The Penalty Part 7

When Barbara at length told the legless man that he might rest, he appeared to think that she had invited him to converse. He leaned back as far as he could in the deal chair. His expression was no longer that which had struck Barbara so hard in the imagination, but one of easy and alert affability. He looked at her when he spoke, or when she spoke, but casually and without offence. Whatever feelings surged in him were for the moment carefully controlled and put aside. In his manner was neither obtrusiveness nor servility, only a kind of well-schooled ease and directness. In short, he behaved and spoke like a gentleman.

"You're the first person I ever sat for," he said, "who hasn't asked me how I lost my legs."

Barbara, regarding the rough blocking of his head which she had made, smiled amiably. That first impression of him, still vivid and lucid in her mind, appeared already, almost of its own accord, to have registered itself in the lump of clay. And she could not but feel that she had laid the groundwork of a masterpiece. If the beggar wished to converse, she would converse--anything to keep him in the mood for returning to pose as often as she should have need of him. And so, though entirely absorbed by the face which she had found, and at the moment almost uncharitably indifferent to the legs which he had lost, she raised her eyes to him, still smiling, and said:

"It wasn't from want of interest, I a.s.sure you. I'm sorry you lost them, and I should like to know how it happened."

"Bravely spoken," said the beggar.

"I have been told," said Barbara, "that you are a great power in the East Side, a sort of overlord."

"Even a beggar has flatterers. They overrate me." The accompanying shrug of his great shoulders had an affectation of humility. "Now, if I had a pair of legs--but I haven't. And if I had I shouldn't be an East-Sider.

For the maimed, the crippled, the diseased, it is pleasantest to be in residence on the East Side. You have company. You may forget your own misfortunes in contemplating the greater misfortunes of others."

"Do you mind telling me," she asked, "where you learned your English?"

"My father," Blizzard explained, "was rather a distinguished man--Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology man, University of Berlin, degree from Harvard and Oxford. He had a prim way of putting things. I suppose I caught it."

The usual whine about better days was missing from the beggar's voice.

If he seemed a little proud of his high beginnings, he did not seem in the least perturbed by the contemplation of his fallen estate. Barbara was by now frankly interested, and proceeded with characteristic directness to ask questions.

"Is your father living?"

"No. But it would hardly matter. We became thoroughly incompatible after my accident. He had very high ambitions for me, and a chronic disgust for anything abnormal--such as little boys who had had their legs snipped off. I didn't like it either. I suspect it made an unusually vicious child of me, a wicked, vengeful child."

Blizzard's candid expression implied that he had, however, soon seen the evil of his youthful ways, and turned over a whole volume of new leaves.

"What happened?" Barbara asked.

Blizzard laughed. "I cannot be said to have run away," he answered, "but I got away as best I could, and stayed away. My father settled money upon me. And that was the end of our relations."

"And then," said Barbara, "you, being young and foolish, lost your money."

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "I was a very bad little boy, but much too ambitious to be foolish. And you know you can't get very far in this world without money."

"Still," said Barbara, "a hand-organ and a tin cup?"

"A loiterer in the streets of New York," the beggar explained, "picks up knowledge not to be had in any other way. Knowledge is power."

"Then you don't have to beg, don't have to pose, don't have to do anything you don't want to do?"

"Oh, yes, I do. I have to crawl while others walk. I have to wait and procrastinate, where another might rush in and dare."

Again that first expression of Satan fallen overpowered the casual ease and even levity of his face. But he shifted his eyes lest Barbara see into them and be frightened by that which smouldered in their stony depths.

Without a word, Barbara stepped eagerly forward to the rough model that she had made of his head, and once more attacked her inspiration with eager hands. The beggar held himself motionless like a thing of stone, only his eyes roved a little, drinking in, you may say, that white loveliness which was Barbara at such moments as her own eyes were upon her work, and turning swiftly away when she lifted them in scrutiny of him. Now and then she made measurements of him with a pair of compa.s.ses.

At such times it seemed to him that her nearness was more than his unschooled pa.s.sions could bear with any appearance of apathy. Though a child of the nineteenth century, he had been enabled for many years to give way, almost whenever he pleased, to the instincts of primitive man, which, except for the greater frequency of their occurrence, differ in no essential way from the instincts of wild beasts.

Had she been a girl of the East Side he would not have hesitated upon the present occasion or in the present surroundings. But she was a girl of wealth and high position. It was not enough that his hands could stifle an outcry, or that the policeman upon the nearest beat was more in his own employ than in that of the city. Cold reason showed him that in the present case impunity was for once doubtful.

Her hands dropped from their work to her sides.

"How goes it?" asked the beggar.

"If it goes as it's gone," she said--"if it only does!"

"It _will_," said the beggar, and there was a strong vibration of faith and encouragement in his voice. "May I look?"

"Of course."

He came down from the platform, and she could not but admire the almost superhuman facility with which he moved upon his crutches. Halting at ease, before the beginning which she had made, he remained for a long time silent. Then, turning to her, he freed his right hand from the cross-piece of his crutch, and lifted it to his forehead in a sort of salute.

"Master!" he said.

The blood in Barbara's veins tingled with pleasure. He had thrown into his strong, rich voice an added wealth of sincerity, and she knew, or thought she knew, that at last the work of her hands had moved another, who, whatever else he might have been, was by his own showing no fool, but a man having in him much that was extraordinary. And she felt a sudden friendliness for the legless beggar.

His eyes still upon the clay--knowing, considering, measuring, appraising eyes--he said shortly and with decision: "We must go on with this."

"To-morrow--could you come to-morrow at the same time?"

"I _will_," he said.

"Good. Are you hungry?"

But the legless man did not appear to have heard her. A sound in the adjoining room had arrested his attention. He listened to it critically and then smiled.

"A good workman," he said, "is turning a screw into wood."

"How clever of you," said Barbara. "There was a man coming from Schlemmer's to put on some gla.s.s k.n.o.bs for me. Bubbles has brought him in by the back stairs."

The faint crunching sound of the screw going into the wood ceased. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," said Barbara.

Bubbles appeared in the opening. "We're all through in here."

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-ma.s.sed 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.