there's another just as big besides, and a house, and, oh, everything
you can think of. Kirk, dear, we've nothing to worry us any longer.
We're rich!"
Chapter II An Unknown Path
Kirk blinked. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The automobile
was still there, and he was still in it. Ruth was still gazing at him
with the triumphant look in her eyes. The chauffeur, silent emblem of a
substantial bank-balance, still sat stiffly at the steering-wheel.
"Rich?" Kirk repeated.
"Rich," Ruth assured him.
"I don't understand."
Ruth's smile faded.
"Poor father......"
"Your father?"
"He died just after you sailed. Just before Bill got ill." She gave a
little sigh. "Kirk, how odd life is!"
"But......-"
"It was terrible. It was some kind of a stroke. He had been working too
hard and taking no exercise. You know when he sent Steve away that time
he didn't engage anybody else in his place. He went back to his old way
of living, which the doctor had warned him against. He worked and
worked, until one day, Bailey says, he fainted at the office. They
brought him home, and he just went out like a burned-out candle. I, I
went to him, but for a long time he wouldn't see me.
"Oh, Kirk, the hours I spent in the library hoping that he would let me
come to him! But he never did till right at the end. Then I went up,
and he was dying. He couldn't speak. I don't know now how he felt
toward me at the last. I kissed him. He was all shrunk to nothing. I
had a horrible feeling that I had never been a real daughter to him.
But, but, you know, he made it difficult, awfully difficult. And then
he died; Bailey was on one side of the bed and I was on the other, and
the nurse and the doctor were whispering outside the door. I could hear
them through the transom."
She slipped her hand into Kirk's and sat silent while the car slid into
the traffic of Fifth Avenue. For the second time the shadow of the
Great Mystery had fallen on the brightness of the perfect morning.
The car had stopped at Thirty-Fourth Street to allow the hurrying
crowds to cross the avenue. Kirk looked at them with a feeling of
sadness. It was not caused by John Bannister's death. He was too honest
to be able to plunge himself into false emotion at will. His feeling
was more a vague uneasiness, almost a presentiment. Things changed so
quickly in this world. Old landmarks shifted as the crowd of strangers
was shifting before him now, hurrying into his life and hurrying out of
it.
He, too, had changed. Ruth, though he had detected no signs of it,
must be different from the Ruth he had left a year ago. The old life
was dead. What had the new life in store for him? Wealth for one
thing, other standards of living, new experiences.
An odd sensation of regret that this stream of gold had descended upon
him deepened his momentary depression. They had been so happy, he and
Ruth and the kid, in the old days of the hermit's cell. Something that
was almost a superstitious fear of this unexpected legacy came upon
him.
It was unlucky money, grudgingly given at the eleventh hour. He seemed
to feel John Bannister watching him with a sneer, and he was afraid of
him. His nerves were still a little unstrung from the horror of his
wanderings, and the fever had left him weak. It seemed to him that
there was a curse on the old man's wealth, that somehow it was destined
to bring him unhappiness.
The policeman waved his hand. The car jerked forward. The sudden
movement brought him to himself. He smiled, a little ashamed of having
been so fanciful; the sky was blue; the sun shone; a cool breeze put
the joy of life into him; and at his side Ruth sat, smiling now. From
her, too, the cloud had been lifted.
"It seems like a fairy-story," said Kirk, breaking the silence that had
fallen between them.
"I think it must have been the thought of Bill that made him do it,"
said Ruth. "He left half his money to Bailey and half to me during my
lifetime. Bailey's married now, by the way." She paused. "I'm afraid
father never forgave you, dear," she added. "He made Bailey the trustee
for the money, and it goes to Bill in trust after my death."
She looked at him rather nervously it seemed to Kirk. The terms of the
will had been the cause of some trouble to her. Especially had she
speculated on his reception of the news that Bailey was to play so
important a part in the administration of the money. Kirk had never
told her what had passed between him and Bailey that afternoon in the
studio, but her quick intelligence had enabled her to guess at the
truth; and she was aware that the minds of the two men, their
temperaments, were naturally antagonistic.
Kirk's reception of the news relieved her.
"Of course," he said. "He couldn't do anything else. He knew nothing of
me except that I was a kind of man with whom he was quite out of
sympathy. He mistrusted all artists, I expect, in a bunch. And, anyway,
an artist is pretty sure to be a bad man of business. He would know
that. And, and, well, what I mean is, it strikes me as a very sensible
arrangement. Why are we stopping here?"
The car had drawn up before a large house on the upper avenue, one of
those houses which advertise affluence with as little reticence as a
fat diamond solitaire.
"We live here," said Ruth, laughing.
Kirk drew a long breath.
"Do we? By George!" he exclaimed. "I see it's going to take me quite a
while to get used to this state of things."
A thought struck him.
"How about the studio? Have you got rid of it?"
"Of course not. The idea! After the perfect times we had there! We're
going to keep it on as an annex. Every now and then, when we are tired
of being rich, we'll creep off there and boil eggs over the gas-stove
and pretend we are just ordinary persons again."
"And oftener than every now and then this particular plutocrat is going
to creep off there and try to teach himself to paint pictures."
Ruth nodded.
"Yes, I think you ought to have a hobby. It's good for you."
Kirk said nothing. But it was not as a hobby that he was regarding his
painting. He had come to a knowledge of realities in the wilderness and
to an appreciation of the fact that he had a soul which could not be
kept alive except by honest work.
He had the decent man's distaste for living on his wife's money. He
supposed it was inevitable that a certain portion of it must go to his
support, but he was resolved that there should be in the sight of the
gods who look down on human affairs at least a reasonable excuse for
his existence. If work could make him anything approaching a real
artist, he would become one.
Meanwhile he was quite willing that Ruth should look upon his life-work
as a pleasant pastime to save him from ennui. Even to his wife a man is
not always eager to exhibit his soul in its nakedness.
"By the way," said Ruth, "you won't find George Pennicut at the studio.
He has gone back to England."
"I'm sorry. I liked George."
"He liked you. He left all sorts of messages. He nearly wept when he
said good-bye. But he wouldn't stop. In a burst of confidence he told
me what the trouble was. Our blue sky had got on his nerves. He wanted
a London drizzle again. He said the thought of it made him homesick."
Kirk entered the house thoughtfully. Somehow this last piece of news
had put the coping-stone on the edifice of his, his what? Depression? It