Eris by Robert W. Chambers - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXXV

ONLY in books does the story of an individual begin and end.

But birth cannot begin that story; nor can death end it.

Sequel and sequence, continued and continuous, serial interminable.

At the autopsy enough coal-tar was discovered in the viscera of Mr. Carter to account for the large orifice he blew in the abdomen of Mr. Smull.

The motive, too, seemed to be clear enough. Smull had been instrumental in sending Carter to prison, where he had become an addict.

Also, Mr. Shill exhibited letters in which Mr. Carter promised to “get” Mr. Smull unless a satisfactory financial arrangement were made for his personal maintenance.

The name of Eris did not appear in the newspapers.

There were black-edged cards tacked to the bulletin boards of several fashionable clubs, announcing the decease of Albert Wesly Smull. Nothing like that for Eddie Carter.

Saint Berold’s Chapel indorsed Smull. The music was especially fine. The Crook’s Quickstep for Carter; Broadway’s roar his requiem.

However, what was left of Eddie, coal-tar and all, went to Evergreen Valley Cemetery in an automobile hearse, chased by one trailer.

A young girl got out of the trailer after the coffin was lowered, the grave filled, and the mound deftly shaped. She laid a bunch of wild blue asters and golden-rod on the mound.

Then, after she had stood motionless for a minute, she got into the trailer again, where a young man awaited her.

Until their automobile was outside the cemetery neither of them spoke.

Then: “I’ve been wondering,” said Annan, “what is your religion, Eris,—what particular denomination.”

“Oh,” she said, “I am quite happy in any church. Or, in synagogue or mosque, I should feel no barrier between my mind and God’s.... Would you?”

He could not say.

Annulment proceedings, not yet begun, never, of course, were.

The status of Eris, its solution and dissolution, had been effected by another solution. Coal-tar. Chemistry had sundered the tie which, we are instructed, God alone manufactures.

When they arrived at No. 3 Governor’s Place, Eris went into the guest-room, where, centuries ago, she had lain abed under the roof of a man whose name even she did not know.

“I want to lie down before dinner, Barry. May I?”

“Yes. Can Mrs. Sniffen do anything for you?”

But the girl said no, and turned down the lace spread. So Annan lowered the shades and went out to his study.

At dinner Eris appeared very much herself, smiling, gaily inquisitive concerning Annan’s conduct during her recent absence, tenderly diverted to hear how intolerable he had found those few weeks without her. He became emphatic in recollection of his solitary misery.

“Darling, we should not feel that way, ever,” she insisted. “Absence should be a stimulus to carry on. Otherwise——” she shrugged, stopped. But he knew she had meant death.

“All right,” he said, “but I want to tell you that in that event, I follow. And that’s that!”

He even borrowed her phrase to fix, irrevocably, their mutual positions. But without that the girl already knew,—deep, deep within her she had long known,—where the spring of their vital strength had its occult source. And more absolutely, more perfectly the knowledge made this man hers.

Truly there was nothing else in the world for her; no other rival she ever could brook that claimed the mind and strength that she was giving to this man—and must always give as long as mind and strength endured.

There still remained for the career of Eris an autumn, a winter, and a spring in California.

Work was to begin very soon. This knowledge sobered their leave-taking that night.

It tinged all their meetings and leave-takings, a little, during that otherwise perfect week in town.

She wore his betrothal ring when she went away.

Annan stood the separation for a month, then went after her.

During the winter Annan went three times to the Coast. Both, however, thought it best that he should not remain.

Eris made three pictures. Two were the species known as feature pictures; the third a super-picture.

She was paid for her work five hundred dollars a week. She was offered twice as much to sign for another year. Then twice as much again.

To Annan she wrote:

“I had to tell them that circumstances beyond my control might interfere. I meant children, darling, but did not consider it necessary to be more definite.”

As for Annan, excepting his brief journeys to the Coast, he passed a miserable, apathetic, unreal winter.

To Coltfoot it was painfully plain where was the true and only source of the boy’s inspiration.

Everything else now appeared to be only a sort of native ability polished with usage to cleverness where technical fluency and journalistic nimbleness in narrative did brilliant duty for the real thing.

For a few days, after being with Eris, enough of her in him lasted so that he could get on with his novel. Then he needed her again. But he realised his necessity only when he had gone on for a while without her.

Dark days came for the boy; incredulity, alarm, chagrin, the struggle renewed, doubt, helplessness, and the subconscious cry for her, never written nor voiced, yet, somehow heard by her at the edge of the other ocean.

Always the occult appeal was answered; always she responded in a passion of tenderness and abnegation—her promise that the days of separation were drawing to their end, that soon she would come to him forever.

She came when May was ending.

He thought she seemed a trifle taller;—had never dreamed she was as lovely a thing;—yet should have been prepared—for always she had been a series of enchanting revelations.

It transpired that she still had a few days left of her career—spots to fill in with “Eastern stuff,” where the continuity called for it—a location here, a set or two to be knocked together, nothing exacting.

Then the professional career of Eris was to be “irised out.”

