round for some explanation of the evening's experiences, a quick
remembrance came to her. It was like a ray of light--a sudden,
illuminating gleam stabbing swiftly through the darkness. Her thoughts
turned back to the first morning she had spent in that house,
the Christmas day when she encountered the Lloyds, David's cold,
unresponsive parents.
Bit by bit she recalled the scene: first, Mrs. Lloyd's air of
aloofness, her chilly reception to her new-found niece; then in train
with this Lloyd's keen, curious interest in her life at Mrs. Tilney's,
her acquaintance especially with Varick. Of course by now Bab had
learned why Varick was no longer welcome at her grandfather's house.
It was because of Beeston's hatred of Varick's father. But, even this
hardly could be reason enough for the Lloyds' deep-rooted interest
in the matter; at any rate, not for their concern in Bab's early
friendship with Varick. She remembered also the climax of that scene,
the moment when, grim of face, flying the signals of war, Miss Elvira
had swooped down upon the Lloyds. At sight of her they suddenly had
been stricken silent. Why? And then Miss Elvira had flung those few
tart words at the pair. They had contained a warning, a threat, too.
But why was that threat necessary? Was it to keep them from revealing
something to her?
Gradually the conviction that this was the real explanation began to
grow upon her. In this case the revelation, the secret they knew, must
have something to do with Varick. But how was he involved? Was it
something shady they had to tell? If so, why didn't they tell it? Why
didn't they give him a chance to defend himself? Mulling this over,
she recalled, too, with sudden vividness something that had occurred on
that eventful afternoon when she had driven alone with Beeston, the day
when in his rage he had denounced Varick as a fortune hunter. Varick's
father, as Beeston had told her, had tried to trim him, and instead had
himself been trimmed. That the man Varick, Senior, had been dishonest
was manifest. Had he perhaps handed down this trait? Was Varick
dishonest too? But if this were true, why didn't they say so? That she
herself might be the one concerned did not enter Bab's mind by even so
much as a suggestion.
An hour passed. The cannel, crackling and snapping in the hearth,
began presently to burn low. It grew gray about the edges, its glow
subsiding, the ashes turning cold. As three o'clock struck out in the
hall Bab heard a sound upon the stair. Startled, for an instant she
held her breath. Then, the sound passing on, she recognized it--or so
she thought. It was old Crabbe, she told herself. Having locked up, he
now must be going to bed. She did not know he had been there an hour
already. Her alarm gone, she reached over to the grate, and with the
poker stirred up the waning blaze. Again the coals began to snap and
crackle, their light dancing on the ceiling of the half-darkened room.
And Bab once more resumed her thoughts.
It was not only Lloyd and his wife who were hiding something; it was
David, and Miss Elvira, and even Varick. However, though she recalled
Varick's quick question addressed to David, "Does she know?" its
significance did not dawn on her. To her it was merely a part of the
tangle, the mystery, a mere repetition.
Suddenly irritation swept over her. They were treating her like a
child. A child--yes, that was it! They were all of them trying to
hoodwink, to cozen her. Why?
Again and again, as Bab knelt there, her thoughts returned to the
queer, distracting events that had marked her presence in that house.
And still the truth evaded her. She arose presently and, going to the
glass, unwound the coils of brown, wavy hair piled on her slender head,
which by this time had begun to throb painfully. In all the dreary
confusion in her mind one thought stood out above the others--she had
lost Varick!
[Illustration: "One thought stood out ... she had lost Varick."]
A half-hour passed, and she was again in her place before the dying
coals. She could not sleep. Late as it was she felt she would rather
sit with the fire for company than lie wide-eyed in bed, staring
sleeplessly at the walls. More memories swam before her now. This time
they were of that evening, the Christmas Eve, now months gone by,
when in Mrs. Tilney's dowdy dining-room she had dreamed of herself as
an heiress sought after and fortunate. The dream, still vivid, rose
mockingly before her.
She would have a party, a dance. She would have music, flowers, lights.
A gay figure, she would dance, her happiness complete. But little had
she dreamed then, there at Mrs. Tilney's, that not one lover but two,
the old love and the new, would be present, striving together to win
her. And least of all had she dreamed it would be the old love that
lost, the new love that won. But so it had been. Drearily staring into
the grate, she was thinking how different the reality had been from her
dream when, on the stairs outside, she again heard the muffled sound.
