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.
"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. Can _you_ find 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. I _know_ it'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 you _think_ you 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."