At last it was finished. Ruth thought it splendid. Sybil Wilbur pronounced it cute, as she did most things. Kirk could hardly bear to look at it. In its finished state it was worse than he could have believed possible.
In the old days he had been a fair painter with one or two bad faults. Now the faults seemed to have grown like weeds, choking whatever of merit he might once have possessed. This was a horrible production, and he was profoundly thankful when it was packed up and removed from the studio. But behind his thankfulness lurked the feeling that all was not yet over, that there was worse to come.
It came.
It was heralded by a tearful telephone call from Miss Wilbur, who rang up Ruth with the agitated information that “Bailey didn’t seem to like it.” And on the heels of the message came Bailey in person, pink from forehead to collar, and almost as wrathful as he had been on the great occasion of his first visit to the studio. His annoyance robbed his speech of its normal stateliness. He struck a colloquial note unusual with him.
“I guess you know what I’ve come about,” he said.
He had found Kirk alone in the studio, as ill luck would have it. In the absence of Ruth he ventured to speak more freely than he would have done in her presence.
“It’s an infernal outrage,” he went on. “I’ve been stung, and you know it.”
Kirk said nothing. His silence infuriated Bailey.
“It’s the portrait I’m speaking about—the portrait, if you have the nerve to call it that, of Miss Wilbur. I was against her sitting to you from the first, but she insisted. Now she’s sorry.”
“It’s as bad as all that, is it?” said Kirk dully. He felt curiously indisposed to fight. A listlessness had gripped him. He was even a little sorry for Bailey. He saw his point of view and sympathized with it.
“Yes,” said Bailey fiercely. “It is, and you know it.”
Kirk nodded. Bailey was quite right. He did know it.
“It’s a joke,” went on Bailey shrilly. “I can’t hang it up. People would laugh at it. And to think that I paid you all that money for it. I could have got a real artist for half the price.”
“That is easily remedied,” said Kirk. “I will send you a cheque tomorrow.”
Bailey was not to be appeased. The venom of more than three years cried out for utterance. He had always held definite views upon Kirk, and Heaven had sent him the opportunity of expressing them.
“Yes, I dare say,” he said contemptuously. “That would settle the whole thing, wouldn’t it? What do you think you are—a millionaire? Talking as if that amount of money made no difference to you? Where does my sister come in? How about Ruth? You sneak her away from her home and then—”
Kirk’s lethargy left him. He flushed.
“I think that will be about all, Bannister?” he said. He spoke quietly, but his voice trembled.
But Bailey’s long-dammed hatred, having at last found an outlet, was not to be checked in a moment.
“Will it? Will it? The hell it will. Let me tell you that I came here to talk straight to you, and I’m going to do it. It’s about time you had your darned dime-novel romance shown up to you the way it strikes somebody else. You think you’re a tremendous dashing twentieth-century Young Lochinvar, don’t you? You thought you had done a pretty smooth bit of work when you sneaked Ruth away! You! You haven’t enough backbone in you even to make a bluff at working to support her. You’re just what my father said you were—a loafer who pretends to be an artist. You’ve got away with it up to now, but you’ve shown yourself up at last. You damned waster!”
Kirk walked to the door and flung it open.
“You’re perfectly right, Bannister,” he said quietly. “Everything you have said is quite true. And now would you mind going?”
“I’ve not finished yet.”
“Yes, you have.”
Bailey hesitated. The first time frenzy had left him, and he was beginning to be a little ashamed of himself for having expressed his views in a manner which, though satisfying, was, he felt, less dignified than he could have wished.
He looked at Kirk, who was standing stiffly by the door. Something in his attitude decided Bailey to leave well alone. Such had been his indignation that it was only now that for the first time it struck him that his statement of opinion had not been made without considerable bodily danger to himself. Jarred nerves had stood him in the stead of courage; but now his nerves were soothed and he saw things clearly.
He choked down what he had intended to say and walked out. Kirk closed the door softly behind him and began to pace the studio floor as he had done on that night when Ruth had fought for her life in the room upstairs.
His mind worked slowly at first. Then, as it cleared, he began to think more and more rapidly, till the thoughts leaped and ran like tongues of fire scorching him.
It was all true. That was what hurt. Every word that Bailey had flung at him had been strictly just.
He had thought himself a fine, romantic fellow. He was a waster and a loafer who pretended to be an artist. He had thrown away the little talent he had once possessed. He had behaved shamefully to Ruth, shirking his responsibilities and idling through life. He realized it now, when it was too late.
Suddenly through the chaos of his reflections there shone out clearly one coherent