“Never!” repeated Annan, holding her so that he could see deeply in her grey eyes. And saw a tiny image there, reflected—the miniature of himself.

“Well,” she murmured, “that event is with God, darling. But I don’t think there’s much doubt, because I love children.... And anyway——”

She lifted her eyes to her lover, smiled, recognising her destiny.

After dinner that evening, in his study, he sat at his desk with the typed manuscript over which he had agonised all winter.

Eris, perched on the arm of his chair, read it over his shoulder, page after page.

“It seems to be getting on, darling,” she ventured.

“Well, I’ve got to talk it over with you. I want it to be the real thing.”

“You’ll make it so.”

He looked up at her. In his eyes there was a sort of tragic curiosity. Her heart seemed to stand still for an instant.

Suddenly he smiled, bent and touched his lips to her betrothal ring.

“‘Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,’” he murmured. “And these things are in you.”

She bent her head close to his: “What do you mean by ‘things unattempted’?”

“Milton’s line, Eris, not mine.... ‘Things unattempted.’... And latent in you.... Not within me ... unless you give them.”

Her grey eyes said: “If they truly are in me you have only to take.” Her lips tenderly denied such possession, attributing all origin to him.

The boy said: “God knows where it comes from; but it is in me only when you are near.”

She rested her cool cheek against his. Her career was paid for.

“One thing,” he said with an embarrassed grin, “is likely to annoy you. But I’ve got to show it to you. You haven’t seen to-day’s papers, have you?”

“No.... Oh, Barry!——”

“You bet, sweetheart. It’s the announcement of our engagement.”

“Darling! How wonderful! And what do you mean by my being annoyed? I authorised you to announce it any time in May it suited you.”

“That’s it,” he admitted. “I was to send the announcement to the papers. But I didn’t know how such things were done so I was ass enough to go to my Aunt about it.”

Eris flushed. “Was Mrs. Grandcourt annoyed?”

“I’ll tell you what happened. I knew she had just arrived from Bermuda, and I went yesterday afternoon. Well—my aunt is my aunt. We don’t get on.

“We went through our semi-yearly financial pow-wow. That’s all fixed for the next six months.

“Then she gave me an opening by asking, suspiciously, whether I knew where you were.... Did you know she once warned me to keep away from you?”

The colour in Eris’ face deepened: “No, I didn’t know that.”

“The reason,” he said airily, “was because she liked and respected you, and considered me a philanderer——”

“Barry!”

“I was.”

There ensued a painful pause. Then their eyes met; and he reddened and said in a low voice:

“I haven’t anything to ask your pardon for—even mentally.”

They both were trembling a little when they kissed.

“—About my aunt,” he resumed, the faint grin again apparent; “when she mentioned you I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m marrying Eris in June. I meant to mention it——’

“Dearest, the extraordinary face my aunt made at me stopped me.

“I think she was too astounded to understand whether she was pleased or not. You see she had got me all wrong, dear. I wasn’t the sort she believed.

“One thing was rather extraordinary. Did you suppose my aunt could swear? Well, she can. She swore at me for ten minutes, threatening dire things if I philandered with the granddaughter of Jeanne d’Espremont——”

“Barry!”

“Well, she did. And when finally it filtered through her skull that I was semi-decent, she became very much excited.... You’ve got to have a very grand church wedding, Eris. Do you mind?”

“Darling! I’d adore it!”

“Well, for heaven’s sake—Well, I’m glad you feel that way. Men usually don’t, you know.... But it’s all right——”

“Oh, Barry!” she said in ecstasy, clasping her white hands as unconscious of dramatic effect as when she pleaded with Mr. Quiss on Whitewater Brook.

He said: “My aunt’s a snob. Here’s the announcement she sent out yesterday afternoon——”

He opened a drawer, took out a dozen clippings. They read them together:

“Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt announces the engagement of Eris Odell, granddaughter of the late Comtesse Jeanne d’Espremont, of Bayou d’Espremont, Louisiana, to Barry Annan, only son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt Annan, of New York.

“Miss Odell is the descendant of one of the oldest Royalist families of France,—her great grandfather coming to this country as a refugee during the Terror of ’93. Miss Odell’s grandmother, Comtesse Jeanne d’Espremont, and Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt shared the same room at boarding school in Exmouth, Virginia.

“Miss Odell, who early in childhood evinced unusual artistic proclivities, had chosen the silent drama as a medium for self-expression, and is charmingly known to the artistically fastidious section of the nation’s public.

“But after the wedding, which will occur in June, Miss Odell has decided to retire from a career which promises such brilliant fulfilment.

“Mr. Annan served his country in the Great War as Liaison Officer and was decorated for gallantry in action.

“He is an author of repute and promise.”

After a silence: “That’s her work, Eris. I told you she’s a snob.”

The girl looked at him with a troubled smile: “It’s rather too late to do anything except live up to what she says of us—isn’t it, Barry?”

“You wonderful girl, you’ve already lived way beyond anything that anybody says of you.”

Her arms went around his neck, tightened:

“Darling!... But we must make good.... You know it.”

He knew it. He knew that she already had. He rested his head on her breast like a tired boy.

It was up to him.

THE END