If Annan supposed he was to see Eris frequently during those first
enchanted days, he presently realised his mistake. She was working
under pressure at the studio.
* * * * *
Pressure, due to laziness and ignorance, seldom bears hard on
the incompetents who cause it. In this case it was due to hasty
organization and Mr. Creevy’s direction. And Eris was always about to
take a train when Annan called her on the telephone,--always starting
“on location,” or “working late at the studio,” or kept idle awaiting
“re-takes.”
These phrases began to irritate Annan; but there seemed to be nothing
he could do about it.
* * * * *
In New York, theatres were closing for the summer; roofs and beaches
opening; synthetic fruit-drinks appeared. June did her pathetic best
for the noisy, shabby city in park and square;--put on her prettiest in
green leaves and blossoms. The Park Department ruined the effort with
red and yellow cannas. God knows whether New York’s dull and bovine
eyes notice such things at all. Does the ox notice the wild flowers he
chews, or the ass admire the thistle blossoms before munching? But why
New York is not nauseated by its floral display remains a mystery.
The only dose the aborigine notices is an emetic. But even red and
yellow cannas in combination left New York’s bowels unaffected.
Still, ailanthus and catalpa in Governor’s Place spread once more
their cool, green pools of shade over parched sidewalks; ampelopsis on
Annan’s house and an ancient wistaria twisted over the iron balcony
did their missionary part to touch the encysted hearts of those who
‘have eyes but see not.’ A white butterfly or two fluttered through
Governor’s Place.
Annan’s house, stripped for summer, was cool and dusky and still,
haunted by a starched and female phantom that flitted through the
demi-light in eternal quest for moth and dust and rust.
* * * * *
The only inclination of a man really in love is to keep at work in the
absence of the beloved. Nothing else helps to slay the intolerable
hours and days.
It was thus with this young man. Eris on location was so tragic a
calamity that he could endure it only by rushing headlong into the
clutch of literature.
All day, in dressing-gown and slippers, pen in hand, he scratched madly
at a pad.
Nourishment was set before him at proper intervals; he ate it at
improper intervals.
But the pinched look had left his youthful and agreeable features and
shadows were gone from cheek and temple.
Every day he wrote a morning and an evening letter to Eris. And no
doubt it was her letters to him that were feeding him fat.
Sometimes Coltfoot dropped in to lounge in an arm-chair and smoke his
pipe and lazily observe the younger man, _flagrante delicto_ with his
brazen Muse.
And once Rosalind coolly invaded his threshold, announced with a sniff
by the Starched One.
Rosalind wanted a cocktail and lunch. She sat on the edge of Annan’s
writing table, swinging one trim foot, interrupting breezily when it
suited her, or satisfying her capricious curiosity with his inky copy.
“Not so bad,” she drawled, shuffling a dozen unnumbered sheets together
and tossing them under his nose. “Come on, ducky, and talk to me ere we
feast and revel.”
“I’m going to give you your lunch when it’s ready. Until then I want to
work. Run away and play, Linda----”
“Play nothing! We’re closed for the summer. Mom’s gone to the mountains
and I’m queen of the flat. I sleep most of the time. Lay off, ducky,
and converse with your little lonely Linda----”
“Wait a second, will you----” he protested. “Let my papers alone----”
“No, not a second will I wait--not a heart-throb! Regardez-moi, beau
jeune homme. Ayez pitié de moi----”
She leaned over, patted his crisp hair, joggled his pen, gave a fillip
to his nose.
“Betsy’s going to Paris,” she said. “What do you think of that?”
“Why don’t you go too?”
“You want to get rid of me? You can’t. By the way, how’s your solemn
friend, Mr. Coltfoot?”
“All right,” he murmured, scratching away on his copy.
“And Eris? Do you ever see her, Barry?”
“Now and then.”
“Is it all over?”
“What?”
