Fate could have provided no more suitable ally for Kirk. It was universally admitted around Washington Square and--grudgingly--down-town that in the matter of theory Mr. Penway excelled. He could teach to perfection what he was too erratic to practise.
Robert Dwight Penway, run to earth one sultry evening in the Brevoort, welcomed Kirk as a brother, as a rich brother. Even when his first impression, that he was to have the run of the house on Fifth Avenue and mix freely with touchable multi-millionaires, had been corrected, his alt.i.tude was still brotherly. He parted from Kirk with many solemn promises to present himself at the studio daily and teach him enough art to put him clear at the top of the profession. "Way above all these other dubs," a.s.serted Mr. Penway.
Robert Dwight Penway"s att.i.tude toward his contemporaries in art bore a striking resemblance to Steve"s estimate of his successors in the middle-weight department of the American prize-ring.
Surprisingly to those who knew him, Mr. Penway was as good as his word.
Certainly Kirk"s terms had been extremely generous; but he had thrown away many a contract of equal value in his palmy days. Possibly his activity was due to his liking for Kirk; or it may have been that the prospect of sitting by with a cigar while somebody else worked, with nothing to do all day except offer criticism, and advice, appealed to him.
At any rate, he appeared at the studio on the following afternoon, completely sober and excessively critical. He examined the canvases which Kirk had hauled from shelves and corners for his inspection. One after another he gazed upon them in an increasingly significant silence. When the last one was laid aside he delivered judgment.
"Golly!" he said.
Kirk flushed. It was not that he was not in complete agreement with the verdict. Looking at these paintings, some of which he had in the old days thought extremely good, he was forced to admit that "Golly" was the only possible criticism.
He had not seen them for a long time, and absence had enabled him to correct first impressions. Moreover, something had happened to him, causing him to detect flaws where he had seen only merits. Life had sharpened his powers of judgment. He was a grown man looking at the follies of his youth.
"Burn them!" said Mr. Penway, lighting a cigar with the air of one restoring his tissues after a strenuous ordeal. "Burn the lot. They"re awful. Darned amateur nightmares. They offend the eye. Cast them into a burning fiery furnace."
Kirk nodded. The criticism was just. It erred, if at all, on the side of mildness. Certainly something had happened to him since he perpetrated those daubs. He had developed. He saw things with new eyes.
"I guess I had better start right in again at the beginning," he said.
"Earlier than that," amended Mr. Penway.
So Kirk settled down to a routine of hard work; and, so doing, drove another blow at the wedge which was separating his life from Ruth"s.
There were days now when they did not meet at all, and others when they saw each other for a few short moments in which neither seemed to have much to say.
Ruth had made a perfunctory protest against the new departure.
"Really," she said, "it does seem absurd for you to spend all your time down at that old studio. It isn"t as if you had to. But, of course, if you want to----"
And she had gone on to speak of other subjects. It was plain to Kirk that his absence scarcely affected her. She was still in the rapids, and every day carried her farther away from him.
It did not hurt him now. A sort of apathy seemed to have fallen on him.
The old days became more and more remote. Sometimes he doubted whether anything remained of her former love for him, and sometimes he wondered if he still loved her. She was so different that it was almost as if she were a stranger. Once they had had everything in common. Now it seemed to him that they had nothing--not even Bill.
He did not brood upon it. He gave himself no time for that. He worked doggedly on under the blasphemous but efficient guidance of Mr. Penway.
He was becoming a man with a fixed idea--the idea of making good.
He began to make headway. His beginnings were small, but practical. He no longer sat down when the spirit moved him to dash off vague masterpieces which might turn into something quite unexpected on the road to completion; he s.n.a.t.c.hed at anything definite that presented itself.
Sometimes it was a couple of ill.u.s.trations to a short story in one of the minor magazines, sometimes a picture to go with an eulogy of a patent medicine. Whatever it was, he seized upon it and put into it all the talent he possessed. And thanks to the indefatigable coaching of Robert Dwight Penway, a certain merit was beginning to creep into his work. His drawing was growing firmer. He no longer shirked difficulties.
