Part 10

He had lost; he knew that now. His crime, the fraud and forgery he had committed, all had been in vain. However, it was not just of this failure that the little man sat thinking, not altogether of this downfall of his dreams. Curiously, neither did his mind dwell at the moment on its consequences to himself. Jail yawned for Mr. Mapleson, and yet he did not give it a thought. The thought of Bab was what filled him with despair. He began to see now what he had done to her.

"Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls!" A groan escaped him. How he had tried, how he had striven, sacrificing everything, his own honor included, to make her happy, to give her what she wanted! And how he had failed! It was not only that he had failed, however; he withered at the thought of what he'd brought upon her. For the diamonds and pearls, these symbols of the vaunted riches he so long had prated about, were not all that would be stripped from her now. Bab not only had lost all this, she not only would be shamed and branded, but she would in all probability lose the man she loved!

"O God!" said Mapleson; and as the groan escaped him he bent forward swiftly and buried his face in his hands.

It was of Varick he thought. Varick he knew loved Bab. But even though he did, would Varick care now to marry her? Would anyone, in fact, care to take for his wife a woman who had been the central figure in a crime, a shameful fraud? Or even if he did, would his friends, his family, let him? Nor was that all. There was a nearer, more poignant shame that the fraud would fasten on her. Before his mind's eye arose a vision, a picture of Beeston, now that he knew the fraud, denouncing Bab before her guests. Mr. Mapleson quivered at the thought.

Varick, when he had left, had warned him he must not leave the cab. He must stay there until Varick came back with Bab. But this was too much. At this thought, this picture of Beeston, Mr. Mapleson struggled swiftly to his feet. There was still time. If he hurried he still could get to her before Beeston did. So, his hands fumbling with the catch, Mr. Mapleson had thrown open the cab door and was stepping out when, with a quick exclamation, he halted. There, hurrying toward him, came Varick!

Not above half an hour had passed since he and Mr. Mapleson had parted, but to the little man a lifetime might as well have intervened. Unnerved, in a sort of stupor, he stared blankly. Varick was alone! Outside, his hand on the cab door, he stood giving an order to the driver. Then as Varick, entering the cab, slammed the door behind him Mr. Mapleson awoke.

"Bab--where's Bab?" he cried.

For a moment Varick did not speak. His face was set, and a smile, grim and sardonic, played about the corners of his mouth.

"She's not coming," he said abruptly then.

Mr. Mapleson did not seem to comprehend.

"You left her?" he exclaimed.

"Yes," answered Varick grimly, "I left her."

Mr. Mapleson could stand no more. His voice suddenly rose.

"Tell me what has happened!" he cried. "Don't they know? Haven't they found it out?"

The taxicab, gathering speed, had already reached the Avenue, turning southward on its way, and with a jerk of his head Varick indicated the house they had left behind them.

"They know everything," he said; "all of them. Beeston has known it for weeks. He knew long before Lloyd took the trouble to tell him."

Mr. Mapleson heard him dumbfounded.

"Beeston knows?"

Varick nodded.

"And he didn't turn her out?" gasped Mr. Mapleson.

It was so, and the little man's eyes rounded themselves like marbles. Beeston had let her stay? Incredible!

"I'll tell you something else," drawled Varick. His air dull, his speech, too, as if what had happened had left him stupefied, he turned to Mr. Mapleson. "Beeston said he didn't give a damn what Bab was, whether she was a fraud or not. Understand? Lloyd was there, and I heard Beeston say to him: 'You tell her a word--her or anyone else, mind you--and your wife'll get no more money from me. You'll go to work!'"

XVIII

The guests had gone, the musicians had followed them, and in the huge Beeston house, its lower floors once more shadowy and dim, Crabbe and the other servants yawned their way about, locking up for the night. It was striking two when the old servant, after a final round about him, slowly climbed the stairs. Stillness fell then. Bab's dance was done.

Upstairs, alone in her dressing room, she sat with her chin upon her hand, plunged in a train of thought. The night, in spite of the fact that May drew near, had come on cold, and Mawson had lit the fire in the grate. Bab, after her dress had been removed, had slipped a wrapper over her bare arms and shoulders, then drifted to the hearth.

"You may go, Mawson," she said to the drowsy maid; and Mawson departing, Bab slipped to her knees on the big fur rug before the fire.

The warmth of the glowing cannel allured her. Downstairs in the last hour of the dance a chill had seemed to steal upon her, a sensation that had been as much mental, perhaps, as it was physical. She felt dull, numbly troubled, and in addition a shadow of apprehension was now creeping upon her. Why, she could not have told. Filled with all that had happened that night, she sat staring at the coals, conscious only of the burden that had begun to weigh upon her.

A feeling of sadness and longing That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain.

After all, what was it that had happened? As her mind, harking back over the night's occurrences, dwelt on each event, her vision of what had taken place grew more and more confused. It was not just of Varick she thought, for Varick, she knew now, she had lost. Of that she was sure. The instant she had told him the truth, that she had given her promise to David Lloyd, the look on his face had been enough. This look and the exclamation that had gone with it had shown doubt, first, and with it dismay, consternation. Then she had seen, she felt sure, a look of repugnance follow. But there was something besides that, something Varick seemed to know and that was causing him deep concern. What could it be?

Of the real facts regarding her presence in the Beeston house Bab as yet knew nothing. However, though ignorant of the truth, her mind was by no means at rest. Already back in her brain a dim something was at work. One hardly could call it a suspicion--not yet, at any rate. Suspicion, for one thing, involves some suggestion of the truth. It was more bewilderment, a sense of confused, growing wonder.

As she sat there staring at the fire in the grate, her mind groping 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!

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.