combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the
result been fortunate.
However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the
way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of
hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously.
"Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get
a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the
other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only
living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"
Miss Elvira did her best to scowl.
"David!" she protested.
"That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His
aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added.
"Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"
After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently
put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor
were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating,
allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic.
David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced,
rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David
would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to
heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager
had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you
must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney.
Instantly Barney responded.
"Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!"
"Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?"
"Oh, he's glad too," answered David--"glad, you know, Bab was found!"
Even the dowager had to laugh.
But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him.
Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and
look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like
females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking
when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him
a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and
day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin--a sunny,
cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that
was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned
themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done
and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His
thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready
to give to her.
It was a vivid period to her--that first month or so of her new
life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the
persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth
Avenue that would have turned up its nose at Bab the boarding-house
waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's
grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of
outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door.
Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She
had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in
Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed,
might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so,
Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it.
Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling.
"It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops!
What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out,
already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!"
Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished
with Bab, Bab would look like someone.
Bab thought so too--either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them
both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid
David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab
make friends in that big world about them--girls whom he himself knew,
men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by
a single, magnificent coup.
"Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down
firmly. Bab happened to overhear him.
"Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully
pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul?
Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!"
"Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always
to yourself?"
The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every
pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To
them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than
passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too
intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab
laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.
One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair,
a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a
thoughtful smile.
"A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the
nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?"
"Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the
boarders who brought me up!"
"Not _really_?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a
boarding-house keeper?"
"They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and
after a gasp the other recovered herself.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"
Bab knew she hadn't.
Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that
David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence
awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk
roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its
master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously.
Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house.
"What's that?" he grumbled.
Miss Elvira happened to be with him.
"It's Barbara," she answered--"she and David. They have some friends
with them."
There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems
waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her
breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new
and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared
buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and
the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that
first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep
hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick--where was he? She had not
seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?
In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped,
Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had
made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life
also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she
had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was
no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Bab at Mrs.
Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort
of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the
new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look
in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly
admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown
it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender
throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner
dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had
gazed; then his lips parted.
"Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"
At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept
faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its
contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick
only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.
After that encounter--her first day's surprising experience with the
Lloyds--it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom
their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear.
That he was suspected of something seemed as evident. Nor was that
all. His attitude had itself been curious.
The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had
learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What
had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning
who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now
he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he
hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have
shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her
heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally
she learned!
IX
It was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had
passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed,
in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining
strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief
trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed
was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a
big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on
Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to
look forward with pleasure to these excursions.
By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had
roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the
dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced
when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe
her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had accepted as
a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs,
but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness
it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier,
more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that
money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that.
"Happy?" he'd rumble at her.
"Happy!" she'd return.
To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her
heart--not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in
the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure
in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture.
Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused
indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow;
when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she
averred.
It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got
that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The
Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their
country place out on Long Island, David was spending the day there.
Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.
A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously,
though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled.
The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this,
the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than
an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done
for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney
refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's
lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.
Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old
story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she
had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened
that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she
had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears!
And then, too, that was but a part of it.
"Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr.
Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"
Bab spoke then. "Dad"--it was thus she called him--"dad," she demanded,
"what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He
used to, you know!"
Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes,
and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten
caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good
reason why Varick had avoided her.
"Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that
fellow does?"
"Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered
deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her
another sharp stare.
"Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how
the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?"
"Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the
consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him
if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"
The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit
darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering.
"Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that
boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the
blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her
body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however,
Beeston spoke again.
"Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His
voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone.
"You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh?
Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the
tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take
it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money,
isn't he?"
But this, it happened, was too much.
"That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"
She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her
short.
"You don't think, do you, he'd marry you without your money? If you
do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He
was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"
Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom
calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder.
Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the
words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder.
"Drive home!" he ordered.
Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except
that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She
herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs.
Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept
recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house
was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem
flat!
That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money?
Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said
it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then
why hadn't he married her when she was only Bab--Bab of the boarding
house? Why? Why? Why?
Her face like stone, Bab sat out the remainder of that drive plunged in
those gnawing reflections. Beeston, too, seemed stricken into silence.
