Rich Man, Poor Man. Foster Maximilian
flat. And Bab, too, don't forget, was a boarding-house keeper's nameless ward.
"Tell me something," she said.
Slipping from her perch, she drew up a chair and, seating herself, bent forward with her chin on her hands.
"You've heard of the Beestons, haven't you—that family uptown. By any chance do you know them?"
"The Beestons!"
She saw him frown, his air amazed. However, though she wondered at the moment at his air, her interest was entirely in what he would answer.
"Why do you ask?" he inquired.
"I wanted to know," Bab returned slowly. "I wanted to find out something. Do they ever give parties—dances like the one you're going to tonight? And do you ever go to them?"
Varick's look grew all the more amazed. He not only knew the Beestons, he had often been in the huge house they occupied in one of the uptown side streets off the Avenue. But though that was true, for some reason the fact did not seem to afford him any great satisfaction. His face suddenly had grown hard.
"Who told you about them?" he demanded.
Bab smiled vaguely.
"There's a boy, isn't there?" she parried. "Old Mr. Beeston's grandson?"
The look of wonder in his face grew.
"Who? David Lloyd, you mean? How did you know him?" he questioned.
"I don't," said Bab, smiling at his vehemence; "I've only heard about him. He's a cripple, isn't he—a hopeless cripple?"
It proved that all his life Varick had known the boy—the man rather—whom she meant.
"Look here, Bab," he directed, puzzled, "why do you ask me about those people? I'd like to know that! Will you tell me?"
She deliberated for a moment.
"It was something I heard," she said then, hesitating.
"Here? In this house?" he questioned, all the more amazed; and Bab nodded.
"I heard Mr. Mapy say it," she returned.
Varick in return gazed at her, his face a picture.
"Mr. Mapy," he knew, meant Mr. Mapleson. He knew, too, like the other boarders, Bab's interest in the quaint, gray-faced little man, his next-door neighbor upstairs. True, Bab often laughed blithely at Mr. Mapleson, teasing him endlessly for his idiosyncrasies; but otherwise, as also Varick knew, her heart held for the queer, curious little man a deep well of tenderness, of love and gentle understanding. However, that was not the point. What had Mapleson to do with David Lloyd? What had a musty, antiquated Pine Street clerk to do with any of the Beestons? Now that he thought of it, there was something else, too, that Varick would have liked to know.
For the past ten days—for a fortnight, in fact—he had felt indefinably that something queer was going on in that room next to his. Night after night, long after Mrs. Tilney's other guests had sought their rest, he had heard Mr. Mapleson softly stirring about. Again and again, too, he could hear him whispering, mumbling to himself. What is more, Varick was not the only one who had been disturbed. A few nights before, quite late, too, he heard a hand rap abruptly at Mr. Mapleson's door. Startled, a moment later he had heard someone speak. It was Jessup!
"Mapleson," Jessup had demanded; "what are you up to, man?"
Varick had not caught the reply; for, after a startled exclamation, Mr. Mapleson had dropped his voice to a whisper. But Varick had heard enough. What, indeed, was Mr. Mapleson up to?
Bab's eyes grew vague. Then she laughed. The laugh, though, was a little strained, a little less free than usual. Then her eyes fell and a faint tide of color crept up into her face and neck.
"Honest Injun now," she again laughed awkwardly, "don't you know what's happening?"
Varick shook his head, and Bab, her eyes on his, bit her lip reflectively. That question she longed to ask him hovered on her lips now, and with it there had come into her face an air of wistfulness. Her blue eyes clouded faintly.
"Tell me," she said, and hesitated—"tell me something. If at the dance tonight—the dance you're going to—if—if things were changed; and I—you——"
Varick nodded quietly.
"Yes," he prompted, "if I——"
"If I were there," said Bab; "if things were changed and I——"
Again she paused. Her eyes, too, fell suddenly. Then she caught her lip between her teeth.
"Yes, Bab," encouraged Varick; "if what were changed?"
But Bab did not reply. Of a sudden, as she raised her eyes to his, a great wave of color rushed into her face, mantling her to the eyes. Of a sudden, too, the eyes fell, dropping before his look. Her confusion was furious and with an abrupt movement, swift and unexpected to him, she slipped from her chair and darted into the half-lit hall. Then the next instant she was gone, and Varick, his own face a study, stood gazing after her dumbfounded.
"Good Lord!" he murmured to himself.
For he was no fool, neither was he a coxcomb; and what Bab had let him read in her face had been a revelation.
III
Meanwhile, her cheeks aflame, furiously self-conscious at what she had revealed, Barbara Wynne had gone flying up the stairway to her room. There, half an hour later, tapping softly at her door, Mr. Mapleson found her lying in the dark, her face buried among the pillows of her bed.
"Why, Babbie!" he whispered—"Babbie Wynne!"
The boarders at Mrs. Tilney's, and especially those who had heard the story of Barbara Wynne, often commented on Mr. Mapleson's devotion to the landlady's little ward. The fact is the two had long lived together in the boarding house; for the year that Mr. Mapleson came to Mrs. Tilney's was the year Barbara Wynne had come there too. However, that was but a coincidence. They were in no way related. Mr. Mapleson, it seemed, had come first.
That night, now nearly seventeen years ago, nine o'clock had just struck when Mrs. Tilney's doorbell sounded. As the day happened to be a Sunday, and therefore the upstairs girl's evening out, Mrs. Tilney herself had answered.
The night was withering. It was the evening of an August dog day, ghastly betwixt the horrors of its heat and its stagnant, glaring sunshine, yet the man she found in the vestibule was clad in a winter suit not only sizes too large for him but suffocating in its armorlike thickness. Dust powdered him from head to foot. It powdered also the cheap suitcase he had set down beside him.
"Well?" Mrs. Tilney had inquired sharply.
A perfect convulsion of embarrassment had for a moment kept the slight, pallid man from replying. "I—why, your sign outside," he'd faltered then; "if you could let me have a room."
"You have references?" Mrs. Tilney had demanded.
The little man shook his head. Mrs. Tilney was about to shut the door when abruptly he threw out both his hands. The gesture was as timid as a girl's.
"I am from the country," he appealed. "I've come a great ways. I am very tired."
Then he smiled up at her, and somehow, in the wan wistfulness of his look, the sharp, distrustful woman had been placated.
"Oh, well," she grumbled and, standing aside, she waved for him to enter.
It had taken Mrs. Tilney weeks, not to say months, to grasp the real nature of her queer, retiring guest. Summer went, the autumn drew on. A new flock of winter "steadies" replaced summer's birds of passage and she wondered when he, too, would be gone. But Mr. Mapleson showed no disposition to depart.