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BOOK ONE: Chapter VII - Sufficient Unto Themselves
Some months after John Bannister had spoken his ultimatum in the
library two drought-stricken men met on the Rialto. It was a close June
evening, full of thirst.
"I could do with a drink," said the first man. "Several."
"My tongue is black clear down to the roots," said the second.
"Let's go up to Kirk Winfield's," proposed the first man, inspired.
"Not for me," said the other briefly. "Haven't you heard about Kirk?
He's married!"
"I know--but----"
"And when I say married, I mean _married_. She's old John
Bannister's daughter, you know, and I guess she inherits her father's
character. She's what I call a determined girl. She seems to have made
up her mind that the old crowd that used to trail around the studio
aren't needed any longer, and they've been hitting the sidewalk on one
ear ever since the honeymoon.
"If you want to see her in action, go up there now. She'll be perfectly
sweet and friendly, but somehow you'll get the notion that you don't
want to go there again, and that she can bear up if you don't. It's
something in her manner. I guess it's a trick these society girls
learn. You've seen a bouncer handling a souse. He doesn't rough-house
him. He just puts his arm round his waist and kind of suggests he
should leave the place. Well, it's like that."
"But doesn't Kirk kick? He used to like having us around."
His friend laughed.
"Kick? Kirk? You should see him! He just sits there waiting for you to
go, and, when you do go, shuts the door on you so quick you have to
jump to keep from getting your coat caught in it. I tell you, those two
are about all the company either of them needs. They've got the
Newly-weds licked to a whisper."
"It's always the best fellows that get it the worse," said the other
philosophically, "and it's always the fellows you think are safe too. I
could have bet on Kirk. Six months ago I'd have given you any odds you
wanted that he would never marry."
"And I wouldn't have taken you. It's always the way."
The criticisms of the two thirsty men, though prejudiced, were
accurate. Marriage had undeniably wrought changes in Kirk Winfield. It
had blown up, decentralized, and re-arranged his entire scheme of life.
Kirk's was one of those natures that run to extremes. He had been a
whole-hearted bachelor, and he was assuredly a much-married man. For
the first six months Ruth was almost literally his whole world. His
friends, the old brigade of the studio, had dropped away from him in a
body. They had visited the studio once or twice at first, but after
that had mysteriously disappeared. He was too engrossed in his
happiness to speculate on the reasons for this defection: he only knew
that he was glad of it.
Their visits had not been a success.
Conversation had flowed fitfully. Some sixth sense told him that Ruth,
though charming to them all, had not liked them; and he himself was
astonished to find what bull dogs they really were. It was odd how out
of sympathy he felt with them. They seemed so unnecessary: yet what a
large part of his life they had once made up!
Something had come between him and them. What it was he did not know.
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. She tried to analyse her objection
to these men, and came to the conclusion that it was the fact that they
had known Kirk before she did that caused it.
She made a compromise with herself. Kirk should have friends, but they
must be new ones. In a little while, when this crazy desire to keep
herself and him alone together in a world of their own should have left
her, they would begin to build up a circle. But these men whose
vocabulary included the words "Do you remember?" must be eliminated one
and all.
Kirk, blissfully unconscious that his future was being arranged for him
and the steering-wheel of his life quietly taken out of his hands,
passed his days in a state of almost painful happiness. It never
crossed his mind that he had ceased to be master of his fate and
captain of his soul. The reins were handled so gently that he did not
feel them. It seemed to him that he was travelling of his own free will
along a pleasant path selected by himself.
He saw his friends go from him without a regret. Perhaps at the bottom
of his heart he had always had a suspicion of contempt for them. He had
taken them on their surface value, as amusing fellows who were good
company of an evening. There was not one of them whom he had ever known
as real friends know each other--not one, except Hank Jardine; and
Hank had yet to be subjected to the acid test of the new conditions.
There were moments when the thought of Hank threw a shadow across his
happiness. He could let these others go, but Hank was different. And
something told him that Ruth would not like Hank.
But these shadows were not frequent. Ruth filled his life too
completely to allow him leisure to brood on possibilities of future
trouble.
Looking back, it struck him that on their wedding-day they had been
almost strangers. They had taken each other blindly, trusting to
instinct. Since then he had been getting to know her. It was
astonishing how much there was to know. There was a fresh discovery to
be made about her every day. She was a perpetually recurring miracle.
