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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12557 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 12557-h.htm or 12557-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/5/12557/12557-h/12557-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/5/12557/12557-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PENALTY
+
+By
+
+Gouverneur Morris
+
+Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Are you in love with me now?" he
+asked wistfully]
+
+
+
+
+TO MARY BALDWIN
+
+If I should lose from my life that part of it of which you are a part,
+there would be but a skeleton left. Yet if you had played a larger part
+in my life I should have been so spoiled that there would be no living
+with me. And I'm spoiled enough, God knows!
+
+In the Iliad you wrote for me, and I "drawed" for us both, 'twas Hector
+fixed Achilles. When I sat at your right hand and your sharp, swift
+knife went into the turkey, 'twas I that got the tit-bits and the
+oyster. And all was right with the world _then_, I can tell you!
+
+We have ridden together over old battlefields, and I have worn the
+epaulettes and the swords in the attic, and listened to tales of the
+great brother who died of the war, and whose bull-terrier Jerry chased
+the cannon-balls at Gettysburg. Oh, the cutlass captured from the
+Confederate ram, and the wooden canteen, and the Confederate money (in a
+frame)! I was the hunter that used to handle the Colt (with the ships
+engraved on the cylinder) that shot the buffalo from the rear platform
+of the train, and was stolen by a genuine thief. Is Jeff Davis's bible
+that he gave to the brother who with Major R. caused game chickens to
+fight for the edification of his captivity still in your upper
+bureau drawer?
+
+Are the photographs that General Gilmore had taken of Charleston siege
+still in the bookcase with the glass doors? Or have they vanished like
+the child's footprint that I made for you when we were planting the--the
+"plant," and I was going away?
+
+Time has passed. _Grand_ nephews are as young and hopeful as nephews used
+to be. _I_ have written innumerable miserable grovelling tales. I
+dedicate this one to you; despairing at last of writing that masterpiece
+which should have been worthy of you.
+
+But tell me this: Is there still a little corner of your heart that I
+may call mine? a corner into which no one else is allowed to
+put--yes--to put _foot_? Oh, but I should be glad to know that!
+
+G.M.
+
+BEDFORD, February, 1913.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Are you in love with me now?" he asked wistfully (Frontispiece).
+
+She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had 4
+never been born.
+
+She had on her work-apron, but she was not working.
+
+He praised, blamed, patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with
+superiority on topics which are best left alone.
+
+She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into the tin cup.
+
+The young man knelt at the door by which he had entered and began to
+remove its ancient lock.
+
+Harry, the workman, ... rose to his feet, and turned to Barbara with a
+certain quiet eagerness.
+
+But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even larger and more stately
+rooms, chatted ... as two children.
+
+She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.
+
+In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell
+of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo".
+
+Dr. Ferris frowned. "I'm not trying to interfere," he said. "You're old
+enough to know what's best for you".
+
+"Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending me
+flowers".
+
+In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.
+
+He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab.... "Here I
+wishes you salutations".
+
+Wilmot Allen took her in to dinner, and looked much love at her, and
+talked much nonsense.
+
+He saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand ... and his stout heart
+failed him a little.
+
+When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried.
+
+The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.
+
+And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara.
+
+"'D afternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles.
+
+"I want me thumb bandaged".
+
+She said in a small; surprised voice, "Why, it's finished".
+
+In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily.
+
+Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind
+her.
+
+They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most
+formal of their many gardens.
+
+"What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He went away," said
+Barbara, her eyes troubled.
+
+He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.
+
+"I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff".
+
+"Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house".
+
+"I've seen that man. I was writing notes in the summer house when he
+came".
+
+"Read that, father".
+
+The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table.
+
+"You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry".
+
+They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for Christmas
+vacation.
+
+"And when you think," said she, "that some women spend the best years of
+their lives making _statues_!"
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's
+first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not
+have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men,
+had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew
+only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and
+that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider
+herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When
+she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one long
+depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and hated
+herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and only
+touch of mania. It lasted only a little while and was not acute. She got
+the idea that she was being watched, spied on, and followed. But she was
+too strong in body and mind to give in for long to so silly an
+hallucination. And when she had dismissed the second man and her maid,
+who had particularly excited her suspicions, the mania left her, as a
+dream leaves at waking.
+
+In her seventeenth year she was presented to society, and became an
+immense favorite. There were excellent reasons for this: she was lovely
+to look at, she would inherit a great deal of money, she had charming
+natural manners, and she was sweet-tempered.
+
+During her second season she had an unpleasant experience. She had
+almost reached an understanding with a certain young man with whom she
+fancied herself in love. They were spending a Saturday to Monday at a
+great place on Long Island. On Sunday night, her host, a man old enough
+to be her father, invited her to see his rose garden by moonlight. She
+accepted this invitation as a matter of course. Pacing down a path
+between tall privet hedges, her host, who for some minutes seemed to
+have lost the use of his tongue, made her a sudden impassioned
+declaration of love, seized her in his arms, and kissed her wherever he
+could with a kind of dreadful fury. For half a minute she stood still as
+a statue. Then, crimson with shame and anger, she wrenched free, and
+struck him heavy blows on the face and head with her strong young fists.
+She beat him, not indeed to insensibility, but to his senses. They
+returned to the house after a time, and entered the drawing-room talking
+in lazy, natural voices and praising the beauty of the night and of the
+garden. Not even Barbara's lover suspected that anything out of the
+common had happened.
+
+Barbara, having played half a dozen rubbers of bridge with the great
+skill and sweet temper which were natural to her, excused herself, went
+to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having
+been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the
+unforgettable, unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious
+kissing she had found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She
+wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had never
+been born.
+
+It seemed terrible to her that she could at once be in love with one man
+and enjoy the kisses of another. She had heard of girls who were thus,
+and had for them the contempt which they deserved. And yet it seemed
+that she was one of them; neither better nor worse. What Barbara did not
+realize was, that in the first place she was not really in love with
+anybody and never had been, and that it was not she herself who enjoyed
+being kissed by a man to whom she was indifferent, neither liking nor
+loathing, but nature, which for reasons, or perhaps only whims, of its
+own, tempts the cell to divide and the flower to go to seed.
+
+Through the tangle of her love affairs Wilmot Allen threaded a path of
+hope, despair, and cynicism. There were times when she seemed to have a
+return of her childhood infatuation for him; there were times when he
+feared that in one of her moments of impressionable enthusiasm she would
+marry some other man in haste, and repent at leisure. And there were the
+cynical intervals, when it seemed to him that he could do without her,
+and that nothing was worth while but enjoyment, both base and innocent,
+and pleasure.
+
+During Wilmot's junior year at New Haven, his father's sensational,
+dissipated, and stock-gambling career came to a sudden end. There was
+even a shadow on the name. He had done something _really_ discreditable,
+something of course to do with money; since a man who is _merely_ a
+gambler, a drunkard, and a Don Juan may with ease keep upon good terms
+with society.
+
+Wilmot Allen failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of
+brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his
+mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was
+"accidentally shot while cleaning the weapon."
+
+The real tragedy was that so good a career as the son's should have come
+to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale. He stood
+well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was
+heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have
+received an election to a senior society in the spring. But the solid
+ground being withdrawn from under his feet--in other words, his
+allowance from his father--he left amid universal regret, and found
+himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had
+always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, and color, and who
+now had no visible means of support.
+
+[Illustration: She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better,
+that she had never been born.]
+
+Friends found him a position in Wall Street. Being young, attractive,
+a good "mixer," not in the least shy, he was given a handsome
+"entertaining" allowance and told to bring in business. So he
+foregathered with out-of-town magnates, made the city a pleasant,
+familiar place to them, and brought much of their money into the firm's
+office. When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and
+strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.
+
+And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her,
+Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if
+not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of
+his nature, and hardened his heart.
+
+If the father's heritage, drink and women, were spared him, or at least
+that part of him which was really noble, a love of cleanness,
+clear-mindedness, and purity, died hard. But gambling was second nature
+to him. He could not enjoy a game unless he had something on it; and all
+book-makers and proprietors of gambling-houses were friends of his and
+called him by his first name. Sometimes through a series of lucky turns
+he rose to heights of picturesque affluence; more often he was
+stone-broke; but so much money passed through his hands in the course of
+a year that it was always possible for him to borrow and live well
+enough on credit. Money became his passion, not for its own sake, not
+for the sake of what it could buy, but because it was a game upon which
+the best wits of the world have been engaged for ages and ages--and
+because you have to have it, or be able to owe so much that it amounts
+to the same thing.
+
+At first when he got in a hole, owed money which he saw no way of
+raising, Wilmot suffered all the anguish and remorse of the trustee who
+has speculated with orphans' funds (for the first time) and lost them.
+Gradually he became hardened. And those who knew him best could never
+tell whether he was worth fifty thousand or had just lost that much. He
+drew upon a stock of courage and cheerfulness worthy of even the noblest
+cause, until the term "self-respect" dropped automatically from his
+inner vocabulary and his moral sense became a rotten, rusty buckler
+through which the spear of temptation or necessity passed like a pin
+through a sheet of tissue-paper.
+
+He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to
+dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the
+contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and
+in soul.
+
+One day, being at his wit's end, he walked rapidly, seeking light,
+through a quarter of the city which was not familiar to him. He was in
+that mood when a man does not wish to be at the trouble of nodding or
+exchanging a word even with his best friend. A voice hailed him,
+"Mr. Allen."
+
+He stopped and saw that the voice came from a legless man who sat in the
+sun by a hand-organ on which were displayed for sale a few pairs of
+shoe-laces and, to excite charity, a battered (and empty) tin cup.
+
+"Have you forgotten me?"
+
+The light of recognition had twinkled instantly in Wilmot's eyes, for he
+was wonderful at remembering faces. And he smiled and said:
+
+"Of course not. How are you?"
+
+"Pretty well," said the beggar. "And you?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+Wilmot's giving hand had slipped automatically into his trousers pocket.
+Then, for once in his charitable life, he hesitated, since the pocket
+contained nothing but a ten-dollar bill, and that was all the money he
+had in the world with which to meet a pressing note of ten thousand. His
+hesitation lasted only a moment. He laughed and stuffed the ten-dollar
+bill into the cup, and said:
+
+"For old acquaintance' sake."
+
+The beggar studied the young man's face. Then he said: "Mr. Allen, I
+once had the honor to warn you against three things."
+
+"I remember."
+
+"Your face is innocent of wine and women. How about the gambling?"
+
+"My friend," said Wilmot, "you read me like a book. The gambling is all
+to the bad. I have just given you all the money I had in the world."
+
+"A few dollars are of no use to me," said the beggar.
+
+"Nor to me. Don't worry."
+
+"I am not worrying. I'm thinking that you and I have something in
+common. And for that reason I am tempted to ask if a few thousand would
+be of any use to you?"
+
+Wilmot smiled with engaging candor. "Fifteen thousand would."
+
+"You shall have them," said the beggar shortly. He pointed to a glazed
+door across which was printed in gilt letters:
+
+     BLIZZARD--MFR. HATS
+
+"That," said the beggar, "is my name, and that is my place of business.
+Come in."
+
+Wilmot followed the beggar through the glass door, which at opening and
+closing caused a bell to clang. The front of the establishment was
+occupied by a dust-ridden salesroom, and an office with yellow-pine
+partitions. As he followed the beggar into this, Wilmot caught a glimpse
+in the distance of fifteen or twenty young girls who sat at a long table
+industriously plaiting straw hats. He lifted his own hat a little
+mechanically, and thought that he had never seen so many pretty girls at
+one time under one roof.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Wilmot buttoned his coat over fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. Only
+supreme necessity could have persuaded him to take them, since, although
+he had not put his name to a paper of any kind, he felt a little as if
+he had sold himself to the devil. But Blizzard had shown him no
+deviltry; only kindness and a certain whimsicality of speech and a point
+of view that was engaging.
+
+The transaction finished, Wilmot was for leaving, but being under
+obligation to the legless man was at pains not to be abrupt. He lingered
+then a little, and they talked.
+
+"The first time we met," said the beggar, "you were roller-skating with
+a pretty child. She was so pretty that I asked you her name. And I have
+never forgotten it."
+
+He did not add that he had watched that pretty child's goings and
+comings for many years; that he had lain in wait to see her pass; that
+he had bribed servants in her father's house to give him news of her:
+and that the day approached when, fearing neither man nor God, he
+proposed that she should disappear from the world that knew her, and go
+down into the infamous depths of that vengeance which had been the
+key-note of his life. Nor did he add that there were but two
+contingencies which he felt might thwart his plans: her marriage to
+Wilmot Allen, or his own untimely death. And he feared the latter but
+little. The former, however, had at times seemed imminent to those who
+spied upon the daily life of the heiress for him, and in lending money
+to Wilmot he was taking a first step toward making it impossible. For
+Barbara herself Blizzard had at this time no more feeling than for a
+pawn upon a chess-board. It pleased his sense of fitness to know she was
+beautiful; and to be told that she was like sunshine in her
+father's house.
+
+"What has become of her?" he said.
+
+"Of Miss Ferris?" Wilmot did not care to discuss her with a stranger.
+But unfortunately there were fifteen thousand dollars of the stranger's
+money in his inside pocket. "She became a great favorite in society," he
+said, "and then dropped out to study art."
+
+"Painting?" The legless man knew perfectly well, but it suited him to
+make inquiries. "Music?"
+
+"Sculpture," said Wilmot shortly.
+
+"Is she succeeding?"
+
+"She works very hard, and she has talent."
+
+"That is not enthusiastic."
+
+"You mustn't ask me; I'm not an art critic."
+
+"What a pity."
+
+"A pity that I'm not an art critic?"
+
+"No. A pity for a beautiful girl to do anything but exist."
+
+Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. The beggar's speech surprised him,
+and pleased him, since it expressed a favorite thought of his own.
+
+"Is any of her work on exhibition? Having seen her once, one takes an
+interest, you know."
+
+"I think there is nothing that can be seen," said Wilmot coolly, "except
+upon special invitation. And I think she is very shy of showing anything
+that she has done."
+
+"True artists," said Blizzard, who criminally was an artist himself and
+knew what he was talking about, "live in the future."
+
+Again Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. Why should a legless beggar be
+able to make loans of fifteen thousand dollars, and why should he be
+able to talk like a gentleman?
+
+"I am interested in art," continued Blizzard; "sometimes I have earned a
+few dollars by sitting for my portrait."
+
+He did not add that he continually put himself in the way of artists in
+the hope that his fame as a model would reach Barbara, and touch her
+imagination. He did not add that he haunted Washington Square and
+McBurney Place, where her studio was, in the hope that his face, which
+he knew to be different and more terrible than other faces, might kindle
+a fire of inspiration in her. He believed rightly that if a woman once
+looked him in the eyes she would never forget him. But hitherto Barbara
+had not so much as glanced at him, since she carried her lovely head
+very high, and looked straight before her as she went. While, as for
+him, he stood upon the stumps of his legs, a gigantic sort of dwarf,
+beneath the notice of the proud-eyed and the tall.
+
+Wilmot passed out of the place in deep thought; not even the pretty
+girls plaiting straw won a glance from him. Coupled with the relief of
+being out of present difficulties was a disagreeable sense of
+foreboding. Suppose the legless man were to ask favors of him before the
+money could be repaid? Suppose they were favors which a gentleman could
+not grant? And he determined to find out, from the police if necessary,
+just what sort of a man it was with whom he had had dealings.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+It seemed to Wilmot that he had not seen Barbara for an age. And indeed
+a week had passed without their meeting. Therefore, although he had
+often been forbidden to call during working hours, he had himself driven
+to 17 McBurney Place and climbed the two flights of stairs to
+her studio.
+
+It was a disconsolate Barbara who received him. She had on her
+work-apron, but she was not working. She sat in a deep chair, and
+presented the soles of her small shoes to an open fire. Wilmot,
+expecting to be scolded for disobeying orders, was relieved at being
+received with visible signs of pleasure.
+
+"You're just the person I wanted to see," she said, "just the one and
+only Wilmot in the world."
+
+"Are you dying?" he asked.
+
+She laughed. "I'm discouraged. I've come to one of those times when you
+just want to chuck everything. And there's a man at the bottom of it."
+
+"Tell me," said Wilmot, "in words of two syllables."
+
+"Well," said Barbara, "I woke up in the middle of the night out of a
+dream. I dreamed I'd made a statue of Satan after the fall from heaven,
+and that everybody said: 'Well done, Barbs, bully for you,' 'Got Rodin
+skinned a mile'--it was you said that--and so forth and so on. I rose,
+swollen with conceit, and made a sketch of the head I'd dreamed about,
+so's not to forget the pose, and then I went to sleep again. Next day,
+early, a man stopped me in Washington Square and begged for a dime. I
+looked at him, and he had just the expression of the fallen Satan I'd
+dreamed about--a beast of a face, but all filled with a sort of hopeless
+longing to 'get back,' and remorse. I invited him to pose for me--not
+for a dime--but for real money. Well, he fell for it. And for all that
+morning he looked just the way I wanted him to look. But the next
+morning, having had the spending of certain moneys, he looked too tidy
+and well fed for Satan. And this morning he was hopeless. He looked smug
+and fatuous and disgustingly self-satisfied. So I gave him quite a lot
+of money, not wishing to hurt the creature's feelings, and told him to
+go away." She looked up, laughing at herself. "Do you know, I really
+believed I'd dreamed out a golden inspiration, and then to strike just
+the face I wanted--and then to have everything foozle out!"
+
+Wilmot walked over to the modelling-table on which, strongly modelled in
+wet clay but quite meaningless, was the bust of a man.
+
+"I think." said Barbara, "it would look better if you snubbed his nose
+for him."
+
+Wilmot snubbed the long nose heavenward, and the effect was such as to
+make them laugh. Barbara recovered all her usual good humor.
+
+[Illustration: She had on her work-apron, but she was not working.]
+
+"Get some forms out of the kitchen," she said, "and we'll turn him
+into mud pies."
+
+For half an hour they diverted themselves, displaying a tremendous
+rivalry and enthusiasm. And then Barbara announced that there had been
+enough foolishness, and that if Wilmot would put fuel on the fire, he
+might talk with her till lunch-time and then take her out to lunch.
+
+"Always provided," she said, "that you are not broke at the moment. In
+which case Barbara will pay and tip."
+
+"I've had a funny adventure," said Wilmot. "I _was_ dreadfully broke. A
+man I hadn't seen for years and years--and only the once at
+that--stopped me in the street, told me I was broke, and offered to lend
+me money. Wilmot accepted, and is now plenty flush enough to blow to
+lunch, thank you!"
+
+Barbara, reseated herself in the deep chair, and once more presented the
+soles of her shoes to the flames. "Look here," she said, "aren't you,
+just among old friends, rather flitting your life away? I don't think
+it's very pretty to borrow money from strangers, and to be always just
+getting into difficulties or just getting out of them. Do you?"
+
+"Well, you know," said Wilmot earnestly, "I don't. When I don't hate
+myself, I don't like myself any too well. But there's something wrong
+with me. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe I lack an impulse. Maybe I'd do
+better if any single solitary person in this world really gave a damn
+about me."
+
+His cheerful boyish face assumed a proper solemnity of expression, and
+a certain nobility. At the moment he really thought that nobody in the
+world cared what became of him.
+
+"Nobody," said Barbara, "likes to back a flighty pony. You yourself, for
+instance, are always putting money, your own or some one else's, on
+horses that always run somewhere near form. Of course you have excuses
+for yourself."
+
+"I? None."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. You were brought up to be rich, and you were left
+poor, and a man has to live and even secure for himself the luxuries to
+which he has been accustomed. Haven't you ever excused yourself to
+yourself something like that?"
+
+Wilmot admitted that he had, and went further. "You can't knock livings
+out of a tree with a stick like ripe apples," he said. "You've either
+got to use your wits or begin at the bottom and work up. And it seems to
+me that I'd rather be a little bit tarnished than toil away the best
+years of my life the way some men I know are doing."
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, "but why not go somewhere where the world is
+younger, and there are real chances to be a man, and real opportunities
+to make money in real ways? I don't blame you for living on your wits. I
+blame you for gambling and never getting anywhere and not caring."
+
+"Not caring? And this from you?"
+
+She changed color under his steady eyes.
+
+"You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of
+honor I'll settle to something above-board and make it hum. Look here
+now! How about it? Who's been so faithful to the one girl for so long?
+Who understands her so well? Who'd enjoy dying for her so much?"
+
+"Good old Wilmot," she said gently and gave him her hand. He kissed it
+and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away
+from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness: "I mustn't
+ever marry anybody. I've learned to know myself too well. And I've no
+constancy, and I don't trust myself."
+
+"That," said Wilmot with the faith of a fanatic in his god, "is because
+you've never really cared."
+
+"And besides," she said, "I have what I am pleased to call my career.
+And 'Down to Gehenna and up to the throne he travels fastest who
+travels alone.'"
+
+"True," said Wilmot, "he arrives soonest, but all tired out, and the
+house is empty, and there are no children in it, and only paid servants.
+And it may be very showy to live for fame, but it isn't good enough.
+When we turned that bust you began into mud pies, we did a wise thing.
+We amused ourselves, and we said the last word on art as opposed to
+life. The best thing in this world is to _be_ children and to _have_
+children--and the next best thing is nowhere."
+
+"Would you," said Barbara, and her eyes twinkled a little, "really
+rather be a parent than a Praxiteles?"
+
+"It looks to me," said Wilmot sadly, "sometimes--in moments of
+despondency--as if the honorable gentleman was never going to be either.
+But then again," and he spoke in a strong voice, "I believe in my heart
+that after you've done handling the book of life and admiring the
+binding, you'll open it at chapter one, and read, '_Young
+Wilmot_ Allen--'"
+
+"Lunch-time," said Barbara, and she rose from the comfortable chair with
+sharp decision. "I vote for a thick steak, being famished. Is my hair
+all mussy?"
+
+"No," said Wilmot dejectedly. "I wish it was. And I wish it was my
+fault--and yours."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"I've done enough for you more than once," said the legless man; "you're
+big enough and strong enough to work, but you're a born loafer."
+
+"I had a job." The speaker, a shabby, unshaven man with a beastly face,
+whined dolefully. "And I done right; but I got the sack."
+
+"What was the job and why were you sacked?"
+
+"I got a job as a artist's model. I sits in a chair while the lady makes
+a statue out of my face, and then she gives me money, and I goes and
+spends it. The third day she gives me more money, and tells me I looks
+too well fed and happy to suit her, and sends me away."
+
+The legless man was astonished to learn that his heart was beating with
+unaccustomed force and rapidity. "Who was the artist?"
+
+"She's a lady name o' Ferris."
+
+The legless man steeled his face to express nothing. "Ferris," he
+commented briefly.
+
+"Say," said the unshaven man, "what's all that about the devil falling
+out of heaven and fetching up in hell?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"That's how she says I looks. And she wants to make a statue of him,
+just when he comes to and sits up, and looks up and sees how far he's
+fell. She says my face has all the sorrers and horrors of the world
+in it."
+
+"And then, you fool," said the legless man, "you spoiled her game by
+high living. You ate and you drank till you looked like a paranoiac
+bulldog asleep in the sun. Where was the lady's studio?"
+
+"Seventeen McBurney Place."
+
+"And she wants to do a Satan, does she?"
+
+The unshaven man drew back from the expression of the legless man, in
+whose face it was as if all the fires of hell had suddenly burst into
+flame. The unshaven man covered the breast of his threadbare coat with
+outstretched hands as if to shield himself from some suddenly bared
+weapon. His eyes blinked, but did not falter.
+
+"Say," he said presently, after drawing a deep breath, "if she could see
+you once."
+
+"If I don't know," said the legless man, "how Satan felt after the fall,
+nobody does. The things I've been--the things I've seen--back
+there--down here--the things I've lost--the things I've found! Hell's
+Bell's, Johnson! what is it you want--food?--drink?--a woman?"
+
+The unshaven man's eyes shone with an unholy light.
+
+"What would you do for twenty-five dollars?"
+
+The unshaven man said nothing. He looked everything.
+
+"Do you know the McIver woman?"
+
+"Fanny?"
+
+The legless man granted. "Yes. Fanny. She'll look at you if you've got
+money."
+
+"She'd crawl through a sewer to find a dime."
+
+"Quite so," the legless man commented dryly. "Well, it wouldn't matter
+to me if she went on a tear and was found dead in her bed."
+
+"It's worth fifty." Something in the unshaven man's voice suggested that
+he had once been remotely connected with some sort of a business.
+
+The legless man shook his head. "Judas Iscariot," he said, "betrayed the
+Lord God for thirty. Fanny McIver's scalp isn't worth a cent over
+twenty-five. You're just a broken-down drunk. It takes a bigger bluffer
+than you to make me put an insult on Christendom. Fifteen down. Ten when
+Fanny's had her last hang-over."
+
+"Why don't you do some of your dirty work yourself?"
+
+"I do all I can," said the legless man simply; "I can't find time for
+everything."
+
+The unshaven man shifted uneasily on his shabby feet. In his stomach the
+flames which only alcohol can quench were burning with a steady gnawing
+fury. "How about a little drink?" he said.
+
+"Fifteen down," said the legless man; "ten when the job's done, and a
+ticket to Chicago."
+
+"With a reservation? I'll feel like the devil; I couldn't sit up all
+night."
+
+"I'll throw in an upper," said the legless man.
+
+Still the unshaven man resisted. "What's Fanny done to you?"
+
+"None of your business."
+
+As if that settled the matter, and removed all obstacles and moral
+scruples, the unshaven man sighed, and held out his hand for the money
+which was to bind the contract.
+
+Twelve hours later, Fanny McIver's death was being attributed by the
+authorities to the insane, jealous rage of a lover. But as she had
+lately changed her name and address, she lay for a while in the morgue
+awaiting identification. It was the legless beggar who performed that
+last solemn rite. He was quite unmoved. Her death mattered no more in
+his scheme of life than the death of a fly.
+
+But as he held up his hand and swore that the identity of the corpse was
+such and such, he remembered how graceful she had been at sixteen, how
+affectionate, how ready to forgive. He remembered with a certain
+admiration that during the heyday of her earning powers she had always
+trusted to his generosity, and had never tried to hold any of her
+earnings back. Prison and drink had destroyed all that was honest in
+her, all that was womanly. So a drop of acid will eat out the heart of
+the freshest and loveliest rose. She became a very evil thing--full of
+evil knowledge. There was even a certain danger in her--not
+much--nothing definite--but enough. She was better dead.
+
+He turned and swung out of the morgue into the sunlight. And he wondered
+whatever had become of the child that she had borne him.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+It would have been easier for Wilmot Allen if he could have come into
+Barbara's life for the first time. She was too used to him to appreciate
+such of his qualities as were fine and noble at their true value. And
+contrarily it was the same familiarity which limned his faults so
+clearly and perhaps exaggerated them. She often thought that if she
+could see him for the first time she would fall head over ears in love
+with him, and be married to him out of hand. Was it not better
+therefore, since the man's character had its disillusionments, that
+their life-long friendship precluded the idea of marrying in haste and
+repenting at leisure? "It's almost," she said to herself, "as if I had
+married him long ago and found out that I had made a mistake."
+
+But she hated to hurt him in any way. And it caused her a genuine sorrow
+sometimes to say no to him. He had proposed to her many times a year for
+many, many years, and always with a passion and sincerity that made it
+appear as if he was proposing for the first time in his life. Twice, the
+strength and devotion of his physical presence had seemed to remove
+every doubt of him from her mind, and she had said that she would marry
+him, and had been ecstatically happy while he kissed her and held her in
+his arms. And each time better knowledge of herself, a sleepless night,
+and the unsparing light of morning had filled her with shame and
+remorse, and made it quite clear that she had made one more mistake, and
+must tell him so, and eat humble pie. And exact a promise that he would
+never make love to her again. But she could never get him to promise
+that. And she could never keep him from kissing things that belonged to
+her when she was looking, and when she wasn't. And if, as he sometimes
+threatened in moments of disappointed and injured feelings, he had gone
+far away, so that he could never cross her path again, she would have
+missed him so much that it would almost have killed her. And so it is
+with all human beings--they care little enough about their dearest
+possessions until the fire by night consumes them, or the thief walks
+off with them. Then the silver and the jewels, and this thing and that,
+assume a sort of humanity--and are as if they had been dear friends and
+unutterably necessary companions in joy and sorrow.
+
+To Wilmot a little encouragement was a great thing, a foundation upon
+which to undertake pyramids. Having intruded upon Barbara's working
+hours without being scolded, Wilmot began to picture for himself a
+delightful life of intruding upon them every day. He hoped that if she
+was really working, she would not actually send him away, but let him
+sit in the deep chair by the fire and wait till she was through, and
+ready for talk and play. As much almost as he loved her, he hated her
+ambitions, if only because they interfered with him, and because he
+found it impossible to take them seriously. Her work seemed surprisingly
+good to him--not surprisingly good for a genuine sculptor who exhibited
+in salons, but for a girl of his own class whom he had always known. In
+this estimate he did not do Barbara justice. She had a fine natural
+talent and she had been well trained. People who knew what they were
+talking about, shock-headed young fellows with neighboring studios,
+prophesied great things for her, partly because she was beautiful, and
+partly because her work, as far as she had gone in it, was really good.
+What she lacked, they said, was inspiration, experience, and knowledge
+of life. When these things came to her in due time, her technique would
+be quite equal to expressing them.
+
+Wilmot's dream of being much in Barbara's studio proved negotiable only
+as a dream. Barbara began a fountain for her father's garden at
+Clovelly, and during the modelling of the central figure the studio was
+no place for a modest young man. He had one glimpse through the
+half-open door of a girl with very red hair and very white skin, and he
+turned and beat a decided retreat, blushing furiously. He did not repeat
+his visit to her studio until Barbara assured him that the nymph had put
+on her clothes and gone away. Then, much to his disgust, he found there
+a young fellow named Scupper, who smoked a vile pipe and had dirty
+finger-nails and was allowed to make himself at home because he had
+recently exhibited a portrait bust that everybody was praising (even
+Wilmot) and because he had volunteered during a delightful contemplation
+of Barbara's face to do her portrait and tell her all that he had
+learned from his great master, Rodin.
+
+The little beast had the assurance of the devil. He praised, blamed,
+patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with superiority on topics which
+are best left alone, until Wilmot wanted to kick him downstairs.
+Scupper, aware of Wilmot's dislike for him, and thoroughly cognizant of
+its causes, did his best to goad the "young prude" (as he chose to
+consider him) into open hostility. He strutted, boasted, puffed, and
+talked loosely without avail. Wilmot maintained a beautiful calm, and
+the more he raged internally the more Chesterfieldian and gorgeously at
+ease his manners became. Barbara enjoyed the contest between the terrier
+and the Newfoundland hugely. Personally she disliked Scupper almost as
+much as she liked Wilmot, but artistically she admired him tremendously
+and felt that his judgments and criticisms were the most valuable things
+to be had in the whole city.
+
+Wilmot not only kept his temper, but outstayed his antagonist. The
+latter gone, he turned upon Barbara, and she in mock terror held up her
+hands for mercy; but Wilmot was not in a merciful mood.
+
+"When you imagine that you are uplifting the cause of art, Barbs, are
+you sure that you aren't debasing it? You won't marry a man who has
+always loved you. _Art._ You put marble and bronze higher than little
+children. _Art._ You allow disreputable, unwashed men to talk in your
+presence as that man talked. _Art._ You hire people of bad character to
+sit for you, and people of no character. All art. You treat them in a
+spirit of friendliness and camaraderie. You affect to place art above
+all considerations; above character, above morals; worse, you place it
+above cleanliness.
+
+"A man--yes, take him for all and all, a man--eats out his heart for
+you; desires only to live for you, only to die for you, only to lie at
+your feet afterward--that is nothing to you. You do not even care to
+listen. You would rather hear through a braggart, indecent mouth that
+ought to be sewed up what Rodin said about Phidias. It seems finer to
+you to be an artist than a woman, and you so beautiful and so dear!"
+
+Barbara made no answer. She looked a little hurt, possibly a little
+sullen. She had a way of looking a little sullen (it did not happen
+often) when she could not hit upon just the words she wanted to express
+her thoughts. She felt that her attitude toward life was almost entirely
+right, almost entirely justifiable, and she wanted to explain exactly
+why this was thus, and couldn't. So after a silence she said:
+
+"Oh, I'm just a little pig. Why bother about me? And besides, it's no
+use."
+
+"Don't say that, Barbara. There _must_ be use in it. Don't you know in
+your heart that some day you are going to marry me?"
+
+"No," she said. "Sometimes I've thought so, but I don't know it." She
+selected an arrow from her quiver, touched the point with venom, and
+because she had not enjoyed being scolded shot it into him. "And at the
+moment I don't think so."
+
+Wilmot spoke on patiently. "Every true lover, Barbs," he said, "comes in
+time to the end of his patience and the end of his endurance."
+
+"And then he ceases from loving--and troubling."
+
+"He does not. When he knows as I know what is best for her happiness and
+for his, and when he finds that humbleness, and begging, and gentleness,
+and persuasion are of no avail--why, then if he's a man he _makes_ her
+love him, _makes_ her marry him."
+
+"I hope, my dear Wilmot," she said, "that you are speaking from a very
+limited experience."
+
+"From the experience of ten million years. I have only one life to live.
+Somehow I will make you love me, make you belong to me. Just because I
+eat with a fork, do you think my heart is really any different from that
+of the cave-man from whom it descended to me, or that your heart is any
+different from that of the girl he wanted, who kept him guessing and
+guessing until he couldn't stand it, and then turned and ran and ran
+through the woods, and swam rivers and climbed trees and jumped down
+precipices until he caught her?"
+
+There was something in Wilmot's lowered brows, a certain jerking, broken
+quality in his utterance, that was new to Barbara--that at once
+frightened her a little, and caused her heart to beat with a sort of
+wild triumph. But she did not guess that the old cave-man was at that
+moment actually looking out through her old friend's eye-places, and
+that ten thousand years of civilization are but a thin varnish over the
+rough and splendid masterpiece that God made in his image.
+
+There was a knock at the door. It was Scupper returning. He had left his
+beloved pipe (on purpose). His shrewd, bloodshot little eyes took in the
+situation at a glance. In two beats his little heart was wild
+with jealousy.
+
+"I beg _everybody's_ pardon," he said. "I didn't know, I--er--wouldn't
+have knocked--I--er--mean I _would_ have knocked just the same."
+
+Wilmot took one slow step toward the famous sculptor, then smiled,
+picked up the fellow's pipe, and returned it to him. "I saw you put it
+down just before you left," he said. "I think there is nothing else you
+have forgotten, _is_ there? If there is I think it will be best not to
+come back for it until I have gone. Meanwhile you will have time to
+shave and bathe and make yourself presentable."
+
+Scupper, sure that he was not actually going to be hit, escaped with an
+ease and jauntiness which he was far from feeling. And Barbara, the high
+tension relieved, burst out laughing.
+
+It was Wilmot's turn to look sullen. He had felt that the sheer animal
+force of his love was holding and even moulding Barbara to his will, as
+no tenderness and delicacy had ever done. But at the sculptor's
+entrance, the honest if brutal cave-man had fled, like some noble savage
+before a talking-machine, and left in a state of civilized helplessness
+a young gentleman who could not find anything to say for himself.
+
+As for Barbara, she had never seen Wilmot look as he had looked, or
+heard those quivering, broken tones in his voice. The savage in her had
+gone out to him with open arms and, behold, the primal force which,
+standing like an island of refuge in a sea of doubt, she had been about
+to clasp was but an empty shadow. That Wilmot had not done very nobly
+with his talents, that there were weaknesses in his character and
+record, things even that needed explaining, had not at the moment of his
+mastery mattered to her a jot. But now such thoughts flocked to her like
+birds to a tree; and she was glad that she had escaped from a situation
+that had so nearly overwhelmed her reason and drowned her common sense
+in the heavenly sweetness of surrender.
+
+Wilmot could find nothing to say. It was no mere gust of passion that
+had swept over him, but a storm. He was physically tired, as if he had
+rowed a long race. He no longer wished to play the master. He would
+rather a thousand times have rested his hot forehead on Barbara's cool
+hand, and fallen quietly asleep like a little child come in at last to
+his mother after too much play in the hot sun.
+
+"Life," he said at last, "is a nuisance, Barbs. Isn't it? Would you,
+honestly, be happier if I disappeared, and never bothered you again?
+Sometimes I feel that I ought to."
+
+She shook her head. "If you like people," she said, "you like them,
+faults and all. I'm dependent on you in a hundred ways. You're the
+oldest and best friend I've got. If you disappeared I'd curl up and die.
+But now that we are talking personalities, you very nearly forgot
+yourself a few minutes ago. Well, I forgive. But it mustn't
+happen again."
+
+He bowed his head very humbly. "I will go back to patience and
+gentleness," he said, "and give them another trial."
+
+"I wish," she said, "that you would go back and begin your life over
+again--stop drifting and sail for some definite harbor."
+
+"I will," he said, "on condition--"
+
+"No--no--no," she said hurriedly, "no condition. I am in no position to
+make conditions, if that's what you mean. I don't understand myself. I
+don't trust myself. I will not undertake to bind myself to you or any
+one until I know that I can trust myself. It would be very jolly for you
+if I married you and then we found that I really loved the other fellow.
+I'm like that--selfish, unstable, susceptible--and very much ashamed of
+myself. I wouldn't talk myself down so if you didn't know these things
+as well as I do. Why you go on caring for me is a mystery. I'm no good.
+And I'm not even sorry enough to cry about it--ever. I've actually
+thought that I was in love--oh, ever so many times: sometimes with you.
+What's the use? The only things I've ever been faithful to are the
+dressmaker, dancing, and what in moments of supreme egoism I am pleased
+to call my art."
+
+"Barbs," he said, "you're an old silly billy, and I love you with all my
+heart and soul. That's _that_. Don't forget it. Take pen and ink if
+necessary and write it down. I'll try a little more patience, and then,
+my blessing, if there's no good in that, I shall perpetrate marriage
+by capture."
+
+They both laughed, the girl with much sweetness. And she said:
+
+"If you and I ever do marry, it will be with great suddenness." Her eyes
+danced, and she added: "There are moments!"
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely, and then with a kind of wistful gallantry:
+"Could I kiss the dear for luck?"
+
+She turned her cheek to him bravely and frankly like a child. His lips
+touched it lightly, making no sound.
+
+Far off in the native jungle the cave-man moaned, and shut his eyes and
+turned his face to the wall of his cave. The medicine-man came, examined
+him, and said that he was about to die of a new disease. He looked very
+wise and called it "predatory inanition."
+
+As for the cave-girl, having run and run and run, she pulled up in a
+flowery glade, looked behind, listened, saw nothing, heard no sound of
+painfully pursuing feet, and called herself a fool and a silly for
+having run. She wanted to explain that she hadn't meant to run away,
+that girls never really meant what they said, and would the cave-man
+please recover at once from his predatory inanition and take notice of
+her again?
+
+"Come," said Barbara, after quite a long silence, "let's go forth and
+collar a taxi. Anywhere I can take you? I can't ask you to lunch,
+because I am having seven maidens, and afterward Victor Polideon to
+teach us to turkey-trot."
+
+"I wouldn't be afraid of seven devils," Wilmot urged in his own behalf,
+"if you were present."
+
+"There are only two," she said practically, "and they are very little
+devils. But I won't let you come, because you would have much too good a
+time." Then she relented. "Come later, about three, and teach me to
+turkey-trot. You do it better than Polideon. And I hate to have him
+touch me."
+
+"That's something," he exclaimed triumphantly.
+
+"What's something?"
+
+"That you don't hate for me to touch you."
+
+She laughed and tapped his shoulder in rag-time. Also she whistled, and
+did a quiet suspicion of a turkey-trot with her feet.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+One bright morning in May, divinely early, two persons of very different
+appearance and nature came out of two houses of very different
+appearance and nature at precisely the same moment, and started to move
+toward each other by methods of locomotion no less different than were
+the appearances of the respective persons or the respective houses from
+which they emerged.
+
+The house from which the one issued was of speckless white marble, and
+looked from the advantageous corner of Sixty-something Street and Fifth
+Avenue upon the purple and white lilacs and the engaging spring greens
+of Central Park.
+
+The other came out of a dark house at the angle of a narrow street in
+the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge, whose door, crossed by dingy gilt
+lettering, violently clanged a bell at opening and closing. The first
+person stepped with the long clean strides of youth and liberty. The
+second person cannot be said to have stepped at all. The first person,
+meeting a policeman, smiled and said: "Good morning, Kelly." The second,
+similarly meeting with an officer of the law, scowled upward, and said:
+"Do it again, and I'll break you." The first person came out of the
+uptown palace like a fairy from a grotto; the second emerged from the
+downtown rookery like some prehistoric monster from a cave.
+
+At a distance you might have mistaken him for an electrician or a
+sewer-expert coming into view through one of those round holes in the
+sidewalk by which access is provided to the subterranean apparatus of
+cities. But, drawing nearer, you perceived that he was but half a man,
+who stood upon the six-inch stubs of what had once been a pair of legs.
+But what nature could do for what was left of him nature had done. He
+had the neck, the arms, and the torso of a Hercules. His coat, black,
+threadbare, shining, and unpleasantly spotted, seemed on the point of
+giving way here and there to a system of restless and enormous muscles.
+But that these should serve no better purpose than ceaselessly to turn
+the handle of an unusually diminutive and tuneless street-organ might
+have roused in the observer's mind doubts as to the wisdom and vigilance
+of that divine providence which is so much better understood and trusted
+by the healthy and fortunate than by the wretched, the maimed, and
+the diseased.
+
+For the most part the legless man went about the business of begging
+among the business men of the city, since from the congested slum into
+which he disappeared at night it was no great feat for a man of his
+power to reach the more northern streets of that circle in whose midst
+the finances of the nation by turns simmer, boil, and boil over. It was
+not unusual, during the noon-time rush of self-centred individuals, for
+the legless man to get himself stridden into and bowled clean over upon
+his face or back, since nothing is more loosening to purse-strings than
+the average man's horror at having injured some creature already maimed;
+nor was it unusual for him at such times to scramble up smiling with a
+kind of invincible cheerfulness that more potently stirred the
+generosity of the man who had knocked him down than ever groans and
+complaints could have done.
+
+If the weather was fine and conducive to bodily comfort, the beggar
+sometimes turned north and worked his way to Washington Square or the
+lower blocks of Fifth Avenue. Sometimes, having agreed to pose for the
+head and trunk to some young art student, he left his hand-organ behind,
+and permitted himself the extravagance of riding in a surface car. His
+boarding of a street-car was a feat of pure gymnastics, swift and
+virile; so, too, was his ascending or descending of a flight of steps,
+or the high platform on which he was to pose. Incessant practice, added
+to natural skill and balance, enabled him to accomplish, without legs,
+feats which might have balked a man with a capable and energetic pair of
+them. He could travel upon his crutches for the length of a city block
+almost as fast as the average man can run, and if it came to climbing a
+rope or a rain-duct he was more ape than human. In his own dwelling he
+had for his own use, instead of the laborious stairs needed by its other
+inmates, a system of knotted ropes by which he could ascend from cellar
+to attic, and polished poles by whose aid he could accomplish the most
+lightning-like descending slides.
+
+Marrow Lane, shaped like a dog's hind leg, is one of those crooked and
+narrow thoroughfares which the approaches and anchorings of the Brooklyn
+Bridge have cast into gloom and darkness. There are spots upon which the
+sun will not shine again until the great bridge has perished; there are
+corners in which drafts strong as a heaven-born wind whistle from one
+year's end to the other. There are thousands of children in the region,
+and in the more purely tenement settlements to the north, who have yet
+to see a green field or to handle a flower.
+
+At the very crook of the dog's leg, on the north side of Marrow Lane, a
+narrow door, half glazed and sometimes burnished by the sun, has printed
+across it in dingy gilt letters:
+
+     BLIZZARD--MFR. HATS
+
+Once the door with the faded gilt letters had closed, with him inside,
+the legless man, who was none other than Blizzard, the manufacturer of
+hats, put off those airs of helplessness and humility by which so many
+coins were attracted into the little tin cup upon the top of his
+hand-organ, and assumed the attitude of one accustomed to command and to
+be served, to reward and to punish. He was no longer a beggar, but a
+magnate. He swelled with power, and twenty girls of almost as many
+nationalities, plaiting straw hats by the gas-light, cringed in their
+hearts, and redoubled the speed of their hands. About the twenty girls
+who slaved for Blizzard there were two peculiarities which at once
+distinguished them from any other collection of female factory-hands on
+the East Side. They were all strong and healthy looking, and they were
+all pretty. He had collected them much as rich men in a higher station
+of life collect paintings or pearls. If some of them bore the marks of
+blows and pinchings, it was not upon any part of them which showed. If
+some of them suffered from the fear of torture or even sudden death, it
+did not prevent them from showing the master rows of even white teeth
+between ingratiatingly parted lips whenever he deigned to speak to them.
+If any girl among them thought to escape him, to find work elsewhere, to
+betray what she knew of him, even, and vanish into the slums of some far
+city, she was deterred by the memory of certain anecdotes constantly
+related by her companions. The most terrible of these anecdotes was that
+related of a certain Florence Magrue. She had fled with her story to the
+nearest policeman, who had quietly returned her to the shop,
+reluctantly, it was admitted, but with the determination of a man whose
+very existence depends upon the favor of another. The master had
+welcomed her and smiled upon her as upon an erring child. He had sent
+her upon an errand into the cellar under the shop, himself unlocking
+the door. And that was the last that any one had ever seen of
+Florence Magrue.
+
+In addition to fear, the master supplied certain creature comforts, not
+lightly to be thrown away. If a girl could make up her mind to accept
+shame, bodily injury if she displeased, and a life of toil, she fared
+better under Blizzard's direction than her sister who worked for Ecbaum,
+let us say, the lacemaker, or Laskar, or any of a thousand East Side
+employers of labor. The man could be kind upon impulse, and generous. He
+paid the highest wages. He supplied nourishing food at noon, and a
+complete hour in which to discuss it. Furthermore, if a girl pleased
+him, the work of her hands was subjected to less critical inspection,
+and if she had any music in her, he invited her upstairs sometimes to
+work the pedals of his grand piano, while his own powerful, hairy hands
+rippled and thundered upon the keys. He was of a Godlike kindness when
+his mind inclined to music, and the pedalling was skilful and sure. But
+let the unfortunate crouched under the key-board, her trembling hands
+taking the place of those feet which the master had lost, respond
+stupidly to the signals conveyed to her shoulder by graduated pressures
+from the stump of his right leg, and punishment of blows, pinchings, and
+sarcasms was swift and sure.
+
+The legless man was very much at home in his own house. He had inhabited
+it for many years, and its arrangements were the expression of a
+creature immensely able and ingenious, but maimed both in body
+and soul.
+
+The whole building, four stories tall, had once been a manufactory, but
+Blizzard had subdivided its original lofts into pens, dens, passageways,
+and rooms according to an elaborate plan of his own. And it was evident
+to the most casual glance that expediency alone, untrammelled by any
+consideration of purse, had been followed. Those walls, floors, and
+ceilings, for instance, through which no sound of human origin, unaided
+by mechanical device, could penetrate, must have cost a mint of money.
+Nor could any man who depended for a living upon occasional pennies
+dropped into a tin cup have got together so extensive a collection of
+books upon scientific subjects, many of them handsomely bound and
+printed in foreign countries. Works upon explosives, tunnelling,
+electricity, and music were especially abundant, not only in English,
+but in German. And there were books upon the organization of armies, and
+upon the chemistry of precious stones. A cursory examination of his
+books would have found the master of the house to be interested also in
+obstetrics, in poisons, and in anesthesia; but of romance, humanity, or
+poetry his library had but a single example, the "Monte Cristo" of the
+elder Dumas.
