Through Bubbles, Harry West received the happy news that Miss Ferris wished to speak with him. But when he saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand, and the empty box in which they had come at her feet, his stout heart failed him a little.
He saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand ... and his stout heart failed him a little.
"Mr. West," said Barbara, "some person is annoying me."
"Annoying you?"
"I am continually receiving flowers without card or comment."
"Is it the flowers which annoy you or the lack of comment?"
"I love the flowers, but anything in the shape of anonymity is unfair, and I resent it."
"I can think of cases," said West, "in which a man might properly send flowers without disclosing his identity--just as I may pass a fine statue and praise it, without telling the statue who I am." He smiled.
"Flowers don't resemble statues in the least, and your comparison is unnaturally far-fetched. Another thing, and this annoys me even more: my secretive friend sends flowers from the cheapest florist he can find. I argue from this that he is poor, and cannot afford to send me flowers at all."
"Perhaps his home and business in the city are too far from the Fifth Avenue shops."
"You are not saying gallant things, Mr. West. I--an unprotected young woman--tell you that I am being annoyed by a strange man. Instead of flying into a chivalrous rage and threatening to wring his neck when you catch him, you stand up for him. Very well. I shall set Bubbles to find out who the man is, and take my own steps in the matter."
Her expression was grave and unruffled, though a certain look of amusement might have been detected in her eyes, by a youth less embarrassed than Mr. West was.
"Don't do that," he said; "Bubbles could never find out. You wish to know who is sending you flowers?"
"Very much. Canyoufind out?"
"I think so. I mean, I'm sure I can."
"And when you have found him will you point out to him that in the future he must be open and above-board, or something disagreeable will be done to him?"
Mr. West bowed humbly.
"How long," she asked, "will it take you to run the creature down?"
"Well," said Mr. West, "I could go to the florist whose name is on the box, show my badge, and exact a description of the man who bought the flowers. Then I could give you the description, and if you knew any such man--"
"The florist," said Barbara, her expression Sphinx-like, "is just 'round the corner."
"I hear," said Mr. West, "and I obey."
"I will read a book till you come back," said Barbara.
But she didn't read a book; she leaned instead from a window and watched for Mr. West to come out of the studio-building. He came presently, but did not turn east in search of the florist. Neither did he descend the steps. Instead, he took out his watch and sat down, and waited. Barbara in great glee watched him for ten minutes. She was possessed of a devilish longing to fashion out of paper a small water-bomb and drop it on his head. Memories of water-bombs brought up memories of Wilmot Allen and old days. She drew back from the window and was no longer gleeful. Why should men trouble her heart, since she wished and had elected to live, not a woman's life but a man's? She paced the studio, her soul at odds with the rest of her.
Had she ever encouraged Wilmot? Yes. West? Yes. And about a dozen others. And here she struck her left palm with her right fist. She had even encouraged a man who had committed all the crimes in the calendar and was only half a man at that! Half a man? She was not sure. There was a certain compelling force about him which at times made him seem more of a man to her than all the rest of them put together. "I can't imagine him in love," she thought. "It's really too revolting. But if he was, I can imagine nothing that he would let stand in his way, I wonder if he is married. And if he is I pity her. And yet she could say to other women, 'My husband is a man,' and most of the women I know can't say that."
And she remembered her father's perfectly ridiculous suggestion that perhaps the man so wronged by him had lifted his eyes to herself. The idea no longer seemed ridiculous; but quite possible and equally dreadful. She made up her mind that she would sacrifice her immediate chances of recognition and fame and tell the beggar to discontinue his visits. Then she withdrew the cloth from her work, and it seemed to her that what she had made was alive and had about it a certain sublimity, and that to surrender now was beyond her strength. She had a moment of exultation, and she thought: "In a hundred years my body will be dust. It doesn't matter what becomes of it now or hereafter; but people will gather in front of this head, and artists will come from all over the world to see it. And there will be plaster casts of it in city museums and village libraries. And I suppose I'm the most conceited idiot in the world, but--but it's good. Iknowit's good!"
She had forgotten West, and Allen, and Blizzard, so that when the first-named knocked, she had some ado to come out of the clouds and recall what they had been talking about. Then, not wishing to drive West into a lie, she said only:
"Have you the man's description?"
