One light, not strong, illuminated the legless man's face. Barbara and
her friends sat in half-darkness. Kid Shannon went out of the room on
tiptoe, closing the door softly behind him. Of Rose, crouched under the
key-board of the grand piano, her hands on the pedals, nothing could be
seen, owing to a grouping of small palms and flowers in pots. The stump
of Blizzard's right leg touched her shoulder. She was trembling. So was
Blizzard. He was trembling with stage fright; she with Blizzard fright.
His hands, thick with agile muscles and heavy as hams, though he had
just been soaking them in hot water, seemed powerless to him, and stiff.
He struck a chord, and it sounded to him not like the voices of a
musical instrument, but like a clattering together of tin dishes. This
enraged him. His self-consciousness vanished. Those ivory keys and
well-tempered wires had fooled him. He hated his piano. And he began to
punish it. The heavy hands, rising and falling with the speed and
strength of lightning strokes, produced a volume of tone which perhaps
no other player in the world could have equalled.
Blythe, a great amateur of music, had come in a sceptical mood. He now
sat more erect, his face, eyebrows raised, turned to Blizzard, his ears
recalling to him certain moments of Rubinstein's playing.
But Blizzard no longer hated his piano. It had stood up nobly to his
assault. It was a brave instrument, well-bred, a friend full of rare
qualities--for a friend to show off. And, the swollen veins in his
forehead flattening, he began to make his peace with his piano. It could
do more than shout and rage. It could sing like an angel in all
languages; it could be witty, humorous, heart-rending, heart-healing,
chaste, passionate, helpful, mischievous. And it could be wise and
eloquent. It could stand up for a friend, and explain his sins away, and
get him forgiven in high places.
And even as Blizzard thought, so he played. He was no longer conscious
of himself or his guests, not even of Barbara. As for Rose, she was
merely a set of pedals in perfect mechanical adjustment. He was not even
conscious of his thoughts. They came and went without deliberation, and
were expressed as they came and dismissed as they went in the terms of
his extraordinary improvisation.
But it came to this at last, that he thought only of beautiful things,
so that even his face was stripped of wickedness, and his fingers loosed
one by one the voices of angels, until it seemed as if the whole room
was full of them--all singing. And the singing died away to silence.
The legless man looked straight ahead of him into the dim room. Then,
smiling, his head a little on one side, he caressed his piano so that it
gave out Chopin's 7th Prelude, which, as all the world knows, is a
little girl who smiles because she is happy; and she is happy because
so many of the flowers in the garden are blue. It is not known why this
makes her happy, only that it does.
And forthwith he played Chopin and only Chopin: brooks and pools of
sound to which you did not listen, but in which you bathed. And in his
soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara, and only to Barbara.
And so powerful was this obsession that it stole out of him like some
hypnotic influence, affected the others, and gave him away. First Blythe
looked toward Barbara, not realizing why, then Haddon looked, then
Mrs. Bruce.
Barbara felt the warm blood in her cheeks. She was troubled, unhappy,
touched. A man, his face full of unhappy yearning, his soul quick with
genius, was making love to her; asking her to forget his shortcomings,
to forgive his sins, to give him a hand upward out of the dark places
into the light. He followed her, always pleading, by brooks, into
valleys, through flowery meadows in the early morning, into solemn
churches, into groves of cypress flooded with moonlight.
[Illustration: And in his soul the legless man was playing only for
Barbara]
Blythe could have sworn that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now
to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara.
The piano burst into a storm of sound, under cover of which Rose, still
at her post, torn with jealousy, continued to pedal at the direction of
her lord and master, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Devils
filled the room, whirling in mad dances; they screamed and yelled;
the souls of the damned screeched in torment; and the face of him who
invoked the inferno, swollen, streaming with sweat, the eyes glazed,
protruding, was the face of a madman.
Rose, for whom her master's playing had the eloquence and precision of
speech, forgot her jealousy in fear of those consequences which her
ill-timed sobbing must bring upon her. Her tears dried as in a desert
wind; her sobs ceased, and in a moment or two the madness was going out
of Blizzard's music and out of his face. He rested, preluded, and then
began to play Beethoven, quietly, with a pure singing tone, music of a
heavenly sanity.