“Your affair with her----”
“Can it, Rosalind!----”
“_You’re_ the canner, my fickle friend. We’re all pickles and you
jarred us.... Sour pickles.... When you’re through with a girl she’s a
schmeer.
“Look at me! I’m a schmeer. I was innocent and happy till you came
schmoozing.... You know what I hear about Eris?”
No answer.
“Albert Smull is crazy about her.... He’s married, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“They’re the fancy devils, aren’t they?--those red-necked,
ruddy-jowled, hand-groomed Wall Street Romeos. But there’s just a
vulgar suspicion of the natty and jaunty about them;--and their chins
are always shaved blue----”
“Confound it----” he exclaimed, “can’t you let me finish this page?”
“Don’t you like gossip, ducky?” she inquired with a baby stare.
He lay back in his chair while a scowl struggled with an unwilling
smile.
“His Greatness,” she said, “looks hungry. When do we trifle with rare
wines and sparkling fruits? Oh--and that reminds me, I want to tell you
about a suitor--you know him--Wilkes Bruce, the painter ... just to
show you how a man sometimes cans himself. There are two words that all
fakes love to hand a girl.
“He was making a hit with me at the Ritz, and I was showing him that
scarab ring you tell me is phony; and he suddenly said those two
words--said ’em both in one breath!--‘_Indubitably_,’ says he, ‘this is
a _veritable_ antique!’ The _two_ words!... I’m off that schmeer,” she
added.
Annan wanted to yawn but stifled the indiscretion.
“You know,” she drawled, “I’m sorry for Eris.”
“Why?”
“Well, she has picked a bum in Ratford Creevy, and in that Dutch souse,
Emil Shunk. It isn’t agreeable to work with such people.... And I fancy
Smull is beginning to bother her, too.”
A slight colour stained Annan’s temples: “Why do you fancy that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One notices and hears. He’s always on her heels,
always schmoozing around. Of course there’s gossip, there always is.
But that’s the kind of man Smull is.... And there you are.”
“Is he--that kind?”
“Well, he tried it on Betsy. Imagine! _On Betsy_, my dear!”
“What happened?”
“Why, she told him to go to the devil. And he backing her! Can you
imagine?”
“I hope I can.”
“They’re mostly that sort, ducky--Jews and Gentiles.... It’s a good
thing I have Mom. All I have to do is whistle her. Run? It would
surprise you.”
* * * * *
Luncheon was announced.
He nodded, absently.... He was rather silent during luncheon. But
Rosalind departed rather pleased with herself.
That night, writing to Eris, he said: “If ever anything disagreeable
happens to annoy you, I want you to come to me with it immediately.”
Commenting on this, from the Berkshires: “Everything is gay and
nothing is disagreeable. Mr. Smull came up and we had a picnic near
Williamstown--the jolliest party!--except that Mr. Shunk had been
drinking and Mr. Creevy’s jokes were rather vulgar. But a girl becomes
impervious to such details. Only--I miss Frank Donnell and the nice,
clean people in Betsy’s company....”
That was all. And Annan, relieved, yet always vaguely uneasy, went on
with his brand new story--scratched away at it, biding the return of
Eris.
* * * * *
She came when the month was nearly gone, warning him by wire of her
train, evidently not expecting him to meet it, for she asked him to
come to Jane Street for dinner at seven.
He never had gone to the train to meet Eris,--had never even thought
of doing it. He thought of it now and wondered why he never before had
done so.
By telephone he ordered flowers to be sent to Jane Street; and, a few
minutes before six, he walked into the Grand Central Station and was
directed to the exit where the incoming train was already signalled.
Outside the ropes, where people had gathered to welcome arriving
friends, Annan encountered Albert Smull. As usual they shook hands.
Smull wore his habitual and sanguine smile. His features had grown into
it.
“Saw your good aunt at Newport, Friday,” he said, “but I seldom see you
anywhere these days, Annan.”
“I don’t go about. How is it at Newport?”
“Fine weather----” Through the open gates the train glided into view.