This time, however, she did not mistake it.
Her heart thumping a swift tattoo of alarm, Bab struggled to her feet.
Down the stairs, along the hall now and straight toward her door came
the slow, painful footfalls. Then, after a pause--a vital moment in
which the blood poured tumultuously into her face, her bare neck and
shoulders--a hand tapped on her door, a guarded, secret signal. When
she opened the door David stood before her, and at her look of inquiry
he signaled her with a finger on his lips.
"Hush!" he whispered. Then without further ado he swayed into the room
upon his crutches and, turning, shut the door behind him.
Bab gazed at him in silent wonder. The impropriety of his coming to her
room at that hour did not occur to her. What struck her to silence was
his look, the expression of his eyes and mouth. His face was drawn and
haggard. A light like fever burned in his eyes. She stood before him,
her hair tumbling about her shoulders, and waited expectantly for him
to speak. When he did his voice was low and broken.
"I couldn't wait; I had to see you," he said. He paused, and gazed at
her for a moment. "I've not frightened you, have I?" he asked. Bab
could see he was trembling.
To her astonishment, when she answered her voice was quite composed.
"No, I'm not frightened; it's only--why, what is it? What has happened,
David?" Vaguely she began to guess what had brought him there.
His eyes, dull, still darkly burning, had fixed themselves on hers. "I
saw your light," he said slowly, "and I couldn't wait. I wanted to know
whether what you told me tonight you meant--whether you still mean it,
that is." Then, his mouth contracting sharply, he paused, steadying
himself on his crutches. "You know," he said slowly, the effort
manifest, "tonight I saw you with him. I hadn't realized it before. I
didn't know there was someone else."
It was as Bab had guessed. She had surmised, indeed, the reason for his
coming. But though she had, she made no effort of evasion. She merely
wondered that in all her talks with David she had not long before
divulged her real feeling for Varick. In mocking iteration, through
her mind jingled the words of that hackneyed saying: "It's well to be
off with the old love before you're on with the new!" Well, indeed! It
happened, too, that she was!
"You mean Bayard, I suppose," she returned.
David did not give her a direct answer, but she could see the conflict
that was raging within him. Again his mouth twitched, and he swayed
perilously on his crutches. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the storm
passed.
"I don't suppose you'll understand; I don't suppose anyone would," he
said thickly, his face set, "but it's not fair, not just. Because I'm
like this, maimed and twisted, why must I always be made to pay for
it? Don't mistake me," he interrupted as Bab sought to speak; "this is
not self-pity. Pity is the thing that hurts me worst of all. I want a
chance--that's all I ask! I want just for once to be like other men. I
could stand it before. All my life, at school, at college, afterward,
too--all that time when I saw other boys, other men at their play, at
their sports, their good times--I could stand it. I wanted to do what
they did, but I couldn't. I knew, too, that I couldn't, that I never
could. I knew that I had to grin and bear it. Yes," he said with a
fierce vehemence she had never seen before; "and no one can say I
didn't grin, that I didn't bear it! Even he will say that for me--you
know who I mean. Ask him if you like."
Bab, wondering more now, spoke again.
"I'm sure he would," she said quietly.
He gave her a quick glance; but the hurt in his eyes, his drawn and
haggard mouth, went far to obscure the resentment he put into the look.
He did not dislike Varick, she knew; they had been friends, and still
would have been so had David had his way. What had roused him now was
the bitterness of all he'd had to stand.
"Oh, but what's the use!" continued David with a shrug of hopeless
misery. "What's the use! I could stand that--seeing men do the things I
wanted to do. I've stood it for years. Tonight, though, when I saw him
with you--when I saw, too, the look he gave you--that was too much! I'd
thought after all I'd had to give up all my life that perhaps I might
have you! And then I saw I couldn't!"
Bab was watching him fixedly. His eyes on the floor, he did not see the
color fade suddenly in her face.
"Well?" she said abruptly. David at her tone looked up. For a moment
his face was vacant. Bab steeled herself to speak again. "What has
Varick to do with it?" she demanded. "Why do you dwell on him?"
There was an instant's pause.
