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   Chapter 15 No.15

The Coming of Bill By P. G. Wodehouse Characters: 14804

Updated: 2017-11-29 00:05

The Widening Gap



In a moment of weakness, induced by hair-ruffling, he had given in on the point of the hygienic upbringing of William Bannister; but there, he had imagined, his troubles were to cease. He had supposed that he was about to resume the old hermit's-cell life of the studio and live in a world which contained only Ruth, Bill, and himself.

He was quickly undeceived. Within two days he was made aware of the fact that Ruth was in the very centre of the social whirlpool and that she took it for granted that he would join her there. There was nothing of the hermit about Ruth now. She was amazingly undomestic.

Her old distaste for the fashionable life of New York seemed to have vanished absolutely. As far as Kirk could see, she was always entertaining or being entertained. He was pitched head-long into a world where people talked incessantly of things which bored him and did things which seemed to him simply mad. And Ruth, whom he had thought he understood, revelled in it all.

At first he tried to get at her point of view, to discover what she found to enjoy in this lunatic existence of aimlessness and futility. One night, as they were driving home from a dinner which had bored him unspeakably, he asked the question point-blank. It seemed to him incredible that she could take pleasure in an entertainment which had filled him with such depression.

"Ruth," he said impulsively, as the car moved off, "what do you see in this sort of thing? How can you stand these people? What have you in common with them?"

"Poor old Kirk. I know you hated it to-night. But we shan't be dining with the Baileys every night."


"Were you awfully bored? You seemed to be getting along quite well with


"I like her. She's good fun."



"She does the most absurd things. She gave a freak dinner when you were away that cost I don't know how much. She is always doing something. Well, I suppose Bailey knows what he is about; but at her present pace she must be keeping him busy making money to pay for all her fads. You ought to paint a picture of Bailey, Kirk, as the typical patient American husband. You couldn't get a better model."

"Suggest it to him, and let me hide somewhere where I can hear what he says. Bailey has his own opinion of my pictures."


"What did you ask me just now? Something about--"

"I asked you what you had in common with these people."

Ruth reflected.

"Oh, well, it's rather difficult to say if you put it like that. They're just people, you know. They are amusing sometimes. I used to know most of them. I suppose that is the chief thing which brings us together. They happen to be there, and if you're travelling on a road you naturally talk to your fellow travellers. But why? Don't you like them? Which of them didn't you like?"

It was Kirk's turn to reflect.

"Well, that's hard to answer, too. I don't think I actively liked or disliked any of them. They seemed to me just not worth while. My point is, rather, why are we wasting a perfectly good evening mixing with them? What's the use? That's my case in a nut-shell."

"If you put it like that, what's the use of anything? One must do something. We can't be hermits."


He had tried to deceive himself, but he could do so no longer. Ruth had changed. The curse with which his sensitive imagination had invested John Bannister's legacy was, after all no imaginary curse. Like a golden wedge, it had forced Ruth and himself apart.

Everything had changed. He was no longer the centre of Ruth's life. He was just an encumbrance, a nuisance who could not be got rid of and must remain a permanent handicap, always in the way.


Whatever his faults, Kirk rarely whined. He had never felt so miserable in his life, but he tried to infuse a tone of lightness into the conversation. After all, if Ruth's intuition fell short of enabling her to understand his feelings, nothing was to be gained by parading them.

"I guess it's my fault," he said, "that I haven't got abreast of the society game as yet. You had better give me a few pointers. My trouble is that, being new to them, I can't tell whether these people are types or exceptions. Take Clarence Grayling, for instance. Are there any more at home like Clarence?"

"My dear child, all Bailey's special friends are like Clarence, exactly like. I remember telling him so once."

"Who was the specimen with the little black moustache who thought


Italy? Is he an isolated case or an epidemic?"

"He is scarcer than Clarence, but he's quite a well-marked type. He is the millionaire's son who has done Europe and doesn't mean you to forget it."




ut for the intervention of Mrs. Porter, described in an earlier passage, she would certainly have married Basil. Then Kirk had crossed her path and had monopolized her. During the studio period the recollection of Basil had grown faint. After that, just at the moment when Kirk was not there to lend her strength, he had come back into her life. For nearly a year she had seen him daily; and gradually-at first almost with fear-she had realized that the old fascination was by no means such a thing of the past as she had supposed.

She had hoped for Kirk's return as a general, sorely pressed, hopes for reinforcements. With Kirk at her side she felt Basil would slip back into his proper place in the scheme of things. And, behold! Kirk had returned and still the tension remained unrelaxed.



She collected her thoughts and answered his question.

"Basil Milbank? Oh, I should call him unique."


"Who is he?"

She controlled herself with an effort, and answered indifferently.

"Oh, Basil? Well, you might say he's everything. He plays polo, leads cotillions, yachts, shoots, plays the piano wonderfully-everything. People usually like him very much." She paused. "Women especially."

She had tried to put something into her tone which might serve to awaken him, something which might prepare the way for what she wanted to say-and what, if she did not say it now-when the mood was on her, she could never say. But Kirk was deaf.

"He looks that sort of man," he said.



When he spoke again it was on the subject of street-paving defects in

New York City.

* * * * *

It was true, as Ruth had said, that they did not dine with the Baileys every night, but that seemed to Kirk, as the days went on, the one and only bright spot in the new state of affairs. He could not bring himself to treat life with a philosophical resignation. His was not open revolt. He was outwardly docile, but inwardly he rebelled furiously.



He would seek information from Ruth as they drove home.


"If you mean the fine old gentleman with the slightly prominent eyes and rather thin hair, that was Brock Mason, the vice-president of consolidated groceries. You mustn't even think disrespectfully of a man as rich as that."

"He isn't what you would call a sparkling talker."

"He doesn't have to be. His time is worth a hundred dollars a minute, or a second-I forget which."

"Put me down for a nickel's worth next time."



They had drifted apart. They were out of touch with each other. It was not an uncommon state of things in the circle in which Kirk now found himself. Indeed, it seemed to him that the semi-detached couple was the rule rather than the exception.





He did not refer to the article when he met Ruth, but he was more than ever conscious of the gap between them-the gap which was widening every day.

The experiences he had undergone during the year of his wandering had strengthened Kirk considerably, but nature is not easily expelled; and the constitutional weakness of character which had hampered him through life prevented him from making any open protests or appeal. Moreover, he could understand now her point of view, and that disarmed him.

He saw how this state of things had come about. In a sense, it was the natural state of things. Ruth had been brought up in certain surroundings. Her love for him, new and overwhelming, had enabled her to free herself temporarily from these surroundings and to become reconciled to a life for which, he told himself, she had never been intended. Fate had thrown her back into her natural sphere. And now she revelled in the old environment as an exile revels in the life of the homeland from which he has been so long absent.



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