it. Things like this were as near as he came to being rude, but now,
it happened, Bab had begun to notice the occurrences. "Four minutes,
past!" remarked Lloyd, his tone suggestive; then as crisply he added:
"The _soufflé_ will be ruined!"
Miss Elvira looked up swiftly.
"Then don't eat it!" she rejoined; whereat Mr. Lloyd, withdrawing his
pale eyes from Bab, gave his wife's aunt a sudden inquiring stare. If
he'd planned a retort, however, he instantly reconsidered it. Miss
Elvira's mien at the moment did not encourage liberties. Bab all at
once was aware something must have occurred. There was an air of
tension evident.
At the head of the table old Beeston already had taken his place.
Shrugged back in his seat, his gnarled, powerful hands clutching the
arms of his chair, he stared fixedly in front of him. His son-in-law
he did not seem to see, nor for that matter did he pay much heed to
his daughter. It was as if alone and detached he absorbed himself in
dour, dark reflection, his sullen, forceful eyes fixed on the vision,
whatever it was, that drifted at the moment across the changeful mirror
of his mind.
"Hello, dad," murmured Bab.
She paused, bending over his chair, and with both hands patted him
on either cheek. Una and the Lion! A grunt escaped him, a deepening
rumble, and then the man's dark face, Indian in its swartness, lighted
into one of its rare, grudging smiles.
"Hullo, you!" he returned.
Between the two, one saw, all was well again.
Across the room Lloyd had not missed this little by-play. As he seated
himself, then picked up his napkin, he shot a covert look at his wife.
Mrs. Lloyd, however, was engrossed with Aunt Elvira. It had been
planned to give Bab a dance, her first, the week following, and Mrs.
Lloyd seemed just to have heard of it. Possibly this accounted for the
rather unusual interest she showed.
Beeston suddenly spoke.
"Where's Davy?" he demanded.
"'E'll be down presently, sir. 'E's dressing," the butler informed him.
With Hibberd, the second man, Crabbe stood at attention, and bending
forward Beeston knocked abruptly on the table. At the signal all but
Lloyd became silent.
"A dance?" he was saying. "You giving a dance?"
Beeston, bent forward, had lowered his head; but as his son-in-law's
voice raised itself he looked up, his slumberous eyes, in their dark,
fierce latency, burning on the speaker. Lloyd in his affected, clipping
tone still babbled on.
"Fancy giving a dance to people here!"
With a shock that made the glass and silver ring Beeston's fist struck
upon the table.
"Silence!" he said.
He did not raise his voice; he did not need to. The word, spoken with
a slow, unhurried evenness, the man's usual rumbling monotone, seemed
to crash down upon and obliterate Lloyd much as if he had been hit
by a landslide. Shamed and conscious he tugged furiously at his pale
mustaches, at the same time glancing guiltily at the two menservants.
His eyes, when again they returned to his father-in-law, were hard,
angry, resentful. But Beeston did not heed.
"Bless Thou, O Lord, this, food to our use; and make humble our hearts
within us. Amen." Then, sitting back abruptly, he stretched out a hand
to the glass in front of him. "Some of the '88 Canary, Crabbe; I'll
have it with my soup."
Bab raised her eyes. She had been aware of Beeston's opinion of his
son-in-law; but behind his contemptuous disdain she detected now an
impulse she had not known before--a vindictive wrath, a fury only
half hidden. Of that tension in the room Bab from the first had been
aware, and now she realized Lloyd must have been the cause of it. What
had he been doing? Wondering, she was still sitting there, wrapped in
silence, when Mrs. Lloyd broke the uncomfortable pause. About Mrs.
Lloyd's bored, impassive voice there was often a sort of disdainful,
purring inflection that Bab heard with disquiet. Ordinarily it signaled
something disagreeable. Turning to Miss Elvira, Mrs. Lloyd smiled
vaguely.
"You haven't told me yet--has that card been sent?"
"What card?" Miss Elvira looked up sharply. Then almost at the same
instant she seemed to comprehend. "The card to--to---- You mean the one
we were talking about?" Her air was obviously uneasy. Beeston, too,
seemed interested, for his eye lighted and he glanced sideways at his
daughter. Mrs. Lloyd was still smiling vaguely.
"Yes," she returned, "the card for that young man. I'm curious to learn
whether he would accept."
Miss Elvira did not reply. In frosty silence she busied herself about
the tea-urn; but as Bab sat listening, her interest mildly awakened,
she saw Miss Elvira glance swiftly toward her, then away, a signal
evidently for the benefit of Mrs. Lloyd. But Mrs. Lloyd, it seemed, had
some purpose behind her veiled, vague speeches. She, too, cast a glance
at Bab.