+
+Had all the doors and windows of the house been thrown open, and all its
+inhabitants expelled, so that you could have free ingress with a
+companion or two, and time and the mood to explore the whole of its
+ramifications and arrangements, you must have concluded that the
+designer of so much that was hideously obvious and so much that was
+mysteriously obscure was a most extraordinary example of viciousness,
+ability, purpose, and musicianship. You must have been staggered at
+passing from a room containing a grand piano and a bust of Beethoven to
+find yourself in a little operating-theatre such as any eminent surgeon
+might wish to be at work in, to find beyond this a small but excellently
+appointed gymnasium; above this, to be reached only by climbing a
+knotted rope, a long room, lighted from above, containing
+drawing-tables, many cases of drawing-instruments, and a host of
+workman-like designs and specifications. Thence you might pass, still
+wondering, into an apartment of soft divans, thick rags, and open
+fireplace, a smell of incense, double windows and double doors.
+
+Or you might descend by stairs or polished poles to the cellar under the
+hat factory, and find yourself, prying into the most obscure corner and
+lighting matches for guidance, confronted by the door of a mightily
+strong safety vault, the knobs of the combination lock bright and easily
+turned. And you might say: "Well, it's either the house of a man whose
+scheme of life is utterly beyond my comprehension, or of a madman."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Of the two persons who left their homes this morning, the legless
+beggar, owing to having ridden part of the way in a street-car, was the
+first to reach the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington
+Square, whence the last rear-guard of fashion in old New York retreats
+before the advance-pickets of the encroaching slums, like a stag before
+a pack of hounds. Here he ensconced himself, placed his tin cup on the
+top of his organ, together with the few pairs of shoe-laces which
+proclaimed him a merchant within rather than a beggar without the law,
+and proceeded to enliven the still quiet neighborhood with the
+dreadfully strained measure of Verdi's "Miserère." He turned the handles
+of the little organ fitfully, so that now the strains of sorrow arose at
+such long intervals as hardly to be connected with one another, and now
+all huddled and jumbled like notes in a barbaric quickstep, and as he
+played he addressed his instrument in a quiet, cruel voice.
+
+A house-maid opened a window in the servants' wing of No. 1 Fifth
+Avenue. Blizzard turned his head slowly at the sound, and looked up at
+her with agate eyes, coldly interrogative. There was no one else at the
+moment within earshot.
+
+Nevertheless before speaking the house-maid looked nervously into the
+house behind her; then up the avenue, and down into Washington Square.
+She was a girl of some beauty, but her face was most engaging from a
+kind of waggish intelligence that it had.
+
+"Tst!" she said.
+
+The organ squeaked and rattled. It was manoeuvring for a position from
+which to attack the "Danse Macabre." Blizzard indicated by a lift of
+heavy eyebrows that he was all attention.
+
+"You can trust Blake," she said.
+
+Blizzard grunted. "Send him to me at six."
+
+"Marrow Lane?"
+
+He nodded, and turned from her with an air of finality. The house-maid
+hesitated, drew a long breath, pulled in her head, and closed
+the window.
+
+A loose-jointed man in clerical garb came hurrying down the avenue. He
+made longer swings with his right arm and longer strides with his right
+leg than with his left. He had a white, thin face, and a look of worry
+and anxiety. He was perhaps distressed to think that the world contained
+many souls to whose salvation he would never be able to attend.
+Perceiving the legless beggar, he stopped hurrying, sought in his
+pocket, and found a few pennies. These he dropped into the tin cup.
+
+"God bless you, reverend sir," said the beggar in a voice of deep irony.
+
+"Don't," said the clergyman. He managed to look the beggar in the eyes.
+"How many hats have we?" he asked in a quick whisper.
+
+"We're on our fourth thousand."
+
+The clergyman was visibly upset, "Six thousand to go," he muttered. "I
+shall be caught."
+
+The beggar smiled. "Come to me at six-thirty," he said.
+
+The man of God's eyes brightened. "You'll help me again?"
+
+"Tst," said the beggar. "Move on. Here's a plain-clothes man."
+
+The shepherd moved on as if he had been pricked by an awl; since it was
+not among the police that he felt called upon to separate the black
+sheep from the white.
+
+The plain-clothes man approached loitering. He might have been a citizen
+in good standing and with nothing better to do than hobnob with whatever
+persons interested him upon his idle saunterings.
+
+"How many pairs of laces have you sold this morning?" he asked.
+
+"Nary a pair, charitable sir," returned the beggar.
+
+"Speaking of shoe-laces," said the plain-clothes man, "what is your
+opinion of head-gear?"
+
+"Bullish," said the beggar. "Straw hats will be worn next winter."
+
+The eyes of both men sparkled with a curious exhilaration. The
+plain-clothes man drew a deep and sudden breath, and appeared to shiver.
+So a soldier may breathe at the command to charge; so a thoroughbred
+shivers when the barrier is about to fall.
+
+"There will be nice pickings," said the beggar; "there will be enough
+geese to feed ten thousand."
+
+The plain-clothes man dropped a penny into the tin cup. "By the way,"
+he asked professionally, "where can I lay hands on Red Monday?"
+
+The beggar shook his strong head curtly. "Hands off," he said.
+
+"When did _he_ join the church?"
+
+"Last night, with tears and confession. A strong man Red, now that he
+has seen the light."
+
+The plain-clothes man laughed and passed on, still loitering.
+
+The "Danse Macabre" had come to a timely end, if that which is without
+tempo may be said to have any relation with time, and the trio of
+Chopin's "Funeral March" was already in uneven progress. The legless man
+sat on the bare pavement, his back against the handsome area railing of
+No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and steadily revolved the mechanism of the organ
+with his hairy, powerful hand.
+
+Passers were now more frequent. Some looked at him and continued to look
+after they had passed, others turned their eyes steadfastly away. Some
+pitied him because he was a cripple; others, upon suddenly discovering
+that he had no legs, were shocked with a sudden indecent hatred of him.
+A lassie of the Salvation Army invited him to rise up and follow Christ;
+he retorted by urging her to lie down and take a rest. Then, as if
+premonition had laid strong hands upon him and twisted him about, he
+turned, and looked upward into the fresh, rosy face of Barbara Ferris.
+
+Their eyes met. Always the child of impulse, and careless of appearance
+and opinion, she felt her thoughts, none too cheerful or optimistic that
+morning during her long walk down the avenue, drawn by the expression
+upon the legless man's face to a sudden focus of triumph and solution.
+She struck the palm of one small workman-like hand with the back of the
+other, and exclaimed: "By George!"
+
+The face that was upturned to hers was no longer the insolent, heavy
+face of success which we have attempted to describe, but one in which
+the sudden leaping into evidence of a soul dismissed facts of color,
+contour, and line as matters of no importance. If there was wickedness
+in his glance, there were also awe and wonder. He had a tortured look,
+the look of a man who has fallen from unknowable heights--from an
+Elysium which he regrets and desires with all a strong man's strength,
+but to which the way back is irrevocably barred by the degradation and
+the sin of the descent--and who, all but overwhelmed by the knowledge
+that he can never return whence he came, yet bears his eternal loss with
+an iron courage that has about it a kind of splendor.
+
+Barbara Ferris felt that she was looking upon Satan in that moment when
+he first realized that his fall from heaven was for eternity and that,
+against every torturing passion of conviction, he must turn his talents
+and his fearful courage to the needs of hell.
+
+In that first moment of their meeting, she realized nothing about the
+man but the terribly moving expression of his face. Nothing else
+mattered. If her plastic training was equal to catching and fixing that
+expression in clay or marble, she would be made according to the mould
+of her ambition. The flame of art burned white and clear in the inmost
+shrine of her being. She saw before her, and beneath her, not a human
+being, but an inspiration. And since inspiration is a thing swift,
+electric, and trebly enticing from the fact that it presents itself
+shorn of all those difficulties which afterward, during execution, so
+terribly appear and multiply, her heart beat already with the exquisite
+bliss of an immortal achievement. In her vocabulary at that instant it
+would have been impossible to discover under B the aggressive But, or
+under I the faltering If. She was inspired. It was enough.
+
+Then she, in whose mind strong wings had suddenly sprouted, perceived
+that the person directly responsible had not even a pair of legs, and
+felt throughout her whole being a cold gushing of horror and revolt.
+
+This was not lost upon Blizzard. It was an ordinary enough human
+sensation, whose reflections had often enough given the iron that was in
+his soul another twist and refreshed in him vengefulness and hatred. Yet
+on the present occasion the knowledge that he was physically loathed
+roused in the man a feeling rather of that despair which may be
+experienced by the drowning at that precise moment when the straw so
+eagerly clutched has proved itself a straw, and he winced as beneath a
+shocking blow between the eyes.
+
+On discovering that the creature was maimed it had been Barbara's first
+impulse to pass swiftly on. But another glance at the face which had
+arrested her held her. She took some coins from her purse and dropped
+them into the tin cup which the beggar held out to her. And he looked
+upward into her face.
+
+"Did you ever pose for any one?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"I should like to make a bust of you. I'll see that it pays you better
+than--better than earning a living this way."
+
+For the first time Blizzard smiled. "Do you want me to come now?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yes," she said. "My studio is in No. 17 McBurney Place." Here she
+stopped upon a somewhat embarrassing thought. But the legless man read
+what was in her mind.
+
+"Two flights up?" he queried. "Three? I can climb. Don't trouble about
+that."
+
+"You will come as soon as you can?"
+
+"I have to meet a man here in half an hour. Then I'll come."
+
+"Please," she said, "ask for Miss Ferris."
+
+[Illustration: She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into
+the tin cup]
+
+At the name a tremor went through the legless man from head to stump. He
+blanched, and for the thousandth part of a second all that was devil in
+him rushed with smouldering lights to his eyes. But of this Barbara
+perceived nothing; her repugnance mastered, she had already brightly
+smiled, nodded, and was walking swiftly away, her head high, spring air
+in her lungs and inspiration in her heart.
+
+The beggar's eyes playing upon her, she passed through the peaceful warm
+sunshine of the quiet old square, and vanished at last into the still
+brighter sunshine and still older quiet of McBurney Place.
+
+To work with her own hands, at least until she had made something
+beautiful, seemed to her a better aim than any other which the world
+offers. She had at first been the victim of private lessons, amusedly
+approved by her father, and only intermittently attended by herself,
+since it is not in a day that a fashionable idler is turned into a
+steadily toiling aspirant for eternal honors. Just so long as she
+remained an amateur and occasional potterer in her father's house she
+was applauded by him and assumed by the world in general to be a very
+talented young lady; but when, her artistic impulses--if not her
+technique--having strengthened amazingly, she insisted upon the steadier
+routine of an art school, she met with an opposition as narrow, it
+seemed to her, as it was firm. Her own will in the matter, however,
+proved the stronger. And having passed with excellent rapidity through
+those grades of the school in which the student is taught to make cubes
+and spheres, she modelled from the antique, and at last, upon a day
+almost sacred in her memory, was promoted to the life class.
+
+And here, one morning, Dr. Ferris, interested in spite of himself in
+her swift progress, found her, with a number of other young ladies and
+gentlemen, earnestly at work making, from different angles of vision,
+greenish clay statuettes of a handsome young Italian laborer who had
+upon his person no clothes whatever. That fastidious surgeon, to whom
+naked bodies, and indeed naked hearts, could have been nothing new, was
+shocked almost out of his wits. He had left only the good sense and the
+good manners not to make a scene. He beat instead a quiet, if
+substantial, retreat, and put off the hour of reckoning. His daughter
+was soiled in his eyes, and when she explained to him that a naked man
+was not a naked man to her, but a "stunning" assemblage of planes,
+angles, curves, lights, and shadows, he could not understand. And they
+quarrelled as furiously as it is possible for well-bred persons to
+quarrel. He commanded. She denied his right to command. He threatened.
+She denied his right first to create a life, and then to spoil it. He
+advanced the duty of children to parents, and she the duty of parents to
+children. Finally Barbara, thoroughly incensed at having her mind and
+her ambition held so cheap, flung out with: "Have you _never_ made a
+mistake of judgment?" And was astounded to see her father wither, you
+may say, and all in an instant show the first tremors she had ever seen
+in him of age and a life of immense strain and responsibility. From that
+moment the activity of his opposition waned. She knew that her will had
+conquered, and the knowledge distressed her so that she burst
+into tears.
+
+"My dear," said her father, "I once made a very terrible mistake of
+judgment. There isn't a day of my life altogether free from remorse and
+regret. I have given you money and position. It isn't enough, it seems.
+My dear, take the benefit of the doubt into the bargain. If I am making
+another terrible mistake, you must bear at least a portion of the
+responsibility."
+
+It is curious, or perhaps only natural, that Barbara was at the moment
+more interested to know what her father's great mistake of judgment had
+been than in the fact that her ambition had won his tolerance and
+consent, if not his approval and support. If she had asked him then and
+there, for he was still greatly moved, he might have told her, but
+reticence caught the question by the wings, and the moment passed.
+
+And they resumed together their life of punctilious thoughtfulness and
+good manners. Dr. Ferris continued to cut up famous bodies for famous
+fees, while Barbara continued to do what she could to reproduce the
+bodies of more humble persons, for no reward greater than the voice of
+her teacher with his variously intonated; "Go to eet, Mees Barbara!
+go to eet."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was a discouraged but resolute Barbara who stepped forth from her
+father's house that bright morning in May and passed rather than walked
+down the quiet upper stretches of Fifth Avenue. That she might fail in
+art, and make a mess of her life generally, sometimes occurred to her.
+And it was a thought which immeasurably distressed her. It would be too
+dreadful a humiliation to crawl back into the place which she had so
+confidently quitted for a better; to be pointed out as a distinguished
+amateur who had not succeeded as a professional; and to take up once
+more the rounds of dinners, dances, and sports which serve so well to
+keep the purposeless young and ignorant.
+
+To society the tragedy of Barbara's back-sliding into art was very real.
+Dozens of men said very frankly that they missed her like the very
+devil. "There is nobody else," they said, "quite so straightforward, or
+quite so good-looking."
+
+Hers was a face not less vivid than a light. It seemed that in her, the
+greatest artist of all, abandoning the accepted conventions of beauty,
+had created an original masterpiece. If she had been too thin, her eyes,
+tranquil, sea-blue, and shining, must have been too large. Her nose was
+Phidian Greek; her chin, but for an added youthful tenderness, was
+almost a replica of Madame Duse's; a long round throat carried nobly a
+gallant round head, upon which the hair was of three distinct colors.
+The brown in the Master's workshop had not, it seemed, held out; she had
+been finished with tones of amber and deep red. The brown was straight,
+the red waved, the amber rioted in curls and tendrils. Below this
+exquisite massing of line and color, against a low broad forehead, were
+set, crookedly, short narrow eyebrows of an intense black; her eyelashes
+were of the same divine inkiness, very warm and long; a mouth level to
+the world, resolute, at the corners a little smiling, was scarlet
+against a smooth field of golden-brown.
+
+If she had a certain admiration of her own beauty it was the admiration
+of an artist for the beauty of a stranger. Since she had had neither
+hand nor say in her own making, the results were neither to her credit
+nor against it. For success in her chosen line she would have exchanged
+her beauty very willingly for a plain mask, her glorious youth for a
+sedate middle age. She would have given perhaps an eye, an ear, or so at
+least she thought in this ardent and generous period of early beginnings
+and insatiable ambition. In her thoughts nothing seemed to matter to
+her but art.
+
+There was no sustaining pleasure in the fact that her father had given
+in to her. Opposition--unspoken, it is true, but not to be
+mistaken--remained in his attitude toward her. He found indirect means
+for conveying his idea and that of her friends that she was wasting
+herself upon a folly, and was destined, if she persisted in it, to only
+the most mediocre success. An exhibition of her works, undertaken with
+the avowed wish to know "just where she stood," had been discouraging in
+its results. The art critics either refused to take her seriously or
+expressed the opinion that there were already in the world too many
+sculptors of distinguished technique and no imagination whatsoever. Her
+friends told her that she was a "wonder." And there were little
+incidents of the farce which caused her to bite her lips in humiliation.
+
+That the critics should be at the pains of telling her that she was
+without imagination angered her, since it was a fact already better
+known to herself. And in one moment she would determine at all costs to
+prove herself an imaginative artist, and in the next "to chuck the whole
+business." But she could not make up her mind whether it is worse for a
+captain to wait for actual defeat or, having perceived its
+inevitability, to surrender. To go down with colors flying appeals
+perhaps to noble sides of man; but it is a waste of ships, lives,
+and treasure.
+
+Passing swiftly down the avenue, she did not know whether, upon arriving
+at her studio in McBurney Place, she should get into her working-apron
+or make an end, once and for all, of artistic pursuits. But with the
+lifting of the legless beggar's face to hers, all doubts vanished from
+her mind like smoke from a room when the windows and doors are opened.
+Whatever his face might have revealed to another, to her it was Satan's,
+newly fallen, and she read into it a whole wonder of sin, tragedy,
+desolation, and courage; and knew well that if she could reproduce what
+she seemed to see, the world would be grateful to her. She would give it
+a face which it would never make an end of discussing, which should be
+in sculpture what the face of Mona Lisa is in painting. It would be the
+face of a man whom one jury would hang upon the merest suspicion; for
+whom another would return a verdict of "not guilty" no matter what the
+nature of his proved crimes; and whether the face was beautiful or
+hideous would be a matter of dispute for the ages.
+
+Upon arriving at No. 17 McBurney Place, and having climbed two flights
+of stairs, the door of her studio was opened before she could lay hand
+to the knob, and a very small boy with very big eyes, and no more flesh
+upon his bones than served to distinguish him from a living skeleton,
+appeared on the threshold, smiling, you may say, from head to foot. He
+was dressed in a blue suit with bobbed tails and a double row of bright
+brass buttons down the front, and when she had gathered him from the
+gutter in which he had reached to his present stunted stature, a child
+half gone in pneumonia, he had told her that his name, his whole name,
+was "Bubbles" and nothing but "Bubbles."
+
+"Good morning, Miss Barbara," he said; "the plumber's bin and gone, and
+the feller from the hardware store has swore hell be around before noon
+to fix the new knobs in the doors."
+
+"Good!" said Barbara. "Well done, Bubbles."
+
+And she passed into the studio, wondering why a little face all knotting
+with smiles, affection, and the pleasure of commands lovingly received
+and well obeyed, should remind her of that other face, massive,
+sardonic, lost, satanic, which had looked up into hers across the
+battered tin cup on the top of a battered street-organ. She turned to a
+little clay head that she had made recently and for which Bubbles had
+sat; touched it here and there, stepped back from it, turned her own
+head to the left, to the right, and even, such was the concentration of
+her mood, showed between her red lips the tip of a still redder tongue.
+But no matter what she did to test and undo her first impression there
+persisted between the two faces a certain likeness, though in just what
+this resemblance consisted she was unable to say.
+
+"Bubbles," she said, "you were telling me about beggars the other day
+and how much they make, and how rich some of them are. Did you ever run
+across one that sells shoe-laces, plays a hand-organ, and hasn't got
+any legs?"
+
+"Sure," said he; "there's half a dozen in the city." And he named them.
+"Burbage: he's the real thing, got his legs took off by a cannon-ball in
+the wars. Prior: he ain't no 'count. Drunk and fell under a elevated
+train. He ain't saved nothing neither. He drinks _his_. Echmeyer: he's
+some Jew; worth every cent of fifty thousand dollars. They calls him
+congen_eye_tul, 'cause he was born with his legs lef off him. Fun
+Barnheim: he's German, went asleep in the shade of a steam-roller, and
+never woke up till his legs was rolled out flat as a pair of pants
+that's just bin ironed. Then o' course there's Blizzard."
+
+Barbara was smiling. "What became of his _legs_, Bubbles?"
+
+"God knows," returned the boy. "Blizzard don't boast about it like the
+others. But he ain't no common beggar. He's a man."
+
+"A good man?"
+
+"Good? He ain't got a kinder thought in his block than settin' fire to
+houses and killin' people. But when he says 'step,' _it_ steps."
+
+"It?"
+
+"The East Side, Miss Barbara. He's the whole show."
+
+"What does he look like?"
+
+The boy at first thought in vain for a simile, and then, having found
+one to his liking, emitted with great earnestness that the beggar,
+Blizzard, looked exactly like "the wrath of God." Whatever the boy's
+simile may convey to the reader, to Barbara, fresh from seeing the man
+himself, it had a wonderful aptness.
+
+"That's my man," she exclaimed. "Blizzard! He's got a wonderful face,
+Bubbles, and you said just what it looks like. I'm going to make a
+bust of him."
+
+"He's coming here?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+The boy was troubled. "Miss Barbara," he said earnestly, "I wouldn't go
+for to touch that man with a ten-foot pole."
+
+"I shan't touch him, except with compasses to take measurements. He's
+civil-spoken enough."
+
+"He's bad," said Bubbles, "bad. And when I say bad, I mean millions of
+things that you never heard tell of, and never will. If he comes in
+here--and, and raises hell, don't blame _me_."
+
+Barbara laughed. "He will come here, and sit perfectly still," she said,
+"until he wishes he was dead. And then he will receive money, and an
+invitation to come to-morrow. And then he will go away."
+
+Bubbles looked unnaturally solemn and dejected.
+
+"Besides," said Barbara, "I have you to protect me."
+
+Though Bubbles made no boast, a world of resolution swept into his great
+eyes, and you knew by the simultaneous rising toward his chin of all the
+buttons upon the front of his jacket that he had drawn the long breath
+of courage, and stiffened the articulations of his spine.
+
+Barbara's studio was a large, high-ceilinged room, whose north wall was
+almost entirely composed of glass. It was singularly bare of those
+hangings, lanterns, antique cabinets, carved chairs, scraps of brocade,
+brass candle-sticks six or seven, feet high, samovars, pewter
+porringers, spinning-wheels, etc., etc., upon which so many artists
+appear to depend for comfort and inspiration. Nor were there any notable
+collections of dust, or fragments of meals, or dirty plates. There was
+neither a Winged Victory, a Venus de Milo, nor a Hermes after
+Praxiteles. And except for the bust of Bubbles there was no example of
+Barbara's own work by which to fish for stray compliments from the
+casual visitor. Of the amenities the studio had but a thick carpet, an
+open fireplace, and a pair of plain but easy chairs. Upon a strong
+tremorless table placed near the one great window, a huge lump of clay,
+swathed in damp cloths, alone served to denote the occupant's avocation.
+
+Off the studio, however, Barbara had a pleasantly furnished room in
+which she might loaf, make tea, or serve a meal, and this in turn was
+separated from the tiny room in which Bubbles slept, by a small but
+practical kitchen.
+
+Barbara having withdrawn to roll up her sleeves and put on her
+work-apron, the legless beggar arrived in silence at the outer door of
+the studio, and having drawn a long breath, knocked, and Bubbles, not
+without an uncomfortable fluttering of the heart, pulled it open. The
+boy and the beggar, being about the same height, looked each other in
+the face with level eyes.
+
+"_So_," said Blizzard, "this is what has become of you. You were
+reported dead."
+
+"No, sir," said Bubbles, "I wasn't dead, only sick. She brought me
+here, and had her own father and a nurse to take care of me. And now I'm
+Buttons." And he went on glibly: "Come right in; Miss Ferris is
+expecting you. I guess she wants you to sit on the platform over in
+the window."
+
+Blizzard, having unslung his hand-organ and slid it with a show of
+petulance into a corner, crossed the room, swinging strongly and easily
+between his crutches, like a fine piece of machinery, climbed upon the
+model's platform, and seated himself in the plain deal chair which
+already occupied it. From this point of vantage he turned and looked
+down at the boy.
+
+"So," he said, "her father _is_ Dr. Ferris."
+
+"He's _the_ Dr. Ferris," Bubbles returned loyally.
+
+"So--so--so," said the legless one slowly, and he closed his eyes for a
+moment as if he was tired. Then, opening them, and in abrupt tones: "Pay
+you well?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Many people come here?"
+
+Bubbles, who had gone to school--not in the schools, but in the city of
+New York itself--could lie without the least tremor or change of
+feature, and with remarkable suddenness. "Lots and lots of 'em," he
+said. "_She's_ well known."
+
+Blizzard merely grunted. "Tell her I've come."
+
+But it was not necessary for Bubbles to give the message at the door of
+the inner room, since at that moment Barbara entered, her round arms
+bare to the elbow and her street dress completely hidden by a sort of
+blue gingham overall. Bubbles, whose presence was not required during
+working hours, at once withdrew to his bedroom.
+
+Here he changed his tunic of brass buttons for a plain gray jacket,
+snatched his cap from its hook, gained the street by a back stair, and
+set off at the tireless street-boy trot that eats up the blocks. Half an
+hour later he returned, his face no longer wearing a look of anxiety,
+changed back into his many-buttoned jacket of dependence, and sitting
+upon his bed, his back against the pillows, proceeded with astonishing
+deftness and precision to figure with the stump of a pencil, upon the
+leaves of a small dog-eared note-book. Then, appearing to have achieved
+a satisfactory solution of whatever problem he had had occasion to
+attack, he began to go through a series of restless fidgetings, which
+ended with a sigh of relief and a guilty look, and producing from a
+hiding-place a cigarette, he smoked it out of the window, so that his
+room might not carry forward the faintest trace of its telltale odor.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+When Barbara at length told the legless man that he might rest, he
+appeared to think that she had invited him to converse. He leaned back
+as far as he could in the deal chair. His expression was no longer that
+which had struck Barbara so hard in the imagination, but one of easy and
+alert affability. He looked at her when he spoke, or when she spoke, but
+casually and without offence. Whatever feelings surged in him were for
+the moment carefully controlled and put aside. In his manner was neither
+obtrusiveness nor servility, only a kind of well-schooled ease and
+directness. In short, he behaved and spoke like a gentleman.
+
+"You're the first person I ever sat for," he said, "who hasn't asked me
+how I lost my legs."
+
+Barbara, regarding the rough blocking of his head which she had made,
+smiled amiably. That first impression of him, still vivid and lucid in
+her mind, appeared already, almost of its own accord, to have registered
+itself in the lump of clay. And she could not but feel that she had laid
+the groundwork of a masterpiece. If the beggar wished to converse, she
+would converse--anything to keep him in the mood for returning to pose
+as often as she should have need of him. And so, though entirely
+absorbed by the face which she had found, and at the moment almost
+uncharitably indifferent to the legs which he had lost, she raised her
+eyes to him, still smiling, and said:
+
+"It wasn't from want of interest, I assure you. I'm sorry you lost them,
+and I should like to know how it happened."
+
+"Bravely spoken," said the beggar.
+
+"I have been told," said Barbara, "that you are a great power in the
+East Side, a sort of overlord."
+
+"Even a beggar has flatterers. They overrate me." The accompanying shrug
+of his great shoulders had an affectation of humility. "Now, if I had a
+pair of legs--but I haven't. And if I had I shouldn't be an East-Sider.
+For the maimed, the crippled, the diseased, it is pleasantest to be in
+residence on the East Side. You have company. You may forget your own
+misfortunes in contemplating the greater misfortunes of others."
+
+"Do you mind telling me," she asked, "where you learned your English?"
+
+"My father," Blizzard explained, "was rather a distinguished
+man--Massachusetts Institute of Technology man, University of Berlin,
+degree from Harvard and Oxford. He had a prim way of putting things. I
+suppose I caught it."
+
+The usual whine about better days was missing from the beggar's voice.
+If he seemed a little proud of his high beginnings, he did not seem in
+the least perturbed by the contemplation of his fallen estate. Barbara
+was by now frankly interested, and proceeded with characteristic
+directness to ask questions.
+
+"Is your father living?"
+
+"No. But it would hardly matter. We became thoroughly incompatible after
+my accident. He had very high ambitions for me, and a chronic disgust
+for anything abnormal--such as little boys who had had their legs
+snipped off. I didn't like it either. I suspect it made an unusually
+vicious child of me, a wicked, vengeful child."
+
+Blizzard's candid expression implied that he had, however, soon seen the
+evil of his youthful ways, and turned over a whole volume of new leaves.
+
+"What happened?" Barbara asked.
+
+Blizzard laughed. "I cannot be said to have run away," he answered, "but
+I got away as best I could, and stayed away. My father settled money
+upon me. And that was the end of our relations."
+
+"And then," said Barbara, "you, being young and foolish, lost your
+money."
+
+"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "I was a very bad little boy, but much too
+ambitious to be foolish. And you know you can't get very far in this
+world without money."
+
+"Still," said Barbara, "a hand-organ and a tin cup?"
+
+"A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up
+knowledge not to be had in any other way. Knowledge is power."
+
+"Then you don't have to beg, don't have to pose, don't have to do
+anything you don't want to do?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do. I have to crawl while others walk. I have to wait and
+procrastinate, where another might rush in and dare."
+
+Again that first expression of Satan fallen overpowered the casual ease
+and even levity of his face. But he shifted his eyes lest Barbara see
+into them and be frightened by that which smouldered in their
+stony depths.
+
+Without a word, Barbara stepped eagerly forward to the rough model that
+she had made of his head, and once more attacked her inspiration with
+eager hands. The beggar held himself motionless like a thing of stone,
+only his eyes roved a little, drinking in, you may say, that white
+loveliness which was Barbara at such moments as her own eyes were upon
+her work, and turning swiftly away when she lifted them in scrutiny of
+him. Now and then she made measurements of him with a pair of compasses.
+At such times it seemed to him that her nearness was more than his
+unschooled passions could bear with any appearance of apathy. Though a
+child of the nineteenth century, he had been enabled for many years to
+give way, almost whenever he pleased, to the instincts of primitive man,
+which, except for the greater frequency of their occurrence, differ in
+no essential way from the instincts of wild beasts.
+
+Had she been a girl of the East Side he would not have hesitated upon
+the present occasion or in the present surroundings. But she was a girl
+of wealth and high position. It was not enough that his hands could
+stifle an outcry, or that the policeman upon the nearest beat was more
+in his own employ than in that of the city. Cold reason showed him that
+in the present case impunity was for once doubtful.
+
+Her hands dropped from their work to her sides.
+
+"How goes it?" asked the beggar.
+
+"If it goes as it's gone," she said--"if it only does!"
+
+"It _will_," said the beggar, and there was a strong vibration of faith
+and encouragement in his voice. "May I look?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+He came down from the platform, and she could not but admire the almost
+superhuman facility with which he moved upon his crutches. Halting at
+ease, before the beginning which she had made, he remained for a long
+time silent. Then, turning to her, he freed his right hand from the
+cross-piece of his crutch, and lifted it to his forehead in a sort
+of salute.
+
+"Master!" he said.
+
+The blood in Barbara's veins tingled with pleasure. He had thrown into
+his strong, rich voice an added wealth of sincerity, and she knew, or
+thought she knew, that at last the work of her hands had moved another,
+who, whatever else he might have been, was by his own showing no fool,
+but a man having in him much that was extraordinary. And she felt a
+sudden friendliness for the legless beggar.
+
+His eyes still upon the clay--knowing, considering, measuring,
+appraising eyes--he said shortly and with decision: "We must go on
+with this."
+
+"To-morrow--could you come to-morrow at the same time?"
+
+"I _will_," he said.
+
+"Good. Are you hungry?"
+
+But the legless man did not appear to have heard her. A sound in the
+adjoining room had arrested his attention. He listened to it critically
+and then smiled.
+
+"A good workman," he said, "is turning a screw into wood."
+
+"How clever of you," said Barbara. "There was a man coming from
+Schlemmer's to put on some glass knobs for me. Bubbles has brought him
+in by the back stairs."
+
+The faint crunching sound of the screw going into the wood ceased. There
+was a knock on the door.
+
+"Come in," said Barbara.
+
+Bubbles appeared in the opening. "We're all through in here."
+
+It did not at once strike Barbara that to have finished his work in the
+next room the man from Schlemmer's must have arrived upon the scene very
+much earlier than he had promised. And she could not by any possibility
+have guessed that Bubbles, in a state of nervous alarm, had slipped down
+the back stairs and run all the way to the hardware store to fetch him.
+
+"He may as well begin in here, then," she said; "I'm through for this
+morning." And she turned to the beggar. "To-morrow--at the same time?"
+
+He nodded briefly, but did not at once turn to go. He wished, it seemed,
+to have a good look at the young workman who now followed Bubbles into
+the studio. And so did Barbara, the moment she saw him.
+
+To her critical eye he was quite the best-looking young man she had ever
+seen "in the world or out of it." He was tall, broad, round-necked,
+narrow in the hips, and of a fine brown coloring. He carried with easy
+grace a strong, well-massed head, to which the close adherence of the
+ears, and the shortness of the dark-brown shiny hair, gave an effect of
+high civilization and finish. Brown, level eyes, neither hard nor soft,
+but of a twinkling habit, a nose straight, thick, finely chiselled, an
+emphatic chin, and a large mouth of extraordinary sweetness, were not
+lost upon Barbara, but that which served most to arrest her attention
+was that resemblance which she at once perceived to exist between the
+young workman and the legless beggar. Yet between Bubbles, who also
+resembled Blizzard in her eyes or in her imagination, and the youth from
+the hardware store, she was unable, swiftly comparing them, to find
+anything in common. To the one nature had denied even full growth and
+development; upon the other she had lavished muscle, blood, and bone.
+The small boy had a ragged, peaked, pathetic face, hair that sprouted
+every which way, the eyes of an invalid, ears of unequal size and
+different shapes, that stuck straight out from his head--all the
+stampings, in short, of street-birth and gutter-raising. The workman had
+an efficient, commanding look, the easy, strong motions of an athlete
+trained and proved. Neither in the least resembled the other, yet both
+resembled the legless beggar, who in turn resembled Satan after the
+fall--and Barbara was inclined to laugh.
+
+"I am so obsessed with one man's face," she thought, "that I see
+something of it in all other faces."
+
+"Good-morning, Harry." It was the beggar's voice, cool, and perhaps a
+little insolent.
+
+"Good-morning, Blizzard." The young man nodded curtly and turned to
+Barbara. "Do you wish all the knobs changed?"
+
+"Please."
+
+Without another word, the young man knelt at the door by which he had
+entered and began with the aid of a long screw-driver to remove its
+ancient lock of japanned iron and coarse white china.
+
+"What's the best news with you, Harry?"
+
+The young man did not look up from his work. "That the water'll soon be
+warm enough for swimming," he said.
+
+To Barbara that answer seemed pleasantly indicative of a healthy nature
+and a healthy mind.
+
+"It's a curious thing," observed the beggar, "how many more people drown
+themselves when the water is nice and warm than when it is cold and
+inhospitable. And yet it's in the cold months that the most people
+receive visits from despair."
+
+Bubbles looked up, wondering. In his experience the legless beggar had
+no manner of language different from that of the streets to which he
+belonged. But now he spoke as Miss Barbara spoke, only, perhaps we may
+be permitted so to express it, very much more so.
+
+Barbara turned to the beggar. "I haven't paid you."
+
+But he retreated in smiling protest, picked up his hand-organ, and slung
+it across his shoulders. "The door, Bubbles."
+
+Bubbles sprang to let the beggar out.
+
+"To-morrow," said Barbara, "at the same time. Good-by, and thank you."
+
+"Good-by, and thank _you_," said Blizzard.
+
+Bubbles followed him to the head of the stairs and watched, not without
+admiration, the astounding ease of the legless one's rapid descent.
+
+Harry, the workman, having disengaged the old japanned lock from the
+door, rose to his feet, and turned to Barbara with a certain quiet
+eagerness. "Look here," he said, "it's none of my business, but I know,
+and you don't. That man," he waved the screw-driver toward the door by
+which Blizzard had departed, "is poison. There's nothing he'd stop
+at. Nothing."
+
+"Quite so," said Barbara coldly; "and, as you say, it's hardly anybody's
+affair but mine."
+
+The workman was good-nature personified. "If you _must_ go on with him,"
+he said, "haven't you a big brother or somebody with nothing better to
+do than drop in, and," his eyes sought the clay head of Blizzard, "watch
+the good work go on?" He stepped closer to the head, and examined it
+with real interest. "It _is_ good work," he said; "it's splendid."
+
+Barbara was mollified. "What," she said, "is so very wrong about poor
+Mr. Blizzard?"
+
+"Oh," said the young man, "we know a great deal about him, and we are
+trying very hard to gather the proofs."
+
+"_We?_"
+
+"I'm a very little wheel in the machinery of the secret service."
+
+"I _knew_," said Barbara, "the moment I saw you that you weren't _only_
+a locksmith or a carpenter. Does Mr. Blizzard know what you are?"
+
+"He can't prove it, unless you tell him."
+
+"I sha'n't do that."
+
+"How often will he have to pose for you?"
+
+"Heaven only knows. But I think"--and she looked the young man in the
+face, and smiled, for his face had charmed her--"I think that if ever I
+finish with Mr. Blizzard, I shall ask you to be my next model."
+
+The admiration with which the young man regarded Barbara was no less
+frankly and openly expressed than was hers for him. "Until this moment,"
+he said, "I have never understood the eager desire which some people
+have to sit for their portraits. Whenever _you_ say."
+
+She laughed. "And the new door-knobs?"
+
+"Just because a man belongs to the secret service," returned the youth,
+"is no reason why he shouldn't attempt once in a while to do something
+really useful."
+
+And he knelt once more and took up his work where he had left off.
+Barbara stood by and watched him at it. "I would like to do his hands,
+too," she thought, "when I can get round to it." They were very strong,
+square, able hands. She found herself wishing to touch them. And since
+this was a wish that she had never experienced for any other pair of
+hands, she wondered at herself with a frank and childish wonder.
+
+"Your taxi, Miss Barbara."
+
+"Thank you, Bubbles."
+
+She slipped out of her overall, and with swift touches adjusted her hat
+at a small mirror. The secret-service agent once more rose from
+his knees.
+
+"Good-by," said Barbara, "and thank you, and don't forget."
+
+"Never," said he.
+
+She shook hands with him, and his firm strong clasp, literally
+swallowing her own little hand, was immensely pleasant to her and of a
+fine friendliness.
+
+"Good-by, Bubbles. See you in the morning."
+
+"Good-by, Miss Barbara."
+
+She was gone. The man resumed his work. The boy watched.
+
+"Harry."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Was I right?"
+
+"Right."
+
+[Illustration: Harry, the workman, ... rose to his feet, and turned to
+Barbara with a certain quiet eagerness]
+
+"A wonder--or not?"
+
+"A wonder."
+
+"Harry."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You won't leave Blizzard up to me all alone, will you? Not _now_, you
+won't?"
+
+"No, Bubbles, not now. Whenever he's posing in this room, you and I
+won't be far off."
+
+"Because," said Bubbles, smiling with relief, "I'd do my best, but if it
+came to a show-down with _him_ there ain't a thing I _could_ do."
+
+"One time or another," said Harry, "we'll _get_ him. You and I will."
+
+"I betcher," said Bubbles.
+
+And in his little peaked face there was much that was threatening to the
+ultimate welfare of the legless beggar.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Barbara, ordinarily clear-minded and single-minded, drove uptown with
+her thoughts in a state of chaos. She wished to think only about her
+newly begun head of Satan fallen, since nothing else seemed to her at
+the moment of any importance, but the face, hands, and voice of the
+young secret-service agent refused to be banished, and kept suing for
+kindly notice.
+
+In almost the exact degree in which the legless beggar was repulsive to
+her sense of perfection the secret-service agent was attractive. She had
+never seen a man so agreeable to her eyes. And yet, as a marine artist
+might see fame in painting a wreck upon a sea-shore, rather than a fine
+new ship under full sail, so she felt that, artistically considered,
+there was no comparison whatever between the two men. The face of the
+elder compelled attention and study, and loosed in the observer's mind a
+whole stream of conjecture and unanswerable questions. The face of the
+younger began and ended perhaps in the attractions of youth and high
+spirits. It was a face of which, should the mind back of it prove
+wanting, you might tire, and learn to look upon as commonplace.
+
+In the midst of unguided thinking Barbara laughed aloud; that small boy
+whom she had lifted from the cold gutter to comparative affluence and
+incomparable affection for his rescuer came unbidden into the
+flurry-scurry of her thoughts, and remained for some time. And she knew
+that if all her friends should fail her, if the beggar returned no more
+to be modelled, if the secret-service agent proved but a handsome empty
+shell, Bubbles would always show up at the appointed time and place
+while life remained in him. Then, again, as she tried to concentrate
+upon her bust of Blizzard, the secret-service agent stepped forward, you
+may say, and smiled into her eyes. And she smiled back. Again she seemed
+to feel the strong clasp of his hand, and to hear the agreeable and even
+musical intonation of his strong voice. Odd, she thought, that he should
+come to put on door-knobs, turn out to be a secret-service agent, and
+have at the same time, if not the characteristics of a fine gentleman,
+those at least of a man of education and sensibility infinitely superior
+to the highest type of day-laborer or detective. One of her new
+acquaintances talked like a gentleman and claimed to be the son of a
+distinguished man; the other, claiming nothing, was infinitely more
+presentable; and there was only the small boy who remained frankly
+representative of his class. In spite of his coat of bright buttons, he
+was of the streets streety; a valiant little ragamuffin, in all but the
+actual rags. He had the morals of his class and the point of view, and
+differed only in the excellence of his heart. This was a heart made for
+loving, devotion, and sacrifice. Yet it was crammed to the brim with
+knowledge of evil, and even tolerance therefor. That certain men in
+certain circumstances would act in such and such a way was not a
+horrible idea to Bubbles, but merely a fact. In the boy's code stealing
+from a friend was stealing, but stealing from an enemy was merely one
+way of making a living.
+
+Upon arriving at her father's house, Barbara met Wilmot Allen just
+turning away from the door. His handsome face brightened at the sight of
+her, and he sprang forward hatless to furnish her with quite unnecessary
+aid in stepping out of the taxi.
+
+"Oh, _there_ you are!" he said. "Sparker said you might be home for
+lunch and again you might not. Please may I graft a meal?"
+
+"Of course," said Barbara, "but unless somebody else drops out of the
+skies we'll be all alone."
+
+"Your father off on a case?"
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, as they went in, "he is operating, but in Wall
+Street. And what's the best news with you?"
+
+"That spring's come and summer's coming. When do your holidays begin?"
+
+"_That"_ said Barbara, with a certain air of triumph, "is a secret of
+the workshop. Let's sit in the dining-room. It's the only way to
+hurry lunch."
+
+To persons used to humbler ways of life Dr. Ferris's dining-room would
+have proved too large and stately a place for purposes of intimate
+conversation. Warriors and ladies looked down from the tapestried walls
+upon a small round table set with heavy silver and light glass for two,
+and having the effect, in the midst of an immense deep-blue rug, of a
+little island in a lake. But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even
+larger and more stately rooms, faced each other across the white linen
+with its pattern of lotus-plants and swans, and chatted as comfortably
+and unconcernedly as two children in their nursery.
+
+"As for holidays," said Barbara, "I have a new model, Wilmot; a
+wonderful person, and that means _work_. I may stay in town right
+through the summer."
+
+Allen sighed loudly, and on purpose. "You make me tired," he said.
+"Bring a lump of clay down to Newport, and _I'll_ sit for you."
+
+Barbara affected to study his face critically. Then she shook her head.
+"My new model," she explained, "has got the face of a fallen angel. I
+think I can do it. And if I can do it, why, I see all the good things of
+sculping coming my way."
+
+"An ordinary every-day angel face wouldn't do?" her guest insinuated. "I
+could go out and fall."
+
+"I don't doubt it!" she returned somewhat crisply. "I feel very sure
+that you could disgrace yourself without trouble and even with relish.
+But it wouldn't show in your face. You see, you couldn't really
+be wicked."
+
+"Couldn't I though!" exclaimed the young man. "A lot you know about it.
+I could eat you up for one thing without turning a hair, and that would
+be wicked."
+
+"It wouldn't," Barbara laughed. "It would be greedy. My new model has
+the face of a man who has never stopped at anything that has stood in
+his way. I fancy that he has murders up his sleeve and every other crime
+in the calendar. And sometimes memory of them brings the most wonderful
+look of sorrow and remorse into his face, and at the same time he looks
+resolved to go on murdering and burning and sinning because he can't get
+back to where he was when he began to fall, and must go on falling or
+perish. Don't you think that if I can cram that into a lump of clay I'll
+make a reputation for myself?"
+
+"I think," said Wilmot, "that if you've got that kind of a man sitting
+for you, you'll need all the reputation you can get. You talk of him
+with the same sort of enthusiasm that a bird would show in describing
+being fascinated by a snake."
+
+Barbara considered this judicially. "Do you know," she agreed, "it is
+rather like that. He fascinates me, and at the same time I never saw a
+brute I hated so. He must be wicked to deserve such pain."
+
+"Oh, he suffers, does he?"
+
+"Of course. Wouldn't you suffer every minute of your life if you had no
+legs?"
+
+Barbara, intent upon what was on her plate, did not perceive the sudden
+astonished darkening of Wilmot Allen's face, nor that the interest which
+he had hitherto only feigned in her new model had become genuine.
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"I was going to say 'just a beggar,'" said Barbara. "But he isn't just
+a beggar. I've gathered that he's rather well off, and that he's one of
+the powers on the East Side. And he looks money and power, even if he
+doesn't talk them."
+
+"Is his name by any chance Blizzard?"
+
+She looked up in astonishment "How did you know?"
+
+"Oh," he said cheerfully, "I've knocked about the city and known all
+sorts of curious people, and heard about others. So Blizzard's your new
+model. Now look here, Barbara, are we old friends, or aren't we?"
+
+"Very old friends," she said.
+
+"Then let me tell you that you're a little fool to have anything to do
+with a man like that. You can't touch pitch, you know, and--"
+
+"I only touch him with a pair of compasses," she interrupted sweetly.
+
+"Don't quibble," said Allen with energy; "it's not like you. That man is
+so bad, so unsavory, so vile, that you simply _mustn't_ have him about.
+He's dangerous."
+
+"So is a volcano," said Barbara, "but there's no reason why the most
+innocent bread-and-butter miss shouldn't paint a picture of a volcano if
+she felt inspired."
+
+"I see that there's only one thing to do. I shall tell your father."
+
+Wilmot Allen was genuinely troubled. And Barbara laughed at him.
+
+"I'm not a child," she said.
+
+"That's just it," said he; "that's why you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself. And anyway you are a child. All girls say they aren't until
+they get into a mess of some sort, and then they excuse themselves to
+themselves and everybody else by protesting that they were. 'I was so
+young. I didn't know,' and all that rot."
+
+"Blizzard," said Barbara, "is quiet, polite, and a good talker. He
+comes, he sits for me, and he goes away."
+
+The butler having left the room, Wilmot fixed his rather tired eyes on
+Barbara's face, and spoke with a certain earnest tenderness. "Barbs," he
+said, "take it from me, happiness doesn't lie where you think it does. I
+think the very highest achievements of the very greatest artists haven't
+brought happiness. Look here, old dear; put a limit to your ambition.
+Say that by a certain date you'll either succeed and quit, or fail and
+quit, and then see if you can't take a little more interest in your own
+people, in your own heart--even in me."
+
+"Wilmot," she said seriously, "if I fail with my head of Blizzard, I
+think I _shall_ give up."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," he pleaded, "to give up now? And then, you
+know, you could always say if _only_ you'd kept on you would have made a
+masterpiece."
+
+"And who would believe that?"
+
+"_I!_" said Wilmot. "It's easy for me to believe anything wonderful of
+you. It always has been."
+
+"And a moment ago," she smiled, "you called me a little fool and said
+you'd tell my father on me."
+
+She rose, still smiling, and he followed her into the library.
+
+"Are all the studios in your building occupied?" he asked.
+
+"They are," said Barbara, "and they aren't. Kelting, who has the ground
+floor, has gone abroad. And Updyke, who has the third floor, has been in
+Bermuda all winter." She sank into a deep leather chair that half
+swallowed her.