"He is not," said West gravely, "a man in your station in life. He is, I imagine, some young fellow to whom, in passing, you have been carelessly gracious."
"Is he handsome?" Mischief had returned to her mind.
"He is only bigger and stronger than usual."
"Dark or light?"
"Medium."
"And how long did it take you to find out all these interesting items?"
"Twelve minutes," said West gravely.
"By the clock?"
"By a dollar watch.... Miss Ferris, I haven't done right. I'm not doing right."
This came very suddenly. He had lowered his fine head and was frowning,
"I'm the man who's been sending you flowers. I didn't know it was wrong. I'm not a gentleman. But once I'd seen you, I could never see flowers without thinking of you, so I kept sending them, hoping that they would give you pleasure for their own sake. I had no business even to look at you. To win the kind of race I'm up against, a man ought to keep his eyes in the boat, and not look right or left till his race is won or lost. And even then it ought to be right or left that he looks, and not up, and certainly not down. I didn't keep my eyes in the boat. I looked up, 'way up, and saw you, and caught a crab that threw the whole boat out of trim. I've no excuse, only this--that I haven't ever before even looked right or left or down. But it's all right now. Nobody's hurt. I won't come any more to watch over you. The lines are closing round Blizzard, and he knows it. His claws are pulled. He's got to toe a chalk-line, and you're as safe with him as with the Bishop of London."
Barbara said nothing. She felt very unhappy.
"One thing more. As long as I did forget the work in hand, as long as I did look up, why, I'd like to thank God, in your presence, that it was you I saw. Because in all the whole world there is nobody so beautiful or so blind."
He thrust out his hand almost roughly, caught hers, said good-by, and turned to go.
"Please wait," said Barbara. And she said it quite contrary to reason, which told her that it would be kinder to let the young man go without comments.
"You've done nothing wrong," she went on, "and I can't help being pleased by the flowers and knowing that you think I am all sorts of things that I'm not. If you really like me a good deal, don't go away looking as if the world had come to an end. I think you are a fine person, and I shall always be glad to be your friend."
There was agony in West's eyes. "My friendship," he said, "can never be any special pleasure to you. And seeing you--even once a year--would keep alive things that hurt me, and that never ought to have been born, and that were better dead."
"'Faint heart--'" Barbara began, and could have bitten out her tongue, since she had so often promised herself that she would never again encourage anybody.
The agony died in Harry West's eyes, and there came instead a look of great gentleness, compassion, and understanding.
"May I say things to you that are none of my business?" he asked. She nodded briefly, and he went on: "You mustn't say things like that. You have a race to row, too, but your beautiful eyes are all over the place!"
"I knew I was a rotter," said Barbara, "but I didn't know it was obvious to everybody."
"To eyes," said West gently, "in a certain condition lots of things are obvious that other people wouldn't see. May I still say things?"
"Don't spare me."
"You love to attract men. And if you happen to hurt them, you think you are a rotter. That isn't true. You're being pulled two ways. Art pulls you one--the way youthinkyou want to go--and nature pulls you the way you really want to go. Men attract you to a certain extent. I can almost feel that--and you tire of them, and think it's because you haven't got the capacity for really caring. That isn't true either. You have infinite capacities for caring, but as yet you haven't been attracted to the man you are really going to care for."
Barbara looked him straight in the eyes. "How do you know I haven't?"
He returned the look, as if doubting what he should say or do. Then he drew a deep breath to steady himself.
"Perhaps you have. But I know very well that it is not the man you think, at this moment. You are in the hunting stage, and you didn't know it. Now that you do know--unless I am greatly mistaken--I think you will try very hard not to hurt people, not to let them have wild dreams of something doing in the future."
"But if I really think--"
"Then be secret until youknow."
"And if everything that is me seems to be going out to a certain man--"
"Then be secret until it has really gone out to him."
"I don't know why I let you talk to me like this."
"There you go again," he said, and she bit her lips. "It is very awful for me," he said, "to think that I have raised my voice in any criticism or disparagement of you."
"Oh, it's all true, and it's all deserved."
