THE day was warm enough to be uncomfortable. Except in recesses of parks, New York is never fragrant. Once it was—when the odour of lindens filled the Broad-Way from the Fort to St. Paul’s. Wild birds sang in every street. Washington was President. Green leaves and scent and song are gone where “The Almond Tree shall flourish,” deep planted in the heart of man.
As far as perfume is concerned, neither the eastward avenues nor cross-streets suggested Araby to Annan. He carried, as usual, a large pasteboard box full of flowers.
Jane Street runs west out of Greenwich Avenue. Shabby red brick buildings with rusty fire-escapes, lofts, stables, a vista of swarming tenements through which runs a sagging pavement set with pools of water—and, on the south side, half a dozen rickety three-story-and-basement houses—this is Jane Street.
The little children of the poor shrilled and milled about him as he threaded his way among push-cart men and trucks and mounted the low stoop of the house where Eris lived.
It seemed clean enough inside as he climbed the narrow stairs, manœuvering his big box full of flowers.
He could hear her negro maid-of-all-work busy in the kitchen as he knocked,—hear her call out gaily: “Miss Eris! Miss Eris, somebody’s knockin’ an’ I can’t leave mah kitchen——”
Came the light sound of feet dancing along the hall, the door jerked open in his face, sudden vision of grey eyes and bobbed chestnut hair; the swift bright smile:
“Good morning!”—her offered hand, cool and fresh in his. “More flowers? But yesterday’s flowers are perfectly fresh! Thank you, Mr. Annan, so much——”
She was the most engaging person to give things to—anything, no matter how trivial—and her delight and child-like lack of restraint were refreshing reward to a young man accustomed to feminine sophistication.
Any sort of a package excited her, and she lost no time in opening it.
Now, with her arms full of iris and peonies, she exclaimed her delight again, again made her personal gratitude a charming reward out of all proportion to the gift.
“If you’ll turn on the water in the bath-tub,” she said, “I’ll lay them there until I can find something to put them in.”
This was the usual procedure. He had sent her a lot of inexpensive glass bowls, jars and vases. He now gave the flowers a bath while she ran to the pantry and came back with half a dozen receptacles.
Together they arranged the flowers and carried them into the three rooms of the little apartment which, already, was blossoming like a Persian garden. And all the while their desultory chatter continued—fragments left from their last parting—gossip resumed, unasked questions held over and now remembered, punctuated by the girl’s unspoiled pleasure in every blossom that she chose and placed.
Breakfast was ready when they were—the sort of breakfast she remembered he liked.
Nothing about Eris seemed to have been spoiled—least of all her appetite. He thought it charmingly childish, and it always amused him. Besides, the girl’s lovely freshness in the morning always fascinated him. Only children turned unblemished faces to the morning in New York.
Together in the cool living-room, after breakfast, they settled for a happy, busy morning—the business of exchanging thoughts, including vast material for discussion accumulated over night.
After a year’s absence, and in the sudden sun-burst of their reunion, Eris was venturing more and more in the art of conversation. With Annan, diffidence, shyness were vanishing in their new and happy intimacy. She was learning to withhold from him nothing that concerned the things of the mind. Its pleasures she hastened to surrender to him; its perplexities she offered him with a wistful candour that constantly was stirring depths within him hitherto obscurely stagnant.
All these—her personality, the physical loveliness of the girl—were subtly obsessing him, usurping intellectual routine when he was away, crowding other thoughts, colouring his mental process, interfering with its clarity when he worked—interrupting charmingly—as though her light touch on his sleeve had arrested his pen.
She was asking him now about the progress of his new novel: he was lighting a cigarette, and he looked up over the burning match:
“It’s an inert lump,” he said. “I come in and give it a kick but it doesn’t even squirm.”
“Why?” she asked, concerned.
He lighted his cigarette. There was a mischievous glimmer in his eyes:
“Probably it’s sulking because I’m having a better time with you.”
“You’re not serious!”
“Yes, I am. That fool of a novel is jealous. That’s what’s the matter with it, Eris.”
“If I believed that,” she said with a troubled smile, “I’d not go near you.”
“That would be murderous, Eris.”
“How?”
“Why, I’d go home and kick that novel to death.”
Her light laughter was not wholly free of concern:
“I’ve thought sometimes,” she said, “that perhaps our mornings together might take a little of the freshness out of you, Mr. Annan.... Take something from your work.... You’re so nice about it—but you mustn’t let me——”
“Nonsense. Even if it were true I’m not going to let anything spoil our intellectual——” he hesitated,—“honeymoon,” he added with the faintest malice in his laugh.
“What a delightful idea!” she exclaimed. “That’s what this week has been, hasn’t it!—on my part, anyway. But of course you don’t feel——”
“I do, madam. Do you acknowledge our intellectual alliance?”
“Yes, but——”
“That settles it. You can’t honeymoon by yourself, can you?”
She thought him delightfully ridiculous. But a faint misgiving persisted:
“About your novel,” she began,—and he laughed and said:
“Well, what about it?”
“When will you begin again?”
“How long will our honeymoon last?”
“That isn’t fair——”
“Yes, it is. How long, Eris?”
She laughed at his absurdity: “Forever, with me,” she said. “So you might as well begin work now as later.”
