The Coming of Bill Part 39

"He isn't what you would call a sparkling talker."

"He doesn't have to be. His time is worth a hundred dollars a minute, or a second--I forget which."

"Put me down for a nickel's worth next time."

And then they began to laugh over Ruth's suggestion that they should save up and hire Mr. Mason for an afternoon and make him keep quiet all the time; for Ruth was generally ready to join him in ridiculing their new acquaintances. She had none of that reverence for the great and the near-great which, running to seed, becomes sn.o.bbery.

It was this trait in her which kept alive, long after it might have died, the hope that her present state of mind was only a phase, and that, when she had tired of the new game, she would become the old Ruth of the studio. But, when he was honest with himself, he was forced to admit that she showed no signs of ever tiring of it.

They had drifted apart. They were out of touch with each other. It was not an uncommon state of things in the circle in which Kirk now found himself. Indeed, it seemed to him that the semi-detached couple was the rule rather than the exception.

But there was small consolation in this reflection. He was not at all interested in the domestic troubles of the people he mixed with. His own hit him very hard.

Ruth had criticized little Mrs. Bailey, but there was no doubt that she herself had had her head turned quite as completely by the new life.

The first time that Kirk realized this was when he came upon an article in a Sunday paper, printed around a blurred caricature which professed to be a photograph of Mrs. Kirk Winfield, in which she was alluded to with reverence and gusto as one of society's leading hostesses. In the course of the article reference was made to no fewer than three freak dinners of varying ingenuity which she had provided for her delighted friends.

It was this that staggered Kirk. That Mrs. Bailey should indulge in this particular form of insanity was intelligible. But that Ruth should have descended to it was another thing altogether.

He did not refer to the article when he met Ruth, but he was more than ever conscious of the gap between them--the gap which was widening every day.

The experiences he had undergone during the year of his wandering had strengthened Kirk considerably, but nature is not easily expelled; and the const.i.tutional weakness of character which had hampered him through life prevented him from making any open protests or appeal. Moreover, he could understand now her point of view, and that disarmed him.

He saw how this state of things had come about. In a sense, it was the natural state of things. Ruth had been brought up in certain surroundings. Her love for him, new and overwhelming, had enabled her to free herself temporarily from these surroundings and to become reconciled to a life for which, he told himself, she had never been intended. Fate had thrown her back into her natural sphere. And now she revelled in the old environment as an exile revels in the life of the homeland from which he has been so long absent.

That was the crux of the tragedy. Ruth was at home. He was not. Ruth was among her own people. He was a stranger among strangers, a prisoner in a land where men spoke with an alien tongue.

There was nothing to be done. The G.o.ds had played one of their practical jokes, and he must join in the laugh against himself and try to pretend that he was not hurt.

Chapter V

The Real Thing

Kirk sat in the nursery with his chin on his hands, staring gloomily at William Bannister. On the floor William Bannister played some game of his own invention with his box of bricks.

They were alone. It was the first time they had been alone together for two weeks. As a rule, when Kirk paid his daily visit, Lora Delane Porter was there, watchful and forbidding, prepared, on the slightest excuse, to fall upon him with rules and prohibitions. To-day she was out, and Kirk had the field to himself, for Mamie, whose duty it was to mount guard, and who had been threatened with many terrible things by Mrs. Porter if she did not stay on guard, had once more allowed her too sympathetic nature to get the better of her and had vanished.

Kirk was too dispirited to take advantage of his good fortune. He had a sense of being there on parole, of being on his honour not to touch. So he sat in his chair, and looked at Bill; while Bill, crooning to himself, played decorously with bricks.

The truth had been a long time in coming home to Kirk, but it had reached him at last. Ever since his return he had clung to the belief that it was a genuine conviction of its merits that had led Ruth to support her aunt's scheme for Bill's welfare. He himself had always looked on the exaggerated precautions for the maintenance of the latter's health as ridiculous and unnecessary; but he had acquiesced in them because he thought that Ruth sincerely believed them indispensable.

After all, he had not been there when Bill so nearly died, and he could understand that the shock of that episode might have distorted the judgment even of a woman so well balanced as Ruth. He was quite ready to be loyal to her in the matter, however distasteful it might be to him.

But now he saw the truth. A succession of tiny incidents had brought light to him. Ruth might or might not be to some extent genuine in her belief in the new system, but her chief motive for giving it her support was something quite different. He had tried not to admit to himself, but he could do so no longer. Ruth allowed Mrs. Porter to have her way because it suited her to do so; because, with Mrs. Porter on the premises, she had more leisure in which to amuse herself; because, to put it in a word, the child had begun to bore her.

Everything pointed to that. In the old days it had been her chief pleasure to be with the boy. Their walks in the park had been a daily ceremony with which nothing had been allowed to interfere. But now she always had some excuse for keeping away from him.

Her visits to the nursery, when she did go there, were brief and perfunctory. And the mischief of it was that she always presented such admirable reasons for abstaining from Bill's society, when it was suggested to her that she should go to him, that it was impossible to bring her out into the open and settle the matter once and for all.

Patience was one of the virtues which set off the defects in Kirk's character; but he did not feel very patient now as he sat and watched Bill playing on the floor.

"Well, Bill, old man, what do you make of it all?" he said at last.

The child looked up and fixed him with unwinking eyes. Kirk winced.

They were so exactly Ruth's eyes. That wide-open expression when somebody, speaking suddenly to her, interrupted a train of thought, was one of her hundred minor charms.

Bill had reproduced it to the life. He stared for a moment; then, as if there had been some telepathy between them, said: "I want mummy."

Kirk laughed bitterly.

"You aren't the only one. I want mummy, too."

"Where is mummy?"

"I couldn't tell you exactly. At a luncheon-party somewhere."

"What's luncheon-party?"

"A sort of entertainment where everybody eats too much and talks all the time without ever saying a thing that's worth hearing."

Bill considered this gravely.

"Why?"

"Because they like it, I suppose."

"Why do they like it?"

"Goodness knows."

"Does mummy like it?"

"I suppose so."

"Does mummy eat too much?"

"She doesn't. The others do."

"Why?"

William Bannister's thirst for knowledge was at this time perhaps his most marked characteristic. No encyclopaedia could have coped with it.

Kirk was accustomed to do his best, cheerfully yielding up what little information on general subjects he happened to possess, but he was like Mrs. Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean with her broom.

"Because they've been raised that way," he replied to the last question. "Bill, old man, when you grow up, don't you ever become one of these fellows who can't walk two blocks without stopping three times to catch up with their breath. If you get like that mutt Dana Ferris you'll break my heart. And you're heading that way, poor kid."