"Well, that's one thing germs never do, eat bread out of crinkly paper.
You want to forget all the dope they shot into you back in New York and
start fresh. You do what I tell you and you can't go wrong. If you're
going to be a regular germ, what you've got to do is to wrap yourself
round that bread-and-milk the quickest you can. Get me? Till you do
that we can't begin to start out to have a good time."
William Bannister made no more objections. He attacked his meal with an
easy conscience, and about a quarter of an hour later leaned back with
a deep sigh of repletion.
Steve, meanwhile had entered into conversation with the lady of the
house.
"Say, I guess you ain't got a kid of your own anywheres, have you?"
"Sure I have," said the hostess proudly. "He's out in the field with
his pop this minute. His name's Jim."
"Fine. I want to get hold of a kid to play with this kid here. Jim
sounds pretty good to me. About the same age as this one?"
"For the Lord's sake! Jim's eighteen and weighs two hundred pounds."
"Cut out Jim. I thought from the way you spoke he was a regular kid.
Know any one in these parts who's got something about the same weight
as this one?"
The farmer's wife reflected.
"Kids is pretty scarce round here," she said. "I reckon you won't get
one that I knows of. There's that Tom Whiting, but he's a bad boy. He
ain't been raised right."
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't want to speak harm of no one, but his father used to be a low
prize-fighter, and you know what they are."
Steve nodded sympathetically.
"Regular plug-uglies," he said. "A friend of mine used to have to mix
with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of
them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of
scrappy kid, is that it?"
"He's a bad boy."
"Well, maybe I'd better look him over, just in case. Where's he to be
found?"
"They live in the cottage by the big house you can see through them
trees. His pop looks after Mr. Wilson's prize dawgs. That's his job."
"What's Wilson?" asked the White Hope, coming out of his stupor.
"You beat me to it by a second, kid. I was just going to ask it
myself."
"He's one of them rich New Yawkers. He has his summer place here, and
this Whiting looks after his prize dawgs."
"Well, I guess I'll give him a call. It's going to be lonesome for my
kid if he ain't got some one to show him how to hit it up. He's not
used to country life. Come along. We'll get into the bubble and go and
send your pop a telegram."
"What's telegram?" asked William Bannister.
"I got you placed now," said Steve, regarding him with interest.
"You're not going to turn into an ambassador or an artist or any of
them things. You're going to be the greatest district attorney that
ever came down the pike."
Chapter XIV
The Sixty-First Street Cyclone
It was past seven o'clock when Kirk, bending over the wheel, with
Mamie at his side came in sight of the shack. The journey had been
checked just outside the city by a blow-out in one of the back tyres.
Kirk had spent the time, while the shirt-sleeved rescuer from the
garage toiled over the injured wheel, walking up and down with a cigar.
Neither he nor Mamie had shown much tendency towards conversation.
Mamie was habitually of a silent disposition, and Kirk's mind was too
full of his thoughts to admit of speech.
Ever since he had read Steve's telegram he had been in the grip of a
wild exhilaration. He had not stopped to ask himself what this mad
freak of Steve's could possibly lead to in the end - he was satisfied to
feel that its immediate result would be that for a brief while, at any
rate, he would have his son to himself, away from all the chilling
surroundings which had curbed him and frozen his natural feelings in
the past.
He tried to keep his mind from dwelling upon Ruth. He had thought too
much of her of late for his comfort. Since they had parted that day of
the thunder-storm the thought that he had lost her had stabbed him
incessantly. He had tried to tell himself that it was the best thing
they could do, to separate, since it was so plain that their love had
died; but he could not cheat himself into believing it.
It might be true in her case - it must be, or why had she let him go
that afternoon? - but, for himself, the separation had taught him that
he loved her as much as ever, more than ever. Absence had purified him
of that dull anger which had been his so short a while before. He
looked back and marvelled that he could ever have imagined for a moment
that he had ceased to love her.
