JULY began badly in New York. Ambulances became busy, hospitals overcrowded, seaside resorts thronged. Day after day a heavy atmosphere hung like a saturated and steaming blanket over the city. The daily papers recorded deaths from heat. Fountains were full of naked urchins unmolested by police. Firemen drenched the little children of the poor with heavy showers from hose and stand-pipe.
Toward midnight, on the tenth day of the heat, a slight freshness tempered the infernal atmosphere of the streets. It was almost a breeze. In the Park dry leaves rustled slightly. Sleepers on bench and withered sward stirred, sighed, relaxed again into semi-stupor.
Two men in light clothes and straw hats, crossing the Park from West to East, paused on the asphalt path to gaze upon the thousands of prostrate figures.
“Yonder’s a sob-stuff story for you, Barry,” remarked the shorter man.
“There’s more than one story there,” said the other.
“No, only one. I’ll tell you that story: these people had rather work and die in their putrid tenements than work and live in the wholesome countryside. You can’t kick these town rats out of their rat-ridden city. They like to fester and swarm. And when any species swarms, Barry, Nature presently decimates it.”
They moved along slowly, looking out over the dim meadows heaped with unstirring forms.
“Perhaps,” admitted Annan, who had been addressed as Barry, “the mass story is about what you outlined, Mike; but there are other stories there——” He made a slight gesture toward the meadow, “The whole gamut from farce to tragedy....”
“The only drama in that mess is rooted in stupidity.”
“That’s where all tragedy is rooted.... I could step in among those people and in ten minutes I could bring back material for a Hugo, a Balzac, a Maupassant, a Dumas——”
“Why don’t you? It’s your job to look for literary loot in human scrap heaps. Here’s life’s dumping ground. You’re the chiffonier. Why not start business?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Go to it,” laughed the other, lighting a cigarette and leaning gracefully on his walking stick. “Yonder’s the sewer; dig out your diamond. Uproot your lily!”
Annan said: “Do you want to bet I can’t go in there, wake up one of those unwashed, and, in ten minutes, get the roots of a story as good as any ever written?”
“If you weren’t in a class by yourself,” said the other, “I’d bet with you. Any ordinary newspaper man could go in there and dig up a dozen obvious news items. But you’ll dig up a commonplace item and turn it into an epic. Or you’ll dig up none at all, and come back with a corker——”
“I’ll play square——”
“I know you! The biggest story in the world, Barry, was born a punk little news item; and it would have died an item except for the genius who covered it. You’re one of those damned geniuses——”
“Don’t try to hedge!——”
“Don’t tell me! Nothing ever really happens except in clever brains. I can condense Hamlet’s story into a paragraph. But I’m glad Shakespeare didn’t. I’m glad the Apostles were——”
“You’re a crazy Irishman, Coltfoot,” remarked Annan, looking about him at the thousands of spectral sleepers. “Shut up. I need a story and I’m going to get one.... You don’t want to take my bet, do you?”
“All right. Ten dollars that you don’t get the honest makings of a real story in ten minutes. No faking! No creative genius stuff. Just bald facts.” He looked at his wrist-watch, then at his companion. “Ready?”
Annan nodded, glanced out over the waste of withered grass. As he stepped from the asphalt to the meadow a tepid breeze began to blow, cooling his perspiring cheeks.
A few sleepers stirred feverishly. Under a wilted shrub a girl lifted her heavy head from the satchel that had pillowed it. Then, slowly, she sat upright to face the faint stir of air.
Her hat fell off. She passed slim fingers through her bobbed hair, ruffling it to the cool wind blowing.
Annan walked directly toward her, picking his way across the grass among the sleeping heaps of people.
As he stopped beside her, Eris looked up at him out of tired eyes which seemed like wells of shadow, giving her pinched face an appearance almost skull-like.
Annan mistook her age, as did everybody; and he calmly squatted down on his haunches as though condescending to a child.