“Thought I’d come down and see how our picture people are looking
after their tour on location,” said Smull. “You know some of them,
Annan--you’ve met our clever little Eris?”
Annan turned and deliberately looked him over from his ruddy jowls to
the polished tan shoes.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I’ve known Miss Odell for some time. I’m here
to meet her.”
Smull’s sanguine face slowly took on a heavier red but the set smile
remained.
“Bright kid,” he said, “--getting away with it, Creevy tells me. Shill
and I are putting a lot of money into this picture----”
Passengers from the train just arrived were now pouring out of the
exit, recognising waiting friends behind the ropes, signalling them
with eager gestures, hurrying around the barriers to meet them.
Annan, ignoring Smull, and intently scanning the throng, finally
perceived Ratford Creevy and Emil Shunk. Behind them, in the crowd,
were other faces slightly familiar--members of the cast--and suddenly
he saw Eris in a turquoise blue toque and summer gown, carrying her
satchel,--a lithe, buoyant figure, moving quickly through the gates
followed by a red-cap with her luggage.
Smull, perhaps not caring to bend too much at the waist, went around
the rope; Annan stooped under it.
“Barry!” she exclaimed in happy surprise.
“It’s been a thousand years,” he said. “I’ve a taxi here----”
Smull, smiling eagerly out of dark eyes set a trifle too closely, and
carrying his straw hat in his hand, confronted them.
“How do you do, Mr. Smull,” said Eris gaily, withdrawing her gloved
hand from Annan’s and offering it to Smull.
“You’re looking fine, Eris,” he said, with too cordial familiarity. “I
just passed Creevy and he says everything went big. Glad you’re back,
little lady. I’ve a car here----”
“Thank you, Mr. Smull----”
The girl turned to Annan: “Mr. Smull wired me that he’d meet our
train.... So thank _you_, too--for asking me.... I’m so sorry you have
troubled to keep a taxi waiting for me----”
Smull, always smiling, turned to Annan: “Can’t we drop you somewhere,
old chap?”
Annan said: “Thanks, no.” And, looking at Eris with cool curiosity, he
took off his hat.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said. “I hope I may see you while you’re
here. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” she replied, as though slightly confused.
Annan bowed pleasantly, including them both, and turned to the left
along the rope. The girl went rather slowly away beside Smull, followed
by the red-cap with her luggage.
Outside the station, on the ramp above, Annan found his taxi and got
into it. All the way home he stared persistently at the chauffeur’s
frowsy head; but, whatever his thoughts, nothing on his smoothly
composed features betrayed them.
As he entered his house the telephone was ringing, and he went to the
lower one in the butler’s pantry.
“Barry!”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming to dinner?”
“I had expected to.”
“Could you come _now_?”
“Where are you?”
“Why, at home, of course.”
“Alone?”
“Alone!----” she repeated. “Why, yes, of course I am alone. I said
seven, but I want you now. I can’t wait. Do you mind?”
“All right,” he said drily. At such moments, in most young men in love,
the asinine instinct dominates.
Still chilled by the unpleasant impression of an intimacy, the natural
existence of which he had never thought about, he went to his room and
got into a dinner jacket, sulkily.
As he was dressing it occurred to him that this was one sample of
the sort of thing he was very likely to encounter. A rush of boyish
jealousy and resentment flushed his face--irritation that the world
should entertain any doubt as to his proprietary right in this girl.
It was high time that the world made no mistake about it. Men of Albert
Smull’s sort had better understand what was his status vis-à-vis with
Eris.
Intensely annoyed--and without any reason, as he realised--he went out
in a characteristically masculine frame of mind, hailed a disreputable
taxi on Greenwich Avenue, and drove to Jane Street.
The declining sun, not yet low enough to transmute its ugliness to
terms Turneresque, searched out every atom of shabbiness and squalor in
the humble street. And it all added to his sullen dissatisfaction.
“One thing,” he muttered; “--she’s got to get out of this dirty
district. It’s no place for the girl I’m going to marry.”