Now, as he drove along the empty country roads, he forced his mind to
dwell, as far as he could, only upon his son. There was a mist before
his eyes as he thought of him. What a bully lad he had been! What fun
they had had in the old days! But that brought his mind back to Ruth,
and he turned his mind resolutely to the future again.
He chuckled silently as he thought of Steve. Of all the mad things to
do! What had made him think of it? How had such a wild scheme ever
entered his head? This, he supposed, was what Steve called punching
instead of sparring. But he had never given him credit for the
imagination that could conceive a punch of this magnitude.
And how had he carried it out? He could hardly have broken into the
house. Yet that seemed the only way in which it could have been done.
From Steve his thoughts returned to William Bannister. He smiled again.
What a time they would have - while it lasted! The worst of it was, it
could not last long. To-morrow, he supposed, he would have to take the
child back to his home. He could not be a party to this kidnapping raid
for any length of time. This must be looked on as a brief holiday, not
as a permanent relief.
That was the only flaw in his happiness as he stopped the car at the
door of the shack, for by now he had succeeded at last in thrusting the
image of Ruth from his mind.
There was a light in the ground-floor window. He raised his head and
shouted:
"Steve!"
The door opened.
"Hello, Kirk. That you? Come along in. You're just in time for the main
performance."
He caught sight of Mamie standing beside Kirk.
"Who's that?" he cried. For a moment he thought it was Ruth, and his
honest heart leaped at the thought that his scheme had worked already
and brought Kirk and her together again.
"It's me, Steve," said Mamie in her small voice. And Steve, as he heard
it, was seized with the first real qualm he had had since he had
embarked upon his great adventure.
As Kirk had endeavoured temporarily to forget Ruth, so had he tried not
to think of Mamie. It was the only thing he was ashamed of in the whole
affair, the shock he must have given her.
"Hello, Mamie," he said sheepishly, and paused. Words did not come
readily to him.
Mamie entered the house without speaking. It seemed to Steve that
invective would have been better than this ominous silence. He looked
ruefully at her retreating back and turned to greet Kirk.
"You're mighty late," he said.
"I only got your telegram toward the end of the afternoon. I had been
away all day. I came here as fast as I could hit it up directly I read
it. We had a blow-out, and that delayed us."
Steve ventured a question.
"Say, Kirk, why 'us,' while we're talking of it? How does Mamie come to
be here?"
"She insisted on coming. It seems that everybody in the house was away
to-day, so she tells me, so she came round to me with your note."
"I guess this has put me in pretty bad with Mamie," observed Steve
regretfully. "Has she been knocking me on the trip?"
"Not a word."
Steve brightened, but became subdued again next moment.
"I guess she's just saving it," he said resignedly.
"Steve, what made you do it?"
"Oh, I reckoned you could do with having the kid to yourself for a
spell," said Steve awkwardly.
"You're all right, Steve. But how did you manage it? I shouldn't have
thought it possible."
"Oh, it wasn't so hard, that part. I just hid in the house, and - but
say, let's forget it; it makes me feel kind of mean, somehow. It seems
to me I may have lost Mamie her job. It's mighty hard to do the right
thing by every one in this world, ain't it? Come along in and see the
kid. He's great. Are you feeling ready for supper? Him and me was just
going to start."
It occurred to Kirk for the first time that he was hungry.
"Have you got anything to eat, Steve?"
Steve brightened again.
"Have we?" he said. "We've got everything there is in Connecticut! Why,
say, we're celebrating. This is our big day. Know what's happened?
Why - "
He stopped short, as if somebody had choked him. They had gone into the
sitting-room while he was speaking. The table was laid for supper. 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.
"What have you been doing to the poor mite?" she demanded fiercely, "to
get his face scratched this way?"
There was no doubt about the scratch. It was a long, angry red line
running from temple to chin. The White Hope, becoming conscious of the
fact that the attention of the public was upon him, and diagnosing the
cause, volunteered an explanation.
"Bad boy," he said, and looked meaningly again at the candy.
"What does he mean by 'bad boy'?"