“Don’t be afraid to talk to me,” he said in his easy, persuasive way. “I write stories for newspapers. I’m looking for a story now. If you’ll tell me your story I’ll give you ten dollars.”
Eris stared at him without comprehension. The increasing breeze blew her mop of chestnut curls upward from a brow as white as milk.
“Come,” he said in his pleasant voice, “there are ten perfectly good dollars in it for you. All I want of you is your story—not your real name, of course,—just a few plain facts explaining how you happen to be sleeping here in Central Park with your little satchel for your pillow and the sky for your bed-clothes.”
Eris remained motionless, one slender hand buried in the grass, the other resting against her temples. The blessed breeze began to winnow her hair again.
“Won’t you talk to me?” urged Annan. “You’re not afraid, are you?”
“I don’t know what to say to you?”
“Just tell me how you happen to be sleeping here in the Park to-night.”
“I have to save my money—” She yawned and concealed her lips with one hand.
“Please excuse me,” she murmured, “I haven’t slept very well.”
“Then you have some money?” he inquired.
“I have twenty dollars.... Money doesn’t last long in New York.”
“No, it doesn’t,” agreed Annan gravely. “Did you work in a shop?”
“In pictures.”
“Moving pictures?”
“Yes. I have a contract with the Crystal Films.”
“Oh, yes. I heard about that outfit. It blew up. Did they ever pay you any salary?”
“No.”
“How did you happen to hook up with that bunch of crooks?” he asked.
“I don’t think they are crooks. Mr. Quiss isn’t.”
“Who’s he?”
“Well—I think he looks up places to photograph—and he supplies extras——”
“A scout. Where did you run into him?”
“Near my home.”
“Did your parents permit you to join that flossy outfit?”
“No.”
“I see. You ran away.”
“I—went away.”
“Could you go home now if you wished to?”
“I don’t wish to.”
“Then you must believe that you really possess dramatic talent.”
Eris passed her fingers wearily through her hair: “I am trying to learn something,” she said, as though to herself. “I think I have talents.”
“What is it you most desire to be?”
“I like to act ... and dance.... I’d like to write a play ... or a book ... or something....”
“Like other people, you’re after fame and fortune. I’m chasing them, too. Everybody is. But the world’s goal remains the same, no matter what you are hunting. That goal is Happiness.”
She looked at him, heavy-eyed, silent. She yawned slightly, murmured an excuse, rubbed her eyes with her forefinger.
“Which is your principal object in life, fame or fortune?” he inquired, smiling.
“Are those the principal objects in life?” she asked, so naïvely that he suspected her.
“Some believe that love is more important,” he said. “Do you?”
She rested her pale cheek on her hand: “No,” she said.
“Then what is your principal object in life?” he asked, watching her intently.
“I think, more than anything, I desire education.”
His surprise was followed by further suspicion. Her reply sounded too naïve, too moral. He became wary of the latent actress in her.
She sat there huddled up, brooding, gazing into the darkness out of haunted eyes.
“Do you think an education is really worth this sort of hardship?” he asked.
That seemed to interest her. She replied:
“I think so.... I don’t know.”
“What are you trying to learn?”
“The truth ... about things.”
“Why don’t you go to school?”
“I’ve been through high-school.”
“Didn’t you learn the truth about things in high-school?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where are you going to learn it then?”
She was plainly interested now:
“I think the only way is to find out for myself.... I don’t know anybody who can tell me reasons. I like to be told why. If I don’t know the facts about life how can I write plays and act them? I must find out. I’m twenty, and I know scarcely anything worth knowing. It is awful. It frightens me. I’m crazy to be somebody. I can’t be unless I learn the truth about things.
“There is nobody at home to tell me.... I couldn’t stand it any longer.... I had to find out for myself. Books don’t help. They excite.” She looked at him feverishly: “It is a terrible thing to want only facts,” she said. “Because nothing else satisfies.”
He thought, incredulously, “Where did she get that line?” He said: “A taste for Truth spoils one’s appetite for anything else.... So that’s what you’re after, is it? You’re after the truth about things.”