+
+"There's a janitor?"
+
+"No. There's a janitress, a friendly old lady, quite deaf. She has seen
+infinitely better days."
+
+"To all intents and purposes, then," said Wilmot, and the trouble that
+he felt showed in his face, "it's an empty house, and you shut yourself
+up in it with some model or other that you happen to pick up in the
+streets, and you don't know enough to be afraid. You'll get yourself
+murdered one of these bright mornings."
+
+"Oh, I think not!" said Barbara. "There's Bubbles, you know."
+
+"Oh, Bubbles!" exclaimed Wilmot. "He doesn't weigh eighty pounds. This
+Blizzard--look here, get rid of him. I can't tell you what the man is."
+He laughed. "I don't know you well enough. But take my word for it, if a
+crime appeals to him, he commits it. And the police can't touch
+him, Barbs."
+
+"Why can't they?"
+
+"He knows too much about them individually and collectively. They're
+afraid of him. Get rid of him, Barbs."
+
+Wilmot Allen's voice was strongly appealing. The fact that he sat
+forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable
+embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest. But Barbara shook her
+lovely head.
+
+"You ask too much, Wilmot. My heart's in the beginning I've made. I've
+got to go on. It's a test case. If I've got _anything_ in me, now is the
+chance for it to show. You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try
+to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me.
+And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of
+a kind that's almost impossible to face."
+
+"Then do me a favor. It won't interfere with your work, and it may be
+very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic
+pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a
+sort of guardian. It's much stronger than the strongest man."
+
+"How absurd!" she said. "And what are you doing carrying concealed
+weapons? I'm beginning to think that you're a desperado yourself."
+
+He rose, smiling imperturbably, and laid the pistol in her lap.
+
+"At least," she said, "show me how it works."
+
+He explained the mechanism clearly and with patience, not once, but
+several times. "Point it," he said, "as you would point your finger, and
+keep pulling the trigger until the enemy drops."
+
+"One every two hours," Barbara commented, "until relieved."
+
+"May you never need it," said Wilmot, earnestly.
+
+"I never shall," said Barbara. "Must I really keep it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you," she exclaimed, "you will be quite unprotected all the way
+from here to the nearest shop where such things are sold."
+
+"I shall be armed again," he smiled, "before I am threatened. Indeed, to
+know that you are armed has heartened me immensely. What are you doing
+this afternoon?"
+
+"I don't know," she answered with provoking submissiveness; "you haven't
+told me."
+
+"It's just possible," he said, "that the turf courts at the Westchester
+Country Club have been opened. I might telephone and find out. Then we
+could collect some clothes, jump into a taxi, and go out and open
+the season."
+
+"You can't afford taxis, Wilmot. And you never let anybody else pay for
+anything."
+
+"Oh," he pleaded, "I can afford a taxi this once, believe me."
+
+"In that case," said Barbara, "I surrender."
+
+"If you only would, Barbs."
+
+"'Phone if you are going to, and don't be always slipping sentiment
+into a business proposition," She affected to look very stern and
+business-like.
+
+"I shall engage the magic taxi," he affirmed.
+
+"The what?"
+
+"Don't you know? There's a magic taxi in the city--just one. You get in,
+you give your order, and lo and behold, rivers and seas are crossed,
+countries and continents, until finally you fetch up in the place where
+you would be, and when you look at the meter you find that it hasn't
+registered as much as a penny."
+
+"Time," said Barbara, "flies even faster than a magic taxicab. So if you
+are going to 'phone--"
+
+"Is there no drop of sentiment in that exquisite shell which the world
+knows as Barbara Ferris? Didn't any man ever mean anything to
+you, Barbs?"
+
+She flushed slightly, for there had come into her thoughts quite
+unbidden the image of a certain young man in workman's clothes, kneeling
+at a door, and removing an old japanned iron lock. She shook her head
+firmly, and smiled up at him insultingly.
+
+"Men, Wilmot," she said, "are nothing to me but planes, angles, curves,
+masses, lights, and shadows. They are either suited to sculpture or
+they aren't."
+
+Wilmot laughed, and while he was busy with the telephone, Barbara tried
+to think of the secret-service agent in cold terms of planes, curves,
+masses, etc., and found that she couldn't. Which discovery annoyed and
+perplexed her.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The girls who plaited hats for Blizzard had just finished luncheon and
+were taking their places at the long work-table. The entrance door
+having clanged its bell, twenty heads bent earnestly over twenty hats in
+various stages of construction, and twenty pairs of hands leaped into
+skilful activity.
+
+The master passed up and down on his crutches, observing progress and
+despatch with slow-moving, introspective eyes. Presently he came to a
+halt and clapped his hands sharply together. Twenty pairs of eyes, some
+cringing, some with vestiges of boldness, some favor-currying, sought
+his, and twenty pairs of hands ceased work as when power is shut off
+from as many machines. Blizzard's eyes passed slowly over the girls in a
+sort of appraising review, once, and a second time.
+
+"Miss Rose."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The speaker was one of those flowers of girlhood which bloom here and
+there in the slums. She might have been a princess in exile and
+disguise. Even her hands and feet were fine and delicate. And if in her
+expression there was a certain nervousness, there was none of fear.
+
+"Stand up."
+
+She rose in her place; the corners of her mouth trembled a little, but
+curled steadily upward.
+
+"Stand out where I can see you."
+
+She did so, with a certain defiant grace.
+
+"Turn around, slowly."
+
+She might have been one of those young ladies at a fashionable
+dressmaker's upon whom the effect of the latest Parisian models is
+continually tried. While she slowly gyrated, the legless man, looking up
+at her, spoke aloud.
+
+"Muck! Muck!" he said. "And yet she's the pick of the bunch."
+
+The girl kept on turning,
+
+"Stand still."
+
+She did as ordered, but it so happened that her back was squarely turned
+upon the master.
+
+"No monkey business," he shouted. "Face me! Face me!"
+
+She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.
+
+"The rest of you," he said, "will have the rest of the day off. Get
+out."
+
+Seventy-six chair-legs squeaked, and Miss Rose's nineteen companions,
+with murmurs and occasional nervous giggles, hurried off to the
+coat-room. A few minutes later the bell of the outer door clanged
+once--they were going; clanged a second time--they were gone.
+
+[Illustration: She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting
+her lips]
+
+Meanwhile the legless man had not taken his hard, calculating eyes off
+the girl who remained. Presently he spoke. "We're alone," he said.
+"I'm between you and the door." He spread his great arms, as if to
+emphasize the impassability of the barrier which confronted her. "Are
+you afraid?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The legless man laughed. "Well said," he remarked, "and truthfully said.
+And why are you afraid?"
+
+"Everybody's afraid of you."
+
+He regarded her for some moments in silence. "You needn't be. Have I
+ever hurt you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long have you worked for me?"
+
+"Five months."
+
+"And you are the cleverest worker I have. You admit that?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Again he laughed. "Once," he said, "I thought you were the prettiest
+girl I'd ever seen. But I've seen a prettier."
+
+"I believe you."
+
+"'But you've got a certain spirit. You don't cringe."
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"No!" he bellowed, "you don't." And when he saw that she didn't cringe,
+he laughed once more.
+
+"You live with Minnie Bauer?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You have no father--no mother?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Burnt alive in a tenement fire, weren't they?"
+
+She answered with a great effort, and seemed upon the verge of tears,
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You will leave Minnie, and come here to live."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I make it my business to reward the skilful, the laborious, and
+the deserving."
+
+She shook her head. "That's not good enough," she said.
+
+"You will keep my house in order," he said; "you will learn to help me
+with the piano. You will have fine clothes to wear, and the spending of
+plenty of money."
+
+"Not good enough," she repeated.
+
+"I have read you these five months as if you were a book. You are loyal
+to your friends. You can keep secrets. I admire you. There are many
+things that I wish to talk about. But I cannot talk about them except to
+some one that I can trust. Will you stay?"
+
+She shook her head, but the legless man smiled, as he might have smiled
+if she had nodded it.
+
+"I am suffering," he said, "the tortures of the damned. I ask you for
+help and for comfort, and you refuse them."
+
+A look curiously like tenderness swam into the girl's eyes. The beggar
+moved sideways upon his crutches.
+
+"If you want to go," he said, "the way's open."
+
+"Can I really go if I want to, and not come back?"
+
+"You really can," he said. "Most things that I want I take, but a man
+can't take help and comfort unless they are freely given."
+
+She moved slowly forward as if to discover the truth of his statement
+that the way was open. He made not the least gesture of interference.
+When she was between him and the outer door and rather nearer the
+latter, she turned about sharply.
+
+"What's troubling you?" she asked.
+
+"The fact," he said, and there was a something really charming in the
+expression of his mouth and eyes, "that though I can give orders to very
+many people, and be obeyed as a general is obeyed by his soldiers in war
+times, I have no friend. Fear attracts this person to me, self-interest
+attracts that person, but there's no one that's held to me by
+friendship."
+
+"You're only asking me to be your friend?"
+
+"You will be as safe in my house as in the rooms of the Gerry Society."
+
+"If you want me for a friend why did you call me _muck_ just now?"
+
+"I don't want the others to know that we are friends. I want them to
+think--what they always think."
+
+"How do I know you trust me?"
+
+"Lock the street door," he said; "you're younger than I. It's easier for
+you to move about."
+
+She locked the door and returned.
+
+"Are you staying," he asked, "through curiosity or friendship?"
+
+"Look here," she said, "it's neither, Can't you guess what ails me?"
+
+"Tell me."
+
+She took his strong, wicked face between her young hands, and bending
+over kissed him on the forehead. Then she drew back, flaming.
+
+The legless man was touched. "Why?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. It just came to me," she said. "God knows I didn't want
+it to. I guess that's all"
+
+Rose found it hard to control her jumping nerves. A curious thing had
+happened to her. Having at last wormed her way into the master's
+confidence, and brought a long piece of play-acting to a successful
+conclusion, a certain candor and frankness which were natural to her
+made the thought of divulging what she had already found out, and
+whatever he might confide to her in the future, exceedingly repugnant.
+And she acknowledged with a shiver of revolt that the creature's
+fascination for her was not altogether a matter of make-believe. She was
+going to find it very hard to keep a proper perspective and point of
+view; to continue to regard him as just another "case" and all in the
+day's work.
+
+"In my house," he said, "you shall do as you please. You're a dear girl,
+Rose,"
+
+"I feel at home in your house," she said, "and happy."
+
+A cloud gathered in Blizzard's face. "Happiness!" he exclaimed. "There
+is no such thing--neither for you, nor for me. The world is a
+torture-chamber, and remember, Rose, we are to be allies; we are to
+have no secrets from each other."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "That was what you said," she complained.
+"But have you really shown me any confidence?"
+
+He smiled as upon a wayward child. "You shall know everything that there
+is to know--when the time comes."
+
+She pouted.
+
+"And what, by the way," he went on, "have _you_ told _me_?"
+
+"I have told you," she answered with dignity, "my one secret."
+
+"The way you feel about me?"
+
+She nodded and blushed. It was going to be a hard lie to keep telling.
+
+"And you've no other secret? Nothing else that you ought to tell me?"
+
+There was more meaning in his voice than in his words, so that for a
+moment Rose was startled. Was it possible that the man suspected her,
+and was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse?
+
+"What else could I possibly have to tell you of any importance?"
+
+"I was joking," said the beggar.
+
+Rose sat at the window of her room looking upward into a night of stars.
+She could not sleep. Twice she had heard the legless man pass her door
+upon his crutches. Each time he had hesitated, and once, or so she
+thought, he had laid his hand upon the door-knob. She wondered how much
+of her wakefulness was due to fright; and how much to the excitement of
+being well launched upon a case of tremendous importance, for the secret
+service knew that Blizzard was engaged upon a colossal plot of some
+sort, and just what that was Rose had volunteered, at the risk of her
+life, and of her honor, to find out.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The next morning, at the appointed hour, Blizzard climbed the stairs to
+Barbara's studio, knocked, and was admitted. That he was welcome, if
+only for his head's sake, was at once evident.
+
+"Something told me that _you_ wouldn't fail me," said Barbara.
+
+"You can be quite easy about that," said Blizzard. "I am in the habit of
+keeping my word."
+
+He climbed to the model's platform and seated himself as upon the
+previous morning, with a kind of business-like directness.
+
+"Ready when you are," he said.
+
+Barbara withdrew the damp cloths from the clay, looked critically from
+the bust to the original and back again. "My work," she said, "still
+looks right to me. But you don't."
+
+Blizzard smiled.
+
+"Yesterday," she said, "you looked as if you were suffering like," she
+laughed, "like the very devil. To-day you look well fed and contented.
+Now that won't do. Try to remember what you were thinking about when I
+first saw you."
+
+At once, as a fresh slide is placed in a magic-lantern, the legless
+man's expression of well-being vanished, and that dark tortured look of
+Satan fallen which had so fired Barbara's imagination, once more
+possessed his features. Barbara's eyes flashed with satisfaction.
+
+"It wasn't hard for you to remember what you were thinking about, was
+it?" she said.
+
+"It was not," said Blizzard, and his voice was cold as a well-curb.
+"When I first saw you, I was thinking thoughts that can never be
+forgotten."
+
+"Lift your chin, please," she said, "just a fraction. So. Turn your head
+a fraction more toward me. Good. And please don't think of anything
+pleasant until I tell you. Anybody can make an exact copy of a head.
+Expressions are the things that only lucky people can catch."
+
+"I believe you are one of them," said Blizzard. "I believe you will
+catch mine--if you keep on wanting to."
+
+"I must," she said simply.
+
+And then for half an hour there was no sound in the studio but the
+long-drawn breathing of the legless man. Barbara worked in a kind of
+grim, exalted silence.
+
+Meanwhile Bubbles was climbing the back stair to his bedroom, where he
+had left Harry, the secret-service agent, on guard over Barbara. The
+boy, all out of breath with haste, opened his right fist and disclosed a
+narrow slip of paper with writing on it.
+
+"The minute _he_ came out of his burrow and started uptown," said
+Bubbles, "and was out o' sight, I begun to spin my top up and down
+Marrow Lane. Rose she's moved upstairs, like she said she would."
+
+Harry's eyes sparkled with interest and approbation. "Good girl!" he
+said.
+
+"I seen her," Bubbles went on, "at an upper window, and when she seed
+me, she winked both eyes, like as if the sun was too bright for 'em. I
+winked the same way, and then she lets the paper drop."
+
+Harry took the paper out of the boy's hand, and read: "Nothing done,
+much doing."
+
+"She's a grand one," said Bubbles. "If he ever gets wise to her, he'll
+tear her to pieces."
+
+"I'm not worrying about Rose--yet," said Harry. "She knows what she's up
+against, and she can pull a gun quicker than I can. We used to play
+getting the drop on each other by the hour."
+
+"What for?" asked Bubbles, always interested in the smallest details of
+sporting propositions.
+
+"Poker-chips," said Harry, and Bubbles looked his disgust. There was a
+minute's silence, then:
+
+"Harry," said Bubbles, "what do _you_ think he's up to?"
+
+"By George," said Harry, "I can't make out. What do _you_ think?"
+
+Bubbles's sensitive mouth quivered eagerly. "You tell me," he said,
+"what he's making hats for--he don't sell 'em--and I'll tell you what
+he's up to."
+
+"Some of the labor leaders in the West are mixed up in it," said Harry;
+"we _know_ that."
+
+"Labor leaders, Harry!" The small boy's face was comic with scorn and
+facetiousness.
+
+"You know the ones I mean, Bub. Not the men who lead labor--that's only
+what they call themselves; but the men who betray labor for their own
+pockets, the men who find dynamite for half-witted fanatics to set off.
+The men--" He broke short off, and listened. "Better butt in to the
+studio, Bub, and see what's doing,"
+
+"Did you think you heard something?"
+
+"I know that I haven't heard anything for half an hour."
+
+In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell
+of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo."
+
+And although Barbara actually was working with great speed and
+gratitude, the entrance of the small boy had seemed to disturb the train
+of her inspiration. Somewhere in the back of her head appeared to be
+some brain-cells quite detached from the important matter in hand, and
+to these was conveyed the fact that a door-knob had been turned, and at
+once they began to busy themselves upon the suggestion. Something like
+this: door-knobs--old door-knobs--new glass door-knobs--man to put on
+new glass door-knobs--wonderfully prepossessing man--name
+Harry--charming name. Harry--charming smile--wonder if anybody'll ever
+see him again.
+
+Gradually other cells in Barbara's brain took up the business, until
+presently she was entirely occupied with unasked, and unwelcome, and
+altogether pleasant thoughts of the young secret-service agent. It was
+almost as if he laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: "You've worked
+long enough on this dreadful beggar--come with me for a holiday."
+
+Twice, sternly, she endeavored to go on with her work, and could not.
+Something of the May-weather message, that all is futile except life,
+had filtered into her blood. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her
+face, very rosy, became so wonderfully beautiful that Blizzard almost
+groaned aloud. Something told him that his morning was over, his morning
+filled with the happiness of propinquity and stolen looks, with the
+happiness that is half spiritual and half gloating.
+
+"Thank you," said Barbara, "ever so much. I sha'n't do any more to-day.
+I'm not fit. But we have gotten on. Want to look?"
+
+She turned the revolving-table so that Blizzard could look upon his
+likeness. And you may be sure that he did not lose the opportunity thus
+presented. He regarded the clay steadily, for a long time, without
+speaking. Then he drew one very long breath, and the expression upon his
+face softened.
+
+"That man," he said, "has had a hard life, Miss Ferris. It is all
+written in his face. When he was a little boy, he was the victim of a
+mistake so atrocious, so wicked, that the blood in his body turned to
+gall, and all his powers of loving turned to hatred. Instead of facing
+disaster like a man, he turned from it, and fled--down--down--down, and
+fell down--down--grappling with all that he could reach that was good or
+beautiful, and dragging it down with him--to destruction--to the pit--to
+hell on earth. And then he lived a long time, pampering all that was
+base in him, prospering materially, recognizing no moral law. He was
+contented with his choice--happy as a well-fed dog is happy in a warm
+corner. And then the inevitable happened. An idea came to him, a dream
+of peace and beauty, of well-doing and happiness. But that chance was
+torture, since, if he was to live it, he must undo the evil that he had
+done, unthink the thoughts that had been meat and drink to him, and he
+must get back to where he was before he fell."
+
+He paused, and extending his right forefinger pointed at the bust of
+himself and exclaimed:
+
+"That man--there--that you've made in my image--line for line--torture
+for torture, must go on living in the hell which he has prepared with
+his own perverted mind. He can never get back. It is too late--too
+late--too late!"
+
+His voice rose to a kind of restrained fury. The room shook with its
+strong vibrations.
+
+Then he turned to Barbara, smiled, all of a sudden, gayly, almost
+genuinely, and said in a voice of humble gallantry:
+
+"But I've done you a good turn. If you never proved it before, you're
+proving these days that you are a heaven-born genius."
+
+A harder-headed girl than Barbara must have been pleased and beguiled.
+She blushed, and laughed. "I've only one thing to wish for," she said.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I wish," she said, "that you were the greatest art critic in the
+world."
+
+He leaned forward, and in a confidential whisper: "A secret," said he,
+"between us two. I am."
+
+Then they both laughed, and the beggar, not without reluctance, climbed
+down from the platform. Swift and easy as were his motions, he appeared
+to terrible disadvantage, and he knew it. So did Barbara, who a moment
+before had been on the point of really liking him. She steeled herself
+against the sudden disgust which she could not help feeling, and smiled
+at him in a steady, friendly way.
+
+"To-morrow?" she said.
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"At the same time, please. Good-by, and good luck to you."
+
+"Good luck to _you_, Miss Ferris." And he was gone.
+
+Barbara, opening the door into the next room, surprised a sound of
+voices. They ceased instantly.
+
+"Bubbles," she called.
+
+He came, looking a trifle guilty.
+
+"Who's that with you?"
+
+"Harry," he said simply.
+
+"The man who was here before?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Barbara."
+
+"What's he doing in my rooms?"
+
+"He was just sitting, and chinning," said Bubbles.
+
+Miss Ferris was displeased. "Tell him," she said, "that I can't have my
+apartment turned into a Young Men's Club."
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+Bubbles retired, reluctantly, with the message, only to return in a
+moment.
+
+"He says will you let him speak to you a moment, please."
+
+She hesitated. And then, "Yes," she said. "I suppose he wishes to
+apologize."
+
+He was even more charming-looking than the memory of him. She made an
+effort to look a little displeased, and a little unfriendly. She failed,
+because the May-weather message had gotten into her blood, and because
+certain forces of which as yet she knew little had established
+connecting links between herself and the young secret-service agent.
+
+"I am going to scold you," said Barbara. "Bubbles has his work to do."
+
+"But I was helping him with it."
+
+"He said you were just sitting and--and chinning."
+
+"When we had finished working."
+
+"Have you been here long?"
+
+The young man looked her steadily in the face, and said gravely: "Ever
+since Blizzard came."
+
+Barbara lifted her chin a little. "I am quite able to take care of
+myself," she said.
+
+He shook his head sadly.
+
+"Do you make it your business"--she had succeeded in making herself
+angry--"to keep an eye on all young women whom you fancy unable to take
+care of themselves?"
+
+"I only wish to God I could," he said earnestly. "But of course it's
+impossible. So I just do the best I can."
+
+"And why have you chosen me? Surely others are even _more_ helpless than
+I am." She managed to convey a good deal of scorn. "Why," she continued,
+"must I be the particular creature singled out for your
+chivalrous notice?"
+
+"I don't know," he said simply.
+
+All the anger went out of Barbara, and a delicious little thrill passed
+through her from head to foot, leaving in its wake a clear
+rosy coloring.
+
+"Bubbles," said the young man, "would die for you; but he is only a
+little boy. I am very strong."
+
+Barbara refused to rise at the implication that the strong young man was
+also ready and even eager to die for her. "Tell me more about
+Blizzard," she said.
+
+"He's one of the half-dozen men in the city that we would like to have
+an eye on night and day. We want him."
+
+"Oh," she said, "then you are not here entirely on my account? It is
+also your business to be here?"
+
+He nodded, not altogether pleased with the turn the matter had taken.
+
+"In that case," she said, "I have no wish to stand in your way. But--I
+don't propose to be a cat's-paw. You may sit in Bubbles's room if you
+like, but I won't have you on your hands and knees at the studio door
+listening at the key-hole. That must be understood."
+
+The young man flushed with righteous anger. "You don't _look_" he said,
+"as if you could say a thing like that to a fellow."
+
+Instantly, and almost humbly, she begged his pardon.
+
+"Then I may come to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"And the next day," said Barbara. "And, by the way, what is your name?"
+
+"Harry," he said.
+
+"Harry what?"
+
+A look very much like pathos came into his handsome eyes. "I want to be
+honest with you," he said. "I don't own any other name. I call myself
+West. But I've no right to it. I don't know who my father was or what
+he was."
+
+"You don't have to explain," said Barbara. "I think you would have been
+quite within your rights in saying that your name was West and letting
+it go at that."
+
+It was not her intention to receive Mr. West's confidences either at
+this time or any other. And so, of course, ten minutes later, as she
+drove uptown, she was "dying" to know all that there was to be known
+about him. He had gone downstairs with her, and put her into her cab. He
+might have been a prince with a passion for good manners. He seemed to
+her wonderfully graceful and at ease, in all that he did.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Dr. Ferris smiled tolerantly, and said to the footman who had brought
+the card: "I shall be very glad to see Mr. Allen." And he kept on
+smiling after the footman had gone. The interview which he foresaw was
+of that kind which not only did him honor but amused him. Wilmot Allen
+would not be the first young man to whom the rich surgeon had had the
+pleasure of putting embarrassing questions: "What can you tell me of
+your past life and habits?" "Can you support my daughter in the way to
+which she has always been accustomed?" etc., etc.
+
+But Wilmot Allen did not at once ask permission to address Barbara. He
+entered with that good-natured air of easy laziness which was rather
+attractive in him, and without looking in the least troubled announced
+that what he had come to say embarrassed him greatly.
+
+"And furthermore," he said, "if Barbara hears of it, she'll be furious.
+She would take the natural and even correct point of view that it's none
+of my business, and she would select one of the thousand ruthless and
+brutal methods which young women have at their disposition for the
+disciplining of young men. So, please, will you consider my visit
+professional and, if you like," he grinned mischievously, "charge me the
+regular fee for consultation?"
+
+Dr. Ferris laughed. "I shall be delighted to play father confessor," he
+said, "if you'll sit down, and smoke a cigar."
+
+Mr. Allen would. He lighted one of Dr. Ferris's cigars with the care due
+to a thing of value, settled himself in a deep chair, and appeared by
+slightly pausing to be gathering scattered thoughts into a focus.
+
+"Yes," he said at last, "there's no doubt about it. I am about to be
+very impertinent. If you like you shall turn me out of your house, with
+or without kicks, as seems best to you. Barbara needs a nurse, and it
+seems to me you ought to know it; because in a way it's a reflection
+on you."
+
+"Quite so," said Dr. Ferris. "I am not at all pleased with Barbara. What
+has she done?"
+
+"Do you suppose it would be possible to get her interested in anything
+besides this sculpture business--before it's too late?"
+
+"Too late?"
+
+"Before she gets a taste of success."
+
+"But will she--ever?"
+
+Wilmot Allen nodded eagerly. "She will," he said. "She is doing a head.
+It's far from finished; but even now, in the rough state, it's quite the
+most exceptional inspired thing you ever saw. She will exhibit it and
+become famous overnight. I can't bet much--as you may perhaps
+suspect--but I'll bet all I've got. And of course, once she gets
+recognition and everybody begins to kow-tow to her--why,
+good-by, Barbara."
+
+"Still," said Dr. Ferris, "if she's developing a real talent, I don't
+know that I ought to stand in her way. And, besides, we've fought that
+all out, and," he laughed grimly, "I took my licking like a man."
+
+"Of course," said Allen. "When a girl that ought to go in for marriage
+and that sort of thing takes to being talented--I call it a tragedy.
+But, passing that, the model for the head she's doing isn't a proper
+person. That's what I'm driving at. He's one of the wickedest and most
+unscrupulous persons in the world. Barbara ought not to speak to him,
+let alone give him the run of her studio and hobnob with him same as
+with one of her friends. He's a man too busy with villainy to sit as a
+model for the fun of sitting. The pay doesn't interest him. And if he
+shows up every morning at nine and stays all morning, it's only because
+he's got an axe to grind. He talks. He lays down the law. He appeals to
+Barbara's mind and imagination; and it's all rather horrible--one of
+those poison snakes that look like an old rubber boot, and a bird all
+prettiness, bright colors, innocence, and admiration of how the world is
+made. Look at it in this way. She makes a great hit with the bust. Who's
+responsible? Well, the creature that supplied the inspiration, largely.
+She'll feel gratitude. He'll take advantage of anything that comes his
+way. And frankly, Dr. Ferris, I may be making a mountain out of a
+mole-hill, but I'm worried to death. Suppose I told you that, say, Duane
+Carter spent hours every day in Barbara's studio?"
+
+Dr. Ferris jumped to his feet, white with anger. "Do you mean to tell
+me that my daughter is friendly with that person?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Allen calmly. "I think Barbara's new friend is a very
+much more dangerous person for her to know. Whatever Duane Carter is he
+wouldn't dare. This other man--"
+
+"Look here, Wilmot"--Dr. Ferris began to pace the room in considerable
+agitation--"you're an old friend of Barbara's. Is friendliness at the
+root of your worry, or is it some other feeling, not so disinterested as
+friendship?"
+
+Wilmot Allen rose to his full height, and Dr. Ferris paused in his
+pacings. They faced each other.
+
+"If I was any good," said the young man slowly, "if I had any money, if
+Barbara would have me, I'd marry her to-morrow. But I'm not any
+good--never was. I haven't any money, hardly ever have had, and Barbara
+would no more have me of her own free will than she'd take a hammer and
+smash the bust she's making. So much for motives. Have I disposed of
+jealousy?"
+
+Dr. Ferris nodded.
+
+"The man," said Allen, "isn't a man. He's a gutter-dog, a gargoyle, half
+a man. And his position in the city--in the whole country, I think--is
+so fortified that with the best will in the world the law cannot touch
+him. Duane Carter--well, he's been a gay boy with the ladies--a bad man
+if you like--but at least he is not accused by gossip of murder, arson,
+abduction, and crimes infinitely worse than these. He may have beguiled
+women, but at least his worst enemy would never suppose that he had
+trafficked in them. Barbara's model is all the things that you can
+imagine. And all of them are written in his horrible face. To see them
+together, friendly, reparteeing, chummy, would turn your
+stomach--Barbara so exquisite and high-born, and the man, his eyes full
+of evil fires, sitting like a great toad on the model's chair. And at
+that--good God, you might stand it, if he was a whole man! But he isn't.
+It's horrible! He has no legs--and you want to stamp on him till
+he's dead."
+
+Dr. Ferris had turned white as a sheet. "To me," he said quietly, "that
+is the most horrible form of mutilation. I can't tell you why. It is so.
+And you will believe that in my practice I have encountered all sorts.
+But who is he?"
+
+"He's a man named Blizzard--he passes for a beggar, grinds an organ,
+sells shoe-laces and that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, he's very
+well off, if not rich. Why don't you visit Barbara's studio to-morrow,
+look things over, and put a stop to it? You can say things to Barbara
+that I can't, that no young man can say to a girl. Go as far as you
+like. Whatever you tell her about him will be true even if you can't
+prove it. You can make her see what thin ice she's skating on. Or if you
+can't nobody can."
+
+"I'll go to the studio to-morrow," said the surgeon. "I am very much
+disturbed by what you have told me: the more so because as a physician
+I have learned how many impossible things are true. Have you told me all
+you wish to? Or is there more? Do you think," he spoke very steadily,
+"that Barbara _cares_ for this beast? Such things happen in the world,
+I know."
+
+"God forbid," said Allen, "but I think he has a sort of fascination for
+her, and that she doesn't realize it. You'll let your visit appear
+casual and accidental, won't you? You won't let Barbara suspect that I
+had anything to do with it?"
+
+Dr. Ferris promised, and the two parted with mutual good-will; but
+neither the next morning, nor the morning after that, was Dr. Ferris at
+liberty to pay a visit to Barbara in her studio. Nominally retired from
+active practice, and devoting whatever of life should remain to surgical
+experimentation and theory, the sudden and acute jeopardy of an old
+friend caused him to put all other considerations aside for the time
+being, and once more to don the white harness of his profession. For two
+days Dr. Ferris hardly left his friend's side; on the morning of the
+third day, quite worn out, his jumping nerves soothed by a small dose of
+morphine, he called a taxicab, gave Barbara's number in McBurney Place,
+leaned back against the leather cushions, relaxed his muscles, and
+fell asleep.
+
+The taxicab and the legless man reached the curb in front of Barbara's
+studio at the same moment. The driver of the cab lifted one finger to
+his hat. The legless man nodded, and peering into the cab recognized
+the handsome features of the sleeping doctor. He smiled, and said to
+the driver:
+
+"Take him back to his house."
+
+The driver said: "If I do he'll enter a complaint."
+
+"No," said the legless man; "you will tell him when he wakes that he
+gave you the order himself. He won't know whether he did or
+not. So-long."
+
+The driver once more lifted one finger to his hat and obediently drove
+off.
+
+It was very silent in McBurney Place; the double row of ancient stables
+made over into studio-buildings appeared deserted. The legless man could
+not but flatter himself that his actions had been unobserved. He
+chuckled, and with even more than his usual deft alacrity climbed the
+stairs to Barbara's studio.
+
+Meanwhile, however, a young man and a small boy, looking through the
+curtains of the latter's bedroom window, had been witnesses of all
+that passed.
+
+"That was Miss Barbara's father in the taxi," said Harry West.
+
+"Looks like he'd been out all night," said Bubbles.
+
+"He may have been drugged."
+
+"Doubt it. The taxi turned north at the corner. If the ole 'un had had
+the doctor drugged o' purpose he'd 'a' sent him south where he could use
+him. I guess he's sent him home."
+
+"He doesn't want his morning with Miss Barbara interrupted."
+
+Harry West sighed and said: "I don't smoke, Bub. Give me a cigarette."
+
+Bubbles accommodated his friend with eagerness.
+
+"And now," said West, "the road's clear to Marrow Lane; better slip down
+and see if Rose has any word for us. I'll keep a good ear on Blizzard."
+
+Bubbles changed from his buttons to his street-jacket, and departed by
+the back stairs. Harry West took a small automatic pistol from his
+breast pocket and played with it, but in the expression of the young
+man's face was nothing bellicose or threatening; only a kind of gentle,
+patient misery.
+
+He passed fifteen minutes in taking quick aims with the little automatic
+pistol at the roses on the wall-paper. Short of actual target-practice,
+he knew by experience that this was the best way to keep the hand and
+eye in touch with each other. He let his thoughts run as they would. And
+presently he heard the sound of Bubbles's feet upon the back stairs.
+
+"All serene here," said West.
+
+"All serene there," said Bubbles, and he produced a slip of paper upon
+which Rose had written:
+
+"Don't come so often. You've been noticed. He'll tell me things before
+long--or wring my neck."
+
+"She worked her hands some," said Bubbles, and he made letters of the
+deaf and dumb alphabet upon his fingers. "She said O'Hagan's in the
+city. They had him to eat with them last night. He's growed a beard, and
+trained off twenty pounds, so's not to be knowed."
+
+The air of revery had left Harry West. "O'Hagan in the East!" he
+exclaimed, rather with exhilaration than excitement. "Things are coming
+to a head."
+
+"Yep," said Bubbles, "and we don't know what things is--"
+
+"Bubbles! Oh, Bubbles!"
+
+The boy disappeared in the direction of the studio.
+
+"Mr. Blizzard has gone," said Barbara. "Ask Mr. West if he will speak to
+me a moment."
+
+Mr. West would; and he, the athlete, the man of trained poise, actually
+overturned a chair in his willingness.
+
+"Mr. West," she said, "you know all sorts of things about people, don't
+you? And if you don't know them, you can find them out, can't you?"
+
+"Sometimes, Miss Barbara."
+
+"I want to know about the man who comes here to pose--not vague things,
+but facts; who his people were, what turned him against the world."
+
+"You're troubled, Miss Barbara?"
+
+"I am terribly troubled. He has told me a terrible story. But how do I
+know if it's true or not? If it's true, he ought not to be hounded and
+hunted, Mr. West; he ought to be pitied."
+
+"Then I'm sure it's not true," West smiled quietly. "What did he tell
+you?"
+
+"No matter. But will you find out what you can about him?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course. But believe me, it's not his beginnings that are
+of importance. It's his subsequent achievements and his schemes for
+the future."
+
+"Another thing," she said, "I'm sure he means no harm where I'm
+concerned. He has never known that I have a protector within call, and
+yet his whole attitude toward me has been gentle, humorous, and even
+chivalrous. I think," and the color came into her cheeks, "that he feels
+a fatherly sort of affection for me. So thank you for all the trouble
+you've taken."
+
+"I, too, have reason to think that he means no harm," said West, "and if
+that is true, I am wasting my time."
+
+There was a look of bitterness in his eyes that was not lost upon
+Barbara. And she was troubled.
+
+"Of course," she said, "if you _like_ to waste your time--"
+
+He looked her straight in the eyes. "I do," he said, "I love to. No
+man's life would ever be complete if he didn't waste the best part of
+it--throw it away on something or other--on an ambition--on an
+ideal--on a woman."
+
+Barbara returned his glance. "Just what, Mr. West," she said, "is the
+idea?"
+
+And here, Mr. Harry West might have found the sudden courage to speak
+out what was in his heart, had he not remembered that to all intents and
+purposes he had no father, and consequently in the eyes of the great
+world to which Barbara belonged could not be considered to have any
+existence.
+
+"Oh," he said, "I was just talking through my hat."
+
+Barbara, who, you may say, had been unconsciously putting out tentacles
+of affection toward Harry West, at once withdrew them, and said coolly:
+"So I supposed."
+
+"May I look at the bust?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She removed the damp cloths from her work, and Harry found himself
+looking into the legless man's face. The features at once attracted and
+repelled him, and these sensations mingled with them feelings of wonder.
+Some subconscious knowledge told the young man authoritatively that he
+was looking on a master work. Barbara noticed this, and her heart
+warmed, and her pride was gratified.
+
+"I'm going to hurt your feelings," she said.
+
+"Mine? Don't. Please don't."
+
+"If you," she said, "devoted the next twenty years of your life to
+wickedness and vengeful thoughts you would get to look like my friend,
+Mr. Blizzard."
+
+Now that same thought had occurred, and not for the first time, to Harry
+West, but he did not care to admit it. So he laughed gently, and said:
+
+"In that case I shall devote the next twenty years of my life to
+philanthropy and--loving thoughts."
+
+He turned toward her, all smiling. And she avoided his eyes without
+appearing to do so.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+The next morning Blizzard was fifteen minutes late to his appointment
+with Barbara. He had sat up all night with O'Hagan, talking
+energetically, and for once in his life he felt tired. To this feeling
+was added the fear--almost ridiculous under the circumstances--that
+Barbara would scold him for being late. Unscrupulous brute that he was,
+his infatuation for her was humanizing him. And in the whole world he
+dreaded nothing so much, at this time, as a look of displeasure in a
+girl's face.
+
+He had left off the threadbare clothes in which he usually went begging,
+and had attired himself in clean linen and immaculate gray broadcloth.
+His face was exquisitely shaved; his nails trimmed and clean. And there
+hung about him a faint odor of violets. In short, the male of the
+species had begun to change his plumage, as is customary in the spring
+of the year.
+
+His mouth full of apology, he hurried up the stairs to the studio, only
+to find that Barbara herself had not yet arrived. Upon the seat of the
+chair in which he always posed, the legless man perceived an envelope
+addressed to himself. This contained a short note:
+
+     DEAR MR. BLIZZARD:
+
+     I can't be at the studio till eleven. Please find somewhere
+     about you the kindness to wait, or at least to come again at
+     that time. You will greatly oblige,
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+
+     BARBARA FERRIS.
+
+Blizzard read his note three times; it was very friendly. The "Yours
+sincerely" touched his imagination. Especially the "Yours."
+
+"Yours," he said, "mine," and with a sudden idiocy of passion he crushed
+the note to his lips. And then, as if with remorse at having been rough
+with a helpless thing, he smoothed out the crumpled sheet, and placed
+it, together with its envelope, in that pocket which was nearest to his
+heart. Then he seated himself on the edge of the model's platform, laid
+his crutches aside, closed his eyes, and for perhaps five minutes slept,
+motionless as a statue, except that now and then his ears twitched. At
+the end of five minutes, he waked, greatly refreshed, and ready, if the
+need should arise, to sit up the whole of the following night.
+
+There was a sound of a man's steps mounting the stairs. And then a brisk
+knocking on the studio door.
+
+"Come in," said Blizzard.
+
+Dr. Ferris entered, hesitated, and then closed the door behind him.
+
+"You'll pardon me," said Blizzard coolly, "if I don't get up?"
+
+"Yes--yes," said Dr. Ferris, and in his handsome eyes was a look of
+pain and pity.
+
+"It isn't easy for me to get up," Blizzard continued in the same cool,
+emotionless voice, "you can see for yourself. I can't spring to my
+feet--like other men. Do you know who I am?"
+
+"Yes," said Dr. Ferris, "I'm afraid I do. But they told me the name of
+the man who has been posing for Miss Ferris was Blizzard. Your name--"
+
+"My name," said Blizzard, "is forgotten."
+
+Dr. Ferris bowed gravely. "Quite so, Mr. Blizzard," he said.
+
+"Miss Barbara," said Blizzard, watching closely the effect upon the
+older man of the familiarity, "will not be here till eleven. And as you
+and I cannot possibly have anything pleasant to say to each other, and
+as you, although the older man, are far better off than I am for means
+of locomotion, and as even _thinking_ of you has something the effect
+upon my stomach that mustard and warm water would have--"
+
+"If you have any mercy in your heart," said Dr. Ferris, his mouth
+distorted with emotion, "don't talk to me that way. What made a hell of
+your life has made a hell of mine."
+
+The look of cold hatred in Blizzard's face changed at once to curiosity.
+"Really?" he said; "you mean that?"
+
+"It is the truth."
+
+Blizzard considered, and then shook his head. "No," he said, "it
+couldn't be the same. It may have stretched you on the hot grid now and
+then, but between times of remorse you've had long, long stretches of
+success and happiness. I haven't. I have burned in hell fires from that
+day to this."
+
+"I told you on that day," said the surgeon, "that if there was ever
+anything under heaven that I could do for you, I would do it. You've
+never called upon me for anything--money--or service."
+
+"I've not forgotten," said Blizzard, "and some day I may hold you to
+your word. Right here and now I will ask something of you--an absolutely
+truthful answer to a question. Do you hate me?"
+
+Dr. Ferris turned the question over in his conscience, and presently
+said: "I am sorry. Yes."
+
+"Thank you," said Blizzard, who was not in the least disturbed. "I've
+often wondered, and even, putting a hypothetical case, thrashed the
+matter out with my friends. You _would_ hate me. It's thoroughly human.
+With me, for instance--I feel non-committal about a man. I decide to
+injure him. I do so. _And then_ I hate him. Now, if you have any message
+for Miss Barbara--or perhaps you came to see the bust. I will call
+Bubbles. He and Miss Barbara are the only persons allowed to touch the
+cloths. I think she'd let me uncover the thing, but, as you and I know
+so well, I am not tall enough."
+
+"My business with my daughter," said Dr. Ferris, "concerned you."
+
+Blizzard chuckled. "Her friends," said he, "have been at you to
+interfere. They have persuaded you that her model should be _persona non
+grata_ in the best studios. They have, in short, begged you to take me
+by the scruff of the neck and kick me out into the gutter where I
+belong. Well, kick me. You know as well as I do, that I can't
+kick back."
+
+"You hurt me very much," said Dr. Ferris simply, "if that is any
+pleasure to you."
+
+"It is," said Blizzard.
+
+"What your intuition has told you," continued Barbara's father, "is the
+truth. I had made up my mind to interfere."
+
+"Well, why should you?"
+
+"I have heard terrible things about you, Mr. Blizzard."
+
+"That I have done things which the world regards as terrible is true,"
+returned the legless man imperturbably. "What of it? Haven't you?"
+
+Dr. Ferris turned away and slowly paced the length of the studio and
+back. "I owe you," he then said, "anything you choose to ask. But that
+is not the whole of my obligation to this world as I see it."
+
+"You will oblige me," said Blizzard, "by spitting out the moral homily
+into which you are trying to get your teeth. It is very simple. I do not
+wish to be sent away. I ask you not to send me. If your statement that
+you owe me anything I choose to ask amounts to two pins' worth, I think
+that I shall continue to pose for your daughter as long as she
+needs me."
+
+"Oh, I'm quite helpless," said Dr. Ferris; "I realize that."
+
+"Spoken like a man," said Blizzard. "And to show that my nature isn't
+entirely cruel, I'll tell you for your comfort that in Miss Barbara's
+presence the bad man is a very decent sort. We are almost friends,
+Doctor, she and I. She talks to me as if I were her equal. As for me, in
+this studio I have learned the habit of innocent thought. Only yesterday
+I took pleasure in the idea that in the world there are birds, and
+flowers, and green fields."
+
+The beggar's eyes glittered with a sardonic look. He watched the surgeon
+as a tiger might watch a stag. There was quite a long silence. Dr.
+Ferris broke it.
+
+"For God's sake," he said with great energy, "tell me one truth. Is it
+part of your scheme of life to revenge yourself on me through my
+daughter?"
+
+Blizzard raised a soothing hand. "Dr. Ferris," he said, "what would
+cause you suffering would cause her suffering. So, you see, I am tied
+hand and--Pardon me! I shouldn't now think of hurting you through her
+unless it might be for her own happiness."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Then you don't understand the hearts of women. Then you know nothing of
+the heights to which even fallen men can raise their eyes."
+
+"What are you telling me?"
+
+"Very little--very much. Perhaps I love your daughter."
+
+Horror and loathing swept into the surgeon's eyes, but he controlled
+himself. "Mr. Blizzard," said he presently, "I find it hard to take you
+seriously. _Are_ you joking? Whether you are or not, the thing is a
+joke. If you really care for my daughter, I am very, very sorry for you.
+I can't say more. If nothing worse threatens her than the possibility of
+her heart being touched by you, there is no need for me to be anxious
+about her. As for telling her the truth about you and me, why not?"
+
+"_You_ tell her."
+
+"I will. To-night"
+
+"Won't you be playing into my hands?"
+
+"No," said the surgeon curtly, "she has too much common-sense."
+
+"But you won't tell her what I've said?" The beggar was suddenly
+anxious.
+
+"No," and Dr. Ferris smiled, "I may safely leave that to you."
+
+"Damnation," cried Blizzard, "you are laughing at me."
+
+Dr. Ferris's face became serious at once. "God forbid that!" he said.
+"If you have spoken sincerely I feel only sorrow for you and pity--more
+sorrow and pity for you even than I ever felt before."
+
+"S-s-s-s-t," exclaimed the beggar, and his ears twitched. "She's
+coming."
+
+"I shall wait," said Dr. Ferris, "and take her uptown, when she has
+finished working."
+
+"Well," said Blizzard, with a kind of humorous resignation, "I'd kick
+you out if I could; but I can't." And he added: "You haven't got an
+extra pair of legs about you, have you?"
+
+"Why!" said Barbara when she saw her father. "Art _is_ looking up.
+_You_ in a studio!"
+
+Secretly his presence pleased her immensely. She had always hoped that
+some day he would take enough interest in her work to come to see it
+uninvited. And she now felt that this had happened. And she thanked
+Blizzard with sincerity for having waited.
+
+"Mr. Blizzard and I," she told her father, "are doing a bust. And
+whatever anybody else thinks, we think it's an affair of great
+importance. Mr. Blizzard even gives me his time and his judgment
+for nothing."
+
+"Well," Dr. Ferris smiled, "I am willing to give you the latter, on the
+same terms. May I see what you've done?"
+
+Barbara removed the cloths from the bust, and so life-like and tragic
+was the face which suddenly confronted him that Dr. Ferris, instead of
+stepping forward to examine it closely, stepped backward as if he had
+been struck. And then:
+
+"My dear," he said gravely, "the thing's alive."
+
+He looked from the bust to his daughter, and felt as if he was meeting
+some very gifted and important person for the first time. Barbara
+laughed for sheer pleasure.
+
+"What do you think of it?"
+
+"I will buy it as it stands," said her father, "on your own terms."
+
+"If you think it's good now," said Blizzard quietly, "wait till it's
+finished."
+
+"If I had done it," said Dr. Ferris, "I wouldn't dare touch it."
+
+"Yes, you would," said Barbara, "if you knew that you could make it
+better. It's still a beginning."
+
+"When do you expect to finish?"
+
+"I'm going to keep on working until I know that I've done the best I
+can. We may be months on it."
+
+Blizzard smiled secretly, and Dr. Ferris managed to conceal his
+annoyance.
+
+"I wish, my dear," he said, "that I had taken you more seriously in the
+beginning. But it is not too late to get some advantage by studying in
+Paris and Rome."
+
+"I don't believe it's ever too late for that," said Barbara, "and of
+course I've always been crazy for the chance, but knowing how
+you felt--"
+
+"Say the word," said her father, "and you shall go to-morrow."
+
+Blizzard's face was like stone; he felt that his high hopes were on a
+more precarious footing than ever. If she had the whim, Barbara would go
+abroad, far beyond the reach of even his long arms.
+
+"You could finish your bust any time," said Dr. Ferris persuasively.