"Just what he says, Mamie, honest. Gee! you don't think _I_ done
it, do you?"
"Have you been letting the precious lamb _fight_?" cried Mamie,
her eyes two circles of blue indignation.
Steve's enthusiasm overcame his sense of guilt. He uttered a whoop.
"_Letting_ him! Gee! Listen to her! Why, say, that kid don't have
to be let! He's a scrapper from Swatville-on-the-Bingle. Honest! That's
what all this food is about. We're celebrating. This is a little supper
given in his honour by a few of his admirers and backers, meaning me.
Why, say, Kirk, that kid of yours is just the greatest thing that ever
happened. Get that chafing-dish going and I'll tell you all about it."
"How did he come by that scratch?" said Mamie, coldly sticking to her
point.
"I'll tell you quick enough. But let's start in on the eats first. You
wouldn't keep a coming champ waiting for his grub, would you? Look how
he's lamping that candy."
"Were you going to let the poor mite stuff himself with candy, Steve
Dingle?"
"Sure. Whatever he says goes. He owns the joint after this afternoon."
Mamie swiftly removed the unwholesome delicacy.
"The idea!"
Kirk was busying himself with the chafing-dish.
"What have you got in here, Steve?"
"Lobster, colonel. I had to do thirty miles to get it, too."
Mamie looked at him fixedly.
"Were you going to feed lobster to this child?" she asked with ominous
calm. "Were you intending to put him to bed full of broiled lobster and
marshmallows?"
"Nix on the rough stuff, Mamie," pleaded the embarrassed pugilist. "How
was I to know what kids feed on? And maybe he would have passed up the
lobster at that and stuck to the sardines."
"Sardines!"
"Ain't kids allowed sardines?" said Steve anxiously. "The guy at the
store told me they were wholesome and nourishing. It looked to me as if
that ought to hit young Fitzsimmons about right. What's the matter with
them?"
"A little bread-and-milk is all that he ever has before he goes to
bed."
Steve detected a flaw in this and hastened to make his point.
"Sure," he said, "but he don't win the bantam-weight champeenship of
Connecticut every night."
"Is that what he's done to-day, Steve?" asked Kirk.
"It certainly is. Ain't I telling you?"
"That's the trouble. You're not. You and Mamie seem to be having a
discussion about the nourishing properties of sardines and lobster.
What has been happening this afternoon?"
"Bad boy," remarked William Bannister with his mouth full.
"That's right," said Steve. "That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was this
way. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play around
with, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found that
there was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here who had a kid
of the same age or thereabouts. Maybe you remember him? He used to
fight at the feather-weight limit some time back. Called himself Young
O'Brien. He was a pretty good scrapper in his time, and now he's up
here looking after some gent's prize dogs.
"Well, I goes to him and borrows his kid. He's a scrappy sort of kid at
that and weighs ten pounds more than his nibs; but I reckoned he'd have
to do, and I thought I could stay around and part 'em if they got to
mixing it."
Mamie uttered an indignant exclamation, but Kirk's eyes were gleaming
proudly.
"Well?" he said.
Steve swallowed lobster and resumed.
"Well, you know how it is. You meet a guy who's been in the same line
of business as yourself and you find you've got a heap to talk about.
I'd never happened across the gink Whiting, but I knew of him, and, of
course, he'd heard of me, and we got to discussing things. I seen him
lose on a foul to Tommy King in the eighteenth round out in Los
Angeles, and that kept us busy talking, him having it that he hadn't
gone within a mile of fouling Tommy and me saying I'd been in a
ring-seat and had the goods on him same as if I'd taken a snap-shot.
Well, we was both getting pretty hot under the collar about it when
suddenly there's the blazes of a noise behind us, and there's the two
kids scrapping all over the lot. The Whiting kid had started it, mind
you, and him ten pounds heavier than Bill, and tough, too."
The White Hope confirmed this.
"Bad boy," he remarked, and with a deep breath resumed excavating work
on a grapefruit.
