Annan spent the entire day with Eris; came home at midnight; seated
himself at his desk where his work lay in inviting disorder.
But there was no more chance of his working than there was of his
sleeping.
It was the first time it ever had happened. He could not remember an
instance when the subtle challenge of a disordered manuscript had been
declined by him.
But something had happened to this young man. He was in no condition
to realise what. His mind, that hitherto faithful ally, seemed
incompetent; trivial thoughts thronged its corridors, wandering ideas,
irrelevant impressions drifted in agreeable rhythm.
There was a letter from his aunt on his desk. He tore it open; glanced
through it without the usual grin; laid it aside.
A slight, rather vacant smile remained on his lips: he kept moving the
lapel of his coat and inhaling the odour of a white clove-pink--one of
a cluster that had stood in a little rose-bowl between Eris and himself
at breakfast.
A pencil, dislodged, rolled over his pad and dropped onto the floor. He
let it lie.
Neither work nor sleep attracted him. From the oddly pleasant sense
of chaos in his mind always something more definite and more pleasant
seemed about to take shape and emerge.
Whatever it was had delicately saturated him: all his being seemed
permeated, possessed with the spell of it.
Time after time his mind mechanically began that day again, drifted
through the sequence of events, minute by minute, leading him at length
to where he now was seated,--but only to recommence again from the
beginning.
About two o’clock he fell asleep, his boyish nose touching the
clove-pink. When his head sagged to a more uncomfortable position he
awoke, got out of his clothes and went to sleep in the proper place.
* * * * *
The first thing he did after he awoke was to unhook the telephone
receiver:
“Is it you, Eris?”
Then a perfectly damning sequence of solicitous inquiries--the
regulation and inevitable gamut concerning the young lady’s health,
night’s repose, condition of mind, physical symptoms. Followed a
voluntary statement regarding the day before and his intense pleasure
in it; then a diffident inquiry, and a hope expressed that she, also,
might have found the day not insupportably unpleasant;--surprise and
pleasure to learn that she, too, had considered the day “wonderful.”
“Could I see you to-day?” he asked.
But she had her hands full, it appeared.
“I’ll try to get away after dinner,” she said. “Would you telephone
about nine-thirty, Mr. Annan?”
“It’s a long time--all right, then!”
“I may not be able to get away,” she said.
“Don’t let me spoil your evening----”
“I had _rather_ be with you.”
Fluency seemed no longer his: “That’s--that’s jolly of you--awfully
nice of you, Eris,--most kind.... I’ll call your apartment at
nine-thirty, if I may.”
“If I can’t get away,” she said, “could we see each other to-morrow?”
“At _any_ hour, Eris!”
“But--your work----”
“That’s quite all right. I can always fit that in.”
“You shouldn’t. You should fit _me_ in----”
“Nonsense!”
“But _I_ shall have to do that, too, when we begin work----”
“I understand that. When may I see you to-morrow, if you can’t see me
this evening?”
“Will you come to tea?”
“Yes, if I can’t come earlier.”
She laughed--a distant, gay little laugh--a new sound from her lips,
born quite unexpectedly the day before to surprise them both.
“You make our friendship so easy,” she said. “You quite reverse
conditions. I’m happy and _grateful_ that you are coming to tea----”
His unconsidered and somewhat impetuous reply seemed to confuse Eris.
There was a silence, then:
“That’s the truth,” he repeated; “--it _is_ a privilege to be with you.”
Her voice came, a little wistful, yet humourously incredulous:
“You say such kind things, Mr. Annan.... Thank you.”
* * * * *
With a buoyant sense of having begun the day right, Annan took a noisy
bath, ate every scrap of breakfast, and sat down before his desk in
lively spirits, when Mrs. Sniffen had finished with his quarters.
“Xantippe,” he said gaily, “do you know that little Miss Odell has
become a very clever and promising professional?”
“That baby, sir?”
“That child. What do you think of that, Xantippe?”
Mrs. Sniffen’s countenance became grim:
“I ’ope that God may guide her, Mr. Barry,--for there’s devils a-plenty
hunting out such jobs.”
He said: “She’s turned out rather a wonderful sort, Xantippe. Sometimes
beginners do make good in such a short time. I’ve known one or two
instances. I’ve heard of others. Usually there’s disaster as an
aftermath. They’re people who were born to do that one thing _once_.
Nothing else. They’re rockets. Their capacity is emptied in one
dazzling flare-up.
