The Coming of Bill · Book II · Chapter 2 7 (1/3)

VII

Cutting the Tangled Knot

There are some men whose mission in life it appears to be to go about the world creating crises in the lives of other people. When there is thunder in the air they precipitate the thunderbolt.

Bailey Bannister was one of these. He meant extraordinarily well, but he was a dangerous man for that very reason, and in a properly constituted world would have been segregated or kept under supervision. He would not leave the tangled lives of those around him to adjust themselves. He blundered in and tried to help. He nearly always produced a definite result, but seldom the one at which he aimed.

That he should have interfered in the affairs of Ruth and Kirk at this time was, it must be admitted, unselfish of him, for just now he was having troubles of his own on a somewhat extensive scale. His wife’s extravagance was putting a strain on his finances, and he was faced with the choice of checking her or increasing his income. Being very much in love, he shrank from the former task and adopted the other way out of the difficulty.

It was this that had led to the change in his manner noticed by Steve. In order to make more money he had had to take risks, and only recently had he begun to perceive how extremely risky these risks were. For the first time in its history the firm of Bannister was making firsthand acquaintance with frenzied finance.

It is, perhaps, a little unfair to lay the blame for this entirely at the door of Bailey’s Sybil. Her extravagance was largely responsible; but Bailey’s newly found freedom was also a factor in the developments of the firm’s operations. If you keep a dog, a dog with a high sense of his abilities and importance, tied up and muzzled for a length of time and then abruptly set it free the chances are that it will celebrate its freedom. This had happened in the case of Bailey.

Just as her father’s money had caused Ruth to plunge into a whirl of pleasures which she did not really enjoy, merely for the novelty of it, so the death of John Bannister and his own consequent accession to the throne had upset Bailey’s balance and embarked him on an orgy of speculation quite foreign to his true nature. All their lives Ruth and Bailey had been repressed by their father, and his removal had unsteadied them.

Bailey, on whom the shadow of the dead man had pressed particularly severely, had been quite intoxicated by sudden freedom. He had been a cipher in the firm of Bannister & Son. In the firm of Bannister & Co. he was an untrammelled despot. He did that which was right in his own eyes, and there was no one to say him nay.

It was true that veteran members of the firm, looking in the glass, found white hairs where no white hairs had been and wrinkles on foreheads which, under the solid rule of old John Bannister, had been smooth; but it would have taken more than these straws to convince Bailey that the wind which was blowing was an ill-wind. He had developed in a day the sublime self-confidence of a young Napoleon. He was all dash and enterprise⁠—the hurricane fighter of Wall Street.

With these private interests to occupy him, it is surprising that he should have found time to take the affairs of Ruth and Kirk in hand. But he did.

For some time he had watched the widening gulf between them with pained solicitude. He disliked Kirk personally; but that did not influence him. He conceived it to be his duty to suppress private prejudices. Duty seemed to call him to go to Kirk’s aid and smooth out his domestic difficulties.

What urged him to this course more than anything else was Ruth’s growing intimacy with Basil Milbank; for, in the period which had elapsed since the conversation recorded earlier in the story, when Kirk had first made the other’s acquaintance, the gifted Basil had become a very important and menacing figure in Ruth’s life.

To Ruth, as to most women, his gifts were his attraction. He danced well; he talked well; he did everything well. He appealed to a side of Ruth’s nature which Kirk scarcely touched⁠—a side which had only come into prominence in the last year.

His manner was admirable. He suggested sympathy without expressing it. He could convey to Ruth that he thought her a misunderstood and neglected wife while talking to her about the weather. He could make his own knight-errant attitude toward her perfectly plain without saying a word, merely by playing soft music to her on the piano; for he had the gift of saying more with his fingertips than most men could have said in a long speech carefully rehearsed.

Kirk’s inability to accompany Ruth into her present life had given Basil his chance. Into the gap which now lay between them he had slipped with a smooth neatness born of experience.

Bailey hated Basil. Men, as a rule, did, without knowing why. Basil’s reputation was shady, without being actually bad. He was a suspect who had never been convicted. New York contained several husbands who eyed him askance, but could not verify their suspicions, and the apparent hopelessness of ever doing so made them look on Basil as a man who had carried smoothness into the realms of fine art. He was considered too gifted to be wholesome. The men of his set, being for the most part amiably stupid, resented his cleverness.

Bailey, just at present, was feeling strongly on the subject of Basil. He was at that stage of his married life when he would have preferred his Sybil to speak civilly to no other man than himself. And only yesterday Sybil had come to him to inform him with obvious delight that Basil Milbank had invited her to join his yacht party for a lengthy voyage.

