Chapter 12

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.

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.