The futility of his old life made him wince whenever he dared think of
it. How he had drifted, a useless log on a sluggish current!
He was certainly a whole-hearted convert. As to Saul of Tarsus, so to
him there had come a sudden blinding light. He could hardly believe
that he was the same person who had scoffed at the idea of a man giving
up his life to one woman and being happy. But then the abstract wife
had been a pale, bloodless phantom, and Ruth was real.
It was the realness of her that kept him in a state of perpetual
amazement. To see her moving about the studio, to touch her, to look at
her across the dinner-table, to wake in the night and hear her
breathing at his side.... It seemed to him that centuries might pass,
yet these things would still be wonderful.
And always in his heart there was the gratitude for what she had done
for him. She had given up everything to share his life. She had weighed
him in the balance against wealth and comfort and her place among the
great ones of the world, and had chosen him. There were times when the
thought filled him with a kind of delirious pride: times, again, when
he felt a grateful humility that made him long to fall down and worship
this goddess who had stooped to him.
In a word, he was very young, very much in love, and for the first time
in his life was living with every drop of blood in his veins.
* * * * *
Hank returned to New York in due course. He came to the studio the same
night, and he had not been there five minutes before a leaden weight
descended on Kirk's soul. It was as he had feared. Ruth did not like
him.
Hank was not the sort of man who makes universal appeal. Also, he was
no ladies' man. He was long and lean and hard-bitten, and his supply of
conventional small talk was practically non-existent. To get the best
out of Hank, as has been said, you had to let him take his coat off and
put his feet up on the back of a second chair and reconcile yourself to
the pestiferous brand of tobacco which he affected.
Ruth conceded none of these things. Throughout the interview Hank sat
bolt upright, tucking a pair of shoes of the dreadnought class coyly
underneath his chair, and drew suspiciously at Turkish cigarettes from
Kirk's case. An air of constraint hung over the party. Again and again
Kirk hoped that Hank would embark on the epic of his life, but shyness
kept Hank dumb.
He had heard, on reaching New York, that Kirk was married, but he had
learned no details, and had conjured up in his mind the vision of a
jolly little girl of the Bohemian type, who would make a fuss over him
as Kirk's oldest friend. Confronted with Ruth, he lost a nerve which
had never before failed him. This gorgeous creature, he felt, would
never put up with those racy descriptions of wild adventures which had
endeared him to Kirk. As soon as he could decently do so, he left, and
Kirk, returning to the studio after seeing him out, sat down moodily,
trying to convince himself against his judgment that the visit had not
been such a failure after all.
Ruth was playing the piano softly. She had turned out all the lights
except one, which hung above her head, shining on her white arms as
they moved. From where he sat Kirk could see her profile. Her eyes were
half closed.
The sight of her, as it always did, sent a thrill through him, but he
was conscious of an ache behind it. He had hoped so much that Hank
would pass, and he knew that he had not. Why was it that two people so
completely one as Ruth and himself could not see Hank with the same
eyes?
He knew that she had thought him uncouth and impossible. Why could not
Hank have exerted himself more, instead of sitting there in that
stuffed way? Why could not Ruth have unbent? Why had not he himself
done something to save the situation? Of the three, he blamed himself
most. He was the one who should have taken the lead and made things
pleasant for everybody instead of forcing out conversational
platitudes.
Once or twice he had caught Hank's eye, and had hated himself for
understanding what it said and not being able to deny it. He had marked
the end of their old relationship, the parting of the ways, and that a
tragedy had been played out that night.
He found himself thinking of Hank as of a friend who had died. What
times they had had! How smoothly they had got on together! He could not
recall a single occasion on which they had fallen out, from the time
when they had fought as boys at the prep. school and cemented their
friendship the next day. After that there had been periods when they
had parted, sometimes for more than a year, but they had always come
together again and picked up the threads as neatly as if there had been
no gap in their intimacy.
He had gone to college: Hank had started on the roving life which
suited his temperament. But they had never lost touch with each other.
And now it was all over. They would meet again, but it would not be the
same. The angel with the flaming sword stood between them.
For the first time since the delirium of marriage had seized upon him,
Kirk was conscious of a feeling that all was not for the best in a best
of all possible worlds, a feeling of regret, not that he had married--the
mere thought would have been a blasphemy--but that marriage was such a
complicated affair. He liked a calm life, free from complications, and
now they were springing up on every side.
