Chapter XVII

Blizzard was an acute student of human nature. And a certain softening in Barbara's manner toward him was proof that she had learned his story from her father, and no longer regarded him as a stranger off the streets, but as a human being definitely connected with her outlook upon life. Still, the suggestion that their relations had changed did not come from him, for he knew that pity or sympathy given by request lacks the potency of that which is spontaneously offered. So he held his peace in order that Barbara might be the first to speak, and during those days his heart became filled with mad hopes for the future.

Upon one thing he was determined, that when in the course of events Barbara should touch upon her father's criminal mistake, he would conceal, as something precious from a thief, the hatred and vengefulness that were in him, and unroll for her benefit a character noble and forgiving. He was content, or appeared content, day after day, for a number of hours, to be with her, and to play the hypocrite so ably as to defy detection.

And Barbara, knowing how the man had been abused, guessing how he must have suffered, and still suffered, came to look upon him, not indeed as upon a person wholly noble, but as upon one who, with an impulse in the right direction, had in him possibilities of great nobility.

Just as a fine motor-car, perfect in mechanism, punctures a tire and is stalled by the side of the road, so works of genius like Barbara's head of Blizzard do not progress in one swift rush from start to finish. There were whole mornings during which it seemed that things went backward instead of forward, and when she was so discouraged that, had it not been for the legless man's almost fiery confidence in her ability to overcome all obstacles, she must have taken a hammer and pounded her fine sketch back into the lump of clay from which it had been evolved.

Blizzard's eyes had undergone a most thorough schooling. They had learned, to the flicker of an eyelid, when Barbara was going to look their way, and at such times were careful not to meet her eyes. When, however, they knew her to be intent for a period upon the work and not the model, they studied her always with zest, and always with more and more understanding.

Suddenly, one day, after he had been sitting motionless for half an hour, the beggar broke his pose.

"Please don't," she said. "I'm not through."

In his eyes, soft and full of understanding, there was a gentle, if masterful, smiling. "Yes, you are," he said, "for now. I haven't watched you at work all these mornings without learning something about the way you go at it. Do you know what a blind alley is?"

"Yes," she said petulantly, "and I'm in one."

"Quite so," said Blizzard. "And you're not taking the right way out. First you tried to climb up the house on the right, then the house on the left, and when I interrupted you, you were making a sixth effort to shin up the lightning-rod of the house that blocks the alley."

Barbara laughed. "But," she objected, "I've got to get out somehow--or fake--or call the thing a fiasco, and give it up."

"Of course you've got to get out," said Blizzard, "and it's very simple."

"Simple!" she exclaimed; "a lot you know about it."

"Quite simple," he repeated; "you merely face about and walk out. In, other words, remove that lump of mud which one day is going to be more like my ear than my ear itself, and begin over."

And it came home to Barbara that the man was right. "Thank you," she said simply. "You're a great help. That is precisely what I shall do."

"But don't do it now."

"Why not?"

"Because you've wasted the freshness of your early-morning zeal with vain efforts. Destroy what you've done--there's always satisfaction in that; but either leave the re-doing alone for to-day, or try something else."

"When," said Barbara, beginning to feel soothed and confident again, "did I put myself in your hands for guidance?"

"The moment you lost your presence of mind," said the beggar; "that's when a woman always puts herself in a man's hands. Put a cloth over his satanic majesty's portrait, and sit down and relax your muscles, and talk to the devil himself."

Barbara did as he commanded with the expression of a biddable child. She flung herself into a deep chair, and drew a long, care-free breath.

"There," she said, "I knew I wasn't fit."

"You can't spend the night at a Country Club, dance till 4 A.M., catch the 7 A.M. for town, and do good work--not always."

"How did you know all that?"

Blizzard laughed. "From a man," said he, "who had planned to rob the Meadowbrook Club last night. There is a fine haul of scarf-pins, and sleeve-links, and watches and money in the bachelors' quarters. He came to me in great dejection and explained what very hard luck he had had. He said the whole place was lit up and full of people and music, and no chance for an honest man to earn a cent. I happened to ask if you were there, and he said you were. The train was a guess, and so of course was the 4 A.M. Will you take a piece of well-meant advice? Either be a society girl or a sculptor. But don't burn the candle at both ends. You even look tired, and that's nonsense at your age."

He laughed like a boy.

"They tell me," he said, "that I could do the new dances. They tell me they are just like clinches in a prize-fight, and that only the novices move their feet."

Barbara's brows contracted. "I'm going to ask you a favor," she said. "If you want to talk about your misfortune, God knows I'm ready to listen. I feel some of the responsibility. But please don't joke about it. We're friends, I think. And I like to forget that you're not exactly like other people. And sometimes I do."

"Truly?" His eyes were full of suppressed eagerness and elation.

"Yes," she said, "when you talk high-mindedly and generously, as you can, when you want to, I enjoy being with you, in touch with a mind so much more knowing and able than my own. But, now we've made a beginning, I'd really like to talk about--all this dreadful mess that's been made of your life, and how things can be made easier for you, and for my father."

Figuratively, Blizzard's tongue went into his cheek at the mention of Dr. Ferris, but the expression of his face underwent no change. "Of course," he said simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, "I have forgiven your father. He was very young--very excitable--inexperienced."

