He leaned back against the cushions, trying to achieve a coolness of mind and body. But the heat of the day kept him unpleasantly soluble, and dismay, that perspiration of the soul, refused to be absorbed by the pocket-handkerchief of philosophy.
Bailey Bannister was a young man who considered the minding of other people's business a duty not to be shirked. Life is a rocky road for such. His motto was "Let me do it!" He fussed about the affairs of Bannister & Son; he fussed about the welfare of his friends at the club; especially, he fussed about his only sister Ruth.
He looked on himself as a sort of guardian to Ruth. Their mother had died when they were children, and old Mr. Bannister was indifferently equipped with the paternal instinct. He was absorbed, body and soul, in the business of the firm. He lived practically a hermit life in the great house on Fifth Avenue; and, if it had not been for Bailey, so Bailey considered, Ruth would have been allowed to do just whatever she pleased. There were those who said that this was precisely what she did, despite Brother Bailey.
It is a hard world for a conscientious young man of twenty-seven.
Bailey paid the cab and went into the house. It was deliciously cool in the hall, and for a moment peace descended on him. But the distant sound of a piano in the upper regions ejected it again by reminding him of his mission. He bounded up the stairs and knocked at the door of his sister's private den.
The piano stopped as he entered, and the girl on the music-stool glanced over her shoulder.
"Well, Bailey," she said, "you look warm."
"I am warm," said Bailey in an aggrieved tone. He sat down solemnly.
"I want to speak to you, Ruth."
Ruth shut the piano and caused the music-stool to revolve till she faced him.
"Well?" she said.
Ruth Bannister was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." From her mother she had inherited the dark eyes and ivory complexion which went so well with her mass of dark hair; from her father a chin of peculiar determination and perfect teeth. Her body was strong and supple. She radiated health.
To her friends Ruth was a source of perplexity. It was difficult to understand her. In the set in which she moved girls married young; yet season followed season, and Ruth remained single, and this so obviously of her own free will that the usual explanation of such a state of things broke down as soon as it was tested.
In shoals during her first two seasons, and lately with less unanimity, men of every condition, from a prince—somewhat battered, but still a prince—to the Bannisters' English butler—a good man, but at the moment under the influence of tawny port, had laid their hearts at her feet. One and all, they had been compelled to pick them up and take them elsewhere. She was generally kind on these occasions, but always very firm. The determined chin gave no hope that she might yield to importunity. The eyes that backed up the message of the chin were pleasant, but inflexible.
Generally it was with a feeling akin to relief that the rejected, when time had begun to heal the wound, contemplated their position. There was something about this girl, they decided, which no fellow could understand: she frightened them; she made them feel that their hands were large and red and their minds weak and empty. She was waiting for something. What it was they did not know, but it was plain that they were not it, and off they went to live happily ever after with girls who ate candy and read best-sellers. And Ruth went on her way, cool and watchful and mysterious, waiting.
The room which Ruth had taken for her own gave, like all rooms when intelligently considered, a clue to the character of its owner. It was the only room in the house furnished with any taste or simplicity. The furniture was exceedingly expensive, but did not look so. The key-note of the colour-scheme was green and white. All round the walls were books. Except for a few prints, there were no pictures; and the only photograph visible stood in a silver frame on a little table.
It was the portrait of a woman of about fifty, square-jawed, tight-lipped, who stared almost threateningly out of the frame; exceedingly handsome, but, to the ordinary male, too formidable to be attractive. On this was written in a bold hand, bristling with emphatic down-strokes and wholly free from feminine flourish: "To my dear Ruth from her Aunt Lora." And below the signature, in what printers call "quotes," a line that was evidently an extract from somebody's published works: "Bear the torch and do not falter."
Bailey inspected this photograph with disfavour. It always irritated him. The information, conveyed to him by amused friends, that his Aunt Lora had once described Ruth as a jewel in a dust-bin, seemed to him to carry an offensive innuendo directed at himself and the rest of the dwellers in the Bannister home. Also, she had called him a worm. Also, again, his actual encounters with the lady, though few, had been memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she had far too great an influence on Ruth. And, lastly, that infernal sentence about the torch, which he found perfectly meaningless, had a habit of running in his head like a catch-phrase, causing him the keenest annoyance.
He pursed his lips disapprovingly and averted his eyes.
"Don't sniff at Aunt Lora, Bailey," said Ruth. "I've had to speak to you about that before. What's the matter? What has sent you flying up here?"
"I have had a shock," said Bailey. "I have been very greatly disturbed. I have just been speaking to Clarence Grayling."
He eyed her accusingly through his gold-rimmed glasses. She remained tranquil.
"And what had Clarence to say?"
"A great many things."
"I gather he told you I had refused him."
"If it were only that!"
Ruth rapped the piano sharply.
"Bailey," she said, "wake up. Either get to the point or go or read a book or do some tatting or talk about something else. You know perfectly well that I absolutely refuse to endure your impressive manner. I believe when people ask you the time you look pained and important and make a mystery of it. What's troubling you? I should have thought Clarence would have kept quiet about insulting me. But apparently he has no sense of shame."
Bailey gaped. Bailey was shocked and alarmed.
"Insulting you! What do you mean? Clarence is a gentleman. He is incapable of insulting a woman."
"Is he? He told me I was a suitable wife for a wretched dwarf with the miserably inadequate intelligence which nature gave him reduced to practically a minus quantity by alcohol! At least, he implied it. He asked me to marry him."
"I have just left him at the club. He is very upset."
"I should imagine so." A soft smile played over Ruth's face. "I spoke to Clarence. I explained things to him. I lit up Clarence's little mind like a searchlight."
Bailey rose, tremulous with just wrath.
"You spoke to him in a way that I can only call outrageous and improper, and—er—outrageous."
He paced the room with agitated strides. Ruth watched him calmly.
"If the overflowing emotion of a giant soul in torment makes you knock over a table or smash a chair," she said, "I shall send the bill for repairs to you. You had far better sit down and talk quietly. What is worrying you, Bailey?"
"Is it nothing," demanded her brother, "that my sister should have spoken to a man as you spoke to Clarence Grayling?"
With an impassioned gesture he sent a flower-vase crashing to the floor.
"I told you so," said Ruth. "Pick up the bits, and don't let the water spoil the carpet. Use your handkerchief. I should