There was the matter of the models. Kirk had supposed that it was only
in the comic papers that the artist's wife objected to his employing
models. He had classed it with the mother-in-law joke, respecting it
for its antiquity, but not imagining that it ever really happened. And
Ruth had brought this absurd situation into the sphere of practical
politics only a few days ago.
Since his marriage Kirk had dropped his work almost entirely. There had
seemed to be no time for it. He liked to spend his days going round the
stores with Ruth, buying her things, or looking in at the windows of
Fifth Avenue shops and choosing what he would buy her when he had made
his fortune. It was agreed upon between them that he was to make his
fortune some day.
Kirk's painting had always been more of a hobby with him than a
profession. He knew that he had talent, but talent without hard work is
a poor weapon, and he had always shirked hard work. He had an instinct
for colour, but his drawing was uncertain. He hated linework, while
knowing that only through steady practice at linework could he achieve
his artistic salvation. He was an amateur, and a lazy amateur.
But once in a while the work fever would grip him. It had gripped him a
few days before Hank's visit. An idea for a picture had come to him,
and he had set to work upon it with his usual impulsiveness.
This had involved the arrival of Miss Hilda Vince at the studio. There
was no harm in Miss Vince. Her morals were irreproachable. She
supported a work-shy father, and was engaged to be married to a young
gentleman who travelled for a hat firm. But she was of a chatty
disposition and no respecter of persons. She had posed frequently for
Kirk in his bachelor days, and was accustomed to call him by his first
name--a fact which Kirk had forgotten until Ruth, who had been out in
the park, came in.
Miss Vince was saying at the moment: "So I says to her, 'Kirk's just
phoned to me to sit.' 'What! Kirk!' she says. 'Is _he_ doin' a bit
of work for a change? Well, it's about time.' 'Aw, Kirk don't need to
work,' I says. 'He's a plute. He's got it in gobs.' So----"
"I didn't know you were busy, dear," said Ruth. "I won't interrupt
you."
She went out.
"Was that your wife?" inquired Miss Vince. "She's got a sweet face.
Say, I read the piece about you and her in the paper. You certainly got
a nerve, Kirk, breaking in on the millionaires that way."
That night Ruth spoke her mind about Miss Vince. It was in vain that
Kirk touched on the work-shy father, dwelt feelingly on the young
gentleman who travelled in hats. Ruth had made up her mind. It was
thumbs down for Miss Vince.
"But if I'm to paint," said Kirk, "I must have models."
"There must be hundreds who don't call you by your Christian name."
"After about five minutes they all do," said Kirk. "It's a way they've
got. They mean no harm."
Ruth then made this brilliant suggestion: "Kirk, dear, why don't you
paint landscapes?"
In spite of his annoyance, he laughed.
"Why don't I paint landscapes, Ruth? Because I'm not a landscape
painter, that's why."
"You could learn."
"It's a different branch of the trade altogether. You might just as
well tell a catcher to pitch."
"Well, anyhow," reported Ruth with spirit, "I won't have that Vince
creature in the place again."
It was the first time she had jerked at the reins or given any sign
that she was holding them, and undoubtedly this was the moment at which
Kirk should have said: "My dearest, the time has come for me to state
plainly that my soul is my own. I decline to give in to this absurd
suggestion. Marriage is an affair of give and take, not a circus where
one party holds the hoop while the other jumps through and shams dead.
We shall be happier later on if we get this clearly into our heads
now."
What he did say was: "Very well, dear. I'll write and tell her not to
come."
He knew he was being abominably weak, but he did not care. He even felt
a certain pleasure in his surrender. Big, muscular men are given to
this feebleness with women. Hercules probably wore an idiotic grin of
happiness when he spun wool for Omphale.
Since then the picture had been laid aside, but Kirk's desire to be up
and at it had grown with inaction. When a lazy man does make up his
mind to assail a piece of work, he is like a dog with a bone.
* * * * *
The music had stopped. Ruth swung round.
"What are you dreaming about Kirk?"
Kirk came to himself with a start.
"I was thinking of a lot of things. For one, about that picture of
mine."
"What about it?"
"Well, when I was going to finish it."
"Why don't you?"
Kirk laughed.
"Where's my model? You've scared her up a tree, and I can't coax her
down."
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."
"Good gracious! Does your lay-figure call you Kirk too?"
"It always looks as if it were going to."
Ruth shuddered.
"It's a repulsive thing. I hate it. It gives me the creeps. I came in
here last night and switched on the light, and there it was, goggling
at me."