"But you are like that. And all at the same time it's your greatest strength and your greatest weakness, and for the right man, when he comes along, it will be his greatest treasure.... I don't like to say good-by. It comes hard."
"If I said, 'Don't say good-by,' would I be breaking the rules?"
"Yes," he said, "for I could never be the right man."
When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried.
"Not even if--"
"Not even if--and you will have forgotten any kindness that you felt for me, while I am still wondering why the city is so empty, that once seemed so full."
The tears sprang into Barbara's eyes. "Is there anything about me that you don't know?" she asked bitterly.
"Oh, yes," he said.
"Do you know that if you asked me to marry you, I should say yes?"
"And I know that I am not going to ask you. There are two reasons. You don't love me. And I do love you."
Her arms dropped limply to her sides.
"And it shall never be said of me," he said proudly, "that I dragged any one down.... Will you promise me something?"
"If you care to trust me to keep promises or to do anything that's right and honest."
"Only promise to keep your eyes in the boat. Don't help a poor dog of a man into love with you. And don't help yourself into love with him. When the right man comes along, he willmakeyou love him, and then you will be sure."
"I will promise," said Barbara simply, "and I never knew how rotten I was. And I'm glad you've told me. If it's any comfort to you--you've helped. And nobody ever helped before. I shall always be proud to remember that you loved me. And I'll keep my eyes in the boat."
"And that," said Mr. West, "is where I'll keep mine, only, if it's nothing to you, I'll remember sometimes how the moon looked that time I looked up."
She stood uncertain.
"It's kind of awkward," he said, "sometimes to make a clean break. Good luck to you. And don't feel sorry about me. And be true to yourself. And if you ever really need me for anything tell Bubbles. He knows where to find me, when anybody does."
A few minutes later Barbara was asking Bubbles if he happened to know Mr. Harry West's address.
"He won't be coming back here," she said, "and I want to send him a book."
"I'll deliver it," said Bubbles. "He don't keep no regular address. You have to catch him on the run."
"Very well," she said, "take him this, with my very best thanks and my very best wishes."
And she gave Bubbles a charmingly bound copy of Rostand's "Far-Away Princess," and when Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried because she thought she had broken poor West's heart. But there was stern stuff in his heart, and exultation, for he knew that in the supreme test of his life, he had thought only of--her.
"There, everything is understood," said Blizzard; "we are agreed upon the 15th of next January. And you can bring enough men on from the West to do the work?"
O'Hagan, thick-set, black, bristling, nodded across the table. "You have guaranteed the money and the hats," he said; "I will guarantee the men. What's behind that door?"
"Nothing but a junk-closet," said Blizzard. "Drink something."
O'Hagan poured three fingers of dark whiskey into a short glass and drank it at one gulp. "After that one," he said, "the wagon until the 15th."
"Yes," said Blizzard with some grimness. "There must be no frolicking. And mind this, Jimmie: the more good American citizens who don't speak English that you can corral the better. We don't want intelligence. We want blind obedience with a hope of gain. And they mustn't know what they are to do till it's time to do it. They should begin to come into the city by the middle of December, a few at a time. Let 'em come to me half a dozen at once for money, weapons, and orders."
Again O'Hagan nodded. This time he rose, and the two shook hands across the table. O'Hagan seemed to labor under a certain emotion; but Blizzard was calm,
"Keep me posted," he said, "and for God's sake, Jimmie, cut out the little things. You're in big now. Forget your troubles and your wrongs. Leave liquor alone and dynamite. Remember that on the 15th of next January you and I'll be square at last with law and order and oppression. Good luck to you!"
When O'Hagan had gone Blizzard moved his chair so that it faced the door of the junk-closet. And he smiled occasionally as if he were one of an audience at some diverting play. From time to time he took a drink of whiskey and licked his lips. An hour passed, two hours, and always the legless man kept his agate eyes upon the closet door.
When two hours and fifteen minutes had gone, he drew an automatic pistol from his pocket, and held it ready for instant use. A few minutes later, finding his original plan of humor a little tedious in the working out, he spoke in a clear, incisive voice:
"Better come out of that now or I shall begin to shoot."
The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room. After a short pause, during which she swayed and gasped for breath, an automatic pistol fell with a clatter from her nerveless fingers. She sank to the floor all in a heap and began to cry hysterically.