"I suggest we send the invitation. At the most he could only refuse. If
he accepted we might by chance learn his true attitude toward us."
"Ethel!"
It was Miss Elvira that spoke. Like her brother, she did not raise her
voice; neither did she much change its tone. But even so Miss Elvira
managed to convey with it a significant something not to be overlooked.
Mrs. Lloyd, who was just about to speak again, paused. However, after
an inquiring look she began anew: "As I was saying----"
"One lump or two, Ethel?" Miss Elvira abruptly interrupted.
"What? Oh, why two, please. As I was saying----"
"Cream?" asked Miss Elvira.
"Please. As I said----"
"Hibberd, hand me the toast," Miss Elvira again interposed.
In mild wonder Hibberd said there was no toast--should he order some
sent up? No, it was not worth while; Miss Elvira did not need it so
much as that.
"Cream and sugar, Barbara?" she inquired.
"Yes, please, Aunty Vi," returned Bab. Her aunt's strategy she had not
missed. It added to her growing curiosity. Something was going on.
Mrs. Lloyd again glanced at her husband. The two having exchanged a
look, Mrs. Lloyd once more applied herself to her aunt. Some strong
resolution seemed now to have armed her with determination.
"Aunt Vira, I was just speaking to you," she announced.
Without looking up from the teacups Miss Elvira murmured, "Were you?"
"I asked you," returned Mrs. Lloyd, "whether you'd sent that
invitation."
"Yes, I heard you perfectly," Miss Elvira replied calmly.
"Well?"
"Well, what?" was the rejoinder.
An impasse evidently! Obviously the question Mrs. Lloyd seemed so
determined to have answered Miss Elvira was just as determined she
wouldn't answer. Bab's bewilderment grew. She had a curious feeling
that somehow she had intimately to do with the matter, though what it
was, so far she had not the slightest inkling. Why should anyone's
presence at her dance disclose that person's motives? And the motives,
what were they? She was still wondering, her face puckered into a
frown, when she heard the thump of David's crutches in the hall, and a
moment later David himself appeared at the door.
"Hello, everyone!" he greeted.
Passing toward his chair, he halted long enough to give his grandfather
a friendly tap on the shoulder.
"Hello, you!" Beeston growled amiably.
Crabbe had pulled out the chair next to Bab's, and David, having handed
the butler his crutches, skillfully sat himself down. Then, as soon as
Crabbe had turned away, David reached over surreptitiously and gave
Bab's hand an affectionate pat.
"Well, Babs," he remarked.
The color stole faintly into Bab's face and her eyes lighted, animated
now that she had him there to talk to. Just as she was about to speak
David seemed to divine the trouble in the air.
"I say, what's the row?" he asked abruptly.
There was a moment's pause. Then, as if determined to force matters to
a finish, Mrs. Lloyd spoke.
"There's no row. I wish you wouldn't use such words! I merely asked
your Aunt Vira a question. I wished to know whether she'd sent a
card"--she glanced, as she spoke, at Bab--"an invitation to Bayard
Varick!"
Varick? Bab heard the name in vague astonishment. So he was the man
they'd been discussing? Yes, but why all Mrs. Lloyd's strange interest
in him? Why all her curiosity concerning Varick's attitude? Did all
this concern her--Bab? Was that it?
She sat there outwardly unmoved, her face inexpressive of the tumult
that went on within her. Strangely, it was not of the motives she
thought. In her mind ran rioting another thought--a thought that
shouted clamorously, its mockery evident. A party and Varick at it? Her
party too? With that vividly clear-cut minuteness of detail that mental
conflict so often engenders, a memory, a vision leaped into her mind
and stood there, graphic, boldly limned.
It was in Mrs. Tilney's dining-room that she saw herself. Dinner was at
half-past six; it shortly would be served; and the table set, her task
completed, Bab sat with her chin on her hands. Across on the hearthrug
stood Varick. He was in evening clothes, and Bab had just tied his tie.
"Tell me," she'd said, "if tonight things were changed, and I--I was
up there---- If you, you----" Ah, yes; if things were changed! If they
were changed, indeed, and she could be there, uptown, with him, would
he then not think her as pretty, as charming, as desirable as those
other girls he knew? That was the question, the one she'd half asked,
then had not dared to finish! A dance! A party with him there! At the
thought then how her heart had leaped! To be there with him! To have
him dance with her! She still could recall her first exhilaration. Yes,
but that had been weeks ago! There was a difference now; and Bab, a
queer look in her eyes, glanced swiftly, perhaps guiltily, at the man
who sat beside her. It was the first acknowledgment to herself, that
glance, of how far in the past had fallen that romance of hers at Mrs.
