The Penalty Part 2

"I? None."

"Oh, yes, you have. You were brought up to be rich, and you were left poor, and a man has to live and even secure for himself the luxuries to which he has been accustomed. Haven't you ever excused yourself to yourself something like that?"

Wilmot admitted that he had, and went further. "You can't knock livings out of a tree with a stick like ripe apples," he said. "You've either got to use your wits or begin at the bottom and work up. And it seems to me that I'd rather be a little bit tarnished than toil away the best years of my life the way some men I know are doing."

"Yes," said Barbara, "but why not go somewhere where the world is younger, and there are real chances to be a man, and real opportunities to make money in real ways? I don't blame you for living on your wits. I blame you for gambling and never getting anywhere and not caring."

"Not caring? And this from you?"

She changed color under his steady eyes.

"You just give me a certain promise, Barbs, and I give you my word of honor I'll settle to something above-board and make it hum. Look here now! How about it? Who's been so faithful to the one girl for so long?

Who understands her so well? Who'd enjoy dying for her so much?"

"Good old Wilmot," she said gently and gave him her hand. He kissed it and would have liked to go on holding it forever, but she took it away from him, and after a silence said, with some bitterness: "I mustn't ever marry anybody. I've learned to know myself too well. And I've no constancy, and I don't trust myself."

"That," said Wilmot with the faith of a fanatic in his G.o.d, "is because you've never really cared."

"And besides," she said, "I have what I am pleased to call my career.

And 'Down to Gehenna and up to the throne he travels fastest who travels alone.'"

"True," said Wilmot, "he arrives soonest, but all tired out, and the house is empty, and there are no children in it, and only paid servants.

And it may be very showy to live for fame, but it isn't good enough.

When we turned that bust you began into mud pies, we did a wise thing.

We amused ourselves, and we said the last word on art as opposed to life. The best thing in this world is to _be_ children and to _have_ children--and the next best thing is nowhere."

"Would you," said Barbara, and her eyes twinkled a little, "really rather be a parent than a Praxiteles?"

"It looks to me," said Wilmot sadly, "sometimes--in moments of despondency--as if the honorable gentleman was never going to be either.

But then again," and he spoke in a strong voice, "I believe in my heart that after you've done handling the book of life and admiring the binding, you'll open it at chapter one, and read, '_Young Wilmot_ Allen--'"

"Lunch-time," said Barbara, and she rose from the comfortable chair with sharp decision. "I vote for a thick steak, being famished. Is my hair all mussy?"

"No," said Wilmot dejectedly. "I wish it was. And I wish it was my fault--and yours."

IV

"I've done enough for you more than once," said the legless man; "you're big enough and strong enough to work, but you're a born loafer."

"I had a job." The speaker, a shabby, unshaven man with a beastly face, whined dolefully. "And I done right; but I got the sack."

"What was the job and why were you sacked?"

"I got a job as a artist's model. I sits in a chair while the lady makes a statue out of my face, and then she gives me money, and I goes and spends it. The third day she gives me more money, and tells me I looks too well fed and happy to suit her, and sends me away."

The legless man was astonished to learn that his heart was beating with unaccustomed force and rapidity. "Who was the artist?"

"She's a lady name o' Ferris."

The legless man steeled his face to express nothing. "Ferris," he commented briefly.

"Say," said the unshaven man, "what's all that about the devil falling out of heaven and fetching up in h.e.l.l?"

"Why?"

"That's how she says I looks. And she wants to make a statue of him, just when he comes to and sits up, and looks up and sees how far he's fell. She says my face has all the sorrers and horrors of the world in it."

"And then, you fool," said the legless man, "you spoiled her game by high living. You ate and you drank till you looked like a paranoiac bulldog asleep in the sun. Where was the lady's studio?"

"Seventeen McBurney Place."

"And she wants to do a Satan, does she?"

The unshaven man drew back from the expression of the legless man, in whose face it was as if all the fires of h.e.l.l had suddenly burst into flame. The unshaven man covered the breast of his threadbare coat with outstretched hands as if to s.h.i.+eld himself from some suddenly bared weapon. His eyes blinked, but did not falter.

"Say," he said presently, after drawing a deep breath, "if she could see you once."

"If I don't know," said the legless man, "how Satan felt after the fall, n.o.body does. The things I've been--the things I've seen--back there--down here--the things I've lost--the things I've found! h.e.l.l's Bell's, Johnson! what is it you want--food?--drink?--a woman?"

The unshaven man's eyes shone with an unholy light.

"What would you do for twenty-five dollars?"

The unshaven man said nothing. He looked everything.

"Do you know the McIver woman?"

"f.a.n.n.y?"

The legless man granted. "Yes. f.a.n.n.y. She'll look at you if you've got money."

"She'd crawl through a sewer to find a dime."

"Quite so," the legless man commented dryly. "Well, it wouldn't matter to me if she went on a tear and was found dead in her bed."

"It's worth fifty." Something in the unshaven man's voice suggested that he had once been remotely connected with some sort of a business.

The legless man shook his head. "Judas Iscariot," he said, "betrayed the Lord G.o.d for thirty. f.a.n.n.y McIver's scalp isn't worth a cent over twenty-five. You're just a broken-down drunk. It takes a bigger bluffer than you to make me put an insult on Christendom. Fifteen down. Ten when f.a.n.n.y's had her last hang-over."

"Why don't you do some of your dirty work yourself?"

"I do all I can," said the legless man simply; "I can't find time for everything."

The unshaven man s.h.i.+fted uneasily on his shabby feet. In his stomach the flames which only alcohol can quench were burning with a steady gnawing fury. "How about a little drink?" he said.