The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident Part 8

"Could not tell you?"

"Could not or would not."

"Then I can't," said Annandale helplessly. "I went there last evening, I remember that. I remember, too, that she was angry. But why I do not know. Though, to be candid, she had cause to be. I was drunk."

"You seemed all right at the Arundel," Orr objected.

"At all events, drunk or sober, I cannot recall a thing. I have tried.

I have tried hard. It has gone."

"Does it happen to you often?"

"What?"

"To forget like that?"

Annandale shook his head. He stood up and stalked about. Orr eyed him.

He saw he was not shamming.

"You know, Annandale," he said at last, "you could not get many to accept that. But I can and do. I have seen cases of the kind before.

Will you permit me to advise you?"

"Advise me? I wish to G.o.d you would."

"Littre, who was the wisest and ugliest of men, stated that Hippocrates recommended everybody to get tight once a month, a.s.serting that it was hygienic, good for the system, that it relaxed the nerves.

Littre must have known what he was talking about. He put Hippocrates in French, into ten volumes at that! But what is good for everybody is bad for you. Don't drink, Annandale. It will get you into mischief."

"As if it had not? Look at the box I am in. But could you not get Sylvia to reconsider the matter? If she will, I pledge my word never to touch another drop. Of course, I apologize for everything I did. I am only too anxious to. You must understand that I am profoundly humiliated at the idea that I could have done anything she did not like. Certainly I did not intend to. Won't you say that to her?"

"Oh, I appreciate your position," said Orr. "To me the essence of crime is the intent. But, then, you see, I am a man. Now girls are different, and my cousin is very different even from most girls. Her views are very strict. Even otherwise, to any decent girl, a man in his cups is not agreeable. But then, you know, it is not merely a question of that. It is a question of matrimony. Matrimony generally means children. It is on them that the sins of the father are visited.

There is the rub. Sylvia, I have not a doubt, will in the end forgive you, but were she to marry you and her children have your sins visited on them, never would she forgive herself. That I am sure you can realize. Anyway, for the moment argument with her would be futile.

Besides, she has gone from town."

"Gone?"

"Yes, she left for Newport today. If I were you I would not attempt to follow. But I will write. I will tell her what you say, and I will tell you her reply."

Orr stood up. As he did so Annandale sat down. He cared for Sylvia Waldron, absolutely, uniquely. He felt, too, that she had cared for him. But while Orr had been speaking he told himself that her caring had ceased. Had any affection remained she could not have gone. It was his fault, though. He had shocked it out of existence. At the thought of that he felt unutterably miserable. What he felt he looked.

Orr saw his dejection. "Annandale," he said, "I hardly suppose that it will console you now to have me tell you that nothing earthly is of any consequence, but, if you let the idea permeate you, ultimately perhaps it may. By the way, that is a new man you have, isn't it?"

In the wreckage amid which Annandale was floundering the question was like a rope; he caught at it and swam up.

"Who? Harris? Yes, the other poor devil I had was run over and died in an ambulance."

Orr tapped at his foot with his stick. "I may be in error," he said, "but I think I have seen him before."

"Then it must have been in London. He has been here only a short time.

He tells me he used to be with Catty."

Catty was a relative of Annandale, a New York girl who had married the Duke of Kincardine.

"Possibly," said Orr. "Well," he added, reverting to the episode that had brought him there, "I am sorry for all this. I know you are. I will write to Sylvia and tell her so."

"Please do."

Annandale stood up and accompanied him to the door. When he turned life seemed blank as the blanks of the night.

CHAPTER VII

SWEET-AND-TWENTY

What Sylvia replied to Orr's communication, whether indeed she replied at all, Annandale was not informed. He himself wrote to her. The letter was long; it was also abject. But he got no answer. He wrote again. The result was the same.

Then both at her and at himself he rebelled. He had supped on humiliations. He had no appet.i.te for more. With some bravery, yet without bravado, he tore a leaf from his life and on it wrote Finis.

The epitaph was figurative, but he thought it final. He thought that he could dictate to Fate. It is a mistake that many make.

Presently it surprised him to find how laborious is the task of putting people out of your life. If you have cared for them they will come back. In the pages of a book, in the pauses of speech, suddenly you behold them. In sleep they will not let you be. When you awake, there they are. However detestable their behavior may have been, in dream they visit and caress you. It takes time and vigilance; it takes more, it takes other faces to disperse them.

In spite of the Finis, Sylvia Waldron declined to be dismissed. She haunted Annandale. To memories of her he could not always show the door. Sometimes they were masked. Occasionally they reproached him.

Again they seemed to say that did he but find out how, all might yet be well between them. But usually they came and stood gazing at him in love and grief eternal.

Then he would start. But what could he do? Besides, there was the Finis.

June meanwhile had come and gone. Summer with a frenzy quasi-maniacal had battened on the town. It is said that the hottest place in the world is a port on the Persian Gulf. But it is wrong to believe everything we hear. When New York decides to be hot, the temperature of the Persian port must be agreeable by comparison.

One fetid noon Annandale fled. When he stopped it was at Narragansett.

Before August comes and with it the mob, Narragansett is charming.

There is a mile of empty hotels, a stretch of sand fine as face powder, a heaving, heavenly desert of blue and an atmosphere charged with ozone and desire.

In August the hotels are packed. The stretch of sand is a stage. Every day a ballet is given there. The coryphees are the prettiest girls in the world--girls from Baltimore, girls from Philadelphia, girls from everywhere, girls with the Occident in their eyes and lips that say "Drink me."

At high noon, from the greenroom of the bath-houses, Sweet-and-twenty floats down, clasps the sea to the hum of harps, b.r.e.a.s.t.s the waves to the laugh of bra.s.s and re-emerges to the sound of trumpets.

After the dip, other diversions. Primarily flirtations on the lawns; later, polo at the Country Club; at night, dancing in the ballrooms, more flirtations on the galleries of the Casino, supper on the terrace below.

The terrace resembles, or, more exactly, on this particular summer did resemble, a roof garden on the ground floor. From a kiosk a band of Hungarians distributed selections of popular rot, sometimes their own delirious czardas. There, circled by variegated lights, fanned by the violins, girls and men sat beneath the high, wide, flowerful umbrellas of j.a.pan.

Sometimes some of them, wearying of that, wandered into silences and shadows and lingered there, occupied with the crops, with strikes and other subjects of national interest which young people always discuss when holding hands in the dark.

To Newport, which squats disdainfully over the way, this is all too free and easy. To Annandale, it was distressing. Everywhere there was love, yet none for him. He had come to the Pier, as Narragansett is locally termed, because of Newport's propinquity. If Sylvia so much as signaled he could join her at once.

As yet no signaling was apparent. In its place was an influx of a reflection of fas.h.i.+on. The influx made Annandale swear. He hated to be seen stalking moodily about. He hated still more to have the rupture of his engagement discussed. The ballet on the beach irritated him. He told himself that he had come to the wrong shop. One day he thought of joining friends in Canada. The next he thought of joining friends who had gone abroad. The day after he thought that still he might be signaled.