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BOOK ONE: Chapter IV - Troubled Waters
It is not easy in this world to take any definite step without annoying
somebody, and Kirk, in embarking on his wooing of Ruth Bannister,
failed signally to do so. Lora Delane Porter beamed graciously upon
him, like a pleased Providence, but the rest of his circle of
acquaintances were ill at ease.
The statement does not include Hank Jardine, for Hank was out of New
York; but the others--Shanklyn, the actor; Wren, the newspaper-man;
Bryce, Johnson, Willis, Appleton, and the rest--sensed impending change
in the air, and were uneasy, like cattle before a thunder-storm. The
fact that the visits of Mrs. Porter and Ruth to inquire after George,
now of daily occurrence, took place in the afternoon, while they,
Kirk's dependents, seldom or never appeared in the studio till drawn
there by the scent of the evening meal, it being understood that during
the daytime Kirk liked to work undisturbed, kept them ignorant of the
new development.
All they knew was that during the last two weeks a subtle change had
taken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritability
than of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and was
frequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on the
back at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wren
belonging to the jovial school of thought which holds that nature gave
us hands in order to slap backs, was to bring forth a new and
unexpected Kirk, a Kirk who scowled and snarled and was hardly to be
appeased with apology. Stranger still, this new Kirk could be summoned
into existence by precisely the type of story at which, but a few weeks
back, he would have been the first to laugh.
Percy Shanklyn, whose conversation consisted of equal parts of
autobiography and of stories of the type alluded to, was the one to
discover this. His latest, which he had counted on to set the table in
a roar, produced from Kirk criticism so adverse and so crisply
delivered that he refrained from telling his latest but one and spent
the rest of the evening wondering, like his fellow visitors, what had
happened to Kirk and whether he was sickening for something.
Not one of them had the faintest suspicion that these symptoms
indicated that Kirk, for the first time in his easy-going life, was in
love. They had never contemplated such a prospect. It was not till his
conscientious and laborious courtship had been in progress for over two
weeks and was nearing the stage when he felt that the possibility of
revealing his state of mind to Ruth was not so remote as it had been,
that a chance visit of Percy Shanklyn to the studio during the
afternoon solved the mystery.
One calls it a chance visit because Percy had not been meaning to
borrow twenty dollars from Kirk that day at all. The man slated for the
loan was one Burrows, a kindly member of the Lambs Club. But fate and a
telegram from a manager removed Burrows to Chicago, while Percy was
actually circling preparatory to the swoop, and the only other man in
New York who seemed to Percy good for the necessary sum at that precise
moment was Kirk.
He flew to Kirk and found him with Ruth. Kirk's utter absence of any
enthusiasm at the sight of him, the reluctance with which he made
the introduction, the glumness with which he bore his share of the
three-cornered conversation--all these things convinced Percy that
this was no ordinary visitor.
Many years of living by his wits had developed in Percy highly
sensitive powers of observation. Brief as his visit was, he came away
as certain that Kirk was in love with this girl, and the girl was in
love with Kirk, as he had ever been of anything in his life.
As he walked slowly down-town he was thinking hard. The subject
occupying his mind was the problem of how this thing was to be stopped.
Percy Shanklyn was a sleek, suave, unpleasant youth who had been
imported by a theatrical manager two years before to play the part of
an English dude in a new comedy. The comedy had been what its
enthusiastic backer had described in the newspaper advertisements as a
"rousing live-wire success." That is to say, it had staggered along for
six weeks on Broadway to extremely poor houses, and after three weeks
on the road, had perished for all time, leaving Percy out of work.
Since then, no other English dude part having happened along, he had
rested, living in the mysterious way in which out-of-work actors do live.
He had a number of acquaintances, such as the amiable Burrows, who were
good for occasional loans, but Kirk Winfield was the king of them all.
There was something princely about the careless open-handedness of Kirk's
methods, and Percy's whole soul rose in revolt against the prospect of
being deprived of this source of revenue, as something, possibly Ruth's
determined chin, told him that he would be, should Kirk marry this girl.