"Are you getting nervous?"
Ruth's face grew grave.
"Do you know, Kirk, I really believe I am. This morning as I was
dressing, I suddenly got the most awful feeling that something terrible
was going to happen. I don't know what. It was perfectly vague. I just
felt a kind of horror. It passed off in a moment or two; but, while it
lasted--ugh!"
"How ghastly! Why didn't you tell me before? You must be run down. Look
here, let's shut up this place and get out to Florida or somewhere for
the winter!"
"Let's don't do anything of the kind. Florida indeed! For the love of
Mike, as Steve would say, it's much too expensive. You know, Kirk, we
are both frightfully extravagant. I'm sure we are spending too much
money as it is. You know you sold out some of your capital only the
other day."
"It was only that once. And you had set your heart on that pendant.
Surely to goodness, if I drag you away from a comfortable home to live
in a hovel, the least I can do is to----"
"You didn't drag me. I just walked in and sat down, and you couldn't
think how to get rid of me, so in despair you married me."
"That was it. And now I've got to set to work and make a fortune
and--what do you call it?--support you in the style to which you have
been accustomed. Which brings us back to the picture. I don't suppose I
shall get ten dollars for it, but I feel I shall curl up and die if I
don't get it finished. Are you _absolutely_ determined about the
Vince girl?"
"I'm adamant. I'm granite. I'm chilled steel. Oh! Kirk, can't you find
a nice, motherly old model, with white hair and spectacles? I shouldn't
mind _her_ calling you by your first name."
"But it's absurd. I told you just now that an artist doesn't look on
his models as human beings while----"
"I know. I've read all about that in books, and I believed it then.
Why, when I married you, I said to myself: 'I mustn't be foolish.
Kirk's an artist, I mustn't be a comic-supplement wife and object to
his using models!' Oh, I was going to be so good and reasonable. You
would have loved me! And then, when it came to the real thing, I found
I just could not stand it. I know it's silly of me. I know just as well
as you do that Miss Vince is quite a nice girl really, and is going to
make a splendid Mrs. Travelling Salesman, but that doesn't help me.
It's my wicked nature, I suppose. I'm just a plain cat, and that's all
there is to it. Look at the way I treat your friends!"
Kirk started.
"You jumped!" said Ruth. "You jerked my head. Do you think I didn't
know you had noticed it? I knew how unhappy you were when Mr. Jardine
was here, and I just hated myself."
"Didn't you like Hank?" asked Kirk.
Ruth was silent for a moment.
"I wish you would," Kirk went on. "You don't know what a real white man
old Hank is. You didn't see him properly that night. He was nervous.
But he's one of the very best God ever made. We've known each other all
our lives. He and I----"
"Don't tell me!" cried Ruth. "Don't you see that that's just the reason
why I can't like him? Don't tell me about the things you and he did
together, unless you want me to hate him. Don't you understand, dear?
It's the same with all your friends. I'm jealous of them for having
known you before I did. And I hate these models because they come into
a part of your life into which I can't. I want you all to myself. I
want to be your whole life. I know it's idiotic and impossible, but I
do."
"You are my whole life," said Kirk seriously. "I wasn't born till I met
you. There isn't a single moment when you are not my whole life."
She pressed her head contentedly against his arm.
"Kirk."
"Yes?"
"Let _me_ pose for your picture."
"What! You couldn't!"
"Why not?"
"It's terribly hard work. It's an awful strain."
"I'm sure I'm as strong as that Vince girl. You ask Steve; he's seen me
throw the medicine-ball."
"But posing is different. Hilda Vince has been trained for it."
"Well let me try, at any rate."
"But----"
"Do! And I'll promise to like your Hank and not put on my grand manner
when he begins telling me what fun you and he used to have in the good
old days before I was born or thought of. May I?"
"But----"
"Quick! Promise!"
"Very well."
"You dear! I'll be the best model you ever had. I won't move a muscle,
and I'll stand there till I drop."
"You'll do nothing of the kind. You'll come right down off that
model-throne the instant you feel the least bit tired."
* * * * *
The picture which Kirk was painting was one of those pictures which
thousands of young artists are working on unceasingly every day. Kirk's
ideas about it were in a delightfully vague state. He had a notion that
it might turn out in the end as "Carmen." On the other hand, if
anything went wrong and he failed to insert a sufficient amount of wild
devilry into it, he could always hedge by calling it "A Reverie" or
"The Spanish Maiden."
