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 assure 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--Massachusetts Institute 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 compasses.
At such times it seemed to him that her nearness was more than his
unschooled passions 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 glass knobs 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.