His brain cleared. He sat down calmly to wait for Ruth. His mind was made up. Hank’s offer was the way out, the only way out, and he must take it.
Book II
I
Empty-Handed
The steamship Santa Barbara, of the United Fruit Line, moved slowly through the glittering water of the bay on her way to dock. Out at quarantine earlier in the morning there had been a mist, through which passing ships loomed up vague and shapeless; but now the sun had dispersed it and a perfect May morning welcomed the Santa Barbara home.
Kirk leaned on the rail, looking with dull eyes on the city he had left a year before. Only a year! It seemed ten. As he stood there he felt an old man.
A drummer, a cheery soul who had come aboard at Puerto Rico, sauntered up, beaming with well-being and good-fellowship.
“Looks pretty good, sir,” said he.
Kirk did not answer. He had not heard.
“Some burg,” ventured the drummer.
Again encountering silence, he turned away, hurt. This churlish attitude on the part of one returning to God’s country on one of God’s own mornings surprised and wounded him.
To him all was right with the world. He had breakfasted well; he was smoking a good cigar; and he was strong in the knowledge that he had done well by the firm this trip and that bouquets were due to be handed to him in the office on lower Broadway. He was annoyed with Kirk for having cast even a tiny cloud upon his contentment.
He communicated his feelings to the third officer, who happened to come on deck at that moment.
“Say, who is that guy?” he asked complainingly. “The big son of a gun leaning on the rail. Seems like he’d got a hangover this morning. Is he deaf and dumb or just plain grouchy?”
The third officer eyed Kirk’s back with sympathy.
“I shouldn’t worry him, Freddie,” he said. “I guess if you had been up against it like him you’d be shy on the small talk. That’s a fellow called Winfield. They carried him on board at Colon. He was about all in. Got fever in Colombia, inland at the mines, and nearly died. His pal did die. Ever met Hank Jardine?”
“Long, thin man?”
The other nodded.
“One of the best. He made two trips with us.”
“And he’s dead?”
“Died of fever away back in the interior, where there’s nothing much else except mosquitoes. He and Winfield went in there after gold.”
“Did they get any?” asked the drummer, interested.
The third officer spat disgustedly over the rail.
“You ask Winfield. Or, rather, don’t, because I guess it’s not his pet subject. He told me all about it when he was getting better. There was gold there, all right, in chunks. It only needed to be dug for. And somebody else did the digging. Of all the skin games! It made me pretty hot under the collar, and it wasn’t me that was stung.
“Out there you can’t buy land if you’re a foreigner; you have to lease it from the natives. Poor old Hank leased his bit, all right, and when he’d got to his claim he found somebody else working on it. It seemed there had been a flaw in his agreement and the owners had let it over his head to these other guys, who had slipped them more than what Hank had done.”
“What did he do?”
“He couldn’t do anything. They were the right side of the law, or what they call law out there. There was nothing to do except beat it back again three hundred miles to the coast. That’s where they got the fever which finished Hank. So you can understand,” concluded the third officer, “that Mr. Winfield isn’t in what you can call a sunny mood. If I were you, I’d go and talk to someone else, if conversation’s what you need.”
Kirk stood motionless at the rail, thinking. It was not what was past that occupied his thoughts, as the third officer had supposed; it was the future.
The forlorn hope had failed; he was limping back to Ruth wounded and broken. He had sent her a wireless message. She would be at the dock to meet him. How could he face her? Fate had been against him, it was true, but he was in no mood to make excuses for himself. He had failed. That was the beginning and the end of it. He had set out to bring back wealth and comfort to her, and he was returning empty-handed.
That was what the immediate future held, the meeting with Ruth. And after? His imagination was not equal to the task of considering that. He had failed as an artist. There was no future for him there. He must find some other work. But he was fit for no other work. He had no training. What could he do in a city where keenness of competition is a tradition? It would be as if an unarmed man should attack a fortress.
The thought of the years he had wasted was very bitter. Looking back, he could see how fate had tricked him into throwing away his one talent. He had had promise. With hard work he could have become an artist, a professional—a man whose work was worth money in the open market. He had never had it in him to be a great artist, but he had had the facility which goes to make a good worker of the second class. He had it still. Given the time for hard study, it was still in him to take his proper place among painters.
But time for study was out of his reach now. He must set to work at once, without a day’s delay, on something which would bring him immediate money. The reflection brought his mind back abruptly to the practical consideration of