“A burnt-out brain remains.... There’s no tragedy like it....
Consistent failure is less cruel.
“But this girl isn’t like that. I’m satisfied. She’s merely starting.
She’s modest, honest, intelligent. You and I bear witness to her
courage. And there seems to be no question about her talent.... It
seems to be one of those instances where circumstance plays second
fiddle to Destiny.”
He picked up the faded clove-pink, looked at it absently, laid it upon
his desk.
“So ‘that’s that,’ as she says sometimes.” He looked up smilingly at
Mrs. Sniffen, then his smile degenerated into a grin: “Aunt Cornelia is
in town. I’m lunching there.”
At one o’clock Annan sauntered up to the limestone portal.
“Hello, Jennings,” he said genially to a large, severe man who opened
the door,--“the three most annoying things in the world are death,
hay-fever, and nephews. The last are worst, because more frequent.
Kindly prepare Mrs. Grandcourt.”
She was already in the drawing-room. She offered him the celebrated
hand once compared to Queen Victoria’s. He saluted the accustomed
pearl--the black one:
“Madame my Aunt, your most obedient----”
Her butler, Seaman, announced luncheon with the reverence of a
Second-Adventist. Annan offered his arm to the dumpy old woman.
Only her thin, high-bridged, arrogant nose redeemed her features of a
retired charwoman. Watery eyes inspected him across the table; a little
withered chin tucked between dewlaps, a sagging, discontented mouth, a
mottled skin, concluded the ensemble.
White lace collar and cuffs turned over the black gown did what was
sartorially possible for Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt. Otherwise, the
famous string of cherry-sized pearls dangled to what should have been
her waist.
“It appears,” she said, “that you still inhabit your alley.”
“Yes, Barry-in-our-alley,” he said cheerfully.
“When are you going to move to a suitable neighbourhood?” she inquired
with that peculiar pitch of tone usually, in her sex, indicative of
displeasure.
“I like to be quaint,” he explained, grinning.
After a pause and a shift to the next course: “_I_ don’t know where you
get your taste for squalour,” she said. “You didn’t inherit it.”
“Didn’t one of our ancestors haunt bar-maids?” he enquired guilelessly.
“I always understood that was where we acquired our bar-sinister----”
“Come, Barry,” she said sharply; sat staring at him in a cold rage that
Seaman’s ears should have been polluted by such a pleasantry.
Annan’s interior was riotous with laughter and his features crimsoned
with it. But he only gazed inquiringly at his aunt; and the wretched
incident waned.
* * * * *
They went into the library after luncheon. A secretary brought the
necessary papers.
Annan’s was a cheerful nature. There was no greed in it. In all
questions, that might properly have become disputes concerning joint
income and investment, he yielded good humouredly to her.
There was a more vulgar streak than thrift in Mrs. Magnelius
Grandcourt. The majority of rich are infected with it.
However, family matters settled to her satisfaction, she seemed
inclined to a more friendly attitude.
“That was very impudent of you to send me that New York Directory,” she
said, “but I suppose you intended it to be a pleasantry.”
“Why, no,” he said innocently, “I thought it would gratify you to
discover so many people you didn’t care to know----”
“Barry! I see nothing humorous in it. Do you think the breaking down of
society is humorous?”
“Is it breaking down?”
“Do I need to answer you? What has become of the old barriers that kept
out undesirables? _Once_ there was a society in New York. Is there
to-day? No, Barry;--only a fragment here and there.
“Only a few houses left where we rally. This house, thank God, is one
of them. And while _I_ live and retain my faculties, I shall continue
to dictate my visiting list, here and in Newport, and shall properly
censor it, despite the unbecoming mockery of my own flesh and blood----”
“Nonsense, Aunt Cornelia, it’s only in fun, not ill-natured. I
can’t take such matters solemnly. Who the devil cares who you are
to-day? It’s what you _do_. You’re no longer a rarity in an uncouth
town. There are too many like you--quite as wealthy, cultivated,
experienced--plenty of people who can give the denizens inhabiting any
of the social puddles a perfectly good time.
“There isn’t any society. There never has been a real one since
Washington was President. What passed for it you helped boss very
cleverly. But it gradually swelled and burst--like one of those wobbly
stars--scattered into a lot of brilliant little fragments, each a
perfectly good star in itself----”
“What you say is utterly absurd,” interrupted his aunt, wrathfully. “By
tradition there is and can be only one society in America. Its accepted
rendezvous is in New York; its arbiters are so by birth. Theirs is an
inherited trust. They are its censors. I shall never violate what I was
born to respect and uphold.”