The jarred feelings of his audience were soothed. Into his own face
there stole a high-priest look. And when he had finished playing, this
look remained for a few moments. Then he laughed quietly and, speaking
for the first time, expressed the hope that he had not made them
listen too long.
He reached for the wall behind him, and turned a switch so that the room
became brightly lighted. Then, reluctantly, he came out from behind the
piano, swinging between his crutches, and leaving Rose to escape at the
first favorable opportunity. His descent from colossus to cripple had an
unpleasant effect. And the question, "How the deuce do you work the
pedals?" was jerked from Blythe, usually a most tactful person.
"Why," said Blizzard simply, "I have an assistant." He caught Barbara's
eye and reddened a little. "A young man who is musical and intelligent.
We have a system of signals, and--but I think there is a sort of thought
communication that comes of much rehearsing together. And in our best
moments we do pretty well. But sometimes when our minds are not tuned
together we make a dreadful hash of things."
He might have added: "At such times I drag her about by the hair and
beat her." But he didn't. He looked instead the picture of a very
patient man who makes the best of things.
"Whatever you do at times," said Barbara gently, "you have done wonders
to-night. But you know better than we do how good your playing is. So
what is the use of praising it--to you?"
She felt that he was her own private discovery--almost her property. And
knowing that her friends were still profoundly affected by his playing,
she was filled with honest pride. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed.
"What did I tell you?" she exclaimed. "Was I right? Didn't I promise
that he would make good? Did he?"
She was delighted with Blizzard, delighted with herself, delighted with
the whole party. She had forgotten the madman face that he had showed.
She forgot that he was a cripple, a thing soured and wicked. She thought
of him only as a great genius, which she herself had discovered.
The childlike pleasure which she felt communicated itself to the
others, and Blizzard, escaping an ovation of honest praise, led them
into the next room, where, among palms and roses, such a supper was
spread as gamblers, the big men of the profession, spread for
their victims.
The mere sight of the champagne-glasses loosened the men's tongues. Talk
flowed. Mrs. Bruce and Barbara, seated right and left of their host,
made much of his music and his hospitality. For once in his life he was
genuinely happy. He looked very handsome, very high-minded, very modest,
a man's man. Sitting, he was much taller than the others. You forgot
that, standing, he was but a dwarf. He towered at the head of his table,
his mind working in swift, good-natured, hospitable flashes. It was
obvious that he had been born a gentleman, and that he had never
"forgotten how." It was obvious, too, that he was a man of power and
position, who when he wished could spend money like a great lord, and
who was accustomed to give orders.
In his manner to Barbara there was (perhaps noticeable only to herself)
an air of long-proved friendship and a kind of guardianly tenderness,
and he managed somehow to convey to her that she had an immense
influence over him; that he looked to her for help--for inspiration.
The desire to make a great man of him invaded her mind. Her heart warmed
toward him.
"I wonder," said Bruce suddenly, "where our wandering Wilmot is
to-night?"
"I drink to him," said the beggar quickly, "wherever he is, and wish
him luck."
But the poison had been spilled on Barbara's evening. For three hours
she had not once thought of the man whom twelve hours ago she had really
wanted to marry. And her heart meanwhile had warmed and expanded toward
one who at best was a prodigiously successful crook and rascal, and she
was ashamed. But for all that neither the warmth nor the triumphant
sense of influence and conquest went out of her heart. And later, when
Mrs. Bruce said: "I really think we ought to go," Barbara, outwardly all
sweetness and agreement, was inwardly annoyed. She wanted very much to
stay, for she knew that the moment she was alone her conscience would
give her no peace, and that she would make resolutions which she would
not, judging from past experiences, be able to keep. She would resolve
to abandon her bust of Blizzard, resolve never to see the creature
again, since it seemed that he had in him power upon her
emotions--dangerous power.
"Do we work to-morrow, Miss Ferris?"
The words, "No, I'm afraid not to-morrow," rose to her lips. The words,
"_Please,_ at the usual time," came out.
And she felt as if his will, not her own, had caused her to say those
words. Her heart gave a sudden leap of fear.