The Real Thing
Kirk sat in the nursery with his chin on his hands, staring gloomily at
William Bannister. On the floor William Bannister played some game of
his own invention with his box of bricks.
They were alone. It was the first time they had been alone together for
two weeks. As a rule, when Kirk paid his daily visit, Lora Delane
Porter was there, watchful and forbidding, prepared, on the slightest
excuse, to fall upon him with rules and prohibitions. To-day she was
out, and Kirk had the field to himself, for Mamie, whose duty it was to
mount guard, and who had been threatened with many terrible things by
Mrs. Porter if she did not stay on guard, had once more allowed her too
sympathetic nature to get the better of her and had vanished.
Kirk was too dispirited to take advantage of his good fortune. He had a
sense of being there on parole, of being on his honour not to touch. So
he sat in his chair, and looked at Bill; while Bill, crooning to
himself, played decorously with bricks.
The truth had been a long time in coming home to Kirk, but it had
reached him at last. Ever since his return he had clung to the belief
that it was a genuine conviction of its merits that had led Ruth to
support her aunt’s scheme for Bill’s welfare. He himself had always
looked on the exaggerated precautions for the maintenance of the
latter’s health as ridiculous and unnecessary; but he had acquiesced in
them because he thought that Ruth sincerely believed them
indispensable.
After all, he had not been there when Bill so nearly died, and he could
understand that the shock of that episode might have distorted the
judgment even of a woman so well balanced as Ruth. He was quite ready
to be loyal to her in the matter, however distasteful it might be to
him.
But now he saw the truth. A succession of tiny incidents had brought
light to him. Ruth might or might not be to some extent genuine in her
belief in the new system, but her chief motive for giving it her
support was something quite different. He had tried not to admit to
himself, but he could do so no longer. Ruth allowed Mrs. Porter to have
her way because it suited her to do so; because, with Mrs. Porter on
the premises, she had more leisure in which to amuse herself; because,
to put it in a word, the child had begun to bore her.
Everything pointed to that. In the old days it had been her chief
pleasure to be with the boy. Their walks in the park had been a daily
ceremony with which nothing had been allowed to interfere. But now she
always had some excuse for keeping away from him.
Her visits to the nursery, when she did go there, were brief and
perfunctory. And the mischief of it was that she always presented such
admirable reasons for abstaining from Bill’s society, when it was
suggested to her that she should go to him, that it was impossible to
bring her out into the open and settle the matter once and for all.
Patience was one of the virtues which set off the defects in Kirk’s
character; but he did not feel very patient now as he sat and watched
Bill playing on the floor.
“Well, Bill, old man, what do you make of it all?” he said at last.
The child looked up and fixed him with unwinking eyes. Kirk winced.
They were so exactly Ruth’s eyes. That wide-open expression when
somebody, speaking suddenly to her, interrupted a train of thought, was
one of her hundred minor charms.
Bill had reproduced it to the life. He stared for a moment; then, as if
there had been some telepathy between them, said: “I want mummy.”
Kirk laughed bitterly.
“You aren’t the only one. I want mummy, too.”
“Where is mummy?”
“I couldn’t tell you exactly. At a luncheon-party somewhere.”
“What’s luncheon-party?”
“A sort of entertainment where everybody eats too much and talks all
the time without ever saying a thing that’s worth hearing.”
Bill considered this gravely.
“Why?”
“Because they like it, I suppose.”
“Why do they like it?”
“Goodness knows.”
“Does mummy like it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Does mummy eat too much?”
“She doesn’t. The others do.”
“Why?”
William Bannister’s thirst for knowledge was at this time perhaps his
most marked characteristic. No encyclopaedia could have coped with it.
Kirk was accustomed to do his best, cheerfully yielding up what little
information on general subjects he happened to possess, but he was like
Mrs. Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean with her broom.
“Because they’ve been raised that way,” he replied to the last
question. “Bill, old man, when you grow up, don’t you ever become one
of these fellows who can’t walk two blocks without stopping three times
to catch up with their breath. If you get like that mutt Dana Ferris
you’ll break my heart. And you’re heading that way, poor kid.”
“What’s Ferris?”
“He’s a man I met at dinner the other night. When he was your age he
was the richest child in America, and everybody fussed over him till he
grew up into a wretched little creature with a black moustache and two
chins. You ought to see him. He would make you laugh; and you don’t get
much to laugh at nowadays. I guess it isn’t hygienic for a kid to
laugh. Bill, honestly—what _do_ you think of things? Don’t you ever
want to hurl one of those sterilized bricks of yours at a certain lady?
Or has she taken all the heart out of you by this time?”
This was beyond Bill, as Kirk’s monologues frequently were. He changed
the subject.
“I wish I had a cat,” he said, by way of starting a new topic.
“Well, why haven’t you a cat? Why haven’t you a dozen cats if you want
them?”
“I asked Aunty Lora could I have a cat, and she said: ‘Certainly not,
cats are—cats are——”
“Unhygienic?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s what your Aunt Lora might think a cat was. Or did she say
pestilential?”
“I don’t amember.”
“But she wouldn’t let you have one?”
“Mamie said a cat might scratch me.”
“Well, you wouldn’t mind that?” said Kirk anxiously.
He had come to be almost morbidly on the look-out for evidence which
might go to prove that this cotton-wool existence was stealing from the
child the birthright of courage which was his from both his parents.