He had placed Ruth at once, directly he had heard her name. He
remembered having seen her photograph in the society section of the
Sunday paper which he borrowed each week. This was the daughter of old
John Bannister. There was no doubt about that. How she had found her
way to Kirk's studio he could not understand; but there she certainly
was, and Percy was willing to bet the twenty dollars which, despite the
excitement of the moment, he had forgotten to extract from Kirk in a
hurried conversation at the door, that her presence there was not known
and approved by her father.
The only reasonable explanation that Kirk was painting her portrait he
dismissed. There had been no signs of any portrait, and Kirk's
embarrassment had been so obvious that, if there had been any such
explanation, he would certainly have given it. No, Ruth had been there
for other reasons than those of art.
"Unchaperoned, too, by Jove!" thought Percy virtuously, ignorant of
Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, who at the time of his call, had been busily
occupied in a back room instilling into George Pennicut the gospel of
the fit body. For George, now restored to health, had ceased to be a
mere student of "Elementary Rules for the Preservation of the Body" and
had become an active, though unwilling, practiser of its precepts.
Every morning Mrs. Porter called and, having shepherded him into the
back room, put him relentlessly through his exercises. George's groans,
as he moved his stout limbs along the dotted lines indicated in the
book's illustrated plates, might have stirred a faint heart to pity.
But Lora Delane Porter was made of sterner stuff. If George so much as
bent his knees while touching his toes he heard of it instantly, in no
uncertain voice.
Thus, in her decisive way, did Mrs. Porter spread light and sweetness
with both hands, achieving the bodily salvation of George while, at the
same time, furthering the loves of Ruth and Kirk by leaving them alone
together to make each other's better acquaintance in the romantic
dimness of the studio.
* * * * *
Percy proceeded down-town, pondering. His first impulse, I regret to
say, was to send Ruth's father an anonymous letter. This plan he
abandoned from motives of fear rather than of self-respect. Anonymous
letters are too frequently traced to their writers, and the prospect of
facing Kirk in such an event did not appeal to him.
As he could think of no other way of effecting his object, he had begun
to taste the bitterness of futile effort, when fortune, always his
friend, put him in a position to do what he wanted in the easiest
possible way with the minimum of unpleasantness.
Bailey Bannister, that strong, keen Napoleon of finance, was not above
a little relaxation of an evening when his father happened to be out of
town. That giant mind, weary with the strain of business, needed
refreshment.
And so, at eleven thirty that night, his father being in Albany, and
not expected home till next day, Bailey might have been observed,
beautifully arrayed and discreetly jovial, partaking of lobster at one
of those Broadway palaces where this fish is in brisk demand. He was in
company with his rabbit-faced friend, Clarence Grayling, and two
members of the chorus of a neighbouring musical comedy.
One of the two, with whom Clarence was conversing in a lively manner
that showed his heart had not been irreparably broken as the result of
his recent interview with Ruth, we may dismiss. Like Clarence, she is
of no importance to the story. The other, who, not finding Bailey's
measured remarks very gripping, was allowing her gaze to wander idly
around the room, has this claim to a place in the scheme of things,
that she had a wordless part in the comedy in which Percy Shanklyn had
appeared as the English dude and was on terms of friendship with him.
Consequently, seeing him enter the room, as he did at that moment, she
signalled him to approach.
"It's a little feller who was with me in 'The Man from Out West'," she
explained to Bailey as Percy made his way toward them. At which
Bailey's prim mouth closed with an air of disapproval.
The feminine element of the stage he found congenial to his business-
harassed brain, but with the "little fellers" who helped them to keep
the national drama sizzling he felt less in sympathy; and he resented
extremely his companion's tactlessness in inciting this infernal mummer
to intrude upon his privacy.
He prepared to be cold and distant with Percy. And when Bailey, never a
ray of sunshine, deliberately tried to be chilly, those with him at the
time generally had the sensation that winter was once more in their
midst.
