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.”