+
+But Barbara shook her head with complete decision. "A bird in the hand,"
+she said, "is worth two in the bush. And--I hope I'm wrong--but I have
+the conviction that this head is going to be the best thing I shall ever
+do. I can look at it quite impersonally, because half the time it seems
+to model itself. _I_ think it's going to be good. If it is good, it
+will be one of those lucky series of accidents that sometimes happen to
+undeserving but lucky people."
+
+Dr. Ferris sighed inwardly, but the expression of his face did not
+change. "Do you mind if I stay?" he asked. "I think it's time I knew
+what you look like when you are at work, don't you?"
+
+"_High_ time!" exclaimed Barbara. "I'll just get into my apron." She
+went into the next room and closed the door.
+
+"Your innocents abroad," said the legless man, "wasn't a success." His
+face was a jeer.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+"Barbara," said her father when they had finished dinner, "I made a
+threat this morning, and I'm going to keep it. If you have no especial
+objection, will you come into the library?"
+
+Her face was radiant; he had been praising her work for the tenth time.
+"It sounds," she said, "as if I was going to be whipped. That wasn't
+what you threatened to do, was it?"
+
+"No," said he. "_I'm_ to be punished. I'm going to tell you about a
+mistake of judgment I once made. But not as a warning, or a moral
+lesson--merely, my dear, that you and I may learn to know each other
+better. First, though, I want to talk to you about your model."
+
+"He's rather fascinating, don't you think?"
+
+"He is very clever," said her father, "and when he chooses he can talk
+very well. He proved that this morning. To me, personally, he is most
+repugnant, but I admit that when he once launched out, I listened as a
+school-boy listens to stories of treasure and pirates. He's lived and
+observed and suffered. There is no doubt about that. But I shall be
+greatly relieved to hear that your bust is finished. I don't like the
+idea of such a man being in the same block with you. I hope that you
+will not feel inspired to do another head of him."
+
+"He's a splendid model," said Barbara. "Of course this morning he
+didn't keep still--and he did talk. But then I wasn't really working;
+When I wish he keeps almost as still as the clay I work with."
+
+"Doesn't looking at him ever give you--oh, a disagreeable creepy
+feeling?"
+
+"Not any more. I'm so used to him now. No, I feel a genuine friendliness
+for him,"
+
+"I thought," said her father, "that to you artists, models were
+absolutely impersonal--just planes and angles and--what was it you
+used to say?"
+
+Barbara flushed slightly, remembering a former and very disagreeable
+conversation. "Your memory is much too good," she said.
+
+Dr. Ferris frowned, "I'm not trying to interfere," he said; "you're old
+enough to know what's best for you, but if I could instil in you a
+proper distaste for your friend, Mr. Blizzard, I should be delighted.
+Beauty and the beast do _not_ go well together."
+
+"_Please"_ said Barbara, "don't bother your head about me. When the bust
+is finished, you and I go abroad for to look, for to see, for to learn.
+That's agreed. We shall not invite Mr. Blizzard to go with us, and all
+will be well. There's my hand on it!"
+
+She laughed rosily, and they shook hands.
+
+"Until recently," said Dr. Ferris, "I have taken, as you know, very
+little interest in your career as a sculptor. Haven't you thought that
+rather an unnatural attitude?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Barbara, "I have."
+
+She took a box of safety matches from a cigar-table, and kneeling,
+lighted the fire in the big chimney-piece.
+
+"I hope you don't mind," she said; "I'm shivery."
+
+She knelt on, watching the little flames grow into big flames, and
+spreading her hands to the warmth. Her face, arms, throat, and the front
+of her white dress became golden. She looked more like some lovely
+vestal of fire-worship than an ambitious American girl, determined to
+achieve fame in the battleground of the world.
+
+"Why, yes," she repeated, "it has seemed strange to me. When I've
+thought that I wanted to do things, you always took a lot of interest
+and trouble, but when I _knew_ that I wanted to do one thing, you gave
+me a dreadfully cold shoulder." She smiled whimsically. "I shall do an
+allegory in bluish-white marble--The Cold Shoulder."
+
+She retreated a little from the fire, and sat at her father's feet. He
+laid his hand on her many-colored hair.
+
+From childhood Barbara had resented parental caresses. On the present
+occasion, she felt a sudden tenderness for her father, and leaned a
+little against him, in answer to the touch of his hand.
+
+"Did it ever," said he, "strike you as strange that you never took any
+interest in _my_ career?"
+
+"I've always been tremendously proud of you," she said. "You know that."
+
+"You liked my results," he said, "the show pieces--newspaper
+notoriety--speech-making--the races in special trains against death.
+But you don't even know what has chiefly interested me during the last
+thirty years; nor the goal which I have felt I must reach before I could
+be resigned to parting with this life."
+
+"No," she said gently, "I don't. Tell me. I _want_ to be interested."
+
+"You know, of course, that I experiment with animals."
+
+"Yes. I have seen crates of guinea-pigs and monkeys at the laboratory
+door. I'm afraid it always made me a little unhappy. But I suppose it's
+the only way to get certain results. And you always give them something,
+don't you?"
+
+"Always. They don't suffer more than a man would while healing a deep
+clean cut. In other words, they don't suffer at all. And they're not
+unhappy, and they don't bear malice. And still I wouldn't do it, if I
+could help myself. I think, my dear, that I have been chosen for my sins
+to introduce a great benefit to mankind. It seems now only a question of
+perfecting the technique. I've already had extraordinary results."
+
+"What's the idea?"
+
+"You know, of course, that a piece of skin from one man can be
+successfully grafted on another man. Well, so can a liver, a finger, a
+hand, a foot, an arm, a leg. I have two monkeys now: a black and a gray.
+The black monkey has the gray hands and forearms, the gray monkey has
+the black. I made the exchange eighteen months ago. And they have
+developed the same strength and skill with the grafted members that they
+had with their own. I have a monkey who had only one eye when he came.
+Now he has two--they aren't a good color match, but he sees as well with
+one as the other. When these ideas are perfected it will be possible,
+perhaps, to make old people young. The secret is absolute cleanliness
+and the accuracy in joining of a Chippendale or an Adams. So you see,"
+he smiled, "that in a way you and I are chasing the same ambition--how
+to express the thing imagined through perfection of technique."
+
+"Are you the only man working along these lines?"
+
+"Heavens, no! Aristotle probably believed in animal grafting. But I
+think that, owing to a natural talent for doing close and accurate work
+with my hands, I have gone farther than anybody else. What gave you the
+impulse to be a sculptor, Barbs?"
+
+She laughed gayly. "The statues in the Metropolitan that have lost their
+arms and heads and legs. I felt very sorry for them. I was very young
+and foolish, and I invented a game to play. I'd select a statue that
+needed an arm, say, and then I'd hunt among the other statues for an arm
+that would fit, or for a head or whatever else was missing. Through
+playing that game I got the idea of making whole statues from the
+beginning and not bothering with fragments."
+
+"And to think," said Dr. Ferris, "that we have failed to understand
+each other. Why, Barbs, your ambition is a direct lineal descendant of
+mine. It was a maimed marble that showed you your life's work. It was a
+maimed child that showed me mine. It seems that at heart we are
+both menders."
+
+"I began on dolls," said Barbara.
+
+"And I began on guinea-pigs."
+
+A footman entered with whiskey and soda on a tray. Barbara rose.
+
+"Shall I pour you a drink?"
+
+"A very little one, please."
+
+She poured him his drink, and once more seated herself at his feet.
+
+"After I graduated from the P. & S.," said Dr. Ferris, "I did ambulance
+work for two years, accidents, births, fires. I was ambitious to learn,
+and worked myself sick. One morning, after I'd been all night bringing a
+most reluctant young Polack into the world, I was called to the house of
+a world-famous man in East Thirty-fourth Street. The house was full of
+servants mad with grief and fright. The man and his wife had gone out of
+town, and their son, a beautiful boy about ten years old, had got
+himself run over by a truck. His governess, I gathered, a German fool,
+had been in some way directly responsible. But that is the small end of
+the matter. The boy's legs were horribly crushed and mangled. It seemed
+to me that if his life was to be saved, they must come off at once. The
+family's physician was the famous old Doctor Watson Bell. I sent for
+him. He didn't come at once, and when I had waited as long as I dared,
+I took upon my own shoulders the very heavy responsibility of operating.
+I put the child under ether, and with the help of one assistant took his
+legs off just below the hip-joints. Then Dr. Bell came. He was a very
+old friend of my father's, and he had always been very good to me. First
+he looked to see that what had been done had been well done. Then he
+examined the legs that I had taken off. Then he sent the nurse out of
+the room. Then he turned and looked at me, and his face was gray and
+cold as a stone. He said: 'You fool! You imbecile!' And he showed me,
+clear as a flash of lightning, that the legs never should have been
+amputated. Then he said, more gently: 'For your father's sake I will
+save your face, young man. I shall set my approval to this catastrophe.
+For your father's sake, and for your mother's. I have always looked on
+you as an adopted son. Are you drunk?' I told him that I had been up all
+night, and had had no sleep since five o'clock the morning before. He
+shrugged his shoulders, and said: 'In your right mind, you couldn't have
+done it,' and I knew that I couldn't. 'Horrible!' he said, 'horrible!
+This poor baby to be a wreck of a thing all his life, because a healthy
+and hearty young man cannot get along on a little sleep. But, thank God,
+the child will never know that the operation wasn't necessary,'
+
+"By common accord, we turned to look at the little boy. His eyes were
+open. He had come out of the ether with miraculous suddenness. And we
+saw by the expression of his face that he had heard--and that he had
+understood."
+
+Barbara took her father's hand in both hers and pressed it hard. "Poor
+old dad," she said.
+
+"Of course," Dr. Ferris went on, "the child told his parents. But Dr.
+Bell lied up and down to save my face. He said that what the child
+thought he had heard was part of an ether dream. And I lied. And nobody
+believed the little boy. I had told him, before Dr. Bell could stop
+me--I was hysterical and crazy--that if there was ever anything under
+heaven that I could do for him, I would do it--no matter what it was.
+And the boy told his parents that I had said that, but it was only taken
+by them as evidence that I felt terribly sorry for what I had had to do,
+and that I had a tender heart."
+
+"Poor old dad!" said Barbara. "And what became of the little boy?"
+
+"He grew vicious," said Dr. Ferris. "I don't blame him. Quarrelled
+fearfully with his father, dropped into all sorts of evil ways and
+companionship--all my fault, every bit of it--and finally disappeared
+completely out of the station to which he had been born. I had reason
+until the other day to believe that he was dead. Then I saw him."
+
+There was quite a long silence. The fire burned brightly. Dr. Ferris,
+greatly agitated by tragic memories, closed his eyes very tightly, as if
+to shut them out.
+
+"And of course," said Barbara at last, "the small boy is my Mr.
+Blizzard. Well, what can we do for him?"
+
+"_You_ owe him nothing," said her father sharply.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Barbara gently, "oh, yes. Your obligations are mine. I
+shall tell him. It's like owing a frightful sum of money. We can't be
+happy till we've paid up, can we? You and I?"
+
+"It seems," said Dr. Ferris, "that I have made two terrible mistakes.
+And the second is having told you about the first. My God, but this life
+is hard to bear!"
+
+"But--why--what have I said? If there is _anything_ we can do for him,
+we ought to do it."
+
+"Are you going to say that to him?"
+
+"Of course," she said.
+
+"Suppose," said her father, "that in all this world he wanted only one
+thing--you?"
+
+This suggestion was most unexpected to Barbara and odious. And she said
+coldly: "I hope he is not quite such a fool."
+
+"But if he is?"
+
+"My dear father," said Barbara, "I have been told that somewhere along
+the Milky Way there is a bridge between stars. Let's cross that when we
+come to it."
+
+A footman entered carrying a large pasteboard box on which, in gilt
+letters, was the name of a Third Avenue florist. But the jonquils in the
+box were very fresh and lovely. They were, however, unaccompanied by
+a card.
+
+[Illustration: "Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the
+habit of sending me flowers"]
+
+"Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending
+me flowers." She smiled. "I shall ask my friend, Mr. Harry West," she
+said, "to find out who it is."
+
+And then, suddenly, she turned away, so that her father should not see
+that she was blushing. The thought, not in the least disagreeable, had
+occurred to her for the first time, that perhaps Mr. Harry West himself
+was anonymously going down into his pocket for her sweet sake.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+The legless man was not in the habit of waiting for things that he
+wanted, when the chance to take them had come. And he did not propose to
+endure the torture of sitting perfectly still hour after hour, morning
+after morning, while any young woman made a bust of him. Yet he allowed
+a number of mornings to pass without taking any definite steps toward
+the vengeance which he felt to be so dear to him.
+
+That Barbara was a high-born lady was the chief obstacle in his plans.
+If she were to disappear suddenly out of the world which knew and loved
+her, there would be raised a hue and outcry greater, perhaps, than his
+utmost powers and resources could check. He would be run to earth
+without much doubt and put where even the sweet memory of vengeance
+would taste bitter in his mouth. It is perhaps pleasant to pluck the
+fruits of vengeance, but a man requires time in which to eat and digest
+them. If they are snatched from his hand the moment they are picked, his
+vengeance fails of all sweetness and justification.
+
+On the other hand, Blizzard, in order to revenge himself on the man who
+had maimed him, was willing to give, if not his liberty, his life.
+
+If he could not abduct Barbara and go free, he would kill himself when
+they came to take him. But he did not wish to kill himself. He wished to
+live a long time after, gloating on his memories. He had also on foot a
+scheme which, starting almost as a pleasantry, had developed in his
+mind, and was still developing, until its latent possibilities staggered
+his own imagination.
+
+A certain Jew, proprietor of a pawnshop, was in reality a receiver of
+stolen goods. It was common knowledge among certain crooks in the city,
+that the recently stolen Bland diamonds had come into this man's hands.
+Blizzard thought that it would be funny to take these diamonds away from
+the Jew, hold them for a while, and then, since the fellow was after all
+a friend, return them. To break into Reichman's store at night would be
+dangerous. Reichman himself was no coward, and he employed a savage
+night-watchman, just out of Sing Sing. So Blizzard planned a robbery in
+a spirit of farce, and in the broad and crowded light of day.
+
+Six stalwart young fellows entered Reichman's pawnshop at eleven-thirty
+in the morning. Each one had a watch or an overcoat to pawn. They
+crowded about Reichman, all talking at once. They were strangers to him.
+At exactly the same time the attention of the six policemen on the six
+nearest beats was attracted by the drunken and disorderly behavior of
+six more stalwart young fellows--one to each policeman. In the end six
+arrests were made, the six young drunkards were marched off to the
+station house, and the beats of the six policemen were for the time
+being deserted.
+
+Sharp at eleven-thirty-seven, five of the six young men in Reichman's
+shop flung an overcoat over his head and rushed him into a dark corner,
+choking him so that he could not scream. A person in the street,
+however, saw the struggle, and rushed off to find the nearest policeman,
+who of course could not be found. Meanwhile the sixth young man ran
+lightly upstairs, looked under the mattress of the palatial Reichman
+bed, where he had been told to look, and secured the stolen diamonds.
+The farce came to a proper conclusion. Reichman could not complain to
+the police that he had been robbed of stolen goods. And he went about
+for many days with a sour face.
+
+Blizzard came every day to condole with him, and finally to return the
+diamonds. Then he told Reichman, a man he could trust, how the robbery
+had been worked, and the two put their heads together.
+
+If six policemen could be so easily put out of commission at a given
+moment, why not many? If a pawnshop could be so easily looted, why not
+Tiffany's, or one of the great wholesale jewellers in Maiden Lane? Why
+not the Sub-Treasury?
+
+In Blizzard's mind the idea became an obsession; and he worked out
+schemes, in all their details; only to think of something bigger and
+more engaging. One or two details were present in all his plans: a
+hiding-place for the treasure when he should get it, and a large number
+of lieutenants whom he could trust. He could, he believed, at the least
+throw the whole city into a state of chaos for a few hours--for half a
+day--for a whole day. And during that period of lawless confusion
+anything might happen to anybody--to Barbara for instance. But his plans
+were not ripe, nor his trusted lieutenants as yet sufficient in number.
+He must therefore either put off his vengeance indefinitely, or run the
+risk of having his own career as a criminal come to a very sudden end.
+For once in his life he vacillated. But it was something more than the
+desire for vengeance which decided him to risk everything on
+immediate action.
+
+His plan was very simple. Sometimes a messenger-boy brought a note to
+her studio. And Blizzard had observed that Barbara's invariable habit
+with notes was first to read them, and then to burn them. She never tore
+them into pieces and threw them into the fireplace. She struck a match,
+lighted them at one corner, and saw to it that they were entirely
+consumed. When Barbara had finished with a note, or a circular, or a
+letter, Sherlock Holmes himself could not have recovered the contents or
+the name of the sender. Banking on this habit, Blizzard wrote Barbara a
+note and sent it to her father's house by a man he could trust. She
+received the note at six o'clock, while she was resting prior to
+dressing and dining out. It read as follows:
+
+     81 Marrow Lane.
+
+     DEAR MISS FERRIS:
+
+     My affairs don't seem to be prospering here, so I am going
+     away. I am sorry the Bust isn't finished. You will be
+     disappointed. I am leaving at 8 o'clock for the West. I have
+     enjoyed sitting for you. I wish you all the success and
+     happiness you deserve.
+
+     Very truly yours,
+
+     BLIZZARD.
+
+Her mind working very rapidly, Barbara rose at once, and quite
+unconsciously, so strong was habit in her, struck a match, set the
+beggar's note on fire, threw it into the fireplace, and watched it burn
+to ashes. On the way to the fireplace she pressed a button to summon her
+maid. When this one came, Barbara, already out of her dressing-gown,
+spoke imperatively:
+
+"I am going out. I want a taxi called at once. Then come back and help
+me dress."
+
+But when the maid returned there was little for her to do. Barbara was
+in a hurry.
+
+She found a taxi waiting at the door. She glanced at the driver--he was
+not one of those who usually drove her.
+
+"Do you know where Marrow Lane is?"
+
+"Is it near the Brooklyn Bridge, miss?"
+
+"I think so. Marrow Lane, No. 81. You can make inquiries. Hurry."
+
+The strange driver drove skilfully and swiftly down the avenue. Two
+thoughts occupied him: the beauty of his fare, and the docility with
+which she came to the master's hand when he called.
+
+In Barbara's mind there was but one thought: not that she was going to
+visit a disreputable man in a disreputable part of the city, but that
+she was going to keep that man in the city and finish her bust of him,
+or know the reason why. Fame was in her grasp. She felt astonishingly
+sure of that. She was not going to let it escape for a mere matter of
+convention. It had been her first idea to send Blizzard a note by
+messenger. But she had more confidence in her personal powers of
+persuasion. If her model needed money or was in some scrape that could
+be righted by money and influence, she believed that she could keep him
+in New York.
+
+It was not yet dark, but all the city lamps were lighted, and the East
+Side had that atmosphere of care-free gaiety habitual to it after
+business hours when the weather is rainless and warm. The taxicab moved
+slowly, because the children had overflowed the sidewalks and played
+games which kept them in blissful danger of their lives. Twice the taxi
+stopped. Instantly a crowd gathered about it, and Barbara became an
+embarrassed but amused centre of criticism and admiration.
+
+It became dark. The streets were less crowded. There were fewer lights.
+There was an unpleasant smell of old fish and garbage. The people
+Barbara now observed seemed each and all intent upon something or other.
+They were not merely loafing in the pure evening air, but hurrying.
+There were no more children. The taxi passed slowly (because of the
+uneven pavement) through a short, narrow street. The few lights in this
+street were nearly all red.
+
+Save for the light in Blizzard's manufactory, Marrow Lane was dark and
+deserted. For some reason or other the city lights had gone out, or had
+been passed over by the lamplighter.
+
+Through the glazed door Barbara saw the vast black shadow of Blizzard's
+profile on the white wall of his office. There was no bell. She turned
+the knob and pushed open the door. A bell clanged almost in her ear with
+fierce suddenness. It was like an alarm. Her heart beat the quicker for
+it; the number of her respirations increased. She was sorry that she had
+come. She was frightened; still she stepped through the door-way, and
+called in her clear? resolute voice:
+
+"Mr. Blizzard! It's Miss Ferris."
+
+His vast shadow remained motionless like a stain on the wall. And for a
+moment he did not answer. Could she have seen his face itself, instead
+of only its shadow, she must have turned with a cry of fear and found
+that the door which had closed behind her, clanging its bell, was
+locked, and that there was no escape that way.
+
+If she had turned her head she must have seen that her taxi had gone
+quietly away.
+
+[Illustration: In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and
+beautiful.]
+
+In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful. The parted
+opera-cloak disclosed her round straight throat and the broad smooth
+modelling of the neck from which it rose. She seemed taller and more
+stately than in street-dress, and at once younger, more defenceless,
+more virginal. There was not enough light in the place to bring out the
+contrasting colors of her hair. She looked like a black-haired beauty
+with ivory-white skin, instead of an amber, red, and brown beauty, with
+rosy, brown skin. Her head, small, round, and carried very high, lent
+her an air of extraordinary breeding and distinction. She had no thought
+for the short rose-brocade train of her dinner-dress, and let it trail
+over the dirty floor.
+
+"Mr. Blizzard!"
+
+This time he answered. It sounded less like a voice than the hoarse bass
+croak of a very enormous bull-frog.
+
+"Please step this way."
+
+Her head, if anything, a little higher than ever, she walked swiftly
+forward right into the legless man's office.
+
+His face was very white, swollen, it looked, and blotched with purple.
+The veins in his forehead looked like mountain ranges on a
+topographical map.
+
+"I've only a minute," said Barbara.
+
+He lowered his head now over his ledger, but said nothing. Then he
+looked up and into her face steadily, and one by one the purple blotches
+in his own face paled, and vanished, like the extinguishing of as many
+hellish lights. And then to Barbara's horror a low groan, more like a
+dog's than a man's, passed his tightly pressed lips, came out, and was
+cut short off, as if with a keen knife.
+
+"Are you sick?" she asked, not kindly, but imperatively and with a tone,
+perhaps, of disgust.
+
+"Yes," said the legless man briefly, but without going into any
+explanation of his ailment. "You came to tell me that I mustn't go away
+till the bust is finished. Is that it?"
+
+Barbara felt more at her ease. "Yes," she said, "I am selfish about it.
+It means so much to me."
+
+"Well, you needn't have come," said Blizzard, and it was almost as if he
+was angry with her for having done so. "I've changed my plans. I've had
+to change them. I stay."
+
+Barbara was immensely pleased. "I wish I could tell you how glad I am,"
+she said.
+
+"The thing now," said Blizzard, "is to get you back to your house. You
+shouldn't have come to this part of the city at all; and especially not
+dressed like that. But you didn't stop to think. You had an idea in your
+head. And you came. Did anybody know where you were going when you
+left home?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Something dreadful might have happened to you," he said, and a curious
+smile played about his mouth for a moment, "and no one the wiser.
+Suppose you hadn't found me here to look after you? Suppose you'd found
+some drunken crook just out of Sing Sing, or something worse?"
+
+"But I _did_ find you," said Barbara, "and all is well."
+
+"Yes--yes," he said, "all _is_ well. And you may thank your stars for
+that. Why didn't you tell your taxi to wait?"
+
+"But I did."
+
+Again the curious smile flickered about the legless man's mouth. "Well,
+he's gone."
+
+Barbara followed the lead of Blizzard's eyes, and saw that the street in
+front of his manufactory was empty. He reached for his crutches, and
+swung himself down from his chair.
+
+"Perhaps he's dropped down to Jake's saloon. Wait here. I'll see."
+
+The bell of the outer door clanged with horrid suddenness. And then she
+heard a piercing loud whistle twice repeated. And a few moments later
+the sound of a motor.
+
+"All right, Miss Ferris, I've got him."
+
+She drew her cloak together, and joined the legless man on the sidewalk.
+
+"Thank you very much," she said, "and good-by till to-morrow."
+
+The taxicab driver's face had no expression whatever. He who understood
+driving so well could not make out what the master was driving at.
+
+Blizzard held open the door of the taxi, and Barbara got in. But he did
+not at once close the door. Instead he turned his head and looked up the
+street. Then he called out sharply:
+
+"Hurry up! Can't you see the lady's waiting."
+
+One came, running; a tall well-built youth, with an expression on his
+face of cool, cynical courage and good humor.
+
+"Miss Ferris," said Blizzard, "this young fellow will ride in with you
+if you don't mind. You can drop him when you get out of the East Side,
+and reach your own part of the city. He will see that no harm comes to
+you. If you ask him questions he will answer them. Otherwise he will not
+speak unless you wish."
+
+The youth grinned a little sheepishly, and Barbara made room for him on
+the seat beside her.
+
+"He will answer for your safety," continued the legless man, "with his
+ears. Where to?"
+
+She gave the number of the house at which she was to dine, and the
+legless man repeated it to the driver.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Blizzard, and thank you."
+
+"Good-night, Miss Ferris, and welcome."
+
+The legless man watched the taxicab until it had rounded the corner of
+Marrow Lane. Then he looked upward at the stars for a while. Then he
+swung slowly and wearily back into his rookery, and having extinguished
+the light, sat for a long time in the dark.
+
+What was it that had come over the man to let his victim escape when she
+was so mercilessly in his power? Ask the stars to which he turned. Ask
+the darkness in which he sits, alone, thinking. Better, perhaps, ask the
+man's warped and tormented soul.
+
+[Illustration: He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the
+cab.... "Here I wishes you salutations ..."]
+
+It seems that while he sat in his office waiting for her, a champion
+rose up to defend her, a champion in his own heart. A champion who
+made such headway against the brute's lawless and beastly intention as
+to overthrow it.
+
+Blizzard was in the power of that which all his mature life he had
+feared more than hanging or the electric chair, more even than prisons.
+He had fallen quietly, even gently, in love.
+
+"I'm not going to ask you any questions," said Barbara, "because I don't
+think of any. But if you like to talk, please do."
+
+Without comment or preamble the youth who was to answer for her safety
+with his ears, began to talk.
+
+"Might have knocked me over with a feather," he said, "to find a lady
+like you sitting in a cab in front o' Blizzard's place. At first look I
+says to myself: 'One o' these high-fliers I've heard talk about that
+likes to fly low.' Then I flings your eyes one penetrating peep, and
+says to myself: ''Spect she ain't one o' that kind.' And I make out just
+this about you that you're O.K. from A to Xylophone, and I takes this
+opportunity to remark aloud to myself that I don't know what your game
+is, and it's none o' my haterogeneous business, but if I was you I'd cut
+Marrow Lane out o' my itenerary, and stay home nights playin' a quiet
+rubber o' tiddle winks-the-barber."
+
+Barbara laughed gayly. "Everybody," she said, "thinks that my friend,
+Mr. Blizzard, is a very bad man. But he does nothing to prove it. He
+has been very considerate of me in every way."
+
+"Did I say anything against Blizzard? You'll tell him I did? Not you.
+And I did not. If it _wasn't_ for him, I says, Marrow Lane _would_ be
+hell's kitchen, and on the chanct that he ain't always going to be on
+the spot, nor me, cut it out, I says. But," continued the talkative
+youth, "in case you don't cut it out, in case you're ever in trouble
+down our way you take this," bluntly he handed her a small, dark metal
+whistle, "and blow her good. I knows the note, and if my ears is on the
+job, you gets help. You gets it sudden. You gets it good. And here,
+without fear or comment, I leaves you."
+
+He signalled to the driver to stop. They had reached the southern
+boundary of Washington Square. Barbara held out her hand. She was
+greatly taken with her escort.
+
+"And whom," she said, "am I thanking for the whistle?"
+
+"Kid Shannon."
+
+"Don't tell me," said Barbara, "that _you're_ the man who put Hook
+Hammersley out in the third!"
+
+"A right to the solar plexus," said Kid Shannon simply, "to bring him in
+range and a left to the jaw. Even his friends admits that he begun to
+take his gloves off while he was still in the air. But I'm in the saloon
+business now, if it's all the same to you, having been light-weight
+champion, and spoke a monologue over three circuits--nice-behaved ladies
+and gentlemen o' both sexes always welcome, pay as you consume; but
+for you or any friends o' yours the drinks will be on the house."
+
+[Illustration: Wilmot Allen took her into dinner, and looked much love
+at her, and talked much nonsense.]
+
+He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab.
+
+"Lady," he said, "what I've poured in jest, drink in earnest. All that's
+yellow isn't butter. But if anybody was to ask you--say, a man who shall
+be as nameless as he is legless--what I says to you during our
+discursive promenaid, you answer back and say, 'Kid Shannon, whenever I
+speaks to him, merely says, "Ha! Hum!"--_or words to that effect_.' Here
+I wishes you salutations, and may your life contain nothing but times
+when you looks and feels your best."
+
+Barbara shook hands with him again. "Come to 17 McBurney Place," she
+said, "some morning. Ask for Miss Ferris, and see what you think of the
+bust she's making of Mr. Blizzard." She smiled mischievously. "He's
+supposed to represent the devil just after falling into hell."
+
+Shannon nodded with complete understanding. "Then," said he, "I bet he
+looks a ringer for Hook Hammersley that time he hit the resin."
+
+"Thank you for protecting me," said Barbara, "and for the whistle. Will
+you tell the man to hurry, please? Thank you! Good-by."
+
+She was very late to her dinner, but much too amused with recent events
+to care. And nobody could have made her believe that her going to
+Blizzard's place had been fraught with terrible peril. She prized the
+whistle that Kid Shannon had given her, and resolved that some time she
+would adventure again into his part of the city, and see if she could
+bring him running to her side.
+
+"I am sorry I am late," said Barbara, "but I couldn't help it." She
+vouchsafed no further explanation, and because she was so young and
+beautiful all those who had been kept waiting forgave her.
+
+Wilmot Allen took her in to dinner, and looked much love at her, and
+talked much nonsense. He was, indeed, so gay and foolish that she
+imagined that he must have got himself into trouble again.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Blizzard was an acute student of human nature. And a certain softening
+in Barbara's manner toward him was proof that she had learned his story
+from her father, and no longer regarded him as a stranger off the
+streets, but as a human being definitely connected with her outlook upon
+life. Still, the suggestion that their relations had changed did not
+come from him, for he knew that pity or sympathy given by request lacks
+the potency of that which is spontaneously offered. So he held his peace
+in order that Barbara might be the first to speak, and during those days
+his heart became filled with mad hopes for the future.
+
+Upon one thing he was determined, that when in the course of events
+Barbara should touch upon her father's criminal mistake, he would
+conceal, as something precious from a thief, the hatred and vengefulness
+that were in him, and unroll for her benefit a character noble and
+forgiving. He was content, or appeared content, day after day, for a
+number of hours, to be with her, and to play the hypocrite so ably as to
+defy detection.
+
+And Barbara, knowing how the man had been abused, guessing how he must
+have suffered, and still suffered, came to look upon him, not indeed as
+upon a person wholly noble, but as upon one who, with an impulse in the
+right direction, had in him possibilities of great nobility.
+
+Just as a fine motor-car, perfect in mechanism, punctures a tire and is
+stalled by the side of the road, so works of genius like Barbara's head
+of Blizzard do not progress in one swift rush from start to finish.
+There were whole mornings during which it seemed that things went
+backward instead of forward, and when she was so discouraged that, had
+it not been for the legless man's almost fiery confidence in her ability
+to overcome all obstacles, she must have taken a hammer and pounded her
+fine sketch back into the lump of clay from which it had been evolved.
+
+Blizzard's eyes had undergone a most thorough schooling. They had
+learned, to the flicker of an eyelid, when Barbara was going to look
+their way, and at such times were careful not to meet her eyes. When,
+however, they knew her to be intent for a period upon the work and not
+the model, they studied her always with zest, and always with more and
+more understanding.
+
+Suddenly, one day, after he had been sitting motionless for half an
+hour, the beggar broke his pose.
+
+"Please don't," she said. "I'm not through."
+
+In his eyes, soft and full of understanding, there was a gentle, if
+masterful, smiling. "Yes, you are," he said, "for now. I haven't watched
+you at work all these mornings without learning something about the way
+you go at it. Do you know what a blind alley is?"
+
+"Yes," she said petulantly, "and I'm in one."
+
+"Quite so," said Blizzard. "And you're not taking the right way out.
+First you tried to climb up the house on the right, then the house on
+the left, and when I interrupted you, you were making a sixth effort to
+shin up the lightning-rod of the house that blocks the alley."
+
+Barbara laughed. "But," she objected, "I've got to get out somehow--or
+fake--or call the thing a fiasco, and give it up."
+
+"Of course you've got to get out," said Blizzard, "and it's very
+simple."
+
+"Simple!" she exclaimed; "a lot you know about it."
+
+"Quite simple," he repeated; "you merely face about and walk out. In,
+other words, remove that lump of mud which one day is going to be more
+like my ear than my ear itself, and begin over."
+
+And it came home to Barbara that the man was right. "Thank you," she
+said simply. "You're a great help. That is precisely what I shall do."
+
+"But don't do it now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you've wasted the freshness of your early-morning zeal with
+vain efforts. Destroy what you've done--there's always satisfaction in
+that; but either leave the re-doing alone for to-day, or try
+something else."
+
+"When," said Barbara, beginning to feel soothed and confident again,
+"did I put myself in your hands for guidance?"
+
+"The moment you lost your presence of mind," said the beggar; "that's
+when a woman always puts herself in a man's hands. Put a cloth over his
+satanic majesty's portrait, and sit down and relax your muscles, and
+talk to the devil himself."
+
+Barbara did as he commanded with the expression of a biddable child. She
+flung herself into a deep chair, and drew a long, care-free breath.
+
+"There," she said, "I knew I wasn't fit."
+
+"You can't spend the night at a Country Club, dance till 4 A.M., catch
+the 7 A.M. for town, and do good work--not always."
+
+"How did you know all that?"
+
+Blizzard laughed. "From a man," said he, "who had planned to rob the
+Meadowbrook Club last night. There is a fine haul of scarf-pins, and
+sleeve-links, and watches and money in the bachelors' quarters. He came
+to me in great dejection and explained what very hard luck he had had.
+He said the whole place was lit up and full of people and music, and no
+chance for an honest man to earn a cent. I happened to ask if you were
+there, and he said you were. The train was a guess, and so of course was
+the 4 A.M. Will you take a piece of well-meant advice? Either be a
+society girl or a sculptor. But don't burn the candle at both ends. You
+even look tired, and that's nonsense at your age."
+
+He laughed like a boy.
+
+"They tell me," he said, "that I could do the new dances. They tell me
+they are just like clinches in a prize-fight, and that only the novices
+move their feet."
+
+Barbara's brows contracted. "I'm going to ask you a favor," she said.
+"If you want to talk about your misfortune, God knows I'm ready to
+listen. I feel some of the responsibility. But please don't joke about
+it. We're friends, I think. And I like to forget that you're not exactly
+like other people. And sometimes I do."
+
+"Truly?" His eyes were full of suppressed eagerness and elation.
+
+"Yes," she said, "when you talk high-mindedly and generously, as you
+can, when you want to, I enjoy being with you, in touch with a mind so
+much more knowing and able than my own. But, now we've made a beginning,
+I'd really like to talk about--all this dreadful mess that's been made
+of your life, and how things can be made easier for you, and for
+my father."
+
+Figuratively, Blizzard's tongue went into his cheek at the mention of
+Dr. Ferris, but the expression of his face underwent no change. "Of
+course," he said simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the
+world, "I have forgiven your father. He was very young--very
+excitable--inexperienced."
+
+"_Actually"_ she said, "in your heart, you've forgiven him? And you're
+not saying things just to make me comfortable?"
+
+"I am afraid," he confessed, "that I am too selfish to say or do things
+just to make other people comfortable. Did you ever hate anybody?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Did you like it?"
+
+"For a while it was rather fun to think up things to do to the person,
+and then it got to be disagreeable, and feverish, like a cut that's
+festered, and then I made a strong effort, and found that hating was
+very poor company and led nowhere."
+
+"Exactly," said the beggar. "Do you mind if I talk frankly? My hatred
+for your father persisted a great many years, until I found that going
+to bed with it every night and getting up with it every morning was a
+slow poison that was affecting all the rest of me--my power to think out
+a line of action, my power to stick to it, even my power to like people
+that were good to me and faithful to my interests. I found that I was
+beginning to hate everybody and everything in the world and the world
+itself. Meanwhile, Miss Barbara, I did things that can never be undone."
+
+He was silent, and appeared to be turning over the leaves in the books
+of his memory. Suddenly he spoke again.
+
+"And it was all so silly," he said, "so futile. The cure was in my head
+all the time--just longing to be used. And fool that I was, I
+didn't know it."
+
+"What was the cure?"
+
+"It was the sovereign cure for all our troubles, Miss Barbara--reason,
+and crowds. Stand morning or evening at the entrance to the Brooklyn
+Bridge--stand there with your trouble, and consider that among the
+passers, better carried than yours, are troubles, far, far greater than
+yours, more poignant, lives lived in dungeons deeper and more dark. Your
+father has lived a life of most admirable utility: should he be hated
+for one mistake? Suppose that it had been some other small boy's legs
+that he wasted, instead of mine? Would I hate him for it? Why, no. I'd
+say it's too bad. But since it was I that lost the legs I lost all sense
+of proportion and justice and was a long time--a long time coming
+back to it."
+
+"May I know what brought you round?"
+
+The beggar felt that he might dare a little. He smiled. "Of course. What
+brought me around was the discovery that he had created something far,
+far more important than what he had destroyed. At first I thought you
+were like so many other girls of your class--well dressed, and good to
+look at. Then that you had a very genuine talent, and were going to
+count in the world. Then, and this is best, it came over me that you
+were one girl in a million--that you would do whatever seemed right to
+you, not without fear of criticism, and pain and sacrifice, but
+regardless of them. And so, you see, the reparation is made. The father
+hurt, and the daughter cured."
+
+Barbara's face had become very grave. "However wrong you are about my
+character," she said, "the reparation is not yet made. And you may be
+sure of this--that, whatever the criticism, I owe you friendship and
+you shall have it,"
+
+The beggar trembled inwardly, but he shook his head. "You could hardly
+pull me up to a level," he said, "upon which friendship between us would
+be possible. Imagine that I have sunk to the chin in mud, and that at
+the last time of calling I have been pulled out. Still the mud clings
+to me."
+
+"Nonsense," said Barbara, "you can be washed."
+
+They both laughed, and at once became grave again.
+
+"You don't know," he said, "what I've been or what I've done. You can't
+even imagine."
+
+"That is not the point," said Barbara, "and this is: Are you sorry? If
+you really have been rotten, do you want to be sound and fine? If you do
+I'm your friend, and whatever help I can give you, you shall have."
+
+"If you knew," he said humbly, "how I dread the bust being finished!
+I'll be like a child stealing a ride by the strength of his arms, I'll
+have to drop off then--won't I?--back into the mud."
+
+"I'm not offering you friendship," she said, "merely while you are
+useful to me. Do well, Mr. Blizzard, and do good, and I will always be
+your friend."
+
+"Do you believe that I want to do well, that I want to do good? That I
+want to wipe the past from the slate?"
+
+"You have only to tell me," she said loyally, "and I shall believe."
+
+"Then I tell you," he said, and Barbara jumped impulsively to her feet
+and shook hands with him.
+
+"And I may come to you," he pleaded, "for advice, and help? Old habits
+are hard to shake. My friends are thieves, crooks, and grafters. My
+sources of income are not clean. Even now I have dishonest irons in the
+fire. Shall I pull them out?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"But people who have trusted me will be hurt."
+
+"You must work those problems out in your own conscience."
+
+To Blizzard, believing that he was actually making progress into the
+fastnesses of her heart, and that he might in time gain his ends by
+propinquity and his own undeniable force and personality, a sudden,
+cheeky knocking upon the door proved intensely irritating. It was a very
+small messenger-boy with a box of jonquils. Blizzard watched very
+closely the expression of Barbara's face while she opened the box. She
+held up the flowers for him to see.
+
+"Aren't they pretty?" she said.
+
+"They are very pretty," said Blizzard, and he found it difficult to
+control his voice. "And it was very sweet of him to send them. Isn't
+that the rest of the speech?"
+
+"Of course," said Barbara gayly.
+
+She lifted the flowers until the lower half of her face was hidden.
+
+"Mr. Allen, I suppose," said the beggar.
+
+"Why should you suppose that?" said Barbara, a little coldly. "There is
+no card."
+
+Blizzard felt his mistake. And Barbara felt that he felt it. She went
+into the next room for a vase of water, and returned presently with
+heightened color. She had heard Harry West's slow grave voice explaining
+something to Bubbles. Her heart told her that West had sent the flowers,
+and she meant to get rid of Blizzard and find out. So, the vase of
+flowers in one hand, she held out the other to him, and said:
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+Blizzard was loath to go, but he felt that there was a certain finality
+in her voice, and he swung out of the studio, his heart gnawed
+with jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Through Bubbles, Harry West received the happy news that Miss Ferris
+wished to speak with him. But when he saw her with the vase of jonquils
+in her hand, and the empty box in which they had come at her feet, his
+stout heart failed him a little.
+
+"Mr. West," said Barbara, "some person is annoying me."
+
+"Annoying you?"
+
+"I am continually receiving flowers without card or comment."
+
+"Is it the flowers which annoy you or the lack of comment?"
+
+"I love the flowers, but anything in the shape of anonymity is unfair,
+and I resent it."
+
+"I can think of cases," said West, "in which a man might properly send
+flowers without disclosing his identity--just as I may pass a fine
+statue and praise it, without telling the statue who I am." He smiled.
+
+"Flowers don't resemble statues in the least, and your comparison is
+unnaturally far-fetched. Another thing, and this annoys me even more: my
+secretive friend sends flowers from the cheapest florist he can find. I
+argue from this that he is poor, and cannot afford to send me flowers
+at all."
+
+"Perhaps his home and business in the city are too far from the Fifth
+Avenue shops."
+
+"You are not saying gallant things, Mr. West. I--an unprotected young
+woman--tell you that I am being annoyed by a strange man. Instead of
+flying into a chivalrous rage and threatening to wring his neck when you
+catch him, you stand up for him. Very well. I shall set Bubbles to find
+out who the man is, and take my own steps in the matter."
+
+Her expression was grave and unruffled, though a certain look of
+amusement might have been detected in her eyes, by a youth less
+embarrassed than Mr. West was.
+
+"Don't do that," he said; "Bubbles could never find out. You wish to
+know who is sending you flowers?"
+
+"Very much. Can _you_ find out?"
+
+"I think so. I mean, I'm sure I can."
+
+"And when you have found him will you point out to him that in the
+future he must be open and above-board, or something disagreeable will
+be done to him?"
+
+Mr. West bowed humbly.
+
+"How long," she asked, "will it take you to run the creature down?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. West, "I could go to the florist whose name is on the
+box, show my badge, and exact a description of the man who bought the
+flowers. Then I could give you the description, and if you knew any
+such man--"
+
+"The florist," said Barbara, her expression Sphinx-like, "is just
+'round the corner."
+
+"I hear," said Mr. West, "and I obey."
+
+"I will read a book till you come back," said Barbara.
+
+But she didn't read a book; she leaned instead from a window and watched
+for Mr. West to come out of the studio-building. He came presently, but
+did not turn east in search of the florist. Neither did he descend the
+steps. Instead, he took out his watch and sat down, and waited. Barbara
+in great glee watched him for ten minutes. She was possessed of a
+devilish longing to fashion out of paper a small water-bomb and drop it
+on his head. Memories of water-bombs brought up memories of Wilmot Allen
+and old days. She drew back from the window and was no longer gleeful.
+Why should men trouble her heart, since she wished and had elected to
+live, not a woman's life but a man's? She paced the studio, her soul at
+odds with the rest of her.
+
+Had she ever encouraged Wilmot? Yes. West? Yes. And about a dozen
+others. And here she struck her left palm with her right fist. She had
+even encouraged a man who had committed all the crimes in the calendar
+and was only half a man at that! Half a man? She was not sure. There was
+a certain compelling force about him which at times made him seem more
+of a man to her than all the rest of them put together. "I can't imagine
+him in love," she thought. "It's really too revolting. But if he was, I
+can imagine nothing that he would let stand in his way, I wonder if he
+is married. And if he is I pity her. And yet she could say to other
+women, 'My husband is a man,' and most of the women I know can't
+say that."
+
+And she remembered her father's perfectly ridiculous suggestion that
+perhaps the man so wronged by him had lifted his eyes to herself. The
+idea no longer seemed ridiculous; but quite possible and equally
+dreadful. She made up her mind that she would sacrifice her immediate
+chances of recognition and fame and tell the beggar to discontinue his
+visits. Then she withdrew the cloth from her work, and it seemed to her
+that what she had made was alive and had about it a certain sublimity,
+and that to surrender now was beyond her strength. She had a moment of
+exultation, and she thought: "In a hundred years my body will be dust.
+It doesn't matter what becomes of it now or hereafter; but people will
+gather in front of this head, and artists will come from all over the
+world to see it. And there will be plaster casts of it in city museums
+and village libraries. And I suppose I'm the most conceited idiot in the
+world, but--but it's good. I _know_ it's good!"
+
+She had forgotten West, and Allen, and Blizzard, so that when the
+first-named knocked, she had some ado to come out of the clouds and
+recall what they had been talking about. Then, not wishing to drive West
+into a lie, she said only:
+
+"Have you the man's description?"
+
+"He is not," said West gravely, "a man in your station in life. He is,
+I imagine, some young fellow to whom, in passing, you have been
+carelessly gracious."
+
+"Is he handsome?" Mischief had returned to her mind.
+
+"He is only bigger and stronger than usual."
+
+"Dark or light?"
+
+"Medium."
+
+"And how long did it take you to find out all these interesting items?"
+
+"Twelve minutes," said West gravely.
+
+"By the clock?"
+
+"By a dollar watch.... Miss Ferris, I haven't done right. I'm not doing
+right."
+
+This came very suddenly. He had lowered his fine head and was frowning,
+
+"I'm the man who's been sending you flowers. I didn't know it was wrong.
+I'm not a gentleman. But once I'd seen you, I could never see flowers
+without thinking of you, so I kept sending them, hoping that they would
+give you pleasure for their own sake. I had no business even to look at
+you. To win the kind of race I'm up against, a man ought to keep his
+eyes in the boat, and not look right or left till his race is won or
+lost. And even then it ought to be right or left that he looks, and not
+up, and certainly not down. I didn't keep my eyes in the boat. I looked
+up, 'way up, and saw you, and caught a crab that threw the whole boat
+out of trim. I've no excuse, only this--that I haven't ever before even
+looked right or left or down. But it's all right now. Nobody's hurt. I
+won't come any more to watch over you. The lines are closing round
+Blizzard, and he knows it. His claws are pulled. He's got to toe a
+chalk-line, and you're as safe with him as with the Bishop of London."
+
+Barbara said nothing. She felt very unhappy.
+
+"One thing more. As long as I did forget the work in hand, as long as I
+did look up, why, I'd like to thank God, in your presence, that it was
+you I saw. Because in all the whole world there is nobody so beautiful
+or so blind."
+
+He thrust out his hand almost roughly, caught hers, said good-by, and
+turned to go.
+
+"Please wait," said Barbara. And she said it quite contrary to reason,
+which told her that it would be kinder to let the young man go
+without comments.
+
+"You've done nothing wrong," she went on, "and I can't help being
+pleased by the flowers and knowing that you think I am all sorts of
+things that I'm not. If you really like me a good deal, don't go away
+looking as if the world had come to an end. I think you are a fine
+person, and I shall always be glad to be your friend."
+
+There was agony in West's eyes. "My friendship," he said, "can never be
+any special pleasure to you. And seeing you--even once a year--would
+keep alive things that hurt me, and that never ought to have been born,
+and that were better dead."