She did not reply.
He said, always watching her: “When you know the truth what are you going to do with it?”
“Act it. Write it.”
“Live it, too?” he inquired gravely.
She turned to look at him, not comprehending.
“Where are you going to get the money to do all this?” he asked lightly.
“It is going to be difficult—without money,” she admitted.
Something in the situation stirred a perverse sort of humour in him. He didn’t quite believe in her, as she revealed her complexities and her simplicities out of her own mouth.
“The love of money is the root of all good,” he remarked.
After a silence: “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully. “One needs it to do good ... perhaps to be good.... Nobody can tell, I suppose, what starvation might do to them.... Money is good.”
“All things are difficult without money,” he said, pursuing his perverse thesis. “The love of it is not the root of all evil. Money is often salvation. Lack of it fetters effort. Want of it retards fulfilment. Without it ambition is crippled. Aspiration remains a dream. Lacking a penny-worth of bread, Hamlet had never been written.... I think I’ll say as much in my next story.”
His was an easy and humorous tongue, facile and creative, too—it being his business to juggle nimbly with ideas and amuse an audience at so much a column.
Eris listened, unaware that he was poking fun at himself. Her shadowy eyes were intent on his in the starlight. The white, sharp contours of her face interested him. He was alert for any word or tone or gesture done for dramatic effect.
“So that’s your story, then,” he said in his gay, agreeable voice. “You are a little pilgrim of Minerva in quest of Wisdom, travelling afoot through the world with an empty wallet and no staff to comfort you.”
“I understand what you mean,” she said. “Minerva was goddess of Wisdom. We had mythology in high-school.”
He thought: “She’s a clever comedienne or an utter baby.” He said: “Is that really all there is to your story?”
“I have no story.”
“No ill-treatment at home to warrant your running away?”
“Oh, no.”
“Not even an unhappy love affair?”
She shook her head slightly as though embarrassed.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty in April.”
Annan was silent. He had not supposed her to be over seventeen. She had seemed little more than a child in the starlight when she sat up ruffling her bobbed hair in the first tepid breeze.
She said seriously: “I am growing old. And if I have talent I have no time to waste. That is why I went away at the first opportunity.”
“What are your talents?”
“I dance. I have acted in school plays. Once I wrote a one-act piece for myself. They liked it.”
“Go ahead and tell me about it.”
She told him how she had written the act and how she had sung and danced. Stimulated by the memory of her little success, she ventured to speak of her connection with the Crystal Films. Then, suddenly, the long-pent flood of trouble poured out of her lonely heart.
“I drove over to Summit,” she said, “where they had been shooting an exterior. Mr. Quiss introduced me to Mr. Donnell, the director. Mr. Donnell said that they were just leaving for Albany on location, and he couldn’t give me a test. So I went to Albany the next morning—I just packed my night-clothes and walked all the way to Gayfield to catch the six o’clock morning train. It was my first chance. I seemed to realise that. I took fifty dollars I had saved. I have spent thirty of it already.
“At Albany Mr. Donnell had a test made of me. It turned out well. He offered me a contract. I telephoned to my stepmother and told her what I had done. I explained that I needed money.... I have some money of my own. But my father wouldn’t let me have it. I wrote several times, but they only told me to come home. They wouldn’t let me have any money.
“Then, when the company arrived at the New York studio, Mr. Donnell seemed to be in trouble. We were not paid. I heard Mr. Quiss say that the principals had received no salary for a month. He said that Mr. Donnell had not been paid, either. The carpenters who were building sets refused to go on until they had their wages. Somebody cut off the electric current. Our dynamo stopped. We stood around all day. Somebody said that the bankers who owned the Crystal Films were in financial difficulties.