* * * * *
Fat Hattie admitted him, simpering her welcome:
“Yuh flowers done come, Mistuh Annan. They’s just grand, suh. Miss Eris
she’s taking a bath. She says foh you to go into the settin’ room,
Mistuh Annan. Might I offah yuh the hospitality of some Sherry wine,
Mistuh Annan?”
He declined and went in; stood looking around at the plain, familiar
place, brightened only by his flowers.
“Another thing,” he thought irritably, “--this installment-plan
furniture has got to go. She doesn’t seem to know what nice things
look like.... She hasn’t any comforts in her bed-room, either. This
third-rate existence has got to stop.”
Unreasonably glum he picked up the evening paper, unfolded it, stood
holding it; but his gaze rested on her closed door. Then, even as he
gazed, it opened and the girl herself came out in a soft wool robe and
slippers, her chestnut hair in lovely disorder.
“Darling!” she said with the breathless smile he knew so well. “I just
couldn’t wait. I was so afraid you were annoyed with me----”
His kiss made her eager explanation incoherent; she nestled to him,
dumb, happy in the physical reunion, wistful for the spiritual, seeking
it in his face with questioning grey eyes.
“It mustn’t happen again,” he said. “You’re mine, Eris, and people have
got to understand.”
“Darling! Of course I am. But I don’t quite see how people are going to
understand----”
“We’ll talk about that this evening.”
“All right.... Darling, I must dress. Oh, Barry, I’m so glad--I’m
always lonely without you, wherever I go!”
One long, deep embrace--her swift ardour leaving him trembling--and
before he knew it her door had slammed behind her.
From within her bed-room: “Your letters have been so wonderful, Barry
darling! They made work delightful.”... The excited clatter and rustle
of a girl in a hurry came indistinctly through the closed door....
“It’s a peach of a part, Barry. There are real brains in it.... I wish
I had Frank Donnell to _tell_ me----”
“Can’t Creevy do that?”
“I don’t know.... He isn’t a drill-master.... Sometimes I’m afraid he
doesn’t know.
“It’s a helpless feeling, Barry. I trusted Frank. I knew I could lean
on him. But Mr. Creevy----”
“I haven’t much use for Creevy, either,” he said bluntly.
She opened the door. He found her seated before her little mirror,
tucking up stray crisp curls. She wore a mauve dinner gown--a scant
affair--as though her supple, milk-white body were lightly sheathed in
orchid petals.
She stretched back her head to him where he stood behind her; he kissed
her soft lips, her throat. Leaning so, against him, she looked back
again at her fresh young beauty in the mirror.
“That year with Frank Donnell,” she murmured, “is saving my very skin,
now. I _don’t_ know enough to go ahead without a strong, friendly power
reassuring, leading me. Mr. Creevy lets me go my own way, or loses his
temper and shouts at me.”
“He’s rather a cheap individual,” remarked Annan.
“He’s always shouting at us.... And I haven’t much confidence in Emil
Shunk, either.... Oh, how I long for Frank, and for that nice, kind
camera-man, Stoll! To work with gentlemen means so much to a girl.”
“It means that she can do her best work,” said Annan. “In other words,
it’s bad business to employ a pair of vulgarians like Ratford Creevy
and Emil Shunk to direct decent people in a decent picture.”
“I seem to have no point of contact with them,” she admitted. “Betsy’s
company was so respectable,--and even the Crystal Films people were so
decent to me that I didn’t expect to encounter film folk as common and
horrid as I have met.... And the Jews are no worse than the Gentiles,
Barry.”
“Gentile or Jew,” he said, “--who cares in these days how an educated
gentleman worships God? But a Christian blackguard or a Jewish
blackguard, there’s the pair that are ruining pictures, Eris. Whether
they finance a picture, direct it, release it, exhibit it, or act in
it, these two vermin are likely to do it to death.
