The Penalty | Page 8

a bigger bluffer
than you to make me put an insult on Christendom. Fifteen down. Ten
when Fanny'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 shifted 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.
"Fifteen down," said the legless man; "ten when the job's done, and a
ticket to Chicago."
"With a reservation? I'll feel like the devil; I couldn't sit up all night."
"I'll throw in an upper," said the legless man.
Still the unshaven man resisted. "What's Fanny done to you?"
"None of your business."
As if that settled the matter, and removed all obstacles and moral
scruples, the unshaven man sighed, and held out his hand for the money
which was to bind the contract.
Twelve hours later, Fanny McIver's death was being attributed by the
authorities to the insane, jealous rage of a lover. But as she had lately
changed her name and address, she lay for a while in the morgue

awaiting identification. It was the legless beggar who performed that
last solemn rite. He was quite unmoved. Her death mattered no more in
his scheme of life than the death of a fly.
But as he held up his hand and swore that the identity of the corpse was
such and such, he remembered how graceful she had been at sixteen,
how affectionate, how ready to forgive. He remembered with a certain
admiration that during the heyday of her earning powers she had
always trusted to his generosity, and had never tried to hold any of her
earnings back. Prison and drink had destroyed all that was honest in her,
all that was womanly. So a drop of acid will eat out the heart of the
freshest and loveliest rose. She became a very evil thing--full of evil
knowledge. There was even a certain danger in her--not much--nothing
definite--but enough. She was better dead.
He turned and swung out of the morgue into the sunlight. And he
wondered whatever had become of the child that she had borne him.

V
It would have been easier for Wilmot Allen if he could have come into
Barbara's life for the first time. She was too used to him to appreciate
such of his qualities as were fine and noble at their true value. And
contrarily it was the same familiarity which limned his faults so clearly
and perhaps exaggerated them. She often thought that if she could see
him for the first time she would fall head over ears in love with him,
and be married to him out of hand. Was it not better therefore, since the
man's character had its disillusionments, that their life-long friendship
precluded the idea of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure? "It's
almost," she said to herself, "as if I had married him long ago and
found out that I had made a mistake."
But she hated to hurt him in any way. And it caused her a genuine
sorrow sometimes to say no to him. He had proposed to her many times
a year for many, many years, and always with a passion and sincerity
that made it appear as if he was proposing for the first time in his life.

Twice, the strength and devotion of his physical presence had seemed
to remove every doubt of him from her mind, and she had said that she
would marry him, and had been ecstatically happy while he kissed her
and held her in his arms. And each time better knowledge of herself, a
sleepless night, and the unsparing light of morning had filled her with
shame and remorse, and made it quite clear that she had made one more
mistake, and must tell him so, and eat humble pie. And exact a promise
that he would never make love to her again. But she could never get
him to promise that. And she could never keep him from kissing things
that belonged to her when she was looking, and when she wasn't. And
if, as he sometimes threatened in moments of disappointed and injured
feelings, he had gone far away, so that he could never cross her path
again, she would have missed him so much that it would almost have
killed her. And so it is with all human beings--they care little enough
about their dearest possessions until the fire by night consumes them,
or the thief walks off with them. Then the silver and the jewels, and this
thing and that, assume a sort of humanity--and are as if they