Annan, leaving the Province Club--one of the remaining threads
attaching him to the conventional world--espied Coltfoot.
They had not met in weeks, and they shook hands affectionately.
“What are you doing these days, Mike?” inquired Annan.
“Hunting geniuses as a dog hunts fleas. What’s your latest effort,
Barry?”
“No effort. I am awaiting with composure the birth of my great novel.”
“Any good?” demanded the other with professional curiosity.
“It’s good enough to sell in Heaven,” replied Annan modestly.
“Not so good then,” grunted Coltfoot. “And if that’s all you’re doing
this afternoon, why not saunter along with me?”
“Gladly, but whither?”
“To 57th Street. Frank Donnell is running Betsy Blythe’s stuff this
afternoon. Don’t you want to see it?”
“Why, yes--of course.”
Annan signalled a club taxi in waiting; they rolled away together,
Coltfoot directing the driver to go to “The Looking Glass”--quite the
most charming little motion-picture house yet erected on Manhattan
Island.
“Albert Wesly Smull built it,” remarked Coltfoot. “It’s a gem.”
“Isn’t Smull one of that bunch of sports behind Betsy Blythe?”
“One of ’em. I hear ‘The Looking Glass’ is the first of a string of
picture houses that Smull means to build and operate.”
“I supposed that Wall Street men had learned to fight shy of pictures,”
remarked Annan.
“You can’t scare them away. It’s a bigger gamble than their own. That’s
why.”
They stopped at the pretty bit of colonial architecture on
Fifty-Seventh Street, and entered a private corridor where an elevator
whisked them to the third floor.
There were a number of people in Frank Donnell’s office.
Donnell, prematurely grey, smooth-shaven and with the manners of a
gentleman, greeted Coltfoot who, in turn, made him known to Annan.
Other men spoke to them, Dick Quilling--whose novel had been filmed for
Miss Blythe--a dapper, restless young man, eternally caressing a small
and pointed moustache with nicotine-stained fingers; Stoll, celebrated
camera-man, silent, dreamy and foreign; David Zanger, art-director, a
stumpy, fat man with no eyelashes, a round, pock-marked face, frayed
cuffs and dirty fingers.
Annan, looking about, discovered Betsy Blythe, returned a smile for her
swift frown, and went over to make his peace for his long neglect of
her.
“Where’s that blooming continuity you were to do for me?” she demanded
irritably.
“I’m still evolving it, most beautiful of women----”
“Gentle liar, you’ve never given it another thought. I suppose you
can’t help gazing at people as though you mean what you say, can you,
Barry?” And, to the man seated beside her--“You remember Mr. Annan,
Albert?”
Albert Wesly Smull got up--an elaborately-groomed man of ruddy,
uncertain age. His expression, always verging on a smile, might have
been agreeable if less persistent. He had a disturbing habit of smiling
rather fixedly at people out of small, red-brown eyes.
He knew Annan by sight, it appeared. They shook hands politely.
“I used to see you in the Patroon’s Club,” said Mr. Smull. “I know your
aunt very well,” he added with his sanguine smile.
“Probably better than I do,” said Annan. “I’m socially disinherited,
you know.”
Smull’s reddish-brown eyes clung to Annan like two gadflies.
“Your aunt is a very wonderful old lady,” he said; “--a great power in
New York under the old régime--” His eyes began to move, leaving Annan
and turning toward the window where people were grouped.
“The grand dame is done for in this town,” remarked Betsy. “She’s as
important in these days as a stuffed Dodo.”
Annan caught sight of Rosalind Shore near the window; Betsy shrugged
her congé; he went across to Rosalind, who stood with other people
looking at stills which Frank Donnell was sorting on a table.
“Hello, ducky!” said Rosalind, extending one fair hand and drawing
Annan to her side. “We’re looking at Mr. Stoll’s delightful stills.
Isn’t this one interesting?”--holding up the finished photograph.
“How wonderfully Betsy screens! Look, Nan,”--turning to one of the
girls behind her; and then, remembering, she introduced Annan to Nancy
Cassell, a small, blond girl, as nervously organised as a butterfly.
“Your stories in the _Planet_ have cost me many a tear, Mr. Annan,”
said Miss Cassell. “Why do you always exterminate your heroes and
heroines?”
