Kirk Winfield was an amiable, if rather weak, young man with whom life,for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, anincome more than sufficient for his needs, a profession whichinterested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contenteddisposition, and the happy knack of surrounding himself with friends.
That he had to contribute to the support of the majority of thesefriends might have seemed a drawback to some men. Kirk did not objectto it in the least. He had enough money to meet their needs, and, beinga sociable person who enjoyed mixing with all sorts and conditions ofmen, he found the Liberty Hall regime pleasant.
He liked to be a magnet, attracting New York's Bohemian population. Ifhe had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studioas a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking hiswhisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion,his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully aspleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually resting Englishactor, whom he disliked as far as he was capable of disliking any one,as he was to Hank Jardine, the prospector, and Hank's prize-fighterfriend, Steve Dingle, both of whom he liked enormously.
It seemed to him sometimes that he had drifted into the absolutelyideal life. He lived entirely in the present. The passage of time lefthim untouched. Day followed day, week followed week, and nothing seemedto change. He was never unhappy, never ill, never bored.
He would get up in the morning with the comfortable knowledge that theday held no definite duties. George Pennicut would produce one of hisexcellent breakfasts. The next mile-stone would be the arrival of SteveDingle. Five brisk rounds with Steve, a cold bath, and a rub-down tookhim pleasantly on to lunch, after which it amused him to play atpainting.
There was always something to do when he wearied of that until, almostbefore the day had properly begun, up came George with one of hiscelebrated dinners. And then began the incursion of his friends. One byone they would drop in, making themselves very much at home, to helptheir host through till bedtime. And another day would slip into thepast.
It never occurred to Kirk that he was wasting his life. He had noambitions. Ambition is born of woman, and no woman that he had ever methad ever stirred him deeply. He had never been in love, and he had cometo imagine that he was incapable of anything except a mild liking forwomen. He considered himself immune, and was secretly glad of it. Heenjoyed his go-as-you-please existence too much to want to have itupset. He belonged, in fact, to the type which, when the momentarrives, falls in love very suddenly, very violently, and for all time.
Nothing could have convinced him of this. He was like a child lightingmatches in a powder-magazine. When the idea of marriage crossed hismind he thrust it from him with a kind of shuddering horror. He couldnot picture to himself a woman who could compensate him for the loss ofhis freedom and, still less, of his friends.
His friends were men's men; he could not see them fitting into a schemeof life that involved the perpetual presence of a hostess. HankJardine, for instance. To Kirk, the great point about Hank was that hehad been everywhere, seen everything, and was, when properly stimulatedwith tobacco and drink, a fountain of reminiscence. But he could nottalk unless he had his coat off and his feet up on the back of a chair.
No hostess could be expected to relish that.
Hank was a bachelor's friend; he did not belong in a married household.
The abstract wife could not be reconciled to him, and Kirk, loving Hanklike a brother, firmly dismissed the abstract wife.
He came to look upon himself as a confirmed bachelor. He had thoughtout the question of marriage in all its aspects, and decided againstit. He was the strong man who knew his own mind and could not beshaken.
Yet, on the afternoon of the day following Mrs. Lora Delane Porter'sentry into his life, Kirk sat in the studio, feeling, for the firsttime in recent years, a vague discontent. He was uneasy, almost afraid.
The slight dislocation in the smooth-working machinery of hisexistence, caused by the compulsory retirement of George Pennicut, hadmade him thoroughly uncomfortable. With discomfort had comeintrospection, and with introspection this uneasiness that was almostfear.
A man, living alone, without money troubles to worry him, sinksinevitably into a routine. Fatted ease is good for no one. It sucks thesoul out of a man. Kirk, as he sat smoking in the cool dusk of thestudio, was wondering, almost in a panic, whether all was well withhimself.
This mild domestic calamity had upset him so infernally. It could notbe right that so slight a change in his habits should have such aneffect upon him. George had been so little hurt--the doctor gave him acouple of days before complete recovery--that it had not seemed worthwhile to Kirk to engage a substitute. It was simpler to go out for hismeals and make his own bed. And it was the realization that thisalteration in his habits had horribly disturbed and unsettled him thatwas making Kirk subject himself now to an examination of quite unusualseverity.
