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RICH MAN, POOR MAN
[Illustration: "'Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that--can't you see!'"
PAGE 172]
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
by
MAXIMILIAN FOSTER
Author of "The Whistling Man," "Keeping Up Appearances," etc.
Illustrated by F. R. Gruger
D. Appleton and Company
New York London
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
D. Appleton and Company
Copyright, 1915, by the Curtis Publishing Company
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. 1
II. 11
III. 26
IV. 41
V. 49
VI. 59
VII. 72
VIII. 93
IX. 105
X. 113
XI. 122
XII. 139
XIII. 157
XIV. 164
XV. 176
XVI. 191
XVII. 207
XVIII. 215
XIX. 227
XX. 245
XXI. 257
XXII. 275
XXIII. 290
XXIV. 299
XXV. 310
XXVI. 319
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that--can't you see!'"
_Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"'Do you know, I've never been at a dance!'" 18
"One thought stood out ... she had lost Varick." 220
"'It's you he wants and you he's going to have!'" 288
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
I
Promptly at six every week-day evening in the year Mr. Mapleson came
down the stairs of the L road station on the corner and trudged up
the side street toward his home. He lived at Mrs. Tilney's, the
last house but one in the block; but though for more than sixteen
years Mr. Mapleson had boarded there, none of the landlady's other
patrons--or the landlady either, for that matter--knew much about
their fellow-guest. Frankly he was a good deal of a puzzle. The others
thought him queer in his ways besides. They were right perhaps.
He was a little man, round-shouldered, elderly and spare, with an air
of alert, bustling energy quite birdlike in its abruptness. Uppish
you might have judged him, and self-important too; yet in his tired
eyes as well as in the droop of his small sensitive mouth there was
something that belied the vanity of a pompous, confident man. Nor
was his briskness so very convincing, once you had closely scanned
him, for beneath it all was a secret, furtive nervousness that
bordered at times on the panicky. He was, in short, shy--shy to a last
degree; a self-conscious, timorous man that on every occasion shrank
mistrustfully from the busy world about him. A castaway marooned on
a desert island could scarcely have been more solitary, only in Mr.
Mapleson's case, of course, the solitude was New York.
There are many such. No quarter of the city, indeed, is without its
Mr. Maplesons. They are to be seen caged behind the grilles of every
bank and counting-room; they infest, as well, the hivelike offices of
the big insurance companies; soft-footed, faithful, meek, they burrow
dustily among the musty, dusty back rooms and libraries of the law.
Mere cogs in the machine, their reward is existence, nothing else. Then
when the cog is broken, its usefulness at an end, it is cast carelessly
on the scrapheap, while the machine goes grinding on. _O tempore! O
mores!_ Mr. Mapleson was a clerk in a Pine Street real-estate office.
His salary was twenty-eight dollars a week, and his employers thought
it high!
But enough! Tonight it was Christmas Eve; and as Mr. Mapleson descended
from the L road station and trudged westward on his way, a smile
as secret, as furtive as himself, quivered radiantly on his lips.
Overhead, through a rift in the fleecy, racing clouds, a host of stars
blazed down like the lights of an anchored argosy; and when he looked
up and saw them there the little man's eyes blinked and twinkled back
at them. Then a gust of the night's raw wind swooped along the street,
and he had bent his head to it and was hurrying when a fleck of snow
like a knife-point stung him on the cheek. "Hah!" cried Mr. Mapleson,
his face beaming, "a white Christmas, eh?" And with a quick look
upward, as if to assure himself, he critically examined the sky.
Afterward he chuckled, a silvery tinkle, and tightly clutching the
bundles in his arms Mr. Mapleson hurried on, his slender feet padding
the pavement like a bunny cottontail's. A little agitated you would
have thought him, a little feverish perhaps; and yet, after all, why
not? Remember, Christmas comes but once a year; and as the slight
figure passed swiftly under a street lamp standing near his door,
there was a glow in the gray furrowed face that one would have wagered
sprang from a heart filled only with kindliness, with the night's
spirit of goodwill.
Still smiling, Mr. Mapleson opened the door with his latchkey and
stepped into Mrs. Tilney's hall. Then a curious thing occurred. Closing
the door, Mr. Mapleson for a moment stood poised in an attitude of
acute attention. It was not only furtive, it was a little crafty too.
Then his eyes, roaming about him, fled down the dingy hall to where in
the dim light of the single gas jet a stair was to be seen, Obviously
it led to the kitchen floor below, for there arose from it not only a
potent scent of cooking but the sound of a shrill, flustered voice,
a woman's. Evidently its owner reigned in an advisory capacity over
the kitchen's busy doings. At any rate, the voice lifting itself in
shriller complaint, the words became intelligible.
"Is everything on earth going to ruin? Mary Mangin, don't you hear me?
Do as I tell you now!"
"I'm a-doin' ut, ain't I?" an aggrieved voice returned.
Then came an interlude. The kitchen door was slammed, while from
elsewhere belowstairs arose yet a third voice, a girl's.
She sang, lilting like a lark:
One shoe off and one shoe on,
Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John.
That was all. It ended in a little laugh, a burst of merriment that
rippled musically up the stairwell.
Mr. Mapleson abruptly moved. Tiptoeing to the stairhead he descended
stealthily halfway to the foot. Here he turned, and laying down his
parcels on a stair he removed his hat, which he placed on top of them.
Afterward the little man hurriedly unbuttoned his coat, removing from
the recesses of its inner pocket a newspaper. This he opened in the
middle. Then with a painstaking precision, scrupulous with care, Mr.
Mapleson compactly folded the newspaper so as to display one particular
column among its advertisements.
