The Penalty Part 30

"Yes."

"Do you love me?"

Slowly, like two things in anguish, her eyes turned from their steady gazing into his. And, "I dare not say it," she said, "but I will go with you--and try."

They were aware of something pressing toward them, and turning with a common resentment against interruption, they found themselves looking down upon the legless man.

"Just dropped in to say good-by and wish you good luck," he said.

His face wore a good-natured smile, and, quite innocent of self-consciousness, brought confusion upon their last moments together.

The tentacles of unreasoning pa.s.sion that each had been putting forth were beaten down by it and aside.

"Better get a move on--time's up."

"Good-by, Wilmot," said Barbara swiftly. "Everything's all right. Good luck to you and G.o.d bless you."

She turned, her lovely head drooping, and walked swiftly away.

A young man took off his hat and held it in his hands until she had pa.s.sed. He had been watching her and Wilmot, and incidentally the legless man, for the last ten minutes. He hoped that she would look up and speak to him, but her mind was given singly to sorrow. And she went through the station to the street without knowing if it was crowded or deserted. Harry West's sad eyes followed her until she was out of sight.

Then with a sort of wrench he turned once more to observe the actions of the legless man. This one, however, having said cheerful good-bys to the sulky and heartsick Wilmot, and having at the same time noted the obtrusive nearness of the secret-service agent, had made swift use of his crutches and stumps and was at the moment climbing into a waiting taxicab.

Whatever West's opinion may have been, Blizzard was making a sufficiently innocent disposition of time. He had prevented an elopement, perhaps. And he was on his way to a prominent florist to fill his cab with flowers for the evening's entertainment.

He was in a curiously shy and nervous state of mind. There was perhaps no man living whose hands were more nearly at home upon the key-board of a piano, or whose mind was more disdainful of other people's opinions.

But of the fact that he was suffering from incipient stage fright there could be no doubt whatever. Would this inoculate his playing, keep the soul out of it? Or worse, would it cause him to strike wrong notes, and even to forget whole pa.s.sages, so that his guests, and of course Barbara, would go away in the impression that they had heard a boastful person make an a.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sistance--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 l.u.s.t money and a gla.s.s 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 n.o.bly to his a.s.sault. 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, pa.s.sionate, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara]

Blythe could have sworn that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara.