The Penalty — Context and Discussion

She had on her work-apron, but she was not working.

He praised, blamed, patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with superiority on topics which are best left alone.

She took some coins from her purse and dropped them into the tin cup.

The young man knelt at the door by which he had entered and began to remove its ancient lock.

Harry, the workman, ... rose to his feet, and turned to Barbara with a certain quiet eagerness.

But Barbara and Wilmot Allen, well used to even larger and more stately rooms, chatted ... as two children.

She faced him, still scornful, but white now, and biting her lips.

In a few minutes Bubbles returned. "He's just sitting there with a hell of a face on him," he said, "and she's working like a dynamo".

Dr. Ferris frowned. "I'm not trying to interfere," he said. "You're old enough to know what's best for you".

"Some unknown person," said Barbara, "has formed the habit of sending me flowers".

In the dim light she looked wonderfully young and beautiful.

He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab.... "Here I wishes you salutations".

Wilmot Allen took her in to dinner, and looked much love at her, and talked much nonsense.

He saw her with the vase of jonquils in her hand ... and his stout heart failed him a little.

When Bubbles had trotted off, she dropped into her chair and cried.

The door opened, and Rose staggered into the room.

And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara.

"'D afternoon, Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles.

"I want me thumb bandaged".

She said in a small; surprised voice, "Why, it's finished".

In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily.

Barbara ... dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind her.

They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most formal of their many gardens.

"What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?" "He went away," said Barbara, her eyes troubled.

He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.

"I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff".

"Climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house".

"I've seen that man. I was writing notes in the summer house when he came".

The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table.

"You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry".

They were much amused with Bubbles, who came out to them for Christmas vacation.

"And when you think," said she, "that some women spend the best years of their lives making _statues_!"

The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one long depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and hated herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and only touch of mania. It lasted only a little while and was not acute. She got the idea that she was being watched, spied on, and followed. But she was too strong in body and mind to give in for long to so silly an hallucination. And when she had dismissed the second man and her maid, who had particularly excited her suspicions, the mania left her, as a dream leaves at waking.

In her seventeenth year she was presented to society, and became an immense favorite. There were excellent reasons for this: she was lovely to look at, she would inherit a great deal of money, she had charming natural manners, and she was sweet-tempered.

During her second season she had an unpleasant experience. She had almost reached an understanding with a certain young man with whom she fancied herself in love. They were spending a Saturday to Monday at a great place on Long Island. On Sunday night, her host, a man old enough to be her father, invited her to see his rose garden by moonlight. She accepted this invitation as a matter of course. Pacing down a path between tall privet hedges, her host, who for some minutes seemed to have lost the use of his tongue, made her a sudden impassioned declaration of love, seized her in his arms, and kissed her wherever he could with a kind of dreadful fury. For half a minute she stood still as a statue. Then, crimson with shame and anger, she wrenched free, and struck him heavy blows on the face and head with her strong young fists. She beat him, not indeed to insensibility, but to his senses. They returned to the house after a time, and entered the drawing-room talking in lazy, natural voices and praising the beauty of the night and of the garden. Not even Barbara's lover suspected that anything out of the common had happened.

Barbara, having played half a dozen rubbers of bridge with the great skill and sweet temper which were natural to her, excused herself, went to her room, and cried half the night. It was not the shame of having been forcibly kissed that sickened her of herself, but the unforgettable, unforgivable fact that toward the last of that furious kissing she had found a certain low feline pleasure in the kisses. She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had never been born.

It seemed terrible to her that she could at once be in love with one man and enjoy the kisses of another. She had heard of girls who were thus, and had for them the contempt which they deserved. And yet it seemed that she was one of them; neither better nor worse. What Barbara did not realize was, that in the first place she was not really in love with anybody and never had been, and that it was not she herself who enjoyed being kissed by a man to whom she was indifferent, neither liking nor loathing, but nature, which for reasons, or perhaps only whims, of its own, tempts the cell to divide and the flower to go to seed.

Through the tangle of her love affairs Wilmot Allen threaded a path of hope, despair, and cynicism. There were times when she seemed to have a return of her childhood infatuation for him; there were times when he feared that in one of her moments of impressionable enthusiasm she would marry some other man in haste, and repent at leisure. And there were the cynical intervals, when it seemed to him that he could do without her, and that nothing was worth while but enjoyment, both base and innocent, and pleasure.

