IF Annan supposed he was to see Eris frequently during those first enchanted days, he presently realised his mistake. She was working under pressure at the studio.
Pressure, due to laziness and ignorance, seldom bears hard on the incompetents who cause it. In this case it was due to hasty organization and Mr. Creevy’s direction. And Eris was always about to take a train when Annan called her on the telephone,—always starting “on location,” or “working late at the studio,” or kept idle awaiting “re-takes.”
These phrases began to irritate Annan; but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
In New York, theatres were closing for the summer; roofs and beaches opening; synthetic fruit-drinks appeared. June did her pathetic best for the noisy, shabby city in park and square;—put on her prettiest in green leaves and blossoms. The Park Department ruined the effort with red and yellow cannas. God knows whether New York’s dull and bovine eyes notice such things at all. Does the ox notice the wild flowers he chews, or the ass admire the thistle blossoms before munching? But why New York is not nauseated by its floral display remains a mystery.
The only dose the aborigine notices is an emetic. But even red and yellow cannas in combination left New York’s bowels unaffected.
Still, ailanthus and catalpa in Governor’s Place spread once more their cool, green pools of shade over parched sidewalks; ampelopsis on Annan’s house and an ancient wistaria twisted over the iron balcony did their missionary part to touch the encysted hearts of those who ‘have eyes but see not.’ A white butterfly or two fluttered through Governor’s Place.
Annan’s house, stripped for summer, was cool and dusky and still, haunted by a starched and female phantom that flitted through the demi-light in eternal quest for moth and dust and rust.
The only inclination of a man really in love is to keep at work in the absence of the beloved. Nothing else helps to slay the intolerable hours and days.
It was thus with this young man. Eris on location was so tragic a calamity that he could endure it only by rushing headlong into the clutch of literature.
All day, in dressing-gown and slippers, pen in hand, he scratched madly at a pad.
Nourishment was set before him at proper intervals; he ate it at improper intervals.
But the pinched look had left his youthful and agreeable features and shadows were gone from cheek and temple.
Every day he wrote a morning and an evening letter to Eris. And no doubt it was her letters to him that were feeding him fat.
Sometimes Coltfoot dropped in to lounge in an arm-chair and smoke his pipe and lazily observe the younger man, flagrante delicto with his brazen Muse.
And once Rosalind coolly invaded his threshold, announced with a sniff by the Starched One.
Rosalind wanted a cocktail and lunch. She sat on the edge of Annan’s writing table, swinging one trim foot, interrupting breezily when it suited her, or satisfying her capricious curiosity with his inky copy.
“Not so bad,” she drawled, shuffling a dozen unnumbered sheets together and tossing them under his nose. “Come on, ducky, and talk to me ere we feast and revel.”
“I’m going to give you your lunch when it’s ready. Until then I want to work. Run away and play, Linda——”
“Play nothing! We’re closed for the summer. Mom’s gone to the mountains and I’m queen of the flat. I sleep most of the time. Lay off, ducky, and converse with your little lonely Linda——”
“Wait a second, will you——” he protested. “Let my papers alone——”
“No, not a second will I wait—not a heart-throb! Regardez-moi, beau jeune homme. Ayez pitié de moi——”
She leaned over, patted his crisp hair, joggled his pen, gave a fillip to his nose.
“Betsy’s going to Paris,” she said. “What do you think of that?”
“Why don’t you go too?”
“You want to get rid of me? You can’t. By the way, how’s your solemn friend, Mr. Coltfoot?”
“All right,” he murmured, scratching away on his copy.
“And Eris? Do you ever see her, Barry?”
“Now and then.”
“Is it all over?”
“What?”
“Your affair with her——”
“Can it, Rosalind!——”
“You’re the canner, my fickle friend. We’re all pickles and you jarred us.... Sour pickles.... When you’re through with a girl she’s a schmeer.
“Look at me! I’m a schmeer. I was innocent and happy till you came schmoozing.... You know what I hear about Eris?”
No answer.
“Albert Smull is crazy about her.... He’s married, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“They’re the fancy devils, aren’t they?—those red-necked, ruddy-jowled, hand-groomed Wall Street Romeos. But there’s just a vulgar suspicion of the natty and jaunty about them;—and their chins are always shaved blue——”
“Confound it——” he exclaimed, “can’t you let me finish this page?”
“Don’t you like gossip, ducky?” she inquired with a baby stare.
He lay back in his chair while a scowl struggled with an unwilling smile.