“Then, the next morning, when we reported for work at the studio, we found it locked. I was sorry for our company. Even the principals seemed to be in need of money. Mr. Quiss was very kind to me. He offered to pay my fare back home. But I wouldn’t go. Mr. Donnell offered to lend me ten dollars, but I told him I had twenty. He gave me a nice letter to the Elite Agency. Mr. Quiss promised to keep me in mind. But the agencies tell me that all the film companies are letting their people go this summer. I can’t seem to find any work. They tell me there won’t be any work until October.... I’m saving my twenty dollars. And I’m wondering what I shall find to do to keep busy until October.... Even if I could afford a room, I don’t need it. It is too hot in New York to sleep indoors.... I can wash my face and hands in the ladies’ room of any hotel. I give the maid five cents.... But I don’t know what to do for a bath. I must do something.... I shall hire a room for a day and wash myself and my clothes.... You see, twenty dollars doesn’t go very far in New York.... I wonder how far I can go on it.... Do you know what would be the very cheapest way to live on twenty dollars until October?”
After a silence Annan said: “I owe you ten for your story. That makes thirty dollars.”
“Oh. But I can’t take money from you!”
“Why?”
“I haven’t earned it. I had no story to tell you. I’ve only talked to you.”
Annan, sitting cross-legged on the grass, clasped his knees with both arms. He said, coolly:
“I offered you ten dollars for your story. That was too little to offer for such a story. It’s worth more.”
“Why, it isn’t worth anything,” she retorted. “I hadn’t any story to tell you. I shan’t let you give me money just because I’ve talked to you.”
“Can you guess how much I shall be paid by my newspaper for writing out this story you have told me?” he asked, smiling at her in the starlight.
She shook her head.
“Well, I won’t bother you with details; but your commission in this transaction will be considerable. Your commission will amount to a hundred dollars.”
She sat so rigid and unstirring that he leaned a little toward her to see her expression. It was flushed and hostile.
“Do you think I am joking?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you are doing.”
He said: “I’m not mean enough to make a joke of your predicament. I’m telling you very honestly that I can construct a first-rate short story out of the story you have just told me. I’m workman enough to do it. That’s my job.
“Every week I write a short story for the Sunday edition of the New York Planet. My stories have become popular. My name is becoming rather well known. I am now paid so well for my stories that I can afford to pay well for the idea you have given me. Your story is full of ideas, and it’s worth about a hundred dollars to me.”
“It isn’t worth a cent,” she said. “I don’t want you to offer me money.... Or anything....” She laid both hands against her forehead as though her head ached, and sat huddled up, elbows resting on her knees. Presently she yawned.
“Please excuse me,” she murmured, “I seem to be tired.”
There was a long silence. Annan turned his head to see if his friend Coltfoot still waited. Not discovering him, he inspected his watch. Surprised, he lit a match to make certain of the time; and discovered that he had been talking with this girl for more than an hour and a half.
He said to her in his pleasant, persuasive voice: “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
She looked up, white and tired: “I’m not afraid of anybody.”
“Well, you’re not entirely right. However, if you’re not afraid of me, suppose I help you find a room to-night. You can afford a room now.”
She shook her head.
“You intend to stay here?”
“Yes, to-night.”
“You’d better not stay here with a hundred and twenty dollars in your pocket.”
“I shan’t take money from you.”
“Do you want me to lose five hundred dollars?”
“How?” she asked, bewildered by the sudden impatience in his voice.
“If I write the story I get six hundred. I won’t write it unless you take your commission.”
She said nothing.
“Come,” he said, almost sharply. “I’m not going to leave you here. You need a bath, anyway. You can’t get a good rest unless you have a bath.”
He sprang up from the grass, took her hand before she could withdraw it, and drew her forcibly to her feet.
“Maybe you’re twenty,” he said, “but some cop is likely to take you to the Arsenal as a lost child.”
She seemed so startled that he reassured her with a smile,—stooped to pick up her hat and satchel, still smiling.
“Come on, little pilgrim,” he said, “it’s two o’clock in the morning, and the Temple of Wisdom is closed. Bath and bed is your best bet.”
She pinned on her hat mechanically, smoothed her wrinkled dress. Then she looked up at him in a dazed way.
“Ready?” he asked gently.
“Yes. What do you want me to do?”
