AS the door closed behind Graydon, Hattie appeared from the dining-room and sullenly confronted her mistress.
“I ain’t a-going to stay,” she said.
Eris looked up, blankly, still pale and confused by the gust of passion that had swept her.
“I don’t have to work in no such kinda place,” continued the coloured woman doggedly, “and I ain’t a-going to. Mah week’s up Friday, but you pay me up to las’ night an’ I’ll go now.”
The girl comprehended. A painful colour surged over her face to the roots of her hair.
“Very well,” she said in a low voice. She went to her desk, opened an account book, then drew a cheque for the balance of the woman’s wages.
Hattie took the cheque, hesitated: “Of co’se,” she ventured, “if yo’ wishes me to stay, Miss Eris, mah wages will be jess ten dollahs mo’ a week. Any real lady would be glad to gimme that foh all I does——”
“I don’t need you,” said the girl quietly. “Go as soon as you can get ready.”
“Suit yo’se’f, Mrs. Graydon,” retorted Hattie, with elaborate disrespect, “and if I may kindly persume to be excused, Mrs. Graydon, I will attend to the requiahments necessary fo’ my departure.”
Said Eris: “Pack your effects, Hattie, and call an expressman. I shall not expect to find you loitering here when I return.”
The coloured woman’s eyes snapped as Eris entered her bed-room and closed the door.
To bathe and dress did not take her very long.
When she came out she was dressed for the street. There was no breakfast on the dining-room table, but she wanted none.
She went to the kitchen and found Hattie seated, feeding on hambone, and her rickety valise still unpacked.
“I want you to be out of this apartment by noon,” said Eris quietly. Then she opened the hall door and ran downstairs, Hattie’s malignant laugh ringing in her ears.
When Eris had disappeared, the negress waddled to the gas stove, lit it, and started to make herself a cup of tea. She meant to do what gastronomic damage she could short of theft.
Before the kettle boiled, the telephone rang. To ignore it was a haughty pleasure for Hattie; but presently African curiosity prevailed and she got up and waddled to the telephone, muttering to herself.
“Yaas, suh?” she replied to some query.
“Who?”
“Mistuh Annan?”
“No, suh, she ain’t home. Dey’s nobody home ’cept’n myse’f.”
Annan said: “I’ve some flowers. I’d like to arrange them to surprise Miss Odell. Could I bring them around, Hattie?”
“Suit yo’se’f, suh. It ain’t botherin’ me none.”
“I’ll be right around,” he said gaily.
She went sullenly back to her kettle, meditating mischief.
Annan arrived in a few moments, laden with long, flat boxes of pasteboard. He nodded pleasantly to Hattie, took his flowers to the living-room, returned to fetch a dozen plain glass vases, jars and rose-bowls, and went happily back to the business of decoration.
He remained very busy for half an hour or more, filling the vases at her bath-tub, clipping stems, trimming too profuse foliage, arranging the sheaves of fragrant bloom, and carrying each vase to its proper place in the three rooms.
When he had finished, and on his way out, he stopped to speak to Hattie at the dining-room door:
“Please ask Miss Odell to call me up when she returns,” he said. “I suppose she has gone to the studio,” he added.
“I don’t know, suh. Miss Eris’ husband he stayed here las’ night. I reckon she’s payin’ him a call, maybe.”
Annan stared at her as though she suddenly had gone mad.
“Yaas, suh,” continued the negress, “I’se quit, I has. Too many doin’s in this here flat to suit me. I guess you all didn’t know Miss Eris had a husband sleepin’ here,” she added with a bland malignance that stunned him.
He inspected the wench in silence for a moment, then turned sharply on his heel and went down stairs.
His taxi was waiting. He drove directly home, entered his study and sat down to the sorry business of waiting.
All the morning and afternoon he waited there, his face white and set, his grim gaze fixed on space.
About five o’clock he called up. The house did not answer.
Eris had asked him not to call her at the studio for obvious reasons, and he never had done so, except by previous agreement. But now he decided to do so. He got the doorman, Flynn.
“Yes, sir; Miss Odell come in half an hour ago.”
“Is the company working?” inquired Annan nervously.
“No, sir, nobody’s here to-day except Miss Odell and Mr. Smull——”
“Who?”
“Mr. Smull, sir. He just come in a minute since——Hold the wire, please.”
After a minute or two the door-keeper’s voice: “She’s busy, sir. She can’t talk to you now——”
“Did Miss Odell tell you to say that?”
“No, Mr. Smull told me she couldn’t talk to nobody just now.”
“Call up Mr. Smull again and tell him Mr. Annan wishes to speak to Miss Odell at once!”
“I don’t like to—all right, hold it again——”
Annan waited. Suddenly Smull’s voice: “Annan?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, but the little lady can’t be interrupted just now——”
“Yes, she can. She isn’t working. Tell her to come to the wire!”
“There’s a business conference——”
“Will you kindly say to her that I wish to speak to——”
“Sorry,” interrupted Smull, and hung up in his ear.
Annan picked up his hat, descended the stairs, and went out.
About five minutes after he left the house his telephone rang. Mrs. Sniffen answered it, and recognised the voice of Eris inquiring for Annan.
“I’ll see if he’s in, Miss——”
“Did he call me a few minutes ago, Mrs. Sniffen?”