Its heading, a single word printed in full-faced type, was significant.
PERSONAL
When he had replaced the paper in his pocket Mr. Mapleson picked up his
hat and bundles and on tiptoe crept down the remainder of the stairs. A
board partition inclosed the stairway, and on reaching the bottom the
little man peered cautiously past the woodwork. The glance revealed to
him Mrs. Tilney's dining-room, its lights lighted, its table set for
dinner. In a few minutes now the bell would ring, the dozen guests come
trooping to their meal. However, as if assured the room was vacant, Mr.
Mapleson was just creeping into the basement hall when with a catch of
his breath he shrank back suddenly.
On the hearthrug in front of the fireplace stood a girl. She was a
young girl. In age she was nineteen perhaps, or it may have been a
little more. But whatever her age, or whether you would or would not
call her beautiful, there was one thing about her that was not to be
mistaken. It was the allurement of her smile, a merriment that danced
and rippled in her eyes like the sheen on sunlit silk. At the moment
it happened that a young man in evening clothes stood before her,
and with her arms uplifted, her slender form close to his, the girl
was intently tying his necktie. All her attention was centered on the
task as with deft fingers she molded the white lawn into a bow; but
with the young man it was different. His face, so far from wearing the
vacuous, bored expression seen on the faces of those who must have
their neckties tied, seemed interested to an extreme. With parted lips,
his eyes smiling, he was gazing down at the face now so near to his.
Mr. Mapleson peeped. Presently he saw the girl's quick slender fingers
twist the tie into a bow, then give it a finishing pat; and as if yet
fearful he should be seen, he was effacing himself, when the young man
moved and he heard him draw a little breath.
"Thanks," said the young man briefly.
The girl's eyes leisurely lifted themselves. Briefly they dwelt on his,
then their gray depths lighted suddenly. A moment later a tinkling
ripple of merriment left her and she turned away.
"You're welcome!" she laughed; and she and the young man moving out of
view, Mr. Mapleson made the best of his opportunity.
Gliding down the hallway, he quietly opened the door at the other
end. Then, stepping inside, he as quietly closed it behind him. He
was in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen, a sanctuary tabooed usually to Mrs.
Tilney's guests. Across the floor the lady herself stood near the range
shrilly exhorting her cook, a red-faced person of astonishing girth
and--notably--impenetrable calmness.
"Mary Mangin, my Gawd!" Mrs. Tilney addressed her; "d'you wish to be
the death of me? Enough's happening without your burning the soup! Take
off that kettle at once, d'you hear me?"
Quaking as she moved, the behemoth emerged momentarily out of the
vapors surrounding the cookstove.
"Be aisy, will ye!" admonished Mary Mangin. "What wit' y'r carryin' ons
th' day 'twill be a wonder we're not worse an' all!"
It was at this moment that Mr. Mapleson spoke.
"Mrs. Tilney," he said.
The landlady turned. She was a small woman with sharp, inquiring
features and shrewd, not unkindly eyes. Now, having peered at Mr.
Mapleson from behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, Mrs. Tilney began
to blink exactly like a small, startled barn owl. Obviously she had
suddenly become agitated.
"Well?" she breathed.
Laying down his bundles, Mr. Mapleson removed his hat, after which he
produced from his pocket the folded newspaper. Silently he pointed to
the column headed "Personal," and as silently Mrs. Tilney read:
BENEDICT. A liberal reward will be paid for information concerning the
present whereabouts, living or dead, of the person known variously as
Randolph Benedict, Benedict Ames, or Ames Randolph, who, when last heard
of in January, 1897, was about to embark from New York City presumably
for some port in South America. All communications will be regarded
as entirely confidential. Address Hill, Hamilton, Durand & Hill, Wall
Street, New York.
A little gasp escaped Mrs. Tilney. She was still gaping at the paper
when Mr. Mapleson took it from her and, turning the page, indicated a
new item in another column:
=BEESTON'S CONDITION CRITICAL=
=FAMILY SUMMONED TO THE=
=GREAT FINANCIER'S=
=BEDSIDE=
There was a pause. Then with a jerk of his thumb Mr. Mapleson indicated
the adjoining dining-room where again the girl's voice arose, tinkling
with merriment.
"All hers," he said, and as he spoke his voice cracked
thinly--"millions!"
Again Mrs. Tilney caught swiftly at her breath.
"Bab's?" she whispered. "My little Babbie Wynne?"
Mr. Mapleson slowly nodded.
"It's true," he said; "I phoned them, and it's as true as the Holy
Writ! The lawyers are coming here at eight!"
II
Six o'clock had just struck when Bab, after a brief look at herself
in the glass, opened the door of her bedroom and hurried out into the
hall. Every evening it was her duty to see that the dining-room table
was set properly and tonight she had been delayed. In spite of her
hurry, however, her pace perceptibly slackened as she neared the head
of the stairs. The room there was Mr. Varick's; and behind the door she
could hear him briskly moving about, humming to himself a lively little
air as he dressed:
La Donna è mobile,
Quam plume mal vento!
She smiled at his cheerfulness. How pleasant it always was to hear him!
Frankly Bab's interest in the young man was a bit deeper than the
feeling she usually displayed toward the boarders at Mrs. Tilney's.
The house, though comfortable enough in its homely way, was still not
what one would call enlivening; nor were its patrons any the more
inspiriting. They were, for the most part, clerks, breadwinners like
Mr. Mapleson, with an occasional stenographer or saleswoman to lend
variety. To these, however, Varick had proved the exception--notably
so, in fact; and this Bab had been quick to see.
One ordinarily does not look to find a Varick in a boarding house.