“Hasn’t our honeymoon interfered a little with your work?” he asked lightly.
“Of course not. It’s been the most stimulating of tonics, Mr. Annan.”
“Well, it’s overstimulated me, perhaps. I can’t keep my feet on the earth,—I float——”
“You’re lazy!”
“Blissfully, Eris.... Eris!... Eris, immortal goddess of eternal discord.... Who gave you that lovely, ominous name?”
“The ironical physician who brought me into the world, I believe.... I believe I was well named.”
“You don’t create discord.”
“I seem to; from birth,” she said absently. She bent over a mass of rose-scented white peonies, inhaling the slightly aromatic perfume.
Watching her, he said: “It’s hard for me to realise that you’ve ever had troubles.”
“It’s hard for me, too,” she brushed her lips against the delicate, crisp petals. “Troubles,” she said, “become unreal when one’s mind remains interested.... I can’t even remember how it feels to be unhappy.... A busy mind forgets unessentials like trouble.”
He said: “You’re rather amazing at times, do you know it?”
“Why?”
He smiled: “Also,” he said, “there’s an incongruity about this honeymoon of ours, Eris.”
“Where, Mr. Annan?”
“Between your lips and mine—when you say ‘Mr. Annan’ and I answer, ‘Eris.’ And on our honeymoon, too,” he added gravely.
Her laughter was a little confused.
“It seems natural for me to call you Mr. Annan. One is not likely to think familiarly of famous people——”
“Is it a horrible sort of bourgeois respect for the mystery of my art, Eris?”
She abandoned herself to laughter as his features grew gloomier.
“You are funny,” she said, “but one’s first impressions of people are not easily altered.... Would you wish me to call you—Barry?”
“If consistent with your commendable and proper awe of me.”
For a moment or two she was unable to control her laughter. Then a moment’s hesitation, bright-eyed, flushed:
“Barry,” she said, like a child plucking courage from embarrassment.
She had some books to show him from a list she had asked him to make after one of their conferences on self-improvement.
They went over them together, she ardently intent on the unread pages, he conscious of her nearness; the faint, warm perfume of her bent head.
Her mantel-clock struck and she looked up incredulously.
“Yes,” he said, “you’ve got to go.”
“It can’t be noon, can it?”
“I’ll drive you to the studio.”
She called: “Hattie! Have you put up my lunch?”
“All ready, Miss Eris, honey!”
There was a silence, Eris gazing absently at the outrageous mantel-clock, Annan’s eyes on her face.
She drew a long, even breath: “Time—and its hours—like a flight of bullets.... When can you come again?”
“Any day—any hour you can give me——”
“No.... You will begin work again, won’t you?” She turned toward him.
“I can’t, yet.”
“Why?”
“I suppose it’s because I’m so preoccupied with you.”
“But—that isn’t possible!” She seemed so frankly perplexed and disturbed that he said:
“No, that isn’t the reason.... I don’t know what it is.”
“Are you tired, perhaps?” she asked with a winning concern in her voice, that now always seemed to stir within him those vague depths hitherto unsuspected.
Her mantel-clock tinkled the quarter-hour.
They both looked up at it.
“Well,” he said, “you must go to your work.”
“It’s annoying, isn’t it?”
“It’s the way I feel about my work, too,” he said. “I’d rather be with you.”
For a moment she did not notice the analogy. Then she turned and her face flushed in comprehension.
Neither spoke for a moment. Then she rose, went to her bed-room, pulled on her hat, and came slowly out, not looking at him.
As she moved toward the door his hand, lightly, then his arm detained her, drew her to him face to face, held her in slightest contact.
There was a damp sweetness to her mouth as he kissed it. She did not change colour,—there was no emotion. Smooth, cool, her face touched his—softly cool her relaxed hand that he took into his.
He looked into grey eyes that looked back. He kissed a fresh mouth that yielded like a flower but did not quiver.
Released, she stood apart, slender, still, not aloof, nor altered visibly by the moment’s intimacy.
The little clock struck the half hour.
He came to her, drew her head back against his face.
“You’ll have to go,” he said. “Will you let me drive you up to the studio? We’ll have time.”
She nodded; they went slowly to the door, down to the hot street in silence.
On Greenwich Avenue, near the new theatre, still in process of building, they found a taxi.
When they descended at the studio she was just on time.
“Thank you so much,” she said, not offering him her hand.
“To-morrow, Eris?” he asked.
“I can’t. I’m called for ten o’clock.”
“In the evening, then?”
“I’m dining with Mr. Smull.”
“Could you lunch with me the day after that?”
“I’m sorry.”
A pause: “Are you offended?” he asked in a low voice.
She looked up, slightly shook her head.
“You don’t seem very anxious to see me again,” he added, forcing a smile.
In the eyes of the girl he read neither response nor any comment.
“I won’t detain you now,” he said. “I’m sorry you seem to be unable to see me soon.”
“I hope you will feel like working soon,” she said quietly.
“I’ll begin in a day or so.... Are you free day after to-morrow, at any time?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Could you come to dinner?”
His features altered swiftly: “You charming, generous girl! Of course I’ll come——”
“Good-bye,” she nodded, and turned away into the portal where the door-keeper on duty stood watching them.