Wilmot buttoned his coat over fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. Only
supreme necessity could have persuaded him to take them, since, although
he had not put his name to a paper of any kind, he felt a little as if
he had sold himself to the devil. But Blizzard had shown him no
deviltry; only kindness and a certain whimsicality of speech and a point
of view that was engaging.
The transaction finished, Wilmot was for leaving, but being under
obligation to the legless man was at pains not to be abrupt. He lingered
then a little, and they talked.
"The first time we met," said the beggar, "you were roller-skating with
a pretty child. She was so pretty that I asked you her name. And I have
never forgotten it."
He did not add that he had watched that pretty child's goings and
comings for many years; that he had lain in wait to see her pass; that
he had bribed servants in her father's house to give him news of her:
and that the day approached when, fearing neither man nor God, he
proposed that she should disappear from the world that knew her, and go
down into the infamous depths of that vengeance which had been the
key-note of his life. Nor did he add that there were but two
contingencies which he felt might thwart his plans: her marriage to
Wilmot Allen, or his own untimely death. And he feared the latter but
little. The former, however, had at times seemed imminent to those who
spied upon the daily life of the heiress for him, and in lending money
to Wilmot he was taking a first step toward making it impossible. For
Barbara herself Blizzard had at this time no more feeling than for a
pawn upon a chess-board. It pleased his sense of fitness to know she was
beautiful; and to be told that she was like sunshine in her
father's house.
"What has become of her?" he said.
"Of Miss Ferris?" Wilmot did not care to discuss her with a stranger.
But unfortunately there were fifteen thousand dollars of the stranger's
money in his inside pocket. "She became a great favorite in society," he
said, "and then dropped out to study art."
"Painting?" The legless man knew perfectly well, but it suited him to
make inquiries. "Music?"
"Sculpture," said Wilmot shortly.
"Is she succeeding?"
"She works very hard, and she has talent."
"That is not enthusiastic."
"You mustn't ask me; I'm not an art critic."
"What a pity."
"A pity that I'm not an art critic?"
"No. A pity for a beautiful girl to do anything but exist."
Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. The beggar's speech surprised him,
and pleased him, since it expressed a favorite thought of his own.
"Is any of her work on exhibition? Having seen her once, one takes an
interest, you know."
"I think there is nothing that can be seen," said Wilmot coolly, "except
upon special invitation. And I think she is very shy of showing anything
that she has done."
"True artists," said Blizzard, who criminally was an artist himself and
knew what he was talking about, "live in the future."
Again Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. Why should a legless beggar be
able to make loans of fifteen thousand dollars, and why should he be
able to talk like a gentleman?
"I am interested in art," continued Blizzard; "sometimes I have earned a
few dollars by sitting for my portrait."
He did not add that he continually put himself in the way of artists in
the hope that his fame as a model would reach Barbara, and touch her
imagination. He did not add that he haunted Washington Square and
McBurney Place, where her studio was, in the hope that his face, which
he knew to be different and more terrible than other faces, might kindle
a fire of inspiration in her. He believed rightly that if a woman once
looked him in the eyes she would never forget him. But hitherto Barbara
had not so much as glanced at him, since she carried her lovely head
very high, and looked straight before her as she went. While, as for
him, he stood upon the stumps of his legs, a gigantic sort of dwarf,
beneath the notice of the proud-eyed and the tall.
Wilmot passed out of the place in deep thought; not even the pretty
girls plaiting straw won a glance from him. Coupled with the relief of
being out of present difficulties was a disagreeable sense of
foreboding. Suppose the legless man were to ask favors of him before the
money could be repaid? Suppose they were favors which a gentleman could
not grant? And he determined to find out, from the police if necessary,
just what sort of a man it was with whom he had had dealings.