"I've found you out, Mapleson! You had those letters, didn't you?
You gave those lawyers their proofs. It was you, wasn't it, who got
together all those papers?"
Yes, it was Mr. Mapleson who had done all this, but still he did not
speak. It was as if his tongue, paralyzed, cleaved to the roof of his
mouth.
"Well," said Varick, "they were all forgeries! You forged them, John
Mapleson. You cooked them all up yourself! Bab is no more Beeston's
grandchild than I am!"
Mr. Mapleson did not even deny it.
"Hush!" he whispered, his voice appalled. "What if they should find
out! Think what they'd do to her!"
XI
And there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too--all these, as Varick
charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter
Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.
That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and
midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back
had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare
the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale
it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair,
and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr.
Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become
a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not
once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had
forged only to help others. It had never been for himself.
"You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick.
"I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful.
"Certainly not!" he said.
"Good Lord!" Varick murmured.
Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the
fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a
week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud
and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.
At one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon--it was the first half-holiday
in April--Varick slammed shut the covers of the ledger he was working
on and, his task finished for the day, donned his hat and hurried out
into Broad Street. The day was glorious. A mild breeze was stirring,
while from overhead, pouring down between the cañon-like walls of the
skyscrapers, a burst of sunshine filled all the neighborhood with
light. Its radiance contrasted vividly with the lower city's usual
dingy dimness, though Varick gave little heed to that. He bustled
onward, his face grim. Even when across the street a man stepped out
from a doorway and followed him, matching his step to Varick's, he
gave it scant attention. To be watched, to be followed, was not any
novelty now. It neither worried him nor made him wonder why he was the
subject of that espionage. The night before, shoved under his door
at Mrs. Tilney's, he had found the card of no less a person than his
one-time friend, David Lloyd. "I'd like to see you," was penciled on
the back. But until that morning, some time after he had reached the
bank, the full significance of the card and its message had not dawned
on him.
Why did David Lloyd wish to see him? It was a year since the two had
last met, and the friendship that Varick himself had at that time
broken up he meant David to see never would be renewed. No Beeston,
nor any kin of Beeston, should be a friend of his. He would arrange
for that. Blunt, brusque, in fact, he had said good-by, then turned
abruptly on his heel, leaving David Lloyd staring after him. This,
however, was not the point. Though Varick often had regretted that
day's harshness, he had still made no overtures. Neither by word nor by
sign had he given the least hint that he wished to end the feud.
So what was the meaning of that card? What was it David Lloyd wished
of him? It was not until nearly noon that a thought came to him. Then
with a staggering certitude the suspicion flashed into his mind. Mr.
Mapleson! Had the Lloyds heard something? Was the fraud already known?
As murder will out, so, too, would a thing like that cry itself from
the housetops.
"My soul!" said Varick to himself. "If they should know!"
That was why he had hurried homeward--to find out if they had. All the
way uptown in the crawling L road train he sat mulling over in his mind
the tale he had dragged piecemeal out of Mr. Mapleson. Across the aisle
a pair of girls, office workers evidently, gave him an appraising look,
frankly appreciative; then they began to giggle and whisper together,
their eyes stealing consciously toward him. But Varick did not heed.
It was a queer tale--that story he had heard from Mr. Mapleson. He
hailed, it appeared, from a town in western New York--Buckland, a
village near Rochester. Here the little man had come of sound stock, a
line of God-fearing, sturdy men, of thrifty, virtuous women. Of the
man's family, however, only one besides himself survived. This was
a married sister, and to her Mr. Mapleson owed the first of his two
forgeries, a crime that had sent him to state's prison, and that he had
committed to save her from dishonor and her husband from disgrace.
The sister's husband, it appeared, was a politician. He was,
furthermore, like many of his ilk, smug, self-satisfied, selfish
and dishonest. One might guess offhand his part in the tale. Some
countyroad funds having fallen into his hands, the fellow had
appropriated them, and then, unable to repay and in imminent peril of
exposure, he had appealed in terror to his wife. She, in turn, appealed
with a like terror to her brother.
