Rich Man, Poor Man
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!"
Again she turned. Her head poised, wondering, she watched him over her shoulder. Beeston had bent forward now, both his gnarled hands clasped upon his stick, and under their heavy lids his somber eyes pored over her. What his motive was in looking her over like that she had not the faintest notion. Then of a sudden Beeston spoke.
"Huh!" he said, his tone a half-contemptuous growl. "Good-looking, you are, aren't you! A handsome piece, and healthy and strong too! Yes, that's what you are!" Then with a sudden movement, surprising in its swiftness, he bent over and tapped her on the arm. "Lucky for you!" he said. "Lucky for you!" The words still on his lips, he indicated the library door. "Davy's in there. You go to him, you hear?" The next instant he was gone, calling as he stamped along the hall: "Crabbe, Crabbe, come give me an arm up the stairs!"
David, too, had come down early. Since the beginning of the spring, the time when the Lloyds had moved out to their place on Long Island, he had had a room for himself at his grandfather's. Ordinarily the country appealed far more to David than the town, but of late, for various reasons, he seemed to have changed his preference. Bab found him now in the library, his chin upon his hands, a book opened on his knees. The scene with Beeston, an incident as astonishing as it was inexplicable, had left her uncomfortable; but at the sight of David all Bab's animation returned at a bound. Leaning over, she slipped the book away from him.
"Silly!"
"Oh, hello!"
His air as he looked up was bewildered, and again she laughed.
"You weren't reading; your book was upside down! A fine time to be dreaming!"
"Not dreaming; I was thinking," he answered, and though a smile went with the words there was a note in his tone that instantly caught her attention.
"Why, David!" she murmured.
She came round in front of him as she spoke, and again, a second time that evening, her voice was slow with wonder.
"David, what's wrong?" asked Bab.
He shook his head.
"Nothing," he said. Then as he looked her over, from the crown of her soft brown hair to her little golden slippers, David's lips parted.
"Bab, you're lovely tonight!" he murmured. "That gown makes you more than ever lovely!"
Bab dropped him a curtsy.
"Recognize it? It's the same rose gown you liked the other night!"
His eyes leaped to hers, a sudden look. A swift speech hovered on his lips, but before he could utter it Bab spoke again.
"Look, Davy, see this too!"
She had bent her head, her hands raised to play with something at her throat – a slender platinum thread from which hung a single pearl, pear-shaped and heavy. Intent on it she did not see the light that leaped into his eyes.
"Wonderful, isn't it!" she murmured, and held it out for him to see. Her face rapt, she looked down at the pearl again. In the hollow of her small pink palm the pearl lay like a dewdrop in the petal of a rose. Such a gem might well have graced a duchess.
"Grandfather gave it to me tonight," she said.