“Your profession is crawling with them. It needs delousing. It’s
all squirming with parasites. They carry moral leprosy. They poison
audiences. Some day the public will kill them.”
Eris stood up and linked her arms in Annan’s: “It’s so stupid,” she
said “--a wonderful art--and only in its infancy--and already almost
monopolised by beastly people.... Well, there _are_ men like Frank
Donnell.... And, as for the rest of us--as far as I can judge the vast
majority among us appreciate decency and have every inclination toward
it.... I don’t know a woman in my profession who leads an irregular
life from choice.”
“It’s that or quit, sometimes, I suppose,” he said gravely.
“I’ve heard so.... Before I knew anything I used to hold such a girl in
contempt, Barry. I know better, now.”
“With all your passion for learning,” he said, “did you ever suppose
there was such sorry wisdom to acquire?”
“Oh, yes. I guessed, vaguely. One can’t live in a little village
without guessing some things.... Or on a farm without guessing the
rest.... It’s best to know, always.... Lies shock me; but, do you
know, truth never did. Truth has frightened me, disgusted, angered,
saddened me. But it never shocked me yet.... I’m afraid you think me
hardened----”
His arm drew her and she turned swiftly to his lips--in full view of
Hattie in the dining-room beyond.
“I don’t care,” whispered Eris, her cheeks scarlet, “--she ought to
guess what we are to each other by this time.”
As he seated her he said: “If she does know she knows more than I do,
Eris.... _What_ are we to each other?”
He took his chair and she laughed at him.
“I’m serious,” he repeated. “_What_ are we to each other?”
“Darling! Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not a bit. Please answer me, Eris.”
“Ridiculum!”
“Answer me!”
“Why--why, you goose, we are in love with each other. Isn’t that the
answer?”
“Are you engaged to me?”
“_Darling!_----”
“_Are_ you?”
“Why--no.”
“Why not?”
“You know one reason, anyway.”
“You mean that fellow,” he said with a shrug.
“Yes, of course.”
They remained rather silent for a while. Presently he said:
“Merely to be in love with each other doesn’t place either of us
definitely.”
“Place us?” she repeated, perplexed. “It places us with each other,
doesn’t it?”
“But not with the world.”
She considered this while covers were removed and another course laid.
“Darling, do you mind carving that chicken? If you don’t want to,
Hattie can take it to the kitchen----”
“Watch me,” he boasted, impaling the tender, roasted bird and shaving a
smoking slice from its sternum.
“Wonderful,” she murmured, clasping her snowy fingers; “he knows
everything, does everything. And he asks me where it places him!... It
places you, darling, like a god, under lock and key inside the secret
shrine of my innermost heart.”
“No,” he said, “that temple is already reserved. It’s occupied by the
real and only god you worship.... The god of Work!”
After a moment she raised her eyes, tenderly apprehensive:
“I do love you, Barry.”
“But you _worship_ the other one.... You can’t serve two gods.”
“I worship you, too, whatever you say!”
“I’m a minor deity compared to the great god Work.”
“Darling--don’t speak that way--even in jest----”
“I want a shrine for myself. I won’t interfere with the other god----”
“--When I tell you you’re the only man in the world!----”
“I want you to engage yourself to me. You can take your time about
marrying me if you’re afraid it will spoil your career. But I want the
world to know we’re engaged.”
“Why, dear?” she asked in uneasy surprise.
“Because that will place us both, definitely.”
“Goodness,” she murmured uncertainly, “I didn’t suppose that falling in
love was so complicated.... Darling! I haven’t time to--to find out how
to get rid of that man, now; or do it, either----”
“It will have to be done sooner or later,” he insisted. “And that’s
that, as you say.”
Until coffee was served they spoke rarely and of other matters.
After coffee, in the living-room, she brought out a packet of stills to
show him. They went over them, minutely, consulting, criticising, she
explaining every picture and its relation to the continuity.