"Bab, what do you mean?"
She did not answer directly. Then because she would not hold him
in suspense, and hurt him more than he had already been hurt: "You
haven't lost me," she said. "I told you I'd marry you, and I'll keep my
promise, dear!"
A moment later, swaying on his crutches, he had laid both hands on her
shoulders and, his eyes alight, was gazing deeply into hers.
"Oh, Bab, do you mean it?"
"Yes, dear," she returned courageously. "I'll marry you when you want."
XIX
April now was drawing on toward May; and after the dance, the first
within its walls for years, life in the Beeston house resumed itself
much as it had been before. The family, at the end of a fortnight,
was to go out to the Beeston place on Long Island and once they were
there settled for the summer, David meant to announce the engagement.
Meanwhile Bab's mind was so full of it that there was little room there
for anything else.
Her decision to marry David had changed her mental attitude entirely.
With the past and its events she was determined she would not distress
herself. In this she included Varick. She no longer pondered, either,
those happenings, still unexplained, that so long had bewildered her.
It was to the future she looked. Varick had gone out of her life. David
was the one she must think about.
The days slipped by, every one, it seemed to Bab, fuller for her than
the one before. And it was to David that all this was due. There was
not an hour when his every thought, every consideration, was not
directed toward her. Bab vividly perceived the depth of his feeling for
her.
In the time that preceded the departure for Long Island a feverish
happiness seemed to animate him. He hovered about her as if he resented
the loss even of a single moment of her company, and Bab was far from
objecting to this. David's companionship always had allured her; his
thoughtfulness, his consideration must have endeared him to anyone.
Besides, David's happiness somehow was infectious. When she was with
him her spirits leaped contagiously. More and more in those few days
Bab learned to appreciate how companionable he really was.
There was about him, too, a gentleness and understanding that were in
themselves subtly comforting to her. David, in spite of his deep-rooted
feeling for her, seemed ever fearful of alarming her. In the same way,
though eager to have every moment with her, he was careful never to
obtrude himself.
"I mustn't bore you," he said once.
"Bore me? Why, you never do," Bab returned; and with a quick
comprehension she laid her hand on his. A light at the touch leaped
into David's eyes. Instantly, however, he controlled it.
"I'm glad," he answered simply.
Day by day he hovered about her. Even when Bab was alone, she had
but to call, or dispatch a servant for him, to have him instantly
respond. It was as if he were constantly on guard, watching over her.
David might be a cripple; but the woman he loved could not have asked
for a more able knight, nor one more generous. Bab eventually had to
call a halt to his prodigality. There were flowers every morning,
books, candies, what not. Then one night--it was just a week after the
dance--David, his face radiant, tapped on the door of her sitting-room.
He had one hand held behind him.
"Guess what's in it," he proposed.
The day before he had suggested giving her a motor, a small, smart
landaulet of a type she had casually admired; but this plan instantly
had been squelched. What need had she of a motor when her "grandfather"
had at least five? However, what David now held behind him was
manifestly not a town landaulet. But it might be the order for one.
"Look here," said Bab; "have you been silly enough----"
With a shake of his head, his eyes glowing, he interrupted her.
"Guess, can't you?" he persisted.
Then when she couldn't he came a step closer to her.
"Look," he said, and suddenly opened his hand.
In it lay a ring, a single diamond set on a platinum band. It was not
a huge stone, ostentatious and vulgar; but one whose water was as
translucent as a drop of dew. As she beheld it Bab caught her breath.
"For me!" she cried.
David nodded. In his hand was a chain, too, a finely woven thread of
gold. "Till we've told them," he said, his voice low, "wear it round
your neck, Bab."
Her breath came swiftly through parted lips. Beeston's pearl, worth
five times David's gift, had not begun to thrill her so. It was the
significance of the ring, all it conveyed, that now made her heart leap
and the color pour into her face.
The following Saturday the family, bag and baggage, moved to Long
Island. Half the servants, Crabbe in charge, already were established
there; and Saturday afternoon, sometime after luncheon, Beeston and
Miss Elvira were to follow. The run to Eastbourne was short--not more
than an hour; and they were to take the limousine. Bab and David,
however, elected to leave earlier. Just after breakfast David's
roadster was brought round to the door.
