dining-room, turned the knob with stealth, to avoid disturbing her family.

      To her surprise and dismay, as the first crack widened between the door and jamb, she saw that the room was lighted.

      Wondering, she walked boldly in.

      Her father was seated at the dining-table, a cheap pipe gripped between his teeth. Contrary to his custom, when he sat up late, he was not thumbing his dope. His fat, hairy arms were folded upon the oilcloth, his face turned squarely to the door. Instinctively Joan understood that he had waited up for her, that inexplicably a crisis was about to occur in her relations with her family.

      In a chair tilted back against the wall, near the window opening upon the air-shaft, Butch sat, his feet drawn up on the lower rung, purple lisle-thread socks luridly displayed, hands in his trouser-pockets, a cigarette drooping from his cynical mouth, a straw hat with brilliant ribbon tilted forward over his eyes.

      Closing the door, Joan put her back to it, eyes questioning her parent. Butch did not move. Thursby sagged his chin lower on his chest.

      "Where have you been?" he demanded in deep accents, with the incisive and precise enunciation which she had learned to associate only with his phases of bad temper.

      "Where've I been?" she repeated, stammering. "Where… Why – out walking – "

      "Street-walking?" he suggested with an ugly snarl.

      She sank, a limp, frightened figure, into a chair near the door.

      "Why, pa – what do you mean?"

      "I mean I'm going to find out the why and wherefore of the way you're behaving yourself. You're my daughter, and not of age yet, and I have a right to know what you do and where you go. Keep still!" he snapped, as she started to interrupt. "Speak when you're spoken to… I'm going to have a serious talk with you, young woman… What's all this I hear about your losing your job and going on the stage?"

      IV

      For a brief moment Joan sat agape, meeting incredulously the keen, contemptuous gaze of her father. Then she pulled herself together with determination to be neither browbeaten nor overborne.

      "Where'd you hear that about me?" she demanded ominously.

      Thursby shook his ponderous head: "It makes no difference – "

      "It makes a lot of difference to me!" she cut in, sharply contentious. "You might's well tell me, because I won't talk to you if you don't."

      Butch brushed the brim of his hat an inch above his eyes and threw her a glance of approbation. Thursby hesitated, his large, mottled face sullen and dark in the bluish illumination provided by the single gas-jet wheezing above the table. Then reluctantly he gave in.

      "Old Inness was in the store this evening. He said – "

      "Never mind what he said! I guess I know. Gussie's been shooting off her face about me at home. And of course old Inness hadn't nothing better to do than to run off and tell you everything he knew!"

      "Then you don't deny it?" Thursby insisted.

      "I don't have to. It's true. No, I don't deny it," she returned, aping his manner to exasperation.

      "How'd you come to lose your job?"

      "Mr. Winter insulted me – one of the floor-walkers – if you've got to know."

      Thursby's head wagged heavily while he weighed this information, and he regarded his daughter with a baleful, morose glare, his fat hands trembling.

      "What did you say to this man, Winter?" he asked presently.

      "Told him I'd slap his face if he tried anything like that on me again. So he reported me up to the management – lied about me – and I got fired."

      There was a long silence, through which Thursby pondered the matter, his thick lips moving inaudibly, while Joan sat upright, maintaining her attitude of independence and defiance, and Butch, grinning lazily, as if at some private jest, manufactured ring after ring of smoke in the still, close air.

      Before her father spoke again, Joan became cognizant of Edna and her mother, like twin ghosts in their night-dresses, stealing silently, barefooted, to listen just within the door of the adjoining bedroom.

      "And what do you propose to do now?" asked Thursby at length, lifting his weary, haunted gaze to his daughter's face. "What's this about your going on the stage?"

      Joan set her jaw firmly. "That's what I'm going to do."

      Thursby shook his head with decision. "I won't have it," he said.

      "Oh, you won't? Well, I'd like to know how you're going to stop me. I'm tired slaving behind a counter for a dog's wages – and that eaten up by fines because I won't go out with the floor-walkers. I'm going to do the best I can for myself. I'm going to be an actress, so's I can make a decent living for Edna and ma and myself."

      "A decent living!" Thursby mocked without mirth. "You're old enough to know better than that."

      "I'm old enough to know which side my bread's buttered on," the girl flashed back angrily. "I'm through living in this dirty flat and giving up every dollar I make to keep us all from starving. God knows what we'd do if it wasn't for me with a steady job, and Edna working during the season. You don't do anything to help us out: all you get goes on the ponies. I don't see any reason why I got to consult you if I choose to better myself."

      She rose the better to end her tirade with a stamp of her foot. Thursby likewise got up, if more sluggishly, and moved round the table to confront her.

      "You don't go on the stage – no!" he said. "That's settled. Understand?"

      "Oh, I get you," she replied, with a flirt of her head, "but I don't agree with you. I'm going down town first thing tomorrow to try for a job with – with," she hesitated, "Ziegfield's Follies!"

      "You will do nothing of the sort," he insisted fiercely, congested veins starting out upon his forehead. "You're my daughter, and those are my orders to you, and you'll obey 'em or I'll know the reason why. You…" He faltered as if choking. Then he flung out an arm, with a violent