“I couldn’t say, Miss; I was in the kitchen. I’ll see if he’s in his study——”
She returned in a moment to say that Mr. Annan was not in.
“Thank you,” came the girl’s hasty voice.
Eris hung up the receiver of the telephone in the directors’ office at the studio, where Smull stood.
“Now will you believe me?” he demanded.
“I heard you ask if it were Mr. Annan,” she said. “I could hear perfectly well from my dressing-room.”
“I thought Flynn said it was Annan and I asked,” insisted Smull, “but it turned out to be a Herald man who wanted copy. So now if you’ll listen to me, Eris——”
“I have already tried to make you understand that I have no interest in anything you say——”
“For God’s sake, be charitable and overlook what a man says and does when he’s drunk——”
“I don’t think you were——”
“I was, I tell you! I carry it that way. I turn ugly. When I get a few highballs in me I’m a different kind of man.... Look here, Eris, if you’ll be a sport and call it off, I’ll give you my word, as long as you and I are friends, never to touch a drop of anything!”
“I wish you would let me alone,” she said in a colourless voice. “I don’t know how you knew I was here——”
“I told Flynn to notify me as soon as you arrived——”
“That was insolent of you——”
“Good heavens, Eris, I couldn’t let things stand as they were, could I? The memory of my beastly behaviour to you was driving me crazy. Anyhow, you’ve a cheque coming to you and I had to get at the books——”
“That is Mr. Creevy’s business.... I didn’t come here for that, either. I came to gather up my personal belongings——”
“Listen, Eris. After all, I’ve given you your chance, haven’t I? I’ve backed you with real money. Except for that one break last night I’ve played square, haven’t I? All right. Are you going to quit me cold?”
“I’ve got to——”
“You’re going to put this outfit on the bum? You’re going to walk out on us?”
“You told me I was out.”
“Can’t you forget what a souse says when he’s all to the bad? What’ll we do if you leave us flat? Do you think it’s a cinch to pick another like you? What’ll this bunch do? What’ll Creevy do, and Shunk? Look at this plant! I’ve got it for a year more. Do you know what our overhead costs me a week? Listen, Eris; have a heart. Don’t do that to us——”
“It’s what you’ve done, Mr. Smull, not I. You’ve spoiled any pleasure I might have had in working for you. I couldn’t go on here. I couldn’t do good work. When you told me, last evening, that I was out, you were right. I was out as soon as you said so. It was final.... Truth always is final.... I learned it last night.... There is nothing further to learn.”
She walked slowly past him to the door and looked out across the great, barn-like place all littered with the lumber and canvas of half-demolished sets, tangles of insulated wires and cables, and sprawling batteries of lights of every sort.
In the heated stillness of the place a light footfall echoed sonorously across the flooring. The chatter of intruding sparrows came from the arches overhead. Outside sunny windows ailanthus trees, intensely green, spread motionless fronds under the July sky.
Eris moved on, slowly, to her dressing-room—a built-in affair with its flimsy partition adjoining the directors’ office.
Chintz and paint had mitigated the bareness of the room with its extemporised dressing table and couch and a chair or two.
For a while she was occupied with her make-up box; then, locking it, she opened her suitcase and began to lay away such articles as belonged to her.
As she locked and strapped it, Smull appeared at her door, and she rose in displeasure, although the infraction of rule meant nothing to her now.
“Your cheque,” he said, extending it.
“Thank you, I don’t want it.”
“It belongs to you.... You could hold me for the balance of the year if you chose, and not do a stroke of work.”
Her short upper lip curled shorter in contempt:
“I release you, Mr. Smull.”
“I want you to take this, anyway——”
“Please, Eris——”
“No!” She picked up her suitcase and make-up box. But he continued to block the doorway.
“Eris! Eris!” he stammered. “Don’t do this—don’t leave me! My God, my God!—I—can’t stand such—such cruelty——” His face was heavily flushed and his fat neck was swelling red behind the ears.
He began to tremble and stammer again—“I’ll do anything you ask—give you anything—if you’ll only listen—Eris——
“Eris—my God, I want to marry you! I want you! I’ll keep away until I can get a divorce——”
He caught her arm in his hot, red hands; suddenly clutched her body, crushing her face against his with an inarticulate cry as though strangling. And she fought him back, savagely, in silence, bruised, wild with the shame of it. Both chairs fell; he trod on one, crushing it to splinters, and his powerful shoulder tore the mirror from the wall and wrecked the dressing table with it.
With a desperate wrench she tore free of him. They stood, panting, watching each other for a full minute. Then her grey eyes dilated with horror, for he slowly took a pistol from his pocket, his near-set black eyes, all bloodshot, fastened on her.
“You listen to me,” he said brokenly, his great chest heaving with every word,—“I want you because I can’t live without you.... Will you marry me?”
“No!”
“If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll blow my brains out in your face.”
There was a terrible silence. Then he said:
“If you leave this room I’ll kill myself.... It’s up to you, now.”
Another silence.
“Well, why don’t you go?” he said.
“I—am going.” She picked up the suitcase and make-up box. Watching him, she began to move slowly toward the door—passed him where he was standing, slowly, never taking her eyes off him.
She reached the door.
“I swear I will do it!” he shouted.
She looked at him coolly over her shoulder.
“You are too fond of yourself,” she said. And walked on.