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V

Would he marry Barbara Wynne? That night with its train of abrupt, confusing happenings, all following swiftly, one hard on the heels of another, Varick ever afterward could remember only as the mind recalls the vague, inconstant images of a dream. The least of it all, though, was that veiled query put to him by Mr. Mapleson. However, he had still to answer it, even to himself, when the clang of the doorbell interrupted.

Outside in the vestibule stood two persons – a woman and a man. Their voices, as they waited, were audible through the glass; and Varick, once he heard them, listened curiously. Something in their tone was familiar, especially in the woman's tone; and though the footfalls of Lena, the waitress, already could be heard slipslopping on the stair, he did not wait. Instinctively he threw open the door.

It was as he'd surmised. The two outside were known to him, and for a moment he gazed, astonished. The lady – for manifestly in spite of her curious appearance she was that – was the first to break the silence.

"Bless me!" she said in a voice that boomed like a grenadier's. "If it isn't Bayard Varick!"

Her escort seemed equally astonished. The gentleman, a middle-aged, medium-sized person with pale, myopic eyes, pale, drooping mustaches, and thin, colorless hair, gave vent to a grunt, then a sniff. The lady's buglelike tones, however, at once submerged this.

Her surprise at finding Varick there was not only startled, it was scandalized, one saw.

"You don't mean you're living here?" she demanded. Afterward, having given her bonnet a devastating jab with one hand, she remarked eloquently: "My Lord!"

Varick in spite of himself had to smile. The world, or that part of the world at least which arrogates to itself that title, ever will recall with reverence – a regard, however, not unmixed with humor – that able, energetic figure, Miss Elvira Beeston. The chatelaine, the doyenne too, of that rich, powerful family, Miss Elvira enjoyed into the bargain a personality not to be overlooked. Briefly, it would have made her notable whatever her walk in life. But never mind that now. In years she was sixty – that or thereabouts; in figure she was short, not to mention dumpy. Bushy eyebrows, a square, craggy face, inquiring eyes and a salient, hawklike nose comprised other details of her appearance.

As the prefix suggests, Miss Elvira never had married. There were reasons, perhaps. Of these, however, the one advanced by the lady herself possibly was the most plausible. "Life," she was heard to observe, "has enough troubles as it is."

However, that she was a woman of mind, of character, rather than one merely feminine, you would have divined readily from Miss Elvira's dress. Her hat, a turban whose mode was at least three seasons in arrears, sagged jadedly into the position where her hand last had jabbed it; while her gown, equally rococo, was of a style with which no washerwoman would have deigned to disfigure herself.

Her companion, the gentleman of the myopic eyes and pale mustaches, was her niece's husband, De Courcy Lloyd. Old Peter Beeston was his father-in-law. His air bored, his nose uplifted and his aspect that of one pursuing a subtle odor, Mr. Lloyd advanced into Mrs. Tilney's hallway. Evidently its appointments filled him with distaste, for having glanced about him he was just remarking, "Good Lord! What a wretched hole!" when of a sudden there was a diversion.

Mr. Mapleson was still in the hallway. The instant the doorbell rang he started; and then had one looked, a quick change would have been seen to steal over the little man's gray, furrowed features. In turn the varying emotions of alertness, interest, then agitation pictured themselves on his face; and now, having for a moment gazed blankly at Miss Beeston, he gave vent to a stifled cry. The next instant, turning on his heel, Mr. Mapleson fled at full tilt up the stairs. He ran, his haste unmistakable, flitting like a frightened rabbit. Then as he reached the stairhead he turned and cast a glance behind him. It was at Miss Beeston he looked, and Varick saw his face. Terror convulsed the little man. The look, however, was lost on Miss Elvira. Having glanced about her for a moment, she leveled at Varick a pudgy yet commanding finger.

"Well, young man," bugled Miss Elvira; "you haven't told me yet what you are doing here?"

Varick, with a queer expression on his face, turned to her.

"Don't you know?" he inquired quietly.

Miss Beeston didn't. From the time Varick had been a boy in short trousers she had known him. Added to that, he long had been a friend, a close friend, too, of her nephew, crippled David Lloyd.

"That reminds me," Miss Elvira said abruptly, "why haven't you been to see us lately?"