"Well, I was just making a jump to separate them when this Whiting gook
says, 'Betcha a dollar my kid wins!' and before I knew what I was doing
I'd taken him. It wasn't that that stopped me, though. It was his
saying that his kid took after his dad and could eat up anything of his
own age in America. Well, darn it, could I take that from a slob of a
mixed-ale scrapper when it was handed out at the finest kid that ever
came from New York?"
"Of course not," said Kirk indignantly, and even Mamie forbore to
criticize. She bent over the White Hope and gave his grapefruit-stained
cheek a kiss.
"Well, I _should_ say not!" cried Steve. "I just hollered to his
nibs, 'Soak it to him, kid! for the honour of No. 99'; and, believe me,
the young bear-cat sort of gathered himself together, winked at me, and
began to hammer the stuffing out of the scrappy kid. Say, there wasn't
no sterilized stuff about his work. You were a regular germ, all right,
weren't you squire?"
"Germ," agreed the White Hope. He spoke drowsily.
"Gee!" Steve resumed his saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. "Gee! if
they're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got the
grit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half the
germ-killer in the country. From the way that kid acted you'd have
thought he'd been spending the last year in a training-camp. The other
kid rolled him over, but he come up again as if that was just the sort
of stuff he liked, and pretty soon I see that he's uncovered a yellow
streak in the Whiting kid as big as a barn door. You were on it,
weren't you, colonel?"
But the White Hope had no remarks to offer this time. His head had
fallen forward and was resting peacefully in his grapefruit.
"He's asleep," said Mamie.
She picked him up gently and carried him out.
"He's a champeen at that too," said Steve. "I had to pull him out of
the hay this morning. Well, I guess he's earned it. He's had a busy
day."
"What happened then, Steve?"
"Why, after that there wasn't a thing to it. Whiting, poor simp,
couldn't see it. 'Betcha ten dollars my kid wins,' he hollers. 'He's
got him going.' 'Take you,' I shouts; and at that moment the scrappy
kid sees it's all over, so he does the old business of fouling, same as
his pop done when he fought Tommy King. It's in the blood, I guess. He
takes and scratches poor Bill on the cheek."
"That was enough for me. I jumps in. 'All over,' I says. 'My kid wins
on a foul.' 'Foul nothing,' says Whiting. 'It was an accident, and you
lose because you jumped into the fight, same as Connie McVey did when
Corbett fought Sharkey. Think you can get away with it, pulling that
old-time stuff?' I didn't trouble to argue with him. 'Oh,' I says, 'is
that it? Say, just take a slant at your man. If you don't stop him
quick he'll be in Texas.'
"For the scrappy kid was beating it while the going was good and was
half a mile away, running hard. Well, that was enough even for the
Whiting guy. 'I guess we'll call it a draw,' he says, 'and all bets
off.' I just looks at him and says, quite civil and polite: 'You darned
half-baked slob of a rough-house scrapper,' I says, 'it ain't a draw or
anything like it. My kid wins, and I'll trouble you now to proceed to
cash in with the dough, or else I'm liable to start something.' So he
paid up, and I took the White Hope indoors and give him a wash and
brush-up, and we cranks up the bubble and hikes off to the town and
spends the money on getting food for the celebration supper. And what's
over I slips into the kid's pocket and says: 'That's your first
winner's end, kid, and you've earned it.'"
Steve paused and filled his glass.
"I'm on the waggon as a general thing nowadays," he said; "but I reckon
this an occasion. Right here is where we drink his health."
And, overcome by his emotion, he burst into discordant song.
"Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow," bellowed Steve. "For he's a jolly
good fellow. For he's - "
There was a sound of quick footsteps outside, and Mamie entered the
room like a small whirlwind.
"Be quiet!" she cried. "Do you want to wake him?"
"Wake him?" said Steve. "You can't wake that kid with dynamite."
He raised his glass.
"Ladeez'n gentlemen, the boy wonder! Here's to him! The bantam-weight
champeen of Connecticut. The Sixty-First Street Cyclone! The kid they
couldn't sterilize! The White Hope!"