Percy, meanwhile, threaded his way among the tables, little knowing
that fate had already solved the problem which had worried him the
greater part of the day.
He had come to the restaurant as a relief from his thoughts. If he
could find some kind friend who would invite him to supper, well and
good. If not, he was feeling so tired and depressed that he was ready
to take the bull by the horns and pay for his meal himself. He had
obeyed Miss Freda Reece's signal because it was impossible to avoid
doing so; but one glance at Bailey's face had convinced him that not
there was his kind host.
"Why, Perce," said Miss Reece, "I ain't saw you in years. Where you
been hiding yourself?"
Percy gave a languid gesture indicative of the man of affairs whose
time is not his own.
"Percy," continued Miss Reece, "shake hands with my friend Mr.
Bannister. I been telling him about how you made such a hit as the pin
in 'Pinafore'!"
The name galvanized Percy like a bugle-blast.
"Mr. Bannister!" he exclaimed. "Any relation to Mr. John Bannister, the
millionaire?"
Bailey favoured him with a scrutiny through the gold-rimmed glasses
which would have frozen his very spine.
"My father's name is--ah--John, and he is a millionaire."
Percy met the scrutiny with a suave smile.
"By Jove!" he said. "I know your sister quite well, Mr. Bannister. I
meet her frequently at the studio of my friend Kirk Winfield. Very
frequently. She is there nearly every day. Well, I must be moving on.
Got a date with a man. Goodbye, Freda. Glad you're going strong. Good
night, Mr. Bannister. Delighted to have made your acquaintance. You
must come round to the studio one of these days. Good night."
He moved softly away. Miss Reece watched him go with regret.
"He's a good little feller, Percy," she said. "And so he knows your
sister. Well, ain't that nice!"
Bailey did not reply. And to the feast of reason and flow of soul that
went on at the table during the rest of the meal he contributed so
little that Miss Reece, in conversation that night with her friend
alluded to him, not without justice, first as "that stiff," and, later,
as "a dead one."
* * * * *
If Percy Shanklyn could have seen Bailey in the small hours of that
night he would have been satisfied that his words had borne fruit. Like
a modern Prometheus, Bailey writhed, sleepless, on his bed till
daylight appeared. The discovery that Ruth was in the habit of paying
clandestine visits to artists' studios, where she met men like the
little bounder who had been thrust upon him at supper, rent his haughty
soul like a bomb.
He knew no artists, but he had read novels of Bohemian life in Paris,
and he had gathered a general impression that they were, as a class,
shock-headed, unwashed persons of no social standing whatever,
extremely short of money and much addicted to orgies. And his sister
had lowered herself by association with one of these.
He rose early. His appearance in the mirror shocked him. He looked
positively haggard.
Dressing with unwonted haste, he inquired for Ruth, and was told that a
telephone message had come from her late the previous evening to say
that she was spending the night at the apartment of Mrs. Lora Delane
Porter. The hated name increased Bailey's indignation. He held Mrs.
Porter responsible for the whole trouble. But for her pernicious
influence, Ruth would have been an ordinary sweet American girl,
running as, Bailey held, a girl should, in a decent groove.
It increased his troubles that his father was away from New York.
Bailey, who enjoyed the dignity of being temporary head of the firm of
Bannister & Son, had approved of his departure. But now he would have
given much to have him on the spot. He did not doubt his own ability to
handle this matter, but he felt that his father ought to know what was
going on.
His wrath against this upstart artist who secretly entertained his
sister in his studio grew with the minutes. It would be his privilege
very shortly to read that scrubby dauber a lesson in deportment which
he would remember.
In the interests of the family welfare he decided to stay away from the
office that day. The affairs of Bannister & Son would be safe for the
time being in the hands of the head clerk. Having telephoned to Wall
Street to announce his decision, he made a moody breakfast and then
proceeded, as was his custom of a morning, to the gymnasium for his
daily exercise.
