Part 41 (1/2)

Fate could have provided no more suitable ally for Kirk. It was universally admitted around Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.h.i.+rked 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.”