“His Greatness,” she said, “looks hungry. When do we trifle with rare wines and sparkling fruits? Oh—and that reminds me, I want to tell you about a suitor—you know him—Wilkes Bruce, the painter ... just to show you how a man sometimes cans himself. There are two words that all fakes love to hand a girl.
“He was making a hit with me at the Ritz, and I was showing him that scarab ring you tell me is phony; and he suddenly said those two words—said ’em both in one breath!—‘Indubitably,’ says he, ‘this is a veritable antique!’ The two words!... I’m off that schmeer,” she added.
Annan wanted to yawn but stifled the indiscretion.
“You know,” she drawled, “I’m sorry for Eris.”
“Why?”
“Well, she has picked a bum in Ratford Creevy, and in that Dutch souse, Emil Shunk. It isn’t agreeable to work with such people.... And I fancy Smull is beginning to bother her, too.”
A slight colour stained Annan’s temples: “Why do you fancy that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One notices and hears. He’s always on her heels, always schmoozing around. Of course there’s gossip, there always is. But that’s the kind of man Smull is.... And there you are.”
“Is he—that kind?”
“Well, he tried it on Betsy. Imagine! On Betsy, my dear!”
“What happened?”
“Why, she told him to go to the devil. And he backing her! Can you imagine?”
“I hope I can.”
“They’re mostly that sort, ducky—Jews and Gentiles.... It’s a good thing I have Mom. All I have to do is whistle her. Run? It would surprise you.”
Luncheon was announced.
He nodded, absently.... He was rather silent during luncheon. But Rosalind departed rather pleased with herself.
That night, writing to Eris, he said: “If ever anything disagreeable happens to annoy you, I want you to come to me with it immediately.”
Commenting on this, from the Berkshires: “Everything is gay and nothing is disagreeable. Mr. Smull came up and we had a picnic near Williamstown—the jolliest party!—except that Mr. Shunk had been drinking and Mr. Creevy’s jokes were rather vulgar. But a girl becomes impervious to such details. Only—I miss Frank Donnell and the nice, clean people in Betsy’s company....”
That was all. And Annan, relieved, yet always vaguely uneasy, went on with his brand new story—scratched away at it, biding the return of Eris.
She came when the month was nearly gone, warning him by wire of her train, evidently not expecting him to meet it, for she asked him to come to Jane Street for dinner at seven.
He never had gone to the train to meet Eris,—had never even thought of doing it. He thought of it now and wondered why he never before had done so.
By telephone he ordered flowers to be sent to Jane Street; and, a few minutes before six, he walked into the Grand Central Station and was directed to the exit where the incoming train was already signalled.
Outside the ropes, where people had gathered to welcome arriving friends, Annan encountered Albert Smull. As usual they shook hands. Smull wore his habitual and sanguine smile. His features had grown into it.
“Saw your good aunt at Newport, Friday,” he said, “but I seldom see you anywhere these days, Annan.”
“I don’t go about. How is it at Newport?”
“Fine weather——” Through the open gates the train glided into view. “Thought I’d come down and see how our picture people are looking after their tour on location,” said Smull. “You know some of them, Annan—you’ve met our clever little Eris?”
Annan turned and deliberately looked him over from his ruddy jowls to the polished tan shoes.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I’ve known Miss Odell for some time. I’m here to meet her.”
Smull’s sanguine face slowly took on a heavier red but the set smile remained.
“Bright kid,” he said, “—getting away with it, Creevy tells me. Shill and I are putting a lot of money into this picture——”
Passengers from the train just arrived were now pouring out of the exit, recognising waiting friends behind the ropes, signalling them with eager gestures, hurrying around the barriers to meet them.
Annan, ignoring Smull, and intently scanning the throng, finally perceived Ratford Creevy and Emil Shunk. Behind them, in the crowd, were other faces slightly familiar—members of the cast—and suddenly he saw Eris in a turquoise blue toque and summer gown, carrying her satchel,—a lithe, buoyant figure, moving quickly through the gates followed by a red-cap with her luggage.
Smull, perhaps not caring to bend too much at the waist, went around the rope; Annan stooped under it.
“Barry!” she exclaimed in happy surprise.
“It’s been a thousand years,” he said. “I’ve a taxi here——”
Smull, smiling eagerly out of dark eyes set a trifle too closely, and carrying his straw hat in his hand, confronted them.
“How do you do, Mr. Smull,” said Eris gaily, withdrawing her gloved hand from Annan’s and offering it to Smull.