The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.
Blizzard slid from his chair and secured her pistol. His face wore an expression of amused tolerance. "Tell me all about it," he said. "Cryingcan'tdo any good, and talking may. You hid in the closet to listen. It's not the first time. I found one of your combs, and saw where you'd brushed away the dirt so's not to spoil your dress. Now I'd like to know how much you know, and whom you've told it to?"
"What's the use?" said Rose with sudden desperation. "You've got me--nobody'll ever know from me what I've heard to-night. You're going to kill me."
"I doubt it," said Blizzard. "Now look up and tell me all about everything."
"Well," she said, "I've been spying on you."
"I know that. I knew that the day you came. When you said you loved me I knew you were lying."
"At first," she said, "I passed over everything I could find out about you. It wasn't much."
"I took care of that."
"Then I made up things--just to keep the others from knowing I wasn't playing fair. I wanted to put that off as long as I could. Anything I really found out--like your first talk with O'Hagan--I just kept to myself. I know I lied to you the first day. But I'm not lying now."
The legless man smiled tolerantly. "Why did you keep on trying to find out things--if you didn't mean to use them?"
"Because I wanted to know all about you, what you were doing, what your interests were. I thought I could be more useful to you that way."
"It's a good thing for you, Rose," said Blizzard, "that I guessed all this. If I hadn't you wouldn't be alive now. And so, now that you've gotten to know me pretty well, there's something about me, is there, that's knocked your ambitions galley-west?"
"I had friends that trusted me," she said, "and I've played double with them. And now I've got only you."
"Tell me one thing," and Blizzard asked the question with some eagerness, "what particular quality of mine got you to feeling this way about me?"
"I guess it's every quality now," said Rose, "but it started with me the first time I heard you play, and knew that, whatever you'd been and done, and were planning to do, you had a soul above it all. And I knew that if your soul had ever had a fair chance you'd have been more like a god than a man."
"Well, well," said Blizzard after a long silence, "perhaps. Who knows! And so it was the music that changed your heart? Well, why not? Nobody makes better music--unless it's Hofman."
The idea of appealing to the heart of quite another girl through his music filled the legless man with a wild hoping. Why not? If he could play himself clean out of hell whenever he pleased, why not another? He would not tell her the possibilities of nobility that yet remained in him. He would play them to her.
"Rose," he said, "you're the best pedaller I ever had. You've got music in you. We'll practise up and give a concert. I'll ask some nobs in. We'll turn the piano so that seeing how the pedalling is done won't distract their attention from the music. But they won't hear our music, Rose. It will be better than that. They shall roll in it, bathe in it, see heaven!"
"That's what I saw."
Blizzard's agate eyes glinted with a strange light. It was as if the beast in him was fighting with the God. But gradually all mercifulness, all-pity, went out, and the fires which remained were not good to see.
He kissed her and she kissed him back.
Feeling that she had been working too hard, being in much distress about Harry West, and in some for herself, and learning that Wilmot Allen was to be of the party, Barbara told Blizzard, at the end of his sitting on Friday, that he need not come Saturday, as she was going to spend the week-end with the Bruces at Meadowbrook.
"I'm dog-tired," she said, "and that's the same as being discouraged. We both need a rest. Things have been at a stand-still nearly all the week."
"I think you are right about yourself," said Blizzard, "but won't your gay friends keep you up till all hours?"
"They willnot" said Barbara, "and it won't be gay. During a falling market there are never more than two happy people at the largest Long Island house-party. The men will sit by themselves and drink very solemnly. The women will sit by themselves and yawn till ten o'clock. It will be very boring and very restful."
"Speaking of falling markets, is my friend Mr. Allen to be among those present? I understand that he has been very hard hit."
"I don't know about that," said Barbara. "He often is. Yes, he is to be among those present, and I'm really going just to have a chance to talk to him."
"Withhim ortohim?" asked Blizzard with one of his sudden, dazzling smiles.
"Tohim," said Barbara, also smiling, "I, too, have listened to tales out of school, and since he is my oldest friend, and probably my best, he must be straightened out."
"A little absence from New York, perhaps," suggested Blizzard, and watched her face closely.