Indeed, until the day he arrived at Mrs. Tilney's Varick had never so
much as put his nose in one. He was, in short, what Miss Hultz, the
occupant of Mrs. Tilney's third-floor front, so aptly termed a "swell."
And when she said swell Miss Hultz meant swell; there was no doubt of
that. Being in the hat and feather department at Bimberg's--the Fifth
Avenue Bim's of course--she consequently knew.
But then that Varick was a Varick, therefore of the elect, would
probably have been evident even without Miss Hultz' authoritative
say-so.
He was a slender, tall, gray-eyed fellow with a narrow, high-bred head
and quiet, pleasant manners. Newcomers were not many at Mrs. Tilney's,
for the house, if modest, was well kept, so that its guests remained
on indefinitely. However, the instant Varick for the first time had
entered its dining-room he was looked at with interest, the others
divining immediately that he was a somebody. Moreover, Mr. Jessup, the
gentleman at the head of the table, instantly had confirmed this.
With his wife, a plump, kindly little woman, Mr. Jessup tenanted Mrs.
Tilney's second-floor back. Briefly he was a bookkeeper in the National
Guaranty's R to Z Department; and looking up from his soup as Varick
entered, Mr. Jessup had stared.
"Phew!" he'd whistled, whereat Mrs. J. had nudged him with her elbow.
"Don't blow in your soup, Joe!" she'd admonished; "it isn't manners!"
A lot he cared! Months before, when Varick's father had died, Jessup
had been called in to help untangle the old man's bank accounts. That
they had been as involved as all this, though, he had not even dreamed.
A Varick in a boarding house! Again Mr. Jessup had whistled. However,
not even this vicissitude seemed to have crushed the young man. A quick
smile lit up his face when the bookkeeper ventured to address him.
"Of course I remember you!" he exclaimed. Then he had turned to the
bookkeeper's chubby lady in the same frank, friendly way. "Delighted
to meet you, Mrs. Jessup!"
Thus it was that, impressed, a little awed perhaps, Mrs. Tilney's other
guests learned they had a Varick among them. Not that Varick had tried
either to awe or to impress. Like Jessup, he too was merely an employee
in a bank now, and he made no bones of saying so. The bank was the
Borough National. It was in Broad Street and it paid him twelve dollars
a week. That was another reason why Varick was at Mrs. Tilney's.
But not even this--the fact, that is, of the twelve dollars and its
contingent relation to his presence in the boarding house--seemed in
the least to have marred his cheerfulness. Bab felt heartily she had
never met anyone so responsive, so entertaining. As she went on down
the stairs, hurrying to her task in the dining-room, she was still
smiling, humming softly to herself the while the air she had heard him
singing.
A few minutes later, while she was arranging the last knives and forks,
the dining-room door opened and Varick himself stood there. His face
lit instantly as he saw her.
"Hello, Bab!" he greeted. "I thought I heard you come down!"
He was in evening dress, his attire spick and span save for the one
particular of his necktie. This, with its two ends askew, clung to his
collar in a rumpled knot.
"Busy?" he inquired.
Bab laughed.
"You want your tie tied, I suppose!" she returned, warned by former
experience. "I thought the last time I gave you a lesson!"
Varick nodded.
"I know. What I need, though, is not lessons--it's less thumbs. Now be
a good fellow, won't you?"
Bab laughed again; and laying down the knives and forks in her hands,
she reached up and began pulling and patting the soft lawn into shape.
Finally she had it to her satisfaction.
"There!" she murmured.
Varick did not move away. Instead he stood looking down at her, his
gray eyes dwelling on hers, and in them was a gleam of interest she
had seen there more than once of late. It was as if recently Varick
had found in her face something he had not found there before. That
something, too, seemed to inspire in him a growing look of reflection.
Bab, in spite of her good looks, was not vain. At the same time,
though, neither was she blind. She gazed at Varick curiously.
"Well?" she inquired presently.
Varick seemed suddenly to recollect.
"Thanks!" he said; and in turn she laughed back: "You're welcome!"
She had just spoken when out in the dimly lighted hall Bab saw Mr.
Mapleson emerge suddenly from the stairway, and on stealthy tiptoes
dart out of view toward the kitchen. A muffled exclamation escaped her,
and as he heard it Varick looked at her vaguely.
"I beg pardon?" he inquired.
"Nothing--it was just someone in the hall," Bab evasively answered;
and her face thoughtful now, she finished arranging the table. Planted
on the hearthrug, Varick watched her. However, though she was quite
conscious of this, she gave little heed to it. Her brow puckered itself
still more in thought.
"You're not going to be home tonight, are you?" she inquired presently.
When Varick said no, that he'd be out all the evening, Bab perched
herself on the serving table in the corner, and sat swinging her
shapely, slender heels. "I suppose you're going to a party, aren't
you?" she suggested.
Again he smiled.
"Why, yes, Bab--why?"
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured as aimlessly. Then her eyes growing
vague, she drew a little breath.
"There'll be a tree, I suppose?" Varick nodded. Yes, there would be
a tree. "And you'll dance besides, I shouldn't wonder?" added Bab,
drawing in her breath again, a pensive sigh. "I imagine, too, there'll
be a lot of girls there--pretty girls?"
She could see him stare, curious at her tone, her questioning; but now
she hardly cared. There was something Bab meant to ask him presently,
though how she was to do it she still was not quite sure.
"Funny," she murmured, her tone as if she mused; "do you know, I've
never been at a dance!"
Varick stared anew. "Really?"
"Honor bright!" said Bab, aware of his astonishment. She had a way,
when others amused her, of drolly twisting up one corner of her mouth;
and then as her smile broadened, rippling over her face, Bab's small
nose would wrinkle up like a rabbit's, obscuring temporarily the
freckles on each side of it. "Give you my word!" she avowed.