The morning was brilliant, a burst of sunlight glorifying even that
ugly neighborhood, the street lined with its rows of brownstone fronts.
The air, too, was animating. May was at hand, but the morning in spite
of that had a tang like October. Bab wisely had tucked herself in furs,
a muff and scarf of silver fox. At the curb she found David already
waiting in his motor.
The roadster, a powerful machine, glittered with varnish and brightly
polished metal. David never looked better than when he was seated
at its wheel. As Bab came down the steps, smart in her furs and her
fetching little toque and fashionably cut tweeds, a quick smile
lighted his face. Certainly his features were attractive. Though he
was not handsome, there was about him a look of high-bred, clean-cut
manliness--an expression thoroughly appealing to women. As the
chauffeur, having tucked a rug about Bab, climbed to his seat in the
rumble, David bent swiftly toward her.
"Bab, you're beautiful!" he whispered.
The arm pressed against hers she could feel tremble with his feeling.
Then, its engine purring softly, the car shot forward. Their way lay
eastward. Taking to a cross-town bystreet, they were soon at the
bridge, the broad reach of river below leaping in the crisp sunlight
like silver. In the distance far below a long, narrow power yacht
slipped past like a missile. "Look!" cried Bab. Her animation grew
bubbling. Bending forward, her muff tucked beneath her chin, she
looked about her with eyes glowing. Everything interested her. After
the yacht it was a tug shrouded in steam and buffeting its way along
that caught her exuberant notice. How delightful was the morning air!
How the sunlight got into one's spirits! Bab laughed and chattered
exhilarantly. David, too, laughed and chatted with her.
Before long they left the river behind them; and rolling out of the
last dingy street that lay upon the way, they came presently to the
country. In the lush, fresh coloring of its fields and of the low hills
that lay hazy in the distance they found a new exhilaration. Time sped
forgotten. Engrossed in one another, they considered little else.
The morning by now was well advanced, and as they forged along the
broad, level highroad they began to meet the stream of motors that
every day heads cityward from the big Long Island country places.
David, as the roadster neared Eastbourne, began nodding to the
occupants of the big limousines, the big touring cars and the smart,
powerful motors like theirs that passed them. Each time he did so he
was at pains to mention their names to Bab. And they were names, too,
that would have thrilled the ordinary mortal, the man in the street.
Bab herself was thrilled that David knew many of them. It pleased
her that some of them, a few, she knew too. Most gratifying of all,
though, was the interest with which David's acquaintances gazed at
her. She wondered that often these looks were pointed. Was it because
she was the Beeston heiress? Was it that alone, or had they guessed
the truth about her and David? Plunged in this reverie, delightful to
her with all the fancies it evoked, its dreams of place and power,
she did not notice that as her chatter had subsided David's animation
had risen correspondingly. All his life Long Island had been his
playground, and hereabout there was hardly a stone, a tree, a hedge
that was not familiar to him, filled with reminiscence. Then all at
once his animation waned. As they topped the rise that led down to the
Eastbourne plains he brought the car to a standstill.
"Look!" he said.
Bab had never seen Byewolde, the Beeston summer place. In the rush of
life during the few months she had been a member of the household there
had been no opportunity. Now, however, as she looked across the open
lowland to the wooded slope it crowned, she knew the house instantly.
Ten minutes later the roadster, after a burst of speed that gave Bab
the impression that she was being borne through the air on rushing
wings, came to a halt under Byewolde's high Doris porch.
"Sit still, Bab," said David; then he turned to the chauffeur. "That's
all, Gaffney," he directed; "I won't need you now." To Crabbe who,
deferent, all eagerness, had come hurrying to the door, David bade a
pleasant good morning. "Luncheon at one, Crabbe--just for us two, you
understand. We'll be back."
Then he threw in the clutch, and the car shot out again from under the
tall white porch. Bab said nothing. Awakened abruptly from the pensive
reverie in which she had been plunged, she had seen instantly that
there was some purpose behind David's quick, energetic manner. What the
purpose was, though, she did not know or particularly care. His plans
might be anything, she would be lazily in accord with them. The day,
the leaping sunshine, the swift exhilaration of the ride and David's
deferent, tender attention--all had been to her a subtle balm. She sat
back in her cushioned seat, her chin tucked luxuriously in the soft
deep pelage of her muff, indolent mentally and physically, her eyes
lazily wandering over the view. It was the first time in days she had
felt at peace with herself and her surroundings. It mattered little
to her that inertness really was the reason for that peace. She was
content not to think.