"Do you think so? It doesn't seem to me necessary to run away in order to straighten out."
"Mr. Allen," said Blizzard, "should swear off stock-gambling, and marry a rich girl."
"He's not that kind," said Barbara simply. And this swift, loyal statement did not please the beggar, since it argued more to his mind of the faith that goes with love than of that appertaining to friendship. He felt a sharp stab of jealousy, and had some ado to keep the pain of it from showing in his face.
"Well," he said, "if anybody can help him, you can. And if you can't, send him to me. Oh, we've had dealings before now. I was even of real service to him once."
"If that is true," Barbara thought, "it's rather rotten of Wilmot to keep running this poor soul down."
Blizzard left with obvious reluctance. Two whole days without a sight of Miss Ferris seemed a very long time to him. "I shall miss these morning loafings."
"Is that what you call posing?"
"What else? You loaf now. Good luck to the tired eye and hand."
"Thank you," said Barbara. "Next week we'll see if we can't really get somewhere."
"We shall try," said Blizzard. He turned at the door. "I want to play for you some time," he said. "May I?"
"Why, yes--of course."
"At my place," he said. "I have a new piano in; it's very good. You see, I pound four or five of them to pieces in the course of a year. I thought perhaps you'd bring two or three or more of your friends who like music, I knowyoudo. I'll give you supper. Your friends might think it was a good slumming spree to come to a concert at my house. And I particularly want to play for you. I go for weeks without playing, and then the wish comes."
She longed to ask him how he worked the pedals, and had to bite the question back.
He laughed, reading her mind. "If you come," he said, "I will try to make you forget what I am--even what I look like. I should like you to know what I might have been--what I still might be." He went out abruptly and closed the door after him.
Barbara mused for a minute and then rang for Bubbles. "I'm going out of town for over Sunday," she said. "What will you do?"
"Me and Harry," said he, "is going down to the sea swimming."
"Please give Harry my best wishes, Bubbles."
The great eyes held hers for a minute and were turned away. He was sharp enough to know that through one of his idols the other had been hurt. And he found the knowledge sorrowful and heavy.
"I'll do that," he said solemnly.
That afternoon Wilmot Allen drove Barbara down to Meadowbrook. He had borrowed a sixty-horse-power runabout for the occasion, but displayed no anxiety to put the machine through its higher paces. "I've had a rough week," he said, "and my nerves are shaky. Do you mind if we take our time?"
"No," said Barbara, "my nerves are shaky, too. And I want to talk to you without having the words blown out of my mouth and scattered all over Long Island."
He bowed over the steering-wheel, and said: "It's good to know that youwantto talk to me. Is it to be about you, about me--or us?"
Barbara leaned luxuriously against the scientifically placed cushion, all her muscles relaxed. "You," she said, "are to play several parts, Wilmot."
"And always one," he answered softly.
"Not now," she said, "please. First you are to play priest, and listen to confession. Then you are to confess, or I am to do it for you, and receive penance."
"While I'm priest," he said, "do I impose any penance on you?"
"I'll listen to suggestions," said she, "that point toward absolution."
"I am now clothed In my priestly outfit," said Wilmot; "you have entered the confessional. I listen."
Very simply, without preamble, she plunged into her affair with Harry West. And Wilmot listened, his head bent forward over the steering-wheel. It was not pleasant for him to learn that she had thought herself seriously in love with another man, and was not now in the least sure of her feelings toward him.
"I cried almost all night," she said; "it didn't seem as if I could bear it."
"How about the next night, Barbs?"
"Oh, I slept," she said, "or thought about work."
"And he told you that you mustn't see each other anymore?"
"Yes."
"I think he was right, Barbs. I don't believe you really love him, dear. If you did you would have cried for many nights and days--felt like it, I mean, all the time. Men attract you--they drop out for some reason or other--and so on. I know pretty well."
"That's just what he said," said Barbara, "and it's true, Wilmot. I'm almost sure now that I don't really love him. And that's ugly enough. But it's worse to think that he really loves me, and that it's my fault."
Wilmot Allen did not make the mistake of saying that it was not her fault. "It just shows, Barbs dear," he said, "that it's time to pull up. You've got more darned temperament than anybody I ever saw. It's a great weapon, but you've got to learn to control it, and not swing it wild and hurt people."