Leaning back, then, she sat clicking her heels together, her eyes
roving toward the ceiling.
"Don't laugh," she murmured; "but often I've wondered what a dance was
like--a real dance, I mean. You see, ever since I was a kid everyone
round me has been too busy or too tired to think of things like that.
Sometimes they've been too worried too; so the only dances I've ever
been at have been just dream dances--make-believes. You know how it
is, don't you, when you have no other children to play with? I'd make
believe I was in a huge ballroom, all alone, and then somewhere music
would begin to play! Oh, I can hear it yet--Strauss, the Blue Danube!"
Bab's look was misty, rapt; and then with a slender hand upraised she
began to beat time to the sensuous measure of the melody drifting in
her mind. "Lights, music, that huge ballroom," she laughed at the
memory; "music, the Blue Danube. Yes--and then I'd dance all alone, all
by myself! Can't you see me--me in my pigtails and pinafore, dancing!
Funny, wasn't it?"
[Illustration: "'Do you know, I've never been at a dance!'"]
"Funny?" repeated Varick, and she saw his face was grave. "I don't
think so. Why?"
But Bab did not heed. Her face rapt, she still sat smiling at the
ceiling.
Strangers often wondered about Bab. It was not only her face, however,
that roused, that held their interest. They marveled, too, that in
the dim and dingy surroundings of the boarding house the landlady's
little ward had acquired an air, a manner so manifestly above her
surroundings. But Bab's history, vague as it was, gave a hint of the
reason. Her mother, a woman who had died years before at Mrs. Tilney's,
leaving her child in Mrs. Tilney's hands, manifestly had been a woman
of refinement. In other words, despite environment Bab's blood had
told; and that it had was evidenced by Varick's interest in her. During
his months at Mrs. Tilney's he had, in fact, managed to see a good deal
of his landlady's pretty ward.
However, not even this interest, the pleasure he had found in her
company, had obscured in the least Bab's perception of the facts. She
knew thoroughly her own position. She knew, too, his--that and the gulf
it put between them. Young, attractive, a man; the fact that he now
was poor had not much altered his social standing. It would remain as
it was, too, until he married. Then when he did, his position would be
rated by the wealth--that or the lack of it--of the woman who became
his wife.
So, though Varick single might exist with propriety in a boarding
house, there was a vast difference between that and a Varick married--a
Varick setting up for life, say, in a four-room Harlem flat. And Bab,
too, don't forget, was a boarding-house keeper's nameless ward.
"Tell me something," she said.
Slipping from her perch, she drew up a chair and, seating herself, bent
forward with her chin on her hands.
"You've heard of the Beestons, haven't you--that family uptown. By any
chance do you know them?"
"The Beestons!"
She saw him frown, his air amazed. However, though she wondered at the
moment at his air, her interest was entirely in what he would answer.
"Why do you ask?" he inquired.
"I wanted to know," Bab returned slowly. "I wanted to find out
something. Do they ever give parties--dances like the one you're going
to tonight? And do you ever go to them?"
Varick's look grew all the more amazed. He not only knew the Beestons,
he had often been in the huge house they occupied in one of the uptown
side streets off the Avenue. But though that was true, for some reason
the fact did not seem to afford him any great satisfaction. His face
suddenly had grown hard.
"Who told you about them?" he demanded.
Bab smiled vaguely.
"There's a boy, isn't there?" she parried. "Old Mr. Beeston's grandson?"
The look of wonder in his face grew.
"Who? David Lloyd, you mean? How did you know him?" he questioned.
"I don't," said Bab, smiling at his vehemence; "I've only heard about
him. He's a cripple, isn't he--a hopeless cripple?"
It proved that all his life Varick had known the boy--the man
rather--whom she meant.
"Look here, Bab," he directed, puzzled, "why do you ask me about those
people? I'd like to know that! Will you tell me?"
She deliberated for a moment.
"It was something I heard," she said then, hesitating.
"Here? In this house?" he questioned, all the more amazed; and Bab
nodded.
"I heard Mr. Mapy say it," she returned.
Varick in return gazed at her, his face a picture.
"Mr. Mapy," he knew, meant Mr. Mapleson. He knew, too, like the other
boarders, Bab's interest in the quaint, gray-faced little man, his
next-door neighbor upstairs. True, Bab often laughed blithely at Mr.
Mapleson, teasing him endlessly for his idiosyncrasies; but otherwise,
as also Varick knew, her heart held for the queer, curious little man
a deep well of tenderness, of love and gentle understanding. However,
that was not the point. What had Mapleson to do with David Lloyd?
What had a musty, antiquated Pine Street clerk to do with any of the
Beestons? Now that he thought of it, there was something else, too,
that Varick would have liked to know.
For the past ten days--for a fortnight, in fact--he had felt
indefinably that something queer was going on in that room next to his.
Night after night, long after Mrs. Tilney's other guests had sought
their rest, he had heard Mr. Mapleson softly stirring about. Again and
again, too, he could hear him whispering, mumbling to himself. What is
more, Varick was not the only one who had been disturbed. A few nights
before, quite late, too, he heard a hand rap abruptly at Mr. Mapleson's
door. Startled, a moment later he had heard someone speak. It was
Jessup!
"Mapleson," Jessup had demanded; "what are you up to, man?"
Varick had not caught the reply; for, after a startled exclamation,
Mr. Mapleson had dropped his voice to a whisper. But Varick had heard
enough. What, indeed, was Mr. Mapleson up to?
