The Coming of Bill Page 10

  Chapter X

  An Interlude of Peace

  Two events of importance in the small world which centred round WilliamB. Winfield occurred at about this time. The first was the entrance ofMamie, the second the exit of Mrs. Porter.

  Mamie was the last of a series of nurses who came and went in somewhatrapid succession during the early years of the White Hope's life. Shewas introduced by Steve, who, it seemed, had known her since she was achild. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a compositor on one ofthe morning papers, a little, mouselike thing, with tiny hands andfeet, a soft voice, and eyes that took up far more than their fairshare of her face.

  She had had no professional experience as a nursery-maid; but, as Stevepointed out, the fact that, in the absence of her mother, who had diedsome years previously, she had had sole charge of three small brothersat the age when small brothers are least easily handled, and hadsteered them through to the office-boy age without mishap, put herextremely high in the class of gifted amateurs. Mamie was accordinglygiven a trial, and survived it triumphantly. William Bannister, thatdiscerning youth, took to her at once. Kirk liked the neat way shemoved about the studio, his heart being still sore at the performanceof one of her predecessors, who had upset and put a substantial footthrough his masterpiece, that same "Ariadne in Naxos" which Lora DelanePorter had criticised on the occasion of her first visit to the studio.Ruth, for her part, was delighted with Mamie.

  As for Steve, though as an outside member of the firm he cannot beconsidered to count, he had long ago made up his mind about her. Sometime before, when he had found it impossible for him to be in herpresence, still less to converse with her, without experiencing a warm,clammy, shooting sensation and a feeling of general weakness similar tothat which follows a well-directed blow at the solar plexus, he hadcome to the conclusion that he must be in love. The furious jealousywhich assailed him on seeing her embraced by and embracing a stoutperson old enough to be her father convinced him of this.

  The discovery that the stout man actually was her father's brotherrelieved his mind to a certain extent, but the episode left him shaken.He made up his mind to propose at once and get it over. When Mamiejoined the garrison of No. 90 a year later the dashing feat was stillunperformed. There was that about Mamie which unmanned Steve. She wasso small and dainty that the ruggedness which had once been his prideseemed to him, when he thought of her, an insuperable defect. Theconviction that he was a roughneck deepened in him and tied his tongue.

  The defection of Mrs. Porter was a gradual affair. From a very earlyperiod in the new regime she had been dissatisfied. Accustomed to rule,she found herself in an unexpectedly minor position. She had definiteviews on the hygienic upbringing of children, and these she imparted toRuth, who listened pleasantly, smiled, and ignored them.

  Mrs. Porter was not used to such treatment. She found Ruth considerablyless malleable than she had been before marriage, and she resented thechange.

  Kirk, coming in one afternoon, found Ruth laughing.

  "It's only Aunt Lora," she said. "She will come in and lecture me onhow to raise babies. She's crazy about microbes. It's the new idea.Sterilization, and all that. She thinks that everything a child touchesought to be sterilized first to kill the germs. Bill's running awfulrisks being allowed to play about the studio like this."

  Kirk looked at his son and heir, who was submitting at that moment tobe bathed. He was standing up. It was a peculiarity of his that herefused to sit down in a bath, being apparently under the impression,when asked to do so, that there was a conspiracy afoot to drown him.

  "I don't see how the kid could be much fitter."

  "It's not so much what he is now. She is worrying about what mighthappen to him. She can talk about bacilli till your flesh creeps.Honestly, if Bill ever did get really ill, I believe Aunt Lora couldtalk me round to her views about them in a minute. It's only the factthat he is so splendidly well that makes it seem so absurd."

  Kirk laughed.

  "It's all very well to laugh. You haven't heard her. I've caught myselfwavering a dozen times. Do you know, she says a child ought not to bekissed?"

  "It has struck me," said Kirk meditatively, "that your Aunt Lora, if Imay make the suggestion, is the least bit of what Steve would call ashy-dome. Is there anything else she had mentioned?'

  "Hundreds of things. Bill ought to be kept in a properly sterilizednursery, with sterilized toys and sterilized everything, and thetemperature ought to be just so high and no higher, and just so low andno lower. Get her to talk about it to you. She makes you wonder whyeverybody is not dead."