"That's what he said."
"Well, he seems to be a sensible fellow, and a fine fellow, and to have thought of you rather than himself. You told him you'd marry him if he asked you? Now, Barbs, listen to me. That was a fool thing to say."
"I know it"
"Do you realize how lucky you are to have said it to West instead of to some other fellow who happened to be on the make? You've come through your young life almost entirely by good luck, not by good management. You've run up against honorable men, instead of rotters. That's the answer."
"I should think, feeling this way, you'd hate and despise me."
His hand left the steering-wheel and gave hers a swift pat.
"Well, it's over," she said, "and I wanted you to know. I'm going to pull back in my shell and be very dignified and honorable. If anybody wants to get hurt through me, they've got to hurt themselves."
"You'll not try to see West any more?"
"No," she said rather wearily, "that's over. And it's for the best. I've had a good lesson. No man ought ever to take me seriously until I've told him every day for a year that I love him. Maybe two years."
"Just tell meonce--" he began
"Don't," she said, "please. Now you confess."
"Well, Barbs," he said, "this week-end is a sort of good-by. I'm in very deep, and I'm going to a new place to live a new life."
"Well!" she exclaimed, "you're not running away?"
"Only from temptation," he said. "I have spoken to all my creditors but one, and they have behaved decently and kindly. Wherever I go I take my obligations with me, and, God willing, they shall all be paid."
"Oh," she said, "I think a man ought to make good in the midst of his temptations."
"Might just as well say that you ought to finish your bust of Blizzard with one hand tied behind your back, since it's a constant temptation to you to use both. You ought also to be blindfolded and to work in the dark, since you are constantly tempted to look at your model and see what you are doing."
"I shall miss you," she said simply, "like everything. Why--"
"Why what?"
"It fills the future with blanks that can't be filled in."
"That may or may not be, Barbs. If they can't be filled in, you will write to me, and I will come back."
"But I don't mean--"
"I don't believe you know what you mean. But you aren't Barbs now; you are my confessor. I confess to you, then, that I am in pretty much the same boat with Harry West. I am going away, partly, to get over you--if I can. Love is a fire. Feed it, and it grows. Let it alone, and it dies. Confessor, there is a certain girl--one Barbara Ferris, I love her with all my heart and soul and have so done for many years. Since this leads to happiness for neither of us, I am going to cut her out of my life."
"Wilmot! Are you speaking seriously? You're not going to write to me? I'll have no news of you? Not know how you are getting on? Not know if you are sick or well?"
"The first night," said Wilmot, "you cried. The second you slept and thought about work."
"But you are my oldest friend and my best. Whatever we are to each other, we are that--best friends. We have our roots so deep in the happenings of years and years that we can't be moved--and get away with it."
"We shall see," said Wilmot almost solemnly. "It isn't going to be easy for me, either. But time will soon show. If after a year we find that we cannot do without each other's friendship--why, then we must see each other again. That's all there is to it."
"At least you'll write?"
He shook his head.
"But I will."
"No, Barbs. The sight of your writing would be too much fuel for the fire."
She was silent for a quarter of a mile. She did not enjoy the idea of being deliberately cut out of Wilmot Allen's life and heart "Suppose," she said, "that at the end of the year the fire is still burning bright?"
He slowed the car down so that he could turn and look at her. His face looked very strong and stern. "In that case," he said, "I will come back and marry you,"
"And supposing that meanwhile, in a fit of loneliness and mistaken zeal, I shall have married some one else?"
"If I feel about you as I do now," said Allen, "I will take you away from him."
Once more the car began to run swiftly, so swiftly that Wilmot could not take his eyes from the road to look at Barbara's face. If he had, he would have seen in her eyes an extraordinary look of trouble and tenderness.
During the week-end Barbara and Allen were much together, to the amusement of the other guests, who said: "It'son again." But it was not really.
