The abstract wife could not be reconciled to him, and Kirk, loving Hank
like a brother, firmly dismissed the abstract wife.
He came to look upon himself as a confirmed bachelor. He had thought
out the question of marriage in all its aspects, and decided against
it. He was the strong man who knew his own mind and could not be
shaken.
Yet, on the afternoon of the day following Mrs. Lora Delane Porter's
entry into his life, Kirk sat in the studio, feeling, for the first
time in recent years, a vague discontent. He was uneasy, almost afraid.
The slight dislocation in the smooth-working machinery of his
existence, caused by the compulsory retirement of George Pennicut, had
made him thoroughly uncomfortable. With discomfort had come
introspection, and with introspection this uneasiness that was almost
fear.
A man, living alone, without money troubles to worry him, sinks
inevitably into a routine. Fatted ease is good for no one. It sucks the
soul out of a man. Kirk, as he sat smoking in the cool dusk of the
studio, was wondering, almost in a panic, whether all was well with
himself.
This mild domestic calamity had upset him so infernally. It could not
be right that so slight a change in his habits should have such an
effect upon him. George had been so little hurt, the doctor gave him a
couple of days before complete recovery, that it had not seemed worth
while to Kirk to engage a substitute. It was simpler to go out for his
meals and make his own bed. And it was the realization that this
alteration in his habits had horribly disturbed and unsettled him that
was making Kirk subject himself now to an examination of quite unusual
severity.
He hated softness. Physically, he kept himself always in perfect
condition. Had he become spiritually flabby? Certainly this unexpected
call on his energies would appear to have found him unprepared. It
spoiled his whole day, knowing, when he got out of bed in the morning,
that he must hunt about and find his food instead of sitting still and
having it brought to him. It frightened him to think how set he had
become.
Forty-eight hours ago he would have scorned the suggestion that he
coddled himself. He would have produced as evidence to the contrary his
cold baths, his exercises, his bouts with Steve Dingle. To-day he felt
less confidence. For all his baths and boxing, the fact remained that
he had become, at the age of twenty-six, such a slave to habit that a
very trifling deviation from settled routine had been enough to poison
life for him.
Bachelors have these black moments, and it is then that the abstract
wife comes into her own. To Kirk, brooding in the dusk, the figure of
the abstract wife seemed to grow less formidable, the fact that she
might not get on with Hank Jardine of less importance.
The revolutionary thought that life was rather a bore, and would become
more and more of a bore as the years went on, unless he had some one to
share it with, crept into his mind and stayed there.
He shivered. These were unpleasant thoughts, and in his hour of clear
vision he knew whence they came. They were entirely due to the
knowledge that, instead of sitting comfortably at home, he would be
compelled in a few short hours to go out and get dinner at some
restaurant. To such a pass had he come in the twenty-sixth year of his
life.
Once the gods have marked a bachelor down, they give him few chances of
escape. It was when Kirk's mood was at its blackest, and the figure of
the abstract wife had ceased to be a menace and become a shining angel
of salvation, that Lora Delane Porter, with Ruth Bannister at her side,
rang the studio bell.
Kirk went to the door. He hoped it was a tradesman; he feared it was a
friend. In his present state of mind he had no use for friends. When he
found himself confronting Mrs. Porter he became momentarily incapable
of speech. It had not entered his mind that she would pay him a second
visit. Possibly it was joy that rendered him dumb.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. "I have come to
inquire after the man Pennicut. Ruth, this is Mr. Winfield. Mr.
Winfield, my niece, Miss Bannister."
And Kirk perceived for the first time that his visitor was not alone.
In the shadow behind her a girl was standing. He stood aside to let
Mrs. Porter pass, and Ruth came into the light.
If there are degrees in speechlessness, Kirk's aphasia became doubled
and trebled at the sight of her. It seemed to him that he went all to
pieces, as if he had received a violent blow. Curious physical changes
were taking place in him. His legs, which only that morning he had
looked upon as eminently muscular, he now discovered to be composed of
some curiously unstable jelly.
He also perceived, a fact which he had never before suspected, that he
had heart-disease. His lungs, too, were in poor condition; he found it
practically impossible to breathe. The violent trembling fit which
assailed him he attributed to general organic weakness.
He gaped at Ruth.
Ruth, outwardly, remained unaffected by the meeting, but inwardly she
was feeling precisely the same sensation of smallness which had come to
Mrs. Porter on her first meeting with Kirk. If this sensation had been
novel to Mrs. Porter, it was even stranger to Ruth.
To think humbly of herself was an experience that seldom happened to
her. She was perfectly aware that her beauty was remarkable even in a
city of beautiful women, and it was rarely that she permitted her
knowledge of that fact to escape her. Her beauty, to her, was a natural
phenomenon, impossible to overlook. The realization of it did not
obtrude itself into her mind, it simply existed subconsciously.
Yet for an instant it ceased to exist. She was staggered by a sense of
inferiority.
It lasted but a pin-point of time, this riotous upheaval of her nature.
She recovered herself so swiftly that Kirk, busy with his own emotions,
had no suspicion of it.
A moment later he, too, was himself again. He was conscious of feeling
curiously uplifted and thrilled, as if the world had suddenly become
charged with ozone and electricity, and for some reason he felt capable
of great feats of muscle and energy; but the aphasia had left him, and
he addressed himself with a clear brain to the task of entertaining his
visitors.
"George is better to-day," he reported.
"He never was bad," said Mrs. Porter succinctly.
"He doesn't think so."
"Possibly not. He is hopelessly weak-minded."
Ruth laughed. Kirk thrilled at the sound.
"Poor George!" she observed.
"Don't waste your sympathy, my dear," said Mrs. Porter. "That he is
injured at all is his own fault. For years he has allowed himself to
become gross and flabby, with the result that the collision did damage
which it would not have done to a man in hard condition. You, Mr.
Winfield," she added, turning abruptly to Kirk, "would scarcely have
felt it. But then you," went on Mrs. Porter, "are in good condition.
Cold baths!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Do you take cold baths?"
"I do."
"Do you do Swedish exercises?"
"I go through a series of evolutions every morning, with the utmost
loathing. I started them as a boy, and they have become a habit like
dram-drinking. I would leave them off if I could, but I can't."
"Do nothing of the kind. They are invaluable."
"But undignified."
"Let me feel your biceps, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. She nodded
approvingly. "Like iron." She poised a finger and ran a meditative