One may picture the little man's trembling horror. One may picture,
too, his shame. To clear the politician, however, fifteen hundred
dollars must be had forthwith; and not having that much, Mr. Mapleson
had obtained the amount in the only way he knew how--by forgery. He
endorsed a check, the property of his employer. And the employer had
been Beeston!
It was there, in fact, working in Beeston's office as a clerk, that
Mr. Mapleson had obtained the information he later put to use in his
second forgery. He knew Beeston's son--Randolph Beeston that was. He
had known, too, of the man's surreptitious marriage.
At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the
usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would
be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when
an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it,
too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with
characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten,
outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail,
he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him
with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in
fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?
There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding
house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman--the widowed
girl mother and her child; then the mother's death. Lonely and
shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to
Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life
theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all
that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr.
Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to
him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this.
"Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not
merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest
in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick
to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost
son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup.
Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would.
The story the mother herself had suggested--that she was a widow, that
she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her
husband had any kin left living--all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured
himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How
in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed with it, who knows
or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston
lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as
well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly,
it seemed, as if she had been born there.
But now---- Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering
there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little
wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward
the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering
disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it
the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the
message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable
that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And
yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not
apply to the man responsible? Why?
With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind
him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there!
He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, was panting
softly as he shut the street door behind him.
Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's?
More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later
Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.
* * * * *
The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at
twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high,
still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by
making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their
employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life.
Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his
fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting
him.
The years had made little change. She had always been there--in the
beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in
pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when
she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a
stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him.
As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste,
he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child,
bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were
scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough
for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad
whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!"
The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr.
Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement.
"Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the
master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's
got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.
But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its
gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons,
gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On
Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender,
slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture
galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went,
to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good.
For the little man, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no
delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls,
Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed
woman--the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid,
as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr.
Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there
is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may
not sneer. _Ave_, John Mapleson! _Salutamus!_
What times the two had then! "Hah! th' play's the thing!" he'd cry,
stirred, his face alight at some rousing scene that had depicted
virtue victorious and villainy put to rout. "Hah, I told you so!" It
made Bab smile to see him. On the other hand, if on the stage things
went wrong with some poor girl or some noble fellow was in jeopardy,
Mr. Mapy would sit almost breathless, silenced, waiting until all was
well. Bab more than once had seen the tears steal down the little man's
gray face. However, once the suspense had passed, once all was as it
should be, Mr. Mapy, his spirits rising at a bound, would bubble with
animation. "Great! Wasn't it great! Was ever anything so fine!" For a
week he and Bab would talk it over, discussing every scene; then the
Saturday half-holiday would come again, and there would be another
matinée.
Little wonder Mr. Mapy so eagerly waited from week to week. It was his
joy. It was the one great, true pleasure of that marred, broken life
of his. And when heads began to turn, eyes to glance, lighting with
admiration at the slim, tender girl, the young woman now, who went with
him on these Saturdays, little Mr. Mapleson's heart fairly bounded,
swelling with pride, with loving satisfaction.
Of all the days that's in the week
I dearly love but one day----
If he who wrote that ballad had only made it Saturday!
So thought John Mapleson at any rate. So, too, in the passage of all
those years, never once had he let anything stand in the way of that
holiday. There was Bab, hanging over the gate, waiting in her pigtails
to wave to him. Then there was the stilty-legged little Bab riding
the gilded carrousel, scream-ing with delight when she speared the
treasured brass ring. And then, finally, there was Bab the blue-eyed
and slender, the white-faced little old man's charming companion--the
Bab whom people, smiling in admiration, turned their heads to see. All
these, Mr. Mapy! Yes, but where was Bab now? It was a Saturday, yet she
was not with him. He wondered with a rising terror what had happened.
Where was she? What had befallen her?
He was still sitting there, his chin fallen on his breast, when he
heard Varick's step upon the stair. A moment later there came his
knock. With trembling knees the little man arose, and shambling across
the room, he unlocked and opened the door.
"Well?" he asked monotonously.
In the week, the few days that had intervened since the night when he
had dragged out of Mr. Mapleson his story, Varick's anger at the little
man had drained itself away. For what good now could anger do? After
all, too, if it were indeed forgery that Mr. Mapleson had set his hand
to, there was no meanness in that fraud. It was merely the impulse of
an unbalanced mind. Varick, after he had closed the door behind him,
walked quietly across the room. Mr. Mapleson at his approach turned to
him, trembling.