"_Actually"_ she said, "in your heart, you've forgiven him? And you're not saying things just to make me comfortable?"

"I am afraid," he confessed, "that I am too selfish to say or do things just to make other people comfortable. Did you ever hate anybody?"

"I think so."

"Did you like it?"

"For a while it was rather fun to think up things to do to the person, and then it got to be disagreeable, and feverish, like a cut that's festered, and then I made a strong effort, and found that hating was very poor company and led nowhere."

"Exactly," said the beggar. "Do you mind if I talk frankly? My hatred for your father persisted a great many years, until I found that going to bed with it every night and getting up with it every morning was a slow poison that was affecting all the rest of me--my power to think out a line of action, my power to stick to it, even my power to like people that were good to me and faithful to my interests. I found that I was beginning to hate everybody and everything in the world and the world itself. Meanwhile, Miss Barbara, I did things that can never be undone."

He was silent, and appeared to be turning over the leaves in the books of his memory. Suddenly he spoke again.

"And it was all so silly," he said, "so futile. The cure was in my head all the time--just longing to be used. And fool that I was, I didn't know it."

"What was the cure?"

"It was the sovereign cure for all our troubles, Miss Barbara--reason, and crowds. Stand morning or evening at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge--stand there with your trouble, and consider that among the passers, better carried than yours, are troubles, far, far greater than yours, more poignant, lives lived in dungeons deeper and more dark. Your father has lived a life of most admirable utility: should he be hated for one mistake? Suppose that it had been some other small boy's legs that he wasted, instead of mine? Would I hate him for it? Why, no. I'd say it's too bad. But since it was I that lost the legs I lost all sense of proportion and justice and was a long time--a long time coming back to it."

"May I know what brought you round?"

The beggar felt that he might dare a little. He smiled. "Of course. What brought me around was the discovery that he had created something far, far more important than what he had destroyed. At first I thought you were like so many other girls of your class--well dressed, and good to look at. Then that you had a very genuine talent, and were going to count in the world. Then, and this is best, it came over me that you were one girl in a million--that you would do whatever seemed right to you, not without fear of criticism, and pain and sacrifice, but regardless of them. And so, you see, the reparation is made. The father hurt, and the daughter cured."

Barbara's face had become very grave. "However wrong you are about my character," she said, "the reparation is not yet made. And you may be sure of this--that, whatever the criticism, I owe you friendship and you shall have it,"

The beggar trembled inwardly, but he shook his head. "You could hardly pull me up to a level," he said, "upon which friendship between us would be possible. Imagine that I have sunk to the chin in mud, and that at the last time of calling I have been pulled out. Still the mud clings to me."

"Nonsense," said Barbara, "you can be washed."

They both laughed, and at once became grave again.

"You don't know," he said, "what I've been or what I've done. You can't even imagine."

"That is not the point," said Barbara, "and this is: Are you sorry? If you really have been rotten, do you want to be sound and fine? If you do I'm your friend, and whatever help I can give you, you shall have."

"If you knew," he said humbly, "how I dread the bust being finished! I'll be like a child stealing a ride by the strength of his arms, I'll have to drop off then--won't I?--back into the mud."

"I'm not offering you friendship," she said, "merely while you are useful to me. Do well, Mr. Blizzard, and do good, and I will always be your friend."

"Do you believe that I want to do well, that I want to do good? That I want to wipe the past from the slate?"

"You have only to tell me," she said loyally, "and I shall believe."

"Then I tell you," he said, and Barbara jumped impulsively to her feet and shook hands with him.

"And I may come to you," he pleaded, "for advice, and help? Old habits are hard to shake. My friends are thieves, crooks, and grafters. My sources of income are not clean. Even now I have dishonest irons in the fire. Shall I pull them out?"

"Of course."

"But people who have trusted me will be hurt."

"You must work those problems out in your own conscience."

To Blizzard, believing that he was actually making progress into the fastnesses of her heart, and that he might in time gain his ends by propinquity and his own undeniable force and personality, a sudden, cheeky knocking upon the door proved intensely irritating. It was a very small messenger-boy with a box of jonquils. Blizzard watched very closely the expression of Barbara's face while she opened the box. She held up the flowers for him to see.

"Aren't they pretty?" she said.

"They are very pretty," said Blizzard, and he found it difficult to control his voice. "And it was very sweet of him to send them. Isn't that the rest of the speech?"

"Of course," said Barbara gayly.

She lifted the flowers until the lower half of her face was hidden.

"Mr. Allen, I suppose," said the beggar.

"Why should you suppose that?" said Barbara, a little coldly. "There is no card."

Blizzard felt his mistake. And Barbara felt that he felt it. She went into the next room for a vase of water, and returned presently with heightened color. She had heard Harry West's slow grave voice explaining something to Bubbles. Her heart told her that West had sent the flowers, and she meant to get rid of Blizzard and find out. So, the vase of flowers in one hand, she held out the other to him, and said:

"To-morrow."

Blizzard was loath to go, but he felt that there was a certain finality in her voice, and he swung out of the studio, his heart gnawed with jealousy.