He hated softness. Physically, he kept himself always in perfectcondition. Had he become spiritually flabby? Certainly this unexpectedcall on his energies would appear to have found him unprepared. Itspoiled his whole day, knowing, when he got out of bed in the morning,that he must hunt about and find his food instead of sitting still andhaving it brought to him. It frightened him to think how set he hadbecome.
Forty-eight hours ago he would have scorned the suggestion that hecoddled himself. He would have produced as evidence to the contrary hiscold baths, his exercises, his bouts with Steve Dingle. To-day he feltless confidence. For all his baths and boxing, the fact remained thathe had become, at the age of twenty-six, such a slave to habit that avery trifling deviation from settled routine had been enough to poisonlife for him.
Bachelors have these black moments, and it is then that the abstractwife comes into her own. To Kirk, brooding in the dusk, the figure ofthe abstract wife seemed to grow less formidable, the fact that shemight not get on with Hank Jardine of less importance.
The revolutionary thought that life was rather a bore, and would becomemore and more of a bore as the years went on, unless he had some one toshare it with, crept into his mind and stayed there.
He shivered. These were unpleasant thoughts, and in his hour of clearvision he knew whence they came. They were entirely due to theknowledge that, instead of sitting comfortably at home, he would becompelled in a few short hours to go out and get dinner at somerestaurant. To such a pass had he come in the twenty-sixth year of hislife.
Once the gods have marked a bachelor down, they give him few chances ofescape. It was when Kirk's mood was at its blackest, and the figure ofthe abstract wife had ceased to be a menace and become a shining angelof salvation, that Lora Delane Porter, with Ruth Bannister at her side,rang the studio bell.
Kirk went to the door. He hoped it was a tradesman; he feared it was afriend. In his present state of mind he had no use for friends. When hefound himself confronting Mrs. Porter he became momentarily incapableof speech. It had not entered his mind that she would pay him a secondvisit. Possibly it was joy that rendered him dumb.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. "I have come toinquire after the man Pennicut. Ruth, this is Mr. Winfield. Mr.
Winfield, my niece, Miss Bannister."And Kirk perceived for the first time that his visitor was not alone.
In the shadow behind her a girl was standing. He stood aside to letMrs. Porter pass, and Ruth came into the light.
If there are degrees in speechlessness, Kirk's aphasia became doubledand trebled at the sight of her. It seemed to him that he went all topieces, as if he had received a violent blow. Curious physical changeswere taking place in him. His legs, which only that morning he hadlooked upon as eminently muscular, he now discovered to be composed ofsome curiously unstable jelly.
He also perceived--a fact which he had never before suspected--that hehad heart-disease. His lungs, too, were in poor condition; he found itpractically impossible to breathe. The violent trembling fit whichassailed him he attributed to general organic weakness.
He gaped at Ruth.
Ruth, outwardly, remained unaffected by the meeting, but inwardly shewas feeling precisely the same sensation of smallness which had come toMrs. Porter on her first meeting with Kirk. If this sensation had beennovel to Mrs. Porter, it was even stranger to Ruth.
To think humbly of herself was an experience that seldom happened toher. She was perfectly aware that her beauty was remarkable even in acity of beautiful women, and it was rarely that she permitted herknowledge of that fact to escape her. Her beauty, to her, was a naturalphenomenon, impossible to overlook. The realization of it did notobtrude itself into her mind, it simply existed subconsciously.
Yet for an instant it ceased to exist. She was staggered by a sense ofinferiority.
It lasted but a pin-point of time, this riotous upheaval of her nature.
She recovered herself so swiftly that Kirk, busy with his own emotions,had no suspicion of it.
A moment later he, too, was himself again. He was conscious of feelingcuriously uplifted and thrilled, as if the world had suddenly becomecharged with ozone and electricity, and for some reason he felt capableof great feats of muscle and energy; but the aphasia had left him, andhe addressed himself with a clear brain to the task of entertaining hisvisitors.
"George is better to-day," he reported.
"He never was bad," said Mrs. Porter succinctly.