+
+"'Faint heart--'" Barbara began, and could have bitten out her tongue,
+since she had so often promised herself that she would never again
+encourage anybody.
+
+The agony died in Harry West's eyes, and there came instead a look of
+great gentleness, compassion, and understanding.
+
+"May I say things to you that are none of my business?" he asked. She
+nodded briefly, and he went on: "You mustn't say things like that. You
+have a race to row, too, but your beautiful eyes are all over
+the place!"
+
+"I knew I was a rotter," said Barbara, "but I didn't know it was obvious
+to everybody."
+
+"To eyes," said West gently, "in a certain condition lots of things are
+obvious that other people wouldn't see. May I still say things?"
+
+"Don't spare me."
+
+"You love to attract men. And if you happen to hurt them, you think you
+are a rotter. That isn't true. You're being pulled two ways. Art pulls
+you one--the way you _think_ you want to go--and nature pulls you the
+way you really want to go. Men attract you to a certain extent. I can
+almost feel that--and you tire of them, and think it's because you
+haven't got the capacity for really caring. That isn't true either. You
+have infinite capacities for caring, but as yet you haven't been
+attracted to the man you are really going to care for."
+
+Barbara looked him straight in the eyes. "How do you know I haven't?"
+
+He returned the look, as if doubting what he should say or do. Then he
+drew a deep breath to steady himself.
+
+"Perhaps you have. But I know very well that it is not the man you
+think, at this moment. You are in the hunting stage, and you didn't know
+it. Now that you do know--unless I am greatly mistaken--I think you will
+try very hard not to hurt people, not to let them have wild dreams of
+something doing in the future."
+
+"But if I really think--"
+
+"Then be secret until you _know_."
+
+"And if everything that is me seems to be going out to a certain man--"
+
+"Then be secret until it has really gone out to him."
+
+"I don't know why I let you talk to me like this."
+
+"There you go again," he said, and she bit her lips. "It is very awful
+for me," he said, "to think that I have raised my voice in any criticism
+or disparagement of you."
+
+"Oh, it's all true, and it's all deserved."
+
+"But you are like that. And all at the same time it's your greatest
+strength and your greatest weakness, and for the right man, when he
+comes along, it will be his greatest treasure.... I don't like to say
+good-by. It comes hard."
+
+"If I said, 'Don't say good-by,' would I be breaking the rules?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "for I could never be the right man."
+
+[Illustration: When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair
+and cried.]
+
+"Not even if--"
+
+"Not even if--and you will have forgotten any kindness that you felt for
+me, while I am still wondering why the city is so empty, that once
+seemed so full."
+
+The tears sprang into Barbara's eyes. "Is there anything about me that
+you don't know?" she asked bitterly.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said.
+
+"Do you know that if you asked me to marry you, I should say yes?"
+
+"And I know that I am not going to ask you. There are two reasons. You
+don't love me. And I do love you."
+
+Her arms dropped limply to her sides.
+
+"And it shall never be said of me," he said proudly, "that I dragged any
+one down.... Will you promise me something?"
+
+"If you care to trust me to keep promises or to do anything that's right
+and honest."
+
+"Only promise to keep your eyes in the boat. Don't help a poor dog of a
+man into love with you. And don't help yourself into love with him. When
+the right man comes along, he will _make_ you love him, and then you
+will be sure."
+
+"I will promise," said Barbara simply, "and I never knew how rotten I
+was. And I'm glad you've told me. If it's any comfort to you--you've
+helped. And nobody ever helped before. I shall always be proud to
+remember that you loved me. And I'll keep my eyes in the boat."
+
+"And that," said Mr. West, "is where I'll keep mine, only, if it's
+nothing to you, I'll remember sometimes how the moon looked that time I
+looked up."
+
+She stood uncertain.
+
+"It's kind of awkward," he said, "sometimes to make a clean break. Good
+luck to you. And don't feel sorry about me. And be true to yourself. And
+if you ever really need me for anything tell Bubbles. He knows where to
+find me, when anybody does."
+
+A few minutes later Barbara was asking Bubbles if he happened to know
+Mr. Harry West's address.
+
+"He won't be coming back here," she said, "and I want to send him a
+book."
+
+"I'll deliver it," said Bubbles. "He don't keep no regular address. You
+have to catch him on the run."
+
+"Very well," she said, "take him this, with my very best thanks and my
+very best wishes."
+
+And she gave Bubbles a charmingly bound copy of Rostand's "Far-Away
+Princess," and when Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair
+and cried because she thought she had broken poor West's heart. But
+there was stern stuff in his heart, and exultation, for he knew that in
+the supreme test of his life, he had thought only of--her.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+"There, everything is understood," said Blizzard; "we are agreed upon
+the 15th of next January. And you can bring enough men on from the West
+to do the work?"
+
+O'Hagan, thick-set, black, bristling, nodded across the table. "You have
+guaranteed the money and the hats," he said; "I will guarantee the men.
+What's behind that door?"
+
+"Nothing but a junk-closet," said Blizzard. "Drink something."
+
+O'Hagan poured three fingers of dark whiskey into a short glass and
+drank it at one gulp. "After that one," he said, "the wagon until
+the 15th."
+
+"Yes," said Blizzard with some grimness. "There must be no frolicking.
+And mind this, Jimmie: the more good American citizens who don't speak
+English that you can corral the better. We don't want intelligence. We
+want blind obedience with a hope of gain. And they mustn't know what
+they are to do till it's time to do it. They should begin to come into
+the city by the middle of December, a few at a time. Let 'em come to me
+half a dozen at once for money, weapons, and orders."
+
+Again O'Hagan nodded. This time he rose, and the two shook hands across
+the table. O'Hagan seemed to labor under a certain emotion; but
+Blizzard was calm,
+
+"Keep me posted," he said, "and for God's sake, Jimmie, cut out the
+little things. You're in big now. Forget your troubles and your wrongs.
+Leave liquor alone and dynamite. Remember that on the 15th of next
+January you and I'll be square at last with law and order and
+oppression. Good luck to you!"
+
+When O'Hagan had gone Blizzard moved his chair so that it faced the door
+of the junk-closet. And he smiled occasionally as if he were one of an
+audience at some diverting play. From time to time he took a drink of
+whiskey and licked his lips. An hour passed, two hours, and always the
+legless man kept his agate eyes upon the closet door.
+
+When two hours and fifteen minutes had gone, he drew an automatic pistol
+from his pocket, and held it ready for instant use. A few minutes later,
+finding his original plan of humor a little tedious in the working out,
+he spoke in a clear, incisive voice:
+
+"Better come out of that now or I shall begin to shoot."
+
+The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room. After a short pause,
+during which she swayed and gasped for breath, an automatic pistol fell
+with a clatter from her nerveless fingers. She sank to the floor all in
+a heap and began to cry hysterically.
+
+[Illustration: The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room]
+
+Blizzard slid from his chair and secured her pistol. His face wore an
+expression of amused tolerance. "Tell me all about it," he said. "Crying
+_can't_ do any good, and talking may. You hid in the closet to
+listen. It's not the first time. I found one of your combs, and saw
+where you'd brushed away the dirt so's not to spoil your dress. Now I'd
+like to know how much you know, and whom you've told it to?"
+
+"What's the use?" said Rose with sudden desperation. "You've got
+me--nobody'll ever know from me what I've heard to-night. You're going
+to kill me."
+
+"I doubt it," said Blizzard. "Now look up and tell me all about
+everything."
+
+"Well," she said, "I've been spying on you."
+
+"I know that. I knew that the day you came. When you said you loved me I
+knew you were lying."
+
+"At first," she said, "I passed over everything I could find out about
+you. It wasn't much."
+
+"I took care of that."
+
+"Then I made up things--just to keep the others from knowing I wasn't
+playing fair. I wanted to put that off as long as I could. Anything I
+really found out--like your first talk with O'Hagan--I just kept to
+myself. I know I lied to you the first day. But I'm not lying now."
+
+The legless man smiled tolerantly. "Why did you keep on trying to find
+out things--if you didn't mean to use them?"
+
+"Because I wanted to know all about you, what you were doing, what your
+interests were. I thought I could be more useful to you that way."
+
+"It's a good thing for you, Rose," said Blizzard, "that I guessed all
+this. If I hadn't you wouldn't be alive now. And so, now that you've
+gotten to know me pretty well, there's something about me, is there,
+that's knocked your ambitions galley-west?"
+
+"I had friends that trusted me," she said, "and I've played double with
+them. And now I've got only you."
+
+"Tell me one thing," and Blizzard asked the question with some
+eagerness, "what particular quality of mine got you to feeling this way
+about me?"
+
+"I guess it's every quality now," said Rose, "but it started with me the
+first time I heard you play, and knew that, whatever you'd been and
+done, and were planning to do, you had a soul above it all. And I knew
+that if your soul had ever had a fair chance you'd have been more like a
+god than a man."
+
+"Well, well," said Blizzard after a long silence, "perhaps. Who knows!
+And so it was the music that changed your heart? Well, why not? Nobody
+makes better music--unless it's Hofman."
+
+The idea of appealing to the heart of quite another girl through his
+music filled the legless man with a wild hoping. Why not? If he could
+play himself clean out of hell whenever he pleased, why not another? He
+would not tell her the possibilities of nobility that yet remained in
+him. He would play them to her.
+
+"Rose," he said, "you're the best pedaller I ever had. You've got music
+in you. We'll practise up and give a concert. I'll ask some nobs in.
+We'll turn the piano so that seeing how the pedalling is done won't
+distract their attention from the music. But they won't hear our music,
+Rose. It will be better than that. They shall roll in it, bathe in it,
+see heaven!"
+
+"That's what I saw."
+
+Blizzard's agate eyes glinted with a strange light. It was as if the
+beast in him was fighting with the God. But gradually all mercifulness,
+all-pity, went out, and the fires which remained were not good to see.
+
+He kissed her and she kissed him back.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Feeling that she had been working too hard, being in much distress about
+Harry West, and in some for herself, and learning that Wilmot Allen was
+to be of the party, Barbara told Blizzard, at the end of his sitting on
+Friday, that he need not come Saturday, as she was going to spend the
+week-end with the Bruces at Meadowbrook.
+
+"I'm dog-tired," she said, "and that's the same as being discouraged. We
+both need a rest. Things have been at a stand-still nearly all
+the week."
+
+"I think you are right about yourself," said Blizzard, "but won't your
+gay friends keep you up till all hours?"
+
+"They will _not_" said Barbara, "and it won't be gay. During a falling
+market there are never more than two happy people at the largest Long
+Island house-party. The men will sit by themselves and drink very
+solemnly. The women will sit by themselves and yawn till ten o'clock. It
+will be very boring and very restful."
+
+"Speaking of falling markets, is my friend Mr. Allen to be among those
+present? I understand that he has been very hard hit."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Barbara. "He often is. Yes, he is to be
+among those present, and I'm really going just to have a chance to
+talk to him."
+
+"_With_ him or _to_ him?" asked Blizzard with one of his sudden,
+dazzling smiles.
+
+"_To_ him," said Barbara, also smiling, "I, too, have listened to tales
+out of school, and since he is my oldest friend, and probably my best,
+he must be straightened out."
+
+"A little absence from New York, perhaps," suggested Blizzard, and
+watched her face closely.
+
+"Do you think so? It doesn't seem to me necessary to run away in order
+to straighten out."
+
+"Mr. Allen," said Blizzard, "should swear off stock-gambling, and marry
+a rich girl."
+
+"He's not that kind," said Barbara simply. And this swift, loyal
+statement did not please the beggar, since it argued more to his mind of
+the faith that goes with love than of that appertaining to friendship.
+He felt a sharp stab of jealousy, and had some ado to keep the pain of
+it from showing in his face.
+
+"Well," he said, "if anybody can help him, you can. And if you can't,
+send him to me. Oh, we've had dealings before now. I was even of real
+service to him once."
+
+"If that is true," Barbara thought, "it's rather rotten of Wilmot to
+keep running this poor soul down."
+
+Blizzard left with obvious reluctance. Two whole days without a sight of
+Miss Ferris seemed a very long time to him. "I shall miss these morning
+loafings."
+
+"Is that what you call posing?"
+
+"What else? You loaf now. Good luck to the tired eye and hand."
+
+"Thank you," said Barbara. "Next week we'll see if we can't really get
+somewhere."
+
+"We shall try," said Blizzard. He turned at the door. "I want to play
+for you some time," he said. "May I?"
+
+"Why, yes--of course."
+
+"At my place," he said. "I have a new piano in; it's very good. You see,
+I pound four or five of them to pieces in the course of a year. I
+thought perhaps you'd bring two or three or more of your friends who
+like music, I know _you_ do. I'll give you supper. Your friends might
+think it was a good slumming spree to come to a concert at my house. And
+I particularly want to play for you. I go for weeks without playing, and
+then the wish comes."
+
+She longed to ask him how he worked the pedals, and had to bite the
+question back.
+
+He laughed, reading her mind. "If you come," he said, "I will try to
+make you forget what I am--even what I look like. I should like you to
+know what I might have been--what I still might be." He went out
+abruptly and closed the door after him.
+
+Barbara mused for a minute and then rang for Bubbles. "I'm going out of
+town for over Sunday," she said. "What will you do?"
+
+"Me and Harry," said he, "is going down to the sea swimming."
+
+"Please give Harry my best wishes, Bubbles."
+
+The great eyes held hers for a minute and were turned away. He was sharp
+enough to know that through one of his idols the other had been hurt.
+And he found the knowledge sorrowful and heavy.
+
+"I'll do that," he said solemnly.
+
+That afternoon Wilmot Allen drove Barbara down to Meadowbrook. He had
+borrowed a sixty-horse-power runabout for the occasion, but displayed no
+anxiety to put the machine through its higher paces. "I've had a rough
+week," he said, "and my nerves are shaky. Do you mind if we take
+our time?"
+
+"No," said Barbara, "my nerves are shaky, too. And I want to talk to you
+without having the words blown out of my mouth and scattered all over
+Long Island."
+
+He bowed over the steering-wheel, and said: "It's good to know that you
+_want_ to talk to me. Is it to be about you, about me--or us?"
+
+Barbara leaned luxuriously against the scientifically placed cushion,
+all her muscles relaxed. "You," she said, "are to play several
+parts, Wilmot."
+
+"And always one," he answered softly.
+
+"Not now," she said, "please. First you are to play priest, and listen
+to confession. Then you are to confess, or I am to do it for you, and
+receive penance."
+
+"While I'm priest," he said, "do I impose any penance on you?"
+
+"I'll listen to suggestions," said she, "that point toward absolution."
+
+"I am now clothed In my priestly outfit," said Wilmot; "you have
+entered the confessional. I listen."
+
+Very simply, without preamble, she plunged into her affair with Harry
+West. And Wilmot listened, his head bent forward over the
+steering-wheel. It was not pleasant for him to learn that she had
+thought herself seriously in love with another man, and was not now in
+the least sure of her feelings toward him.
+
+"I cried almost all night," she said; "it didn't seem as if I could bear
+it."
+
+"How about the next night, Barbs?"
+
+"Oh, I slept," she said, "or thought about work."
+
+"And he told you that you mustn't see each other anymore?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think he was right, Barbs. I don't believe you really love him, dear.
+If you did you would have cried for many nights and days--felt like it,
+I mean, all the time. Men attract you--they drop out for some reason or
+other--and so on. I know pretty well."
+
+"That's just what he said," said Barbara, "and it's true, Wilmot. I'm
+almost sure now that I don't really love him. And that's ugly enough.
+But it's worse to think that he really loves me, and that it's
+my fault."
+
+Wilmot Allen did not make the mistake of saying that it was not her
+fault. "It just shows, Barbs dear," he said, "that it's time to pull up.
+You've got more darned temperament than anybody I ever saw. It's a
+great weapon, but you've got to learn to control it, and not swing it
+wild and hurt people."
+
+"That's what he said."
+
+"Well, he seems to be a sensible fellow, and a fine fellow, and to have
+thought of you rather than himself. You told him you'd marry him if he
+asked you? Now, Barbs, listen to me. That was a fool thing to say."
+
+"I know it"
+
+"Do you realize how lucky you are to have said it to West instead of to
+some other fellow who happened to be on the make? You've come through
+your young life almost entirely by good luck, not by good management.
+You've run up against honorable men, instead of rotters. That's
+the answer."
+
+"I should think, feeling this way, you'd hate and despise me."
+
+His hand left the steering-wheel and gave hers a swift pat.
+
+"Well, it's over," she said, "and I wanted you to know. I'm going to
+pull back in my shell and be very dignified and honorable. If anybody
+wants to get hurt through me, they've got to hurt themselves."
+
+"You'll not try to see West any more?"
+
+"No," she said rather wearily, "that's over. And it's for the best. I've
+had a good lesson. No man ought ever to take me seriously until I've
+told him every day for a year that I love him. Maybe two years."
+
+"Just tell me _once_--" he began
+
+"Don't," she said, "please. Now you confess."
+
+"Well, Barbs," he said, "this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very
+deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life."
+
+"Well!" she exclaimed, "you're not running away?"
+
+"Only from temptation," he said. "I have spoken to all my creditors but
+one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my
+obligations with me, and, God willing, they shall all be paid."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his
+temptations."
+
+"Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard
+with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to
+you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the
+dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see
+what you are doing."
+
+"I shall miss you," she said simply, "like everything. Why--"
+
+"Why what?"
+
+"It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in."
+
+"That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will
+write to me, and I will come back."
+
+"But I don't mean--"
+
+"I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you
+are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the
+same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if
+I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies.
+Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with
+all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads
+to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life."
+
+"Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me?
+I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if
+you are sick or well?"
+
+"The first night," said Wilmot, "you cried. The second you slept and
+thought about work."
+
+"But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each
+other, we are that--best friends. We have our roots so deep in the
+happenings of years and years that we can't be moved--and get away
+with it."
+
+"We shall see," said Wilmot almost solemnly. "It isn't going to be easy
+for me, either. But time will soon show. If after a year we find that we
+cannot do without each other's friendship--why, then we must see each
+other again. That's all there is to it."
+
+"At least you'll write?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"But I will."
+
+"No, Barbs. The sight of your writing would be too much fuel for the
+fire."
+
+She was silent for a quarter of a mile. She did not enjoy the idea of
+being deliberately cut out of Wilmot Allen's life and heart "Suppose,"
+she said, "that at the end of the year the fire is still
+burning bright?"
+
+He slowed the car down so that he could turn and look at her. His face
+looked very strong and stern. "In that case," he said, "I will come back
+and marry you,"
+
+"And supposing that meanwhile, in a fit of loneliness and mistaken zeal,
+I shall have married some one else?"
+
+"If I feel about you as I do now," said Allen, "I will take you away
+from him."
+
+Once more the car began to run swiftly, so swiftly that Wilmot could not
+take his eyes from the road to look at Barbara's face. If he had, he
+would have seen in her eyes an extraordinary look of trouble and
+tenderness.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+During the week-end Barbara and Allen were much together, to the
+amusement of the other guests, who said: "_It's_ on again." But it was
+not really.
+
+If Wilmot was going away, Barbara wished him to have good memories of
+last times together to carry with him. And Wilmot, like a foolish fellow
+who is going to swear off Monday, and in the meanwhile drinks to excess,
+saw no reason why he should dress his wounds in the present, since, in
+time to save his life, he was going to give them every attention
+possible. That he was going to "get over" Barbara in a year he did not
+believe. But observation and common-sense told him that life without her
+must become easier and saner as time passed, and that to be forever
+caught up or thrown down by her varying moods toward him had ceased to
+be a self-respecting way of life. This is what common-sense and
+experience told him; but his heart told him that he would love her
+always, and that if he could not have her he must simply die.
+
+Sunday night, after she had gone to bed, Barbara lay in the darkness and
+asked herself questions. Wilmot's life had not been fine, but his love
+had been very fine, and for longer than she could remember. Would it not
+be well to trust herself to such a love as that? Had she the right to
+send it away begging? Would it not be better, since marriage is a
+lottery, to grasp some things that in this case would be sure, instead
+of leaving everything to chance? If he kept away from her long enough,
+his love would probably die, or at least reduce itself to a state of
+occasional melancholy agitation. But if she belonged to him it would
+never die. Of this their whole past seemed a sure proof. If she married
+him he would always love her and be faithful to her; for her part she
+was wonderfully fond of him, and she believed that if she once actually
+committed herself to his care, she would be a good wife to him, and a
+loving. Then why not? She tried the effect of pretending that she had
+promised to marry him and meant to keep her word, and she found that the
+position, if only mentally, was strategically strong and secure. She
+would make him happy; she herself would cease from troubling him and
+other men. For her sake he would turn over new leaves and be everything
+that was fine. She would be obedient and have no more difficult knots to
+untangle for herself. Wilmot would simply cut them for her with a sure
+word, one way or the other.
+
+She had not for a long time enjoyed so peaceful a night. Hours passed,
+and she found that, without sleeping, she was becoming wonderfully
+rested. For it is true that nothing so rests the thinker as
+unselfish thinking.
+
+She had breakfast in her room, but was down in time to catch the
+business men's train for town, or to be driven in Wilmot's borrowed
+runabout, if he should ask her. He did, and amid shouts of farewell and
+invitations to come again soon, they drove away together into the cool
+bright morning.
+
+"Wilmot," Barbara said, when they had passed the last outpost of the
+Bruces' shrubbery and whirled into the turnpike, "I spent most of last
+night thinking."
+
+"You look fresh as a rosebud."
+
+She shook her head as if to shake off the dew, and said: "I feel more
+rested than if I had slept soundly. If you will marry me, Wilmot, I will
+make you a good wife."
+
+Wilmot's heart leaped into his throat with joy, and then dropped as if
+into a deep abyss of doubt. For all her confessions to him, and for all
+her promises of amendment, here was his darling Barbs unable to resist
+the temptation of hurting him again. "One of her impulses," he thought,
+and at once he was angry with her, and his heart yearned over her.
+
+"Are you going to be able to say that, Barbs," he said gently, "a year
+from now, after we've been out of sight and hearing of each other all
+that time?"
+
+"Wilmot," she said, "I'm not up to my old bad tricks. I am ready to give
+you my word this time, and to keep faith. Only I'd like everything to be
+done as soon as possible. I've been a very foolish girl, and perplexed
+and tired, and I want to lean on you, if you'll let me. We'll have a
+good life together, and I will keep my eyes in the boat."
+
+"A few days ago, Barbs," he said, "you thought that you were seriously
+in love with another man."
+
+"I know," she said, "but I wasn't."
+
+"Are you in love with me now?" he asked wistfully.
+
+"I know that you will always be good to me, and love me. And that is
+what I _know_ that I want."
+
+"Poor little Barbs," he said.
+
+"It seems to me rather," she said, "that I am now rich with chances of
+happiness for us both. I want to make my oldest and most deserving
+friend happy, and I trust him to make me happy."
+
+"It isn't love, dear?"
+
+"It's so much affection and friendship that perhaps it's better." She
+turned her face away a little. "The best that marriage can end in is
+affectionate companionship; why not begin with that, and so be sure of
+it for always?"
+
+"If I had ever dreamed," said Wilmot unsteadily, "that you were going to
+say things like this to me, I'd have dreamed that I went wild with
+happiness, and drove you to the nearest clergyman. But now that you have
+actually said what you have said, in real life, I find that I love you
+more than ever, and that it is not compatible with so much love to take
+you on a basis of friendship. You feel that you have hurt me more than
+is possible for your conscience to bear, and you wish to make up for it.
+Is that right?"
+
+"That's not all there is to it, Wilmot, by any means. But for heaven's
+sake believe that I'm being altogether unselfish: but you know me too
+well to believe anything so ridiculous."
+
+"I know you well enough," said Wilmot, "to worship the ground you walk
+on. Not because my heart urges me, but my understanding. And I know you
+would play the game, once you had given your word, and make me a
+splendid wife. But what I have for you cannot be given to mere
+friendship and submission, I should feel that I had sinned against my
+love for you too greatly to be forgiven. You are closer to me than you
+have ever been, my dear--and yet so far away that I can only look upward
+as to a star, and despair of the distance. If there has been anything
+fine in my life, it has been my love for you. And behold, you, with
+every opposite intention, are tempting me to let that go rotten, too.
+But, O my Barbs, if you could only love me!"
+
+Barbara drew a long breath. "I thought I was doing right."
+
+"You _have_ done right. It is for me to do right."
+
+"Well," she said, "I'm bitterly disappointed, and that's all there is to
+it. Ought I to thank you for letting me off?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Then I thank you."
+
+Neither spoke for a long time. At last Barbara said:
+
+"When do you go West?"
+
+"In a very few days."
+
+"Then you will be able to go to Mr. Blizzard's party and hear him play."
+
+"Are you still determined on that?"
+
+"Why, yes. It will be fun. And besides, I haven't any husband to forbid
+me."
+
+Wilmot's temper rose a little. "I'll go," he said shortly. "When will
+the bust be finished? And the whole Blizzard episode?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Barbara patiently. "But I think the
+Blizzard episode--as you call it--is rather a permanent friendship. I
+find reasons to like him, and to admire him."
+
+Wilmot made no comment. He longed to speak evil of Blizzard, but the
+fact of his financial obligation to the man kept him silent. He
+contented himself with saying: "I'm glad that I haven't your artistic
+judgment of character. One of these days you will learn, to your cost,
+that men's judgment of a man is usually correct."
+
+"I wish he had legs," said Barbara. "I'd like to do Prometheus bound to
+the rock."
+
+Wilmot's disgust was intense. "Do you mean to say--" he began, and then
+checked himself. "Why not have your father graft a pair on him? He's
+succeeded, by all accounts, in doing so for all sorts of beasts."
+
+"Do you know," said Barbara sweetly, "that is just what my father would
+try to do for Mr. Blizzard if some interested person would only step
+forward and supply the legs."
+
+"I dare say Blizzard would find a pair quickly enough, if he thought
+they could be attached."
+
+"But how could he?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just joking, Miss Innocence. But, seriously, he could buy a
+pair for a price. You can buy anything in this world--except love,"
+
+Blizzard, sitting in the sun on the steps of 17 McBurney Place, watched
+the pair approaching in the runabout, noted as they drew near the
+affectionate seriousness of their attitude toward each other--for they
+had stopped talking of him and returned to themselves--and his whole
+being burned suddenly with a rage of jealousy. Controlling the
+expression of his face, he rose upon his crutches and descended the
+steps to greet Barbara at the curb.
+
+"Glad to see you!" said she. "And how about Wednesday night for the
+party? Mr. Allen is coming, and I have asked three or four
+other people."
+
+The legless man bowed and said: "Thank you. Wednesday at half-past
+nine."
+
+He nodded affably to Allen, who returned the salute with all his
+charming ease and courtesy. You might have mistaken them for two men who
+really valued each other.
+
+"Miss Ferris," said Blizzard, "I shall be ready for work as soon as you.
+I wish to ask Mr. Allen a question."
+
+Wilmot winced, since he noted a tone of command in Blizzard's voice, and
+it jarred on him, and he said good-by to Barbara and watched her
+disappear into the studio-building with a feeling of strong resentment
+against the man who had to all intents and purposes dismissed her from
+the scene.
+
+"Well?" he said curtly.
+
+But Blizzard, enjoying the childish satisfaction of having separated the
+pair, was no longer in the mood to take offence. "I wish to make a
+proposition to you," he said, "but at some length. Will you come to my
+place at three o'clock this afternoon? It is easier for you to get about
+than for me."
+
+"I am very busy," said Wilmot; "I am getting ready to go West."
+
+"So I have gathered. Have you anything definite in view?"
+
+"Not very," said Wilmot. "Nor any money to put it through with. About
+the loan you were so kind as to make me, I can only say that I am going
+to turn over a new leaf, and to work very hard at something or other. If
+I have any luck you shall be paid."
+
+The legless man dismissed the matter of the loan with a backward toss of
+his head. "If you've nothing definite in view," said he, "please come at
+three o'clock, I have interests in the West--legitimate interests, and
+influence. Perhaps I can put you in a way to clear up your debts."
+
+"Well, by George," said Wilmot, his good nature returning, "if that's
+the idea, I'll turn up at three sharp. Sure thing."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Blizzard had upon his desk a specimen of the straw hats which the young
+ladies of his establishment were kept so busy plaiting. At exactly three
+o'clock he thrust it to one side, and at exactly the same moment the
+bell of his street door clanged, and Wilmot Allen came in out of
+the sunlight.
+
+"On time," said Blizzard, "thank you. Are you a judge of hats? Try that
+one."
+
+Obediently Wilmot removed his own heavy yellowish straw, and substituted
+the soft and pliant article indicated. It fitted him to perfection, and
+the legless man smiled.
+
+"It's yours," he said; "fold it up, and put it in your pocket."
+
+"It'll break it."
+
+"Here. Let me show you." And Blizzard folded the hat as if it had been a
+linen handkerchief. "Very handy thing," he said, "and only to be
+obtained as a gift. Sit down," Wilmot thrust the hat into his inside
+pocket and sat down on the beggar's left, facing the light. The faint
+hum of girls talking at their work came from the back of the
+establishment. A whirling fan buzzed and bumped. The weather had
+turned very hot.
+
+"Young man," the beggar began abruptly, "if I had your legs I'd engage
+in something more active and adventurous than the manufacture of straw
+hats. Have you ever had the wish to be a soldier of fortune? To go about
+the world redressing wrong, fighting upon the side of the oppressed?"
+
+"Of course," said Wilmot simply.
+
+"You are heavily in debt?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Whatever I may say to you will go no further?"
+
+"No further."
+
+The legless man stroked his chin strongly with his thick fingers. "I am
+engineering a little revolution," he said. "My own morals are
+negligible. Any revolution that offered a profit would look good to me.
+But in this case the revolutionary party _is_ oppressed, down-trodden,
+robbed, starved, and murdered by conditions created by the party in
+power. I am not yet at liberty to name you the part of the world in
+which this state of affairs exists, that will be for later. Meanwhile,
+if my proposition interests you, will you take my word for the place and
+for the abuse of power? Indeed, the latter smells to heaven."
+
+"South America," said Wilmot, "is full of just such rottenness as you
+describe. I suppose you're speaking of some South American republic?"
+
+"Maybe I am," said Blizzard, "and maybe I'm not. That will be for
+later--for January 15th. On that date my soldiers of fortune will be
+gathered in New York and told their destiny. I am hoping that you will
+be one of the leaders."
+
+"I know nothing of soldiering."
+
+"Your record proves that you are a great hand with a rifle. It stands to
+reason that you can teach the trick to others."
+
+"Possibly," said Wilmot, "to a certain extent."
+
+"I have," said Blizzard, "a number of scattered mining interests in
+Utah. I wish you to travel among them teaching the men in relays to
+shoot accurately and fast. This can be done without greatly interfering
+with the working of the mines. You would be nominally under the command
+of a man named O'Hagan, to whom I have written a letter introducing you,
+on the chance that you might care to use it."
+
+"Where," said Wilmot smiling, "does the business end of the affair
+begin? I'm rotten with debts."
+
+"For teaching my men to shoot," said Blizzard, "I will pay you the money
+that you owe me. That's one debt written off."
+
+"And how shall I live in the meanwhile?"
+
+"I have empowered O'Hagan to pay you five hundred dollars a month."
+
+"And the rest of my debts? How about them?"
+
+"You will fight for down-trodden people," said Blizzard gravely. "If you
+win, you will find them grateful--possibly beyond the dreams of avarice.
+In the republic of which we are speaking there is wealth enough for all.
+It is one of the richest little corners of God's footstool--gold,
+diamonds, silver. If you succeed you will be on Easy Street. If you
+fail, you will very likely get a bullet through your head."
+
+Wilmot's face brightened. "If I got killed trying to pay 'em," said he,
+"my creditors couldn't feel very nasty toward me, could they?"
+
+A look of strong admiration came into Blizzard's hard eyes. "I like the
+way your mind works," said he. "If you get killed in my service, I'll
+pay your debts myself."
+
+"I owe nearly a hundred thousand," said Wilmot.
+
+"I've been worse stung," said Blizzard.
+
+"Where the devil do you get all your money, Blizzard?"
+
+"I've lived for money and power. I've been lucky, clever--and
+unscrupulous."
+
+"I like your frankness. But you are not letting me in for anything
+rotten?"
+
+"Your Revolutionary ancestors fought against just such forces as you are
+to fight against--unjust taxation, abuse of power, and corruption in
+high places. Are you going to serve?"
+
+"I'm going it pretty blind, but I think so. I like the idea of fighting.
+I like the idea of paying my debts. And at times I think a bullet in the
+head would be a matter for self-congratulation."
+
+"That," said Blizzard, "is the feeling of two classes of young
+men--those who are tangled up with women and those who aren't."
+
+Wilmot laughed, though the legless man's words brought the ache into his
+heart.
+
+"You will return to New York," Blizzard went on, "during the first half
+of January."
+
+"I had rather promised myself to keep out of New York for a year."
+
+"It will be for only a few days. If you don't wish your presence in the
+city known, I'll put you up in my house. Parts of it are as secret as
+the grave."
+
+"All right. But supposing the revolution falls through before it ever
+gets started?"
+
+"I'll make you a bet," said Blizzard, smiling. "Please reach me that
+black check-book." He wrote a check, blotted it, and showed it to
+Wilmot. "This," he said, "against a penny! It will pay your debts. It's
+payable at the City Bank on January 16th. Put it in your pocket."
+
+"When do I start for Utah?"
+
+"Wednesday afternoon."
+
+"I hoped to come to your concert that night."
+
+Blizzard shook his head. "You will hear better music," he said, "in the
+West--rifles on the ranges. And by the way, don't lose that hat I gave
+you. It must be where you can get it on the 15th of January."
+
+To Wilmot a straw hat suggested the palm-groves of a South American
+republic rather than the streets of New York in midwinter, and he said
+so; but the legless man only smiled.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+During those last days Barbara and Wilmot were together a great deal
+Tuesday morning, by invitation, he watched her at work upon her bust of
+Blizzard; afterward he took her to lunch and for a long drive through
+Westchester County. That night they dined with Mr. Ferris, who,
+immediately after dinner, excused himself, and withdrew to his
+laboratory. Wednesday morning Barbara did no work, but drove about in a
+taxicab with Wilmot and helped him shop. They lunched together, and she
+went to the Grand Central to see him off. Where Wilmot found the time to
+pack the things which they had bought in the morning was always
+something of a mystery to them both.
+
+As train-time approached the hearts of both these young people began to
+beat very fast. Each felt that the good-bys presently to be said might
+be forever. In his resolution not even to write to Barbara, Wilmot was
+weakening pitiably. He wished that he had taken her at her word and
+married her Monday when she was in the mood. Better Barbara unloving, he
+thought, than this terrible emptiness and aching. His heart was proving
+stronger than his mind. Short, more or less conventional phrases were
+torn from him. Barbara, her heart beating faster and faster, said
+very little.
+
+The attention of her wonderful eyes was divided between the crowds and
+the station clock. She could see the minute-hand move. Once in a while
+she snatched, as it were, a look at Wilmot. His eyes were never lifted
+from her face.
+
+The gate for Wilmot's train was suddenly slid wide open with a horrid,
+rasping noise, and people began to press upon the man who examined the
+tickets. It was then that Barbara's roving and troubled eyes came to
+rest, you may say, in Wilmot's, with a look so sweet, so confiding, so
+trusting, that it seemed to the young man that the pain of separation
+was going to be greater than he could bear. He lifted his hands as if to
+take her in his arms, and stood there like a study in arrested motion.
+
+"Best friend in the world," she said, the great eyes still in his, "most
+charming companion in the world--man I've hurt so much and so
+often--only say the word."
+
+"What word? That I love you--love you--love you?"
+
+They spoke in whispers.
+
+"Stay with me," she said, "and for me--or take me with you. I can't bear
+this. I can't bear it."
+
+"You'd come--now--just as you are?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+Slowly, like two things in anguish, her eyes turned from their steady
+gazing into his. And, "I dare not say it," she said, "but I will go with
+you--and try."
+
+They were aware of something pressing toward them, and turning with a
+common resentment against interruption, they found themselves looking
+down upon the legless man.
+
+"Just dropped in to say good-by and wish you good luck," he said.
+His face wore a good-natured smile, and, quite innocent of
+self-consciousness, brought confusion upon their last moments together.
+The tentacles of unreasoning passion that each had been putting forth
+were beaten down by it and aside.
+
+"Better get a move on--time's up."
+
+"Good-by, Wilmot," said Barbara swiftly. "Everything's all right. Good
+luck to you and God bless you."
+
+She turned, her lovely head drooping, and walked swiftly away.
+
+A young man took off his hat and held it in his hands until she had
+passed. He had been watching her and Wilmot, and incidentally the
+legless man, for the last ten minutes. He hoped that she would look up
+and speak to him, but her mind was given singly to sorrow. And she went
+through the station to the street without knowing if it was crowded or
+deserted. Harry West's sad eyes followed her until she was out of sight.
+Then with a sort of wrench he turned once more to observe the actions of
+the legless man. This one, however, having said cheerful good-bys to the
+sulky and heartsick Wilmot, and having at the same time noted the
+obtrusive nearness of the secret-service agent, had made swift use of
+his crutches and stumps and was at the moment climbing into a
+waiting taxicab.
+
+Whatever West's opinion may have been, Blizzard was making a
+sufficiently innocent disposition of time. He had prevented an
+elopement, perhaps. And he was on his way to a prominent florist to fill
+his cab with flowers for the evening's entertainment.
+
+He was in a curiously shy and nervous state of mind. There was perhaps
+no man living whose hands were more nearly at home upon the key-board of
+a piano, or whose mind was more disdainful of other people's opinions.
+But of the fact that he was suffering from incipient stage fright there
+could be no doubt whatever. Would this inoculate his playing, keep the
+soul out of it? Or worse, would it cause him to strike wrong notes, and
+even to forget whole passages, so that his guests, and of course
+Barbara, would go away in the impression that they had heard a boastful
+person make an ass of himself? He was almost minded to begin his concert
+with an imitation of a virtuoso suffering from stage fright. If there
+was going to be laughter, let it be thought that he was not the
+irresponsible cause of it, but the deliberate and responsible. What
+should he play? Violent things to get his hands in and his courage up,
+and then Chopin? Let Chopin speak up on his behalf to Barbara; tell her
+how he had suffered; how you must not judge him until you understood the
+suffering; how there was still in him a soul that looked up from the
+depths, and aspired to beautiful things? Yes, let Chopin speak to her,
+plead with her, reason with her, show her, lead her.
+
+He descended from the cab, and entered the florist's.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Barbara paid Blizzard the compliment of inviting only people who were
+really fond of music to hear him play. The Braces, Adrian Savage, Blythe
+the architect, young Morton Haddon, and Barbara herself, composed the
+party. They dined on a roof, and then, occupying two taxicabs, started
+for Marrow Lane in the highest spirits. But the East Side had its way
+with them, and they reached their destination in a serious mood,
+ashamed, perhaps, of being rich and fortunate, unhappy at feeling
+themselves envied and hated. Bruce, Adrian Savage, and Barbara were in
+the leading cab, a brand-new one smelling of leather, and of the
+gardenia which Barbara was wearing. The filth of the East Side came no
+nearer to them than the tires of the cab. They were, you may say,
+insulated, enfortressed against squalor, poverty, crime, and discontent.
+They were almost free to do as they pleased, as indeed their expedition
+proved, and yet, such is the natural charity of the human heart, they
+could not look from the windows of the cab and remain untroubled, or
+fail to understand a little of those motives which turn the minds of the
+unfortunate to thoughts of anarchy. There was no whole tragedy unrolled
+before their eyes, not even a completed episode in one. It so happened
+that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw
+many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one
+another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not
+physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present,
+for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a
+misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment from recreation to
+violence. Indeed, the mere fact of their own passing in the highly
+polished cab with its wake of burned gas and Havana tobacco turned many
+a smile into a scowl or a jeer.
+
+Often the driver throttled his car to a snail's pace or brought it to a
+full stop to avoid running over one of those children who, so far as
+self-preservation goes, appear to be deaf, dumb, blind, and without
+powers of locomotion; and during one of these halts a little girl,
+walking slowly backward, her eyes upon another little girl who for no
+apparent cause was making a series of malevolent faces at her, collided
+with one of the tires and fell on her back directly in front of the
+stationary car. Instantly she began to screech, and the street, hitherto
+but scatteringly occupied, filled with raging people.
+
+The driver from his seat, Bruce from one window, Savage from the other,
+attempted to explain to deaf ears. Their voices were drowned in a
+torrent of abuse.
+
+Barbara, at first only exasperated by the stupidity of the crowd,
+sitting very still and erect, had upon her face that expression of
+bored contempt with which aristocrats in the French Revolution are said
+to have gone to the guillotine. Then that was shouted in her ear which,
+though but half, understood, turned her scarlet with anger.
+Unfortunately Savage, hitherto patiently self-controlled, had heard the
+compounded epithet hurled at Barbara, and in a moment his fighting blood
+was beyond control, and he was out of the cab raining heavy blows upon a
+bloated chalky-white face, and receiving worse than he gave from a dozen
+fists and feet. Strong as a bull, always in training, his strength was
+beaten and kicked from him in twenty seconds, and with Bruce and the
+driver--who, bravely enough, if reluctantly, had leaped to his
+assistance--things were no better.
+
+A whistling, shrill and metallic, brought the fight to a sudden end. The
+crowd drew back sullen and reluctant, no longer shouting and cursing,
+but muttering, explaining, and discreet.
+
+Barbara took from her lips the whistle which Kid Shannon had given her.
+She was very white, but her eyes blazed with the light of success and
+power. The bringing of the whistle had been an accident, the blowing it
+an act of desperation: but perceiving the sudden effect of that blowing
+she could not but feel that she had done something strategically good
+and in the nick of time. Savage began to straighten his collar and
+necktie, Bruce to nurse a sprained thumb. The second cab came up. Ely
+the and Morton Haddon got out and, full of perplexity but not unamused,
+fell to asking questions of their dishevelled friends. These, winded
+and bruised, could give but an ejaculatory explanation, mostly of what
+they would do to such and such a one if they could isolate him from his
+fellow cutthroats for five minutes; and Blythe and Haddon, not bruised
+and winded, told them to pull themselves together. Meanwhile the crowd
+had disintegrated before the possible arrival of Kid Shannon; had
+vanished like a lump of sugar in a cup of tea. Even the little child who
+had been the cause of the uproar had disappeared. So a colony of
+prairie-dogs vanishes into its burrows at the shadow of a hawk.
+
+The short street was deserted save for the figure of a rapidly
+approaching policeman. Why this guardian of the peace had not been upon
+his beat during the fracas could have been best explained perhaps by the
+proprietor of a disorderly house, from whom at the time he had been
+levying a weekly stipend of lust money and a glass of beer. For his
+lapse of duty, however, he made such amends as were possible. In short,
+he took the numbers of both taxicabs, the names of their occupants, and
+told them, with stern condescension, that they were now at liberty to
+pursue their interrupted way.
+
+But first Barbara received praise for having blown the whistle, and
+Bruce and Savage were made to say repeatedly that they insisted on going
+on with the evening's entertainment; that they were not really hurt, and
+that they wouldn't think of being driven to a doctor. Everybody wanted
+to know more about Kid Shannon, and in just what consisted the terror
+and efficacy of his name. But Barbara could only say that he was a
+friend of hers, and a sort of henchman of their host for the evening.
+Then she said, smiling:
+
+"I'm sorry he didn't come himself, but anyway his whistle is a perfectly
+good whistle, and another time I'll know enough to blow it before
+anybody gets hurt."
+
+Mrs. Bruce insisted on having her husband ride with her, so Blythe took
+his place in Barbara's cab, and they reached Marrow Lane without further
+molestation. Indeed, it seemed as if rumor had gone ahead of them,
+saying that they were not as other swells, but East-Siders in disguise,
+integral parts of the master's organization, armed with the whistle of
+his lieutenant. They were stared at, it is true, and commented upon, but
+with awe now and childish admiration.
+
+The door of Blizzard's house was opened for them by Kid Shannon.
+
+"Why, Mr. Shannon," exclaimed Barbara, "I blew your whistle, and you
+never came."
+
+"And wasn't the whistling enough?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+He smiled the smile of a general who knows that his troops are in a
+state of perfect discipline. "The boss is expecting you," he said.
+"Please step right in."
+
+A faint odor of roses greeted them.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+One light, not strong, illuminated the legless man's face. Barbara and
+her friends sat in half-darkness. Kid Shannon went out of the room on
+tiptoe, closing the door softly behind him. Of Rose, crouched under the
+key-board of the grand piano, her hands on the pedals, nothing could be
+seen, owing to a grouping of small palms and flowers in pots. The stump
+of Blizzard's right leg touched her shoulder. She was trembling. So was
+Blizzard. He was trembling with stage fright; she with Blizzard fright.
+His hands, thick with agile muscles and heavy as hams, though he had
+just been soaking them in hot water, seemed powerless to him, and stiff.
+
+He struck a chord, and it sounded to him not like the voices of a
+musical instrument, but like a clattering together of tin dishes. This
+enraged him. His self-consciousness vanished. Those ivory keys and
+well-tempered wires had fooled him. He hated his piano. And he began to
+punish it. The heavy hands, rising and falling with the speed and
+strength of lightning strokes, produced a volume of tone which perhaps
+no other player in the world could have equalled.
+
+Blythe, a great amateur of music, had come in a sceptical mood. He now
+sat more erect, his face, eyebrows raised, turned to Blizzard, his ears
+recalling to him certain moments of Rubinstein's playing.
+
+But Blizzard no longer hated his piano. It had stood up nobly to his
+assault. It was a brave instrument, well-bred, a friend full of rare
+qualities--for a friend to show off. And, the swollen veins in his
+forehead flattening, he began to make his peace with his piano. It could
+do more than shout and rage. It could sing like an angel in all
+languages; it could be witty, humorous, heart-rending, heart-healing,
+chaste, passionate, helpful, mischievous. And it could be wise and
+eloquent. It could stand up for a friend, and explain his sins away, and
+get him forgiven in high places.
+
+And even as Blizzard thought, so he played. He was no longer conscious
+of himself or his guests, not even of Barbara. As for Rose, she was
+merely a set of pedals in perfect mechanical adjustment. He was not even
+conscious of his thoughts. They came and went without deliberation, and
+were expressed as they came and dismissed as they went in the terms of
+his extraordinary improvisation.
+
+But it came to this at last, that he thought only of beautiful things,
+so that even his face was stripped of wickedness, and his fingers loosed
+one by one the voices of angels, until it seemed as if the whole room
+was full of them--all singing. And the singing died away to silence.
+
+The legless man looked straight ahead of him into the dim room. Then,
+smiling, his head a little on one side, he caressed his piano so that it
+gave out Chopin's 7th Prelude, which, as all the world knows, is a
+little girl who smiles because she is happy; and she is happy because
+so many of the flowers in the garden are blue. It is not known why this
+makes her happy, only that it does.
+
+And forthwith he played Chopin and only Chopin: brooks and pools of
+sound to which you did not listen, but in which you bathed. And in his
+soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara, and only to Barbara.
+And so powerful was this obsession that it stole out of him like some
+hypnotic influence, affected the others, and gave him away. First Blythe
+looked toward Barbara, not realizing why, then Haddon looked, then
+Mrs. Bruce.
+
+Barbara felt the warm blood in her cheeks. She was troubled, unhappy,
+touched. A man, his face full of unhappy yearning, his soul quick with
+genius, was making love to her; asking her to forget his shortcomings,
+to forgive his sins, to give him a hand upward out of the dark places
+into the light. He followed her, always pleading, by brooks, into
+valleys, through flowery meadows in the early morning, into solemn
+churches, into groves of cypress flooded with moonlight.
+
+[Illustration: And in his soul the legless man was playing only for
+Barbara]
+
+Blythe could have sworn that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now
+to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara.
