march. Sybil Wilbur evidently looked on it as a mad gallop.
Ruth felt the same. She was fond of Sybil, but she could not see her as
the fore-ordained Mrs. Bailey.
"I suppose she swept him off his feet," she said. "It just shows that
you never really get to know a person even if you're their sister.
Bailey must have all sorts of hidden sides to his character which I
never noticed, unless she has. But I don't think there is much
of that about Sybil. She's just a child. But she's very amusing, isn't
she? She enjoys life so furiously."
"I think Bailey will find her rather a handful. Does she ever sit
still, by the way? If she is going to act right along as she did to-day
this portrait will look like that cubist picture of the 'Dance at the
Spring'."
As the sittings went on Miss Wilbur consented gradually to simmer down
and the portrait progressed with a fair amount of speed. But Kirk was
conscious every day of a growing sensation of panic. He was trying his
very hardest, but it was bad work, and he knew it.
His hand had never had very much cunning, but what it had had it had
lost in the years of his idleness. Every day showed him more clearly
that the portrait of Miss Wilbur, on which so much depended, was an
amateurish daub. He worked doggedly on, but his heart was cold with
that chill that grips the artist when he looks on his work and sees it
to be bad.
At last it was finished. Ruth thought it splendid. Sybil Wilbur
pronounced it cute, as she did most things. Kirk could hardly bear to
look at it. In its finished state it was worse than he could have
believed possible.
In the old days he had been a fair painter with one or two bad faults.
Now the faults seemed to have grown like weeds, choking whatever of
merit he might once have possessed. This was a horrible production, and
he was profoundly thankful when it was packed up and removed from the
studio. But behind his thankfulness lurked the feeling that all was not
yet over, that there was worse to come.
It came.
It was heralded by a tearful telephone call from Miss Wilbur, who rang
up Ruth with the agitated information that "Bailey didn't seem to like
it." And on the heels of the message came Bailey in person, pink from
forehead to collar, and almost as wrathful as he had been on the great
occasion of his first visit to the studio. His annoyance robbed his
speech of its normal stateliness. He struck a colloquial note unusual
with him.
"I guess you know what I've come about," he said.
He had found Kirk alone in the studio, as ill luck would have it. In
the absence of Ruth he ventured to speak more freely than he would have
done in her presence.
"It's an infernal outrage," he went on. "I've been stung, and you know
it."
Kirk said nothing. His silence infuriated Bailey.
"It's the portrait I'm speaking about, the portrait, if you have the
nerve to call it that, of Miss Wilbur. I was against her sitting to you
from the first, but she insisted. Now she's sorry."
"It's as bad as all that, is it?" said Kirk dully. He felt curiously
indisposed to fight. A listlessness had gripped him. He was even a
little sorry for Bailey. He saw his point of view and sympathized with
it.
"Yes," said Bailey fiercely. "It is, and you know it."
Kirk nodded. Bailey was quite right. He did know it.
"It's a joke," went on Bailey shrilly. "I can't hang it up. People
would laugh at it. And to think that I paid you all that money for it.
I could have got a real artist for half the price."
"That is easily remedied," said Kirk. "I will send you a cheque
to-morrow."
Bailey was not to be appeased. The venom of more than three years cried
out for utterance. He had always held definite views upon Kirk, and
Heaven had sent him the opportunity of expressing them.
"Yes, I dare say," he said contemptuously. "That would settle the whole
thing, wouldn't it? What do you think you are; a millionaire? Talking
as if that amount of money made no difference to you? Where does my
sister come in? How about Ruth? You sneak her away from her home and
then......-"
Kirk's lethargy left him. He flushed.
"I think that will be about all, Bannister?" he said. He spoke quietly,
but his voice trembled.
But Bailey's long-dammed hatred, having at last found an outlet, was
not to be checked in a moment.
"Will it? Will it? The hell it will. Let me tell you that I came here
to talk straight to you, and I'm going to do it. 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.
"You're perfectly right, Bannister," he said quietly. "Everything you
have said is quite true. And now would you mind going?"
"I've not finished yet."
"Yes, you have."
Bailey hesitated. The first time frenzy had left him, and he was
beginning to be a little ashamed of himself for having expressed his
views in a manner which, though satisfying, was, he felt, less
dignified than he could have wished.
He looked at Kirk, who was standing stiffly by the door. Something in
his attitude decided Bailey to leave well alone. Such had been his
indignation that it was only now that for the first time it struck him
that his statement of opinion had not been made without considerable
bodily danger to himself. Jarred nerves had stood him in the stead of
courage; but now his nerves were soothed and he saw things clearly.
He choked down what he had intended to say and walked out. Kirk closed
the door softly behind him and began to pace the studio floor as he had
done on that night when Ruth had fought for her life in the room
upstairs.
His mind worked slowly at first. Then, as it cleared, he began to think
more and more rapidly, till the thoughts leaped and ran like tongues of
fire scorching him.
It was all true. That was what hurt. 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. He sat down calmly to wait for Ruth. His mind was
made up. Hank's offer was the way out, the only way out, and he must
take it.
BOOK TWO
Chapter I Empty-handed
The steamship Santa Barbara, of the United Fruit Line, moved
slowly through the glittering water of the bay on her way to dock. Out