"What do you want?" he asked. "I have told you everything, haven't I?"
"Listen to me," said Varick. "There was a man here yesterday to see me,
and I want to know why. You're not hiding anything, are you? Have these
people uptown found out?"
"Found out?" repeated Mr. Mapleson. He gazed at Varick, his face dull,
uncomprehending. "What do you mean?'
"Let me tell you something," said Varick, and he laid a hand on Mr.
Mapleson's shoulder. "I see you don't know, but for ten days I have
been followed--I, you understand! I have not told you before because I
was not certain. Now I know. For ten days two men have been watching
me!"
"Watching you?" echoed Mr. Mapleson. It was evident he still did not
grasp what the fact conveyed. "Why should they watch you?" he faltered.
"Why are they not watching me?"
Varick shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
"They probably are," he answered; "probably they are following all
of us!" Then he added sharply: "But that's not the point! Don't you
understand, they've found out! Uptown those people know!"
Mr. Mapleson was still staring at him as if bemused.
"Found out--they?" he faltered. "Why do you think so?" Then as Varick
sternly gazed at him Mr. Mapleson put out an appealing hand.
"Please!" he said, and smiled wearily. "I am very tired and I cannot
think. For her sake be a little kind. Won't you tell me now how you
know?"
So Varick told him. The card David Lloyd had left could have had but
one significance. David knew something. For that, for no other reason,
would he have come there to Mrs. Tilney's. He had meant to ask Varick
what he knew.
A sigh, a deep breath, escaped Mr. Mapleson.
"No, you are wrong," he said heavily. "I know why he came. She brought
him here with her."
"Bab brought him!" repeated Varick, wondering.
Mr. Mapleson nodded slowly. She had brought David to see him, but the
significance of this Varick could not see. It merely struck him as odd,
yet why odd he could not have told. After all why shouldn't she? She
knew nothing of the fraud. With equal propriety she might have brought
any of her supposed relatives to see the little man.
"What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Mapleson.
He was gazing at Varick, his air intent. Again Varick looked at him
with wonder.
"Do?" he repeated.
What was there to do? To him at any rate it was evident that those
people either knew or suspected, so what could he do but wait? Bab
could not be saved. He had tried and failed.
"You mean you'll do nothing?" persisted Mr. Mapleson. Once more his
voice rose shrilly. "But you must!" he cried, adding: "It was for you I
did what I did--because of you, Mr. Varick! I felt you cared for her;
I thought you would be up there with her watching out for her! I told
myself that with you near her I need have no fear! What is it now?
Don't you love her? Are you going to stand by idle and let whatever
happens happen? I cannot believe it, Mr. Varick!"
Varick waited until the outburst was at an end.
"I can do nothing," he said. "After what that man Beeston's done to me
you know I can't go into that house! Besides that, you know I asked her
to marry me, and you heard what she answered. When she comes back here
I'll ask her again. That won't be long, I'm certain!"
Mr. Mapleson fairly bubbled over.
"Till she comes back!" he shrilled. "Till she comes back! I tell you
she'll never come back. Don't you understand?"
Varick heard in sudden wonder. Before he could speak, though, Mr.
Mapleson's voice rose to a shriller, keener pitch.
"I say she'll never come back! You've let her stay up there alone,
never going near her, and now that fellow Lloyd wants her. That's why
she brought him here--it was for me to see him. She'll marry him before
you know it!" Then with a gesture of irrepressible misery and despair
Mr. Mapleson seized him by the arm. "What are you going to do?" he
demanded.
"I don't know," said Varick, "but I'll tell you this. If anything
happens I'll be there with her!"
XII
In that gay world of leisure that lies in and round the throbbing
artery of uptown Fifth Avenue, time ordinarily flits by as if on
hurrying wings; but with Bab, it happened, the fortnight that followed
dragged as if every hour plodded on leaden feet.
