That he had to contribute to the support of the majority of these
friends might have seemed a drawback to some men. Kirk did not object
to it in the least. He had enough money to meet their needs, and, being
a sociable person who enjoyed mixing with all sorts and conditions of
men, he found the Liberty Hall regime pleasant.
He liked to be a magnet, attracting New York's Bohemian population. If
he had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studio
as a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking his
whisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion,
his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully as
pleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually resting English
actor, whom he disliked as far as he was capable of disliking any one,
as he was to Hank Jardine, the prospector, and Hank's prize-fighter
friend, Steve Dingle, both of whom he liked enormously.
It seemed to him sometimes that he had drifted into the absolutely
ideal life. He lived entirely in the present. The passage of time left
him untouched. Day followed day, week followed week, and nothing seemed
to change. He was never unhappy, never ill, never bored.
He would get up in the morning with the comfortable knowledge that the
day held no definite duties. George Pennicut would produce one of his
excellent breakfasts. The next mile-stone would be the arrival of Steve
Dingle. Five brisk rounds with Steve, a cold bath, and a rub-down took
him pleasantly on to lunch, after which it amused him to play at
painting.
There was always something to do when he wearied of that until, almost
before the day had properly begun, up came George with one of his
celebrated dinners. And then began the incursion of his friends. One by
one they would drop in, making themselves very much at home, to help
their host through till bedtime. And another day would slip into the
past.
It never occurred to Kirk that he was wasting his life. He had no
ambitions. Ambition is born of woman, and no woman that he had ever met
had ever stirred him deeply. He had never been in love, and he had come
to imagine that he was incapable of anything except a mild liking for
women. He considered himself immune, and was secretly glad of it. He
enjoyed his go-as-you-please existence too much to want to have it
upset. He belonged, in fact, to the type which, when the moment
arrives, falls in love very suddenly, very violently, and for all time.
Nothing could have convinced him of this. He was like a child lighting
matches in a powder-magazine. When the idea of marriage crossed his
mind he thrust it from him with a kind of shuddering horror. He could
not picture to himself a woman who could compensate him for the loss of
his freedom and, still less, of his friends.
His friends were men's men; he could not see them fitting into a scheme
of life that involved the perpetual presence of a hostess. Hank
Jardine, for instance. To Kirk, the great point about Hank was that he
had been everywhere, seen everything, and was, when properly stimulated
with tobacco and drink, a fountain of reminiscence. But he could not
talk unless he had his coat off and his feet up on the back of a chair.
