Read Ebook: Eris by Chambers Robert W Robert William

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Ebook has 2208 lines and 60363 words, and 45 pages

He smiled, made one of his characteristic, graceful gestures: "It's funny, but there she is. And yet, I'd not venture to use her in a story 'as is.' Because my wise guys wouldn't believe in her. I'd be damned as a romanticist. And you'd chuck me out of the Sunday Edition."

Coltfoot sat gazing up at him for a few moments, then put on his reading-spectacles and pawed at a wad of proof.

"I'm going to chuck you out of this office anyway," he grunted.

Exactly why Annan chose to lunch at home did not occur to him until, arriving there, Mrs. Sniffen handed him a note and announced the departure of Eris Odell.

"What!" he said irritably, "has she gone?"

"Give me the note," he interrupted, disappointed. Because that was why he had come home to lunch,--to see this youngster who had so ungratefully and rudely departed.

He went upstairs to his room, seated himself, slit the envelope with a paper cutter, and leisurely but sulkily unfolded the sheet of note paper within.

A hundred-dollar bank note fell to the floor.

"Dear Friend," he read,--a rural form of address that always annoyed Annan,--"please do not be offended if I leave without awaiting your return. Because I feel keenly that I ought not to impose upon your great kindness any longer.

"I am at a loss to express my gratitude. Your goodness has stirred my deepest sensibilities and has imprinted upon my innermost mind a sense of obligation never to be forgotten.

"I shall always marvel that so well known and successful a man could find time to trouble himself with the personal embarrassment of an insignificant stranger.

"What you have done for me is so wonderful that I can only feel it but cannot formulate my feeling in words.

"Confident in the promise of Miss Blythe, I shall venture to take the room that sometimes I have taken for a single night. It is at 696 Jane Street.

"So good-bye--unless you ever would care to see me again--and thank you with a heart very full, dear Mr. Annan.

"Yours sincerely,

"ERIS."

Annan had every intention of going to Jane Street. But Barry Annan was that kind of busy man who takes the most convenient diversion in the interims of work.

He wrote a note to Eris, promising to stop in very soon; but week-ends interfered. Then, in August, a house party at Southampton, another in Saratoga for the races, and the remaining two weeks trout fishing in the Maine forests, convicted him as the sort of social liar everybody understands.

But Eris was not anybody yet. She did not understand. There was not a single evening she had not waited for him, not daring to go out lest she miss him.

Only when the Betsy Blythe Company departed on location did Eris abandon hope and pack her little satchel for the Harlem & Westchester train.

Annan, at Portage Camps, had a letter from Betsy Blythe on location, dated from Cross River in Westchester.

"Our first picture is called 'The Real Thing,'" she wrote, "and we're shooting all our exteriors while the foliage lasts. This is a wonderful spot for that--everything within a mile--and perfect weather.

"Frank Donnell is my director--a dear! And Stoll is our camera-man--none better in the profession. Our people are pretty good,--one or two miscast, I fear,--and we can get all the extras we can use, right here,--it's hick-stuff, my dear, and there's poods of it at hand.

"My people bought Quilling's novel for ,000. You should have heard Levant scream! But Dick Quilling can't be had for nothing, and Crystal Gray herself did the continuity.

"I'm afraid to tell you how our footage stands--and no interiors so far. But our sets will be few and will cost nothing.

"Why should Tobacco shriek? We have our release already through the Five Star, and we get back our cost of production. Isn't that sound business?

"Besides, five weeks should be sufficient for studio shooting. We get the Willow Tree Studios. Frank Donnell will do the cutting in the Lansing Laboratories, and use their projection rooms.

"I've a peach of a part if I'm up to it. Nobody else near me. Wally Crawford plays opposite--a very trying kid--the good-looking, smarty, rather common sort--all plastered hair and eyelashes--you know?

"The other principals will do.

"I write Dad and Mother every night. They've been out here in the car several times. Rosalind motored out Sunday. We had an awfully good time.

"Don't you want to come up before we strike our tents and beat it for the Bronx?

"Yours contentedly,

"BETSY B.

"P. S.--I forgot to say that your little prot?g?e, Eris, does extremely well whatever is required of her. She plays one of those self-conscious rustics, half educated, vain, credulous, and with a capacity for a world of mischief. I'm a pig, I suppose, but I'm glad Crystal Gray cut the part to slivers. Eris has no experience and no training, of course, but she screens well, is intelligent, and does exactly what Frank Donnell tells her to do.

"She comes, diffidently, to sit in my hammock with me after dinner, and curls up like a tired kitten. But, like a kitten, she is receptive, responsive, ready to play or be talked to--an unspoiled, generous nature already actively forming a character the daily development of which is very interesting to watch.

"BETSY."

A short story every Sunday would have grilled the brains out of anybody, even a born story-teller.

He had done twenty stories for Coltfoot in six months. Those stories made Annan. It had finally come to--"Have you read Barry Annan in this week's number?" That, and a growing hostility always certain to be aroused by recognition, were making of the young man a personage.

From the very beginning, scarce knowing why, he had avoided the shallow wallow of American "letters," where the whole herd roots and snouts--literati, critics, public,--gruffling and snuffling for the legendary truffle disinterred and gobbled up so long--so long ago.

Already the younger aspirants hailed him. Already the dreary brethren of the obvious stared disapproval.

The dull read him as they read everything. It takes all kinds of pasture to keep a cow in cud. She chews but never criticises.

Realists peered at him evilly and askance. His description of swill didn't smell like the best swill. There were mutterings of "heretic."

The "small-town" school found fault with his microscope. Waste nothing--their motto--had resulted in a demand for their rag-carpets. But here was a man who saved only a handful of threads and twisted them into a phrase which seemed to do the duty of entire chapters. No, the small-town school took a sniff at Annan and trotted on down the alley.

As for the Romanticists, squirming and writhing and weaving amid their mess of properties and scenery, what did they want of the substance when the shadow cost nothing?

No, Annan didn't fit anywhere. He was just a good story-teller.

Outside that, his qualifications for writing fiction were superfluous, from an American audience's point of view, for, to please that audience, he didn't have to write good English, he didn't have to be intellectual, cultured, witty, or a gentleman. But these unnecessary addenda did not positively count against him.

He talked over the situation with Coltfoot, who was loath to lose him and muttered of moneys.

"No, Mike," concluded Annan, "I've had my romp in your kindly columns. You let me train there. I feel fit for the fight, now. I'm on tip-toe, all pepped up."

"How much do you want then?" demanded Coltfoot, unconvinced.

"Bosco," nodded the other wearily;--"I know. But you'll end in a Coney Island show, matched against all comers to eat twenty-five feet of sausages in twenty-five minutes.... Do a serial for us. We've never tried it but I believe the newspaper is destined to put the magazine out of business. I'll take a chance, anyway. Will you?"

"I'll take it without sample or further identification. It may cost me my job. Are we on?"

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