Tilney's. Far indeed!
Still sitting there, her face inexpressive, she had looked away, when
of a sudden she heard Beeston speak.
"Varick, eh?" he growled. "That fellow asked here!"
He stared about him, his dull eyes threatening, a deep color crowding
into his face.
"Well, why don't you answer?" he demanded. "Who asked that fellow? I've
told you, haven't I, I'll have no Varick in my house!"
It was David who replied.
"No one's asked him," he said quietly. "I've been trying to decide if I
should."
"You?"
It would be difficult to give his inflection. It expressed doubt,
incredulity, as if Beeston distrusted his own ears.
"You trying?"
"Why, yes," said David, his air puzzled; "why not? Varick's a friend of
mine, isn't he? I only wondered whether he'd care to come." Then with
an unexpectedness that made her gasp David added: "Besides, I thought
Bab might like to have him. They were friends at Mrs. Tilney's, you
know."
Friends? Bab with difficulty managed to hide the conflict of her
emotions. Again she glanced swiftly at David. She wondered, had he
known all, whether he would even consider asking Varick. But this was
the least of it. Did she herself want him? Was she ready to see him
again? It was queer that though she had resolved to evict him from her
mind the mere thought of him should so confuse her! Just then she was
aware that Beeston shot a glance at her. Afterward he gazed at David
briefly.
His air was absorbed. It was as if he debated something, as if some
disclosure hovered on his lips. And what the disclosure was Bab had
little doubt. She had not forgotten yet what had occurred the day she
had driven with him alone. Was that what he meant to divulge? What
indeed seemed curious was her hope that he would not blurt it out
before David. Why that hope? Why her dislike to have David hear? After
all he was only her cousin--nothing but a relative. Guardedly Bab
watched old Beeston.
"H'm!" he said presently. "Then you haven't asked him yet?"
David said no. He was waiting, he said, to decide, and again Beeston
grunted.
"Decide? Decide what?" he asked. "Whether you want him? That's it,
isn't it?" he mumbled.
David shook his head.
"No," he said, "it's whether Bab wants him."
She did not move, start; she merely raised her eyes. Bab could not have
told, had her life depended on it, how she managed to keep back the
color from her face. She decide? Deep down in his throat Beeston gave
vent to a sudden chuckle, sardonic, mocking, a laugh stifled as swiftly
as it was given. Then, his eye gleaming, he stared at her.
"Well, that seems to settle it! Do you want him asked, my girl?"
Bab smiled back at him quietly.
"Not if you don't," she replied.
There was a sudden movement. Beeston, again sitting back in his chair,
stared before him, a lurking gleam of triumph in his eyes.
"That's good!" he said. "If that fellow ever sets foot in my house now
I'll bundle him neck and crop out of doors!" Then he beckoned roughly
to Crabbe, the butler. "You hear me, Crabbe? Don't you ever let him
inside my door!"
XIII
"Pass the relish, please!"
It was Miss Hultz who spoke. Attired in a smart spring poplin,
indisputably _chic exquis_ as advertised, the lady from Bimberg's
flashed all her handsome front teeth in a smile directed across the
napery of Mrs. Tilney's dinner table. Varick, plunged in a reverie,
awoke abruptly.
"I beg pardon?" he inquired.
"The relish," repeated Miss Hultz.
Like others at the boarding house, the lady had of late begun to regard
Varick with a new interest, a feeling of sympathy tinged deeply with
regret. It was as if something in his aspect had aroused this, and that
her heartstrings, touched by it, twanged in a responsive chord:
Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Not that Varick was either wan or pale, or that fortune had failed
to smile on him. On the contrary, at the bank he recently had been
promoted, his pay doubled as well. But Miss Hultz had her suspicions of
what was in the air; and with her little finger elegantly extended, her
manner nice, she was pronging into the relish jar when again she spoke.
The pickles, it appeared, had been merely a pretext, a preface.
"Seen the piece in the paper, Mr. Varick?" Varick said no, he hadn't
read the evening paper; and hearing this Miss Hultz, her air now arch,
impaled a pearly onion on her fork. The piece, she said, was in the
society column; and she added: "It's all about a little friend of
yours, Mr. V."
In brief it was an account of Bab's dance that absorbed Miss Hultz.
Tonight was the night it was to be given.
"Indeed?" Varick remarked.
He sat listening idly, while with a great particularity of detail, as
if nothing were too trivial, nothing too insignificant, Miss Hultz
related all she had gleaned from the newspaper's account.