Bab's eyes grew vague. Then she laughed. The laugh, though, was a
little strained, a little less free than usual. Then her eyes fell and
a faint tide of color crept up into her face and neck.
"Honest Injun now," she again laughed awkwardly, "don't you know what's
happening?"
Varick shook his head, and Bab, her eyes on his, bit her lip
reflectively. That question she longed to ask him hovered on her lips
now, and with it there had come into her face an air of wistfulness.
Her blue eyes clouded faintly.
"Tell me," she said, and hesitated--"tell me something. If at the dance
tonight--the dance you're going to--if--if things were changed; and
I--you----"
Varick nodded quietly.
"Yes," he prompted, "if I----"
"If I were there," said Bab; "if things were changed and I----"
Again she paused. Her eyes, too, fell suddenly. Then she caught her lip
between her teeth.
"Yes, Bab," encouraged Varick; "if what were changed?"
But Bab did not reply. Of a sudden, as she raised her eyes to his, a
great wave of color rushed into her face, mantling her to the eyes. Of
a sudden, too, the eyes fell, dropping before his look. Her confusion
was furious and with an abrupt movement, swift and unexpected to him,
she slipped from her chair and darted into the half-lit hall. Then the
next instant she was gone, and Varick, his own face a study, stood
gazing after her dumbfounded.
"Good Lord!" he murmured to himself.
For he was no fool, neither was he a coxcomb; and what Bab had let him
read in her face had been a revelation.
III
Meanwhile, her cheeks aflame, furiously self-conscious at what she had
revealed, Barbara Wynne had gone flying up the stairway to her room.
There, half an hour later, tapping softly at her door, Mr. Mapleson
found her lying in the dark, her face buried among the pillows of her
bed.
"Why, Babbie!" he whispered--"Babbie Wynne!"
The boarders at Mrs. Tilney's, and especially those who had heard the
story of Barbara Wynne, often commented on Mr. Mapleson's devotion to
the landlady's little ward. The fact is the two had long lived together
in the boarding house; for the year that Mr. Mapleson came to Mrs.
Tilney's was the year Barbara Wynne had come there too. However, that
was but a coincidence. They were in no way related. Mr. Mapleson, it
seemed, had come first.
That night, now nearly seventeen years ago, nine o'clock had just
struck when Mrs. Tilney's doorbell sounded. As the day happened to be
a Sunday, and therefore the upstairs girl's evening out, Mrs. Tilney
herself had answered.
The night was withering. It was the evening of an August dog day,
ghastly betwixt the horrors of its heat and its stagnant, glaring
sunshine, yet the man she found in the vestibule was clad in a winter
suit not only sizes too large for him but suffocating in its armorlike
thickness. Dust powdered him from head to foot. It powdered also the
cheap suitcase he had set down beside him.
"Well?" Mrs. Tilney had inquired sharply.
A perfect convulsion of embarrassment had for a moment kept the slight,
pallid man from replying. "I--why, your sign outside," he'd faltered
then; "if you could let me have a room."
"You have references?" Mrs. Tilney had demanded.
The little man shook his head. Mrs. Tilney was about to shut the door
when abruptly he threw out both his hands. The gesture was as timid as
a girl's.
"I am from the country," he appealed. "I've come a great ways. I am
very tired."
Then he smiled up at her, and somehow, in the wan wistfulness of his
look, the sharp, distrustful woman had been placated.
"Oh, well," she grumbled and, standing aside, she waved for him to
enter.
It had taken Mrs. Tilney weeks, not to say months, to grasp the real
nature of her queer, retiring guest. Summer went, the autumn drew on.
A new flock of winter "steadies" replaced summer's birds of passage
and she wondered when he, too, would be gone. But Mr. Mapleson showed
no disposition to depart. There were, in fact, signs that he meant to
remain indefinitely. At any rate, on entering his room one morning
Mrs. Tilney found upon the wall three cheap little color prints, each
neatly framed in fumed oak. Also in a cigar box and tomato can on the
window sill Mr. Mapleson had laid out for himself the beginnings of a
window garden. A geranium and a Chinese bulb composed the horticultural
display.
However, it was not until Thanksgiving Day, some weeks later, that
Mrs. Tilney's suspicions of her guest were effectively set at rest.
The circumstance arose over the departure, somewhat abrupt, of one of
the other boarders, a Mr. Agramonte. The gentleman, the manager of a
vaudeville booking agency, having let his board bill run three weeks,
decamped secretly in the middle of the night. This was the day before
Thanksgiving. At noon then, the fête day in question, Mr. Mapleson
appeared suddenly at Mrs. Tilney's kitchen door. In his arms he bore a
small potted plant. The plant was in full bloom and Mr. Mapleson was
beaming shyly.
"I have brought you a flower," he said.
"Me?" had gasped Mrs. Tilney.
"Yes, it's a begonia," Mr. Mapleson was saying, when to his wonder, his
alarm as well, Mrs. Tilney emitted a laugh, or rather it was a croak,
then burst abruptly into tears, the first in years.
Never, never before, as she protested, had one of her boarders shown
her such consideration. At the thought Mrs. Tilney wept anew.
However, to proceed: It was exactly one month after this that Barbara
Wynne, the ward of Mrs. Tilney, had come there to the boarding
house. The day, like the day of Mr. Mapleson's advent, was one to be
remembered. A raw wind from the eastward had risen with the morning,
and well on in the afternoon rain began. Presently, as if to show what
a December storm really can do in New York, it settled itself into a
soaking downpour--a flood that changed before long to cutting sleet,
then to a wet, clinging snow.
Toward night Mrs. Tilney's upstairs girl entered the kitchen where Mrs.
Tilney waged diurnal warfare with her cook.
