Chapter 5

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."

"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."