During Wilmot's junior year at New Haven, his father's sensational, dissipated, and stock-gambling career came to a sudden end. There was even a shadow on the name. He had done something _really_ discreditable, something of course to do with money; since a man who is _merely_ a gambler, a drunkard, and a Don Juan may with ease keep upon good terms with society.

Wilmot Allen failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was "accidentally shot while cleaning the weapon."

The real tragedy was that so good a career as the son's should have come to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale. He stood well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have received an election to a senior society in the spring. But the solid ground being withdrawn from under his feet--in other words, his allowance from his father--he left amid universal regret, and found himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, and color, and who now had no visible means of support.

Friends found him a position in Wall Street. Being young, attractive, a good "mixer," not in the least shy, he was given a handsome "entertaining" allowance and told to bring in business. So he foregathered with out-of-town magnates, made the city a pleasant, familiar place to them, and brought much of their money into the firm's office. When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.

And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her, Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of his nature, and hardened his heart.

If the father's heritage, drink and women, were spared him, or at least that part of him which was really noble, a love of cleanness, clear-mindedness, and purity, died hard. But gambling was second nature to him. He could not enjoy a game unless he had something on it; and all book-makers and proprietors of gambling-houses were friends of his and called him by his first name. Sometimes through a series of lucky turns he rose to heights of picturesque affluence; more often he was stone-broke; but so much money passed through his hands in the course of a year that it was always possible for him to borrow and live well enough on credit. Money became his passion, not for its own sake, not for the sake of what it could buy, but because it was a game upon which the best wits of the world have been engaged for ages and ages--and because you have to have it, or be able to owe so much that it amounts to the same thing.

At first when he got in a hole, owed money which he saw no way of raising, Wilmot suffered all the anguish and remorse of the trustee who has speculated with orphans' funds (for the first time) and lost them. Gradually he became hardened. And those who knew him best could never tell whether he was worth fifty thousand or had just lost that much. He drew upon a stock of courage and cheerfulness worthy of even the noblest cause, until the term "self-respect" dropped automatically from his inner vocabulary and his moral sense became a rotten, rusty buckler through which the spear of temptation or necessity passed like a pin through a sheet of tissue-paper.

He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and in soul.

One day, being at his wit's end, he walked rapidly, seeking light, through a quarter of the city which was not familiar to him. He was in that mood when a man does not wish to be at the trouble of nodding or exchanging a word even with his best friend. A voice hailed him, "Mr. Allen."

He stopped and saw that the voice came from a legless man who sat in the sun by a hand-organ on which were displayed for sale a few pairs of shoe-laces and, to excite charity, a battered (and empty) tin cup.

"Have you forgotten me?"

The light of recognition had twinkled instantly in Wilmot's eyes, for he was wonderful at remembering faces. And he smiled and said:

"Of course not. How are you?"

"Pretty well," said the beggar. "And you?"

Wilmot's giving hand had slipped automatically into his trousers pocket. Then, for once in his charitable life, he hesitated, since the pocket contained nothing but a ten-dollar bill, and that was all the money he had in the world with which to meet a pressing note of ten thousand. His hesitation lasted only a moment. He laughed and stuffed the ten-dollar bill into the cup, and said:

"For old acquaintance' sake."

The beggar studied the young man's face. Then he said: "Mr. Allen, I once had the honor to warn you against three things."

"Your face is innocent of wine and women. How about the gambling?"

"My friend," said Wilmot, "you read me like a book. The gambling is all to the bad. I have just given you all the money I had in the world."

"A few dollars are of no use to me," said the beggar.

"Nor to me. Don't worry."

"I am not worrying. I'm thinking that you and I have something in common. And for that reason I am tempted to ask if a few thousand would be of any use to you?"

Wilmot smiled with engaging candor. "Fifteen thousand would."

"You shall have them," said the beggar shortly. He pointed to a glazed door across which was printed in gilt letters:

"That," said the beggar, "is my name, and that is my place of business. Come in."

Wilmot followed the beggar through the glass door, which at opening and closing caused a bell to clang. The front of the establishment was occupied by a dust-ridden salesroom, and an office with yellow-pine partitions. As he followed the beggar into this, Wilmot caught a glimpse in the distance of fifteen or twenty young girls who sat at a long table industriously plaiting straw hats. He lifted his own hat a little mechanically, and thought that he had never seen so many pretty girls at one time under one roof.

