"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Porter.
"Sure thing," said Steve. His coolness, the ease with which he found words astonished him as much as his rapidity of action.
"I stole the kid," he said, "and it was my idea at that. Kirk didn"t know anything about it. I wired to him to-day what I had done and that he was to come right along. And," added Steve in a burst of inspiration, "I said bring along Mamie, too, as the kid"s used to her and there ought to be a woman around. And she could be here, all right, and no harm, she being my affianced wife." He liked that phrase. He had read it in a book somewhere, and it was the goods.
He eyed Mrs. Porter jauntily. Mrs. Porter"s gaze wavered. She was not feeling comfortable. Hers was a nature that did not lend itself easily to apologies, yet apologies were obviously what the situation demanded.
The thought of all the eloquence which she had expended to no end added to her discomfort. For the first time she was pleased that Kirk had so manifestly not been listening to a word of it.
"Oh!" she said.
She paused.
"That puts a different complexion on this affair."
"Betcha life!"
She paused once more. It was some moments before she could bring herself to speak. She managed it at last.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
"Mine, ma"am?" said Steve grandly. Five minutes before, the idea that he could ever speak grandly to Lora Delane Porter would have seemed ridiculous to him; but he was surprised at nothing now.
"And the young wom---- And the future Mrs. Dingle"s," said Mrs. Porter with an effort.
"Thank you, ma"am," said Steve, and released Mamie, who forthwith bolted from the room like a scared rabbit.
Steve had started to follow her when Mrs. Porter, magnificent woman, s.n.a.t.c.hing what was left from defeat, stopped him.
"Wait!" she said. "What you have said alters the matter in one respect; but there is another point. On your own confession you have been guilty of the extremely serious offence, the penal offence of kidnapping a child who--"
"Drop me a line about it, ma"am," said Steve. "Me time"s rather full just now."
He disappeared into the outer darkness after Mamie.
In the room they had left, Kirk and Ruth faced each other in silence.
Lora Delane Porter eyed them grimly. It was the hour of her defeat, and she knew it. Forces too strong for her were at work. Her grand attack, the bringing of these two together that Ruth might confront Kirk in his guilt, had recoiled upon her. The Old Guard had made their charge up the hill, and it had failed. Victory had become a rout. With one speech Steve had destroyed her whole plan of campaign.
She knew it was all over, that in another moment if she remained, she would be compelled to witness the humiliating spectacle of Ruth in Kirk"s arms, stammering the words which intuition told her were even now trembling on her lips. She knew Ruth. She could read her like a primer. And her knowledge told her that she was about to capitulate, that all her pride and resentment had been swept away, that she had gone over to the enemy.
Elemental pa.s.sions were warring against Lora Delane Porter, and she bowed before them.
"Mr. Winfield," she said sharply, her voice cutting the silence like a knife, "I beg your pardon. I seem to have made a mistake. Good night."
Kirk did not answer.
"Good night, Ruth."
Ruth made no sign that she had heard.
Mrs. Porter, grand in defeat, moved slowly to the door.
But even in the greatest women there is that germ of feminine curiosity which cannot be wholly eliminated, that little grain of dust that a.s.serts itself and clogs the machinery. It had been Mrs. Porter"s intention to leave the room without a glance, her back defiantly toward the foe. But, as she reached the door, there came from behind her a sound of movement, a stifled cry, a little sound whose meaning she knew too well.
She hesitated. She stood still, fighting herself. But the grain of dust had done its work. For an instant she ceased to be a smoothly working machine and became a woman subject to the dictates of impulse.
She turned.
Intuition had not deceived her. Ruth had gone over to the enemy. She was in Kirk"s arms, holding him to her, her face hidden against his shoulder, for all the world as if Lora Delane Porter, her guiding force, had ceased to exist.
Mrs. Porter closed the door and walked stiffly through the scented night to where the headlights of her automobile cleft the darkness.
Birds, asleep in the trees, fluttered uneasily at the sudden throbbing of the engine.
Chapter XVI
The White-Hope Link
The White Hope slept. The noise of the departing car, which had roused the birds, had made no impression on him. As Steve had said, dynamite could not do it. He slumbered on, calmly detached, unaware of the remarkable changes which, in the past twenty-four hours, had taken place in his life. An epoch had ended and a new one begun, but he knew it not.
And probably, if Kirk and Ruth, who were standing at his bedside, watching him, had roused him and informed him of these facts, he would have displayed little excitement. He had the philosophical temperament.
He took things as they came. Great natural phenomena, like Lora Delane Porter, he accepted as part of life. When they were in his life, he endured them stoically. When they went out of it, he got on without them. Marcus Aurelius would have liked William Bannister Winfield. They belonged to the same school of thought.
The years have a tendency to destroy this placidity towards life and to develop in man a sense of grat.i.tude to fate for its occasional kindnesses; and Kirk, having been in the world longer than William Bannister, did not take the gifts of the G.o.ds so much for granted. He was profoundly grateful for what had happened. That Lora Delane Porter should have retired from active interference with his concerns was much; but that he should have had the incredible good fortune to be freed from the burden of John Bannister"s money was more.
If ever money was the root of all evil, this had been. It had come into his life like a poisonous blight, withering and destroying wherever it touched. It had changed Ruth; it had changed William Bannister; it had changed himself; it was as if the spirit of the old man had lived on, hating him and working him mischief. He always had superst.i.tious fear of it; and events had proved him right.
And now the cloud had rolled away. A few crowded hours of Bailey"s dashing imbecility had removed the curse forever.
He was alone with Ruth and his son in a world that contained only them, just as in the old days of their happiness. There was something symbolic, something suggestive of the beginning of a new order of things, in their isolation at this very moment. Steve had gone. Only he and Ruth and the child were left.
The child--the White Hope--he was the real hero of the story, the real princ.i.p.al of the drama of their three lives. He was the link that bound them together, the force that worked for coherence and against chaos.
He stood between them, his hands in theirs; and while he did so there could be no parting of the ways. His grip was light, but as strong as steel. Time would bring troubles, moods, misunderstandings, for they were both human; but, while that grip held, there could be no gulf dividing Ruth and himself, as it had divided them in the past.
He faced the future calmly, with open eyes. It would be rough going at first, very rough going. It meant hard work, incessant work. No more vague masterpieces which might or might not turn into "Carmen" or "The Spanish Maiden." No more delightful idle days to be loafed through in the studio or the shops. No more dreams, seen hazily through the smoke of a cigar, as he lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, of what he would do to-morrow. To-morrow must look after itself. His business was with the present and the work of the present.
He braced himself to the fight, confident of his power to win. He had found himself.
Bill stirred in his sleep and muttered. Ruth bent over him and kissed the honourable scratch on his cheek.
"Poor little chap! You"ll wake up and find that you aren"t a millionaire baby after all! I wonder if you"ll mind. Kirk, do _you_ mind?"
"Mind!"
"I don"t," said Ruth. "I think it will be rather fun being poor again."