“You’re looking fine, Eris,” he said, with too cordial familiarity. “I just passed Creevy and he says everything went big. Glad you’re back, little lady. I’ve a car here——”
“Thank you, Mr. Smull——”
The girl turned to Annan: “Mr. Smull wired me that he’d meet our train.... So thank you, too—for asking me.... I’m so sorry you have troubled to keep a taxi waiting for me——”
Smull, always smiling, turned to Annan: “Can’t we drop you somewhere, old chap?”
Annan said: “Thanks, no.” And, looking at Eris with cool curiosity, he took off his hat.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he said. “I hope I may see you while you’re here. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” she replied, as though slightly confused.
Annan bowed pleasantly, including them both, and turned to the left along the rope. The girl went rather slowly away beside Smull, followed by the red-cap with her luggage.
Outside the station, on the ramp above, Annan found his taxi and got into it. All the way home he stared persistently at the chauffeur’s frowsy head; but, whatever his thoughts, nothing on his smoothly composed features betrayed them.
As he entered his house the telephone was ringing, and he went to the lower one in the butler’s pantry.
“Barry!”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming to dinner?”
“I had expected to.”
“Could you come now?”
“Why, at home, of course.”
“Alone?”
“Alone!——” she repeated. “Why, yes, of course I am alone. I said seven, but I want you now. I can’t wait. Do you mind?”
“All right,” he said drily. At such moments, in most young men in love, the asinine instinct dominates.
Still chilled by the unpleasant impression of an intimacy, the natural existence of which he had never thought about, he went to his room and got into a dinner jacket, sulkily.
As he was dressing it occurred to him that this was one sample of the sort of thing he was very likely to encounter. A rush of boyish jealousy and resentment flushed his face—irritation that the world should entertain any doubt as to his proprietary right in this girl.
It was high time that the world made no mistake about it. Men of Albert Smull’s sort had better understand what was his status vis-à-vis with Eris.
Intensely annoyed—and without any reason, as he realised—he went out in a characteristically masculine frame of mind, hailed a disreputable taxi on Greenwich Avenue, and drove to Jane Street.
The declining sun, not yet low enough to transmute its ugliness to terms Turneresque, searched out every atom of shabbiness and squalor in the humble street. And it all added to his sullen dissatisfaction.
“One thing,” he muttered; “—she’s got to get out of this dirty district. It’s no place for the girl I’m going to marry.”
Fat Hattie admitted him, simpering her welcome:
“Yuh flowers done come, Mistuh Annan. They’s just grand, suh. Miss Eris she’s taking a bath. She says foh you to go into the settin’ room, Mistuh Annan. Might I offah yuh the hospitality of some Sherry wine, Mistuh Annan?”
He declined and went in; stood looking around at the plain, familiar place, brightened only by his flowers.
“Another thing,” he thought irritably, “—this installment-plan furniture has got to go. She doesn’t seem to know what nice things look like.... She hasn’t any comforts in her bed-room, either. This third-rate existence has got to stop.”
Unreasonably glum he picked up the evening paper, unfolded it, stood holding it; but his gaze rested on her closed door. Then, even as he gazed, it opened and the girl herself came out in a soft wool robe and slippers, her chestnut hair in lovely disorder.
“Darling!” she said with the breathless smile he knew so well. “I just couldn’t wait. I was so afraid you were annoyed with me——”
His kiss made her eager explanation incoherent; she nestled to him, dumb, happy in the physical reunion, wistful for the spiritual, seeking it in his face with questioning grey eyes.
“It mustn’t happen again,” he said. “You’re mine, Eris, and people have got to understand.”
“Darling! Of course I am. But I don’t quite see how people are going to understand——”
“We’ll talk about that this evening.”
“All right.... Darling, I must dress. Oh, Barry, I’m so glad—I’m always lonely without you, wherever I go!”
One long, deep embrace—her swift ardour leaving him trembling—and before he knew it her door had slammed behind her.
From within her bed-room: “Your letters have been so wonderful, Barry darling! They made work delightful.”... The excited clatter and rustle of a girl in a hurry came indistinctly through the closed door.... “It’s a peach of a part, Barry. There are real brains in it.... I wish I had Frank Donnell to tell me——”
“Can’t Creevy do that?”
“I don’t know.... He isn’t a drill-master.... Sometimes I’m afraid he doesn’t know.
“It’s a helpless feeling, Barry. I trusted Frank. I knew I could lean on him. But Mr. Creevy——”
“I haven’t much use for Creevy, either,” he said bluntly.
She opened the door. He found her seated before her little mirror, tucking up stray crisp curls. She wore a mauve dinner gown—a scant affair—as though her supple, milk-white body were lightly sheathed in orchid petals.
