P. G. Wodehouse

“ Devouring aspiring young men of the Bailey type was Norman’s chief diversion.
Ruth knew nothing of these things. She told herself that it was her abruptness that had driven Bailey away.
Weariness and depression had settled on Ruth since that afternoon of the storm. It was as if the storm had wrought an awakening in her. It had marked a definite point of change in her outlook. She felt as if she had been roused from a trance by a sharp blow.
If Steve had but known, she had had the “jolt” by which he set such store. She knew now that she had thrown away the substance for the shadow. ”

“ A curious feeling of being infinitely far from Ruth came over Kirk. She dismissed his dream as a whimsical impossibility not worthy of serious consideration. Why could they not be hermits? They had been hermits before, and it had been the happiest period of both their lives. Why, just because an old man had died and left them money, must they rule out the best thing in life as impossible and plunge into a nightmare which was not life at all? ”

“ There are worse spots in the world than the sheds of the New York customs, but few more desolate; yet to Kirk just then the shadowy vastness seemed a sunlit garden. A flame of happiness blazed up in his mind, blotting out in an instant the forebodings which had lurked there like evil creatures in a dark vault. The future, with its explanations and plans, could take care of itself. Ruth was a thing of the present. ”

“ Every word that Bailey had flung at him had been strictly just.
He had thought himself a fine, romantic fellow. He was a waster and a loafer who pretended to be an artist. He had thrown away the little talent he had once possessed. He had behaved shamefully to Ruth, shirking his responsibilities and idling through life. He realized it now, when it was too late.
Suddenly through the chaos of his reflections there shone out clearly one coherent thought, the recollection of what Hank Jardine had offered to him. “If ever you are in a real tight corner——”
His brain cleared. ”

“ Kirk’s inability to accompany Ruth into her present life had given Basil his chance. Into the gap which now lay between them he had slipped with a smooth neatness born of experience.
Bailey hated Basil. Men, as a rule, did, without knowing why. Basil’s reputation was shady, without being actually bad. He was a suspect who had never been convicted. New York contained several husbands who eyed him askance, but could not verify their suspicions, and the apparent hopelessness of ever doing so made them look on Basil as a man who had carried smoothness into the realms of fine art. ”

“ For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.
She turned.
Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She was in Kirk’s arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding force, had ceased to exist.
Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness. Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing of the engine. ”

“ A chafing-dish stood at one end, and the remainder of the available space was filled with a collection of foods, from cold chicken to candy, which did credit to Steve’s imagination.
But it was not the sight of these that checked his flow of speech. It was the look on Mamie’s face as he caught sight of it in the lamplight. The White Hope was sitting at the table in the attitude of one who has heard the gong and is anxious to begin; while Mamie, bending over him, raised her head as the two men entered and fixed Steve with a baleful stare. ”

“ There was nothing of the hermit about Ruth now. She was amazingly undomestic.
Her old distaste for the fashionable life of New York seemed to have vanished absolutely. As far as Kirk could see, she was always entertaining or being entertained. He was pitched head-long into a world where people talked incessantly of things which bored him and did things which seemed to him simply mad. And Ruth, whom he had thought he understood, revelled in it all. ”

“ It says much for her iron self-control that she remained quiet at this point. A lesser person, after a far less tiring ordeal than she had passed through, would have found relief in some cry or exclamation—possibly even in a scream.
Against the far wall, breathing hard and fondling his left eye with a four-ounce glove, leaned Steve Dingle. His nose was bleeding somewhat freely, but this he appeared to consider a trifle unworthy of serious attention. On the floor, an even more disturbing spectacle, Kirk lay at full length. To Mrs. Porter’s startled gaze he appeared to be dead. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Porter. “Careful attention to them may yet save him. His case is not hopeless. Ruth, let Mr. Winfield show you his pictures. They are poor in many respects, but not entirely without merit.”
Ruth, meanwhile, had been sitting on the couch, listening to the conversation without really hearing it. She was in a dreamy, contented mood. She found herself curiously soothed by the atmosphere of the studio, with its shaded lights and its atmosphere of peace. That was the keynote of the place, peace.
From outside came the rumble of an elevated train, subdued and softened, like faintly heard thunder. ”

“ A soft smile played over Ruth’s face. “I spoke to Clarence. I explained things to him. I lit up Clarence’s little mind like a searchlight.”
Bailey rose, tremulous with just wrath.
“You spoke to him in a way that I can only call outrageous and improper, and—er—outrageous.”
He paced the room with agitated strides. Ruth watched him calmly.
“If the overflowing emotion of a giant soul in torment makes you knock over a table or smash a chair,” she said, “I shall send the bill for repairs to you. You had far better sit down and talk quietly. What is worrying you, Bailey?” ”

“ Ruth could have told him. She was the angel with the flaming sword who guarded their paradise. Marriage was causing her to make unexpected discoveries with regard to herself. Before she had always looked on herself as a rather unusually reasonable, and certainly not a jealous, woman. But now she was filled with an active dislike for these quite harmless young men who came to try and share Kirk with her.
She knew it was utterly illogical. A man must have friends. Life could not be forever a hermitage of two. ”

“ But conscience would not allow Mamie to reveal the secret. Already she was suffering the pangs of remorse for having, in however good a cause, broken her idol’s rest with a push that might have given the poor lamb a headache. She could not confess the crime even to Steve.
And if Steve had had the pluck to tell Mamie that he loved her, as he stood before her dripping with the water which he had suffered in silence rather than betray her, she would have fallen into his arms. For Steve at that moment had all the glamour for her of the self-sacrificing hero of a moving-picture film. ”