"The White Hope!" echoed Kirk.
"Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow - " sang Steve.
"Be quiet!" said Mrs. Porter from the doorway, and Steve, wheeling
round, caught her eye and collapsed like a pricked balloon.
Chapter XV
Mrs. Porter's Waterloo
Of the little band of revellers it would be hard to say which was the
most taken aback at this invasion. The excitement of the moment had
kept them from hearing the sound of the automobile which Mrs. Porter,
mistrusting the rough road that led to the shack, had stopped some
distance away.
Perhaps, on the whole, Kirk was more surprised than either of his
companions. Their guilty consciences had never been quite free from the
idea of the possibility of pursuit; but Kirk, having gathered from
Mamie that neither Ruth nor her aunt was aware of what had happened,
had counted upon remaining undisturbed till the time for return came on
the morrow.
He stood staring at Ruth, who had followed Mrs. Porter into the room.
Mrs. Porter took charge of the situation. She was in her element. She
stood with one hand resting on the table as if she were about to make
an after-dinner speech - as indeed she was.
Lora Delane Porter was not dissatisfied with the turn events had taken.
On the whole, perhaps, it might be said that she was pleased. She
intended, when she began to speak, to pulverize Kirk and the abandoned
young woman whom he had selected as his partner in his shameful
escapade, but in this she was swayed almost entirely by a regard for
abstract morality.
As concerned Ruth, she felt that the situation was, on the whole, the
best thing that could have happened. To her Napoleonic mind, which took
little account of the softer emotions, concerning itself entirely with
the future of the race, Kirk had played his part and was now lagging
superfluous on the stage. His tendency, she felt, was to retard rather
than to assist William Bannister's development. His influence, such as
it was, clashed with hers. She did not forget that there had been a
time when Ruth, having practically to choose between them, had chosen
to go Kirk's way and had abandoned herself to a life which could only
be considered unhygienic and retrograde. Her defeat in the matter of
Whiskers, the microbe-harbouring dog from Ireland, still rankled.
It was true that in what might be called the return match she had
utterly routed Kirk; but until this moment she had always been aware of
him as an opponent who might have to be reckoned with. She was quite
convinced that it would be in the best interests of everybody,
especially of William Bannister, if he could be eliminated. There were
signs of human weakness in Ruth which sometimes made her uneasy. Ruth,
she told herself, might "bear the torch," but when it came to "not
faltering" she was less certain of her.
Ruth, it was true, had behaved admirably in the matter of the
upbringing of William from the moment of her conversion till now,
but might she not at any moment become a backslider and fill the
white-tiled nursery with abominable long-haired dogs? Most certainly
she might. In a woman who had once been a long-haired dogist there are
always possibilities of a relapse into long-haired dogism, just as in a
converted cannibal there are always possibilities of a return to the
gods of wood and stone and the disposition to look on his fellow-man
purely in the light of breakfast-food.
For these reasons Mrs. Porter was determined to push home her present
advantage, to wipe Kirk off the map as an influence in Ruth's life. It
was her intention, having recovered William Bannister and bathed him
from head to foot in a weak solution of boric acid, to stand over Ruth
while she obtained a divorce. That done, she would be in a position to
defy Kirk and all his antagonistic views on the subject of the hygienic
upbringing of children.
She rapped the table and prepared to speak.
Even a Napoleon, however, may err from lack of sufficient information;
and there was a flaw in her position of which she was unaware. From the
beginning of the drive to the end of it Ruth had hardly spoken a word,
and Mrs. Porter, in consequence, was still in ignorance of what had
been happening that day in Wall Street and the effect of these
happenings on her niece's outlook on life. Could she have known it, the
silent girl beside her had already suffered the relapse which she had
feared as a remote possibility.
Ruth's mind during that drive had been in a confusion of regrets and
doubts and hopes. There were times when she refused absolutely to
believe the story of Kirk's baseness which her aunt poured into her ear
during the first miles of the journey. It was absurd and incredible.