+The piano burst into a storm of sound, under cover of which Rose, still
+at her post, torn with jealousy, continued to pedal at the direction of
+her lord and master, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Devils
+filled the room, whirling in mad dances; they screamed and yelled;
+the souls of the damned screeched in torment; and the face of him who
+invoked the inferno, swollen, streaming with sweat, the eyes glazed,
+protruding, was the face of a madman.
+
+Rose, for whom her master's playing had the eloquence and precision of
+speech, forgot her jealousy in fear of those consequences which her
+ill-timed sobbing must bring upon her. Her tears dried as in a desert
+wind; her sobs ceased, and in a moment or two the madness was going out
+of Blizzard's music and out of his face. He rested, preluded, and then
+began to play Beethoven, quietly, with a pure singing tone, music of a
+heavenly sanity.
+
+The jarred feelings of his audience were soothed. Into his own face
+there stole a high-priest look. And when he had finished playing, this
+look remained for a few moments. Then he laughed quietly and, speaking
+for the first time, expressed the hope that he had not made them
+listen too long.
+
+He reached for the wall behind him, and turned a switch so that the room
+became brightly lighted. Then, reluctantly, he came out from behind the
+piano, swinging between his crutches, and leaving Rose to escape at the
+first favorable opportunity. His descent from colossus to cripple had an
+unpleasant effect. And the question, "How the deuce do you work the
+pedals?" was jerked from Blythe, usually a most tactful person.
+
+"Why," said Blizzard simply, "I have an assistant." He caught Barbara's
+eye and reddened a little. "A young man who is musical and intelligent.
+We have a system of signals, and--but I think there is a sort of thought
+communication that comes of much rehearsing together. And in our best
+moments we do pretty well. But sometimes when our minds are not tuned
+together we make a dreadful hash of things."
+
+He might have added: "At such times I drag her about by the hair and
+beat her." But he didn't. He looked instead the picture of a very
+patient man who makes the best of things.
+
+"Whatever you do at times," said Barbara gently, "you have done wonders
+to-night. But you know better than we do how good your playing is. So
+what is the use of praising it--to you?"
+
+She felt that he was her own private discovery--almost her property. And
+knowing that her friends were still profoundly affected by his playing,
+she was filled with honest pride. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she exclaimed. "Was I right? Didn't I promise
+that he would make good? Did he?"
+
+She was delighted with Blizzard, delighted with herself, delighted with
+the whole party. She had forgotten the madman face that he had showed.
+She forgot that he was a cripple, a thing soured and wicked. She thought
+of him only as a great genius, which she herself had discovered.
+
+The childlike pleasure which she felt communicated itself to the
+others, and Blizzard, escaping an ovation of honest praise, led them
+into the next room, where, among palms and roses, such a supper was
+spread as gamblers, the big men of the profession, spread for
+their victims.
+
+The mere sight of the champagne-glasses loosened the men's tongues. Talk
+flowed. Mrs. Bruce and Barbara, seated right and left of their host,
+made much of his music and his hospitality. For once in his life he was
+genuinely happy. He looked very handsome, very high-minded, very modest,
+a man's man. Sitting, he was much taller than the others. You forgot
+that, standing, he was but a dwarf. He towered at the head of his table,
+his mind working in swift, good-natured, hospitable flashes. It was
+obvious that he had been born a gentleman, and that he had never
+"forgotten how." It was obvious, too, that he was a man of power and
+position, who when he wished could spend money like a great lord, and
+who was accustomed to give orders.
+
+In his manner to Barbara there was (perhaps noticeable only to herself)
+an air of long-proved friendship and a kind of guardianly tenderness,
+and he managed somehow to convey to her that she had an immense
+influence over him; that he looked to her for help--for inspiration.
+
+The desire to make a great man of him invaded her mind. Her heart warmed
+toward him.
+
+"I wonder," said Bruce suddenly, "where our wandering Wilmot is
+to-night?"
+
+"I drink to him," said the beggar quickly, "wherever he is, and wish
+him luck."
+
+But the poison had been spilled on Barbara's evening. For three hours
+she had not once thought of the man whom twelve hours ago she had really
+wanted to marry. And her heart meanwhile had warmed and expanded toward
+one who at best was a prodigiously successful crook and rascal, and she
+was ashamed. But for all that neither the warmth nor the triumphant
+sense of influence and conquest went out of her heart. And later, when
+Mrs. Bruce said: "I really think we ought to go," Barbara, outwardly all
+sweetness and agreement, was inwardly annoyed. She wanted very much to
+stay, for she knew that the moment she was alone her conscience would
+give her no peace, and that she would make resolutions which she would
+not, judging from past experiences, be able to keep. She would resolve
+to abandon her bust of Blizzard, resolve never to see the creature
+again, since it seemed that he had in him power upon her
+emotions--dangerous power.
+
+"Do we work to-morrow, Miss Ferris?"
+
+The words, "No, I'm afraid not to-morrow," rose to her lips. The words,
+"_Please,_ at the usual time," came out.
+
+And she felt as if his will, not her own, had caused her to say those
+words. Her heart gave a sudden leap of fear.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Barbara knew very well that she was doing wrong. Summer had descended,
+blazing, upon the city. Without exception her friends had gone to the
+country. Her father had gone to Colorado upon an errand of which for the
+present he chose to make a mystery. She made a habit of lunching at the
+Colony Club, and occasionally saw some friend or other who had run into
+town for a face massage, a hair wave, a gown, or a hat. But the
+afternoons and evenings hung very heavily upon her hands. So that she
+got to living in and for her mornings at the studio. With the appearance
+of Blizzard, clean, thoughtful, and forceful, her feelings of loneliness
+and depression vanished. If her vitality was at low ebb, his was not.
+The heat appeared to brace him, and he had the faculty of communicating
+something of his own energy, so that it was not until she had finished
+working and dismissed him that she was sensible of fatigue and
+discouragement.
+
+The man was on his best behavior. He could not but realize that he had
+established an influence over her; that she was beginning to take him at
+his own estimate of himself, and to believe in his pretended
+aspirations. And while he credited her with no affection for himself, he
+had the presumption to imagine that his maimed condition and his low
+station in life no longer made the slightest difference to her, and that
+finally her friendliness would turn into a warmer feeling. But if not,
+he had but to wait until the maturity of his plans should throw the city
+into chaos, when she would be at his mercy.
+
+The hand which he had dealt himself was so full of high cards that the
+occasional losing of a trick did not disturb him in the slightest. He
+had through her father's hideous mistake a hold on Barbara's conscience.
+As a personage whose power over certain sections of the city was
+stronger than the law, he had a hold upon her imagination. As the
+inspirer of her best work, he had a hold upon her gratitude. He had, or
+thought he had, a chance to win her affection in open and equal
+competition. And, highest card of all--ace of trumps--he had persuaded
+her that her influence upon him was such that with all the strength of
+remorse he was shaping his life toward high ideals.
+
+In his heart she was usually, but not always, the first consideration.
+Sometimes the passion of ambition overlapped the passion of love. And
+sometimes he felt that he would forego the fruition of all his plans if
+only by some miracle his legs could be restored to him.
+
+But on the whole, he had reached a high-water mark of self-satisfaction.
+He had found it easy to carry corruption into high places. A list of
+those who were in his power--willing or unwilling--would have horrified
+the whole nation. From O'Hagan in the West came reports that all went
+well with the organization, and that Wilmot Allen was displaying genius
+in teaching inexperienced Polacks to shoot.
+
+On his walks through the city the legless man carried a high head, and
+looked about him with the eye of a landlord. His imagination was so
+strong that he had already the feelings of a genuine conqueror, and not
+of a man confronted by the awful possibilities of failure. And by some
+subtlety of mental communication Barbara was coming more and more into
+this same opinion of him. And in realizing this, and in allowing their
+relations to continue, she knew that she was doing wrong.
+
+She compared her model with all the men she had known, always to
+conclude that there was in him a sort of greatness utterly wanting in
+the others. If he had revealed his plans to her, she would have believed
+him not only capable of carrying them out, but sure to do so--if he
+wished. He might be Satan fallen, but he was still a god. In the early
+days of their association she had felt herself the important person of
+the two, and her bust of him the most important thing in the world. He
+and she would surely die, but the bust had a chance to live. But now she
+had the feeling that the work was of less importance than the man; and
+that she herself was an insignificant spoiled person of no importance
+whatever. When Blizzard entered the studio she had the feeling that a
+great and busy man was, out of pure good nature, wasting his time upon
+an unknown artist. But she knew very well that such was not the case.
+She knew that he came to the studio because she attracted him, and for
+no other reason. And at times she felt keenly curious to know just how
+much she attracted him, and the morbid wish, for which she hated
+herself, of leading him into some sort of a declaration.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+However unnecessary the hot waves of the New York summer may appear to
+some people, they were never wasted on Bubbles. He had a passion for the
+water, and to his love of swimming was added a passion for the
+underworld gossip with which the piers of the East River reek in bathing
+weather. For just as mice are more intimate with the details of houses
+than landlords are, so the small boys of a city have the best
+opportunities for being acquainted with its workings, and with the
+intimate lives of its inhabitants. The street-boy's mind matures while
+his body is still that of a child. Births and deaths are familiar
+spectacles to him. He knows and holds of high import hundreds of things
+which men have forgotten. He can see in the dark. He can hide in a
+handful of shadow. And when he isn't overhearing on his own hook, he is
+listening to what somebody else has overheard. Second-story men fear
+him, lovers loathe him, and nature, who has been thwarted in her
+intention that he should run in sweet meadows, sleep in fresh air, and
+bathe in clean water, sighs over him.
+
+It was so hot that the policeman whose duty and privilege it was to see
+that no small boy cooled himself from Pier 31A, disappeared tactfully
+into the family entrance of a water-front saloon. The city had many
+laws which to this particular officer appeared unreasonable and which he
+enforced only when he couldn't help himself. In men there is the need of
+gambling and some other things. As for small boys, they _must_ play
+baseball and they _must_ swim.
+
+Bubbles went overboard at about three o'clock. There were twenty or
+thirty boys of all sizes already in the water, and the addition of one
+to the struggling group of wet heads was not to be noticed. Nor was the
+disappearance of that head noticed, nor the fact that it appeared to
+remain under water for nearly three-quarters of an hour, nor that when
+it finally did emerge it looked on the whole as if it had seen a ghost.
+
+Bubbles, it seems, was less interested in the waters around Pier 31A
+than in the waters underneath. And for this reason: on the previous
+night, while stripping for a swim, he had heard a muffled sound of
+voices coming from directly under the pier, followed by a long subdued
+roaring as of a load of earth being emptied into the water. Now, under
+Harry West's tuition Bubbles had formed the habit of investigating
+whatever he did not understand. And he wished very much to find out why
+people should talk under piers at night, how they could get under Pier
+31A except by swimming, and _if_ they were throwing earth overboard
+_why_ they were doing so, and where they got the earth.
+
+His head filled with vague and highly colored notions of a smugglers'
+cave, his narrow lungs filled with air, Bubbles dove, swam between two
+slimy barnacled piles, and came up presently in a dark, dank, stale,
+gurgling region, wonderfully cool after the blazing sunlight which he
+had just left.
+
+Toward the shore the light that filtered between the supporting piles of
+Pier 31A became less and less, until completely shut off by walls of
+solid masonry. Into this darkness Bubbles swam with great caution,
+accustoming his eyes to the obscurity and holding himself ready to dive
+in retreat at the first alarm.
+
+The shore end of Pier 31A had originally been a clean wall of solid
+masonry. The removal of half a dozen great blocks of stone had made a
+jagged opening in the midst of this, and into this opening, pulling
+himself a little out of the water, Bubbles strained and strained his
+eyes and saw nothing but the beginning of a passageway and then
+pitch darkness.
+
+His heart beat very hard and fast like the heart of a caught bird. Here,
+leading into the city from the shore of the East River, was a mysterious
+passageway. Who had made it and why? There were two ways of finding out.
+One was to wait patiently until some one entered the passage or emerged
+from it. The other way, and the better, was to forget how very much the
+idea of so doing frightened you, climb into the opening, and follow the
+passage to its other end. Bubbles compromised. He waited patiently for
+half an hour. Nothing happened. Then he pulled himself into the opening
+and crawled through the darkness for perhaps the length of a city block.
+
+"What," he then said to himself, "is the use of me going any further? I
+can't see in the dark. I've got no matches, and if anything happens to
+me, there'll be nobody to tell Harry about this place. Better make a
+get-away now, find Harry, and bring him here to-night. Then if we find
+anybody there'll be something doing."
+
+He had turned and was crawling rather rapidly toward the entrance of the
+passage.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Bubble's problem was to locate Harry West. And he wrestled with it, if
+trying to cover the whole of a scorching hot city on a pair of
+insufficient legs and a very limited amount of carfare may be called
+wrestling. His search took him into many odd places where you could not
+have expected to cross the trail of an honest man. He even made
+inquiries of a master-plumber, of a Fourth Avenue vender of antiques, of
+a hairy woman with one eye who ran a news-stand, of a bar-tender, of
+saloon-keepers and bootblacks. He drifted through a department store,
+and whispered to a pretty girl who sold "art pictures." She shook her
+head. He spoke a word to the negro sentinel of a house in the West
+Forties, and was admitted to quiet, padded rooms, containing everything
+which is necessary to separate hopeful persons from their money. In one
+room a number of book-makers were whiling away the hot afternoon with
+poker for small stakes. In another room, played upon by an electric fan,
+sat Mr. Lichtenstein, the proprietor. He was bent over a table on which
+he had assembled fifteen or twenty of the component parts of a very
+large picture-puzzle. He was small, plump and earnest. He may have been
+a Jew, but he had bright red hair and a pug nose. His eyes, bright,
+quick, small, brown, and kind, were very busy hunting among the
+brightly colored pieces of the puzzle.
+
+"'Dafternoon, Mr. Liechtenstein," said Bubbles.
+
+"'Dafternoon, Bubbles," said Mr. Lichtenstein, without looking up.
+
+"How d'je know it was me?"
+
+"I saw you in the looking-glass. What's the news?"
+
+"It's for Harry."
+
+"And Harry is--where?"
+
+"Don't you know where Harry is?"
+
+"I do. But you can't get to him." Mr. Lichtenstein lowered his voice.
+"He's gone West, Bub, on the trail of O'Hagan. The plant the old one is
+growing hasn't put its head above ground yet, and the roots are in the
+West. Out in Utah they're teaching all kinds of Polacks to shoot rifles.
+Why? O'Hagan is travelling from one mine to another as a common laborer.
+Why? While here in little New York, the old one is sitting for his
+portrait and getting a perfectly innocent young girl talked about. No
+use to watch the old one till later."
+
+"But," said Bubbles, "suppose some one was to find a secret passage
+leading from the East River to--to--"
+
+"To where?"
+
+"He doesn't know where. He wanted to get Harry to go with him to find
+out."
+
+"Where does the passage begin, Bubbles?"
+
+"Under Pier 31 A."
+
+[Illustration: "'Dafternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles]
+
+"Come over here, Bub," said Mr. Lichtenstein and led the way to a
+mahogany table covered with green baize. Upon this he spread a
+folding-map of New York City that he took from his inside pocket. With
+the rapidity of thought his stubby forefinger found Pier 31A and passed
+from it to the crook in Marrow Lane. And he said:
+
+"Hum! The bee-line of it leads straight to Blizzard's place. There are
+two things to find out, Bub. Is the passage straight? And how long is
+it? A light in the entrance to sight by will answer question No. 1, and
+a ball of twine to be unwound at leisure will answer No. 2."
+
+"You'd ought to have a compass," Bubbles suggested, "to know just how
+she runs."
+
+"True," said Mr. Lichtenstein. "Happy thought. And you could borrow one
+mounted in tiger's eye from a friend."
+
+He laughed, took the little compass in question from its watch chain,
+and gave it to Bubbles. Then, his voice losing its bantering tone and
+taking on a kind of faltering sincerity, he asked:
+
+"Do you want to play this hand, Bubbles, or do you want me to delegate
+some one else?"
+
+"It's my graft," said Bubbles, "I'd like to see it through."
+
+Mr. Lichtenstein looked upon the boy with a certain pride and
+tenderness. "I'd like to go with you," he said, "but I can't run _any_
+risks. There's the strings of too many things in my head. In every
+battle there has to be a general who sits on a hill out of danger and
+orders other people to do brave things. Remember that you've worked for
+us ever since Harry came in and said, laughing, 'Governor, I've made
+friends with a bright baby that knows how to keep his mouth shut,'
+You've only to step up to Blizzard and say, 'Abe Lichtenstein is the
+head,' to bring the gun-men down on me. But you'd die first."
+
+The boy's breast swelled with pride and martial ardor. "Betcher life,"
+he said, and then: "If I get the news will I bring it here?"
+
+Mr. Lichtenstein considered for a minute. Then shook his head. "I'll be
+in Blicker's drug-store between 'leven and midnight," he said.
+
+"If I don't show up it'll be because I can't."
+
+Mr. Lichtenstein smiled encouragingly. "Don't look on the dark side of
+the future," he said, "but don't take any chances, and don't show a
+light till you have to."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+The night was hot, but the rising tide had brought in cold water from
+the ocean, and what with his excitement and trepidation it was a very
+shivery small boy that began to investigate the passage under Pier 31A.
+Mindful of Mr. Lichtenstein's advice not to show a light till he had to,
+Bubbles felt his way forward very slowly in the inky darkness,
+unrolling, as he went, a huge ball of twine. It would be time to take
+the bearings of the place by compass when he had ascertained its general
+extent and whether it was free from human occupants. On this score he
+felt comparatively safe, since it seemed likely that the passage had
+been constructed with a view to emergency rather than daily use.
+
+Having advanced a distance of about three short city blocks, it seemed
+to Bubbles as if the passage had opened suddenly into a room. If so, he
+had to thank instinct for the knowledge, since he could see but an inch
+in the blackness. He had the feeling that walls were no longer passing
+near him, and, groping cautiously this way and that, he found it to be
+fact and not fancy. During these gropings he lost his sense of
+direction, and, after considering the matter at some length, he
+concluded that the time had come to flash his torch. But first he
+listened for a long time. At last, satisfied that he was alone, his
+thumb began to press against the switch of his torch. A shaft of light
+bored into the darkness, and he saw two wildly bearded men, who sat with
+their backs against a wall of living rock and looked straight at him.
+
+It was as if he had been suddenly frozen solid, so dreadful was his
+surprise and horror, but the men with the wild heads showed no emotion.
+They had a pale, tired, hopeless look; and though one was dark and one
+blond, this expression, common to both, gave them an appearance of being
+twin brothers. They had gentle soft eyes in which was no sign of
+surprise or agitation. It seemed as if they were perfectly accustomed to
+having light suddenly flashed into them. One of the men leaned forward
+and began to run his hand this way and that over the hard dirt floor.
+
+"Lost something?" said the other suddenly.
+
+"Dropped my plug," said the first in a dull weary voice, and he
+continued to feel for and repeatedly just miss a half-cake of
+chewing-tobacco. Bubbles could see it distinctly, and another thing was
+clear to him: the men were both blind.
+
+With this knowledge certain frayed and tattered fragments of courage
+returned to him, and, what was of much greater importance, his
+presence of mind.
+
+The excavation in which he stood was nearly forty feet square. His torch
+showed him the passage by which he had entered, and opposite this a
+flight of steps leading sharply upward. Here and there, leaning against
+the walls, were picks and shovels and other tools used in excavating.
+Near the centre of the passage was a tall pile of dirt and loose stones,
+together with two small wheelbarrows of sheet-iron.
+
+Just as Bubbles had ascertained these facts and got himself into a much
+calmer state of mind, he had a fresh thrill of horror. The two blind men
+sighed, and as if moved by a common impulse got up, and the little boy
+saw that, like Blizzard, the beggar, they had no legs. With perfect
+accuracy of direction they turned to the great pile of dirt, and taking
+up two shovels which leaned against it began to fill the two little
+wheelbarrows.
+
+They labored slowly as if time was of no moment, as if the work in hand
+was a form of punishment instead of something that it was intended
+to complete.
+
+Bubbles had begun to wonder what they were going to do with the dirt,
+when one of them, having filled his barrow, trundled off with it into
+the passageway leading to the river. And to Bubbles, feverishly
+listening, there came after what seemed a very long interval a sound as
+of earth being dumped into water.
+
+The second excavator, having filled his barrow, waited the return of his
+companion, since the passage was too narrow to admit of the two barrows
+meeting and passing each other.
+
+And that simple fact was very alarming to Bubbles, since virtually it
+made a prisoner of him. One man with his barrow full or empty was always
+in the passage.
+
+Nor was there any possibility of escape by the flight of stairs which
+he had noticed, for a hurried examination revealed a door of sheet-iron
+which did not give to his most determined efforts. There was nothing for
+it but to wait until the blind men should rest from their labors.
+
+He got used to them gradually; lost his fear of them. Once in a while
+they spoke to each other, always with a kind of lugubrious gentleness in
+their voices. He began to feel sorry for them. He wished to be of
+service to them in some way or other. Their wild beards and shaggy,
+matted hair no longer terrified him. They were two lambs made up to
+represent wolves, but the merest child must have seen through the
+disguisement.
+
+Upon the ball of twine which Bubbles still held in his hand there was a
+sudden tug. It fell to the ground with a thump and rolled toward the
+blind laborer who had just filled his barrow. He was much startled and
+turned his blind eyes this way and that; then called to his mate, at
+that moment coming from the passageway.
+
+"I heard something drop," he said; "somebody dropped something. I
+thought I heard steps on the stairs, and now I know I did."
+
+But the other had found the twine lying the length of the passage. "Some
+one's come in from the river," he said, "and dropped all this string,"
+
+He began to gather it in, hand over hand, paused suddenly, and then,
+with a kind of bravado of terrified politeness, and with a bob of his
+wild, dark head, exclaimed:
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Blizzard!"
+
+Then the pair cowered as if they expected to be struck, and after a long
+while the blond one said:
+
+"It ain't him."
+
+Then the dark one:
+
+"Don't be scared of us. We couldn't hurt a fly if we wanted to. Who is
+it?"
+
+Now it seemed to Bubbles all of a sudden (though the mention of
+Blizzard's name had once more given him the horrors) that any risk run
+in revealing his presence to the blind men was more than compensated by
+the consequent possibility of "finding out things" from them. So
+he said:
+
+"It's only me--just a boy. I found this hole swimmin' and come in to see
+what it was for."
+
+"It's only a boy," said the blond man.
+
+"He wouldn't hurt us," said the dark one.
+
+"Maybe you'll tell me what all this cellar work is for," said Bubbles.
+
+The dark man scratched his matted head. "We don't know," he said; "we
+was just put in here to dig. At first there was ten of us; but we was
+kep' on to give the finishin' touches."
+
+"What became of the others?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Blizzard, he's got other work for them."
+
+"Is this place under his house?"
+
+"No, sir, it ain't. But the cellar at the head of them steps is."
+
+"Maybe he's hollered this out to hide things in?"
+
+The blind men turned toward each other and nodded their heads.
+
+"That's just presactly what we think," said the blond one.
+
+"What do you do when you aren't working?"
+
+"Oh, we sleeps and eats in Blizzard's cellar."
+
+"How long you been on the job?"
+
+"We don't know. We lost track."
+
+"See much of Blizzard?"
+
+"Oh, he's in and out, just to keep things going."
+
+"Is the passage to the river just to get rid of the dirt?"
+
+The dark man laughed sheepishly. "We don't think so," he said--"we gets
+lots of time to think. And it ain't always dirt that goes into the
+river. Twicet it's been men, and once it were a woman. There was lead
+pipe wrapped round the bodies to make 'em sink. And oncet Blizzard he
+tumbled a girl down the stairs to us. But she weren't dead, and me and
+Bill took the lead off her before we throwed her in."
+
+His comrade interrupted. "She said she could swim. She said if we'd take
+the lead off and untie her and give her a chanst, we could have a kiss
+apiece. But we let her go fer nothin'."
+
+"Did she get away?" Bubbles was tremendously interested.
+
+"No, sir. It was dark night, and she couldn't find a way out from under
+the wharf. She just swam round and round, slower and slower, like a
+mouse in a wash-tub. Then she calls out she'll come back and we can hide
+her till daylight. But she don't make it We has to stand there and
+listen to her drown."
+
+"When she's dead she gets out into the open river, and when Blizzard
+hears she's been found without any lead on her he raises hell."
+
+"When he gets through with us we was most skinned alive."
+
+"He wouldn't dig that hole to the river," said Bubbles, "just to get rid
+of people. What do you think it's for?"
+
+"You ain't goin' to tell Blizzard you been here, nor get us in trouble?"
+
+"I'll get you out of this some day, but you can't get in no trouble
+through me."
+
+"Then," said the blond man, "this is what we thinks out and concludes:
+Blizzard he's calculatin' to receive stolen goods wholesale. First he
+stores 'em in here until this cellar is full, and then he takes 'em down
+to the river and puts 'em aboard a ship bound fur furrin' ports, and we
+thinks and concludes that he'll make his get-away about the same time."
+
+"Well," said Bubbles, "I'm obliged. I won't forget your kindness. But
+it's time I was off."
+
+"Come close first," said the blond man.
+
+Bubbles was instantly alarmed. "Why?"
+
+"Only so's we can feel your face, so's to know what you look like."
+
+He stood impatient and embarrassed while they pawed his face with hard,
+grimy hands.
+
+At last they let him go, he whose barrow was full accompanying him to
+the end of the passageway, and speeding him on his way with this
+comfortable remark:
+
+"If you was to dive deep and feel around, you might find those as is
+leaded to the bottom."
+
+It took every ounce of nerve that Bubbles had at command to let his legs
+and body slip down into the cold and tragic current. It seemed certain
+that dead hands were reaching for him. But he screwed his courage up to
+the sticking point, and called to his acquaintance in the passage-mouth
+a whispered but nonchalant, "S'long!"
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+When Bubbles entered Blicker's drug-store, the city clocks were striking
+a quarter to twelve, but the place was still brightly lighted, and at
+the soda-counter a young man was treating his flame to a glass of
+chocolate vanilla ice-cream.
+
+Bubbles marched to the prescription counter, and began to unwrap a
+bloody handkerchief from his left hand. Then he began to clear his
+throat. This brought Mr. Blicker from a region of mortar pestles, empty
+pill-boxes, and glass retorts.
+
+"What you want?" he asked aggressively.
+
+"I want me thumb bandaged."
+
+"You cut him--eh?"
+
+Bubbles lowered his voice. "On a barnacle."
+
+"Come in back here," said Mr. Blicker roughly. "I fix him." But once out
+of sight in the depths of the store, his manner changed, and he patted
+Bubbles enthusiastically on the back. "You have found out some things?"
+
+"Sure--lots."
+
+The chemist, without commenting, began to treat the cut thumb, washing,
+disinfecting, and bandaging. Then, very loud, for the benefit perhaps of
+the lovers at the soda-counter, "So," he said, "I let you out the
+back door."
+
+And he actually opened a door, slammed it shut, and turned a key in the
+lock. But it was a closet door. Then with a finger on his lips he
+pointed to a narrow staircase and, his own feet making a great tramping,
+led the way up it. Upon the top steps they found Mr. Lichtenstein,
+nervously puffing clouds of tobacco smoke,
+
+"'Bout given you up," he said. "Good boy!"
+
+"Better talk by the parlor," said Blicker; "here is too exposed."
+
+When the door of the stuffy little parlor had closed behind them, the
+proprietor began to smile and beam. But Mr. Lichtenstein looked grave
+and troubled. It was not for pleasure that he sometimes found occasion
+to put dangerous work in the hands of children.
+
+"Hurt your thumb bad?" he asked.
+
+Bubbles shook his head and plunged into his story. Now and then the
+German laughed, but the red-haired, pug-nosed Jew appeared to sink
+deeper and deeper into his own thoughts, only showing by an occasional
+question that he was following the boy's narrative. Bubbles wished to
+dwell at length and with comment upon the use of the passage for
+disposing of dead bodies, but to Mr. Lichtenstein this appeared to be
+merely a natural by-product of its construction.
+
+"It wasn't dug for that," he said. "How big is the main excavation?"
+
+[Illustration: "I want me thumb bandaged"]
+
+"'Bout as big as a small East Side dance-hall."
+
+Mr. Liechtenstein turned to the German. "Hold a lot of loot--what?"
+
+"I bet me," said the German, and washed his hands with air.
+
+"Lot o' what?" asked Bubbles.
+
+"Loot--gold, silver, jewels, bullion."
+
+"Your ideas," said the German, "is all idiot. No mans is such a darn
+fool as to think he can get away by such a business--no mans, that is,
+but is crazy."
+
+"Blizzard is crazy," said Mr. Lichtenstein simply. "It wasn't until we
+hit on that hypothesis that we made any progress. Bubbles, did you ever
+hear of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew?"
+
+"Sure," said Bubbles, "they shot him full of arrows."
+
+"That was Saint Sebastian," corrected the Jew. "Now listen, this is
+history. On the night of August 24, 1572, two thousand men,
+distinguished from other men by white cockades in their hats, on the
+order of a crazy man, at the tolling of a bell, drew their swords,
+murdered everybody in a great city who opposed their leaders, and made
+themselves absolute masters of the place. What two thousand men did in
+Paris during the Middle Ages, ten thousand men acting in concert could
+do in New York to-day. If a man rose up with the power to command such a
+following, with the ability to keep his plans absolutely secret, with
+the genius to make plans in which there were no flaws, he could loot
+Maiden Lane, the Sub-Treasury, Tiffany's, the Metropolitan Museum--_and
+get away with it_."
+
+Mr. Lichtenstein's small eyes glittered. He was visibly excited. And so
+was Mr. Blicker.
+
+"He will loot the Metropolitan Museum," said this one, "but what will he
+do with the metropolitan police?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "I am only supposing. But suppose some
+fine night a building somewhere central was blown up with dynamite.
+Suppose the sound was so big that it could be heard in every part of
+greater New York. Suppose at the sound every policeman in greater New
+York was shot dead in his tracks--"
+
+Bubbles's hair began to bristle. "Say," he cried in his excitement, "the
+straw hats--the soft straw hats that Blizzard makes and don't
+sell--they're the white cockades!"
+
+Mr. Blicker guffawed. Mr. Lichtenstein rose and paced the room.
+
+"And that proves," he exclaimed, "that nothing is to happen when you and
+I are wearing straw hats--but in winter. Bubbles, you're a bright boy!"
+
+"You are both so bright," said Mr. Blicker, "you keep me all the time
+laughing."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "that may be, but suppose you tell me why
+Blizzard makes straw hats and don't sell 'em. Tell me why he's dug such
+a great hole under his house with a passage leading to the river, and
+ships. Tell me why O'Hagan is drilling men in the West. Tell me why
+Blizzard has gone out of the white-slave business. It fetched him in a
+pretty penny."
+
+"I think I can answer the last question," said Bubbles.
+
+"Do then."
+
+"I think," said the small boy, "that he's got some good in him
+somewhere, and I know he's dead gone on my Miss Ferris. I think he's
+ashamed o' some o' the things he's done."
+
+Mr. Lichtenstein considered this at some length. Then he said: "Well,
+that's possible. But it's an absolutely new idea to me. Blizzard
+_ashamed_? Hum!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+"True that policemen take money in exchange for protection? True that
+they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a
+big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at
+it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara--and
+this country. I'd like to be dictator for six months."
+
+"Who wouldn't?" said Barbara. "But what would you do? Where would you
+begin?"
+
+"I should be drastic at first," said the legless man, "and kind later.
+I'd begin," he went on, his eyes smiling, "with a general massacre of
+incompetents--old men with too little money, young men with too
+much--old maids, aliens, incurables, the races that are too clever to
+work, the races that are too stupid, habitual drunkards, spreaders of
+disease, the women who abolished the canteen, the women who wear
+aigrettes. After that I should destroy all possibilities of graft."
+
+"How?" asked Barbara.
+
+"Why," said he, "the simplest way in the world--legalize the business
+that now pays for protection. There would be no more of them than there
+are now, and they could be regulated and kept to confined limits of
+cities. Don't blame the police for graft: blame all who believe that
+human nature can be abolished by law. But," and this time his whole face
+smiled, "I shall never be dictator. The thing to do is to start a new
+country, and make no mistakes."
+
+And he proceeded, sometimes seriously but for the most part whimsically,
+to outline his model republic, while Barbara worked and listened,
+sometimes with amusement, sometimes with a sense of being uplifted and
+thrilled by the man's plausible originality. Since she had but the
+vaguest recollection of history, and none whatever of economics, it was
+easy for the man to play the constructive statesman. Nor were his
+schemes always foolish and illogical, since the book of human nature had
+been always in his library, and of all its volumes had been most
+often read.
+
+"Ah!" said the legless man at last, "if I were younger, and whole!"
+
+Whenever he referred to his maimed condition Barbara, to whom it was no
+longer physically shocking, was uncomfortable and distressed, changing
+the subject as swiftly as might be. But now, stopping her work short
+off, her hands hanging at her sides, she began to speak of the matter.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "it's almost life and death to you--sometimes,
+that you'd give almost anything, take any chance to be--the way you were
+meant to be. My father believes that some day people can have anything
+that they've lost restored--a hand or an arm. He's made experiments
+along those lines ever since he made his mistake with you, and it all
+works out beautifully with monkeys and dogs and guinea-pigs and
+rabbits. Just now he is in Colorado to try it on a man. There's a man
+out there in jail for life, who has a brother that lost his right hand
+in some machinery. The well brother has offered to let father cut off
+his hand, and graft it on the maimed brother's wrist. I've just had a
+letter--it's been done. He thinks it's all right, but he can't be sure
+yet. Please don't say anything about it because--well, because people
+are still queer about these things. In the old days people burned the
+best doctors, and now they want to lynch vivisectors and almost anybody
+who's really trying to make health more or less contagious."
+
+"Do you believe I could be made whole?" exclaimed Blizzard, his eyes
+glittering as with a sudden hope. "My God! Even if they weren't much use
+to me, I'd give my soul to look like a real man--my soul! Do you know
+what I'd rather do than anything in this whole world--just once? I'd
+rather draw myself to my full height--just once--than be Napoleon
+Bonaparte. If all the treasure in this city were mine to give, I'd give
+it to walk the length of a city block on my own feet, looking down at
+the people instead of always up--always up--until the leverage of your
+eyes twists the back of your brain in everlasting torment."
+
+"When my father comes back," said Barbara quietly, "talk to him. And if
+only it can be done--why, you'll forgive us, won't you, for all the
+suffering you've had and everything?"
+
+[Illustration: She said in a small, surprised voice, "Why, it's
+finished"]
+
+"Yes, yes," he said quickly. "But it isn't true--it isn't possible. It
+won't work. It's against experience."
+
+"It is _possible_," said Barbara gently. "That's all I know. And even
+if--even if it can't be done yet awhile, I thought it would comfort you
+to think that some day--almost surely--"
+
+"You are always thinking of my comfort," he cried. "In this pit that we
+call life, you are an angel serene, blessed and blessing. Oh," he cried,
+"what would you say if I stood before you on my own feet, and told
+you--told you--" He broke off short and hung his head.
+
+Barbara bit her lips and lifted her hands with a weary gesture to resume
+work. But the bust of Blizzard was a live thing, and seeing anew the
+strength and hellish beauty of it, suddenly and as if with the eyes of a
+stranger, her heart seemed to leap into her throat, her whole body
+relaxed once more, and she said in a small, surprised voice:
+
+"Why, it's finished!"
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Upon Blizzard, who had been looking forward to many mornings during
+which he should unobtrusively advance his cause, this quiet statement
+fell with disturbing force. It meant that his opportunities for intimate
+talks had come to a sudden and most unprepared-for end. He knew that
+Barbara was tired out with the steady grind of creation, and that she
+had been going through an equally steady grind of discouragement and
+uncertainty. He believed that she would make no delay in carrying her
+triumph and her trouble out of the heat-ridden city, to cool places, to
+her own people. He believed, not that she would forget him, but that,
+free from his influence, she would see with equal vision how wide the
+gulf between them really was.
+
+He had made a slip in his calculation. He had been spreading his arts
+thinly, you may say, to cover what he supposed was to have been a much
+longer period of time. And he should have come sooner and with all his
+strength to the point. There had been moments of supreme discouragement,
+when, if there was to be a miracle in his life, he should have spoken.
+There were to be no more of those golden moments. She would close the
+studio, go away, and return by way of exercise and fresh air to a sane
+and normal state of mind--a state of mind in which such a physical and
+moral cripple as himself could have no place except among the
+curiosities.
+
+She stood looking steadily at the head which had come to life under her
+hands. Her eyelids drooped heavily. She looked almost as if she was
+falling asleep.
+
+Blizzard watched her as a cat watches a mouse, not knowing what was best
+for him to dare. Now he was for pleading his cause with all the passion
+that inspired it; now for boldly claiming her as the expiation for her
+father's fault; and now he was for passing over all preliminaries and
+felling her with a blow of his fist.
+
+And then she suddenly turned to him, and smiled like a very happy and
+very tired child. "You've been very good to me," she said, "and so
+patient! I don't know quite how to thank you. I owe you such a lot."
+
+"Do you?" he said, his hard eyes softening and seeking hers.
+
+She nodded slowly. "Such a lot. And there's no way of paying, or making
+things up to you, is there?"
+
+"Only one," he said.
+
+There was quite a long silence; his eyes, flames in them, held hers,
+which were troubled and childlike, and imbued the two words that he had
+spoken with an unmistakable intelligence.
+
+"Don't let me go utterly," he said, "and slip back into the pit. You
+have finished the bust. If you wished you could finish the man: put him
+back among the good angels.... If your father died owing money, you
+couldn't rest until you had paid his debts.... I could be anything you
+wished. And I could give you anything that you wanted in this world.
+There is nothing I couldn't put over--with you at my side, wishing the
+good deed done, the great deed--or--"
+
+He began to tremble with the passion that was in his voice, slipped from
+his chair, and began to move slowly toward her with outstretched arms,
+upon his stumps of legs.
+
+It was no mirth or any sense of the ridiculous that moved Barbara, but
+fear, disgust, and horror. She backed away from him, laughing
+hysterically. But he, whose self-consciousness in her sight bordered
+upon mania, mistook the cause of her laughter, so that a kind of
+hell-born fury shook him, and he rushed at her, his mouth giving out
+horrible and inarticulate sounds. And in those lightning moments she
+could move neither hand nor foot; nor could she cry for help. And yet
+she realized, as in some nightmare, that if once those horrible hairy
+hands closed upon her she was lost utterly. And in that same clear flash
+of reason she realized that for whatever might befall she had herself
+alone to blame. She had touched pitch, and played with fire--and all
+that men might some day call her great.
+
+[Illustration: In that instant the legless man overreached himself and
+fell heavily]
+
+The speed for which the fury of the legless man called was more than the
+stumps of his legs could furnish. He was like a man, thigh-deep in
+water, who attempts to run at top speed. Yet his hands were within
+inches of her dress, when daring and nerve at last thrilled through
+Barbara, and returned her muscles into the keeping of her mind. She
+darted backward and to one side. In that instant the legless man
+overreached himself and fell heavily. Here seemed an inestimable
+advantage for Barbara, and yet the great body, shaken with curses and
+already rising to its stumps, was between her and the door.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+For once the legless man had been deserted by the power of cool
+reasoning. And his fury was of a kind that could not wait for
+satisfaction. He was more like a mad dog than a man. And this, although
+it added to the horror of Barbara's situation, proved her salvation.
+
+Occupying a point from which he could head off her escape by either of
+the studio doors, he abandoned this, and attempted to match the stumps
+of his legs against her swift young feet. And must have overcome the
+disparity, but that in the lightning instinct of self-preservation she
+overturned a table between them, and during the moments thus gained
+dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind her.
+
+Blizzard vented his rage upon the locked door, splintering its panels
+with bleeding fists; but in the meanwhile his quarry had escaped him,
+and was already in the street walking swiftly toward Washington Square.
+He leaned at last from a window, and saw her going. And in his heart
+shame gradually took the place of fury. Why, when she laughed at him,
+had he not been able to dissemble his emotions for a few seconds? to
+mask his dreadfulness? For then, surely, he must have got her in his
+power. He should have hung his head when she laughed, begged her to
+forgive him for daring to lift his thoughts to her; and begged her as a
+token of forgiveness to shake hands with him. Her hand once clasped
+in his--
+
+[Illustration: Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the
+door behind her.]
+
+Well, he had made a fool of himself. Perhaps he had frightened her
+utterly beyond the reach even of his long arm. Fear would carry her out
+of the city, out of the State, out of the country, perhaps. To prevent
+the least of these contingencies he must act swiftly and with
+daring wisdom.
+
+He passed into the studio, glanced upward at the bust of himself,
+stopped, and looked about for something heavy with which to destroy it.
+Later he would tell her that he had done so, and let that knowledge be
+the beginning of her torment.
+
+But the thing that he planned to destroy looked him in the eye, smiling.
+The thing smiled in the full knowledge of good and evil, the fact that
+it had chosen evil, the fact that it was lost forever. It was no
+contagious smile, but a smile aloof and dreadful. So a man, impaled, may
+smile, when agony has passed beyond the usual human passions--and even
+so the legless man smiled upward at the smiling bust of himself. And he
+found that he could not destroy the bust: for the act would have about
+it too ominous a flavor of self-destruction.
+
+He caught up his crutches, his little hand-organ, and hurried from the
+studio. By now Barbara must be well on her way uptown. He entered a
+public telephone station and gave the number of her house. He asked to
+speak with Miss Marion O'Brien, and when after an interval he heard the
+voice of Barbara's maid in his ear, he said: "She's been frightened. Let
+me know what she's going to do as soon as you know. Don't use the house
+'phone. Slip out to a pay station. I must know when she's going and
+where, and if she says for how long." He hung up the receiver, and
+hurried off.
+
+An hour later Barbara's maid telephoned him the required news, but all
+of it that mattered was that Barbara was not going out of town until the
+next day. There was a whole afternoon and night in which to act.
+
+The legless man sank at once into deep and swift thought. And ten
+minutes later he had abandoned all idea of kidnapping Barbara for the
+present. Certain dangers of so doing seemed insurmountable. He must
+possess his soul in patience, and in the meanwhile discount, if
+possible, the fright that he had given her. To this end he wrote the
+following letter:
+
+"It wasn't your fault that I lifted my eyes to you, and hoped that you
+would lower yours to me. But now I know what a fool I have been. I
+forgive you for laughing at me, though at the time it made me mad like a
+dog, and I only wanted to hurt the woman I love. I won't trouble you any
+more, ever. Indeed I am too ashamed and humbled ever to wish to see you
+again. Only please don't hate me. If I had any good sides, please
+remember them. Some time you will hear of me again; but never again from
+me. I have work to do, but I have given my time to dreaming.
+
+"When your father comes back will you ask him to let me know if he will
+see me? You thought he could do something for me--or hold out some hope.
+I would risk my life itself to be whole, even if I could never be very
+active. And science is so wonderful; and I know your father would like
+to help me if he could.
+
+"If you don't think I am being punished for threatening you, and going
+crazy, you don't know anything about the unhappiest beast in this world.
+But it is terrible for a cripple when the one person he looks up to
+laughs at him. I have a thick skin; but that burnt through it
+like acid."
+
+The messenger who carried the letter to Barbara brought him her answer:
+
+"I will give your message to my father. You are quite wrong about the
+laughing. I didn't laugh at you or anything about you. I laughed because
+I was nervous and frightened. But it can't matter much one way or the
+other. I am sorry that you have been hurt twice by my family. But the
+second hurt is not our fault. And I do not see that there is anything to
+be done about it. As for the first, my father would end his days in
+peace if he could make you whole. I shall hope to hear nothing but good
+of you in the future."
+
+The shame and remorse to which Blizzard pretended, Barbara actually
+felt. All her friendships with men had been pursued by disasters of
+some sort or other. But her most disastrous experiment in friendship had
+been with Blizzard. She had been bluntly told by truth-speaking persons
+that he was not a fit acquaintance for her. His own face had warned her.
+But she had persisted in meeting him without precautions, in treating
+him like an equal, in overcoming her natural and just repugnance to him,
+and in calling him her friend. It was humiliating for her to realize and
+acknowledge that she had made a fool of herself. It was worse to
+remember the look in his face, during those last awful moments in the
+studio. Even if the bust she had made of him was a great work of art,
+she had paid too high for the privilege of making it.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Dr. Ferris was delighted to learn that Barbara had left town. Her
+meetings with Blizzard had been horribly on his mind and conscience. He
+had dreaded some vague calamity--some intangible darkening of his
+darling's soul.
+
+A few days in the country had worked wonders for her. Her skin had
+browned a little, and her cheeks were crimson. But dearer to the
+paternal heart than these evidences of good health was the fact that she
+seemed unusually glad to see him. She seemed to him to have lost a world
+of independence and self-reliance, to be inclined to accept his
+judgments without dispute. She seemed more womanly and more daughterly,
+more normal and more beautiful.
+
+For a man with a heavy weight always upon his conscience, the excellent
+surgeon found himself wonderfully at peace with the world and its
+institutions. There was no doubt that the hand which he had come from
+grafting was going to live and be of some use to its new owner. His mail
+was heavy with approbation. And it seemed to him that the path which he
+had discovered had no ending.
+
+"In a hundred years, Barbara," he said, "it will be possible to replace
+anything that the body has lost, or that has become diseased and useless
+or a menace--not the heart, perhaps, nor the brain--but anything else.
+What I have done clumsily others will do to perfection."
+
+"What are the chances for Blizzard?"
+
+"Even," said the surgeon. "They would be more favorable if he had not
+lost his legs so long ago. At the worst the experiment wouldn't kill
+him. He would merely have undergone a useless operation. At the best he
+would be able to walk, run perhaps, and look like a whole man. If
+anything is to be done for him, the time has come. He has only to tell
+me to go ahead."
+
+"I think he'll do that," said Barbara. "But there's one thing I don't
+understand," and she smiled; "who is to supply the spare legs?"
+
+"That's the least of all the difficulties," said her father, "now that
+ways of keeping tissues alive have been discovered and proved. In time
+there will be storages from which any part of the human body may be
+obtained on short notice and in perfect condition for grafting. Just now
+the idea is horrible to ignorant people, but the faith will spread. Only
+wait till we have made a few old people young--for that will come, too,
+with the new surgery."
+
+"You will be glad," said Barbara, "to hear that I have severed friendly
+relations with Mr. Blizzard. He behaved in the end pretty much as you
+all feared he would."
+
+And she told her father, briefly, and somewhat shamefacedly, all that
+had happened in the studio.
+
+"He thought I was laughing at him," she said. "Of course I wasn't. And
+he came at me. Do you remember when poor old Rose went mad, and tried to
+get at us through the bars of the kennel? Blizzard looked like
+that--like a mad dog." She shuddered.
+
+The surgeon's high spirits were dashed as with cold water.
+
+"He ought not to be helped," said Barbara; "he ought to be shot, as Rose
+was."
+
+But Dr. Ferris shook his head gravely. "If he is that sort of a man," he
+said, "who made him so? Who took the joy of life from him? Barbara, my
+dear, there is nothing that man could do that I couldn't forgive."
+
+"And I think that your conscience is sick," said Barbara. "I used to
+think as you think. But if you had seen his face that day!... The one
+great mistake you have made has ruined not his life, but yours. If he
+had had the right stuff in him, calamity would not have broken him! It
+would have _made_ him. Give him a new pair of legs, if you can; and
+forget about him, as I shall. When you first told me about him, I
+thought we owed him anything he chose to ask. At one time I thought that
+if he wished it, it would be right for me to marry him."
+
+"Barbara!"
