At the head of the stairway Eris, carrying her suitcase and make-up
box, encountered Flynn, the voluble door-keeper, coming upstairs.
“Miss Odell,” he began, half way up, “the same gentleman that
tillyphoned you is downstairs askin’ for you with a taxi-cab. I
wouldn’t leave him come up after what the Governor told me. ‘No, sir,’
says I, ‘ye can’t see Miss Odell. I have me orders,’ says I, ‘and I’m
door watch here,’ says I, ‘and whin the Governor says to me, “Flynn, do
this; Flynn, do that,” be gob it’s meself that does ut!’ Was I right,
Miss Odell?”
“I couldn’t see any newspaper man now,” she assented, nervously.
“So I told Mr. Annan, Miss,” commented the door-keeper, relieving her
of her baggage.
“Was it _he_ who telephoned? I--I understood it was a _Herald_ man----”
She continued on down the stairs, followed volubly by Flynn. Outside
the barred gate she saw Annan standing beside a taxi-cab. Flynn opened
the wicket. She went out.
“I didn’t know it was you,” she said. “They misinformed me. I’m so
sorry.”
The girl looked white and tired. One shoulder of her frail summer gown
was torn to the elbow and there were red bruises on the skin already
turning darker.
“What is the matter?” he demanded bluntly, retaining the nervous hand
she had offered and touching her torn sleeve with the other.
She noticed the damage, then, for the first time; the hot colour swept
her face.
“An accident,” she murmured. “The place is impassable--a jungle of
lumber and knocked-down sets.... Will you please drive me home, Barry?”
“Where is Mr. Smull?”
She lifted her gaze to the man beside her, then calmly turned to Flynn
and bade him place her luggage in the taxi. Something in Annan’s eyes
had alarmed her.
“Is Smull here?” he repeated.
She did not answer.
An instant vision of Smull’s heavy black pistol and a swift intuition
that Smull was capable of using it on anybody except himself,--these
thoughts paralysed her tongue.
She looked dumbly at Annan. The stillness of his drawn face terrified
her.
“Barry, come with me----”
“Wait a moment,” he said, but she caught his hands desperately.
“Help me,” she whispered, “I need you. I tell you I need you----”
“I’m going to help you.”
“Barry! You will destroy me!”
She meant that he would destroy himself, but intuition shaped her
speech.
“I want you to take me home,” she said.... “It is the first thing I
ever asked of you. Will you do it?”
“Could you wait till I--speak--to Smull?”
“No. Take me _now_!”
He hesitated. She had clasped his arm. Her weight on it was heavy; her
face had grown deadly pale. He looked at her closely; looked down at
her torn sleeve.
“Is--is it anything that _he_ did?” he demanded harshly.
She put out one hand blindly, reaching for the cab door; wrenched
it open; sagged heavily on his arm. He almost lifted her into the
vehicle; and she crumpled up in the corner, her eyes closing.
Annan spoke to the driver, cast a quick, grim look at the gate, then
turned and jumped into the cab.
“Now,” he said, drawing her head to his shoulder, “we won’t talk until
we get home. If you feel faint we can stop at a chemist’s. Lie quietly,
dear.”
She lay against his shoulder, perfectly inert--so still that, at
moments, he leaned over to see her face, fearing she had fainted.
Neither uttered a word. His thoughts had made glimmering slits of his
eyes and had set the hard muscles working around his jaws.
But all the girl thought of was to get him away from that heavy black
pistol and from the man whose neck had swollen red behind the ears.
For suddenly in that moment when she had seen that terrifying
expression on Annan’s face, a new and vital truth had flashed clear as
crystal in her brain. She saw it; saw through it; knew it for Truth.
With her, Truth was always final. It settled everything for her in whom
no tiniest seed of self-deception ever had germinated.
And Eris knew now that whatever became of her career, this man beside
her, who was her lover, was something more, too. He was a care. He was
a responsibility. He was something to be defended; something to be
guided.
For in that instant of fear in his behalf her whole being responded
with passionate solicitude.
Now she was beginning to comprehend that this solicitude for him must
always be hers while life endured; that the overwhelming instinct
to defend, protect, guide the man who must always be a boy for her,
dominated all else; and would always rule her every thought and motive;
her every plan, every action.
She was beginning to understand that she must have her way with him
as a mother with her son; that, to do so, she must contrive, scheme,
prepare, foresee, and above all, love.