“Somebody’s got to thin ’em out,” he explained, “or they’d become a
pest like the sparrow and the potato beetle----”
“If you don’t save a pair for breeding they’ll become extinct,”
retorted Nancy. “I’m going to join a hero-heroine protective
association with a closed season for mating.... Please join.” Her eyes
flickered provocation, curiosity, defiance. As usual he ignored the
challenge.
Donnell, with his gentle but wearied smile, handed her a new
photograph, and offered a second to Rosalind. Behind them, in the
recess of the window, was another girl, and Donnell turned with kindly
courtesy and handed her a still. As he moved aside to give her room at
the table, Annan, also, politely made a place for her, noticing her
supple grace as she moved forward in silhouette, the sun, behind her,
outlining a curved cheek and slender neck.
And suddenly he knew her.
“Eris!” he exclaimed, delighted.
“I was afraid you didn’t remember me, Mr. Annan----”
A slim hand, scarce ventured, lay in his,--lay very still and cool and
unresponsive.
“Eris,--_Eris!_” he repeated with a boyish warmth so unfeigned that the
bright colour slowly came into her face and her hand reacted nervously
to his.
Rosalind gave them a lazy glance over her shoulder: “Ding-dong! Take
your corners,” she said, offering them a still in which Eris figured.
And, to Eris: “I’ll tell you something, my dear; if I screened like
you I’d quit squalling top notes.... _Look_ at her in this one, Barry!
Isn’t she _too_ sweet? Isn’t Eris wonderful, Frank?”--to Mr. Donnell,
who smiled in his amiable, tired way and sorted out more photographs.
“Here, my dear,” said Rosalind, offering another still to Eris, “I can
stand a prettier girl than I am for just so long. But you and Barry may
admire indefinitely if you like.”
The lovely colour of embarrassment came into the girl’s face as she
took the photograph thrust upon her:
“Mr. Stoll gets the best out of one,” she protested. “The rest is all
in the make-up, Rosalind----”
“The rest is all in _you_,” retorted Rosalind. “You’re scaring us all
stiff with your beauty. God help us to bear it.”
Eris, holding her own picture, let her flushed glance stray toward
Annan as he bent beside her.
“You’re coming into your own, Eris,” he said gaily. “I can see what you
have done for yourself already.”
“You can see what _you_ have done for me,” she replied under her breath.
“What?”
“You gave me my chance.”
“Nonsense. Betsy did that. You are doing the rest for yourself. You’re
making good. That’s evident. You’re happy, too.... Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, little pilgrim,” he said smilingly, “I guess you really knew
your business that night under the stars in the Park. And the credit is
all yours----”
“It’s _yours_!” she interrupted with a sudden passion in her voice that
startled him.
“My dear child,” he protested, but she went on breathlessly:
“I know what you’ve done if _you_ don’t! You made it all possible. This
is what I craved; what I needed. It’s _life_ to me, Mr. Annan. And you
gave it.”
“I had absolutely nothing to----”
“You did! You had everything to do with it. From the time you spoke to
me in the Park to the time I left a letter for you, I _lived_ for the
first time in my life. You don’t understand. Kindness comes very easy
to you--and--and out of your rich store you are--are generous with the
treasures of your mind----”
Something choked her; she averted her head.
Surprised, yet half inclined to laugh, he waited a moment. Then:
“You are so delightfully grateful for nothing,” he said. “I wish I
really had done you a service.”
She spoke, unsteadily, still looking away from him:
“You don’t understand.... I can’t trust myself now.... I seem to be
emotional----” She shook her head and he saw the bobbed hair glimmer
red against the sunny window.
As they stood there in the curtained recess, Frank Donnell’s voice rose
above the general conversation:
“Isn’t that operator nearly ready in the projection room?”
Mr. Zanger left the room to inquire.
Annan turned and accidentally encountered Mr. Smull’s fixed smile.
Something in the persistent, sanguine gaze of the man annoyed him--as
though Mr. Smull had had him under impertinent observation for some
time without his knowledge. He turned to Eris:
“I wish you really were under obligations to me,” he said lightly,
“--you assume imaginary ones so adorably. Shall we go and see how you
and Betsy behave yourselves on the screen?”
She nodded with a swift intake of breath--let him draw her arm through
his. They followed the little crowd now moving toward the review room.
