HATTIE’S voice answered him: “Who is it, please?”
“Mr. Annan. Is Miss Odell at home?”
“I’ll enquiah, suh. Please to hold the wiah.”
He could hear her fat feet clattering away along the corridor. An endless, endless wait, almost a quarter of a minute. Steps again on the tiled corridor,—not Hattie’s; then the composed voice of Eris:
“Mr. Annan?”
“Yes.... Do you—are you quite all right?” he faltered.
“Quite, thank you. Are you?”
“Yes, I’m fine.... I’m so glad you’re all right.... Do you mind my calling up?”
“I hoped you would,” she replied calmly.
“D-did you?—really?” he stammered, unable to believe his ears.
“Naturally. I’ve wondered whether you have been too busy to call me. Have you?”
“Not exactly—busy. Do you—suppose I—I could see you, Eris?”
“Did you suppose you couldn’t?” she asked in a low voice.
“I didn’t know.... When may I?”
“Probably,” she said, “you have an engagement this evening—”
“No! I’m not doing anything at all!”
“Then—will you come?”
“Yes. What time?”
“Any time.”
“Do you—do you mean now?” he cried, enchanted.
Her reply was slightly indistinct: “Yes, as soon as you possibly can—if you would be—so kind——”
Again the low hanging sun at the western end of Jane Street, cherry-red in the river mist, washing out all shabbiness and squalor in a rosy bath of light.
A barrel-organ, played by an old, old man, drew legions of ragged children to the pavement in front of her house, where they whirled like gnats at sunset, dancing to some forgotten rag—the sun spinning its nimbus around each dishevelled, childish head.
Annan made his way through the milling swarm with a caress for those who stumbled across his path and a silver-piece tossed to the ancient where he leaned on his organ, bent almost double, tears perpetual in his sunken eyes.
He ran up the stairs; knocked.
“Hello, Hattie,” he tried to say—scarcely conscious of voice at all, or sight or hearing.
“Go right in, Mr. Annan, suh——”
He was already going, not knowing any longer what he was about. The sun-glare on the windows dazzled him a moment before he saw her.
She was standing at the further end of the room. He went slowly toward her, not knowing how they were to meet after ages of dead days.
Then, still knowing nothing, he took her into his arms.
Her mouth warmed slightly against his. As his embrace tightened, her hands hovered close to his shoulders, touched them, crept upward.
Suddenly the girl strained him to her with all her strength.
In the silence of passionate possession, her lips melted to his, ... a moment, ... then her head dropped on his arm with a sob.
“I was lonely;—you made me feel lonely.... Where have you been?”
“I’ve been in love with you——”
She released herself but clung to his hand. They came together again, sank down on the lounge together.
“I’ve been lonely,” she repeated; “—it’s been deathly lonely without you.... I’m tired—of the pain of it....”
Dusk in the room turned golden with a rosy tinge. They had not spoken. His gaze never left her face. At intervals she rested her bobbed head against him, confused by the dire ruin that once had been her mind before love burst in, disordering everything.
Now, groping for the origin of the cataclysm, she retraced her progress through a maze of memories to the first step. The Park! Vision of hot stars overhead; vision of the great bed where she lay in this man’s house; vision of the Coast—a confusion of sunshine and feverish endeavour;—but in none of these was the germ of The Beginning.... Yet she was drawing nearer now. The place of the birth of love was not far away.... Suddenly she found it.
And, as this man now was to know everything that she knew, Eris prepared to bare her untried heart.... She offered her lips first; looked into his eyes with a vague and virgin curiosity.
“—And after you went out,” she continued, “what had happened seemed suddenly to demoralise me. I was exasperated.... I tore your rose from my belt and threw it after you.... I slammed the door and bolted it.... As though I could bolt out what had happened to me!—” She laughed and looked happily into his eyes,—“Barry! As though I could bolt it out!”
He kissed her hands; her lips caressed his bent head.
“... And, do you know,” she went on, “I even swore at you?”
“Swore at——” Laughter checked him.
“Yes, I damned you. I knew how to. They swear hard on farms.... Oh, Barry, I swore at you like a hired man!”
“You dear,” he said, “—you dear!”
“You say that now, but you nearly drove me mad that evening.... You did!”
“I was half crazy myself, Eris——”
“Were you!” she pleaded with swift tenderness. “Oh, Barry, you are thin! You look ill. I was frightened when you came in this evening——”
She drew his head to her again, caressed it, tender, penitent:
“You are not well. Can I do anything?”
“You are doing it.”
“I know.... I wish I could take care of you——”
“You’re going to feed me, presently.”
“You make a joke of it; but you’re ill, and I did it!”
“Blessed child, I’ll be so fat in a week that I’ll waddle like Hattie!”