His brows drawn together, his murky eyes peering from beneath their
heavy lids, he was slouched down in his seat, staring straight ahead of
him. What visions stalked before him, wraiths of his dead, stormy past,
Bab had no guess; but that hatred stirred thickly in his heart one had
but to see his face to know. Bab, though, gave little heed to that.
Deep in her own heart, too, poison bubbled.
It was true! He never, never would marry her but that she had money!
And if marry her he did, never would she know whether it was for
herself or for her money. She was still thinking of it, mulling it all
over and over in her mind, when the motor rolled up to the Beeston
door. Beeston, leaning heavily on the footman's arm, alighted. Bab,
still plunged in reflection, sat where she was.
"You coming in?" her grandfather demanded.
Bab shook her head. She had something to do, she said; and saying no
more Beeston turned away. She watched him hobble up the stairs and,
still on the footman's arm, disappear indoors. Then when he was gone,
when the door was shut and the servant had returned to the car, Bab, as
the man touched his hat to her, sat up, suddenly alert. She knew what
she must do.
"Drive to Mrs. Tilney's," she said.
X
The window was open, letting in a flood of the spring day's mellow
sunshine, and the leaves of Mr. Mapleson's geraniums in their boxes
on the sill quivered delicately in the breeze. There was a lily, too,
standing in a dish beside them; and as the air stirred its stalk and
slender, rapier-like leaves, they gracefully curved themselves, nodding
and curtsying like a maiden. Outside the clocks had just finished
striking six.
Mr. Mapleson sat on the bed; and with his chin in his hands, his
shoulders sunken, he gazed vacantly at the wall. Never had his lined
face looked so gray, so furrowed; never had it seemed so worn. Age in
the last few weeks, it seemed, had told heavily on the little man.
At Mrs. Tilney's the boarders had not only seen this, but had noted
more than one other change in him. His shy, friendly voice no longer
joined in the talk at the dinner table; his timid, frosty little giggle
no more was heard to echo their merriment. Banquo at the feast indeed
could not have been more dejected. Submerged, downcast, detached, he
had altered utterly in the brief two months since Christmas.
What it was that weighed on the little man's mind was of course not
known to the others. But Mr. Mapleson knew. And it was this knowledge
that had worn on him so destructively. Even now at the thought his face
grew full of pain; and as he raised a hand to draw it across his brow a
penetrating sigh escaped him. "Oh, God!" said Mr. Mapleson.
He was still sitting there, the tragic simpleton, that sentimentalist,
when of a sudden a quick footfall, a step he well remembered, sounded
in the hall. Then a hand rapped swiftly on the door.
The limousine bearing Bab to Mrs. Tilney's had come swiftly; as a
matter of fact, for her it had come too swiftly. Uptown, when she had
made up her mind, she had felt so sure, so certain. The thing to do,
she had been convinced up there, was to see Mr. Mapy; he would set
everything right. Yes, but now that she had come, what was it he was to
set right? What was it he or anyone else could do? She confessed she
didn't know.
Beeston's sneering, contemptuous speeches still rang echoing in her
ears. Even had they been true, the affront in those utterances could
not have been more stinging. And again, how did she know they weren't
true? A vulgar fortune hunter Beeston had termed him; and what reason
had she to believe he wasn't? To be sure, he had neither asked her to
marry him nor openly made love to her; but then how did she know he
wouldn't if once he got the chance? That was it--if once he got the
chance!
"Oh, Mr. Mapy!" called Bab. "Oh, Mr. Mapy!"
Closing his door she stood there smiling wistfully.
The little man's face was a picture. Amazement and alarm together
struggled in it--alarm most of all. Then of a sudden, as if from the
cloud in her eyes he divined something, Mr. Mapleson scrambled to his
feet.
"What is it?" he wheezed, and caught thickly at his breath. "Bab, they
haven't sent you away?"
Sent her away? What in the world did he mean?
"Don't you understand?" she faltered; "I needed someone to talk to; I
had to come to you! Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Mapy?"
Mr. Mapleson wet his lips. Whatever it was that had troubled him seemed
again to have laid its burden on his soul; for when he spoke it was
with difficulty, his words clacking brokenly between his teeth.
