The Penalty Part 36

Dr. Ferris was delighted to learn that Barbara had left town. Her meetings with Blizzard had been horribly on his mind and conscience. He had dreaded some vague calamity--some intangible darkening of his darling's soul.

A few days in the country had worked wonders for her. Her skin had browned a little, and her cheeks were crimson. But dearer to the paternal heart than these evidences of good health was the fact that she seemed unusually glad to see him. She seemed to him to have lost a world of independence and self-reliance, to be inclined to accept his judgments without dispute. She seemed more womanly and more daughterly, more normal and more beautiful.

For a man with a heavy weight always upon his conscience, the excellent surgeon found himself wonderfully at peace with the world and its inst.i.tutions. There was no doubt that the hand which he had come from grafting was going to live and be of some use to its new owner. His mail was heavy with approbation. And it seemed to him that the path which he had discovered had no ending.

"In a hundred years, Barbara," he said, "it will be possible to replace anything that the body has lost, or that has become diseased and useless or a menace--not the heart, perhaps, nor the brain--but anything else.

What I have done clumsily others will do to perfection."

"What are the chances for Blizzard?"

"Even," said the surgeon. "They would be more favorable if he had not lost his legs so long ago. At the worst the experiment wouldn't kill him. He would merely have undergone a useless operation. At the best he would be able to walk, run perhaps, and look like a whole man. If anything is to be done for him, the time has come. He has only to tell me to go ahead."

"I think he'll do that," said Barbara. "But there's one thing I don't understand," and she smiled; "who is to supply the spare legs?"

"That's the least of all the difficulties," said her father, "now that ways of keeping tissues alive have been discovered and proved. In time there will be storages from which any part of the human body may be obtained on short notice and in perfect condition for grafting. Just now the idea is horrible to ignorant people, but the faith will spread. Only wait till we have made a few old people young--for that will come, too, with the new surgery."

"You will be glad," said Barbara, "to hear that I have severed friendly relations with Mr. Blizzard. He behaved in the end pretty much as you all feared he would."

And she told her father, briefly, and somewhat shamefacedly, all that had happened in the studio.

"He thought I was laughing at him," she said. "Of course I wasn't. And he came at me. Do you remember when poor old Rose went mad, and tried to get at us through the bars of the kennel? Blizzard looked like that--like a mad dog." She shuddered.

The surgeon's high spirits were dashed as with cold water.

"He ought not to be helped," said Barbara; "he ought to be shot, as Rose was."

But Dr. Ferris shook his head gravely. "If he is that sort of a man," he said, "who made him so? Who took the joy of life from him? Barbara, my dear, there is nothing that man could do that I couldn't forgive."

"And I think that your conscience is sick," said Barbara. "I used to think as you think. But if you had seen his face that day!... The one great mistake you have made has ruined not his life, but yours. If he had had the right stuff in him, calamity would not have broken him! It would have _made_ him. Give him a new pair of legs, if you can; and forget about him, as I shall. When you first told me about him, I thought we owed him anything he chose to ask. At one time I thought that if he wished it, it would be right for me to marry him."

"Barbara!"

"Yes, I did--I thought it strongly. Shows what a fool a girl who's naturally foolish can make of herself! Why, father, what if he has suffered through your mistake? That mistake turned your thoughts to the new surgery--and for the one miserable man that you have hurt you will have given the wonder of hope to the whole of mankind."

She slid her hand under her father's arm.

"Let's potter 'round the gardens," she said, "and forget our troubles.

It's bully to have you back. There's not much doing in the floral line.

The summer sun in Westchester doesn't vary from year to year. But there are lots of green things that smell good, and the asters and dahlias are making the most extraordinary promises of what they are going to do by and by."

They pa.s.sed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most formal of their many gardens, and so down through the other gardens, terrace below terrace, to the lake.

The water was so still as to suggest a solid rather than a liquid; to the west shadowy mountains of cloud charged with thunder swelled toward the zenith. The long midsummer drought was coming to an end, and all birds and insects were silent, as if tired of complaining. Across the lake one maple, turned prematurely scarlet, brought out the soft greens of the woods with an astounding accent. Directly in front of this flaming tree, a snow-white heron stood motionless upon a gray rock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: They pa.s.sed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most formal of their many gardens]

To Barbara it seemed on that day that "Clovelly" was the loveliest place in all the world, and her father, who had fashioned it out of rough farm lands, one of the world's most charming artists. "Why paint with oils, when you can draw with trees and flowers and gra.s.s and water?" she asked herself.

