"I thought I had better ask. Being the perambulating plague-spot I am,
I was not taking any risks."
"How horribly self-centred you are! You will talk as if you were in
some special sort of quarantine. I keep on telling you it's the same
for all of us."
"I suppose when I'm with him I shall have to be sterilized?"
"I don't think it necessary myself, but Aunt Lora does, so it's always
done. It humours her, and it really isn't any trouble. Besides, it may
be necessary after all. One never knows, and it's best to be on the
safe side."
Kirk laid down his cigar firmly, the cold cigar which stress of emotion
had made him forget to keep alight.
"Ruth, old girl," he said earnestly, "this is pure lunacy."
Ruth's fingers wandered idly through his hair. She did not speak for
some moments.
"You will be good about it, won't you, Kirk dear?" she said at last.
It is curious what a large part hair and its treatment may play in the
undoing of strong men. The case of Samson may be recalled in this
connection. Kirk, with Ruth ruffling the wiry growth that hid his
scalp, was incapable of serious opposition. He tried to be morose and
resolute, but failed miserably.
"Oh, very well," he grunted.
"That's a good boy. And you promise you won't go hugging Bill again?"
"Very well."
"There's an angel for you. Now I'll fix you a cocktail as a reward."
"Well, mind you sterilize it carefully."
Ruth laughed. Having gained her point she could afford to. She made the
cocktail and brought it to him.
"And now I'll be off and dress, and then you can take me out to lunch
somewhere."
"Aren't you dressed?"
"My goodness, no. Not for going to restaurants. You forget that I'm one
of the idle rich now. I spend my whole day putting on different kinds
of clothes. I've a position to keep up now, Mr. Winfield."
Kirk lit a fresh cigar and sat thinking. The old feeling of desolation
which had attacked him as he came up the bay had returned. He felt like
a stranger in a strange world. Life was not the same. Ruth was not the
same. Nothing was the same.
The more he contemplated the new regulations affecting Bill the
chillier and more unfriendly did they seem to him. He could not bring
himself to realize Ruth as one of the great army of cranks preaching
and carrying out the gospel of Lora Delane Porter. It seemed so at
variance with her character as he had known it. He could not seriously
bring himself to believe that she genuinely approved of these absurd
restrictions. Yet, apparently she did.
He looked into the future. It had a grey and bleak aspect. He seemed to
himself like a man gazing down an unknown path full of unknown perils.
Chapter III The Misadventure of Steve
Kirk was not the only person whom the sudden change in the financial
position of the Winfield family had hit hard. The blighting effects of
sudden wealth had touched Steve while Kirk was still in Colombia.
In a sense, it had wrecked Steve's world. Nobody had told him to stop
or even diminish the number of his visits, but the fact remained that,
by the time Kirk returned to New York, he had practically ceased to go
to the house on Fifth Avenue.
For all his roughness, Steve possessed a delicacy which sometimes
almost amounted to diffidence; and he did not need to be told that
there was a substantial difference, as far as he was concerned, between
the new headquarters of the family and the old. At the studio he had
been accustomed to walk in when it pleased him, sure of a welcome; but
he had an idea that he did not fit as neatly into the atmosphere of
Fifth Avenue as he had done into that of Sixty-First Street; and nobody
disabused him of it.
It was perhaps the presence of Mrs. Porter that really made the
difference. In spite of the compliments she had sometimes paid to his
common sense, Mrs. Porter did not put Steve at his ease. He was almost
afraid of her. Consequently, when he came to Fifth Avenue, he remained
below stairs, talking pugilism with Keggs.
It was from Keggs that he first learned of the changes that had taken
place in the surroundings of William Bannister.
"I've 'ad the privilege of serving in some of the best houses in
England," said the butler one evening, as they sat smoking in the
pantry, "and I've never seen such goings on. I don't hold with the
pampering of children."
"What do you mean, pampering?" asked Steve.
"Well, Lord love a duck!" replied the butler, who in his moments of
relaxation was addicted to homely expletives of the lower London type.
"If you don't call it pampering, what do you call pampering? He ain't
allowed to touch nothing that ain't been, it's slipped my memory what
they call it, but it's got something to do with microbes. They sprinkle
stuff on his toys and on his clothes and on his nurse; what's more, and
on any one who comes to see him. And his nursery ain't what I
call a nursery at all. It's nothing more or less than a private
'ospital, with its white tiles and its antiseptics and what not, and
the temperature just so and no lower nor higher. I don't call it 'aving
a proper faith in Providence, pampering and fussing over a child to
that extent."
"You're stringing me!"
"Not a bit of it, Mr. Dingle. I've seen the nursery with my own eyes,
and I 'ave my information direct from the young person who looks after
the child."
"But, say, in the old days that kid was about the dandiest little sport
that ever came down the pike. You seen him that day I brought him round
to say hello to the old man. He didn't have no nursery at all then, let
alone one with white tiles. I've seen him come up off the studio floor
looking like a coon with the dust. And Miss Ruth tickled to see him
like that, too. For the love of Mike, what's come to her?"
"It's all along of this Porter," said Keggs morosely. "She's done it
all. And if," he went on with sudden heat, "she don't break her 'abit
of addressing me in a tone what the 'umblest dorg would resent, I'm
liable to forget my place and give her a piece of my mind. Coming round
and interfering!"
"Got your goat, has she?" commented Steve, interested. "She's
what you'd call a tough proposition, that dame. I used to have my eye
on her all the time in the old days, waiting for her to start
something. But say, I'd like to see this nursery you've been talking
about. Take me up and let me lamp it."
Keggs shook his head.
"I daren't, Mr. Dingle. It 'ud be as much as my place is worth."
"But, darn it! I'm the kid's godfather."
"That wouldn't make no difference to that Porter. She'd pick on me just
the same. But, if you care to risk it, Mr. Dingle, I'll show you where
it is. You'll find the young person up there. She'll tell you more
about the child's 'abits and daily life than I can."
"Good enough," said Steve.
He had not seen Mamie for some time, and absence had made the heart
grow fonder. It embittered him that his meetings with her were all too
rare nowadays. She seemed to have abandoned the practice of walking
altogether, for, whenever he saw her now she was driving in the
automobile with Bill. Keggs' information about the new system threw
some light upon this and made him all the more anxious to meet her now.
It was a curious delusion of Steve's that he was always going to pluck
up courage and propose to Mamie the very next time he saw her. This had
gone on now for over two years, but he still clung to it. Repeated