Chapter XII

The next morning, at the appointed hour, Blizzard climbed the stairs to Barbara's studio, knocked, and was admitted. That he was welcome, if only for his head's sake, was at once evident.

"Something told me that _you_ wouldn't fail me," said Barbara.

"You can be quite easy about that," said Blizzard. "I am in the habit of keeping my word."

He climbed to the model's platform and seated himself as upon the previous morning, with a kind of business-like directness.

"Ready when you are," he said.

Barbara withdrew the damp cloths from the clay, looked critically from the bust to the original and back again. "My work," she said, "still looks right to me. But you don't."

Blizzard smiled.

"Yesterday," she said, "you looked as if you were suffering like," she laughed, "like the very devil. To-day you look well fed and contented. Now that won't do. Try to remember what you were thinking about when I first saw you."

At once, as a fresh slide is placed in a magic-lantern, the legless man's expression of well-being vanished, and that dark tortured look of Satan fallen which had so fired Barbara's imagination, once more possessed his features. Barbara's eyes flashed with satisfaction.

"It wasn't hard for you to remember what you were thinking about, was it?" she said.

"It was not," said Blizzard, and his voice was cold as a well-curb. "When I first saw you, I was thinking thoughts that can never be forgotten."

"Lift your chin, please," she said, "just a fraction. So. Turn your head a fraction more toward me. Good. And please don't think of anything pleasant until I tell you. Anybody can make an exact copy of a head. Expressions are the things that only lucky people can catch."

"I believe you are one of them," said Blizzard. "I believe you will catch mine--if you keep on wanting to."

"I must," she said simply.

And then for half an hour there was no sound in the studio but the long-drawn breathing of the legless man. Barbara worked in a kind of grim, exalted silence.

Meanwhile Bubbles was climbing the back stair to his bedroom, where he had left Harry, the secret-service agent, on guard over Barbara. The boy, all out of breath with haste, opened his right fist and disclosed a narrow slip of paper with writing on it.

"The minute _he_ came out of his burrow and started uptown," said Bubbles, "and was out o' sight, I begun to spin my top up and down Marrow Lane. Rose she's moved upstairs, like she said she would."

Harry's eyes sparkled with interest and approbation. "Good girl!" he said.

"I seen her," Bubbles went on, "at an upper window, and when she seed me, she winked both eyes, like as if the sun was too bright for 'em. I winked the same way, and then she lets the paper drop."

Harry took the paper out of the boy's hand, and read: "Nothing done, much doing."

"She's a grand one," said Bubbles. "If he ever gets wise to her, he'll tear her to pieces."

"I'm not worrying about Rose--yet," said Harry. "She knows what she's up against, and she can pull a gun quicker than I can. We used to play getting the drop on each other by the hour."

"What for?" asked Bubbles, always interested in the smallest details of sporting propositions.

"Poker-chips," said Harry, and Bubbles looked his disgust. There was a minute's silence, then:

"Harry," said Bubbles, "what do _you_ think he's up to?"

"By George," said Harry, "I can't make out. What do _you_ think?"

Bubbles's sensitive mouth quivered eagerly. "You tell me," he said, "what he's making hats for--he don't sell 'em--and I'll tell you what he's up to."

"Some of the labor leaders in the West are mixed up in it," said Harry; "we _know_ that."

"Labor leaders, Harry!" The small boy's face was comic with scorn and facetiousness.

"You know the ones I mean, Bub. Not the men who lead labor--that's only what they call themselves; but the men who betray labor for their own pockets, the men who find dynamite for half-witted fanatics to set off. The men--" He broke short off, and listened. "Better butt in to the studio, Bub, and see what's doing,"

"Did you think you heard something?"

"I know that I haven't heard anything for half an hour."

In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo."

And although Barbara actually was working with great speed and gratitude, the entrance of the small boy had seemed to disturb the train of her inspiration. Somewhere in the back of her head appeared to be some brain-cells quite detached from the important matter in hand, and to these was conveyed the fact that a door-knob had been turned, and at once they began to busy themselves upon the suggestion. Something like this: door-knobs--old door-knobs--new glass door-knobs--man to put on new glass door-knobs--wonderfully prepossessing man--name Harry--charming name. Harry--charming smile--wonder if anybody'll ever see him again.

Gradually other cells in Barbara's brain took up the business, until presently she was entirely occupied with unasked, and unwelcome, and altogether pleasant thoughts of the young secret-service agent. It was almost as if he laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: "You've worked long enough on this dreadful beggar--come with me for a holiday."

Twice, sternly, she endeavored to go on with her work, and could not. Something of the May-weather message, that all is futile except life, had filtered into her blood. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her face, very rosy, became so wonderfully beautiful that Blizzard almost groaned aloud. Something told him that his morning was over, his morning filled with the happiness of propinquity and stolen looks, with the happiness that is half spiritual and half gloating.

"Thank you," said Barbara, "ever so much. I sha'n't do any more to-day. I'm not fit. But we have gotten on. Want to look?"

She turned the revolving-table so that Blizzard could look upon his likeness. And you may be sure that he did not lose the opportunity thus presented. He regarded the clay steadily, for a long time, without speaking. Then he drew one very long breath, and the expression upon his face softened.