Byewolde, as such places go, was not vast perhaps. Its charm, instead,
lay in its well-planned variety. The house, Colonial in type, stood
facing a wide sweep of lawn, a stretch of rolling turf as soft and
closely cropped as velvet. At one side of the house was a terrace
hedged with box and evergreen; beyond that a sunken garden. A deep,
dimpling pool lay at the garden's end, the depth sapphire with the
reflection of the skies; and before it was a Roman marble garden
seat, its snowy whiteness standing out against the carpet of turf,
the bronze green background of the hedges. Bab's eyes lighted as the
motor, turning out of the drive, headed down a byroad that led along
the garden's side. Over the hedge she got a swift glimpse of its quiet,
secluded charm. Then the road plunged of a sudden into a wood. Oaks,
maples, elms, some of them huge, wove the lacelike tracery of their
leaves and branches in a close network overhead, so that for a space
the motor rolled onward through a tunnel of greenery. In its close,
cloistered quiet one might have been miles from any habitation. The
sunlight trickling through the latticed foliage overhead lit the wood's
dim vistas with a mellow gleam, like light from a cathedral glass; and
a hush fell upon Bab and David.
The motor, slowing down, purred softly, like some huge insect--a
denizen of the wood. David touched Bab upon the arm. Along a sunlit
opening a herd of deer slipped silently into view. Almost instantly
they were gone, like wraiths dissolving into the wall of the foliage
that enframed them. A thrush, somewhere hidden in that dim, bosky
depth, of a sudden burst into a throb of song.
"Like it?" asked David, and Bab drew in her breath.
"It's wonderful!" she exclaimed.
He was silent for a moment, looking about him. Then, his tone
deliberate, he said to her: "Grandfather's given me this. Before we
owned it I used to come here. Then one day he bought it and gave me the
deed. It was a birthday present."
Bab looked about her again. All this a birthday present! She would
perhaps have been even more impressed had she known something of Long
Island values. There were a thousand acres in that wood.
Of the Byewolde estate, however, the wood was but a minor part. The
Beeston town house gave to the uninitiated no indication of the wealth
of the owner, for it differed little from a hundred others in the
neighborhood. Here, however, not even the most ignorant could err as
to the money required to maintain such an establishment. As the motor,
rolling on, threaded the roads that led from one quarter of Byewolde to
the other, Bab herself grew impressed with it.
David was particular that she should see it all. There was not a view
he did not point out to her; there was not a nook, a corner in all
that domain he was not eager to have her discover. And it was all well
worth seeing. A show place even in that countryside where wealth is a
commonplace, Byewolde was the envy of its neighbors. Nothing mediocre,
one saw clearly, would do for Beeston. The cattle standing knee-deep in
the lush pasturage were prize stock; the horses gazing over the fences
at the passing motor were blooded animals; the gardens and greenhouses,
these last under their acreage of glass, were splendid with their
array of exotic flowers and foliage. David, alighting, led the way
among them. The orchids, the roses, the long beds of lilies, violets,
carnations--all these he showed her in turn. There was one house filled
entirely with palms and ferns; there was a grapery, too, where at any
season great clusters of grapes, deep with their purple bloom, were
forced into luscious ripeness.
As he led her from one to another of Byewolde's wonders, Bab again
grew conscious that behind his animation, the exhilarant eagerness
he showed, David had some purpose. His air again grew feverish. The
gardener, an elderly Scotchman, hobbled along after them, dilating
proudly on these flowers to which his life had been devoted. David
and he long had been cronies, Bab discovered. It was "Maister Davvy"
this and "Maister Davvy" that. He seemed hardly aware of Bab; all his
attention he devoted to the young man, his master. On one occasion,
though, there came near to being a misunderstanding between those
two--on one side David, gay, animated; on the other the Scotchman, old
and dour, his soul wrapped in the flowers that had been his life. Bab's
attention was called by a sudden exclamation from the old man.