"Then nothing's happened--nothing up there? They are kind to you? You
are happy?" A half-dozen questions came dragging from his lips. After
that, of a sudden Mr. Mapleson held out his pipelike arms to her. "Bab,
Bab!" he cried. "Tell me you are happy!"
"Oh, happy enough!" she answered dully.
Then she told him what she herself had been told. After that what
happened at Mrs. Tilney's was swift.
* * * * *
That evening, as Varick came down the stairs to the L road station on
the corner and trudged briskly up the side street toward Mrs. Tilney's,
a curious thing occurred. Across the way, as he approached, two men had
come out from the shadow of a doorway; and after a sharp glance at him
they had followed him, matching their step to his. The night before,
the same thing had happened, and the night before that too. What was
more, when he had left the bank a moment that morning he had seen one
of the pair standing on a corner across Broad Street. What did they
want with him? It hardly could have been a coincidence, his seeing
them; for on reaching his room he drew the curtain to look and they
still were there. Just then a hand rapped at Varick's door; and his
face grim, curiously thoughtful, he turned away from the window.
"I beg pardon," said Mr. Mapleson. His manner hurried, he looked about
him sharply. "You are alone?" he inquired. "You have a moment you can
spare?"
Varick stared at him fixedly. His expression was, in fact, singularly
hard and penetrating for one of his usual kindliness; and when he spoke
his tone, too, was no less uncompromising.
"What do you want, Mr. Mapleson?" he asked.
The little man, it seemed, was not to be rebuffed.
"You must come with me!" he said. "You must come with me for a moment!"
Catching Varick by the arm he half led, half tugged him down the hall.
Then having reached his own door he paused, at the same time peering up
at Varick like a little gnome.
"Be kind! Oh, be kind!" whispered Mr. Mapleson; and with this, having
thrust open the door, he pushed Varick into the room, then closed the
door behind him. Afterward, wandering along the hall, Mr. Mapleson sat
down on the stairs.
It was a queer sight, the picture that slight, insignificant figure
made huddled there in the dimness of the hall. A ray of light from the
gas jet overhead fell upon his face, and Mr. Mapleson, one saw, was
smiling rapturously. It was as if all were well now. It was as if, as
in the fairy tale, all were to live happy ever afterward. But Mr. Mapy,
it appeared, had counted without his host. Perhaps ten minutes had
passed, certainly not more than fifteen at the most, and he was still
sitting there, his face radiant, when behind him the door suddenly was
thrown open. Bab spoke then, and as he heard her Mr. Mapleson got up
hurriedly. Both in tone and in manner she seemed abrupt.
"No, no, you've said enough!" said Bab. "I won't hear you!"
Mr. Mapleson's face fell.
"Why, why!" he exclaimed. "What is it?"
Bab went straight toward him, toward the stairs.
"I'm going," she said, and her voice was like steel. "I'm going," said
Bab, saying it between her teeth, and over her shoulder she gave Varick
at the same time a look. Its air of disdain Mr. Mapleson did not miss.
Neither did he miss the break in her voice, a note of hurt, of outrage,
and nervously he put out his hand to halt her. "No, don't stop me!" she
said, and pushed his hand aside. "It's true! It's true what they told
me about him! He's just what they said he was!"
Varick's face was like a mask. He did not speak; he made no effort, so
much as by a look, even to answer her.
Again after a glance at him Mr. Mapleson stammered: "What is it? Why,
what is it?"
Bab answered with a laugh.
"Ask him!" she said; that was all. The next instant she had gone
hurrying down the stairs. Then presently, far below, the street door
slammed. At the sound, his eyes still on Varick's, Mr. Mapleson
shuddered involuntarily.
"What is it?" once more he whispered. "Tell me what you've done."
Varick's face did not alter.
"I tried to save her," he said; "I did my best I asked her to marry me."
"To save her?" echoed the little man, and a gasp escaped him. "To save
her!"
Varick's face grew still harder.
"Mapleson, are you mad or what is it? My soul, man; whatever in the
world possessed you?"
Mr. Mapleson's jaw dropped suddenly. Again the last vestige of color
fled from his furrowed face. He gaped at Varick like one bemused.
"What do you mean?" he whispered.