"It's to be a dinner dance!" she announced. "You get me, don't you!"
Then having let the table grapple with this compelling fact, Miss Hultz
leaped to the next illuminating detail. "Covers"--it was the reporter
she quoted--"covers will be laid for twenty couples!"
Nor was this all! As Varick sat there, his manner politely attentive
but his wits far afield, there sounded dully in his ears all that
plethora of sickly, silly inanities with which the society reporter
embellishes his spindling effort. "Exclusive! Select! Our Younger
Set! Gotham's Upper Tendom!" Bab, little Bab, was to have her dance;
and with a growing sorrow at what it signified and in the end must
inevitably involve, Varick listened, hardly hearing, while Miss Hultz
buoyantly prattled on.
Since the afternoon when she had brought David Lloyd to see Mr.
Mapleson, Varick had not heard from Bab, either through the little man
or otherwise. Nor had Mr. Mapleson heard either. A fortnight since then
had passed; but to the two, in their growing uneasiness, each hour of
that time had seemed an age. Nor had Varick's reflections during the
fortnight been exactly those of a lover. The condemned awaiting the
hour of execution could not have felt more depressed.
It was not only what Bab had said to him, her denunciation, that
had swept him off his feet, but it was Mr. Mapleson's revelation
about David Lloyd. David a suitor? He had been quick to see what
that involved; David, indeed, might be a cripple, but the appeal,
the attraction of David's character would go far to obscure the one
blemish, his infirmity. Varick knew that. He knew, too, the pity,
the compassion, that would warm Bab toward David Lloyd, she with her
warm-hearted, impulsive tenderness. He had but a single consolation.
That was the thought, the grim reflection, that were ever the fraud
found out David's family would at once effectually put an end to any
romance. David's father was a perpetual guarantee of that! He let his
son marry a nobody--an impostor into the bargain? And there was Beeston
too! When Varick thought of him again he smiled grimly, a vision before
him of what would happen once Beeston learned the imposture! Yes, but
what if Beeston never learned?
Varick was in the midst of this reflection, his brow moist with it,
when again Miss Hultz addressed him. About his _vis-à-vis_ there was
nothing mean, nothing malicious. Her curiosity for the moment had
merely got the better of her. However, that did not in the least alter
the awkwardness of the question that Miss Hultz now put to him.
"I say, Mr. Varick," she said. "You're going tonight, of course, ain't
you?"
Then, when Varick said no, that he was staying at home, Miss Hultz gave
an exclamation.
"Not going?" she ejaculated.
It was so. Bab had not asked him, and if she had he would not have
gone. However, Varick saw no reason why all this need be explained, and
he was searching in his mind for some evasive answer when of a sudden
there was an interruption. Jessup was its author.
"Varick!" said Jessup abruptly.
Having caught Varick's eye then, with a guarded glance he indicated the
head of the table where Mr. Mapleson sat. Throughout the colloquy with
Miss Hultz the little man had displayed every sign of distaste, not to
say disquiet. Now, however, shrugged down in his chair, his face blank,
he was staring at a scrap of pasteboard, a visiting card, that Lena,
the waitress, had just handed him. Varick, as he looked, felt his heart
knock fiercely.
Many seconds passed while Mr. Mapleson sat huddled in silence,
gazing at the card. Manifestly what it portended was momentous, for
presently he gave vent to a stifled breath, a wheeze. Then with the
same suddenness a change sped over him. It was as if some thought, some
swift, compelling resolution, had sprung into his mind to steel him
and, thrusting back his chair, he arose, his face molded into a look
of unflinching determination. Heroic--that was his air! Mr. Mapleson
for once looked noble. Walking to the dining-room door, he turned and
beckoned to Varick.
"Let me speak to you," said Mr. Mapleson, his voice strongly composed;
then passing out into the hall he stood waiting, his face still firm.
His eyes, too, were gleaming resolutely. Varick joined him hurriedly.
"Look!" said Mr. Mapleson.
His tone was dead, his air quite impassive, as he held out to Varick
the visiting card. Varick glanced at it swiftly. Then with Mr. Mapleson
at his heels he went up the stairs to see the man who waited in Mrs.
Tilney's parlor. It was Lloyd, Beeston's son-in-law.
He was in evening dress, but in his air was nothing that accorded with
that festive attire. Planted on the hearthrug, his hat in one hand,
his other tugging at his pale mustache, he gave Varick and Mr. Mapleson
as they entered a sudden, piercing look. In it was contempt, that and
animosity mixed with satisfaction. Lloyd, Senior, one saw, felt triumph.
"Good evening," said Varick quietly.