The gymnasium was a recent addition to the Bannister home. It had been
established as the result of a heart-to-heart talk between old John
Bannister and his doctor. The doctor spoke earnestly of nervous
prostration and stated without preamble the exact number of months
which would elapse before Mr. Bannister living his present life, would
make first-hand acquaintance with it. He insisted on a regular routine
of exercise. The gymnasium came into being, and Mr. Steve Dingle,
physical instructor at the New York Athletic Club, took up a position
in the Bannister household which he was wont to describe to his
numerous friends as a soft snap.
Certainly his hours were not long. Thirty minutes with old Mr.
Bannister and thirty minutes with Mr. Bailey between eight and nine in
the morning and his duties were over for the day. But Steve was
conscientious and checked any disposition on the part of his two
clients to shirk work with a firmness which Lora Delane Porter might
have envied.
There were moments when he positively bullied old Mr. Bannister. It
would have amazed the clerks in his Wall Street office to see the
meekness with which the old man obeyed orders. But John Bannister was a
man who liked to get his money's worth, and he knew that Steve was
giving it to the last cent.
Steve at that time was twenty-eight years old. He had abandoned an
active connection with the ring, which had begun just after his
seventeenth birthday, twelve months before his entry into the Bannister
home, leaving behind him a record of which any boxer might have been
proud. He personally was exceedingly proud of it, and made no secret of
the fact.
He was a man in private life of astonishingly even temper. The only
thing that appeared to have the power to ruffle him to the slightest
extent was the contemplation of what he described as the bunch of
cheeses who pretended to fight nowadays. He would have considered it a
privilege, it seemed, to be allowed to encounter all the middle-weights
in the country in one ring in a single night without training. But it
appeared that he had promised his mother to quit, and he had quit.
Steve's mother was an old lady who in her day had been the best
washerwoman on Cherry Hill. She was, moreover, completely lacking in
all the qualities which go to make up the patroness of sport. Steve had
been injudicious enough to pay her a visit the day after his celebrated
unpleasantness with that rugged warrior, Pat O'Flaherty (_ne_
Smith), and, though he had knocked Pat out midway through the second
round, he bore away from the arena a black eye of such a startling
richness that old Mrs. Dingle had refused to be comforted until he had
promised never to enter the ring again. Which, as Steve said, had come
pretty hard, he being a man who would rather be a water-bucket in a
ring than a president outside it.
But he had given the promise, and kept it, leaving the field to the
above-mentioned bunch of cheeses. There were times when the temptation
to knock the head off Battling Dick this and Fighting Jack that became
almost agony, but he never yielded to it. All of which suggests that
Steve was a man of character, as indeed he was.
Bailey, entering the gymnasium, found Steve already there, punching
the bag with a force and precision which showed that the bunch of
cheeses ought to have been highly grateful to Mrs. Dingle for her
anti-pugilistic prejudices.
"Good morning, Dingle," said Bailey precisely.
Steve nodded. Bailey began to don his gymnasium costume. Steve gave the
ball a final punch and turned to him. He was a young man who gave the
impression of being, in a literal sense, perfectly square. This was due
to the breadth of his shoulders, which was quite out of proportion to
his height. His chest was extraordinarily deep, and his stomach and
waist small, so that to the observer seeing him for the first time in
boxing trunks, he seemed to begin as a big man and, half-way down,
change his mind and become a small one.
His arms, which were unusually long and thick, hung down nearly to his
knees and were decorated throughout with knobs and ridges of muscle
that popped up and down and in and out as he moved, in a manner both
fascinating and frightening. His face increased the illusion of
squareness, for he had thick, straight eyebrows, a straight mouth, and
a chin of almost the minimum degree of roundness. He inspected Bailey
with a pair of brilliant brown eyes which no detail of his appearance
could escape. And Bailey, that morning, as has been said, was not
looking his best.
"You're lookin' kind o' sick, bo," was Steve's comment. "I guess you
was hittin' it up with the gang last night in one of them lobster
parlours."
Bailey objected to being addressed as "bo," and he was annoyed that
Steve should have guessed the truth respecting his overnight movements.