She stretched back her head to him where he stood behind her; he kissed her soft lips, her throat. Leaning so, against him, she looked back again at her fresh young beauty in the mirror.
“That year with Frank Donnell,” she murmured, “is saving my very skin, now. I don’t know enough to go ahead without a strong, friendly power reassuring, leading me. Mr. Creevy lets me go my own way, or loses his temper and shouts at me.”
“He’s rather a cheap individual,” remarked Annan.
“He’s always shouting at us.... And I haven’t much confidence in Emil Shunk, either.... Oh, how I long for Frank, and for that nice, kind camera-man, Stoll! To work with gentlemen means so much to a girl.”
“It means that she can do her best work,” said Annan. “In other words, it’s bad business to employ a pair of vulgarians like Ratford Creevy and Emil Shunk to direct decent people in a decent picture.”
“I seem to have no point of contact with them,” she admitted. “Betsy’s company was so respectable,—and even the Crystal Films people were so decent to me that I didn’t expect to encounter film folk as common and horrid as I have met.... And the Jews are no worse than the Gentiles, Barry.”
“Gentile or Jew,” he said, “—who cares in these days how an educated gentleman worships God? But a Christian blackguard or a Jewish blackguard, there’s the pair that are ruining pictures, Eris. Whether they finance a picture, direct it, release it, exhibit it, or act in it, these two vermin are likely to do it to death.
“Your profession is crawling with them. It needs delousing. It’s all squirming with parasites. They carry moral leprosy. They poison audiences. Some day the public will kill them.”
Eris stood up and linked her arms in Annan’s: “It’s so stupid,” she said “—a wonderful art—and only in its infancy—and already almost monopolised by beastly people.... Well, there are men like Frank Donnell.... And, as for the rest of us—as far as I can judge the vast majority among us appreciate decency and have every inclination toward it.... I don’t know a woman in my profession who leads an irregular life from choice.”
“It’s that or quit, sometimes, I suppose,” he said gravely.
“I’ve heard so.... Before I knew anything I used to hold such a girl in contempt, Barry. I know better, now.”
“With all your passion for learning,” he said, “did you ever suppose there was such sorry wisdom to acquire?”
“Oh, yes. I guessed, vaguely. One can’t live in a little village without guessing some things.... Or on a farm without guessing the rest.... It’s best to know, always.... Lies shock me; but, do you know, truth never did. Truth has frightened me, disgusted, angered, saddened me. But it never shocked me yet.... I’m afraid you think me hardened——”
His arm drew her and she turned swiftly to his lips—in full view of Hattie in the dining-room beyond.
“I don’t care,” whispered Eris, her cheeks scarlet, “—she ought to guess what we are to each other by this time.”
As he seated her he said: “If she does know she knows more than I do, Eris.... What are we to each other?”
He took his chair and she laughed at him.
“I’m serious,” he repeated. “What are we to each other?”
“Darling! Are you trying to be funny?”
“Not a bit. Please answer me, Eris.”
“Ridiculum!”
“Answer me!”
“Why—why, you goose, we are in love with each other. Isn’t that the answer?”
“Are you engaged to me?”
“Darling!——”
“Are you?”
“Why—no.”
“Why not?”
“You know one reason, anyway.”
“You mean that fellow,” he said with a shrug.
“Yes, of course.”
They remained rather silent for a while. Presently he said:
“Merely to be in love with each other doesn’t place either of us definitely.”
“Place us?” she repeated, perplexed. “It places us with each other, doesn’t it?”
“But not with the world.”
She considered this while covers were removed and another course laid.
“Darling, do you mind carving that chicken? If you don’t want to, Hattie can take it to the kitchen——”
“Watch me,” he boasted, impaling the tender, roasted bird and shaving a smoking slice from its sternum.
“Wonderful,” she murmured, clasping her snowy fingers; “he knows everything, does everything. And he asks me where it places him!... It places you, darling, like a god, under lock and key inside the secret shrine of my innermost heart.”
“No,” he said, “that temple is already reserved. It’s occupied by the real and only god you worship.... The god of Work!”
After a moment she raised her eyes, tenderly apprehensive:
“But you worship the other one.... You can’t serve two gods.”
“I worship you, too, whatever you say!”
“I’m a minor deity compared to the great god Work.”
“Darling—don’t speak that way—even in jest——”
“I want a shrine for myself. I won’t interfere with the other god——”
“—When I tell you you’re the only man in the world!——”
“I want you to engage yourself to me. You can take your time about marrying me if you’re afraid it will spoil your career. But I want the world to know we’re engaged.”