"There's a lady in the parlor, mum," she announced.
The term was too often vulgarly misused in Mrs. Tilney's cosmos to
excite anticipation.
"A lady? How do you know?" demanded Mrs. Tilney.
"Sure, mum," replied the girl with convincing frankness, "she do look
different f'm yer boarders!"
It proved, moreover, to be the truth. Upstairs in the parlor Mrs.
Tilney found a slender, wan-faced woman to whose dripping skirts clung
an equally rain-soaked child; and that they were persons of distinction
not even their appearance could dispute. The visitor's voice, when she
spoke, was low and modulated. It rang like the undertone of a bell.
"I am looking for rooms--a room," she corrected.
A shudder accompanied the words, and with a gesture of uncontrollable
languor she held her hands to the coal glowing in the hearth.
The landlady debated. Transients of this sort were as little to her
liking as they were rare. However, after some misgivings she showed her
visitor the one vacancy. It was a top-floor bedroom just down the hall
from Mr. Mapleson's. Board included, the rent would be sixteen dollars.
"Thanks," said the visitor. "I'll have my trunk sent in at once."
Her tone Mrs. Tilney had thought hasty, over-eager. Before the
landlady, however, could utter that shibboleth of her calling, "You
have references?" the child spoke. Clinging to her mother's skirts, she
had been staring at Mrs. Tilney.
"Babbie Wynne's hungry," she said.
With a start and a swift contraction of her mouth the mother leaned
down to her.
"Hush! Yes, dear, in just a little while now!"
Mrs. Tilney did not ask to have her pay in advance. A certitude,
subconscious but still confident, told her the visitor hadn't it. And
to have turned that woman and her child outdoors on a night like this
needed more courage than Mrs. Tilney had.
"Can we stay, mother?" asked the child earnestly.
There Mrs. Tilney had grimly interposed.
"You're married, aren't you?" she demanded, with a directness as
designed as it was blunt.
A startled look leaped into the visitor's eyes. Then with a quiet
dignity she slipped off her glove, displaying on her finger a narrow
gold band.
"I am a widow," she said.
Mrs. Tilney had asked no more.
"While you get your trunk," she directed, "you leave that child with
me. Tonight's no night for her to be traipsing the street! I'll see she
has her supper too. What's she eat?"
And there you are! Barbara Wynne had come to Mrs. Tilney's!
There's not much more to be told. At seven the mother returned. Then,
sometime later, an express wagon left a trunk at Mrs. Tilney's door.
That night Mrs. Wynne came down to her dinner; but after that, of Mrs.
Tilney's guests none but Mr. Mapleson saw her ever again. Late the
second night the little man pattered down the stairs and tapped at Mrs.
Tilney's door.
"You'd better go up," he said; "something's happening."
Donning a dressing sack, Mrs. Tilney hurried upstairs. Half an hour
later the doctor came. He gave one look at the woman moaning on her
pillow--in her nightdress, her hair in braids, she seemed scarcely more
than a girl--and then the doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Pneumonia--going fast," he said.
By evening, the day after, it was all over. Steadily the lamp of life
burned dimmer, fading down to darkness; yet before its light failed
altogether it flickered once, gleaming momentarily. Then the watcher at
the bedside saw the dulled eyes open, grow bright, and she saw the lips
part and flutter.
"What is it, dearie?" whispered Mrs. Tilney.
Only an unintelligible murmur came, but of a part of it Mrs. Tilney
thought she was certain.
"Babbie! Barbara Wynne!" the lips seemed to call.
Down the hall Mrs. Tilney had gone hurriedly. Mr. Mapleson's door was
ajar, and there on the floor sat the little man and the child. They
were cutting strings of paper dolls out of newspaper.
"Come," Mrs. Tilney had said.
That brief flicker, though, had been the last. The mother love that
momentarily wrung back the passing spirit to its shell had yet not been
able to hold it there. Life had fled when Mrs. Tilney got back to the
room with the child.
The little girl's hand in hers, Mrs. Tilney walked from the room and
shut the door behind her. Never had she looked so grim, so sharp-faced,
so unlovely. Never had her bony, angular face, her slack figure and
sloping shoulders seemed so unalluring. But what of that?
Not one clew to the identity of either the mother or the child was
to be found among the dead woman's few possessions. The fact is her
trunk contained little. Such papers as were in it comprised only half
a dozen undated letters, brief notes for the most part, and none of
any value. All were addressed "Dearest D," and signed either "B," "H"
or "V." However, from a remark let fall by Mrs. Wynne it was inferred
that she had neither friends nor family in New York. It also was
inferred that she had come originally from out of town. That was all.
However, the trunk delivered up one thing that, if it were of no value
in identifying its owner, at least had a monetary value. This was a
diamond brooch. It paid ultimately for its former owner's burial.
Bab, you understand, never left Mrs. Tilney's. The night of the
mother's funeral Mr. Mapleson slipped down the hall toward Mrs.
Tilney's parlor. She sat there shrouded in the dusk and crooning softly.
"Well?" asked Mr. Mapleson.
"Hush!" whispered Mrs. Tilney fiercely. Pressed tight to her flat,
unlovely breast was Bab's rumpled head, and Mr. Mapleson had said no
more.
For those first few years the little old man sold dictionaries for
a living. It was a sordid, distressing trade. Then, too, the snubs
he received were, to a man of his shy nature, each a crucifixion.
Eventually, though, he was enabled to get other employment. It was as
bookkeeper in the Pine Street real-estate office.
That day his joy rose to a pitch of bubbling exultation. Picking up
Bab, he tossed her high.
"Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls! You'll wear 'em yet, you
wait!"