April had come, and one afternoon early in the month half-past one had
just struck when Hibberd, the Beestons' second man, padding softly up
the stairs, knocked on the door of her sitting-room. In his discreet,
deferent voice, the tone of the well-trained manservant, he announced,
"Luncheon is served, please." Laying down the book in her hand, Bab
arose. It would not do to say she had been reading; she hadn't. The
thoughts running in her mind left little room for anything else. And
in these thoughts there was little to comfort her. What had happened,
she began to feel, was exactly what might have been expected. Had she
not been warned? How, indeed, could the whole thing have been made
plainer than in the way Beeston had put it to her! It was thus, feeding
on itself, that the suspicion roused by Beeston's slurs had gone on
growing, a condition that certain remembrances of her own had in no way
improved.
She saw it all now--or so she thought. She remembered, for example,
that time now long past when she first had noted Varick's rising
interest in her. If then he had not openly made love, still his
attitude was next door to it! Had he ever lost a chance to be with
her? Had he once omitted the opportunity to make himself singularly
pleasant? Bab was sure, quite sure, he had not. He had, in short,
amused himself at every occasion! For what else but amusement could
it be called? Her good looks had always sufficed to interest him, but
not until he knew one day she would have money had he ever taken her
seriously.
Day by day her resentment had grown. Day by day, too, she had learned
to find in it a kind of styptic balm, a bitter salve for the hurt she
first had felt. However, that hurt was passing now; and as Bab arose
to make ready for luncheon her spirits manifestly had improved. A new
color had come to her cheeks, a new buoyancy to her step. It was as
if the harvest of her thoughts this morning had at last brought to
her a decision long debated, and that now, once she had reached this
conclusion, the shadow had been swept resolutely from her mind.
"Never mind my hat, Mawson," Bab told the angular, bony-faced
Englishwoman Miss Elvira had provided to wait on her. "I'll run up for
it after luncheon."
"Very good, miss," replied the maid; and her eyes alight with their
new animation, perhaps just a little hard, too, Bab hurried down the
stairs. Rarely had she looked so self-poised.
That afternoon she was to drive out in a new motor, a racing runabout
David Lloyd had just bought; and as she passed swiftly down the long
stairway Bab was humming under her breath a familiar bar of music. It
was by chance an air that once she had heard someone she knew whistling
gayly:
La Donna è mobile!
And singularly, at the remembrance, she smiled as if lightly amused.
But then that is the way of it:
Quam plume mal vento!
She was, indeed, still singing it as she slipped into the living-room,
on her way down, to help herself to a flower or two out of a big
bunch that stood in a vase on the table. David that morning had sent
them to her, and she knew how his face would light when he saw her
wearing them. Of late she had begun to notice rather definitely how
readily she could please him. And he, too, pleased her. She had not
dreamed that one's own cousin--just a relative, you know--could seem
always so charming. But then there was a gentleness, a kindliness and
consideration about David that endeared him to everyone. Bab, by the
time she had reached the dining-room, seemed much like her smiling,
pleasant self again.
At the foot of the luncheon table, ensconced behind a huge, hissing,
silver tea-urn, sat Miss Elvira. Her turtle-like jaw was at the
moment set squarely. Near by stood David's father, and with him was
Mrs. Lloyd. Bab, since that memorable Christmas morning when they'd
plied her with their questions about Varick, had seen the two only
occasionally, and always in Miss Elvira's presence. However, even thus
guarded, the Lloyds somehow still had managed to convey to her a subtle
sense of their dislike, so that Bab long had learned to watch for them
with disquiet. What was it they had against her? Why were they not
like David? Once or twice she had been tempted to appeal to Mrs. Lloyd
herself. She was not only Bab's aunt, Bab told herself, she was David's
mother too. And could not she see how fond David was of his cousin? But
Bab had never made that appeal.
As time progressed and her stay in the house turned into weeks, then
months, Bab had seen the air of aloofness they displayed grow more
marked. Not that they were ever openly rude. But their politeness, the
man's especially, had in it something feline, so that gradually the
impression grew on Bab that she was being played with, that beneath the
velvety paws keen claws were hidden. She could not understand it. Why
did they shrink so from her? As she entered the room Lloyd, starting
awkwardly, gave his wife a quick, covert signal of warning. Evidently
they had just been talking of her. Miss Elvira looked up, then smiled.
"Well, dear," she murmured aimlessly.