Poor inexperienced Joanna!
Peter’s vagaries were not her only worries. She was undergoing just now what she would have termed a really serious disappointment. Her dancing, on which she had spent so many years, so much of her father’s and her own money, on which she had built so many high hopes, was destined, it seemed, to avail her nothing.
She had been so sure. Her art was so perfect, so complete that even Bertully, cynic though he was, believed that in her case the American stage must let down the bars.
“They have but to see you, Mademoiselle, to réaliser zat you are somebody, zat you have ze great gift. And when they see you to danse, v’la!” He snapped his thin fingers. Joanna, he told his assistant, Madame Céleste, was the best pupil he’d ever had.
“You look at her and she is ze child, so grave, so sage. In another moment she is like a wild creature, a Bacchante. Onless zey are all fools, these Américains, they take her up, hein Céleste?”
Madame Céleste nodded a dark, assenting head.
Bertully himself accompanied her. There were three or four managers for whom he had done favors.
They went first to a Mr. Abrams, who received Joanna kindly. “I’m sure of your ability, my dear girl, and you ought to go. You’re young. I can see you could be made into a beauty. With Bertully recommending you as he does, you must be a wizard. But the white American public ain’t ready for you yet, they won’t have you.”
He looked at her reflectively a few seconds.
“I know the day is coming, but not for some time yet. That don’t console you much, does it? I’ve got an idea of my own, if I think I can put it over, I’ll send for you.”
“Courage,” said Bertully, helping her into the taxi, “there are some others.”
The next manager, David Kohler, was explicit and to the point. “Couldn’t make any money out of you. America doesn’t want to see a colored dancer in the role of a première danseuse. How’s that accent, Bertully? She wants you to be absurd, grotesque. Of course,” tentatively, “you couldn’t consider being corked up—you’re brown but you’re too light as you are—and doing a breakdown?”
“No,” said Joanna shortly, “I couldn’t. Shall we go, Monsieur?”
By the time they reached the third manager, Joanna for all her natural assurance had become a little timid. Bertully’s name had gained them almost instant admission to the manager, but it was hard in the short wait to listen to the scarcely veiled comments of the office girls and the other applicants.
“Say, what do you suppose she is?”
“Must be a South American.”
“She ain’t, she’s a nigger or I don’t know one.”
“Say, she’s got her nerve comin’ here. Think Snyder’ll give her anything?”
“Will he? Not a chance!”
Her cheeks were so flushed when she went in that she really was beautiful. But Snyder gave her one look, checked himself in the act of raising his hat, swung around to the Frenchman.
“This your great find, Bertully?”
“Mais oui,” the old man began excitedly.
The other calmly lit a big black cigar.
“You needn’t wait, Miss. Like to oblige you, Bertully, but I couldn’t do a thing for you.” He walked across the office, held the door open for them, bent over Bertully’s ear. “You’ll ruin your trade teachin’ niggers, Bertully. Better take my tip.”
They rode down in the elevator in silence. Joanna, scarlet to the ears, saw the conjectures written in the eyes of the other passengers as they observed her and the Frenchman’s elaborate courtesies. She would take up no more of his time, she told him, thanking him for his kindness; she would go home now. He understood and beckoned her a taxi, into which he helped her with another elaborate display of courtesy, much to the interest of several spectators.
“So silly of me to mind this,” Joanna scolded herself. But she did mind it. How could it be possible that she, Joanna Marshall, was meeting with rebuffs? Not that she was conceited. The point was that she had grown up in her own and Joel’s belief—namely, that honest effort led invariably to success. This was probably the first time in her life that she had been thwarted. She was like a spoiled child, bewildered and indignant at being suddenly brought to book.
The week before Christmas a note came from Peter.
“Of course I’ve been planning as usual to come home, Jan. But we haven’t been hitting it off so well lately. Thought I’d better write and see if you really wanted me to.”
She wrote him. “Of course I want you.” Heavens, what would Christmas be without Peter!
He told her on what train he was arriving and asked her to meet it. She might have done so, but her day was as usual very full and she had a rehearsal at six—of indefinite length. She would have to cut out something. Too bad it had to be meeting Peter. But he surely would come up to the house at once.
Her accompanist appeared promptly and they put in a hard two hours. Joanna, her ear unconsciously straining for the telephone or the doorbell, was not up to her usual mark. Eight o’clock and Peter not here and his train in at four! Well, he wasn’t coming then. She plunged into hard work. Her father came by the door and watched her, thinking what a picture she made in her pretty dress. She had put on one of her old stage frocks, for she usually did better work if she created for herself, as nearly as possible, the atmosphere of the stage. At nine-thirty the accompanist left.
“We went rather slowly at first, but you came out splendidly at the end, Miss Marshall. You were a little bit tired, perhaps.”
“That must have been it. Thank you and good night, Miss Eggleston.”
Still no Peter! “Mean thing,
