“I’ve seen you in better shape,” said Steve cautiously.
“I’ve felt in better shape.”
Steve coughed. The conversation was about to become delicate.
“What’s eating you, colonel?” he asked presently.
Kirk frowned in silence at the Undeniable for a few moments. Then the pent-up misery of months exploded in a cascade of words. He jumped up and began to walk restlessly about the studio.
“Damn it! Steve, I ought not to say a word, I know. It’s weak and cowardly and bad taste and everything else you can think of to speak of it—even to you. One’s supposed to stand this sort of roasting at the stake with a grin, as if one enjoyed it. But, after all, you are different. It’s not as if it was anyone. You are different, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you know what’s wrong as well as I do.”
“Surest thing you know. It’s hit me, too.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, things ain’t the same. That’s about what it comes to.”
Kirk stopped and looked at him. His expression was wistful. “I ought not to be talking about it.”
“You go right ahead, squire,” said Steve soothingly. “I know just how you feel, and I guess talking’s not going to do any harm. Act as if I wasn’t here. Look on it as a monologue. I don’t amount to anything.”
“When did you go to the house last, Steve?”
Steve reflected.
“About a couple of weeks ago, I reckon.”
“See the kid?”
Steve shook his head.
“Seeing his nibs ain’t my long suit these days. I may be wrong, but I got the idea there was a deadline for me about three blocks away from the nursery. I asked Keggs was the coast clear, but he said the Porter dame was in the ring, so I kind of thought I’d better away. I don’t seem to fit in with all them white tiles and thermometers.”
“You used to see him every day when we were here. And you didn’t seem to contaminate him, as far as anyone could notice.”
There was a silence.
“Do you see him often, colonel?”
Kirk laughed.
“Oh, yes. I’m favoured. I pay a state visit every day. Think of that! I sit in a chair at the other end of the room while Mrs. Porter stands between to see that I don’t start anything. Bill plays with his sterilized bricks. Occasionally he and I exchange a few civil words. It’s as jolly and sociable as you could want. We have great times.”
“Say, on the level, I wonder you stand for it.”
“I’ve got to stand for it.”
“He’s your kid.”
“Not exclusively. I have a partner, Steve.”
Steve snorted dolefully.
“Ain’t it hell the way things break loose in this world!” he sighed. “Who’d have thought two years ago—”
“Do you make it only two? I should have put it at about two thousand.”
“Honest, squire, if anyone had told me then that Miss Ruth had it in her to take up with all these fool stunts—”
“Well, I can’t say I was prepared for it.”
Steve coughed again. Kirk was in an expansive mood this afternoon, and the occasion was ideal for the putting forward of certain views which he had long wished to impart. But, on the other hand, the subject was a peculiarly delicate one. It has been well said that it is better for a third party to quarrel with a buzz-saw than to interfere between husband and wife; and Steve was constitutionally averse to anything that savoured of butting in.
Still, Kirk had turned the talk into this channel. He decided to risk it.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d get busy and start something.”
“Such as what?”
Steve decided to abandon caution and speak his mind. Him, almost as much as Kirk, the existing state of things had driven to desperation. Though in a sense he was only a spectator, the fact that the altered conditions of Kirk’s life involved his almost complete separation from Mamie gave him what might be called a stake in the affair. The brief and rare glimpses which he got of her nowadays made it absolutely impossible for him to conduct his wooing on a businesslike basis. A diffident man cannot possibly achieve any success in odd moments. Constant propinquity is his only hope.
That fact alone, he considered, almost gave him the right to interfere. And, apart from that, his affection for Kirk and Ruth gave him a claim. Finally, he held what was practically an official position in the family councils on the strength of being William Bannister Winfield’s godfather.
He loved William Bannister as a son, and it had been one of his favourite day dreams to conjure up a vision of the time when he should be permitted to undertake the child’s physical training. He had toyed lovingly with the idea of imparting to this promising pupil all that he knew of the greatest game on earth. He had watched him in the old days staggering about the studio, and had pictured him grown to his full strength, his muscles trained, his brain full of the wisdom of one who, if his mother had not kicked, would have been middleweight champion of America.
He had resigned himself to the fact that the infant’s social status made it impossible that he should be the real White Hope whom he had once pictured beating all comers in the roped ring; but, after all, there was a certain mild fame to be acquired even by an amateur.