But Bab Wynne was of a far more practical turn of mind.
"Did you bring me my licorice stick?" she demanded.
It was Mr. Mapleson who had first taught Bab her letters. Step by step
he brought her up until it was time to send Bab to a school. Then, the
school having been selected, with the child's hand in his Mr. Mapleson
walked there with her every morning. At night, too, it was Mr. Mapleson
who always heard her lessons. "Spell _cat_," Mr. Mapleson would say;
and when Bab, after deep thought, announced that c-a-t spelled cat,
Mr. Mapleson would exclaim: "Very good! Very good!" and, laying down
the spelling book, would pick up the reader. "Read, please," he would
direct; and the little girl, bending earnestly over her book, would
display to the man's breathless interest that wonderful evidence of the
Creation, the marvel of a child's growing mind. "Oh, see the ox! Is the
ox kind? Yes, the ox is kind."
Mr. Mapleson would be enthralled.
"Diamonds and pearls!" he'd say. "Diamonds and pearls!"
There are times, though, one fears, when Bab Wynne, with the spirit
that betokens the dawning of a character, was not just so earnest, so
tractable. Pouting, she'd mumble: "Don't know how to spell cat!" or,
"No, I don't see the old ox!"
Mr. Mapleson would slowly shake his head.
"If you won't read and won't spell, Bab," he'd say, "how can you hope
ever to grow up a lady--a fine lady?"
"Don't want to be a fine lady!" Bab would answer.
Usually after this was a little silence. Then Mr. Mapleson would hold
out both his hands to her.
"D'you want to break Mr. Mapy's heart?" he'd ask.
That always fetched her. And thus had passed the years, one by one
drifting by. Bab had just turned twenty, and Mr. Mapleson's promise had
come true. "Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls!" he'd told her.
They were to be hers now. Bab Wynne at last had found her people!
* * * * *
She still lay with her brown head buried among the pillows; and Mr.
Mapleson, his eyes gleaming like a bird's, bent above her, quivering,
his slender hand gently touching her on the cheek.
"Why, Babbie!"
She looked up suddenly, her eyes suffused.
"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" she whispered. "Is it true? Is it true?"
He had left the door open, and had one looked closely it would have
been seen in the light from outside that Mr. Mapleson started first,
and that then the color fled swiftly from his face.
"What do you mean?" he whispered; and rising from the pillow Bab bent
closer to him, her face rapt, her lips parting with excitement.
"I mean about me," she answered, her breast heaving gently--"about
everything! Last night you were talking and I heard--I couldn't help
listening! You were telling about the Beestons--about them--about me!
Oh, Mr. Mapy, is it true?"
Mr. Mapleson stared at her, his face like clay. He was shaking too.
Then he spoke, and his voice when she heard it was thick and harshly
broken. One would hardly have known it for his.
"Yes," said Mr. Mapleson, and quivered; "it's true! You're old man
Beeston's granddaughter. Your father was his son." And then Mr.
Mapleson said a very curious thing. "Yes--God help me!" he croaked.
Belowstairs all Mrs. Tilney's boarders sat at dinner, and in the
room lit dimly by the single gas jet the two were quite alone--the
white-faced, white-haired, faded little old man; the girl, youthful,
lovely, alluring. But alone though they were, the whole world at that
instant might have whirled about them, roaring, yet neither would have
heard it.
Bab presently spoke.
"You mean," she said slowly, wondering--"you mean that I'm theirs? That
they are coming to take me?"
Mr. Mapleson said, "Yes."
"And I'm to have everything now, really everything?" she asked. "You
mean I'm to have pretty clothes? To go everywhere? To know everyone
they know?"
It was so; and his face convulsed, his mouth working queerly, Mr.
Mapleson fell to nodding now like a mandarin on a mantelpiece.
"Yes, yes--everything!"
Again he bent over her, his expression once more rapt, once more
transfigured.
"Yes, and you can marry. You understand, don't you?" said Mr. Mapleson,
his voice eager, clear. "You can marry anyone. You understand--anyone?"
Then with a sudden gesture he held out his slender, pipelike arms; and
Bab, her face suffused, crept into them. For a moment Mr. Mapleson
patted the head hidden on his shoulder.
"You are happy, then?" he asked.
"Oh, Mr. Mapy! Mr. Mapy!" she whispered.
IV
The lawyers were to arrive at eight. Long before that hour came the
conviction that something startling was in the wind had begun gradually
to dawn in the minds of Mrs. Tilney's boarders. The dinner in itself
was significant.
Usually under Mrs. Tilney's practiced eye the meal progressed with
order, with propriety. Not so tonight In fact, the longer it continued,
the more it seemed to take on the haste, not to say the impulsiveness,
of an Alpine avalanche. Food, plates, silverware, all were hurled
across the terrain of the tablecloth as if discharged upon it by some
convulsion of Nature.
"Pardon!" said Miss Hultz, pausing abruptly in the middle of the
repast. Then she grasped Lena, the waitress, firmly by the wrist. "You
give me back that slaw!" directed Miss Hultz, her tone minatory. "The
idea, the way you're snatching things before I'm finished!"
Lena valiantly defended herself.
"You needn't lay it on me, miss! There's folks callin' to see Mrs.
Tilney at eight, I tell you, and I gotta git th' room cleared!"
"That's all right too!" retorted Miss Hultz. "Mrs. T. can ask in the
whole street if she's a mind, only I'm not going to give up eating!
Pass th' bread, Mr. Backus!"
Mr. Backus, the gentleman at Miss Hultz' left, was a plump, pasty young
man who worked in Wall Street, and as he passed the bread he inquired:
"What's th' madam giving, a _soirée_?"