Possibly, if the thing became too pensive and soulful altogether,
he might give it some title suggestive of the absent lover at the
bull-fight--"The Toreador's Bride"--or something of that sort. The
only point on which he was solid was that it was to strike the Spanish
note; and to this end he gave Ruth a costume of black and orange and
posed her on the model-throne with a rose in her hair.
Privately he had decided that ten minutes would be Ruth's limit. He
knew something of the strain of sitting to an artist.
"Tired?" he asked at the end of this period.
Ruth shook her head and smiled.
"You must be. Come and sit down and take a rest."
"I'm quite all right, dear. Go on with your work."
"Well, shout out the moment you feel you've had enough."
He began to paint again. The minutes went by and Ruth made no movement.
He began to grow absorbed in his work. He lost count of time. Ruth
ceased to be Ruth, ceased even to be flesh and blood. She was just
something he was painting.
"Kirk!"
The sharp suddenness of the cry brought him to his feet, quivering.
Ruth was swaying on the model-throne. Her eyes were staring straight
before her and her face was twisted with fear.
As he sprang forward she fell, pitching stiffly head foremost, as he
had seen men fall in the ring, her arms hanging at her sides; and he
caught her.
He carried her to the couch and laid her down. He hung for an instant
in doubt whether to go for water or telephone for the doctor. He
decided on the telephone.
He hung up the receiver and went back to Ruth. She stirred and gave a
little moan. He flew upstairs and returned with a pitcher of water.
When he got back Ruth was sitting up. The look of terror was gone from
her face. She smiled at him, a faint, curiously happy smile. He flung
himself on his knees beside her, his arm round her waist, and burst
into a babble of self-reproach.
He cursed himself for being such a brute, such a beast as to let her
stand there, tiring herself to death. She must never do it again. He
was a devil. He ought to have known she could not stand it. He was not
fit to be married. He was not fit to live.
Ruth ruffled his hair.
"Stop abusing my husband," she said. "I'm fond of him. Did you catch
me, Kirk?"
"Yes, thank God. I got to you just in time."
"That's the last thing I remember, wondering if you would. You seemed
such miles and miles away. It was like looking at something in a mist
through the wrong end of a telescope. Oh, Kirk!"
"Yes, honey?"
"It came again, that awful feeling as if something dreadful was going
to happen. And then I felt myself going." She paused. "Kirk, I think I
know now. I understand; and oh, I'm so happy!"
She buried her face on his shoulder, and they stayed there silent, till
there came a ring at the bell. Kirk got up. George Pennicut ushered in
the doctor. It was the same little old doctor who had ministered to
George in his hour of need.
"Feeling better, Mrs. Winfield?" he said, as he caught sight of Ruth.
"Your husband told me over the 'phone that you were unconscious."
"She fainted," cried Kirk. "It was all through me. I-----"
The doctor took him by the shoulders. He had to stretch to do it.
"You go away, young man," he said. "Take a walk round the block. You
aren't on in this scene."
* * * * *
Kirk was waiting in the hall when he left a few minutes later.
"Well?" he said anxiously.
"Well?" said the little doctor.
"Is she all right? There's nothing wrong, is there?"
The doctor grinned a friendly grin.
"On the contrary," he said. "You ought to be very pleased."
"What do you mean?"
"It's quite a commonplace occurrence, though I suppose it will seem
like a miracle to you. But, believe me, it has happened before. If it
hadn't, you and I wouldn't be here now."
Kirk looked at him in utter astonishment. His words seemed meaningless.
And then, suddenly, he understood, and his heart seemed to stand still.
"You don't mean-----" he said huskily.
"Yes, I do," said the doctor. "Good-bye, my boy. I've got to hurry off.
You caught me just as I was starting for the hospital."
* * * * *
Kirk went back to the studio, his mind in a whirl. Ruth was lying on
the couch. She looked up as the door opened. He came quickly to her
side.
"Ruth!" he muttered.
Her eyes were shining with a wonderful light of joy. She drew his head
down and kissed him.
"Oh, Kirk," she whispered. "I'm happy. I'm happy. I've wanted this so."
He could not speak. He sat on the edge of the couch and looked at her.
She had been wonderful to him before. She was a thousand times more
wonderful now.
Content of BOOK ONE: Chapter VII - Sufficient Unto Themselves [P G Wodehouse's novel: The Coming of Bill]
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