Seated together there in the semi-darkness, they watched Frank Donnell
and Max Stoll take their places at desks on a raised platform behind
them. A stenographer, with pad and pencil, came in and seated herself
at Donnell’s elbow.
Out went the lights except the green-shaded globe on Donnell’s desk.
The screen sprang into silvery relief.
Donnell half turned, looking up over his shoulder toward the concealed
operator above:
“All right, Jim. Don’t speed her too much. About 85. And watch your
frames.”
“Are you ready, Mr. Donnell?”
“Go ahead.”
* * * * *
No continuity was attempted. There were no titles, not even scratch
ones. Take followed take, faded or irised out. Nobody unacquainted with
the story could possibly follow it.
In the darkness and silence there was no sound except the droning of
the machine, and Donnell’s calm voice occasionally,--“Frame! _Frame_
her, Jim!” And whispered exclamations of approval at some unusually
beautiful shot of Stoll’s, or at some fragment revealing Betsy,
radiantly in action, or a butterfly flash of Nancy Cassell, or a lovely
glimpse of Eris.
The door of the outer corridor kept opening and closing to admit
professionals arriving late. The darkness was becoming thronged with
people standing back against the door and walls.
Once, as Betsy was enduring a chaste embrace from Wally Crawford, the
film broke. Everybody joined in the gaiety. Then the little audience
re-settled itself with scrape of chair and rustle of skirt as Donnell’s
shaded globe glimmered out, revealing a crowded room.
Annan leaned over toward Betsy: “Good work,” he said cordially. “You’re
splendid. I hope the story is as clever.”
“Thank you, Barry. Frank thinks it ought to go over.”
“It’s beautifully cast and beautifully kissed, Betsy!”
Coltfoot’s voice from the dark: “--But the censor won’t let you kiss
anybody but your grandmother.”
“Great stuff, Betsy,” added Rosalind from somewhere. “God and the
Middle West will forgive that kiss!”
“All set, Mr. Donnell,” came the operator’s voice from above.
“Go ahead!” The light in the shaded globe snapped off; the drone of the
machine filled the room. On the screen Eris, in a rowboat, rested on
her oars and laughed at Betsy swimming toward her, pursued by her young
man. His permanent wave defied the waves.
Annan thought: “Betsy is sure an artist or she’d never stand for the
beauty of this child, Eris.... I wonder how long she _can_ afford to
stand for it?”
He bent close to the girl in the wicker chair beside him: “I couldn’t
know that you really had it in you, Eris, could I?” he whispered.
“Do you think I have?” she breathed.
He whispered: “I _know_ it. You are a born actress, Eris. Your work is
charming.”
He felt her breath lightly on his cheek:
“It’s all Frank Donnell: _I_ wouldn’t know what to do. He tells me and
shows me. I try to comprehend. I do exactly what he tells me.”
“If you weren’t a born actress, even Frank Donnell couldn’t do anything
with you. It’s _you_, Eris. You’re intelligent; you’re lovely to look
at. I can’t see why your future isn’t in your own hands.”
“I’m simply crazy to talk to you about it. Could I?” she whispered
excitedly.
“Of course,” he said, much flattered.
“I’ve wanted to for so long. There are so many things, Mr. Annan--and
you could tell me why.”
Still the same, wistful cry, “Will you tell me why?”--and he remembered
it, now, guiltily, sorry for his long neglect.
“Are you still living in Jane Street, Eris?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I come to see you?”
“I haven’t a place to receive you.”
“Only a bed-room? It wouldn’t do, I suppose.”
“They wouldn’t let me. Mrs. Plummer is strict----”
“Quite right.... Do you mind dining with me some evening?”
She hesitated: “Where?”
“Anywhere you choose. The Ritz?”
“I haven’t--suitable clothes----”
“If you feel that way, will you dine with me at my house?”
“You’re so kind, Mr. Annan. I’d love to! When may I----”
Their whispering was making somebody in front restless. Annan’s slight
pressure on her arm silenced her. He seemed to recollect that Mr.
Smull sat directly in front of Eris; and, again, very vaguely he was
conscious of irritation.
There was no use in attempting to guess at the story which the machine
above was steadily unreeling. It all seemed an inconsequential jumble
of repetitions, full of aggravating close-ups--which better taste, some
day, will eliminate from the screen.