“Let’s go,” he said lightly, and took her by the hand again.
Slowly through starry darkness he guided her between prone shapes on the grass, and so along the asphalt, east, until the silvery lamps of Fifth Avenue stretched away before them in endless, level constellations.
He was beginning to wonder where to take her at such an hour. But to the sort of mind that was Annan’s, direct method and simple solution always appealed. He came to a swift conclusion,—came to it the more easily because it was an amusing one.
“You’re not afraid of me, you say?” he repeated.
She shook her head. “You seem kind.... Should I be?”
“Well, not in my case,” he said, laughing.... “We’ll take that taxi—” He hailed it, gave directions, and seated himself beside her, now keenly amused.
“Little pilgrim,” he said, “you’re going to have a good scrub, a good sleep in a good bed, and a jolly good breakfast when you wake up. What do you think of that!”
“I don’t know what to think.... I have found much kindness among strangers.”
He laughed and lighted a cigarette. The avenue was nearly deserted. At Forty-second Street the taxi swung west to Seventh Avenue, south, passing Twenty-third Street, west again through a maze of crooked old-time streets. It stopped, finally, before a two-story and basement house of red brick—one of many similar houses that lined both sides of a dark and very silent block.
Annan got out, paid his fare, took the little satchel, and handed Eris out.
“Is it a boarding house?” she asked.
“One lodges well here,” he replied carelessly.
They ascended the stoop; Annan used his latch-key, let her in, switched on the light.
“Come up,” he said briefly.
On the landing at the top of the stairs he switched on another light, opened a door, lighted a third bracket.
“Come in!”
Eris entered the bed-room. It was large. So was the bed, a four-poster. So was the furniture.
“Here’s your bath-room,” he remarked, opening a door into a white-tiled room. He stepped inside to be certain. There were plenty of towels, soap still in its wrapper, a row of bottles with flowers painted on them—evidently for masculine use—cologne, bay rum, witch hazel, hair-tonic.
“Now,” he said, “your worries are over until to-morrow. There’s your tub, there’s your bed, there’s a key in the door. Lock it when you turn in. And don’t you stir until they bring your breakfast in the morning.”
Eris nodded.
“All right. Good-night.”
She turned toward him as though still a little bewildered.
“Are you going?” she asked timidly.
“Yes. Is there anything you need?”
“No.... I would like to thank you—if you are going....”
“Little pilgrim,” he said, “I want to thank you for an interesting evening.”
He held out his hand; Eris laid hers in it.
“You needn’t tell me your name,” he said smilingly,—“unless you choose to.”
“Eris Odell.”
“Eris! Well, that’s rather classic, isn’t it? That’s an—unusual—name.... Eris. Suggests Mount Ida and golden apples, doesn’t it?—Or is it your stage name?”
Puzzled, smiling, he stood looking at her, still retaining her hand.
“No, it’s my name.”
“Well, then, my name is Barry Annan.... And I think it’s time we both got a little sleep....” He shook her slender hand formally, released it.
“Good-night, Eris,” he said. “Lock your door and go to sleep.”
“Good-night,” she replied in a tired, unsteady voice.
Annan walked through the corridor into the front bed-room and turned on his light.
He seemed to be much amused with the situation,—a little worried, too.
“She’ll get in Dutch if she doesn’t look out,” he thought as he went about his preparations for the night.... “A funny type.... Rather convincing.... Or a consummate actress.... But she’s most amusing anyway. Let’s see how she turns out.... She looks hungry.... What a little fool!... Now, you couldn’t put this over on the stage or in a story.... Your public is too wise. They don’t grow that kind of girl these days.... That’s romantic stuff and it won’t go with the wise guy.... You can’t pull a character like this girl on any New York audience. And yet, there she is—in there, scrubbing herself, if I can judge by the sound of running water.... No, she doesn’t exist.... And yet, there she is!... Only I’m too clever to believe in her.... There is no fool like a smart one.... That is why the Great American Ass is the greatest ass on earth....”