  "This is a new development, surely? Has she ever broken out in thisplace before?"

  "Oh, yes. In the old days she often used to talk about it. She haswritten books about it."

  "I thought her books were all about the selfishness of the modern youngman in not marrying."

  "Not at all. Some of them are about how to look after the baby. It's nogood the modern young man marrying if he's going to murder his babydirectly afterward, is it?"

  "Something in that. There's just one objection to this sterilizednursery business, though, which she doesn't seem to have detected. Howam I going to provide these things on an income of five thousand and atthe same time live in that luxury which the artist soul demands? Bill,my lad, you'll have to sacrifice yourself for your father's good. WhenI'm a millionaire we'll see about it. Meanwhile--"

  "Meanwhile," said Ruth, "come and be dried before you catch your deathof cold." She gathered William Bannister into her lap.

  "I pity any germ that tries to play catch-as-catch-can with thatinfant," remarked Kirk. "He'd simply flatten it out in a round. Did youever see such a chest on a kid of that age?"

  It was after the installation of Whiskers at the studio that thediminution of Mrs. Porter's visits became really marked. There wassomething almost approaching a battle over Whiskers, who was an Irishterrier puppy which Hank Jardine had presented to William Bannister asa belated birthday present.

  Mrs. Porter utterly excommunicated Whiskers. Nothing, she maintained,was so notoriously supercharged with bacilli as a long-haired dog. Ifthis was true, William Bannister certainly gave them every chance toget to work upon himself. It was his constant pleasure to clutchWhiskers to him in a vice-like clinch, to bury his face in his shaggyback, and generally to court destruction. Yet the more he clutched, thehealthier did he appear to grow, and Mrs. Porter's demand for the dog'sbanishment was overruled.

  Mrs. Porter retired in dudgeon. She liked to rule, and at No. 90 shefelt that she had become merely among those present. She was in theposition of a mother country whose colony has revolted. For years shehad been accustomed to look on Ruth as a disciple, a weaker spirit whomshe could mould to her will, and now Ruth was refusing to be moulded.

  So Mrs. Porter's visits ceased. Ruth still saw her at the apartmentwhen she cared to go there, but she kept away from the studio. Sheconsidered that in the matter of William Bannister her claim had beenjumped, that she had been deposed; and she withdrew.

  "I shall bear up," said Kirk, when this fact was brought home to him."I mistrust your Aunt Lora as I should mistrust some great naturalforce which may become active at any moment and give you yours. Anearthquake, for instance. I have no quarrel with your Aunt Lora in herquiescent state, but I fear the developments of that giant mind. We arebetter off without her."

  "All the same," said Ruth loyally, "she's rather a dear. And we oughtto remember that, if it hadn't been for her, you and I would never havemet."

  "I do remember it. And I'm grateful. But I can't help feeling that awoman capable of taking other people's lives and juggling with them asif they were india-rubber balls as she did with ours, is likely at anymoment to break out in a new place. My gratitude to her is the sort ofgratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home latefor dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep.Your Aunt Lora is a human cyclone. No, on the whole, she's more like anearthquake. She has a ha
bit of splitting up and altering the face ofthe world whenever she feels like it, and I'm too well satisfied withmy world at present to relish the idea of having it changed."

  Little by little the garrison of the studio had been whittled down.Except for Steve, the community had no regular members outside thefamily itself. Hank was generally out of town. Bailey paid one morevisit, then seemed to consider that he could now absent himselfaltogether. And the members of Kirk's bachelor circle stayed away to aman.

  Their isolation was rendered more complete by the fact that Ruth, whenshe had ornamented New York society, had made few real friends. Most ofthe girls she had known bored her. They were gushing creatures with apassion for sharing and imparting secrets, and Ruth's cool reserve hadalienated her from them.

  When she married she dropped out. The romance of her wedding gavepeople something to talk about for a few days, and then she wasforgotten.

  And so it came about that she had her desire and was able practicallyto monopolize Kirk. He and she and William Bannister lived in a kind ofhermit's cell for three and enjoyed this highly unnatural state ofthings enormously. Life had never seemed so full either to Kirk orherself. There was always something to do, something to think about,something to look forward to, if it was only a visit to a theatre orthe inspection of William Bannister's bath.