When he thought Mr. Smull was again quiescent, Annan placed his lips
close to the unseen ear of the girl beside him:
“Come Thursday at seven.... Shall I ask anybody else?”
She shook her head. Then, turning impulsively to whisper to him, in the
darkness her lips brushed his.
Instantly she recoiled, almost upsetting her chair, and he caught it
and steadied her.
His inclination to laugh subsided. He could not see her face, but, in
the chilled silence, he was conscious of her dismay and of her rigid
body beside him.
The shock of contact confused him, too. A delicate perfume of chaste
youth seemed to cling to him, invade him, disturbing his natural ease
and fluency. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he found nothing
flippant to say.
For a long while they remained mute, unstirring, as the endless reel
droned on and on.
Finally,--and very careful not to touch her,--he ventured to whisper:
“Why not make it this evening--unless you are otherwise engaged?”
He could scarcely hear her reply: “Mr. Smull is giving a dinner for
Betsy. I promised to go.”
“_Who_ is giving the party?”
“Mr. Smull.”
Again he experienced a vague sense of irritation.
“I thought you had no dinner gown,” he said drily.
“Betsy offered me one of hers.”
After a silence he said cheerfully: “I hope you’ll have a gay evening,
Eris. Call me up when you care to dine with me.”
They watched the screen for a while, not speaking. Presently, however,
she whispered: “I wish I could, to-night. I’d rather be with you. I’ve
waited so long.... And now--I can’t! And I’m heartbroken, Mr. Annan.”
He was beginning to realise that the candour of this girl held an
unsuspected but unmistakable charm for him. He said under his breath:
“I’ll drive you home when this is over. We can plan things then.”
“I can’t, Mr. Annan. Mr. Smull has offered to drive me home.”
A disagreeable sensation--the same indefinite feeling--dismissed with a
slight shrug;--and suddenly, subtly, this girl’s position and his own
slipped into the reverse. Now it was he who seemed to have waited so
long for a chance to talk to her,--he who was becoming impatient.
“Can you give me to-morrow evening, Eris?”
“Oh, I’m sorry! There is another party. I promised Betsy to go with
her.”
“Is Mr. Smull perpetually giving parties?” he demanded.
“It’s somebody else. I don’t remember who. Mr. Smull is taking Betsy
and me.”
“Have you any time at all to give me this week?” he inquired, the
slightest hint of sarcasm in his pretended amusement.
“Yes. Thursday. May I come?”
“I am flattered speechless.”
He rather felt than saw her turn toward him in her chair, then subside
in silence.
He leaned over, closer:
“I _want_ you; I didn’t realise how much I wished to talk to you,” he
said. “I want you to come and dine at the house, Eris, and tell me
everything you care to. Will you?”
After a while, slowly: “I need to ... if you’ll let me.... You don’t
seem to understand how much you mean to me. I never before talked to a
man like you. I’ve been wild to see you again----”
“What!”
“You know it!” she said passionately. “You fascinate me! If you’ll only
talk to me, sometimes, I can learn something!”
“I’ll talk to you until you find out what a fraud I am,” he whispered,
still laughing. “On your own bobbed head be it! I’m not proof against
such charming flattery as yours. Is it to be Thursday, then?”
“Please!--And thank you so much----”
“Do you _promise_, Eris?”
“I? Oh, you know I do. You are laughing at me, Mr. Annan----”
“I’m very serious. I want you to promise to come--whether Mr. Smull
gives a party or not----”
“You _are_ laughing at me!”
“You listen to me! I’m never going to let you go again,” he said with
an ardour for which, later, he was unable to account. “This is the
beginning of a friendship. And that’s a serious business, Eris.”
“Yes,” she whispered solemnly, “it is. How can I ever thank you? I’ve
dreamed of it often; but I didn’t dare hope for it.... Do you _really_
feel as I do, Mr. Annan?”
He had come to a point where he was not quite sure of what he did feel.
The increasing charm of her was confusing and upsetting him,--he having
suddenly to do with a kind of emotion to which he was naturally averse.
No woman had ever touched him, sentimentally ... so far.... What Eris
was doing to him he did not comprehend.
In a sort of instinctive bravado he leaned toward her and laid his hand
firmly over hers.