“Show me,” she urged, enchanted.
He got up and tried to waddle, and she sank back, convulsed.
In fact, they both had become rather light headed by the time Hattie announced dinner.
It was love’s April—gusty with unbidden gaiety—with heavenly intervals of calm; of caprice; of stormy contact; of smiles, tremulous, close to tears—lips touching in wonder; and the sudden breeze of laughter freshening, refreshing mind and body:—their April in Love after youth’s long winter.
“Poor boy,” she said, “I’ve rather a horrid dinner for you. I was dining out, and you didn’t give me time——”
“You broke a dinner engagement for me, Eris?”
“I telephoned Nancy Cassell that I couldn’t come. It doesn’t matter.... Anyway, that’s why you’re having omelette and minced chicken....”
Now and then she slipped her cool, smooth hand into his under the camouflage of the cloth. And she ate so, sometimes awkwardly; and clung a little to his hand when he would have released hers.
Once she drew a deep, uneven breath: “I never expected to be in love,” she said. “Oh, Barry, it’s so inconvenient!”
“How?” he protested.
“My dear! I work like the dickens! It would be all right if I could come back to you at night. But this way——”
After a silence: “That must happen, too, Eris.”
“I’ll have to talk to you about that.... And there are evenings when I must study—rehearse before the mirror—or read very hard. And some evenings I am dead tired.... And then there are dinners.... And one’s friends.... Darling!—you look at me so oddly!”
“Well—as I’m in love with you, I’d rather like to see you more than twice a year——”
She laughed and caught his hands—set her lips to them—looked up at him again with her heart in her eyes.
“To be loved by you!” she said, “is too wonderful for me!”
“Once,” he reminded her with malice, “you told me you were tired of me——”
Her shocked face checked him.
“I was only joking, Eris——”
“I did say it! And I was already in love with you when I said it. God and you punished me instantly. But I couldn’t ever bear to have you two do it again——”
Somebody had sent her some cordials,—mint, curaçoa,—that sort. She was unaccustomed—had no taste for such things. But she was happy to show him her sideboard after dinner.
“It’s all for you. You like such things, don’t you? Well, then, I’m going to keep them for you.... Rosalind goes schmoozing about when she comes here. Other girls, also. But I’ve been unutterably mean—and I’ve hoarded it for you.”
“Then you did expect me to call you up?” he asked, laughingly.
“Oh, Lord, I didn’t know. If you hadn’t called me I couldn’t have stood it much longer.”
“Would you have called me?”
“Of course.... Or died.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was afraid.... And I wasn’t quite dead, yet——”
“Of what were you afraid?”
“I knew you must be very bored with me.... And there was something else.... It scared me.... It still exists.”
“Tell me, Eris.”
“Yes; I’ll have to tell you, now.” They rose from the table and she took his arm.... “But you must love me, Barry!—I’ve got to be loved by you now.”
In the lamp-lit sitting room he drew her to him: “How could I help loving you, Eris?”
“I don’t want you to help it.”
“I couldn’t, anyway. So you needn’t fear to tell me anything you please.”
“No.... I’ve got to tell you, whether it scares me or not.... I think I’d rather wait until just before you go.”
She curled up on the sofa close to him, one hand clasping her ankles, the other against his shoulder.
“Also, I want to explain to you,” she said, “that I didn’t know Mrs. Grandcourt was your aunt until after I’d fallen in love with you.”
“I don’t follow the continuity——”
“I mean I’m not socially ambitious.”
He was still mystified.
“I didn’t know you were so very important socially,” she explained.
“I’m not. My aunt thinks she is, but really she isn’t any more. Life passed her on the road at eighty with every cylinder hitting. I never travelled that highway. But my poor aunt still trundles along it in an ancient victoria. Even the flivvers cover her old-mine diamonds with plebeian joy-dust——”
Eris, helpless with laughter, clung to his shoulder.
“I don’t wish to laugh,” she protested. “Your aunt is nice to me.... Though rather horrid to Betsy.... It seems she knew my grandmother. She says she told you that.”
“When did she admit to you that my relationship disgraced her?”
“Yesterday.”
“Oh, so you continue to see her in town?”
“I lunched with her.”
“In her private morgue?”
“It is gloomy.”
“I suppose, while she was about it, she handed you a lurid line or two regarding me.”
“Well—yes.... I am instructed to beware of you.... Darling!”
“Are you going to beware of me?”
“No.”
He kissed her threateningly: “What do you suppose my aunt would think if she knew you had once been my guest over night?”
“I told her.”
“What!” he exclaimed.
“But, Barry, I couldn’t allow her to be so friendly unless she understood what sort of girl I am.”
“You didn’t tell her about the Park, also?”
“I did.”
“How did she take it?”