Still more was he annoyed that Steve's material mind should attribute
to a surfeit of lobster a pallor that was superinduced by a tortured
soul.
"I did--ah--take supper last night, it is true," he said. "But if I am
a little pale to-day, that is not the cause. Things have occurred to
annoy me intensely."
"You should worry!" advised Steve. "Catch!"
The heavy medicine-ball struck Bailey in the chest before he could
bring up his hands and sent him staggering back.
"Damn it, Dingle," he gasped. "Kindly give me warning before you do
that sort of thing."
Steve was delighted. It amused his simple, honest soul to catch Bailey
napping, and the incident gave him a text on which to hang a lecture.
And, next to fighting, he loved best the sound of his own voice.
"Warning? Nix!" he said. "Ain't it just what I been telling you every
day for weeks? You gotta be ready _always_. You seen me holding
the pellet. You should oughter have been saying to yourself: 'I gotta
keep an eye on that gink, so's he don't soak me one with that thing
when I ain't looking.' Then you would have caught it and whizzed it
back at me, and maybe, if I hadn't been ready for it, you might have
knocked the breeze out of me."
"I should have derived no pleasure-----"
"Why, say, suppose a plug-ugly sasshays up to you on the street to take
a crack at your pearl stick-pin, do you reckon he's going to drop you a
postal card first? You gotta be _ready_ for him. See what I mean?"
"Let us spar," said Bailey austerely. He had begun to despair of ever
making Steve show him that deference and respect which he considered
due to the son of the house. The more frigid he was, the more genial
and friendly did Steve become. The thing seemed hopeless.
It was a pleasing sight to see Bailey spar. He brought to the task the
measured dignity which characterized all his actions. A left jab from
him had all the majesty of a formal declaration of war. If he was a
trifle slow in his movements for a pastime which demands a certain
agility from its devotees he at least got plenty of exercise and did
himself a great deal of good.
He was perspiring freely as he took off the gloves. A shower-bath,
followed by brisk massage at the energetic hands of Steve, made him
feel better than he had imagined he could feel after that night of
spiritual storm and stress. He was glowing as he put on his clothes,
and a certain high resolve which had come to him in the night watches
now returned with doubled force.
"Dingle," he said, "how did I seem to-day?"
"Fine," answered Steve courteously. "You're gettin' to be a regular
terror."
"You think I shape well?"
"Sure."
"I am glad. This morning I am going to thrash a man within an inch of
his life."
"What!"
Steve spun round. Bailey's face was set and determined.
"You are?" said Steve feebly.
"I am."
"What's he been doing to you?"
"I am afraid I cannot tell you that. But he richly deserves what he
will get."
Steve eyed him with affectionate interest.
"Well, ain't you the wildcat!" he said. "Who'd have thought it? I'd
always had you sized up as a kind o' placid guy."
"I can be roused."
"Gee, can't I see it! But, say, what sort of a gook is this gink,
anyway?"
"In what respect?"
"Well, I mean is he a heavy or a middle or a welter or what? It makes a
kind o' difference, you know."
"I cannot say. I have not seen him."
"What! Not seen him? Then how's there this fuss between you?"
"That is a matter into which I cannot go."
"Well, what's his name, then? Maybe I know him. I know a few good
people in this burg."
"I have no objection to telling you that. He is an artist, and his name
is--his name is----"
Wrinkles appeared in Bailey's forehead. His eyes bulged anxiously
behind their glasses.
"I've forgotten," he said blankly.
"For the love of Mike! Know where he lives?"
"I am afraid not."
Steve patted him kindly on the shoulder.
"Take my advice, bo," he said. "Let the poor fellow off this time."
And so it came about that Bailey, instead of falling upon Kirk
Winfield, hailed a taxicab and drove to the apartment of Mrs. Lora
Delane Porter.
Content of BOOK ONE: Chapter IV - Troubled Waters [P G Wodehouse's novel: The Coming of Bill]
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