Yet, as they raced along the dark roads, doubt came to her and would
not be driven out.
A single unfortunate phrase of Kirk's, spoken in haste, but remembered
at leisure, formed the basis of this uncertainty. That afternoon when
he had left her he had said that Mamie was the real mother of the
child. Could it be that Mamie's undeviating devotion to the boy had won
the love which she had lost? It was possible. Considered in the light
of what Mrs. Porter had told her, it seemed, in her blackest moments,
certain.
She knew how wrapped up in the boy Kirk had been. Was it not a logical
outcome of his estrangement from herself that he should have turned for
consolation to the one person in sympathy with him in his great love
for his child?
She tried to read his face as he stood looking at her now, but she
could find no hope in it. The eyes that met hers were cold and
expressionless.
Mrs. Porter rapped the table a second time.
"Mr. Winfield," she said in the metallic voice with which she was wont
to cow publishers insufficiently equipped with dash and enterprise in
the matter of advertising treatises on the future of the race, "I have
no doubt you are surprised to see us. You appear to be looking your
wife in the face. It speaks well for your courage but badly for your
sense of shame. If you had the remnants of decent feeling in you, you
would be physically incapable of the feat. If you would care to know
how your conduct strikes an unprejudiced spectator, I may tell you that
I consider you a scoundrel of the worst type and unfit to associate
with any but the low company in which I find you."
Steve, who had been listening with interest, and indeed, a certain
relish while Kirk was, as he put it to himself, "getting his" in this
spirited fashion, started at the concluding words of the address,
which, in his opinion, seemed slightly personal. He had long ago made
up his mind that Lora Delane Porter, though an entertaining woman and,
on the whole, more worth while than a moving-picture show, was quite
mad; but, he felt, even lunatics ought to realize that there is a limit
to what they may say.
He moaned protestingly, and rashly, for he drew the speaker's attention
upon himself.
"This person," went on Mrs. Porter, indicating Steve with a wave of her
hand which caused him to sidestep swiftly and throw up an arm, as had
been his habit in the ring when Battling Dick or Fighting Jack
endeavoured to blot him out with a right swing, "who, I observe,
retains the tattered relics of a conscience, seeing that he winces, you
employed to do the only dangerous part of your dirty work. I hope he
will see that he gets his money. In his place I should be feeling
uneasy."
"Ma'am!" protested Steve.
Mrs. Porter silenced him with a gesture.
"Be quiet!" she said.
Steve was quiet.
Mrs. Porter returned to Kirk.
Of all her burning words, Kirk had not heard one. His eyes had never
left Ruth's. Like her, he was trying to read a message from a face that
seemed only cold. In this crisis of their two lives he had no thought
for anybody but her. He had a sense of great issues, of being on the
verge of the tremendous; but his brain felt numbed and heavy. He could
not think. He could see nothing except her eyes.
His inattention seemed to communicate itself to Mrs. Porter. She rapped
imperatively upon the table for the third time. The report galvanized
Steve, as, earlier in the day, a similar report had galvanized Mr.
Penway; but Kirk did not move.
"Mr. Winfield!"
Still Kirk made no sign that he had heard her. It was discouraging, but
Lora Delane Porter was not made of the stuff that yields readily to
discouragement. She resumed:
"As for this wretched girl" - she indicated the silent Mamie with a wave
of her hand - "this abandoned creature whom you have led astray, this
shameless partner of your - - "
"Say!"
The exclamation came from Steve, and it stopped Mrs. Porter like a
bullet. To her this interruption from one whom she had fallen upon and
wiped out resembled a voice from the tomb. She was not accustomed to
having her victims rise up and cut sharply, even peremptorily, into the
flow of her speech. Macbeth, confronted by the ghost of Banquo, may
have been a little more taken aback, but not much.