“She said such severe things about you—I was quite annoyed!... Dreadful things, darling——”
“Yes. She called you several ghastly names——”
“Which?”
“Well—‘libertine’.”
He roared with laughter but Eris had turned rosy.
“I told her very plainly that you were not,” she said. “I told her you were kind and generous and harmless——”
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, helpless with laughter again.
“What are you laughing at? You are harmless!” she repeated. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes, darling.... But some encomiums hurt as well as edify.... Never mind. Go on.”
“That was all.... Except she tried to persuade me to give up my profession. She always does.”
“What does she graciously suggest for you?”
“Why, I suppose she wishes to be kind to me because she was very fond of my grandmother.... But I couldn’t go and live with her.”
“She asked you?”
Eris nodded.
“My aunt,” he said good humouredly, “is very rich and very stingy. You’re the only person I ever heard of on whom she was ready to spend real money. What did she propose?”
“Adoption, I believe.”
“Lord! She really must have cared for your grandmother....”
“I think she really did.”
After a silence: “You declined?”
“Darling! Do you think such things count with me?”
After a silence: “Did you tell her I’d ever kissed you?” he asked curiously.
“That was none of her business, Barry.”
He laughed: “So you pass up the wealthy aunt for the libertine nephew? Do you?”
“I do. I like him. In fact, I’m rather in the way of loving him. Also, I love liberty, and freedom to pursue happiness. Happiness means work, and you.”
“Which comes first, work or me?”
“Darling!”
“Which?”
“I don’t have to make that choice——”
“Suppose you had to?” he insisted.
“I’d be fearfully unhappy——”
“But you’d choose work.... Would you, Eris?”
“I—suppose so.... Probably I’d die in either case.... Work means life.... I guess you do, too. But if I had to choose I’d choose work, I suppose.”
Nothing ever had touched him so deeply; nor had so profoundly surprised him.
He said: “Every word I ever have heard you utter merely reveals new beauty in you,—and my own heart, more and more in love with you.”
He drew her close to his breast; spoke with his lips on her cheek:
“Would marrying me hamper you?... Had you rather wait until you are more secure in your profession?”
“Darling!” she said pitifully, “—that is what I had to tell you. I am married.”
He stared at her astounded.
After a tense silence: “Please love me—Barry——” she whispered. “Please, dear!”
She clasped her hands in appeal, as unconscious of drama as she had been that day on Whitewater Brook when Mr. Quiss threatened to swim out of her ken.
“Barry! Are you disgusted?”
“Why, it seems so impossible——”
“To love me?”
“No!—that you—you ever have been married!”
“I haven’t been—entirely.... Only legally ... and partly.”
He thought: “My God, there seems to be something the matter with everybody and everything.” And to Eris: “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“It was none of your business until I fell in love with you, was it?”
He caught her in his arms, roughly: “It’s my business now. Do you understand? I’ll never give you up.... Look at me, Eris!”
He was hurting her; and she smiled and endured her bruises, breast and lips and limb.
She said: “If you marry me I shall have to get unmarried first—somehow or other——”
“Where is—this man?”
“I don’t know, darling.... This was how it all occurred——”
Now, sullenly, and in silence he listened to the sordid story of the marriage of Eris.
She told it without resentment—and with the candour and brevity of a child.
Always it had seemed to her as though she had been merely a witness of the miserable affair and not personally concerned. And she told it in that manner.
“You see, it really doesn’t count,” she concluded. “I was so ignorant that it meant nothing to me at the time. I scarcely ever think of it, now. Barry.... I want you to love me.... But if you had rather not marry me——”
He reddened: “What alternative do you suggest?”
“Why—this!—as we are.... It leaves us both free to work——”
“That is your ruling passion,” he said bluntly, “—work!”
“If we don’t marry, I can have you, and work, too——”
“Do you think me narrow enough, selfish enough, to interfere with your career if you marry me?”
She answered gravely: “I wasn’t afraid of that.... I was afraid of—children—if I marry you ... dearest.”
“But if——” Then the candour of her chaste self-revelation grew clear to him—her exquisite ignorance, her virgin confidence in the heavenly inviolability of love.
“Do you understand, Barry?”
“I think so.”
“You see,” she explained, “unmarried I can go and still have you.... But careers often end when children come.”
“Don’t you ever want them, Eris?”
“Well—as I’ve never had any, isn’t it natural I should prefer you and a career to you and a baby?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Not that I don’t care for children,” she murmured. Her grey eyes grew remote; a hint of tenderness curved her lips, and she smiled faintly to herself.
“We’ll try out your idea first,” he said, “—the combination you prefer,—your work first, then me.... Our life will pass in one endless courtship.”
“Could anything be lovelier!” she cried, enchanted.