Wilmot buttoned his coat over fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. Only supreme necessity could have persuaded him to take them, since, although he had not put his name to a paper of any kind, he felt a little as if he had sold himself to the devil. But Blizzard had shown him no deviltry; only kindness and a certain whimsicality of speech and a point of view that was engaging.

The transaction finished, Wilmot was for leaving, but being under obligation to the legless man was at pains not to be abrupt. He lingered then a little, and they talked.

"The first time we met," said the beggar, "you were roller-skating with a pretty child. She was so pretty that I asked you her name. And I have never forgotten it."

He did not add that he had watched that pretty child's goings and comings for many years; that he had lain in wait to see her pass; that he had bribed servants in her father's house to give him news of her: and that the day approached when, fearing neither man nor God, he proposed that she should disappear from the world that knew her, and go down into the infamous depths of that vengeance which had been the key-note of his life. Nor did he add that there were but two contingencies which he felt might thwart his plans: her marriage to Wilmot Allen, or his own untimely death. And he feared the latter but little. The former, however, had at times seemed imminent to those who spied upon the daily life of the heiress for him, and in lending money to Wilmot he was taking a first step toward making it impossible. For Barbara herself Blizzard had at this time no more feeling than for a pawn upon a chess-board. It pleased his sense of fitness to know she was beautiful; and to be told that she was like sunshine in her father's house.

"What has become of her?" he said.

"Of Miss Ferris?" Wilmot did not care to discuss her with a stranger. But unfortunately there were fifteen thousand dollars of the stranger's money in his inside pocket. "She became a great favorite in society," he said, "and then dropped out to study art."

"Painting?" The legless man knew perfectly well, but it suited him to make inquiries. "Music?"

"Sculpture," said Wilmot shortly.

"She works very hard, and she has talent."

"That is not enthusiastic."

"You mustn't ask me; I'm not an art critic."

"A pity that I'm not an art critic?"

"No. A pity for a beautiful girl to do anything but exist."

Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. The beggar's speech surprised him, and pleased him, since it expressed a favorite thought of his own.

"Is any of her work on exhibition? Having seen her once, one takes an interest, you know."

"I think there is nothing that can be seen," said Wilmot coolly, "except upon special invitation. And I think she is very shy of showing anything that she has done."

"True artists," said Blizzard, who criminally was an artist himself and knew what he was talking about, "live in the future."

Again Wilmot's eyebrows went up a little. Why should a legless beggar be able to make loans of fifteen thousand dollars, and why should he be able to talk like a gentleman?

"I am interested in art," continued Blizzard; "sometimes I have earned a few dollars by sitting for my portrait."

He did not add that he continually put himself in the way of artists in the hope that his fame as a model would reach Barbara, and touch her imagination. He did not add that he haunted Washington Square and McBurney Place, where her studio was, in the hope that his face, which he knew to be different and more terrible than other faces, might kindle a fire of inspiration in her. He believed rightly that if a woman once looked him in the eyes she would never forget him. But hitherto Barbara had not so much as glanced at him, since she carried her lovely head very high, and looked straight before her as she went. While, as for him, he stood upon the stumps of his legs, a gigantic sort of dwarf, beneath the notice of the proud-eyed and the tall.

Wilmot passed out of the place in deep thought; not even the pretty girls plaiting straw won a glance from him. Coupled with the relief of being out of present difficulties was a disagreeable sense of foreboding. Suppose the legless man were to ask favors of him before the money could be repaid? Suppose they were favors which a gentleman could not grant? And he determined to find out, from the police if necessary, just what sort of a man it was with whom he had had dealings.

It seemed to Wilmot that he had not seen Barbara for an age. And indeed a week had passed without their meeting. Therefore, although he had often been forbidden to call during working hours, he had himself driven to 17 McBurney Place and climbed the two flights of stairs to her studio.

It was a disconsolate Barbara who received him. She had on her work-apron, but she was not working. She sat in a deep chair, and presented the soles of her small shoes to an open fire. Wilmot, expecting to be scolded for disobeying orders, was relieved at being received with visible signs of pleasure.

"You're just the person I wanted to see," she said, "just the one and only Wilmot in the world."

"Are you dying?" he asked.

She laughed. "I'm discouraged. I've come to one of those times when you just want to chuck everything. And there's a man at the bottom of it."

"Tell me," said Wilmot, "in words of two syllables."