This had stung Bailey. He was not included in the invitation. The whole affair struck him as sinister. It was true that Sybil had never shown any sign of being fascinated by Basil; but, he told himself, there was no knowing. He forbade Sybil to accept the invitation. To soothe her disappointment, he sent her off then and there to Tiffany’s with a roving commission to get what she liked; for Bailey, the stern, strong man, the man who knew when to put his foot down, was no tyrant. But he would have been indignant at the suggestion that he had bribed Sybil to refuse Basil’s invitation.

One of the arguments which Sybil had advanced in the brief discussion which had followed the putting down of Bailey’s foot had been that Ruth had been invited and accepted, so why should not she? Bailey had not replied to this⁠—it was at this point of the proceedings that the Tiffany motive had been introduced, but he had not forgotten it. He thought it over, and decided to call upon Ruth. He did so.

It was unfortunate that the nervous strain of being the Napoleon of Wall Street had had the effect of increasing to a marked extent the portentousness of Bailey’s always portentous manner. Ruth rebelled against it. There was an insufferable suggestion of ripe old age and fatherliness in his attitude which she found irritating in the extreme. All her life she had chafed at authority, and now, when Bailey set himself up as one possessing it, she showed the worst side of herself to him.

He struck this unfortunate note from the very beginning.

“Ruth,” he said, “I wish to speak seriously to you.”

Ruth looked at him with hostile eyes, but did not speak. He did not know it, poor man, but he had selected an exceedingly bad moment for his lecture. It so happened that, only half an hour before, she and Kirk had come nearer to open warfare than they had ever come.

It had come about in this way. Kirk had slept badly the night before, and, as he lay awake in the small hours, his conscience had troubled him.

Had he done all that it was in him to do to bridge the gap between Ruth and himself? That was what his conscience had wanted to know. The answer was in the negative. On the following day, just before Bailey’s call, he accordingly sought Ruth out, and⁠—rather nervously, for Ruth made him feel nervous nowadays⁠—suggested that he and she and William Bannister should take the air in each other’s company and go and feed the squirrels in the park.

Ruth declined. It is possible that she declined somewhat curtly. The day was close and oppressive, and she had a headache and a general feeling of ill-will toward her species. Also, in her heart, she considered that the scheme proposed smacked too much of Sunday afternoon domesticity in Brooklyn. The idea of papa, mamma, and baby sporting together in a public park offended her sense of the social proprieties.

She did not reveal these thoughts to Kirk because she was more than a little ashamed of them. A year ago, she knew, she would not have objected to the idea. A year ago such an expedition would have been a daily occurrence with her. Now she felt if William Bannister wished to feed squirrels, Mamie was his proper companion.

She could not put all this baldly to Kirk, so she placed the burden of her refusal on the adequate shoulders of Lora Delane Porter. Aunt Lora, she said, would never hear of William Bannister wandering at large in such an unhygienic fashion. Upon which Kirk, whose patience was not so robust as it had been, and who, like Ruth, found the day oppressive and making for irritability, had cursed Aunt Lora heartily, given it as his opinion that between them she and Ruth were turning the child from a human being into a sort of spineless, effeminate exhibit in a museum, and had taken himself off to the studio muttering disjointed things.

Ruth was still quivering with the indignation of a woman who has been cheated of the last word when Bailey appeared and announced that he wished to speak seriously to her.

Bailey saw the hostility in her eyes and winced a little before it. He was not feeling altogether at his ease. He had had experience of Ruth in this mood, and she had taught him to respect it.

But he was not going to shirk his duty. He resumed:

“I am only speaking for your own good,” he said. “I know that it is nothing but thoughtlessness on your part, but I am naturally anxious⁠—”

“Bailey,” interrupted Ruth, “get to the point.”

Bailey drew a long breath.

“Well, then,” he said, baulked of his preamble, and rushing on his fate, “I think you see too much of Basil Milbank.”

Ruth raised her eyebrows.

“Oh?”

The mildness of her tone deceived Bailey.

“I do not like to speak of these things,” he went on more happily; “but I feel that I must. It is my duty. Basil Milbank has not a good reputation. He is not the sort of man who⁠—ah⁠—who⁠—in fact, he has not a good reputation.”

“Oh?”

“I understand that he has invited you to form one of his yacht party.”

“How did you know?”

“Sybil told me. He invited her. I refused to allow her to accept the invitation.”

“And what did Sybil say?”

