Chapter 18

"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?"

"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."