"In the time it took me to do Blizzard's bust," she said, "I could have planted millions of flowers and seen them bloom."

"At least," said her father, "you can finish a bust, but a garden that is finished isn't a garden. What are you going to do with it?"

"The bust? Why, sometimes I think I'll just leave it in the studio, and let it survive or perish. Sometimes I want to take a hammer and smash it to pieces."

"It didn't come out as well as you hoped?"

"Of course not. Does anything ever? But it's the best that I can do. And I shall never do anything better."

"Nonsense."

"I shall never even try. I want to recover all the things I've thrown away, and put them back in my head and heart where they belong, and just live."

"Well," said her father, smiling, "if you feel that way, why that's a good way to feel. But I'm afraid art is stronger in you than you think.

Just now you're tired and disillusionized. In a month you'll be making sketches for some monumental opus."

"If I do," said Barbara, "it will be executed here at Clovelly. I never want to leave Clovelly. I feel safe here, safe from myself and other people. I think," and she smiled whimsically, "that I should almost like to settle down and make you a good daughter."

"A good daughter," said the surgeon, "marries; and her father builds a beautiful house for her, just over the hill from his own--remember the little valley where we found all the fringed gentian one year?--and the shortest cut between the two houses is worn bare and packed hard by the feet of grandchildren. Good Lord, my dear, what's the good of art, what's the good of science? I would rather have watched you grow up than have made the Winged Victory, or discovered the circulation of the blood. Come now? Barbs, tell me, who's the young man?"

For the first time in her life she told him of the wild impulsiveness and the shocking brevity of her affections for various members of his s.e.x; naming no names she explained to him with much self-abas.e.m.e.nt (and a little amus.e.m.e.nt) that she was no good, "A nice wife I'd make!" she concluded.

But her father only laughed. "The only abnormal thing about you," he said, "is that you tell the truth. The average girl shows men more attentions than men show her. I don't mean that she demonstrates her attentions; but that she feels them in her heart. To be absolutely the first in a woman's heart a man must catch her when she's about three months old."

"But a girl," said Barbara, "who thinks she's sure and then finds she isn't, hurts the people she's fondest of. In extreme eases she breaks hearts and spoils lives."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He went away," said Barbara, her eyes troubled.]

"Hearts," said her father, "that can be broken are very weak. Lives that can be spoiled by disappointment and injured pride aren't worth preserving. If you have nothing more serious on your conscience than having, in all good faith, encouraged a few young men, found that you were wrong, and sent them away with bees in their bonnets, I'm sure I envy you."

Barbara simply shook her head.

"When you do find the right man, Barbara, you'll make up to him with showers of blessings for whatever cold rains you've shed on others....

What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?"

"He went away," said Barbara, and she sat looking steadily across the lake, her chin on her hand, her eyes troubled.

x.x.xV

In many ways the life which Barbara led at Clovelly was calculated to rest her mind. She developed a pa.s.sion for exercise, and when night came was too full of tired good health to read or talk. Since the estate was to be hers one day, she found the wish to know her way intimately about it, and since there were three thousand acres, for the most part thick forests spread over rocky hills, she could contemplate weeks of delightful explorations. To discover ponds, brooks, and caves that belong to other people has its delights, but to go daily up and down a lovely country discovering lovely things that belong to yourself is perhaps the most delightful way of pa.s.sing time that has been vouchsafed to any one.

On these explorations Barbara's chosen companion was Bubbles. He was no longer a mere b.u.t.tons: her interest and belief in the child had pa.s.sed beyond the wish to see him develop into a good servant. She wished to make something better of him--or if there is nothing better than a good servant, something more showy and ornamental.

He was sharp as a needle; and he was honest. He was not too old to be moulded by good influences, schools, and a.s.sociations into a man with proper manners, and an upper-cla.s.s command of the English language. He should go to one of the New England church schools, later to college, then he should choose a career for himself and be helped into harness.

So she planned his future. In the meanwhile she wished to see the thin, spindly body catch up with the big, intelligent head. Although his muscles were tough and wiry he had a delicate look which troubled her, and a cough which to her inexperienced and anxious ears suggested a consumptive tendency.