Mr. Penway was good enough to approve of his progress. Being free from any morbid distaste for himself, he attributed that progress to its proper source. As he said once in a moment of expansive candour, he could, given a free hand and something to drink and smoke while doing it, make an artist out of two sticks and a lump of coal.
"Why, I"ve made _you_ turn out things that are like something on earth, my boy," he said proudly. "And that," he added, as he reached out for the bottle of Bourbon which Kirk had provided for him, "is going some."
Kirk was far too grateful to resent the slightly unflattering note a more spirited man might have detected in the remark.
Only once during those days did Kirk allow himself to weaken and admit to himself how wretched he was. He was drawing a picture of Steve at the time, and Steve had the sympathy which encourages weakness in others.
It was a significant sign of his changed att.i.tude towards his profession that he was not drawing Steve as a figure in an allegorical picture or as "Apollo" or "The Toiler," but simply as a well-developed young man who had had the good sense to support his nether garments with Middleton"s Undeniable Suspenders. The picture, when completed, would show Steve smirking down at the region of his waist-line and announcing with pride and satisfaction: "They"re Middleton"s!" Kirk was putting all he knew into the work, and his face, as he drew, was dark and gloomy.
Steve noted this with concern. He had perceived for some time that Kirk had changed. He had lost all his old boyish enjoyment of their sparring-bouts, and he threw the medicine-ball with an absent gloom almost equal to Bailey"s.
It had not occurred to Steve to question Kirk about this. If Kirk had anything on his mind which he wished to impart he would say it.
Meanwhile, the friendly thing for him to do was to be quiet and pretend to notice nothing.
It seemed to Steve that nothing was going right these days. Here was he, chafing at his inability to open his heart to Mamie. Here was Kirk, obviously in trouble. And--a smaller thing, but of interest, as showing how universal the present depression was--there was Bailey Bannister, equally obviously much worried over something or other.
For Bailey had reinstated Steve in the place he had occupied before old John Bannister had dismissed him, and for some time past Steve had marked him down as a man with a secret trouble. He had never been of a riotously cheerful disposition, but it had been possible once to draw him into conversation at the close of the morning"s exercises. Now he hardly spoke. And often, when Steve arrived in the morning, he was informed that Mr. Bannister had started for Wall Street early on important business.
These things troubled Steve. His simple soul abhorred a mystery.
But it was the case of Kirk that worried him most, for he half guessed that the latter"s gloom had to do with Ruth; and he worshipped Ruth.
Kirk laid down his sketch and got up.
"I guess that"ll do for the moment, Steve," he said.
Steve relaxed the att.i.tude of proud satisfaction which he had a.s.sumed in order to do justice to the Undeniable Suspenders. He stretched himself and sat down.
"You certainly are working to beat the band just now, squire," he remarked.
"It"s a pretty good thing, work, Steve," said Kirk. "If it does nothing else, it keeps you from thinking."
He knew it was feeble of him, but he was powerfully impelled to relieve himself by confiding his wretchedness to Steve. He need not say much, he told himself plausibly--only just enough to lighten the burden a little.
He would not be disloyal to Ruth--he had not sunk to that--but, after all Steve was Steve. It was not like blurting out his troubles to a stranger. It would harm n.o.body, and do him a great deal of good, if he talked to Steve.
He relit his pipe, which had gone out during a tense spell of work on the suspenders.
"Well, Steve," he said, "what do you think of life? How is this best of all possible worlds treating you?"
Steve deposed that life was pretty punk.
"You"re a great describer, Steve. You"ve hit it first time. Punk is the word. It"s funny, if you look at it properly. Take my own case. The superficial observer, who is apt to be a bonehead, would say that I ought to be singing psalms of joy. I am married to the woman I wanted to marry. I have a son who, not to be fulsome, is a perfectly good sort of son. I have no financial troubles. I eat well. I have ceased to tremble when I see a job of work. In fact, I have advanced in my art to such an extent that shrewd business men like Middleton put the pictorial side of their Undeniable Suspenders in my hands and go off to play golf with their minds easy, having perfect confidence in my skill and judgment. If I can"t be merry and bright, who can? Do you find me merry and bright, Steve?"
"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.