She endeavoured to quell Steve with a glance, but it was instantly
apparent that he was immune for the time being to quelling glances. His
brown eyes were fixed upon her in a cold stare which she found
arresting and charged with menace. His chin protruded and his upper lip
was entirely concealed behind its fellow in a most uncomfortable
manner.
She had never had the privilege of seeing Steve in the active exercise
of his late profession, or she would have recognized the look. It was
the one which proclaims the state of mind commonly known as "being
fighting mad," and in other days had usually heralded a knock-out for
some too persistent opponent.
"Say, ma'am, you want to cut that out. That line of talk don't go."
Great is the magic of love that can restore a man in an instant of time
from being an obsequious wreck to a thing of fire and resolution. A
moment before Steve's only immediate object in life had been to stay
quiet and keep out of the way as much as possible. He had never been a
man of ready speech in the presence of an angry woman; words
intimidated him as blows never did, especially the whirl of words which
were at Lora Delane Porter's command in moments of emotion.
But this sudden onslaught upon Mamie, innocent Mamie who had done
nothing to anybody, scattered his embarrassment and filled him with
much the same spirit which sent bantam-weight knights up against
heavy-weight dragons in the Middle Ages. He felt inspired.
"Nix on the 'abandoned creature,'" he said with dignity. "You're on the
wrong wire! This here lady is my affianced wife!"
He went to Mamie and, putting his arm round her waist, pressed her to
him. He was conscious, as he did so, of a sensation of wonderment at
himself. This was the attitude he had dreamed of a thousand times and
had been afraid to assume. For the last three years he had been
picturing himself in precisely this position, and daily had cursed the
lack of nerve which had held him back. Yet here he was, and it had all
happened in a moment. A funny thing, life.
"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter.
"Sure thing," said Steve. His coolness, the ease with which he found
words astonished him as much as his rapidity of action.
"I stole the kid," he said, "and it was my idea at that. Kirk didn't
know anything about it. I wired to him to-day what I had done and that
he was to come right along. And," added Steve in a burst of
inspiration, "I said bring along Mamie, too, as the kid's used to her
and there ought to be a woman around. And she could be here, all right,
and no harm, she being my affianced wife." He liked that phrase. He had
read it in a book somewhere, and it was the goods.
He eyed Mrs. Porter jauntily. Mrs. Porter's gaze wavered. She was not
feeling comfortable. Hers was a nature that did not lend itself easily
to apologies, yet apologies were obviously what the situation demanded.
The thought of all the eloquence which she had expended to no end added
to her discomfort. For the first time she was pleased that Kirk had so
manifestly not been listening to a word of it.
"Oh!" she said.
She paused.
"That puts a different complexion on this affair."
"Betcha life!"
She paused once more. It was some moments before she could bring
herself to speak. She managed it at last.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
"Mine, ma'am?" said Steve grandly. Five minutes before, the idea that
he could ever speak grandly to Lora Delane Porter would have seemed
ridiculous to him; but he was surprised at nothing now.
"And the young wom - - And the future Mrs. Dingle's," said Mrs. Porter
with an effort.
"Thank you, ma'am," said Steve, and released Mamie, who forthwith
bolted from the room like a scared rabbit.
Steve had started to follow her when Mrs. Porter, magnificent woman,
snatching what was left from defeat, stopped him.
"Wait!" she said. "What you have said alters the matter in one respect;
but there is another point. On your own confession you have been guilty
of the extremely serious offence, the penal offence of kidnapping a
child who - "
"Drop me a line about it, ma'am," said Steve. "Me time's rather full
just now."
He disappeared into the outer darkness after Mamie.
* * * * *
In the room they had left, Kirk and Ruth faced each other in silence.
Lora Delane Porter eyed them grimly. It was the hour of her defeat, and
she knew it. Forces too strong for her were at work. Her grand attack,
the bringing of these two together that Ruth might confront Kirk in his
guilt, had recoiled upon her. The Old Guard had made their charge up
the hill, and it had failed. Victory had become a rout. With one speech
Steve had destroyed her whole plan of campaign.