“ In a way, if you shut your eyes to the white tiles and the thermometer and the brass knobs and the shower-bath, it was a peaceful scene; and Steve, as he sat there and watched Mamie sew, was stirred by it. Remove the white tiles, the thermometer the brass knobs, and the shower-bath, and this was precisely the sort of scene his imagination conjured up when the business of life slackened sufficiently to allow him to dream dreams. ”

“ There had been the upkeep of the summer shack he had bought in Connecticut. There had been expenses in connection with William Bannister. There had been little treats for Ruth. There had been cigars and clothes and dinners and taxi-cabs and all the other trifles which cost nothing but mount up and make a man wander beyond the bounds of his legitimate income.
It was borne in upon Kirk, as he reflected upon these things, that the only evidence he had shown of the possession of the artistic temperament had been the joyous carelessness of his extravagance. In that only had he been the artist. ”

“ John Bannister smiled. He had a wintry smile, a sort of muscular affection of the mouth, to which his eyes contributed nothing. He had made up his mind to be perfectly calm and pleasant with Ruth. He had read in novels and seen on the stage situations of this kind, where the father had stormed and blustered. The foolishness of such a policy amused him. A strong man had no need to behave like that.
“I think I have heard it already,” he said. “I have just been seeing Bailey.” ”

“ Lora Delane Porter dismissed the hireling who had brought her automobile around from the garage and seated herself at the wheel. It was her habit to refresh her mind and improve her health by a daily drive between the hours of two and four in the afternoon.
The world knows little of its greatest women, and it is possible that Mrs. Porter’s name is not familiar to you. If this is the case, I am pained, but not surprised. It happens only too often that the uplifter of the public mind is baulked by a disinclination on the part of the public mind to meet him or her half-way. ”

“ Bailey was disgusted at this futile attempt to hide the known facts of the case from him.
“You need not trouble to try and fool me, Mr. Winfield,” he said tartly. “I know everything. I have just seen my sister, and she told me herself in so many words that she intended to marry you.”
To his amazement he found his hand violently shaken.
“My dear old man!” Kirk was stammering in his delight. “My dear old sport, you don’t know what a weight you’ve taken off my mind. You know how it is. A fellow falls in love and instantly starts thinking he hasn’t a chance on earth. ”

“ Sybil Wilbur fluttered in next day at noon, a tiny, restless creature who darted about the studio like a humming-bird. She effervesced with the joy of life. She uttered little squeaks of delight at everything she saw. She hugged Ruth, beamed at Kirk, went wild over William Bannister, thought the studio too cute for words, insisted on being shown all over it, and talked incessantly. ”

“ Once the gods have marked a bachelor down, they give him few chances of escape. It was when Kirk’s mood was at its blackest, and the figure of the abstract wife had ceased to be a menace and become a shining angel of salvation, that Lora Delane Porter, with Ruth Bannister at her side, rang the studio bell. ”

“ That was what the immediate future held, the meeting with Ruth. And after? His imagination was not equal to the task of considering that. He had failed as an artist. There was no future for him there. He must find some other work. But he was fit for no other work. He had no training. What could he do in a city where keenness of competition is a tradition? It would be as if an unarmed man should attack a fortress. ”

“ Kirk’s face clouded.
“I feel old.”
For the first time since he had left the ship the memory of Hank had come back to him. The sight of Ruth had driven it away, but now it swept back on him. The golden moment was over. Life with all its troubles and its explanations and its burdening sense of failure must be faced. ”

“ Kirk did not object to it in the least. He had enough money to meet their needs, and, being a sociable person who enjoyed mixing with all sorts and conditions of men, he found the Liberty Hall regime pleasant.
He liked to be a magnet, attracting New York’s Bohemian population. If he had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studio as a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking his whisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion, his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. ”

“ If you keep a dog, a dog with a high sense of his abilities and importance, tied up and muzzled for a length of time and then abruptly set it free the chances are that it will celebrate its freedom. This had happened in the case of Bailey.
Just as her father’s money had caused Ruth to plunge into a whirl of pleasures which she did not really enjoy, merely for the novelty of it, so the death of John Bannister and his own consequent accession to the throne had upset Bailey’s balance and embarked him on an orgy of speculation quite foreign to his true nature. ”

“ Ruth came over to him and sat down on a low chair at his side. She put her arm round his waist and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder.
“Is he pining for his horrid Vince girl, the poor boy?”
“He certainly is,” said Kirk. “Or at any rate, for some understudy to her.”
“We must think. Do they all call you Kirk?”
“I’ve never met one who didn’t.”
“What horrible creatures you artists are!”
“My dear kid, you don’t understand the thing at all. When you’re painting a model she ceases to be a girl at all. You don’t think of her as anything except a sort of lay-figure.” ”

“ It’s about time you had your darned dime-novel romance shown up to you the way it strikes somebody else. You think you’re a tremendous dashing twentieth-century Young Lochinvar, don’t you? You thought you had done a pretty smooth bit of work when you sneaked Ruth away! You! You haven’t enough backbone in you even to make a bluff at working to support her. You’re just what my father said you were—a loafer who pretends to be an artist. You’ve got away with it up to now, but you’ve shown yourself up at last. You damned waster!”
Kirk walked to the door and flung it open. ”