“You’re very generous,” he said. “I could have gone to see you and I
didn’t. That wasn’t friendly of me. Your loyalty makes me ashamed. If
you’ll give me another chance to be of practical use----”
Her nervous fingers pressed his in protest: “No--not that! I thought I
made it clear----”
“I didn’t mean--money----”
“I’ll never accept it,” she whispered fiercely. “I only want _you_!
Don’t you know that I’ve been starved all my life and that you are the
first person who ever satisfied me! Can’t you understand what such a
man means to me?”
Her amazing intellectual passion for him swept him clean off his feet:
“I’ll never let you go again, never!” he whispered, not very clear as
to what he meant.
She clung to his hand in pledge of the pact, every intellectual
aspiration excited, thrilled to the spirit by sheerest delight.
As for him, emotions unsuspected and inextricably confused set his
youthful brain spinning.
Disbelief, reluctance, fastidiousness, pride, perhaps, and constant
mental preoccupation had steered this young man clear of lesser
emotions. His few love affairs had been born of a mischievous
curiosity. No woman had ever really stirred him,--not even
intellectually. Women were agreeable to go about with, amusing to
analyse; characters to build on, to create. That was the real rôle they
played in his career.
And now, for the first time in his life, emotional impulse had upset
his complacent equilibrium, and had incited him to say and do things,
the import of which was not very clear to him.
And he hadn’t yet come to his senses sufficiently to analyse the
situation and discover what it was all about.
In the darkness, beside her, the charm of her seemed to envelop him
progressively--steal stealthily through and through him, stimulating
his imagination, exciting his curiosity and a swiftly increasing desire
to learn more about her.
The honesty of her admiration for him flattered him as he never before
had been flattered. Such naïve, such ardent adoration quite upset his
mental balance, and slightly intoxicated him.
Nothing ever had so appealed, so moved this sophisticated young man.
And, add the girl’s beauty, and nascent talent to that, the total was
too much for him--might have been too much for older and more level
heads than Barry Annan’s.
“Thursday,” he whispered, as she slowly released her hand from
his--freed it with a sort of winning reluctance.
“Yes,” she breathed, “at seven.”
“And many, many other hours together,” he added fervently.
“Oh, I hope so.... Thank you, Mr. Annan.”
Sitting in silence there he had a confused idea that never had he
encountered a feminine mind so utterly purged of material sentiment.
“It behooves me to keep my own brain as clear,” he thought,
vaguely,--seeming to realise that it was no longer entirely so.
Suddenly the drone of the machine ceased; the lights went on; the
screen faded.
All around him people stirred, rose, turned to exchange impressions,
congratulations.
The light sobered Annan. He turned almost apprehensively to look at
Eris.
Something radical happened to him as he met her grey
eyes,--crystal-clear eyes, beautiful, unabashed.
“Good-bye,” he said in a voice that sounded odd in his own ears.
Once more he took her hand, and the contact stirred him to definite
emotion. Had she been experienced she could have seen much to astonish
and trouble her girl’s soul in this young man’s face.
“Good-bye,” she said with adorable frankness, “--and thank
you--always--Mr. Annan.”
As he went away toward the corridor where Coltfoot stood talking to
Rosalind, he began to realise that something had happened to him.
Rosalind, seeing him, crinkled her eyes and wrinkled her fascinating
nose:
“Did you turn her head, Barry? Is that child to follow Betsy and
myself? Everybody noticed you.”
He said, annoyed: “She wouldn’t consider that very humorous.”
Rosalind’s dark eyes widened lazily: “Did you suppose I meant it,
Barry? You’re rather crude for a subtle novelist, aren’t you?”
“She wouldn’t understand it,” he repeated, annoyed. “She’s an unusually
sensitive girl.”
He went on along the corridor to take leave of Frank Donnell.
Rosalind looked at Coltfoot, inclined to giggle.
“Don’t think it,” said Coltfoot with a shrug.
“I don’t know--” Rosalind turned and looked across at Eris. Smull had
seated himself beside her in Annan’s chair. Other men gathered around
her. Her beauty startled Rosalind.
“It would be funny,” she said. “That child has no heart. Neither has
Barry Annan.... They’re merely a pair of minds.... It would be funny if
they became entangled ... intellectually.”