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