“You should hear Mr. Creevy bellow, ‘Hold it! Hold it! D’ye think I
told you to shimmy?’ Oh, he is rough, Barry. The first time I heard
him bawl out, ‘Kill that nigger!’ I was terrified: I thought there was
going to be a lynching----”
They sat laughing uncontrollably at each other.
“You imitate Creevy’s cracked contralto voice,” said Annan. “I didn’t
know you were a mimic, Eris.”
“Didn’t you?” And she laughed adorably. Then, suddenly, Ratford
Creevy’s high-pitched, irritated voice came again from her lips:
“‘Everybody! Everybody! Yaas, _you_, too, you poor dumbbell! Get on
there.... Eris! Eris! My Gawd, where’s that amateur!... Well, where
were you?... Well, stand up next time.... Lights!... Hey, where’s that
amateur camera-man.... Where the hell’s Shunk? Emil! Emil!----’”
His laughter and her own checked her and she leaned back, the stills
sliding from her lap to the floor.
Together they squatted down like two children to gather the litter of
scattered photographs, interrupting to touch lips, lightly; and finally
he dumped the stills onto a table and drew her to the lounge and
gathered her close.
“You know, sweet, the reasonable goal of real love is marriage. Don’t
you know that?”
“Darling!”
“Isn’t it?”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“Isn’t it?” he insisted.
“Sometimes.”
“Always, ultimately. You realise that, don’t you, Eris?”
“Y-es.... Ultimately it’s the goal. But----”
“You love me enough to marry me, don’t you?”
“Now?”
“No, not now. Ultimately.”
She said, pitifully: “I love you enough to marry you this moment....
But even if I were free you wouldn’t ask it, would you, Barry?”
“I don’t know.” He looked intently at her. “It wouldn’t be any use,
anyway,” he concluded. “Your work is more to you than I am. Isn’t it?”
The girl laid her face against his shoulder in silence.
“It’s your ruling passion, Eris, isn’t it?”
“I--suppose so.... But there never can be any other man than you.”
“You would make any sacrifice for your work, but you wouldn’t sacrifice
your work for me, would you, Eris?”
Her head only pressed his shoulder closer.
He said: “You’ve starved for your work, gone almost in rags, slept in
public parks----”
“I’d do these for you.... I’ll give you anything, do anything for
you--except----”
“Except give up your work,” he ended drily.
“I couldn’t love you if you made me do that,” she whispered.
“If I _made_ you do it? Do you admit I could make you give it up?” he
demanded almost arrogantly.
She shrugged slightly: then raised her head and looked dumbly into his
hard eyes.
There are dumb creatures that let themselves be slain without
resistance; but in their doomed eyes is something that the slayer
never, never can forget.
And, as Annan looked at this girl, something of his masculine egotism
and arrogance became troubled.
He said in a more subdued voice: “After you are firmly established in
your profession, we can think about marriage, can’t we?”
“I always think about it.... I often wonder if you can wait.”
“I suppose that I must.... How long, Eris?”
“I don’t know.... Darling! I don’t know----”
Suddenly she took his head in her arms and kissed him passionately,
strained him to her convulsively.
“I don’t want you to have a living corpse for a wife,” she said
tremulously. “That’s what I’d be if I stopped work now. I’d be a dead,
inert, mindless thing. I couldn’t love. Let us go on this way. I must
have my freedom.... I’ll come to you when I’m ready, Barry.... There’ll
come a time when I’ll have to have you to go on at all. I’ll not be
able to work without you.... There’ll come such a time.... Then, if I
don’t have you, I shall be unable to work at all.... Work will stop. I
_know_ it.... If only you will understand....”
It seemed that he did understand. He said he did, anyway. But he also
wanted their engagement to be understood. And she promised him to
consult his lawyer as soon as work permitted and find out what could be
done to eliminate from her life the last traces of Eddie Carter, alias
E. Stuart Graydon.
For Eris never expected to lay eyes again upon the nimble Mr. Graydon.
But it is the unexpected that usually happens, particularly if it’s
disagreeable.