The Penalty Part 48

He was not. Some he bullied a little, for habit is strong; some he treated with laughter and irony, some with wit, and some with kindness and deep understanding. He might have been an able shepherd going to work on a hopelessly numerous black and ramshackle flock of sheep. He couldn't expect to make model citizens out of all his old heelers; he couldn't expect to turn more than fifty per cent of his two clergymen into the paths of righteousness. But with the young criminals he took much pains, giving money where it would do good, and advice whether it would do good or not. Among the first to come to him was Kid Shannon.

"Now look a-here," said the Kid, "I bin good and bad by turns till I don't know which side is top side. But this minute I'm good--d'you get me? If you want to jail me you kin do it, n.o.body easier; but don't do it! You was always a bigger man than me, and when you led I followed--for a real man had rather follow a strong bad man than a good slob any day. You out of the lead, I got nothing to follow but me own wishes, and they're all to the good these days."

"A woman?" said Blizzard sternly.

"She ain't a woman yet," said the Kid, "and she ain't a kid--she's about half-past girl o'clock, and she thinks there's no better man in the United States than always truly yours, Kid Shannon. I got a good saloon business, and nothing crooked on hand but what's past and done with, and I looks to you to give a fellow a chance. Do I get it? Jail ain't goin'

to help me, and it would break her. Look here, sport: I _want_ to be good."

"Kid," said Blizzard, "no man that _wants_ to be good need be afraid of me. You'd have been a good boy always--if it hadn't been for me. _I_ know that as well as you. I've got the past all written down in my head.

I can't rub it out. But any man that's got the nerve can put new writing across and across the old, until the old can't be read, or if it could would read like a joke. You can tell whomsoever it concerns to do well and fear nothing. At first I thought to tell Lichtenstein every first and last thing that I knew about this city, and he tried to make me tell. We had a meeting, Old Abe and I did. I was always afraid of the little Jew, Kid. Well, face to face, I wasn't. He talked, and I talked.

And I was the stronger. He lets me go scot-free, and I don't tell anything. If others get you for what you've done, it can't be helped.

But none of you'll be got through me. The past is buried; but if in the future any of you fellows start anything, and I hear of it--look out"

Kid Shannon wriggled uncomfortably. "Say," he said, "what changed you?"

"I'm not changed," said Blizzard; "according to Dr. Ferris I'm just acting natural. I was a good boy. I had a fracture of the skull. The bone pressed on my gray matter and made me a bad man. I'll tell you a funny thing: _I can't beat the box any more!_ I had a go at it the other day, the missus all ready to work the pedals, and Lord help me there was no more music in my head or my fingers than there is in the liver of a frog. It was the same when I was a two-legged little kid--no music."

"Are you going to close the old diggings?"

Blizzard shook his head. "Yes and no. I'm going to pull down the old rookery; and I'm going to put up in its place a model factory."

"Hats?"

"Hats and maybe other things. I'm going to show New York how to run a sweatshop--you wait and see--the most wages and the least sweat--and the girls happier and safer than in their own homes. The missus and I were planning to bolt to a new place and begin life all over. That was foolish. I'd always feel like a coward. Don't forget that old friends meditating new crimes will be welcome at the office--advice always given away, money sometimes and sometimes help. Pa.s.s the word around--and when you and Miss Half-past Girl send out your cards don't forget me and Mrs.

Blizzard in Marrow Lane."

He leaned forward, his eyes very bright and mischievous.

"Kid," he said, "artistically and dramatically, it's a pity."

"What's a pity?"

"That we didn't loot Maiden Lane before we got religion. If there was any hitch in the plan, I don't know what it was. And, Lord, I _was_ so set on the whole thing--not because I wanted the loot, but to see if it could be done. Some of you always said it couldn't--said there was a joker in the pack. Well, we'll never know now. And here's Mrs. O'Farrall come to pa.s.s the time of day--Good-by, Kid, so-long, pa.s.s the word around. Good luck--love and best wishes to Half-past! Mrs. O'Farrall, your kitchen extends under the sidewalk; the more negotiable of your delicatessen are cooked on city property."

"And 'twill be me ruin to have it found out. What I came for--"

"Was to find out what I'm going to do about it. Well, the law that you're breaking isn't hurting the city a bit, Mrs. O'Farrall--I wish I could say the same for your biscuits. If you're reported, come to me and I'll see you through. How's Morgan the day?"

"The same as to-morrow, thank ye kindly--dhrunk and philanderin'."

"I'll send him a pledge to sign with my compliments, Mrs. O'Farrall, and a good job at the same time."

"He'll never sign the pledge."

"Not if I ask him to, Mrs. O'Farrall, ask him on bended knee?"

Mrs. O'Farrall looked frightened, apoplectic, and confused. Blizzard lifted his heavy eyebrows, then a smile began to brighten his face.

"Mrs. O'Farrall," said he, "blessings on your old red face! For just this minute for the first time since I lost them, the fact that I have no knees to bend escaped me. Your religion teaches you that the Lord is good to the repentant sinner. Madam, he is!" And then he began to call in a loud voice:

"Rose--Rose, run down a minute. I clean forgot that I hadn't any legs."

She came, fresh, young, and lovely. What if she had played the traitor--thrown her cap over the wind-mills? These things are not serious matters to her s.e.x--when the men they love are kind. And then Lichtenstein had forgiven her, and pretended to box her ears--and then she had had enough tragedy and jealousy crowded into a few months to atone for greater crimes and lapses than hers.

XLIX

"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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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 members.h.i.+p 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.