Rich Man, Poor Man

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 weekI 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.

Lloyd, after glancing at the clock, drew out his watch and studied 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."