“Well,” he said, smiling, “I suppose you really consider me a renegade
and a low fellow because I entertain the public with my stories.”
“A public entertainer has his proper place, Barry.”
“Sure. On the door-step. That’s where we once were told to
sit--authors, players, painters--the whole job-lot of us. Now we prefer
it, although since your youth society welcomes anybody that can amuse
it. We go in, now and then. But it’s better fun outside. So I’m going
to sit there and tell my stories to the hoi-polloi as they pass along.
If what you consider society wishes to listen it can stick its head out
of the window.”
“It is amazing to me,” she said, staring at him out of watery eyes,
“how utterly common my brother’s son can be. I can _not_ understand
it, Barry. And you are not alone in this demoralization. Young people
everywhere are infected. Only a week or two ago I met Elizabeth Blythe
in California. She was painted a perfectly ghastly colour in broad
daylight. Elizabeth Blythe--the daughter of Courtlandt Blythe, a
painted, motion-picture _actress_!”
It was impossible for him to control his laughter.
“She told me that you snubbed her,” he said. “But you don’t seem to be
consistent, Aunt Cornelia. I hear that you’ve been civil and kind to
another actress. I mean Eris Odell.”
“Do _you_ know her?” inquired his aunt calmly.
“I’ve met her.”
Mrs. Grandcourt remained silent for a while, her pale eyes fixed on her
nephew.
“That girl’s grandmother was my beloved comrade in boarding school,”
she said slowly. “We shared the same room. Her name was Jeanne
d’Espremont. Her grandmother was that celebrated Countess of the time
of Louis XV.... They were Louisiana Creoles. Her blood was as good as
any in France. Probably that means nothing to a modern young man.... It
meant something to me.... I shouldn’t have wished to love a nobody as I
loved Jeanne d’Espremont.”
Mrs. Grandcourt bent her head and looked down at her celebrated
Victorian hands. Pearls bulged on the tiny, fat fingers.
“Jeanne ran away,” she said. “She married the son of a planter. His
family was unimpeachable, but he looked like a fox. When he drank
himself to death she went on the stage.
“She had a baby. I saw it. It looked like a female fox. Jeanne died
when the girl was sixteen.... I’d have taken her,----”
Presently Annan asked why she hadn’t done so.
“Because,” said his aunt, “she married a boy who peddled vegetables the
day after the funeral. His name was Odell.”
“Oh! Was he the father of Eris?”
“He was. And is.... What an astonishing reversion to the lovely,
aristocratic type of her grandmother.... I encountered her by accident.
She was with Elizabeth Blythe, but she was not painted.... I assure
you, Barry, it was a severe shock to me. She is the absolute image of
her grandmother.... She startled me so.... I never was emotional....
But--I could scarcely speak--scarcely find my voice--to ask her.... But
I _knew_. The girl was Jeanne d’Espremont, _alive_.”
After a moment: “Did you find her interesting?” he asked.
“She has all the charm and intelligence of her grandmother.... And all
her lovely appeal. And her fatal obstinacy.”
“Obstinacy?”
“Yes.... I told her about her grandmother. I asked her to give up
her profession and come to me----” Mrs. Grandcourt’s features grew
red:--“I offered to stand her sponsor, educate her properly, give her
the position in the younger set to which her blood entitled her.... I
offered to endow her, Barry.... I think now you understand how I loved
her grandmother.”
The idea of his aunt parting willingly with a penny so amazed and
entranced the young man that he merely gazed at her incapable of
comment.
His aunt rose,--signal that the audience was ended. Annan got up.
“Do you mean,” he said, “that she declined to give up her profession
for such a prospect?”
“Not only that,” replied his aunt, getting redder, “but she refused
to accept a dollar.... And she hasn’t a penny except her salary. That
is like her grandmother, never permitting a favour that she could not
return.... Jeanne was poor, compared to me, Barry--my little comrade,
Jeanne d’Espremont.... I loved her ... dearly....”
Annan coolly put both arms around his aunt and kissed her--a thing that
had not occurred since he was in college.
“I’ll drop in for tea before you beat it to Newport,” he said. “Then
you tell me some more about Jeanne d’Espremont.”
He gave her another hearty smack and went out gaily, leaving Mrs.
Magnelius Grandcourt with glassy, astonished eyes, and a little,
selfish, tucked-in mouth that was slightly quivering.