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.