"He doesn't think so.""Possibly not. He is hopelessly weak-minded."Ruth laughed. Kirk thrilled at the sound.
"Poor George!" she observed.
"Don't waste your sympathy, my dear," said Mrs. Porter. "That he isinjured at all is his own fault. For years he has allowed himself tobecome gross and flabby, with the result that the collision did damagewhich it would not have done to a man in hard condition. You, Mr.
Winfield," she added, turning abruptly to Kirk, "would scarcely havefelt it. But then you," went on Mrs. Porter, "are in good condition.
Cold baths!""I beg your pardon?""Do you take cold baths?""I do.""Do you do Swedish exercises?""I go through a series of evolutions every morning, with the utmostloathing. I started them as a boy, and they have become a habit likedram-drinking. I would leave them off if I could, but I can't.""Do nothing of the kind. They are invaluable.""But undignified.""Let me feel your biceps, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. She noddedapprovingly. "Like iron." She poised a finger and ran a meditativeglance over his form. Kirk eyed her apprehensively. The finger dartedforward and struck home in the region of the third waistcoat button.
"Wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Ruth!""Yes, aunt.""Prod Mr. Winfield where my finger is pointing. He is extraordinarilymuscular.""I say, really!" protested Kirk. He was a modest young man, and thisexploration of his more intimate anatomy by the finger-tips of the girlhe loved was not to be contemplated.
"Just as you please," said Mrs. Porter. "If I were a man of yourphysique, I should be proud of it.""Wouldn't you like to go up and see George?" asked Kirk. It was hard onGeorge, but it was imperative that this woman be removed somehow.
"Very well. I have brought him a little book to read, which will do himgood. It is called 'Elementary Rules for the Preservation of theBody'.""He has learned one of them, all right, since yesterday," said Kirk.
"Not to walk about in front of automobiles.""The rules I refer to are mainly concerned with diet and wholesomeexercise," explained Mrs. Porter. "Careful attention to them may yetsave him. His case is not hopeless. Ruth, let Mr. Winfield show you hispictures. They are poor in many respects, but not entirely withoutmerit."Ruth, meanwhile, had been sitting on the couch, listening to theconversation without really hearing it. She was in a dreamy, contentedmood. She found herself curiously soothed by the atmosphere of thestudio, with its shaded lights and its atmosphere of peace. That wasthe keynote of the place, peace.
From outside came the rumble of an elevated train, subdued andsoftened, like faintly heard thunder. Somebody passed the window,whistling. A barrier seemed to separate her from these noises of thecity. New York was very far away.
"I believe I could be wonderfully happy in a place like this," shethought.
She became suddenly aware, in the midst of her meditations, of eyeswatching her intently. She looked up and met Kirk's.
She could read the message in them as clearly as if he had spoken it,and she was conscious of a little thrill of annoyance at the thought ofall the tiresome formalities which must be gone through before he couldspeak it. They seemed absurd.
It was all so simple. He wanted her; she wanted him. She had known itfrom the moment of their meeting. The man had found his woman, thewoman her man. Nature had settled the whole affair in an instant. Andnow civilization, propriety, etiquette, whatever one cared to call it,must needs step in with the rules and regulations and precedents.
The goal was there, clear in sight, but it must be reached by thewinding road appointed. She, being a woman and, by virtue of her sex,primeval, scorned the road, and would have ignored it. But she knewmen, and especially, at that moment as their eyes met, she knew Kirk;and she understood that to him the road was a thing that could not beignored. The mere idea of doing so would seem grotesque and impossible,probably even shocking, to him. Men were odd, formal creatures, slavesto precedent.
He must have time, it was the prerogative of the male; time to revealhimself to her, to strut before her, to go through the solemn comedy ofproving to her, by the exhibition of his virtues and the carefulsuppression of his defects, what had been clear to her from the firstinstant, that here was her mate, the man nature had set apart for her.
He would begin by putting on a new suit of clothes and having his haircut.
She smiled. It was silly and tiresome, but it was funny.
"Will you show me your pictures, Mr. Winfield?" she asked.
"If you'd really care to see them. I'm afraid they're pretty bad.""Exhibit A. Modesty," thought Ruth.
The journey had begun.
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