"I understand," said Blizzard sternly, "that when you learned I was your
father, you refused to proceed further against me."
"Yes, sir," said Bubbles.
"You did wrong! Always do your duty. It was your duty to send me to the
chair, if you could. A fine father I'd been to you--and to Harry--and a
good honest man I was to your mother! My boy, I'm face to face with the
penalty that I have to pay--you. I know all about you, Bubbles, from
Lichtenstein, from Dr. Ferris, from Wilmot Allen and--and others. And
you're a good boy. I drove your mother crazy, I let you drift into the
streets--to sink, I thought, and perish; but you're a good boy. I gave
you no education, but you have picked up reading and writing and God
knows what else. Once I was going to wring your neck. I didn't. That's
the only favor you ever had at my hands. You'll grow up to be a good
man--a fine, clever, understanding man. And it won't be because of me,
it will be in spite of me. This is the hardest thing I have to face.
You've come now to pay a duty call. Well, my boy, I'm obliged. But I
wish to Heaven I had some hold on your affection, some way of getting a
hold. Bubbles, what can I do to make you like me?"
Bubbles wriggled with awful discomfort, but said nothing.
"Is it because of your mother that you can't ever like me?"
Bubbles drew a long breath as if for a deep dive. His voice shook. "She
lives in a bug-house," he said; "you drove her into it. Dr. Ferris says
you were crazy yourself and nothing you ever done ought to be held
against you. He says, and Miss Barbara, she says, that I ought to try to
like you and feel kind to you. And--and I thought it was my duty to come
and tell you that I just can't."
He was only a little boy, and the delivery of these plain truths to a
man he had always held in deadly dread unmanned him. He gave one short,
wailing, whimpering sob, and then bit his lips until he had himself in a
sort of control.
"That's all right, Bubbles," said the legless man after a pause. "It
hits hard, but it's all right. And whether you said it or not, it was
coming to me, and I knew it. Do you mind if I send you books and things
now and then? There was a book I had when I was a boy. I'd like you to
have it. Don't know what reminds me of it--unless it's you. It's the
story of a Frenchman, Bayard--they called him the chevalier _sans peur
et sans reproche_. That's French. The book tells what it means. You
better go now. I'm talking against time. I haven't got the same control
of my nerves I used to have. I'm all broken up, my boy. But you're dead
right--dead right. I say so, and I think so. You're to go to
boarding-school. That's good. They won't teach _you_ any evil."
He did not offer his hand, and the boy was glad.
"Well, good-by," he said uneasily, reached the door, turned, and came
back a little way. "Wish you good luck," he said.
Blizzard lowered his formidable head almost reverently. "Thank you," he
said.
Poor Bubbles, he began to whistle before he was out of the building; it
wasn't from heartlessness, it was from pure discomfort and remorse.
Anyway, his father heard the shrill piping--and he sat and looked
straight ahead of him, and his face was as that of Satan fallen--fallen,
and hell fires licked into the marrow of his bones.
So Rose found him, and flung herself upon his breast with a cry of
yearning, and his heavy sorrowed head nestled closer and closer to hers,
and he burst suddenly into a great storm of weeping.
L
But the legless man was not one who easily or often gave way to grief.
He retained all of that will-power which had made him so potent for
evil, and he used it now to force cheerfulness out of discouragement and
sorrow. Just what he proposed to do with his life is difficult to
expose, for his plans kept changing, as almost all plans do, in the
working out.
His remodelled factory will serve for an example. It began as a place in
which the East Side maiden could earn enough money to keep body and soul
together without scotching either. Still keeping to this idea, Blizzard
kept brightening conditions, and letting in light--figuratively and
actually. And he proved that short hours, high pay, and worth-while
profits may be made to keep company. It all depends on how much
willingness and efficiency are crowded into the short hours. Employment
in Blizzard's factory became a distinction, like membership in an
exclusive club, and carried with it so many privileges of comfort and
self-respect that the employees couldn't very well help being efficient.
Blizzard's office, where he held the threads of many enterprises, became
a sort of clearing-house for East Side troubles. He kept free certain
hours during which, sitting for all the world like a judge, he listened
to private affairs, and sympathizing, scolding, wheedling, and even
bullying, he gave advice, gave money, found work, brought about
reconciliations, and turned hundreds of erring feet into the straight
and narrow path. He preached, and very eloquently, the gospel of
common-sense. For every crisis in people's lives, he seemed to remember
a parallel. And his knowledge, especially of criminalities and the
workings of crooked minds, seemed very marvellous to those who sought
him out. And he was an easy man to speak truth to, for there were very
few wicked things that he had not done himself. It is easier to confess
theft to a thief than to a man of virtue, and the resulting advice may
very well be just the same.
His energy and activity were endless. "It's just as hard work," he told
Rose, "to do good in the world as to do evil. I haven't changed my
methods, only my conditions and ideals. You've got to get the confidence
of the people you're working for, and to get that you've got to know
more about them than they know about themselves. To know that a man has
murdered, gives you power over that man; to know that another man has
done something fine and manly, gives you a hold on that man. Real men
are ashamed of having two things found out about them--their secret bad
actions, and their secret good actions. Men who do good for the sake of
notoriety aren't real men."
"I know who's a real man," said Rose.
He regarded her with much tenderness and amusement. "Rose," he said,
"there's one thing I'm keen to know."
"What?"
"Will you give an honest answer?"
She nodded.
"Well then, do you like me as much as you did when I used to maltreat
you and bully you and threaten you? Or do you like me more, or do you
like me less?"
"It's just the same," she said, "only that then I was unhappy all the
time, and now all the time I'm happy."
"Were you unhappy because I wasn't kind?"
She laughed that idea to scorn. "I was unhappy because you liked
somebody else more than me."
The amusement went out of Blizzard's face; the tenderness remained.
There was one thing that he was determined to do with his life, and that
was to make Rose a good husband. And he was very fond of her, and she
could make him laugh, but it wasn't going to be very easy, as long as
the image of another girl persisted in haunting him.