The gentleman did not even trouble himself to reply. Transferring his
glance to Mr. Mapleson, he looked him up and down.
"Are you John Mapleson?" he inquired.
Then when Mr. Mapleson, after moistening his lips, had said yes, Lloyd,
his manner brisk, wasted no time in coming to the point.
"I'll be brief with you, Mapleson!" he said brusquely, and as he spoke
he turned to Varick. "Varick, I'll be brief with you as well. Unless
tonight you two take that girl away from my father-in-law's house
uptown I'll see to it myself that she's turned out, bag and baggage!
What's more, tomorrow morning I'll turn you all over to the police!"
Then he strode toward the door.
"That's all!" said Mr. Lloyd.
XIV
The dinner was at eight. At half-past seven, long before the first
of the guests possibly could arrive, Bab, dressed and ready, came
pitapatting down the broad stairway in her high-heeled little gold
slippers. On each cheek a spot of color burned, and Bab's blue eyes,
too, gleamed brightly, dancing with suppressed excitement The house
during the day had been transformed.
A huge bank of palms behind which the orchestra was to play half filled
the hall, and everywhere there were flowers. Bab's breath came swiftly
as she saw them. She had not expected anything like this, and, her hand
on the stair rail, she halted, gazing about her, thrilled. Seeing her,
Crabbe, the white-haired butler, came hurrying from the pantry. Like
her, Crabbe, too, was filled with suppressed excitement.
"Mr. David's in the library, please," he announced; "he said I was to
let you know." Then his taciturnity for once forgotten, Crabbe smiled
broadly. "Wonderful, Miss Barbara, isn't it? The master's orders it
was!"
"My grandfather's!" Bab had cried out in astonishment.
All along, it had seemed to her, Beeston had regarded her first dance
only in gloomy tolerance, as if he wished the confusion and stir in his
household at an end. But apparently she had been mistaken. Of a sudden
that evening Beeston had appeared upon the scene, and after a look
about him had demanded where the florist was. Then when the man had
come running, Beeston, his brows twitching, more than ever grim, had
rumbled an order at him. After that for an hour confusion had piled on
itself in the household. Then as hurriedly it had passed, while out of
it the house had risen transformed, beautified into a bower.
Bab listened intently to what old Crabbe was telling her. In the
months she had lived there in that house she had grasped how
many-sided was Beeston's dark and formidable nature. And yet, grim as
it was and uncompromising, the man had about him, somewhere buried
in his half-starved soul, a streak of sentimentalism impulsive and
surprising. Of this his orders for the night's decoration seemed
an evidence, and Bab still was looking about her in wonder, her
appreciation growing, when at the door of the library Beeston himself
appeared. Crabbe, breaking off in the midst of a sentence, sought to
efface himself, but Beeston had seen him.
"Here, you, _Crabbe_!" he grunted.
Bearing on the arm of his young English valet, Cater, he came scuffling
along the hall, his stick thwacking loudly on the floor, his brow
darkened by an angry frown.
"Yes, sir," said Crabbe.
"My son-in-law, Mr. Lloyd--has he come in?" Beeston demanded abruptly.
Crabbe bent toward him deferentially.
"Mr. Lloyd was here, sir, and left. It was an hour ago."
Again a growl left Beeston.
"I know when he left! What I want to know is--has he come back?"
On being informed that Mr. Lloyd had not returned, Beeston struck the
floor a vicious blow with his stick.
"He'll be back and I want to see him! You hear? You let me know the
instant he comes in!"
"Very good, sir," Crabbe replied and, dismissed with a brusque wave of
the hand, withdrew to the pantry. Then, freeing his arm from Cater's,
Beeston gave him, too, a knockdown scowl.
"Get out!" he ordered. Cater, as ordered, got out.
Bab was still there on the stairs. That raw, ill-mannered roughness so
often Beeston's mood was too old a story now for her to give much heed
to it, and she was moving off indifferently when he put a hand swiftly
on her arm.
"Wait!" ordered Beeston. "You hear? Wait!" Bab gazed at him wide-eyed.
"I want to have a look at you," said Beeston.
His mouth set, his lips protruding on themselves, he stamped up the
hall a way, and, pushing a button set there in the wall, sent a flood
of light pouring down from the chandelier. Then he came pounding back.
"Now stand where you are!" directed Beeston.
Bab in wonder obeyed. To be inspected, to be looked over, appraised and
then admired may perhaps be the object all women have when they array
themselves in all the allurement of their dress. But what an inspection
this was! Not even in her last survey before the mirror had she given
herself a closer, a more critical scrutiny.
"Turn round!" directed Beeston.
Bab turned.
"Now turn the other way!"