+
+"Yes, I did--I thought it strongly. Shows what a fool a girl who's
+naturally foolish can make of herself! Why, father, what if he has
+suffered through your mistake? That mistake turned your thoughts to the
+new surgery--and for the one miserable man that you have hurt you will
+have given the wonder of hope to the whole of mankind."
+
+She slid her hand under her father's arm.
+
+"Let's potter 'round the gardens," she said, "and forget our troubles.
+It's bully to have you back. There's not much doing in the floral line.
+The summer sun in Westchester doesn't vary from year to year. But there
+are lots of green things that smell good, and the asters and dahlias are
+making the most extraordinary promises of what they are going to do
+by and by."
+
+They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most
+formal of their many gardens, and so down through the other gardens,
+terrace below terrace, to the lake.
+
+The water was so still as to suggest a solid rather than a liquid; to
+the west shadowy mountains of cloud charged with thunder swelled toward
+the zenith. The long midsummer drought was coming to an end, and all
+birds and insects were silent, as if tired of complaining. Across the
+lake one maple, turned prematurely scarlet, brought out the soft greens
+of the woods with an astounding accent. Directly in front of this
+flaming tree, a snow-white heron stood motionless upon a gray rock.
+
+[Illustration: They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the
+first and most formal of their many gardens]
+
+To Barbara it seemed on that day that "Clovelly" was the loveliest place
+in all the world, and her father, who had fashioned it out of rough farm
+lands, one of the world's most charming artists. "Why paint with
+oils, when you can draw with trees and flowers and grass and water?" she
+asked herself.
+
+"In the time it took me to do Blizzard's bust," she said, "I could have
+planted millions of flowers and seen them bloom."
+
+"At least," said her father, "you can finish a bust, but a garden that
+is finished isn't a garden. What are you going to do with it?"
+
+"The bust? Why, sometimes I think I'll just leave it in the studio, and
+let it survive or perish. Sometimes I want to take a hammer and smash it
+to pieces."
+
+"It didn't come out as well as you hoped?"
+
+"Of course not. Does anything ever? But it's the best that I can do. And
+I shall never do anything better."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"I shall never even try. I want to recover all the things I've thrown
+away, and put them back in my head and heart where they belong, and
+just live."
+
+"Well," said her father, smiling, "if you feel that way, why that's a
+good way to feel. But I'm afraid art is stronger in you than you think.
+Just now you're tired and disillusionized. In a month you'll be making
+sketches for some monumental opus."
+
+"If I do," said Barbara, "it will be executed here at Clovelly. I never
+want to leave Clovelly. I feel safe here, safe from myself and other
+people. I think," and she smiled whimsically, "that I should almost
+like to settle down and make you a good daughter."
+
+"A good daughter," said the surgeon, "marries; and her father builds a
+beautiful house for her, just over the hill from his own--remember the
+little valley where we found all the fringed gentian one year?--and the
+shortest cut between the two houses is worn bare and packed hard by the
+feet of grandchildren. Good Lord, my dear, what's the good of art,
+what's the good of science? I would rather have watched you grow up than
+have made the Winged Victory, or discovered the circulation of the
+blood. Come now? Barbs, tell me, who's the young man?"
+
+For the first time in her life she told him of the wild impulsiveness
+and the shocking brevity of her affections for various members of his
+sex; naming no names she explained to him with much self-abasement (and
+a little amusement) that she was no good, "A nice wife I'd make!" she
+concluded.
+
+But her father only laughed. "The only abnormal thing about you," he
+said, "is that you tell the truth. The average girl shows men more
+attentions than men show her. I don't mean that she demonstrates her
+attentions; but that she feels them in her heart. To be absolutely the
+first in a woman's heart a man must catch her when she's about three
+months old."
+
+"But a girl," said Barbara, "who thinks she's sure and then finds she
+isn't, hurts the people she's fondest of. In extreme eases she breaks
+hearts and spoils lives."
+
+[Illustration: "What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He
+went away," said Barbara, her eyes troubled.]
+
+"Hearts," said her father, "that can be broken are very weak. Lives
+that can be spoiled by disappointment and injured pride aren't worth
+preserving. If you have nothing more serious on your conscience than
+having, in all good faith, encouraged a few young men, found that you
+were wrong, and sent them away with bees in their bonnets, I'm sure I
+envy you."
+
+Barbara simply shook her head.
+
+"When you do find the right man, Barbara, you'll make up to him with
+showers of blessings for whatever cold rains you've shed on others....
+What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?"
+
+"He went away," said Barbara, and she sat looking steadily across the
+lake, her chin on her hand, her eyes troubled.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+In many ways the life which Barbara led at Clovelly was calculated to
+rest her mind. She developed a passion for exercise, and when night came
+was too full of tired good health to read or talk. Since the estate was
+to be hers one day, she found the wish to know her way intimately about
+it, and since there were three thousand acres, for the most part thick
+forests spread over rocky hills, she could contemplate weeks of
+delightful explorations. To discover ponds, brooks, and caves that
+belong to other people has its delights, but to go daily up and down a
+lovely country discovering lovely things that belong to yourself is
+perhaps the most delightful way of passing time that has been vouchsafed
+to any one.
+
+On these explorations Barbara's chosen companion was Bubbles. He was no
+longer a mere Buttons: her interest and belief in the child had passed
+beyond the wish to see him develop into a good servant. She wished to
+make something better of him--or if there is nothing better than a good
+servant, something more showy and ornamental.
+
+He was sharp as a needle; and he was honest. He was not too old to be
+moulded by good influences, schools, and associations into a man with
+proper manners, and an upper-class command of the English language. He
+should go to one of the New England church schools, later to college,
+then he should choose a career for himself and be helped into harness.
+So she planned his future. In the meanwhile she wished to see the thin,
+spindly body catch up with the big, intelligent head. Although his
+muscles were tough and wiry he had a delicate look which troubled her,
+and a cough which to her inexperienced and anxious ears suggested a
+consumptive tendency.
+
+Dr. Ferris laughed at this, but to satisfy her he gave the boy a
+thorough questioning and a thorough looking over. "Any of your family
+consumptives, Bubbles?"
+
+"Don't think so, sir."
+
+"Well, you're not. Heart and lungs are sound."
+
+"Miss Barbara says she doesn't like my cough."
+
+"Yes," said the surgeon, "it worries her quite a good deal. And I advise
+you to stop it."
+
+"But my throat gets tickling, and--"
+
+"Your throat gets tickling because you are an inveterate cigarette
+smoker. And that's the reason why you are undersized and
+under-nourished. How long have you smoked?"
+
+"I don't remember when I didn't."
+
+"Can't you stop?"
+
+"I stopped once for two days, and then I took a pack of smokers that
+wasn't mine. That was about the only thing I ever stole."
+
+"But if you gave me your word not to smoke any more till you're
+twenty-one, couldn't you keep that promise?"
+
+"I could try," said Bubbles, evincing very little confidence,
+
+"Will you try?" said the surgeon. "Hello, what's this?"
+
+The boy in lifting his left arm had disclosed a dark-brown birthmark
+shaped like the new moon. All amusement had gone out of Dr. Ferris's
+eyes; and he had that look of tragic memories that so often put an end
+to his smiling and optimistic moods.
+
+"Do you remember your father?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Mother living?"
+
+Bubbles hesitated. "She's in an asylum. She's crazy."
+
+"What was your father's name?"
+
+Bubbles shook his head.
+
+The surgeon considered for a moment. "Well," he said, at length, and
+once more smiling, "put your clothes on, and then go to Miss Ferris and
+promise her that you won't smoke any more. What asylum did you say your
+mother was in?"
+
+"Ottawan."
+
+"Do you ever see her?"
+
+"No, sir. She don't like to see me."
+
+"What is her name, Bubbles?"
+
+"Jenny Ward."
+
+Dr. Ferris ordered a car, and in less than two hours he was talking
+with the superintendent of Ottawan about the patient, Jenny Ward.
+
+"The boy," he was saying, "is a protégé of my daughter's. She means to
+educate him, and we are naturally interested in his antecedents. I
+wonder if she has any lucid recollection of the father?"
+
+"When she first came she seemed to have lucid moments. Even now she
+never makes trouble for any one, except that sometimes she wakes in the
+night screaming. She has been very pretty."
+
+"H'm!" said Dr. Ferris. "You think she couldn't tell me anything about
+the boy's father?"
+
+"I know she couldn't. When she was examined after being committed, it
+was found that her tongue had been cut out."
+
+The woman, upon being visited, proved a meek, gentle, pathetic creature,
+eager to please. As the superintendent reported, she had been very
+pretty. She would have been pretty still, but for her utterly
+vacant look.
+
+The doctor questioned her, but she made no effort, it seemed, even to
+understand the questions. Given a pencil and paper she seemed to take
+pleasure in making dots, dashes, and scrawls; but she made no mark that
+in any way represented a letter of the alphabet. Confronted with a
+printed page, she thrust it aside.
+
+"Very likely she never could read or write," said the superintendent;
+"usually when you give 'em a pencil they make letters by an act of
+muscular memory."
+
+In the corridor outside the woman's room, they encountered one of those
+nurses who are used in managing the violent insane. He was a huge
+fellow, with a dark, strong, and somewhat forbidding face. He nodded to
+the superintendent and passed. Dr. Ferris looked after him down the
+corridor, had a sudden thought, and communicated it to his host in a
+quick undertone.
+
+"I say, Gyles! Look here a moment"
+
+The huge nurse turned on his heel, and came towering back to them.
+
+"Have you ever assisted in looking after the woman Jenny Ward?" and he
+pointed toward the door of her room.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Dr. Ferris wishes to try an experiment."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"He wishes you to throw open the door of her room, and to enter
+quickly--upon your knees."
+
+"On my knees?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All right, sir." The man shrugged his big shoulders, and, his face
+sullen and annoyed, knelt at the door of Jenny Ward's room, unlocked it,
+flung it open, and entered quickly.
+
+Over his head the doctors saw an expression of fear, almost unearthly,
+come over the woman's face. And she filled her room and the corridor
+without with a hoarse and horrible screaming.
+
+Instantly the big nurse rose to his feet, and came out of the room. His
+face was passionately angry. And he said:
+
+"It's a shame to frighten her like that."
+
+The superintendent's eyes fell before the glare in those of the
+employee, and he murmured something about "necessary experiment--had
+to be done."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+"There's no room for doubt in my mind," said Dr. Ferris. "The
+coincidence of the birthmarks, most unusual in shape and texture, the
+poor woman's behavior at sight of a man who at first glance appeared to
+be without legs--"
+
+"Yes," said Barbara, "but I go more on a certain expression that Bubbles
+sometimes has and that makes him look like his father. You see, I've
+done both their heads, and studied them closer than anybody else."
+
+"Do you suppose the boy knows?"
+
+She shook her head. "I think not. He's too--too decent. If he thought
+that Blizzard was his father, he wouldn't say the things that I have
+heard him say about him. He's the most loyal child."
+
+"Do you suppose Blizzard knows?"
+
+"Why, of course. A man could hardly have a son without knowing
+him--especially a man who lives with his ears to the ground and his mind
+in touch with everything in the city."
+
+Dr. Ferris smiled a little. "Well," he said, "shall we tell Bubbles?"
+
+"Why should we? I shouldn't like to be told out of a clear sky that I
+had such and such a father. It doesn't seem in the least necessary."
+
+But before the day was out Barbara thought best to tell Bubbles. He
+came to her, with a slightly important air, which he did his best to
+conceal, and said that he wished to go to the city for a few days,
+on business.
+
+"Sure the business isn't free untrammelled smoking?"
+
+Bubbles was offended. "If I hadn't given you my word," he said, "you
+might think that. I told you when we came that I might have to go back
+any time on business. I got to go. Honest, Miss Barbara."
+
+"Well, that settles it, Bubbles. But don't you think as long as I'm
+trying to give you some of the things you've missed, that you might take
+me a little more into your confidence?"
+
+She maintained a discreet and serious countenance, although she wished
+very much to laugh.
+
+The boy studied her face gravely with grave eyes. "The ABC of my
+business," he said presently, "is knowing who to trust. I know you won't
+blab, Miss Barbara, 'r else I wouldn't tell you. There's a society in
+New York City for putting down grafts and crimes. There's a rich man
+back of it. And there's more kinds o' people working for it than you'd
+guess in a year. There's even policemen workin' for it--"
+
+"But it's their business to put down crime."
+
+Bubbles shook his head sadly. "The chief business of the society is to
+put down police graft in crime," he said. "But there's heaps o' side
+businesses. Harry West, he's one of us. He's way high up. I'm way low
+down. But when I'm called to do what I can, I got to do it. There's one
+member younger'n me. And there's Fifth Avenue swells belongs, and
+waiters, and druggists, and bootblacks, and men in hardware stores, and
+barkeepers--"
+
+"What sort of work do you have to do?"
+
+"To go places and find out things."
+
+"Why, then you're a detective, Bubbles."
+
+A look of contempt swept into the child's face. "Detectives is in
+business," he said, "for what they can get out of it. We're in it
+because the house we live in is dirty and full of rats, and we want to
+make it clean."
+
+The boy had raised his voice a little, and Barbara found herself
+thrilling to it.
+
+"But, Bubbles," she objected, "you can't go to school and college and
+keep up this work at the same time."
+
+"If I get education," said Bubbles, "it's so's to be fitter for the work
+when I come out. But I can't give the work up till the job I'm on is
+finished. It wouldn't be square."
+
+"Can you tell me the job?"
+
+"I'm one o' them that's helpin' to get the old un where he's wanted."
+
+"What old one?"
+
+"Blizzard."
+
+Barbara was very much taken aback. "The man I made the bust of?"
+
+"We can send him to the chair any time. But what's the use? He knows
+things that we got to know before we pass him up."
+
+"But, Bubbles, how can you help?"
+
+"Oh, I'm little. I can get into little places. They wouldn't want me if
+I weren't of use."
+
+"But I don't like the idea of your running down Blizzard, Bubbles."
+
+"Why not, Miss Barbara? There's no one in the city that's _needed_ as
+much as him."
+
+"Aside from that, Bubbles--I'm willing to grant that--there's a reason
+why I think you should have nothing to do with running him down."
+
+"It's got to be an awful good one, Miss Barbara--not just good to you,
+and maybe to me, but to men higher up."
+
+"I think it would be good enough for the very highest up, Bubbles. Will
+you take my word for it?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Barbara. But _they_ won't take my word for your word."
+
+"No," she said, "of course not."
+
+She considered for a few moments. Then she said: "Bubbles, I'm going to
+tell you my reason. I hope I'm not doing wrong. It's a serious thing for
+me to tell you and for you to know. There is very little doubt but that
+Blizzard is your father."
+
+"Say that again, please," said Bubbles.
+
+"Blizzard is probably your father."
+
+Bubbles took the news very coolly. His eyes sparkled; but he made no
+exclamations of surprise or chagrin. Instead he said: "_That_
+accounts for it."
+
+"Accounts for what?"
+
+"Oncet he caught me in his house. He said the next time he'd skin me
+alive. If I hadn't been his son he'd a skun me that time. Do you get me,
+Miss Barbara? He's my father, sure. But--" Now chagrin, wonder, and
+perplexity were written in Bubbles's face. "Why," he said, "it makes
+everything different. He never done anything for me; but if he's
+my father--"
+
+"You can't very well spy on him, can you, Bubbles? You've got to stand
+aside and leave all that to others."
+
+"I got to see the Head, Miss Barbara. I got to ask him."
+
+"Who is the head, Bubbles?"
+
+"I'd tell you in a minute, Miss Barbara, only we're all swore to tell no
+one. But what he says goes with me. It's got to be that way, else we'd
+never get nowhere."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+Mr. Abe Lichtenstein looked up from a mass of writing. "So," he smiled,
+"you got your few days off?"
+
+"Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles, his eyes big, his voice trembling, "an
+awful thing has happened."
+
+"You can tell me nothing bad but I can tell you something worse. What
+has happened?"
+
+"The old un is my father!"
+
+"Yes," said Lichtenstein, "I have thought of that. You are sure?"
+
+"I'm sure enough not to want to have anything more to do with huntin'
+him. But that's for you to say. I do what you say."
+
+"I won't ask you to go on," said Lichtenstein; "but you're still with
+us, Bubbles? You're still for cleaning up the dirty house and making it
+fit for human beings to live in?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"As far as your father's concerned you'll be neutral."
+
+"Meaning I won't do nothing against him, nor for him?"
+
+The red-headed Jew nodded. "You won't do like Rose?"
+
+"Rose?"
+
+Lichtenstein's face became very cold and grim. "She's gone over to him
+body and soul. Bubbles, and heart and mind. For weeks she's fooled us
+with nonsense--stuff they've made up together. Worse, she's broken every
+oath she ever swore. Our strength was secrecy. Well, your father knows
+the name of every agent in our society. Oh, he's got it all out of her!
+Everything!"
+
+"Does he know that you are--"
+
+"Yes, confound him, he does. And my life is about as safe in this city
+as that of the average cat in the Italian quarter. My life isn't the
+important thing. It's what I've got in my head--cold facts. See all this
+stuff? That's what's in my head going down on paper for the first time.
+It's to guide the man that takes my place--to help him over some of the
+hard places--three hundred sheets of it already, and only a week since
+I began."
+
+"Rose!" exclaimed Bubbles.
+
+"There was none better--none smarter--till she fell in love--_fell_ in
+love!"
+
+"Does he know I'm one of us, Mr. Lichtenstein?"
+
+"Why, yes. I suppose she'll have given even the children away." Mr.
+Lichtenstein's eye roamed over the suite of rich rooms with their
+elaborate gambling-paraphernalia. "Not much doing," he smiled, "since
+Rose went over. The tip's out that I'm wanted. Nobody drops in for a
+quiet game. Bubbles, you tell people when you're a man and I'm gone,
+that I wasn't only a gambler. Tell 'em I took money from people who had
+plenty but wouldn't take the trouble to do right with it, and tell 'em I
+used that money to do right--to help make dirty things clean."
+
+He turned and regarded the face of the black marble clock on the
+mantel-piece. As he looked the face of the clock was violently
+shattered, and so, but on a lower level, was a pane of glass in the
+window immediately opposite.
+
+Abe Lichtenstein fell face down upon his unfinished manuscript.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+Then he began to speak in a quiet voice. "Never touched me. Bubbles.
+Pull that cord at the right of the window. That will close the curtains.
+Careful not to show yourself. The man that fired that shot thinks he got
+me. I fell over to make him think so and to keep him from shooting
+again. Now then"--the curtain had been drawn over the window with the
+broken pane--"let's see what sort of a gun our friend uses, and then
+perhaps we can spot our friend. Did you hear the shot?"
+
+"No, sir. There was a noise just when the clock broke like when a steel
+girder falls on the sidewalk."
+
+"That noise was just _before_ the clock broke, Bubbles. And it was loud
+enough to drown the noise of our friend's gun. Clever work, though, to
+_have_ to pull the trigger at a given moment, and to make such a close
+shot. Probably had his gun screwed in a vise."
+
+Meanwhile Lichtenstein had extracted from the ruined clock a .45-calibre
+bullet of nickel steel. A glance at the grooves made by the rifling of
+the barrel from which it had been expelled caused him to raise his
+colorless eyebrows and smile cynically.
+
+"New government automatic, Bubbles," he said, "and the funny part of it
+is they've only been issued to officers so far, and the factory hasn't
+put 'em on sale yet."
+
+"Must have been stole from an officer, then," said Bubbles.
+
+"You steal her jewels from an actress," said Lichtenstein, "her mite
+from the widow, its romances from the people, but you don't steal his
+side arms from an American army officer. No. Somebody in the factory has
+let the weapon that fired this slip out. It doesn't matter--it's just a
+little link in the long chain."
+
+He seated himself calmly at the table and set down in black and white
+the fact that he had been very nearly murdered by a bullet fired from
+the new army pistol. Then he began to gather up the sheets of his
+manuscript.
+
+"Now I wonder," he said, "where I can go to finish this document? I
+don't want them to 'get' me until I've paved the way for the man that
+comes after me. Now then--the secret passage isn't only for the wicked."
+
+Kneeling on the clean hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental
+cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching
+a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the
+iron back of a fireplace in the next house.
+
+Bubbles, crawling through first, found himself in a somewhat overdressed
+pink and blue bedroom. The lace curtains were too elaborate. The room
+was luxurious and vulgar. Among the photographs on the centre-table
+reposed a champagne-bottle, three parts empty, and two glasses, in which
+a number of flies were heavily crawling.
+
+Lichtenstein, having carefully replaced the fire-backs, rose smiling,
+and clapped a hand upon Bubbles's shoulder.
+
+"Now then, Bubbles," he said, "push that bell-button by the door four
+times, and we'll see what Mrs. Popple can do to get us out of this.
+Never met Mrs. Popple? She's one of us, and at heart a good one."
+
+The lady in question came swiftly in answer to the four rings. At first
+sight she passed for a woman of hard and forbidding aspect; filmy laces
+and a clinging kimona of rose-pink silk neither softened nor made
+feminine the alabaster-colored face with its thin, straight mouth, heavy
+hairy eyebrows, and clean-cut Greek nose. Only her costume and her hair,
+indescribably fine, and indescribably yellow, betrayed that there were
+follies in her nature. But the moment she spoke you liked her. She had a
+slow, deep, beautiful voice, and the slowness of her speech was offset
+by the fewness of her words.
+
+"What's wrong, Abe?"
+
+Lichtenstein explained briefly, and added: "Now how are we to get out of
+this without being spotted and followed?"
+
+"Easy," said Mrs. Popple. She went to a vast wardrobe painted white, and
+pulled the creaking doors wide open. "Wedge the man into one dress,"
+she said, "pad the boy into another. Send 'em off in a taxi. Now, boy.
+Is this Bubbles? Pleased to meet you. I'm old enough to be your
+grandmother."
+
+The words were a command, and the boy, much embarrassed, began to take
+off his coat.
+
+"Get busy, Abe. Can take your own things along in a suit-case. I don't
+look, see? I'm looking out duds for you. What's that? Razor? Find
+everything in medicine-closet over wash-basin in bath-room."
+
+Lichtenstein disappeared, and gave forth presently the rasping sounds of
+a man shaving in a hurry. And in the meanwhile, always swift and sure,
+Mrs. Popple initiated Bubbles into the ABC's of female attire.
+
+"No trouble about a straight front for you," she chuckled, and gave a
+sudden strong tug at the laces of Bubbles's corsets. He gasped, and the
+tears came to his eyes.
+
+"Mind to take little steps," she said, "and don't swing your arms." She
+clasped a blond wig upon his head, and drew back to see the effect.
+
+"Abe," she called, "she's a pippin!"
+
+A moment later she frowned, almost savagely, laid her finger on her
+lips, knelt at the fireplace, thrust her head far in and
+listened intently.
+
+Lichtenstein, one side of his face in lather, appeared at the bath-room
+door. His eyes on the crouching figure of Mrs. Popple, he continued
+calmly and methodically to shave himself.
+
+After an interval the woman rose, and shook her head.
+
+"Can't make out who's in there," she whispered. "Have Lizzie watch front
+window see who goes out."
+
+Lichtenstein nodded, washed the tag ends of lather from his face, and
+proceeded in dead silence to dress himself as a lady of somewhat
+doubtful age, looks, and position. But Bubbles would have made a very
+pretty girl, if Mrs. Popple had not insisted on powdering his face till
+it was as white as that of a clown.
+
+"Won't do to be conspicuous," she explained.
+
+Lichtenstein packed the things which he and Bubbles had taken off into a
+suit-case marked "A.P." (Amelia Popple), and led the way downstairs. A
+little later a taxicab drew up at the curb, and the two disguised
+secret-service agents sauntered down the high steps of Mrs. Popple's
+brownstone house, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and
+got in.
+
+"Where to?" said the driver, with rather a bold leer. The average lady
+who descended or ascended Mrs. Popple's steps; was not considered
+respectable even by taxi-drivers.
+
+It had been agreed that Bubbles, having of the two the more feminine
+adaptabilities of voice, should do the talking.
+
+"Grand Central," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Barbara was reading "Smoke" and did not wish to be interrupted by a
+"young person" (in the footman's words) who refused to give her name.
+Nevertheless she was weakly good-natured in such matters, and closing
+her book said: "Very well--in here, John."
+
+A moment later the young person was shown into the living-room. Barbara
+was still more annoyed, for young faces covered with powder were odious
+to her. But suddenly the young person's mouth curled into a captivating
+grin, and the young person trotted forward in a very un-young-personish
+way, and cried triumphantly:
+
+"It's me--Bubbles."
+
+And Bubbles followed Barbara's gratifying exclamations of surprise and
+inquiry with a syncopated outburst of explanation, finishing with: "And
+Mr. Lichtenstein said I was to throw us on your mercy, and ask if he
+could stay to finish his writing, and he's stepped into some bushes off
+the driveway to put on his own clothes. And please, Miss Barbara, he's
+just the finest and bravest ever, and don't care what happens to him,
+only he says they're bound to get him now everything's found out, and
+he's just got to finish writing down what he carries in his head."
+
+"Of course," said Barbara, "we'll have to tell my father; but all will
+be well. Mr. Lichtenstein shall stay. Bring him to me when he's finished
+changing, and then you'd best change, and if you don't want to have a
+sore face wash all that nasty stuff off it."
+
+Lichtenstein had already changed, and was coming up the driveway
+carrying a suit-case. Bubbles brought him at once, and with great pride,
+to Barbara. Mr. Lichtenstein had never seen her before. In his bow there
+was a trace of Oriental elaboration. And his curiously meagreish,
+pug-nosed sandy face beamed with pleasure and admiration.
+
+"I thought I knew my New York, Miss Ferris," he said, "but it seems I
+was mistaken."
+
+Since the compliment was obviously sincere, Barbara took pleasure in it,
+and the pleasure showed in her charming face. "And Bubbles says," said
+she, "that you are the 'finest ever.' I'm glad if staying here is going
+to help the cause. You can be as private as you like--" But a sudden
+change had come over Lichtenstein's face, the smile had vanished, the
+eyes grown sharp, even stern. "What is your maid's name?" he
+asked abruptly.
+
+"My maid? Why, what about her?"
+
+"She passed just now--by that door. I saw her in the mirror at the end
+of the room. What's her name?"
+
+"Marion--" Barbara hesitated.
+
+"O'Brien?"
+
+"Yes, O'Brien."
+
+[Illustration: He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and
+into the room]
+
+"I thought so. She's in Blizzard's pay. If she has recognized me--Shut
+the door into the hall, Bubbles."
+
+The door being shut, Lichtenstein crossed the room and stood near it,
+his hand on the knob. For nearly a minute he neither moved nor changed
+expression. Then a smile flickered about his mouth, and, sure of his
+effect, with a sharp gesture he flung the door wide open, and discovered
+Miss Marion O'Brien kneeling in the opening. He caught her by the wrist,
+drew her to her feet, and into the room.
+
+"Marion!" exclaimed Miss Ferris.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+There was a long silence during which Miss O'Brien tried to look
+defiant, and succeeded only in shedding a few tears. Barbara had always
+liked the girl, and now felt profoundly sorry for her. Liechtenstein,
+too, seemed sorry and at a loss for words. The position was difficult.
+The O'Brien's eavesdropping warranted her discharge, and nothing more.
+She would go straight to Blizzard and disclose Lichtenstein's
+whereabouts. But this in itself was merely an annoyance, as in the
+meanwhile the secret service head could go elsewhere. There was nothing
+for it but to discharge her and let her go. So Lichtenstein said
+presently, and then wrote with a pencil on a card. This card he handed
+to the maid.
+
+"Give that to your employer," he said. On the card was written: "If
+anything happens to me you will be indicted for the Kaparoff business,
+and there is enough evidence in a safe place to make you pay the
+penalty. Lichtenstein."
+
+"And now, Miss Ferris," he said, "it will be as well to let this girl
+first telephone to her master to say that I am here, and second to pack
+her trunks and go."
+
+Barbara smiled, but not unkindly, at Marion, and nodded her brightly
+colored head. "I think that will be best, Marion."
+
+The maid turned without a word and started for the hall-door, but was
+brought to a trembling stop by sudden words from Bubbles.
+
+"Miss Barbara," said he, "ask her where your diamond bow-knot went!"
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Lichtenstein, "an excuse for keeping an eye on her,
+perhaps. That was what we needed. How about this bow-knot, Marion?"
+
+The guilt in the girl's face must have been obvious to the dullest eye.
+
+"Oh," said Barbara, "is it good enough? She'd communicate with him
+somehow. This isn't the Middle Ages. Marion, if by any chance any of my
+things have gotten mixed with yours, please leave them on my
+dressing-table."
+
+Marion, very red in the face, lurched out of the room.
+
+"I can't very well give her a character," said Barbara.
+
+Lichtenstein laughed. "Plenty of worse girls," he said, "receive
+excellent characters daily. And now I suppose I ought to put distance
+between this house and myself."
+
+Barbara lifted her eyebrows. "Why?"
+
+"Why? She's probably working the telephone now."
+
+"I know," said Barbara, "but if you pretend to go, and then come back,
+this would be the last home in the world that Blizzard would suspect
+you of hiding in. Marion will tell him her story. And he certainly won't
+look for you here."
+
+Lichtenstein's face was wreathed in smiles, "So be it," he said, "and I
+shall sit at your feet to learn."
+
+"Can you drive a car?" asked Barbara.
+
+"What kind of a car?"
+
+"A Stoughton? But if you can drive any kind you can drive a Stoughton.
+We'll lend you a car and you shall take a long run and come back when
+it's dark. If you start at once, Marion will know of it. Meanwhile I'll
+tell my father all about everything. But first of all I'm dying with
+curiosity to know what you wrote on that card. That's all I can say. Of
+course if I'm not to be told--"
+
+Had she asked for his dearest secret Lichtenstein could not have refused
+it, and he told her what he had written on the card.
+
+"But why," said Barbara, "if you have a criminal, so to speak, where you
+want him--why let him be free to make more mischief? I ask merely for
+information."
+
+"If he were punished for an ordinary crime," said Lichtenstein, "justice
+would be cheated. But if we can really get him where we want him, why,
+not only crime will be tried and found guilty, but the whole fabric of
+the police--yes, and the administration of the law. Therefore," and his
+voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for
+such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and
+throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that
+might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going to lend me
+a car--"
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+Wilmot Allen was surprised and annoyed at being called back to New York
+by his employer. He had not "gotten over" Barbara in the least, but the
+great West had entered his blood. Thanks to financial arrangements with
+Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and
+developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and
+sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together
+with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in
+the forest soil,
+
+He had grown in body and mind. Wall Street, that had seemed so broad and
+important to him, now seemed narrow and insignificant. It was better for
+a man, a good horse between his knees, to find out what lay beyond the
+Ridges than whether steel was going up or down. He looked back upon his
+past life, not, it is true, with contempt and loathing, but with amused
+tolerance, as a man wise and reliable looks back upon the pranks of
+his boyhood.
+
+He loved Barbara with all his heart, but no longer with the feeling that
+the loss of her would put an end to all the possibilities of life.
+Indeed he was coolly resolved in the event of her marrying somebody else
+to marry somebody else himself. The thought of children and a home had
+grown very dear to him. In short, he had assimilated a characteristic
+of the great unsettled West, where the ratio of the male of the species
+to the female is often as great as ten to one.
+
+But if the year did not cure him of Barbara he would get her if he
+could.
+
+To the main line was a day's journey over a single-track road abounding
+in undeveloped way stations, at which an insatiable locomotive was
+forever stopping to drink. At one of these stations a young man taller
+and broader even than Wilmot himself, and like him bearded and brown as
+autumn leaves, boarded the train laboriously and came down the aisle
+occasionally catching at the backs of seats for support.
+
+A second look assured Wilmot that the stranger was not drunk, but sick
+or hurt, and he was wondering whether or not to offer him assistance,
+when the stranger suddenly stopped and smiled, steadied himself with one
+hand, and held out the other.
+
+"I heard that you would be on this train," he said simply, "so I managed
+to catch it, too. May I sit with you?"
+
+Wondering, Wilmot made room for the stranger and waited developments.
+But as these were not at once forthcoming he felt that he must break a
+silence which seemed awkward to him. And he turned his head and saw that
+the man had fainted.
+
+A request for whiskey addressed to a car containing a dozen men
+accustomed to wrest metals from the earth was not in vain. Wilmot chose
+the nearest of twelve outstretched flasks, and was obliged to refuse a
+thirteenth in the kindly hand of the conductor.
+
+"Fed better?"
+
+"Thanks, I'm all right."
+
+The twelve miners withdrew tactfully to their seats.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Sure. Just let me sample that brand again. Good. Now if you don't mind
+I'll say what I came to say."
+
+"But aren't you hurt--isn't there something to do?"
+
+"I've _been_ hurt. I'm just weak. Don't think about it. But you're Mr.
+Wilmot Allen all right, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's hard to be sure of a man you never knew and who's grown a beard
+since you saw him last."
+
+"I assure you," Wilmot smiled, "that I'm only waiting to reach a
+first-class barber-shop."
+
+"Perhaps you will change your mind."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"You know a man named O'Hagan?"
+
+Wilmot nodded.
+
+"I had a talk with him up in the mountains yesterday. He spoke truth for
+once. You know a man in New York--Blizzard?"
+
+"He's been a good friend to me."
+
+"Why?" asked the stranger.
+
+"I don't know. I've asked myself that question a thousand times."
+
+"He's helped you with your debts in return for your services in
+teaching a lot of foreigners to shoot straight?"
+
+Wilmot frowned.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that he could have obtained half a dozen
+teachers for a tenth of the money?"
+
+"That _has_ occurred to me," said Wilmot stiffly.
+
+"Obviously then he has some ulterior use for you."
+
+"Very possibly."
+
+"Please don't take offence. There are reasons why you shouldn't. I am
+coming to them. Remember, O'Hagan talked to me, and talked truth.
+Blizzard is planning a revolution. You are to be one of the leaders. You
+imagine that one of the hell-governed Latin republics is to be the seat
+of operations, or you wouldn't have gone into the thing. But Blizzard is
+after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses. Mr. Allen, you are part
+of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City."
+
+"Say that again."
+
+The stranger smiled. "O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of
+everything. He had to. I came West to make him."
+
+"At the _last_? What does that mean?"
+
+"When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that
+he can never talk again."
+
+"Is O'Hagan _dead_?"
+
+"He had his choice. But he _had_ to talk. If I had let him off
+afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us
+had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan
+should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not."
+
+"You killed him?"
+
+"I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked
+him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on
+him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint
+like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over
+a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was
+unconscious."
+
+The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at
+him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was
+telling the truth.
+
+"He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?"
+
+"There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here."
+
+"Are you badly hit?"
+
+The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a shirt twice perforated
+over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood. "Please don't
+try to do anything. There's no help. The damage is where it doesn't
+show. Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me."
+
+Wilmot nodded gravely. "I don't know who you are," he said, "but you are
+hurt, and if you'd rather talk than try to do something about it, of
+course I'll listen."
+
+[Illustration: "I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over
+a cliff"]
+
+"You are in wrong on the revolution," said the stranger. "It is not to
+come off in South America, but in the city of New York. If Blizzard's
+plans carry, this will happen. On the 15th of January there will be an
+explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the
+Bronx. At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on
+active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks. The assassins,
+distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a
+peculiar weave--"
+
+"I have such a hat in my trunk."
+
+"Are to assemble together with that third of the police force whom it
+was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street.
+Here they will receive further orders--some to loot the Sub-Treasury,
+some to loot banks, some Tiffany's, some the great wholesale jewellers
+of Maiden Lane. You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding,
+would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other
+high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art--"
+
+"Look here, did O'Hagan--"
+
+"He did. Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by
+cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off. For at least
+twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard's power, at his,
+disposition."
+
+"How about communication by train?"
+
+"Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they
+will not go out."
+
+"A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news."
+
+"Ferries will stop running. Bridges will be closed."
+
+The idea of looting New York had fired Wilmot's imagination. It was a
+possibility to which he had never before given any thought,
+
+"But," he objected, "there must be a flaw somewhere."
+
+"Probably," admitted the stranger. "For there is a flaw in Blizzard's
+mind. It is the only way to account for him. He stands on the verge of
+insanity."
+
+"Suppose the plan carries. The city has been looted. What next?"
+
+"The stuff is hidden under Blizzard's house in Marrow Lane in cellars
+that he has been preparing for years. A passage leads from these cellars
+to a pier on the East River. Either he gets away with his loot in a
+stolen liner, or he finds that he may live on in New York, or perhaps in
+Washington."
+
+"I don't see that."
+
+"What effect would a successful revolution in New York have upon the
+discontented and the murderous of other cities? Are the criminals of San
+Francisco, Denver, Chicago to be outdone by the criminals of the effete
+East? I tell you, Mr. Allen, that sometimes in mad visions the legless
+beggar sees upon his brows a kingly crown."
+
+"But the rest of the police--the garrison at Governor's Island?"
+
+"O'Hagan was Blizzard's right-hand man, his general in the West. For
+the honor of being his left-hand man there are two aspirants--the mayor
+of New York City and the police commissioner--nor will the
+lieutenant-governor of our great State hold his hands behind his back
+and shake his head when the loot is being distributed."
+
+"Are you _joking?"_
+
+"No, Mr. Allen. I am dying. Now listen. I assume that you are no longer
+with Blizzard."
+
+"What an ass I've been!"
+
+"You are to find Abe Lichtenstein and tell him what I have told you. The
+boy Bubbles will put you on his track. As for money which Blizzard has
+advanced to you--" The stranger fumbled in his breast pocket and brought
+forth a much-soiled sheet of paper. "This locates outlying mining claims
+in Utah. They will make you rich. One-third to you--one-third to Miss
+Barbara Ferris--one-third to the boy Bubbles. You will tell him that I
+was his brother--different mothers, but the same father."
+
+"_You_ are Harry West," and Wilmot looked with compassionate interest
+upon the man who, if only for a brief period of time, had once stood
+first in Barbara's affections.
+
+Under the strain of talking West's voice had grown weaker. "Miss
+Barbara," he said quietly, "is in great danger from my father--"
+
+"_Your_ father?"
+
+"Didn't I tell you? Oh, yes. He is my father--Blizzard. That is why I
+don't mind dying. When the city is in confusion, and without any laws
+save of his own dictation, Miss Barbara will be in terrible danger. Many
+years from now, when it can do no harm with you, tell her, please, that
+in my life I had the incomparable privilege--"
+
+Wilmot leaped to his feet. "Is there a doctor here? This man is dying."
+
+But the Spartan, the wolf Death gnawing at his vitals, had said all that
+it was necessary for him to say. Wilmot Allen's strong arm about him,
+his mouth vaguely smiling, he fell heavily forward as if under the
+weight of a new and overpowering wonder and knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Nothing so makes for insomnia as a man's knowledge that he has made a
+fool of himself. Between Chicago and New York Wilmot Allen did not even
+have his berth made up. He visited the dining-car at the proper
+intervals, hardly conscious of what he ordered or ate. He bought
+newspapers, books, magazines, and opened none of them. For the most part
+he looked out the window of his compartment into rushing daylight or
+darkness. His mind kept travelling the round of a great circle that
+began and ended in humiliation. He had been as confiding in Blizzard's
+hands as an undeveloped child of seven. He had been teaching men whose
+creed was murder and anarchy how to handle weapons. He had taken at
+their face value words uttered by an emperor among scoundrels; had asked
+no material or leading questions, and was in his conscience paying the
+penalty for having snatched at tainted money with which to relieve
+himself of obligations that pressed till they hurt.
+
+Beginning in humiliation, the circle of his thoughts ascended time after
+time to Barbara, only to fall from the high and tender lights which
+memories and anticipations of her brought into them, back to that
+darkness in which he struggled to give himself "a little the best of
+things" and could not.
+
+On arriving in New York a man of more complex mental processes would
+have tried first of all to get the precious information which he carried
+into the possession of Lichtenstein, but Wilmot felt that he could have
+no peace until he had seen Blizzard, spoken his mind, and washed his
+hands of him. That he would then put his own life in danger did not
+occur to him, and would not have altered his determination if it had.
+
+The lure of Barbara, however, drew him aside from the direct path to
+Marrow Lane. He had resolved not to see her for a year, but thought it
+right to break through that resolution in order to tell her at first
+hand of Harry West's death. But the janitor told him that Miss Ferris
+had not been coming to the studio for a long time. She had had no word
+from her. She had left one day by the back stair without her hat; a
+little later the legless beggar had left by the front door. His
+expression had been enough to frighten a body to death. Yes, the boy had
+come one day in a taxicab and gone away with her things. He had refused
+to answer any questions. She had never thought very highly of him as a
+boy. No, the bust upon which Miss Ferris had been at work had not been
+removed. No, the gentleman could not see it. Orders were orders.... Yes,
+the gentleman could see it. After all there had been no orders recently.
+
+She led the way upstairs, her hand tightly closed upon a greenback. She
+unlocked and flung open the door of Barbara's studio, remarking that
+nothing in it had been touched since that lady's departure.
+
+Wilmot noticed much dust, an overturned chair, and then his eyes rose to
+the bust of Blizzard as to a living presence. The expression of that
+bestial fallen face made his spine feel as if ants were crawling on it.
+And he turned away with disgust and hatred. "Oh, Barbs, Barbs, what a
+wrong-headed little darling you are!" But he added: "And Lord, what a
+talent she's got!"
+
+Blizzard was not in his office. But he was upstairs and expected Mr.
+Allen.
+
+A girl who had been wonderfully pretty told Wilmot these things. She
+would have been wonderfully pretty still, for she was very young, if she
+had not looked so tired, so unhappy, so broken-spirited. Did Rose still
+love the man for whom she had betrayed her friends and her own better
+nature? Yes. But she had learned that she was no more to him than a
+plaything--to caress or to break as seemed most amusing to him. At first
+until the novelty of her had worn off he had shown her a sufficiency of
+brusque tenderness. Latterly as his great plans matured he had been all
+brute. Sometimes he made her feel that he was so surfeited with her love
+that he considered killing her.
+
+Sideways, with eyes haunted by shame and tragedy, she gave the handsome
+bearded youth a look of compassion. "In here, please," she said.
+
+The door closed behind Wilmot with an ominous click, and he found
+himself face to face with the legless beggar. In this one's eyes, seen
+above a table littered with pamphlets and writings, was none of that
+mock affability to which he had formerly treated Wilmot Allen. He looked
+angry, dangerous, poisonous. And he broke into a harsh, ugly laugh.
+
+"It takes you," he said, "to rush in where angels fear to tread. Welcome
+to my parlor! What a fool! My God! You heard what Harry West had to say
+before he died, and you came straight here."
+
+"I don't know how you know it. But I did talk to your son. I did hear
+what he said. And I came here to tell you. And to tell you that there
+will be no more dealings between us. I am going straight from here to
+tell the proper authorities what I know."
+
+"Aren't you going to punch my face first? That's what you'd like to do.
+It's in your eyes. But you're afraid."
+
+"I am not afraid," said Wilmot, "and you know it."
+
+For answer the legless man picked up a silver dollar from among the
+papers in front of him, and broke it savagely into four pieces.
+"Afraid!" he said. "Afraid! Afraid!"
+
+Wilmot took a step forward. "It would give me the greatest pleasure," he
+said quietly, "to knock your head off. Unfortunately you are a cripple."
+
+Blizzard said nothing, and presently, white with anger and contempt,
+Wilmot turned and tried the handle of the door by which he had entered.
+Blizzard laughed.
+
+[Illustration "Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house"]
+
+"This door is locked," said Wilmot.
+
+"You are a prisoner in this house."
+
+"I am, am I?"
+
+Quick as lightning he had drawn and levelled at the legless man an
+automatic pistol of the largest calibre. The legless man did not move an
+inch, change expression, or take his eyes from Wilmot's.
+
+Wilmot advanced till only the table separated them. "You will," he said,
+"climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house, walking in
+front of me."
+
+The legless beggar appeared to consider the matter. There was silence.
+Wilmot shifted the position of his feet, and the floor boards under
+them creaked.
+
+Blizzard appeared to have made up his mind. He spread his hands on the
+table as if to help himself out of his chair. The palm of his right
+hand, unknown to Wilmot, covered an electric push-button.
+
+"Perhaps," said Blizzard, "you won't be in such a hurry to go after you
+hear that Miss Barbara Ferris is also a prisoner in this house--"
+
+In horror and bewilderment Wilmot allowed the muzzle of his automatic to
+swerve. In that moment the palm of the legless man's right hand pressed
+upon the button, and the square of the floor upon which Wilmot stood
+dropped like the trap of a gallows, and he fell through the opening
+into darkness.
+
+He was neither stunned nor bruised, and he began to grope about for the
+pistol which in the sudden descent had been knocked from his hand. The
+only light came from the open trap in the floor above. Something fell
+softly at his feet; he picked it up. It was a cloth, saturated with
+chloroform. He flung it from him, and began with a new haste to grope
+and fumble for his pistol.
+
+Another cloth fell, and another. Distant and ugly laughter fell with
+them. More cloths, and already the air in the place reeked with
+chloroform.
+
+He no longer knew what he was looking for, and when at last his hand
+closed upon the stock of the automatic, he did not know what it was that
+he had found.
+
+Another cloth fell.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+He came to in a narrow iron bed, weak, nauseated, and handcuffed. He
+could rub his feet together, but he could not separate them. He had been
+dreaming about Barbara--horrible dreams. His first conscious thought was
+that she, too, was a prisoner in the house of Blizzard, and that somehow
+or other he must save her. Having tried in vain to break the bright,
+delicate-looking handcuffs, he tried in vain to think calmly. Hours
+passed. Nobody came. He worked himself gradually into a fever of
+impotent rage. Civilization slipped away from him. He was ready, if
+necessary, to fight with his teeth, to gouge eyes, to inflict any
+barbarous atrocity upon his enemy.
+
+Gradually, for the air in the room was fresh, the feeling of sickness
+passed away, and was succeeded by weakness and lassitude. As a matter of
+fact, being a strong man, in splendid health, he was faint from hunger.
+But he did not know this.
+
+An elderly woman came softly into the room. She wore a blue dress, a
+white apron, a white kerchief, white cuffs, a white cap. Her face was
+disfigured by a great brown protruding mole from which a tuft of hair
+sprouted; she had an expression of methodical kindness, but small
+shifting eyes in which was no honesty.
+
+She carried a cup that smoked. She put the cup on a table, lifted
+Wilmot to a sitting position, as if he had been a child, and asked him
+if he was hungry.
+
+For a moment he did not answer; he was getting used to the discovery
+that he had been undressed and was wearing a linen night-gown. Then he
+nodded toward the smoking cup.
+
+"How do I know it isn't poisoned?"
+
+"Come--come," said the woman, "you'd have gone out under the chloroform
+if that had been the intention. Better keep your strength up."
+
+After a few spoonfuls of the soup, Wilmot suggested that he should
+prefer something solid.
+
+The woman shook her head.
+
+"If I'm to be kept alive," he said petulantly, "why not comfortably?"
+
+"Nothing solid. That's the doctor's orders."
+
+"Blizzard's?"
+
+"No. The doctor."
+
+"What doctor?"
+
+"Why, Dr. Ferris."
+
+"Where is he? I want to speak to him."
+
+"He isn't here. He's coming when everything's ready."
+
+"Everything ready?" A nameless fear began to gnaw at Wilmot's vitals.
+And at that moment the door swung open, and he saw, beyond the bulking
+head and shoulders of the legless man, a narrow iron table, white and
+shining, in a room all glass and white paint.
+
+On the entrance of Blizzard, the woman took up the remains of the soup,
+and passed noiselessly out of the room.
+
+Blizzard climbed to the foot of Wilmot's bed, and sat looking at him. In
+his eyes there was a glitter of suppressed excitement. "When our last
+talk was interrupted," he said, "I had just told you that Miss Ferris is
+a prisoner in this house. You don't like the idea?"