If Wilmot was going away, Barbara wished him to have good memories of last times together to carry with him. And Wilmot, like a foolish fellow who is going to swear off Monday, and in the meanwhile drinks to excess, saw no reason why he should dress his wounds in the present, since, in time to save his life, he was going to give them every attention possible. That he was going to "get over" Barbara in a year he did not believe. But observation and common-sense told him that life without her must become easier and saner as time passed, and that to be forever caught up or thrown down by her varying moods toward him had ceased to be a self-respecting way of life. This is what common-sense and experience told him; but his heart told him that he would love her always, and that if he could not have her he must simply die.
Sunday night, after she had gone to bed, Barbara lay in the darkness and asked herself questions. Wilmot's life had not been fine, but his love had been very fine, and for longer than she could remember. Would it not be well to trust herself to such a love as that? Had she the right to send it away begging? Would it not be better, since marriage is a lottery, to grasp some things that in this case would be sure, instead of leaving everything to chance? If he kept away from her long enough, his love would probably die, or at least reduce itself to a state of occasional melancholy agitation. But if she belonged to him it would never die. Of this their whole past seemed a sure proof. If she married him he would always love her and be faithful to her; for her part she was wonderfully fond of him, and she believed that if she once actually committed herself to his care, she would be a good wife to him, and a loving. Then why not? She tried the effect of pretending that she had promised to marry him and meant to keep her word, and she found that the position, if only mentally, was strategically strong and secure. She would make him happy; she herself would cease from troubling him and other men. For her sake he would turn over new leaves and be everything that was fine. She would be obedient and have no more difficult knots to untangle for herself. Wilmot would simply cut them for her with a sure word, one way or the other.
She had not for a long time enjoyed so peaceful a night. Hours passed, and she found that, without sleeping, she was becoming wonderfully rested. For it is true that nothing so rests the thinker as unselfish thinking.
She had breakfast in her room, but was down in time to catch the business men's train for town, or to be driven in Wilmot's borrowed runabout, if he should ask her. He did, and amid shouts of farewell and invitations to come again soon, they drove away together into the cool bright morning.
"Wilmot," Barbara said, when they had passed the last outpost of the Bruces' shrubbery and whirled into the turnpike, "I spent most of last night thinking."
"You look fresh as a rosebud."
She shook her head as if to shake off the dew, and said: "I feel more rested than if I had slept soundly. If you will marry me, Wilmot, I will make you a good wife."
Wilmot's heart leaped into his throat with joy, and then dropped as if into a deep abyss of doubt. For all her confessions to him, and for all her promises of amendment, here was his darling Barbs unable to resist the temptation of hurting him again. "One of her impulses," he thought, and at once he was angry with her, and his heart yearned over her.
"Are you going to be able to say that, Barbs," he said gently, "a year from now, after we've been out of sight and hearing of each other all that time?"
"Wilmot," she said, "I'm not up to my old bad tricks. I am ready to give you my word this time, and to keep faith. Only I'd like everything to be done as soon as possible. I've been a very foolish girl, and perplexed and tired, and I want to lean on you, if you'll let me. We'll have a good life together, and I will keep my eyes in the boat."
"A few days ago, Barbs," he said, "you thought that you were seriously in love with another man."
"I know," she said, "but I wasn't."
"Are you in love with me now?" he asked wistfully.
"I know that you will always be good to me, and love me. And that is what Iknowthat I want."
"Poor little Barbs," he said.
"It seems to me rather," she said, "that I am now rich with chances of happiness for us both. I want to make my oldest and most deserving friend happy, and I trust him to make me happy."
"It isn't love, dear?"
"It's so much affection and friendship that perhaps it's better." She turned her face away a little. "The best that marriage can end in is affectionate companionship; why not begin with that, and so be sure of it for always?"
"If I had ever dreamed," said Wilmot unsteadily, "that you were going to say things like this to me, I'd have dreamed that I went wild with happiness, and drove you to the nearest clergyman. But now that you have actually said what you have said, in real life, I find that I love you more than ever, and that it is not compatible with so much love to take you on a basis of friendship. You feel that you have hurt me more than is possible for your conscience to bear, and you wish to make up for it. Is that right?"
"That's not all there is to it, Wilmot, by any means. But for heaven's sake believe that I'm being altogether unselfish: but you know me too well to believe anything so ridiculous."