Much often depends on little things, and, if Bill had replied in the
affirmative to the question, it would probably have had the result of
sending Kirk there and then raging through the house conducting a sort
of War of Independence.
The only thing that had kept him from doing so before was the
reflection that Mrs. Porter’s system could not be definitely taxed with
any harmful results. But his mind was never easy. Every day found him
still nervously on the alert for symptoms.
Bill soothed him now by answering “No” in a very decided voice. All
well so far, but it had been an anxious moment.
It seemed incredible to Kirk that the life he was leading should not in
time turn the child into a whimpering bundle of nerves. His
conversations with Bill were, as a result, a sort of spiritual parallel
to the daily taking of his temperature with the thermometer. Sooner or
later he always led the talk round to some point where Bill must make a
definite pronouncement which would show whether or not the insidious
decay had begun to set in.
So far all appeared to be well. In earlier conversations Bill, subtly
questioned, had stoutly maintained that he was not afraid of Indians,
dogs, pirates, mice, cows, June-bugs, or noises in the dark. He had
even gone so far as to state that if an Indian chief found his way into
the nursery he, Bill, would chop his head off. The most exacting father
could not have asked more. And yet Kirk was not satisfied: he remained
uneasy.
It so happened that this afternoon Bill, who had had hitherto to
maintain his reputation for intrepidity entirely by verbal statements,
was afforded an opportunity of providing a practical demonstration that
his heart was in the right place. The game he was playing with the
bricks was one that involved a certain amount of running about with a
puffing accompaniment of a vaguely equine nature. And while performing
this part of the programme he chanced to trip. He hesitated for a
moment, as if uncertain whether to fall or remain standing; then did
the former with a most emphatic bump.
He scrambled up, stood looking at Kirk with a twitching lip, then gave
a great gulp, and resumed his trotting. The whole exhibition of
indomitable heroism was over in half a minute, and he did not even
bother to wait for applause.
The effect of the incident on Kirk was magical. He was in the position
of an earnest worshipper who, tortured with doubts, has prayed for a
sign. This was a revelation. A million anti-Indian statements, however
resolute, were nothing to this.
This was the real thing. Before his eyes this super-child of his had
fallen in a manner which might quite reasonably have led to tears;
which would, Kirk felt sure, have produced bellows of anguish from
every other child in America. And what had happened? Not a moan. No,
sir, not one solitary cry. Just a gulp which you had to strain your
ears to hear, and which, at that, might have been a mere taking-in of
breath such as every athlete must do, and all was over.
This child of his was the real thing. It had been proved beyond
possibility of criticism.
There are moments when a man on parole forgets his promise. All thought
of rules and prohibitions went from Kirk. He rose from his seat,
grabbed his son with both hands, and hugged him. We cannot even begin
to estimate the number of bacilli which must have rushed, whooping with
joy, on to the unfortunate child. Under a microscope it would probably
have looked like an Old Home Week. And Kirk did not care. He simply
kept on hugging. That was the sort of man he was—thoroughly heartless.
“Bill, you’re great!” he cried.
Bill had been an amazed party to the incident. Nothing of this kind had
happened to him for so long that he had forgotten there were children
to whom this sort of thing did happen. Then he recollected a similar
encounter with a bearded man down in the hall when he came in one
morning from his ride in the automobile. A moment later he had
connected his facts.
This man who had no beard was the same man as the man who had a beard,
and this behaviour was a personal eccentricity of his. The thought
crossed his mind that Aunty Lora would not approve of this.
And then, surprisingly, there came the thought that he did not care
whether Aunty Lora approved or not. _He_ liked it, and that was enough
for him.
The seeds of revolt had been sown in the bosom of William Bannister.
It happened that Ruth, returning from her luncheon-party, looked in at
the nursery on her way upstairs. She was confronted with the spectacle
of Bill seated on Kirk’s lap, his face against Kirk’s shoulder. Kirk,
though he had stopped speaking as the door opened, appeared to be in
the middle of a story, for Bill, after a brief glance at the newcomer,
asked: “What happened then?”
“Kirk, really!” said Ruth.
Kirk did not appear in the least ashamed of himself.
“Ruth, this kid is the most amazing kid. Do you know what happened just
now? He was running along and he tripped and came down flat. And he
didn’t even think of crying. He just picked himself up, and——”
“That was very brave of you, Billy. But, seriously, Kirk, you shouldn’t
hug him like that. Think what Aunt Lora would say!”
“Aunt Lora be——Bother Aunt Lora!”
“Well, I won’t give you away. If she heard, she would write a book
about it. And she was just starting to come up when I was downstairs.
We came in together. You had better fly while there’s time.”
It was sound advice, and Kirk took it.
It was not till some time later, going over the incident again in his
mind, he realized how very lightly Ruth had treated what, if she really
adhered to Mrs. Porter’s views on hygiene, should have been to her a
dreadful discovery. The reflection was pleasant to him for a moment; it
seemed to draw Ruth and himself closer together; then he saw the
reverse side of it.
If Ruth did not really believe in this absurd hygienic nonsense, why
had she permitted it to be practised upon the boy? There was only one
answer, and it was the one which Kirk had already guessed at. She did
it because it gave her more freedom, because it bored her to look after
the child herself, because she was not the same Ruth he had left at the
studio when he started with Hank Jardine for Colombia.