She knew it was all over, that in another moment if she remained, she
would be compelled to witness the humiliating spectacle of Ruth in
Kirk's arms, stammering the words which intuition told her were even
now trembling on her lips. She knew Ruth. She could read her like a
primer. And her knowledge told her that she was about to capitulate,
that all her pride and resentment had been swept away, that she had
gone over to the enemy.
Elemental passions were warring against Lora Delane Porter, and she
bowed before them.
"Mr. Winfield," she said sharply, her voice cutting the silence like a
knife, "I beg your pardon. I seem to have made a mistake. Good night."
Kirk did not answer.
"Good night, Ruth."
Ruth made no sign that she had heard.
Mrs. Porter, grand in defeat, moved slowly to the door.
But even in the greatest women there is that germ of feminine curiosity
which cannot be wholly eliminated, that little grain of dust that
asserts itself and clogs the machinery. It had been Mrs. Porter's
intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward
the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a
sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew
too well.
She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust
had done its work. 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.
Chapter XVI
The White-Hope Link
The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused
the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite
could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the
remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken
place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew
it not.
And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside,
watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would
have displayed little excitement. He had the philosophical temperament.
He took things as they came. Great natural phenomena, like Lora Delane
Porter, he accepted as part of life. When they were in his life, he
endured them stoically. When they went out of it, he got on without
them. Marcus Aurelius would have liked William Bannister Winfield. They
belonged to the same school of thought.
The years have a tendency to
destroy this placidity towards life and to develop in man a sense of
gratitude to fate for its occasional kindnesses; and Kirk, having been
in the world longer than William Bannister, did not take the gifts of
the gods so much for granted. He was profoundly grateful for what had
happened. That Lora Delane Porter should have retired from active
interference with his concerns was much; but that he should have had
the incredible good fortune to be freed from the burden of John
Bannister's money was more.
If ever money was the root of all evil, this had been. It had come into
his life like a poisonous blight, withering and destroying wherever it
touched. It had changed Ruth; it had changed William Bannister; it had
changed himself; it was as if the spirit of the old man had lived on,
hating him and working him mischief. He always had superstitious fear
of it; and events had proved him right.
And now the cloud had rolled away. A few crowded hours of Bailey's
dashing imbecility had removed the curse forever.
He was alone with Ruth and his son in a world that contained only them,
just as in the old days of their happiness. There was something
symbolic, something suggestive of the beginning of a new order of
things, in their isolation at this very moment. Steve had gone. Only he
and Ruth and the child were left.
The child - the White Hope - he was the real hero of the story, the real
principal of the drama of their three lives. He was the link that bound
them together, the force that worked for coherence and against chaos.
He stood between them, his hands in theirs; and while he did so there
could be no parting of the ways. His grip was light, but as strong as
steel. Time would bring troubles, moods, misunderstandings, for they
were both human; but, while that grip held, there could be no gulf
dividing Ruth and himself, as it had divided them in the past.
He faced the future calmly, with open eyes. It would be rough going at
first, very rough going. It meant hard work, incessant work. No more
vague masterpieces which might or might not turn into "Carmen" or "The
Spanish Maiden." No more delightful idle days to be loafed through in
the studio or the shops. No more dreams, seen hazily through the smoke
of a cigar, as he lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, of what
he would do to-morrow. To-morrow must look after itself. His business
was with the present and the work of the present.
He braced himself to the fight, confident of his power to win. He had
found himself.
Bill stirred in his sleep and muttered. Ruth bent over him and kissed
the honourable scratch on his cheek.
"Poor little chap! You'll wake up and find that you aren't a
millionaire baby after all! I wonder if you'll mind. Kirk, do
_you_ mind?"
"Mind!"
"I don't," said Ruth. "I think it will be rather fun being poor again."
"Who's poor?" said Kirk stoutly. "I'm not. I've got you and I've got
Bill. Do you remember - ages ago - what that Vince girl, the model, you
know, said that her friend had called me? A plute. That's me. I'm the
richest man in the world."