"That man," he said, "has had a hard life, Miss Ferris. It is all written in his face. When he was a little boy, he was the victim of a mistake so atrocious, so wicked, that the blood in his body turned to gall, and all his powers of loving turned to hatred. Instead of facing disaster like a man, he turned from it, and fled--down--down--down, and fell down--down--grappling with all that he could reach that was good or beautiful, and dragging it down with him--to destruction--to the pit--to hell on earth. And then he lived a long time, pampering all that was base in him, prospering materially, recognizing no moral law. He was contented with his choice--happy as a well-fed dog is happy in a warm corner. And then the inevitable happened. An idea came to him, a dream of peace and beauty, of well-doing and happiness. But that chance was torture, since, if he was to live it, he must undo the evil that he had done, unthink the thoughts that had been meat and drink to him, and he must get back to where he was before he fell."

He paused, and extending his right forefinger pointed at the bust of himself and exclaimed:

"That man--there--that you've made in my image--line for line--torture for torture, must go on living in the hell which he has prepared with his own perverted mind. He can never get back. It is too late--too late--too late!"

His voice rose to a kind of restrained fury. The room shook with its strong vibrations.

Then he turned to Barbara, smiled, all of a sudden, gayly, almost genuinely, and said in a voice of humble gallantry:

"But I've done you a good turn. If you never proved it before, you're proving these days that you are a heaven-born genius."

A harder-headed girl than Barbara must have been pleased and beguiled. She blushed, and laughed. "I've only one thing to wish for," she said.

"What is that?"

"I wish," she said, "that you were the greatest art critic in the world."

He leaned forward, and in a confidential whisper: "A secret," said he, "between us two. I am."

Then they both laughed, and the beggar, not without reluctance, climbed down from the platform. Swift and easy as were his motions, he appeared to terrible disadvantage, and he knew it. So did Barbara, who a moment before had been on the point of really liking him. She steeled herself against the sudden disgust which she could not help feeling, and smiled at him in a steady, friendly way.

"To-morrow?" she said.

"To-morrow."

"At the same time, please. Good-by, and good luck to you."

"Good luck to _you_, Miss Ferris." And he was gone.

Barbara, opening the door into the next room, surprised a sound of voices. They ceased instantly.

"Bubbles," she called.

He came, looking a trifle guilty.

"Who's that with you?"

"Harry," he said simply.

"The man who was here before?"

"Yes, Miss Barbara."

"What's he doing in my rooms?"

"He was just sitting, and chinning," said Bubbles.

Miss Ferris was displeased. "Tell him," she said, "that I can't have my apartment turned into a Young Men's Club."

"Yes, miss."

Bubbles retired, reluctantly, with the message, only to return in a moment.

"He says will you let him speak to you a moment, please."

She hesitated. And then, "Yes," she said. "I suppose he wishes to apologize."

He was even more charming-looking than the memory of him. She made an effort to look a little displeased, and a little unfriendly. She failed, because the May-weather message had gotten into her blood, and because certain forces of which as yet she knew little had established connecting links between herself and the young secret-service agent.

"I am going to scold you," said Barbara. "Bubbles has his work to do."

"But I was helping him with it."

"He said you were just sitting and--and chinning."

"When we had finished working."

"Have you been here long?"

The young man looked her steadily in the face, and said gravely: "Ever since Blizzard came."

Barbara lifted her chin a little. "I am quite able to take care of myself," she said.

He shook his head sadly.

"Do you make it your business"--she had succeeded in making herself angry--"to keep an eye on all young women whom you fancy unable to take care of themselves?"

"I only wish to God I could," he said earnestly. "But of course it's impossible. So I just do the best I can."

"And why have you chosen me? Surely others are even _more_ helpless than I am." She managed to convey a good deal of scorn. "Why," she continued, "must I be the particular creature singled out for your chivalrous notice?"

"I don't know," he said simply.

All the anger went out of Barbara, and a delicious little thrill passed through her from head to foot, leaving in its wake a clear rosy coloring.

"Bubbles," said the young man, "would die for you; but he is only a little boy. I am very strong."

Barbara refused to rise at the implication that the strong young man was also ready and even eager to die for her. "Tell me more about Blizzard," she said.

"He's one of the half-dozen men in the city that we would like to have an eye on night and day. We want him."

"Oh," she said, "then you are not here entirely on my account? It is also your business to be here?"

He nodded, not altogether pleased with the turn the matter had taken.

"In that case," she said, "I have no wish to stand in your way. But--I don't propose to be a cat's-paw. You may sit in Bubbles's room if you like, but I won't have you on your hands and knees at the studio door listening at the key-hole. That must be understood."

The young man flushed with righteous anger. "You don't _look_" he said, "as if you could say a thing like that to a fellow."

Instantly, and almost humbly, she begged his pardon.

"Then I may come to-morrow?" he asked.

"And the next day," said Barbara. "And, by the way, what is your name?"

"Harry," he said.

"Harry what?"

A look very much like pathos came into his handsome eyes. "I want to be honest with you," he said. "I don't own any other name. I call myself West. But I've no right to it. I don't know who my father was or what he was."

"You don't have to explain," said Barbara. "I think you would have been quite within your rights in saying that your name was West and letting it go at that."

It was not her intention to receive Mr. West's confidences either at this time or any other. And so, of course, ten minutes later, as she drove uptown, she was "dying" to know all that there was to be known about him. He had gone downstairs with her, and put her into her cab. He might have been a prince with a passion for good manners. He seemed to her wonderfully graceful and at ease, in all that he did.