The Coming of Bill

It was only later, when he looked back on this conversation, that Kirk realized this. At the moment he was unconscious of it, significant as it was of the fact that there were points at which his mind and Ruth's did not touch.

When Ruth spoke again it was to change the subject.

"Well, Kirk," she said, "have you come back with your trunk crammed with nuggets? You haven't said a word about the mine yet, and I'm dying to know."

He groaned inwardly. The moment he had been dreading had arrived more swiftly than he had expected. It was time for him to face facts.

"No," he said shortly.

Ruth looked at him curiously. She met his eyes and saw the pain in them, and intuition told her in an instant what Kirk, stumbling through his story, could not have told her in an hour. She squeezed his arm affectionately.

"Don't tell me," she said. "I understand. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter a bit."

"Doesn't matter? But——"

Ruth's eyes were dancing.

"Kirk, dear, I've something to tell you. Wait till we get outside."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll soon see?"

They went out into the street. Against the kerb a large red automobile was standing. The chauffeur touched his cap as he saw them. Kirk stared at him dumbly.

"In you get, dear," said Ruth.

She met his astonished gaze with a smile of triumph. This was her moment, the moment for which she had been waiting. The chauffeur started the machine.

"I don't understand. Whose car is this?"

"Mine. Yours. Ours. Oh, Kirk, darling, I was so afraid that you would come back bulging with a fortune that would make my little one look like nothing. But you haven't, you haven't, and it's just splendid." She caught his hand and pressed it. "It's simply sweet of you to look so astonished. I was hoping you would. This car belongs to us, and there's another just as big besides, and a house, and—oh—everything you can think of. Kirk, dear, we've nothing to worry us any longer. We're rich!"

Chapter II An Unknown Path

Kirk blinked. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The automobile was still there, and he was still in it. Ruth was still gazing at him with the triumphant look in her eyes. The chauffeur, silent emblem of a substantial bank-balance, still sat stiffly at the steering-wheel.

"Rich?" Kirk repeated.

"Rich," Ruth assured him.

"I don't understand."

Ruth's smile faded.

"Poor father——"

"Your father?"

"He died just after you sailed. Just before Bill got ill." She gave a little sigh. "Kirk, how odd life is!"

"But——-"

"It was terrible. It was some kind of a stroke. He had been working too hard and taking no exercise. You know when he sent Steve away that time he didn't engage anybody else in his place. He went back to his old way of living, which the doctor had warned him against. He worked and worked, until one day, Bailey says, he fainted at the office. They brought him home, and he just went out like a burned-out candle. I—I went to him, but for a long time he wouldn't see me.

"Oh, Kirk, the hours I spent in the library hoping that he would let me come to him! But he never did till right at the end. Then I went up, and he was dying. He couldn't speak. I don't know now how he felt toward me at the last. I kissed him. He was all shrunk to nothing. I had a horrible feeling that I had never been a real daughter to him. But—but—you know, he made it difficult, awfully difficult. And then he died; Bailey was on one side of the bed and I was on the other, and the nurse and the doctor were whispering outside the door. I could hear them through the transom."

She slipped her hand into Kirk's and sat silent while the car slid into the traffic of Fifth Avenue. For the second time the shadow of the Great Mystery had fallen on the brightness of the perfect morning.

The car had stopped at Thirty-Fourth Street to allow the hurrying crowds to cross the avenue. Kirk looked at them with a feeling of sadness. It was not caused by John Bannister's death. He was too honest to be able to plunge himself into false emotion at will. His feeling was more a vague uneasiness, almost a presentiment. Things changed so quickly in this world. Old landmarks shifted as the crowd of strangers was shifting before him now, hurrying into his life and hurrying out of it.

He, too, had changed. Ruth, though he had detected no signs of it, must be different from the Ruth he had left a year ago. The old life was dead. What had the new life in store for him? Wealth for one thing—other standards of living—new experiences.

An odd sensation of regret that this stream of gold had descended upon him deepened his momentary depression. They had been so happy, he and Ruth and the kid, in the old days of the hermit's cell. Something that was almost a superstitious fear of this unexpected legacy came upon him.