"Sworry" was what he called it, but Miss Hultz seemed to comprehend.
Shrugging her shoulders, she raised at the same time her fine,
expressive eyebrows.
"Search me," she murmured indolently.
The colloquy, it appeared, had not been lost on the others; neither had
they missed the vague evidences that something unusual was happening in
Mrs. Tilney's house.
Mr. Jessup spoke suddenly.
"Did you say someone was coming?" he abruptly asked. Then he added:
"Tonight?"
His tone was queer. His air, too, was equally curious; and Mrs. Jessup
glanced up at him astonished.
"What's that?" she asked.
"I asked what was happening," said Mr. Jessup. Then, as no one seemed
able to answer him, he looked round the table. "Where's Mr. Mapleson?"
he suddenly inquired.
No one seemed able to tell him this.
"H'm!" said Mr. Jessup queerly, and picking up his knife and fork
he silently went on eating. His face, however, still wore a strange
expression.
Varick arose. He too had been conscious throughout the dinner of the
haste, the hurry that had filled it with confusion. However, he had
given little heed to that. Assured that something was happening, he was
at the same time little interested in its effect on Mrs. Tilney's table
arrangements. For Mr. Mapleson's was not the only face that was absent.
Bab, too, was missing.
A growing worry, in spite of himself, had begun to nag and nettle
Varick. He still pondered curiously over what had occurred between them
there in the dining-room before dinner. Then, besides, what was it that
was happening? Was she affected? His dinner half finished, he shoved
back his chair from the table.
"Hello, off for a party, I see!" knowingly cried Mr. Backus.
Varick nodded.
"Yes, just off," he returned; and glancing about the table, he bobbed
his head, smiling shyly. "Merry Christmas, everyone!"
Miss Hultz, for one, gave him a flashing smile, all her handsome teeth
revealed.
"Same to you, Mr. Varick! Many of them!"
"Sure! And a happy New Year, son!" added Mr. Backus.
All the others joined in, even crusty old Mr. Lomax, the broken-down,
disappointed life-insurance solicitor who tenanted Mrs. Tilney's back
parlor.
"---- Christmas, young man!" he grunted; and again fell to pronging his
slaw in moody silence. His wife leaned over and touched him. She was
a tall, faded woman in black silk and a lace cap, with the frail pink
cheeks that go with caps and black silk. "Some night you must put on
your full-dress suit too," she whispered. "We will go to a theater!"
As Varick passed toward the door her eyes followed him. She could
remember the time when Mr. Lomax, too, had looked young; when he had
seemed slender, vital, energetic. Varick saw the look, and as his eyes
caught hers he smiled at her in his friendly, boyish way. Mrs. Lomax
beamed.
The young man had reached the floor above and was passing on his way
up the second flight of stairs when Mr. Mapleson appeared suddenly at
the stairhead. The little man's haste was evident. The instant he saw
Varick he exclaimed:
"Why, there you are! I was just looking for you!"
He came pattering down the stairs, his small figure more alert, more
fussy, more bustling than ever. About it, though, was an uneasiness
that was unmistakable. His air was, in fact, as if he had steeled
himself to face something.
"You are going out?" he asked, his tone quick.
Varick said he was. Mr. Mapleson at the reply seemed to fuss and
flutter even more. Then, swiftly putting out his hand, he touched
Varick on the arm.
"Could you wait?" he appealed. "It is a favor--a great favor!"
Varick regarded him with surprise. The little man was quivering. For
the moment a fit of shyness more than usually awkward seemed painfully
to convulse him. His eyes leaped about him everywhere. Nor was his
speech less agitated.
"If you could wait," he faltered, "I have something to tell you."
Then his emotion, whatever the cause of it, got the better of him. "I
beg of you do not go yet!" he piped; and he peered up at Varick, his
eyes gleaming, his mouth working nervously.
A moment passed while Varick, his wonder growing, gazed down at the
white face turned up to his. Then he laid his hand quietly on Mr.
Mapleson's shoulder.
"Why, what's wrong, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked. "You're not in any
trouble, are you?"
Mr. Mapleson at the question looked blank.
"In trouble? I?"
"Yes. If I can help you----" Varick had begun, when the little man gave
vent to a sudden exclamation.
"I'm in no trouble! Who said I was?" he cried; and Varick stared,
gazing at him with renewed astonishment. If it wasn't for his own sake
that Mr. Mapleson had begged him to stay in, for whose, then, was it?
Varick at this point started with a sudden thought.
"Look here," he said sharply; "it isn't Bab, is it?"
The effect was immediate. Again Mr. Mapleson peered up at Varick, his
face transfigured; and again, his manner impulsive, he touched the
young man on the arm.
"She is very lovely, isn't she?" he said; "and she is very good and
sweet; don't you think she is?"
There was no doubt of it, but still Varick did not reply. A vague
understanding had begun to creep into his mind, and questioningly he
gazed down into the little man's upturned face.
"Tell me," said Mr. Mapleson--and as he heard him Varick's eyes grew
wide--"tell me," he faltered, "you do think her lovely? You do think
her sweet and lovely, don't you?"
Varick nodded slowly.
"Why, yes," he said, "she is very lovely." And at that Mr. Mapleson
gave vent to an eager exclamation.
His face gleaming, again he threw out both his hands.
"Oh!" he cried, "then if she were rich, if you knew her to be
well-born, too, why--why----" Here Mr. Mapleson began awkwardly to
falter--"Why, then you would--would----" There he paused. Moistening
his lips, the little man quivered suddenly: "She could marry--marry
anyone, don't you think?" he shrilled. "She could marry whom she chose;
you think so, don't you?"