“She was naturally a little disappointed, of course, but she did as I requested.”

“I wonder she didn’t pack her things and go straight off.”

“My dear Ruth!”

“That is what I should have done.”

“You don’t know what you are saying.”

“Oh? Do you think I should let Kirk dictate to me like that?”

“He is certain to disapprove of your going when he hears of the invitation. What will you do?”

Ruth’s eyes opened. For a moment she looked almost ugly.

“What shall I do? Why, go, of course.”

She clenched her teeth. A woman’s mind can work curiously, and she was associating Kirk with Bailey in what she considered an unwarrantable intrusion into her private affairs. It was as if Kirk, and not Bailey, were standing there, demanding that she should not associate with Basil Milbank.

“I shall make it my business,” said Bailey, “to warn Kirk that this man is not a desirable companion for you.”

The discussion of this miserable yacht affair had brought back to Bailey all the jealousy which he had felt when Sybil had first told him of it. All the vague stories he had ever heard about Basil were surging in his mind like waves of some corrosive acid. He had become a leading member of the extreme wing of the anti-Milbank party. He regarded Basil with the aversion which a dignified pigeon might feel for a circling hawk; and he was now looking on this yacht party as a deadly peril from which Ruth must be saved at any cost.

“I shall speak to him very strongly,” he added.

Ruth’s suppressed anger blazed up in the sudden way which before now had disconcerted her brother.

“Bailey, what do you mean by coming here and saying this sort of thing? You’re becoming a perfect old woman. You spend your whole time prying into other people’s affairs. I’m sorry for Sybil.”

Bailey cast one reproachable look at her and left the room with pained dignity. Something seemed to tell him that no good could come to him from a prolongation of the interview. Ruth, in this mood, always had been too much for him, and always would be. Well, he had done his duty as far as he was concerned. It now remained to do the same by Kirk.

He hailed a taxi and drove to the studio.

Kirk was busy and not anxious for conversation, least of all with Bailey. He had not forgotten their last tête-à-tête.

Bailey, however, was regarding him with a feeling almost of friendliness. They were bound together by a common grievance against Basil Milbank.

“I came here, Winfield,” he said, after a few moments of awkward conversation on neutral topics, “because I understand that this man Milbank has invited Ruth to join his yacht party.”

“What yacht party?”

“This man Milbank is taking a party for a cruise shortly in his yacht.”

“Who is Milbank?”

“Surely you have met him? Yes, he was at my house one night when you and Ruth dined there shortly after your return.”

“I don’t remember him. However, it doesn’t matter. But why does the fact that he has asked Ruth on his yacht excite you? Are you nervous about the sea?”

“I dislike this man Milbank very much, Winfield. I think Ruth sees too much of him.”

Kirk stiffened. His eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch.

“Oh?” he said.

It seemed to Bailey for an instant that he had been talking all his life to people who raised their eyebrows and said “Oh!” but he continued manfully.

“I do not think that Ruth should know him, Winfield.”

“Wouldn’t Ruth be rather a good judge of that?”

His tone nettled Bailey, but the man conscious of doing his duty acquires an artificial thickness of skin, and he controlled himself. But he had lost that feeling of friendliness, of sympathy with a brother in misfortune which he had brought in with him.

“I disagree with you entirely,” he said.

“Another thing,” went on Kirk. “If this man Milbank⁠—I still can’t place him⁠—is such a thug, or whatever it is that he happens to be, how did he come to be at your house the night you say I met him?”

Bailey winced. He wished the world was not perpetually reminding him that Basil and Sybil were on speaking terms.

“Sybil invited him. I may say he has asked Sybil to make one of the yacht party. I absolutely forbade it.”

“But, Heavens! What’s wrong with the man?”

“He has a bad reputation.”

“Has he, indeed!”

“And I wish my wife to associate with him as little as possible. And I should advise you to forbid Ruth to see more of him than she can help.”

Kirk laughed. The idea struck him as comic.

“My good man, I don’t forbid Ruth to do things.”

Bailey, objecting to being called anyone’s good man, especially Kirk’s, permitted his temper to get the better of him.

“Then you should,” he snapped. “I have no wish to quarrel with you. I came in here in a friendly spirit to warn you; but I must say that for a man who married a girl, as you married Ruth, in direct opposition to the wishes of her family, you take a curious view of your obligations. Ruth has always been a headstrong, impulsive girl, and it is for you to see that she is protected from herself. If you are indifferent to her welfare, then all I can say is that you should not have married her. You appear to think otherwise. Good afternoon.”