"I know you well enough," said Wilmot, "to worship the ground you walk on. Not because my heart urges me, but my understanding. And I know you would play the game, once you had given your word, and make me a splendid wife. But what I have for you cannot be given to mere friendship and submission, I should feel that I had sinned against my love for you too greatly to be forgiven. You are closer to me than you have ever been, my dear--and yet so far away that I can only look upward as to a star, and despair of the distance. If there has been anything fine in my life, it has been my love for you. And behold, you, with every opposite intention, are tempting me to let that go rotten, too. But, O my Barbs, if you could only love me!"
Barbara drew a long breath. "I thought I was doing right."
"Youhavedone right. It is for me to do right."
"Well," she said, "I'm bitterly disappointed, and that's all there is to it. Ought I to thank you for letting me off?"
"Yes, dear."
"Then I thank you."
Neither spoke for a long time. At last Barbara said:
"When do you go West?"
"In a very few days."
"Then you will be able to go to Mr. Blizzard's party and hear him play."
"Are you still determined on that?"
"Why, yes. It will be fun. And besides, I haven't any husband to forbid me."
Wilmot's temper rose a little. "I'll go," he said shortly. "When will the bust be finished? And the whole Blizzard episode?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Barbara patiently. "But I think the Blizzard episode--as you call it--is rather a permanent friendship. I find reasons to like him, and to admire him."
Wilmot made no comment. He longed to speak evil of Blizzard, but the fact of his financial obligation to the man kept him silent. He contented himself with saying: "I'm glad that I haven't your artistic judgment of character. One of these days you will learn, to your cost, that men's judgment of a man is usually correct."
"I wish he had legs," said Barbara. "I'd like to do Prometheus bound to the rock."
Wilmot's disgust was intense. "Do you mean to say--" he began, and then checked himself. "Why not have your father graft a pair on him? He's succeeded, by all accounts, in doing so for all sorts of beasts."
"Do you know," said Barbara sweetly, "that is just what my father would try to do for Mr. Blizzard if some interested person would only step forward and supply the legs."
"I dare say Blizzard would find a pair quickly enough, if he thought they could be attached."
"But how could he?"
"Oh, I'm just joking, Miss Innocence. But, seriously, he could buy a pair for a price. You can buy anything in this world--except love,"
Blizzard, sitting in the sun on the steps of 17 McBurney Place, watched the pair approaching in the runabout, noted as they drew near the affectionate seriousness of their attitude toward each other--for they had stopped talking of him and returned to themselves--and his whole being burned suddenly with a rage of jealousy. Controlling the expression of his face, he rose upon his crutches and descended the steps to greet Barbara at the curb.
"Glad to see you!" said she. "And how about Wednesday night for the party? Mr. Allen is coming, and I have asked three or four other people."
The legless man bowed and said: "Thank you. Wednesday at half-past nine."
He nodded affably to Allen, who returned the salute with all his charming ease and courtesy. You might have mistaken them for two men who really valued each other.
"Miss Ferris," said Blizzard, "I shall be ready for work as soon as you. I wish to ask Mr. Allen a question."
Wilmot winced, since he noted a tone of command in Blizzard's voice, and it jarred on him, and he said good-by to Barbara and watched her disappear into the studio-building with a feeling of strong resentment against the man who had to all intents and purposes dismissed her from the scene.
"Well?" he said curtly.
But Blizzard, enjoying the childish satisfaction of having separated the pair, was no longer in the mood to take offence. "I wish to make a proposition to you," he said, "but at some length. Will you come to my place at three o'clock this afternoon? It is easier for you to get about than for me."
"I am very busy," said Wilmot; "I am getting ready to go West."
"So I have gathered. Have you anything definite in view?"
"Not very," said Wilmot. "Nor any money to put it through with. About the loan you were so kind as to make me, I can only say that I am going to turn over a new leaf, and to work very hard at something or other. If I have any luck you shall be paid."
The legless man dismissed the matter of the loan with a backward toss of his head. "If you've nothing definite in view," said he, "please come at three o'clock, I have interests in the West--legitimate interests, and influence. Perhaps I can put you in a way to clear up your debts."
"Well, by George," said Wilmot, his good nature returning, "if that's the idea, I'll turn up at three sharp. Sure thing."