“Why, dear?” she asked in uneasy surprise.
“Because that will place us both, definitely.”
“Goodness,” she murmured uncertainly, “I didn’t suppose that falling in love was so complicated.... Darling! I haven’t time to—to find out how to get rid of that man, now; or do it, either——”
“It will have to be done sooner or later,” he insisted. “And that’s that, as you say.”
Until coffee was served they spoke rarely and of other matters.
After coffee, in the living-room, she brought out a packet of stills to show him. They went over them, minutely, consulting, criticising, she explaining every picture and its relation to the continuity.
“You should hear Mr. Creevy bellow, ‘Hold it! Hold it! D’ye think I told you to shimmy?’ Oh, he is rough, Barry. The first time I heard him bawl out, ‘Kill that nigger!’ I was terrified: I thought there was going to be a lynching——”
They sat laughing uncontrollably at each other.
“You imitate Creevy’s cracked contralto voice,” said Annan. “I didn’t know you were a mimic, Eris.”
“Didn’t you?” And she laughed adorably. Then, suddenly, Ratford Creevy’s high-pitched, irritated voice came again from her lips: “‘Everybody! Everybody! Yaas, you, too, you poor dumbbell! Get on there.... Eris! Eris! My Gawd, where’s that amateur!... Well, where were you?... Well, stand up next time.... Lights!... Hey, where’s that amateur camera-man.... Where the hell’s Shunk? Emil! Emil!——’”
His laughter and her own checked her and she leaned back, the stills sliding from her lap to the floor.
Together they squatted down like two children to gather the litter of scattered photographs, interrupting to touch lips, lightly; and finally he dumped the stills onto a table and drew her to the lounge and gathered her close.
“You know, sweet, the reasonable goal of real love is marriage. Don’t you know that?”
“Darling!”
“Isn’t it?”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“Isn’t it?” he insisted.
“Sometimes.”
“Always, ultimately. You realise that, don’t you, Eris?”
“Y-es.... Ultimately it’s the goal. But——”
“You love me enough to marry me, don’t you?”
“Now?”
“No, not now. Ultimately.”
She said, pitifully: “I love you enough to marry you this moment.... But even if I were free you wouldn’t ask it, would you, Barry?”
“I don’t know.” He looked intently at her. “It wouldn’t be any use, anyway,” he concluded. “Your work is more to you than I am. Isn’t it?”
The girl laid her face against his shoulder in silence.
“It’s your ruling passion, Eris, isn’t it?”
“I—suppose so.... But there never can be any other man than you.”
“You would make any sacrifice for your work, but you wouldn’t sacrifice your work for me, would you, Eris?”
Her head only pressed his shoulder closer.
He said: “You’ve starved for your work, gone almost in rags, slept in public parks——”
“I’d do these for you.... I’ll give you anything, do anything for you—except——”
“Except give up your work,” he ended drily.
“I couldn’t love you if you made me do that,” she whispered.
“If I made you do it? Do you admit I could make you give it up?” he demanded almost arrogantly.
She shrugged slightly: then raised her head and looked dumbly into his hard eyes.
There are dumb creatures that let themselves be slain without resistance; but in their doomed eyes is something that the slayer never, never can forget.
And, as Annan looked at this girl, something of his masculine egotism and arrogance became troubled.
He said in a more subdued voice: “After you are firmly established in your profession, we can think about marriage, can’t we?”
“I always think about it.... I often wonder if you can wait.”
“I suppose that I must.... How long, Eris?”
“I don’t know.... Darling! I don’t know——”
Suddenly she took his head in her arms and kissed him passionately, strained him to her convulsively.
“I don’t want you to have a living corpse for a wife,” she said tremulously. “That’s what I’d be if I stopped work now. I’d be a dead, inert, mindless thing. I couldn’t love. Let us go on this way. I must have my freedom.... I’ll come to you when I’m ready, Barry.... There’ll come a time when I’ll have to have you to go on at all. I’ll not be able to work without you.... There’ll come such a time.... Then, if I don’t have you, I shall be unable to work at all.... Work will stop. I know it.... If only you will understand....”
It seemed that he did understand. He said he did, anyway. But he also wanted their engagement to be understood. And she promised him to consult his lawyer as soon as work permitted and find out what could be done to eliminate from her life the last traces of Eddie Carter, alias E. Stuart Graydon.
For Eris never expected to lay eyes again upon the nimble Mr. Graydon.
But it is the unexpected that usually happens, particularly if it’s disagreeable.