Chapter 10

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."

"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.

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--"