+
+Wilmot shuddered and made a convulsive effort to break the handcuffs. He
+struggled with them in desperate silence for nearly a minute.
+
+"I might break them," said Blizzard, "but you can't. Try to be as
+reasonable as you can. Miss Ferris is in no immediate danger. I am going
+to let her go, if you and I can agree."
+
+"What do you want _me_ to agree to?"
+
+"I've had it in mind for a long time. It was why I relieved you of money
+cares, and sent you West. I wished to put you in a state of perfect
+health before trying an experiment of the utmost interest and value to
+science. Only your consent is now wanting. Upon that consent depends
+Miss Ferris's fate. Refuse and I leave your lover heart to imagine what
+that fate may be. She is absolutely in my power--absolutely. Do you know
+her writing?"
+
+He smiled a little and held before Wilmot's eyes a sheet of note-paper.
+
+"She has just written it," he said, "of her own free will."
+
+Wilmot read: "I will marry you, as soon as I know that Wilmot Allen is
+out of your power and safe in life and limb."
+
+A sort of ecstasy, half anguish and half delight, thrilled through
+Wilmot. The writing was unmistakably Barbara's--and she was ready to
+make that sacrifice for him!
+
+"She sha'n't do that," he said, "so help me God. What must I do--to save
+her?"
+
+"Young man," said the legless man, "you must give me your legs."
+
+Wilmot was at first bewildered.
+
+"My legs?"
+
+"They are to be grafted on my poor old stumps," said Blizzard. "You
+won't die. You'll just be as I am now. And I--I," his eyes shone with an
+unholy light, "shall be as you are now--a biped--a real man--a giant of
+a man. You are going to consent?"
+
+"How do I know that you will let Miss Ferris go?"
+
+"You shall have news of her freedom and safety in her own writing."
+
+"When I have that assurance," said Wilmot, "I will consent to anything.
+Any decent man would give his life for a woman--why not his legs? Is Dr.
+Ferris to operate?"
+
+"He will be the chief of three surgeons."
+
+"But he won't cut off my legs. We're old friends. He--"
+
+"Won't know you in that beard. I have told him that you are a murderer
+whom I have saved from the chair. That in gratitude for this and for
+the further services of smuggling you out of the country and giving you
+a large sum of money--not forgetting the crying interests of
+science--you have consented to give me your legs. He will ask you if you
+consent to have your legs cut off, and you will nod your head without
+speaking--then when my old stumps have been prepared--you will be put
+under an anaesthetic--"
+
+"First I must know that Miss Ferris is safe."
+
+"Give me your word of honor that when you _know_ that she is--you will
+consent."
+
+"I don't know what you have to do with honor," said Wilmot, "but I give
+my word."
+
+"Then," said Blizzard, sliding to the floor, "I go to set Miss Ferris
+free."
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+At first Barbara could not bear to tell her father, but at last her
+excitement and distress became so great that she had to tell him. In a
+few hours she had changed from a radiant person to one white, sick,
+and shadowed.
+
+"I've seen that man," she said. "I was writing notes in the
+summer-house. He--"
+
+"What man--Blizzard? Well?"
+
+"I've promised to marry him. He has Wilmot Allen in his house--in his
+power. He told me that if I would marry him, he would let Wilmot go. If
+I wouldn't, he would kill him with indescribable tortures. I told him
+that I would marry him when I learned that Wilmot was safe. And so I
+will, and then I will kill myself. You've got to do something. I never
+knew till he was in this awful danger that in all the world there was
+never anybody for me but Wilmot--fool not to know it in time."
+
+Dr. Ferris made her drink something that he mixed in a glass. In a few
+minutes her jumping nerves began to come into control.
+
+[Illustration: "I've seen that man. I was writing notes in the summer
+house when he came".]
+
+"Wilmot," said he, "will never consent to save himself at your expense.
+And I think I can promise you that Blizzard will do nothing in this
+matter for some time. He is to undergo a very serious operation
+to-night. It has all been arranged. A man under obligation to
+Blizzard has consented to give his legs--I am to operate. Don't look at
+me like that, daughter. I have given my word that if I thought the thing
+could be done, I would do it. The man consents. There is no reason why I
+shouldn't. I would do more to undo what I have done, and in the
+interests of science."
+
+"You don't understand. The man who _consents_ is Wilmot."
+
+"Did Blizzard tell you so?"
+
+"Nobody has told me. I know it. He consents so that I may go free."
+
+"Of course if Wilmot is the man--"
+
+"You couldn't--you wouldn't do it to _him_, father."
+
+"And you so in love with him, my dear! We must go to the police."
+
+"No, we mustn't. He said that if we tried to play any tricks, we might
+get him, but never Wilmot, alive. Don't you see? Father, the man isn't
+fit to live. He's insane."
+
+"Answer wanted, Miss Barbara." Bubbles entered hesitatingly, a note in
+his hand.
+
+One glance at the superscription, and Barbara ripped open the envelope.
+She read the note and her brows contracted with pain. "Read
+that, father."
+
+Dr. Ferris read:
+
+     DEAREST BARBS:
+
+     I can't help breaking my silence to say I love you with my
+     whole heart and soul. Only tell me that you are safe and
+     sound in your father's house. I want much to know that, for I
+     am on the brink of a great, a dangerous, and I think a noble
+     venture.
+
+     WILMOT.
+
+"What did I tell you!" she exclaimed. "Who brought this, Bubbles?"
+
+"Nobody--a messenger-boy."
+
+"Barbara," said her father, "write that you are safe at home. I'll tell
+Lichtenstein what has happened. He's our best advice. Where is Mr.
+Lichtenstein, Bubbles?"
+
+"In his room, sir, writing."
+
+Dr. Ferris left hurriedly, and Bubbles, gnawed by unsatisfied curiosity,
+stood first on one foot and then on the other while Barbara wrote to
+Wilmot. Somehow it was a very difficult note to write, for she felt sure
+that it would not be read by Wilmot's eyes alone, and she didn't wish by
+a syllable further to incite the legless man against his prisoner. So at
+last she merely wrote that she was with her father at Clovelly. What she
+wanted to write was that her love for him had grown and grown until she
+was sure of it.
+
+After Bubbles had gone with the note she sat for a long time without
+moving, silent and white.
+
+When her father returned, bringing Lichtenstein, he, too, was white. "I
+am going to town at once," he said. "God willing, I shall have only good
+news for you."
+
+Barbara turned to Lichtenstein. "You've thought out something?"
+
+He nodded gravely.
+
+[Illustration: "Read that, father"]
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+"My treasure! My ownest own!"
+
+Rose cowered from the cold malice in the legless man's voice, and from
+the unearthly subdued excitement in his eyes.
+
+"Sit there opposite me. Don't be afraid. Things are coming my way.
+To-morrow I shall have a pair of legs. Think of that! Are you
+thinking of it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+The legless man wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. "I told him,"
+he said, "that she was a prisoner in this house. He said he would give
+me his legs if I would let her go free. He wrote a note asking if she
+was safe and sound. I sent it out to her place where she was all the
+time, and of course she answered that she was safe and sound."
+
+He chuckled, and his agate eyes appeared to give off sparks.
+
+"But she," he went on, "has promised to marry me, if I will let _him_ go
+free. They love each other, Rose. They love each other! But I'm not
+jealous. It won't come to anything. First I will get his legs. Then, if
+he lives, I will make him write to her that he _is_ sound and free. I
+will tell her that he refused to sacrifice himself. That will make her
+hate him, and then we'll be married and live happily ever after. But if
+she breaks her word, why on the 15th of January she will be taken,
+wherever she is, and brought here, and we--we _won't_ be married!" He
+laughed a long, ugly laugh.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?"
+
+The legless man considered, "I'm afraid you'll be too jealous to have
+about, my pretty Rose. I'm afraid your love for me will turn into a
+different feeling--in spite of the beautiful new legs that I shall have.
+In short, my dear, knowing women as I do, you are one of my greatest
+problems. If I could be sure that you wouldn't give anything away before
+the 15th--after that it wouldn't matter."
+
+"Are you leading up to the announcement that you are going to kill me?"
+She looked him straight in the eyes, and began to shiver as if she was
+very cold.
+
+"Wouldn't that be best," he asked, "for everybody concerned?"
+
+"I swear to God I won't give anything away," she said.
+
+He continued to smile in her face. "I could do it for you," he said, "so
+delicately--so painlessly--with my hands--and your troubles would be
+all over."
+
+He took her slender white neck between the palms of his great hairy
+hands and caressed it. She did not shrink from his touch.
+
+"Rose," he said presently and with the brutal and tigerish quality gone
+from his voice, "you're brave. But I know women too well. I don't trust
+you. If you'd screamed then or shown fear in any way, you'd be dead
+now. After the 15th you shall do what you please with your life.
+Meanwhile, my dear, lock and key for yours."
+
+"You'll come to see me sometimes?"
+
+"After to-night, I shall be laid up for a while, growing a pair of legs.
+Later I'll look in, now and then. How about a little music, before you
+retire to your room for the next few months? I'll tell you a secret. I'm
+nervous about to-night, and frightened. A little Beethoven? to soothe
+our nerves? the Adagio from the Pathétique?"
+
+He stumped beside her, holding her hand as a child holds that of its
+nurse; but for a different reason.
+
+That night, securely locked in her own room next to his, she slept at
+last from sheer weariness. And she dreamed that he was playing to her,
+for her--the Adagio, and then the "Funeral March of a Hero."
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Occasionally now, for a long time, there had been coming from the next
+room the dink of steel against steel, a murmur of hushed voices, and a
+sound of several pairs of feet moving softly. With the exception of two
+cups of soup, Wilmot, in preparation for what he was to undergo, had had
+nothing to eat. What with this and the natural commotion of revolt in
+his whole nervous system, he was weak and faint.
+
+The door opened, and Dr. Ferris came quietly into the room and bent over
+him. He was in white linen from head to foot, and wore upon his hands a
+pair of thin rubber gloves, glistening with the water in which they had
+been boiling.
+
+Prepared to find Wilmot, he naturally recognized him, in spite of the
+beard which so changed the young man's face for the worse; but of this
+recognition he gave no sign. The legless man, alert for any possibility
+of self-betrayal on Wilmot's part, had followed him into the room. Dr.
+Ferris spoke very quickly:
+
+"My man," he said, "is it true that of your own free will, in exchange
+for immunity and other benefits received, you consent to the amputation
+of both your legs, as near the hip-joint as may be found necessary?"
+
+Wilmot drew a long breath, focussed his mind upon bright memories of
+Barbara, and slowly nodded.
+
+"You are quite sure? You are holding back nothing? There has been no
+coercion?"
+
+"It's all right," chirped in Blizzard. "Glad of the chance to pay me
+back, aren't you, my boy?"
+
+For a moment Wilmot's eyes rested with a cold contempt on the beggar's.
+And he thought, "to save her from that!" and once more nodded.
+
+"Shall I tell them to bring the ether, doctor?"
+
+Dr. Ferris turned his head slowly.
+
+"What are _you_ doing here?" he said, in his smiling professional voice.
+"You ought to be undressed, scrubbed, and ready for the anaesthetic
+yourself."
+
+"But I thought--I thought you'd make sure of the legs first, before you
+did anything to me."
+
+"The success of graftage," said the doctor, "lies in the speed with
+which the parts to be grafted can be transferred from one patient to the
+other. In this case, the two operations will proceed at the same
+time--side by side. There are four of us, and two nurses to do what is
+necessary--now if you will go and get ready."
+
+"Frankly, doctor, do you think the chances of success are good?"
+
+Dr. Ferris's voice rang out heartily. "Splendid!" he said, "splendid!"
+He turned once more to Wilmot. "I am sorry for you," he said kindly,
+"but you are willing that we should go ahead, aren't you?"
+
+Blizzard stood, hesitating.
+
+"Not losing your nerve?" asked the surgeon, and there was the least hint
+of mockery in his voice.
+
+"Hope this is the last time I have to walk on stumps," Blizzard
+answered, and he began to move toward the door.
+
+"I hope so, too, Blizzard," said Dr. Ferris, "with all my heart." And
+with an encouraging nod to Wilmot he followed the beggar out of the
+room, and closed the door behind him.
+
+In the operating quarter were two nurses on whom Dr. Ferris had been
+able to rely for many years, and three clean-cut young surgeons, in whom
+he had detected more than ordinary talents.
+
+"He said he'd send word when he was ready," said one of the nurses.
+
+"Good," said Dr. Ferris, "for I have a few words to say to you all,
+knowing that, because of the etiquette of our profession, these words
+will not go any further."
+
+For five minutes he spoke quietly and gravely. He told them his
+relations with Blizzard since the beginning. And something of Blizzard's
+relations, subsequent to the loss of his legs, with the rest of the
+world. Then he explained the operation which he was _expected_ to
+perform, enlarging upon both its chances for success and for failure.
+And then, much to the astonishment of his audience, he brought his talk
+to an end with these words:
+
+"But in this instance the operation has no chance whatever of success.
+The stump of a limb amputated in childhood does not keep pace with the
+rest of the body-growth. And we should be trying to graft the legs of a
+grown man upon the hips of a child. It seems, therefore, that I have
+brought you here under false pretenses. Technically I am going to commit
+a crime--I am going to perform an operation not thought of or sanctioned
+by the patient. But my conscience is clear. When I examined the child
+Blizzard after he had been run over, I did not give the attention which
+would be given nowadays to minor injuries, bruises, and contusions which
+he had sustained. From all accounts the boy was a good boy up to the
+time of his accident. In taking off his legs I have blamed myself for
+the whole of his subsequent downfall. I think I have been wrong. The man
+was once arrested for a crime, and freed on police perjury. During his
+incarceration, however, accurate measurements and a description of him
+were made. Only to-day a copy of this document has been shown to me, by
+a gentleman high in the secret service. And it seems that Blizzard is
+differentiated from other legless men, by a mole under one arm, and by a
+curious protuberance on the back of his head--and I believe that his
+moral delinquency is not owing to the despair and humiliation of being a
+cripple, but to skull-pressure upon the brain."
+
+The three young surgeons looked at each other. One of them started to
+voice a protest.
+
+"But, doctor--it's--you're asking a good deal of us. I don't know that I
+personally--"
+
+Three knocks sounded quietly on a door of the room. Dr. Ferris, breaking
+into a smile of relief, sprang to open it.
+
+In the rectangle appeared Lichtenstein; he was dripping wet from head
+to foot and carried in one hand a heavy blue automatic.
+
+"'Fraid you couldn't make it," exclaimed the surgeon.
+
+"Had to dynamite a safe down in the cellar--hear anything?"
+
+Dr. Ferris shook his head, and turned to the others.
+
+"Mr. Lichtenstein," he said, "of the secret service ... Lichtenstein,
+some of these youngsters don't want to mix up in this. Tell
+them things."
+
+Lichtenstein smiled broadly. "Then I'll have to operate," he said. And
+he lifted his pistol ostentatiously. "Young men," he went on, "if you
+aren't willing to make a decent citizen of Blizzard, why I must arrest
+him, and send him to the chair, or if he resists arrest, I must make a
+decent dead man of him--"
+
+In the distance there rose suddenly the powerful cries of the legless
+man. "All ready," he cried, "bring on your ether."
+
+"Who's going to help me?" asked Dr. Ferris.
+
+The three young surgeons stepped quickly forward.
+
+"Good," said Dr. Ferris. "He's strong as a bull. You come with me,
+Jordyce, and you two wait within hearing just outside the door."
+
+"One moment," said Lichtenstein, "where's young Allen?"
+
+"In there," said Dr. Ferris.
+
+"I'll just introduce myself," said the Jew, "and tell him what's up. He
+must be in a most unpleasant state of mind."
+
+To Wilmot there appeared the figure of a little stout man with red hair
+and a pug nose, who was dripping wet, and who smiled in an
+engaging fashion.
+
+"You're safe as you'd be in your own house," said the kindly Jew; "no
+ether--no amputation--no nothing. And here's a note from Miss Barbara.
+I'm dripping wet, but I guess the ink hasn't run so's you can't
+read it."
+
+Wilmot read his note, and a great light of happiness came into his eyes,
+
+"After a while," said Lichtenstein, "I'll hunt up more clothes for you,
+and you can jump into a car and run out to Clovelly. Don't let Miss
+Barbara see you in that beard, though."
+
+"I won't," said Wilmot. "Tell me what's happened. Has Blizzard been
+arrested? You're--"
+
+"I'm Abe Lichtenstein--"
+
+"Good Lord!" exclaimed Wilmot, "if I'd only gone straight to you--"
+
+"If you had you might never have known that Beauty would have married
+the Beast--just to save young Mr. Allen pain. But why come to me?"
+
+"With information from Harry West. He had run the whole conspiracy down.
+It seems--"
+
+"Names--did he give names?"
+
+"Yes--unbelievable names."
+
+Lichtenstein's eyes narrowed with excitement.
+
+In the next room there arose suddenly the sound of many feet shuffling,
+as if men were carrying a heavy weight, and presently the smell of ether
+began to come to them through the key-hole. And they heard groans, and a
+dull, passionless voice that spoke words of blasphemy and obscenity.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+It was rare in Dr. Ferris's experience to see a man, after an operation,
+come so quickly to his senses. It was to be accounted for by perfect
+health and a powerful mind. The patient lay on his side, because of the
+wound on the back of his head, and into his eyes, glazed and
+ether-blind, there came suddenly light and understanding, and memory.
+Memory brought the sweat to his forehead in great beads.
+
+"Is it over?" he asked quickly. "Have you done the trick?"
+
+"It couldn't be done."
+
+"When did you find that out?"
+
+"I knew it before you went under ether."
+
+"Then you haven't mutilated young Allen?"
+
+"No."
+
+The legless man's eyes closed, and he smiled, and for perhaps a minute
+dozed. He awoke saying: "Thank God for that." A moment later: "I'm all
+knocked out of time--what have you done to me?"
+
+"I took the liberty of freeing your brain from pressure--result of an
+old accident. It can only do you good. It was hurting your mind more
+and more."
+
+"I'd like to sleep, but I have the horrors."
+
+"What sort of horrors?"
+
+"Remorse--remorse," said the legless man in a strong voice.
+
+Dr. Ferris was trembling with excitement.
+
+"But thank God my deal against Allen didn't go through. That's something
+saved out of the burning. Where is Rose? I want Rose."
+
+"Rose?"
+
+"I remember. I locked her up--in that room. The key's in the bureau top
+drawer, left. I'd like her to sit by me. I want to go to sleep. I want
+to forget. Time enough to remember when I'm not sick.... That you, Rose?
+Sit by me and hold my hand, there's a dear. If I need anything she'll
+call you, doctor. Just leave us alone, will you?"
+
+He clung to the hand, as a child clings to its mother's hand; and there
+was a tenderness and trust in the clasp that thrilled the girl to
+her heart.
+
+"Say _you_ forgive me, Rose." His voice was wheedling.
+
+She leaned forward and kissed him.
+
+"We got a lot to live down, Rose. Don't say we can't do it. Wait till
+I'm up and around, and strong."
+
+He fell asleep, breathing quietly. Two hours later he woke. Rose had not
+moved.
+
+"We'll begin," he said, "at once by getting married. I've dreamed it all
+out. And we'll set up home in a far place. That is, if _they'll_ give me
+a chance. But I've never asked you--Rose, will you marry me?"
+
+"Do you want me?" She leaned forward and rested her cheek against his.
+
+"Do you understand?" he said. "We're beginning all over. You can't undo
+things that you've done; but you can start out and do the other kind of
+things and strike some sort of a balance--not before man maybe--but in
+your own conscience. That's something. I want to talk to Ferris. Call
+him, will you, and leave us."
+
+"Doctor, was everything I _was_ bone pressure? Ever get drunk?"
+
+Dr. Ferris nodded gravely. "In extreme youth," he said.
+
+"Well, you know how the next day you remember some of the things you
+did, and half remember others, and have the shakes and horrors all
+around, and make up your mind you'll never do so and so again? That's
+me--at this moment. But the past I'm facing is a million times harder to
+face than the average spree. It covers years and years. It's black as
+pitch. I don't recall any white places. Everything that the law of man
+forbids I've done, and everything that the law of God forbids. I won't
+detail. It's enough that I know. Some wrongs I can put finger to and
+right; others have gone their way out of reach, out of recovery. Maybe I
+don't sound sorry enough? I tell you it takes every ounce of courage
+I've got to remember my past, and face it. Was it all bone pressure? Am
+I really changed? Am I accountable for what I did? Was it I that did
+wicked things right and left, or was it somebody else that did 'em?
+Another thing, is the change permanent? Am I a good man now, or am I
+having some sort of a fit? Fetch me a hand-glass off the bureau,
+will you?"
+
+Blizzard looked at himself in the mirror.
+
+"Seems to me," he said, "I've changed. Seems to me I don't look so
+much--like hell, as I did. What do you think?"
+
+"I think, Blizzard," said Dr. Ferris, "that when you were run over as a
+child you hurt your head. I think that even if I hadn't cut off your
+legs you would have grown up an enemy of society. I think that up to the
+time of your accident, and since you have come out of ether just now,
+are the only two periods in your life when you have been sane, and
+accountable for your actions. Between these two periods, as I see it,
+you were insane--clever, shrewd--all that--but insane nevertheless. I
+think this--I _know_ it. Even the expression of your face has changed.
+You look like an honest man, a man to be trusted, an able man, a kind
+man, the kind of man you were meant to be--a good man."
+
+"You really think that?"
+
+"It isn't what I think, after all; it's what _you_ feel. Do you wish to
+be kind to people--friends with them? To do good?"
+
+"That is the way I feel _now_. But, doctor--will it last?"
+
+"It's got to last. Blizzard. And you've got to stop talking."
+
+"But will they give me a chance? Lichtenstein could send me to the chair
+if he wanted to."
+
+"He won't do that. He will _understand_."
+
+"I should like Miss Barbara to feel kindly toward me."
+
+"She will. I hope that your mind has changed about her, too?"
+
+"That," said Blizzard, "is between me and my conscience. Whatever I feel
+toward her will never trouble her again."
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+With O'Hagan dead and Blizzard turned penitent, the bottom of course
+fell clean out of the scheme to loot Maiden Lane and the Sub-Treasury.
+But the work of Lichtenstein and his agents had not been in vain. Like
+the man in the opera Lichtenstein had a little "list." The
+lieutenant-governor soon retired into private life. He gave out that he
+wished to devote the remainder of his life to philanthropic enterprises.
+The police commissioner resigned, owing to ill health. Others who had
+counted too many unhatched chicks went into bankruptcy. Some thousands
+of discontents in the West who had been promised lucrative work in New
+York, about January 15th, were advised to stick to their jobs, and to
+keep their mouths shut. The two blind cripples who had delved for so
+many years in Blizzard's cellars were brought up into the light and
+cared for. Miss Marion O'Brien went home to England with an unusually
+large pot of savings, and married a man who spent these and beat her
+until she had thoroughly paid the penalty for all her little
+dishonesties and treacheries. It was curious that all the little people
+in the plot received tangible punishments, while the big people seemed
+to go scot-free. Blizzard, for instance.
+
+No sooner recovered from the operation on the back of his head than the
+creature was up and doing. In straightening out his life and affairs he
+displayed the energy of a steam-boiler under high pressure and a
+colossal cheerfulness.
+
+His first act was to marry Rose; his second to let it be known
+throughout the East Side that he was no longer marching in the forefront
+of crime. This ultimatum started a procession of wrongdoers to Marrow
+Lane. They came singly, in threes and fours, humble and afraid; men of
+substance, gun-men, the athletic, the diseased, fat crooks, thin crooks,
+saloon-keepers and policemen, Italians and Slavs, short noses and long
+(many--many of them), two clergymen, two bankers, sharp-eyed children,
+married women who were childless, unmarried women who weren't--and all
+these came trembling and with but the one thought: "Is he going to tell
+what he knows about us?"
+
+He was not. Some he bullied a little, for habit is strong; some he
+treated with laughter and irony, some with wit, and some with kindness
+and deep understanding. He might have been an able shepherd going to
+work on a hopelessly numerous black and ramshackle flock of sheep. He
+couldn't expect to make model citizens out of all his old heelers; he
+couldn't expect to turn more than fifty per cent of his two clergymen
+into the paths of righteousness. But with the young criminals he took
+much pains, giving money where it would do good, and advice whether it
+would do good or not. Among the first to come to him was Kid Shannon.
+
+"Now look a-here," said the Kid, "I bin good and bad by turns till I
+don't know which side is top side. But this minute I'm good--d'you get
+me? If you want to jail me you kin do it, nobody easier; but don't do
+it! You was always a bigger man than me, and when you led I
+followed--for a real man had rather follow a strong bad man than a good
+slob any day. You out of the lead, I got nothing to follow but me own
+wishes, and they're all to the good these days."
+
+"A woman?" said Blizzard sternly.
+
+"She ain't a woman yet," said the Kid, "and she ain't a kid--she's about
+half-past girl o'clock, and she thinks there's no better man in the
+United States than always truly yours, Kid Shannon. I got a good saloon
+business, and nothing crooked on hand but what's past and done with, and
+I looks to you to give a fellow a chance. Do I get it? Jail ain't goin'
+to help me, and it would break her. Look here, sport: I _want_ to
+be good."
+
+"Kid," said Blizzard, "no man that _wants_ to be good need be afraid of
+me. You'd have been a good boy always--if it hadn't been for me. _I_
+know that as well as you. I've got the past all written down in my head.
+I can't rub it out. But any man that's got the nerve can put new writing
+across and across the old, until the old can't be read, or if it could
+would read like a joke. You can tell whomsoever it concerns to do well
+and fear nothing. At first I thought to tell Lichtenstein every first
+and last thing that I knew about this city, and he tried to make me
+tell. We had a meeting, Old Abe and I did. I was always afraid of the
+little Jew, Kid. Well, face to face, I wasn't. He talked, and I talked.
+And I was the stronger. He lets me go scot-free, and I don't tell
+anything. If others get you for what you've done, it can't be helped.
+But none of you'll be got through me. The past is buried; but if in the
+future any of you fellows start anything, and I hear of it--look out"
+
+Kid Shannon wriggled uncomfortably. "Say," he said, "what changed you?"
+
+"I'm not changed," said Blizzard; "according to Dr. Ferris I'm just
+acting natural. I was a good boy. I had a fracture of the skull. The
+bone pressed on my gray matter and made me a bad man. I'll tell you a
+funny thing: _I can't beat the box any more!_ I had a go at it the other
+day, the missus all ready to work the pedals, and Lord help me there was
+no more music in my head or my fingers than there is in the liver of a
+frog. It was the same when I was a two-legged little kid--no music."
+
+"Are you going to close the old diggings?"
+
+Blizzard shook his head. "Yes and no. I'm going to pull down the old
+rookery; and I'm going to put up in its place a model factory."
+
+"Hats?"
+
+"Hats and maybe other things. I'm going to show New York how to run a
+sweatshop--you wait and see--the most wages and the least sweat--and the
+girls happier and safer than in their own homes. The missus and I were
+planning to bolt to a new place and begin life all over. That was
+foolish. I'd always feel like a coward. Don't forget that old friends
+meditating new crimes will be welcome at the office--advice always given
+away, money sometimes and sometimes help. Pass the word around--and when
+you and Miss Half-past Girl send out your cards don't forget me and Mrs.
+Blizzard in Marrow Lane."
+
+He leaned forward, his eyes very bright and mischievous.
+
+"Kid," he said, "artistically and dramatically, it's a pity."
+
+"What's a pity?"
+
+"That we didn't loot Maiden Lane before we got religion. If there was
+any hitch in the plan, I don't know what it was. And, Lord, I _was_ so
+set on the whole thing--not because I wanted the loot, but to see if it
+could be done. Some of you always said it couldn't--said there was a
+joker in the pack. Well, we'll never know now. And here's Mrs. O'Farrall
+come to pass the time of day--Good-by, Kid, so-long, pass the word
+around. Good luck--love and best wishes to Half-past! Mrs. O'Farrall,
+your kitchen extends under the sidewalk; the more negotiable of your
+delicatessen are cooked on city property."
+
+"And 'twill be me ruin to have it found out. What I came for--"
+
+"Was to find out what I'm going to do about it. Well, the law that
+you're breaking isn't hurting the city a bit, Mrs. O'Farrall--I wish I
+could say the same for your biscuits. If you're reported, come to me and
+I'll see you through. How's Morgan the day?"
+
+"The same as to-morrow, thank ye kindly--dhrunk and philanderin'."
+
+"I'll send him a pledge to sign with my compliments, Mrs. O'Farrall, and
+a good job at the same time."
+
+"He'll never sign the pledge."
+
+"Not if I ask him to, Mrs. O'Farrall, ask him on bended knee?"
+
+Mrs. O'Farrall looked frightened, apoplectic, and confused. Blizzard
+lifted his heavy eyebrows, then a smile began to brighten his face.
+
+"Mrs. O'Farrall," said he, "blessings on your old red face! For just
+this minute for the first time since I lost them, the fact that I have
+no knees to bend escaped me. Your religion teaches you that the Lord is
+good to the repentant sinner. Madam, he is!" And then he began to call
+in a loud voice:
+
+"Rose--Rose, run down a minute. I clean forgot that I hadn't any legs."
+
+She came, fresh, young, and lovely. What if she had played the
+traitor--thrown her cap over the wind-mills? These things are not
+serious matters to her sex--when the men they love are kind. And then
+Lichtenstein had forgiven her, and pretended to box her ears--and then
+she had had enough tragedy and jealousy crowded into a few months to
+atone for greater crimes and lapses than hers.
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+"I understand," said Blizzard sternly, "that when you learned I was your
+father, you refused to proceed further against me."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Bubbles.
+
+"You did wrong! Always do your duty. It was your duty to send me to the
+chair, if you could. A fine father I'd been to you--and to Harry--and a
+good honest man I was to your mother! My boy, I'm face to face with the
+penalty that I have to pay--you. I know all about you, Bubbles, from
+Lichtenstein, from Dr. Ferris, from Wilmot Allen and--and others. And
+you're a good boy. I drove your mother crazy, I let you drift into the
+streets--to sink, I thought, and perish; but you're a good boy. I gave
+you no education, but you have picked up reading and writing and God
+knows what else. Once I was going to wring your neck. I didn't. That's
+the only favor you ever had at my hands. You'll grow up to be a good
+man--a fine, clever, understanding man. And it won't be because of me,
+it will be in spite of me. This is the hardest thing I have to face.
+You've come now to pay a duty call. Well, my boy, I'm obliged. But I
+wish to Heaven I had some hold on your affection, some way of getting a
+hold. Bubbles, what can I do to make you like me?"
+
+Bubbles wriggled with awful discomfort, but said nothing.
+
+"Is it because of your mother that you can't ever like me?"
+
+Bubbles drew a long breath as if for a deep dive. His voice shook. "She
+lives in a bug-house," he said; "you drove her into it. Dr. Ferris says
+you were crazy yourself and nothing you ever done ought to be held
+against you. He says, and Miss Barbara, she says, that I ought to try to
+like you and feel kind to you. And--and I thought it was my duty to come
+and tell you that I just can't."
+
+He was only a little boy, and the delivery of these plain truths to a
+man he had always held in deadly dread unmanned him. He gave one short,
+wailing, whimpering sob, and then bit his lips until he had himself in a
+sort of control.
+
+"That's all right, Bubbles," said the legless man after a pause. "It
+hits hard, but it's all right. And whether you said it or not, it was
+coming to me, and I knew it. Do you mind if I send you books and things
+now and then? There was a book I had when I was a boy. I'd like you to
+have it. Don't know what reminds me of it--unless it's you. It's the
+story of a Frenchman, Bayard--they called him the chevalier _sans peur
+et sans reproche_. That's French. The book tells what it means. You
+better go now. I'm talking against time. I haven't got the same control
+of my nerves I used to have. I'm all broken up, my boy. But you're dead
+right--dead right. I say so, and I think so. You're to go to
+boarding-school. That's good. They won't teach _you_ any evil."
+
+He did not offer his hand, and the boy was glad.
+
+"Well, good-by," he said uneasily, reached the door, turned, and came
+back a little way. "Wish you good luck," he said.
+
+Blizzard lowered his formidable head almost reverently. "Thank you," he
+said.
+
+Poor Bubbles, he began to whistle before he was out of the building; it
+wasn't from heartlessness, it was from pure discomfort and remorse.
+Anyway, his father heard the shrill piping--and he sat and looked
+straight ahead of him, and his face was as that of Satan fallen--fallen,
+and hell fires licked into the marrow of his bones.
+
+So Rose found him, and flung herself upon his breast with a cry of
+yearning, and his heavy sorrowed head nestled closer and closer to hers,
+and he burst suddenly into a great storm of weeping.
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+But the legless man was not one who easily or often gave way to grief.
+He retained all of that will-power which had made him so potent for
+evil, and he used it now to force cheerfulness out of discouragement and
+sorrow. Just what he proposed to do with his life is difficult to
+expose, for his plans kept changing, as almost all plans do, in the
+working out.
+
+His remodelled factory will serve for an example. It began as a place in
+which the East Side maiden could earn enough money to keep body and soul
+together without scotching either. Still keeping to this idea, Blizzard
+kept brightening conditions, and letting in light--figuratively and
+actually. And he proved that short hours, high pay, and worth-while
+profits may be made to keep company. It all depends on how much
+willingness and efficiency are crowded into the short hours. Employment
+in Blizzard's factory became a distinction, like membership in an
+exclusive club, and carried with it so many privileges of comfort and
+self-respect that the employees couldn't very well help being efficient.
+
+Blizzard's office, where he held the threads of many enterprises, became
+a sort of clearing-house for East Side troubles. He kept free certain
+hours during which, sitting for all the world like a judge, he listened
+to private affairs, and sympathizing, scolding, wheedling, and even
+bullying, he gave advice, gave money, found work, brought about
+reconciliations, and turned hundreds of erring feet into the straight
+and narrow path. He preached, and very eloquently, the gospel of
+common-sense. For every crisis in people's lives, he seemed to remember
+a parallel. And his knowledge, especially of criminalities and the
+workings of crooked minds, seemed very marvellous to those who sought
+him out. And he was an easy man to speak truth to, for there were very
+few wicked things that he had not done himself. It is easier to confess
+theft to a thief than to a man of virtue, and the resulting advice may
+very well be just the same.
+
+His energy and activity were endless. "It's just as hard work," he told
+Rose, "to do good in the world as to do evil. I haven't changed my
+methods, only my conditions and ideals. You've got to get the confidence
+of the people you're working for, and to get that you've got to know
+more about them than they know about themselves. To know that a man has
+murdered, gives you power over that man; to know that another man has
+done something fine and manly, gives you a hold on that man. Real men
+are ashamed of having two things found out about them--their secret bad
+actions, and their secret good actions. Men who do good for the sake of
+notoriety aren't real men."
+
+"I know who's a real man," said Rose.
+
+He regarded her with much tenderness and amusement. "Rose," he said,
+"there's one thing I'm keen to know."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you give an honest answer?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Well then, do you like me as much as you did when I used to maltreat
+you and bully you and threaten you? Or do you like me more, or do you
+like me less?"
+
+"It's just the same," she said, "only that then I was unhappy all the
+time, and now all the time I'm happy."
+
+"Were you unhappy because I wasn't kind?"
+
+She laughed that idea to scorn. "I was unhappy because you liked
+somebody else more than me."
+
+The amusement went out of Blizzard's face; the tenderness remained.
+There was one thing that he was determined to do with his life, and that
+was to make Rose a good husband. And he was very fond of her, and she
+could make him laugh, but it wasn't going to be very easy, as long as
+the image of another girl persisted in haunting him.
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+When Wilmot Allen left Blizzard's house, he went direct to a
+barber-shop, where he remained for three hundred years. During this
+period, he lost his beard and thereby regained his self-respect. It took
+him a hundred years to reach the Grand Central, and a thousand more to
+get from there to Clovelly.
+
+"I got your telegram," said Barbara.
+
+"When?" he asked anxiously.
+
+She broke into a sudden smile. "Oh," she said, "about fourteen hundred
+years ago."
+
+"Barbara," he said, "that's a miracle! If you'd said thirteen hundred or
+fifteen hundred it would have been guessing, but fourteen hundred is the
+exact time that has passed since I telegraphed."
+
+"Have you had breakfast?"
+
+"No," he said, "I didn't have time."
+
+They strolled through the familiar house, talking nonsense. They were
+almost too glad to see each other, for there was now no longer any
+question of Barbara making up her mind. It had been made up for her, and
+Wilmot knew this somehow without being told. But when had the definite
+change come?--that change which made her caring for Wilmot different
+from all her other carings? She could not say.
+
+He had dreaded telling her about Harry West's death. And when he had
+done so he watched her grave face with appealing eyes. Presently she
+smiled a little.
+
+"I'm _not_ heartless," she said, "but I'm going to keep on forgetting
+all the times when there was anybody but you. I expect most girls do a
+lot of shilly-shallying before they are sure of themselves."
+
+"And you are really sure of yourself?"
+
+"Yes, Wilmot, if I'm sure of you."
+
+"The first thing," he said, "is to look into these mining properties
+we've fallen heir to. West wasn't the kind of man to be easily fooled;
+at the same time I myself have learned something about mines."
+
+"For instance?" Her face was very mischievous.
+
+"Well," he said, "for instance, I have learned that there are mines
+_and_ mines. And you know, Barbs dear, I'm not eligible yet. I owe
+money, I haven't made good at anything, and I've got to--first of all.
+Haven't I?"
+
+"Are you going to sit right there and tell me that we're not to be
+married until you've paid your debts and made a fortune? Where do I come
+in? What life have I to lead except yours? If you are in debt, so am I.
+If you've got to dig holes in the ground, so have I. Whatever has got to
+be done, we've got to do it together. So much is clear. Of course it
+would be _easier_ for you!"
+
+A little later he asked her what she was going to do with her head of
+Blizzard.
+
+"Nothing," she said. "If it is good enough, it will survive these
+troubled times. If it isn't, somebody will break it up."
+
+"Are you through with art?"
+
+"What have I to do with art?" she said. "I'm in love. I used to think
+that women ought to have professions and all. But there's only one thing
+that a woman can do supremely well--and that's to make a home for a man.
+That will take all that she has in her of art and heart and ambition and
+delicacy. Of course if a girl is denied the opportunity of making a
+home, she can paint and sculp and thump the piano and get her name in
+the papers. What I want to know is--when do _we_ start West?"
+
+"You've offered to take me just as I am, with all my encumbrances, and
+to help me fight things through to a good finish. And I think that is
+pure folly on your part. But there's going to be no more folly on mine.
+I'm going to be a fool. Barbs--come here!"
+
+He held out his arms, and she threw herself into them.
+
+"Is to-morrow too soon, Barbs?"
+
+"We could hardly arrange things sooner, but to my mind to-morrow is not
+nearly soon enough."
+
+"What will your father say?"
+
+"Why, if he's the father I think he is he'll bless us and wish us good
+luck. There'll be an awful lot to do. Hadn't we better jump into a car,
+run over to Greenwich, and get married? That will be just so much off
+our minds."
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+The young Allens began their new life by plunging themselves still
+deeper in debt. Their honeymoon was very short. They spent it on Long
+Island Sound in a yacht which Wilmot borrowed over the telephone, just
+before they left Clovelly to be married. On the sixth day they went
+West. In Salt Lake City they foregathered with a mining engineer to whom
+Wilmot had secured letters. This one fell in love with Barbara, closed
+his office and went with them into the hills for ten days. They came out
+of the hills with brown faces and sparkling eyes. The engineer opened
+his office and dictated his report of their mines to his stenographer.
+During this work of enthusiasm he occasionally sighed, and the
+stenographer knit her brows.
+
+"Now then," said the engineer to Wilmot and Barbara, "if my name is any
+good in New York, you can raise all the money you need on that document.
+If you can't, telegraph, and I can raise it here."
+
+"But," said Barbara, growing very practical, "if the money can be raised
+here, why blow in two car-fares _and_ a drawing-room from here to New
+York and back?"
+
+[Illustration: The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table]
+
+"Why," the engineer stammered a little, "I thought you'd have lots and
+lots of friends that you'd want to let in on the ground floor. But if
+you haven't, and if my money is as good as another's--you see, it's
+a grand property--I'm not above longing for an interest in it myself."
+
+"I can't deny," said Wilmot, who had been worrying himself dreadfully
+about finding the means, "that this looks like easy money to me."
+
+The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table, and the young
+Allens borrowed his money from him.
+
+"I suppose," said the engineer hopefully, "that you'll run out from time
+to time to see how things are getting on?"
+
+"Run out?" exclaimed Barbara; "we are going to live with the proposition
+until it goes through or under. Aren't we, Wilmot?"
+
+"I hoped you'd feel that way about it, Barbs."
+
+"You _knew_ I would."
+
+At first they lived in a tent, and then in a series of large wooden
+boxes that they called first "The House" and then "Home." Machinery
+began to come into the camp in the wake of long strings of mules walking
+two and two. Upon the report of their special consulting engineer the
+nearest transcontinental railroad began to lay metals across the desert,
+to the mines. One day came strangers with picks and shovels, and the
+next day came more. And these began to scratch among the sage-brush and
+to explode sticks of dynamite against the faces of hills. Claims were
+staked; shanties built; a hotel with saloon attached, all of shining tin
+and tar paper, arose in the night. The first thing Barbara knew Wilmot
+began to talk of a stretch of sage-brush as Main Street. And the same
+day she heard a man with red beard speak of the little town as "Allen."
+
+One night a man was shot dead among the sage-bushes of Main Street. Six
+hours later Wilmot came in on a horse covered with lather. There was a
+stern, but not unhappy, look in his eyes.
+
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+"He showed fight," said Wilmot; "and we had to pot him."
+
+"Did you--"
+
+"Would you care? We shook hands on keeping all details secret. I think
+the town of Allen will be run orderly in the future. And by the way,
+have I such a thing as a clean shirt?"
+
+"You will have," said Barbara, "when the things dry."
+
+"Barbara!"
+
+"Yes, it had to come to it. There are only two women in town, and the
+other isn't fit to wash your shirts, dear."
+
+"Let me see your hands."
+
+He examined them critically, then kissed them uncritically.
+
+"They don't look like a washer-woman's hands yet," he said.
+
+"No," she said, "not yet. But please say they look less and less like a
+sculptor's."
+
+[Illustration: "You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry"]
+
+"Barbara," he said, "they look more and more like a dear's. But tell
+me, aren't you getting bored with it--missing New York things and
+all and all?"
+
+"No," she said stoutly, "I'm not. I'm useful here in some ways. And I
+was about as useful there as--as all the other people. I'm not even
+worried about the mines."
+
+"Neither am I. But development's a great deal slower than I thought.
+We've still plenty of money. And the moment we begin to ship ore, we'll
+have plenty of credit which is just as useful. No! I'm not worried.
+We're going to be rich, and we're going to live in a palace."
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"That _is_ worrying me. What do people do when the striving's over, and
+the sixteen hours a day hard work? What _do_ they do? Oh, Barbs, we know
+lots of such people, and we must find out exactly what they do, and--do
+something else. Living as we are living has its drawbacks; but it's not
+a place to hurry over."
+
+"It's a good way to live," said Barbara. "If you've got sense enough to
+know that it's good while it's going on. People who speak of the good
+old days, or who are always looking forward to better days, are usually
+unhappy. All the time I've been washing your clothes and mine this
+morning I kept saying, 'Now this is really _good_--this is really worth
+while,' and once when I got the better of an ink-spot, my heart began to
+beat as if I'd just finished some immortal work."
+
+They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for the
+Christmas vacation. The short fall term had already stamped him with the
+better ear-marks of the great New England boarding-schools. He was quite
+a superior person, rather prone to quotes just as if they had been facts
+out of the gospel, the sayings of Mr. This and Mr. That. And he used
+superior words, and spoke of various Kings of England as if he had
+_always_ known that such persons existed. He had in addition a
+smattering of Latin, his pride in which he strove in vain to conceal.
+And most of all he considered the school-boy captain of the foot-ball
+team a creature, on the whole, wiser and more knowing even than Abe
+Lichtenstein.
+
+But by the time he had been a week in camp he was himself again. And by
+the time he returned to school he had forgotten the ablative singular
+of Rosa.
+
+They thought best to tell him that he would have plenty of money some
+day. In view of this would he persist in being a secret service agent?
+He thought so. He wasn't sure. The service needed money often and always
+service. Had he seen his father? Yes, and he told them about the
+interview.
+
+"And," said Bubbles, "he sent me a box Thanks-giving, There was a cold
+turkey and caramels and guava jelly and ginger-snaps, and walnut meats
+and seedless raisins, and, and as Mr. Tompkins says, it doesn't do to be
+_too_ hard on a man."
+
+[Illustration: They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to
+them for Christmas vacation]
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+
+Spring came. Their mine made its first shipments of ore and was no
+longer a paper success. The balance-sheet for the first month after
+shipments had begun made Wilmot whistle. He couldn't believe the
+figures, and worked till late into the night, trying to find some
+dreadful error. Finding none, finding that with the help of others he
+had really made good at last, the rough life began to lose its savor. If
+he still owed money it could be but for a short time. He was free as
+air--free to do what he pleased--almost to spend what he pleased.
+
+"Barbs," he said, the next morning, "the mine's no good; we've got to
+tackle something else."
+
+"What do you mean, no good? Why, you said--"
+
+"I know what I said. The mine is a success. Aside from what your father
+has, you're a rich woman. And I'm a rich man. And that's the difficulty.
+There's no use working our hearts out over a thing that's a definite
+success--is there? No fun in it. We've got to look round for something
+else. Now we are always going to have money--that's certain. What are we
+going to do with it? Think of something hard--something worth while."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I can't--can you?"
+
+"No," he said almost angrily, "I can't. And that's the rotten side of
+money. That's the stumbling-block for everybody who succeeds in
+collecting a lot of it. The distribution is infinitely harder than the
+collecting. I think we'd better pull up stakes, go back to New York, and
+think hard."
+
+"Yes. Let's."
+
+"I'd like to have a talk with Blizzard."
+
+Barbara's eyebrows went high with surprise.
+
+"Why not? Your father writes that the man is doing more good right in
+New York City where it's most needed than any six philanthropists the
+place ever owned. Maybe he's got something really big in view, and maybe
+he'll let us in on the ground floor."
+
+"Well," said Barbara, "considering everything, I shouldn't care to have
+much to do with him."
+
+Wilmot put back his head and laughed aloud. "That," said he, "is
+precisely the sort of advice that I used to give you."
+
+Barbara blushed. "I'd like to forget that such a man ever came into my
+life in any way."
+
+"You can't forget it, dear. You asked him in. You _would_ do it. And now
+you can never forget. And that's one of the penalties you have to pay
+for going against the people who love you most."
+
+"Well," said she, "I'm willing to keep on paying--if the right people
+will keep on loving. Anyway, philanthropy--good works--are none of my
+business. My business, sir, is to make you a home. And with the
+exception of one person that I know about positively, the rest of the
+world can go hang."
+
+[Illustration: "And when you think," said she, "that some women spend
+the best years of their lives making _statues_!"]
+
+"That statement," said Wilmot, "sounds very pagan and profane to me
+and also very, very beautiful. But, who, may I ask, is this _other_
+person?" His brows gathered a little jealously.
+
+"This other person," said Barbara quietly, "is at the present moment a
+total stranger to us,"
+
+Then she leaned forward until her head was on his breast. And she gave a
+little sigh which was fifty per cent comfort, and fifty per cent
+courage. She could hear his heart beating like a trip-hammer. Had he
+burst into immortal eloquence, his words would have been of less
+consequence in her ear.
+
+"And when you think," said she, "that some women spend the best years of
+their lives making _statues_!"
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12557 ***