And, above everything, even love,--if truly in her life this man
had become the passion paramount--she must be prepared to give. And
supreme, even above love and above giving, she must give up!
She lay unstirring on his shoulder, her lids drooping, thinking,
understanding, searching, accepting.
It had happened. It was true. Chiefest of all in life, and suddenly,
and in the twinkling of an eye, had become the passionate necessity for
the happiness and well-being of this man.
And she knew that she would give her life without a second’s hesitation
to protect his. And she knew that in her heart, her mind, her soul, he
came first. And all that even most remotely pertained to him. And then,
only, came herself. Which was her career. The career, hardly begun,
to which she had dedicated all the best in her of belief and effort.
The career which, germinating, had filled her ardent heart of a child,
which had budded in girlhood, and was in earliest blossom, now. The
career for which she had so gratefully gone shabby, had starved, had
slept under the stars in public parks.
Lying there on his breast she felt it slipping away--slipping through
her slender fingers on his breast. And if, for an instant, her small
fingers clutched at what was slipping through them, it was his coat she
grasped. And held, tightly, knowing now what truly was her goal and
what above all else she must hold her whole life through.
* * * * *
“Dear,” he said gently, “we are here. Do you feel strong enough to
stand, or shall I carry you?”
If her smile were faintly wise it also was tenderly ironical. God
knew--and had whispered to her--who it was between these two who would
do the carrying; and who it would be who was carried by the stronger.
“Darling,” she murmured, “you’re so funny. I only needed a nap because
I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Have you really been asleep, Eris?”
“Well, I had visions, anyhow. Please pay this frightfully expensive
taxi and carry up my luggage, because Hattie has left and I’m going to
cook our dinner.”
They climbed the bare and poorly lighted stairs. Eris fumbled for her
keys, selected the right one, and opened the door. The whole place was
sweet with the scent of flowers.
As always, the girl’s gratitude was out of all proportion for anything
offered her; and now, in the living-room, she stood enchanted, gazing
at the flowers, touching them here and there with finger tip and lip.
“Oh,” she murmured, “you are so sweet to me, Barry.... And you must
have brought them and arranged them while I was out.” She turned,
happily, and took both his hands. And saw the darkness of impending
trouble in his clouded face.
“Darling?” she exclaimed.
“It’s nothing, Eris.... That miserable wench of yours lied about
you.... I suppose I’d better tell you----”
“What did she say, dear?”
“That--I can’t!--and it was a damned lie----”
“Perhaps it wasn’t. Tell me.”
“I’m ashamed to.... She said a man was here--all night----”
“Oh,” she said disdainfully, “that was my husband. He pretended to be
ill and starving and I let him in. When he got inside he tried to bully
me. So I locked my door; and in the morning I turned him out.”
In the girl’s healthy and flushed contempt, making of a sinister
situation only a squalid commonplace, the boy’s formless fears--all the
tragic perplexity faded, burned out in a wholesome rage.
But into her grey eyes came the swift shadow of anxiety again and she
took hold of him, impulsively, by both elbows.
“What am I going to do with you!” she cried in tender exasperation.
“Will you smooth out that scowl and mind your business, darling? I
can manage my own affairs. I’ve never been afraid of anything--except
to-day. My only fear in the world is that you’ll get into mischief----”
“Well, do you think I’m going to sit still and let----”
“Will you mind your adorable business, Barry? You worry me. You’re on
my mind. I’ve got to marry you as soon as I can I realise _that_----”
He caught her in his clasp, fiercely.
“You _will_!”
“I’ve got to----”
“You promise?”
“Good heavens, yes!” she looked up at him, laughing.
Suddenly her eyes filled. She tore his arms away and took him to her
breast in a fiercer, closer clasp. Then the long tension broke with her
cry:
“Barry--Barry,” she breathed brokenly, “you belong to me--you’re _my_
boy! You’re all I ever owned in all my life that really belonged to
me.... I--I had a--a heifer”--she was laughing hysterically--“but I had
to sell her--and _they_ kept the money....”
She clung to him, strained him to her in an abandon of long-pent need,
incoherent between convulsive tears and the sobbing laughter that shook
her slender body:
“You want me, you need me, don’t you, Barry? You’re lonely. No boy ever
should be lonely. It is the wickedest thing in the world--that any
child should ever be lonely for need of love.... You _are_ a child!
Mine! You’re all I care about.... And I’m going to marry you because
you want me to--because we both want to--Barry, my darling--my boy who
belongs to me----”