Varick gave his shoulders a shrug. The shrug, though, was deprecatory rather than rude. That somehow he felt awkward was evident. Miss Beeston stared inquiringly.

"Well?"

"Your brother knows," Varick was saying; "perhaps you'd better ask him," when he became aware that Miss Elvira was neither interested in what he was telling her nor, for that matter, listening to him.

Her square, unlovely face raised expectantly, she stood looking up the stairway, and as Varick gazed at her he saw a sudden transformation. The square jaw seemed to grow less square; the bright, inquiring eyes visibly softened, their gleam less hard, less penetrating, while Miss Elvira's mouth, set ordinarily in a shrewd, covert grin, seemed for a moment to quiver. Her breast, too, was gently heaving and, marveling, Varick turned to look.

At the head of the stairs stood Barbara. Her hand on the stair rail, she paused momentarily, staring at the strangers in the hall below. Then a faint air of wonderment crept into her face, and, her eyes on Miss Elvira, she came slowly down toward her.

Miss Elvira's square, squat form was as if suddenly transfigured. For once in her life a rare, indefinable beauty shone upon her plain unlovely features – a radiance that would have startled into wonder Miss Elvira's cronies had they been there to see it. She did not speak. She stood, bending forward, her mouth working, her eyes glowing beneath their shaggy brows.

Bab walked straight to her.

"I am Barbara – Barbara Wynne," she said. "You've come to see me, I suppose?"

Varick, puzzled, looked from one to the other in his wonder. As yet he grasped nothing of what was going on. "Why, what is it?" he murmured to Miss Elvira. By now, however, that lady had forgotten that Varick even existed. With a jab at her bonnet, her hard old face twitching queerly, she suddenly threw out both her hands.

"Come here, girl," said Miss Elvira thickly, her voice cracking as she spoke; "you know me, don't you? I'm your father's aunt – yours too. I've come to take you home."

Late that night, long after the dinner hour at Mrs. Tilney's, the news of what had happened ran from room to room. To say the boarding house was stupefied but barely expresses it. The story read like a fairy tale.

It was told, for example, how twenty years before, old man Beeston's son, against his father's will, had married an insignificant nobody – a girl without either wealth or position. Disowned, then disinherited, the son as well as the woman he'd married had disappeared. It was as if the grave had swallowed them. Which, indeed, had been the case, as both the man and his girl wife were dead. A child, however, had survived them, and that child was Bab. Picture the sensation at Mrs. Tilney's!

"Well, talk of luck!" remarked Miss Hultz, who had been among the first to hear the news. "She can have anything she wants now!" A thought at this instant entering her mind, she gave a sudden exclamation. "Why, she can even have Mr. Varick!" There seemed no reason to doubt it.

In Mrs. Tilney's house, it happened, was one person who did not share Miss Hultz' view. This was Varick himself!

Eleven o'clock had struck and Bab, with her little handbag packed, her face white, had been whirled away uptown in the Beestons' big limousine. Mrs. Tilney, too, had made her exit. Her gaunt face drawn and grim, she sat in her bedroom staring into the cold, burned-out grate. Its ashes seemed somehow to typify her sense of desolation, of loneliness; for, as she reflected, Bab was gone, Bab was no longer hers. How swift it all had been! How unexpected! However, with that fortitude bred of a long familiarity with fate – or call it fortune if you like – Mrs. Tilney accepted dry-eyed this last gift it offered; and with a sigh she arose and made ready for bed.

Meanwhile, on the floor above, Varick had just knocked at Mr. Mapleson's door. His face was a study. All the color had left it until he was white, ash pale, and his gray eyes were clouded darkly.

"Mapleson," he said thickly, "do you know what you've done?"

The little man gaped. He cringed, starting as if he had been struck. Then from Mr. Mapleson's face, too, the last vestige of color sped swiftly.

"I?" he gasped.

Varick grimly nodded.

"Yes, you, Mapleson! It was you, wasn't it, that had those letters, the ones in that dead woman's trunk? It was you, too, wasn't it, that gave the lawyers the other papers – their proofs?" His voice rasping, he stared at the little man fixedly. "A fine mess, man, you've made of it!"

Both hands at his mouth, Mr. Mapleson shrank back, quivering.

"What do you mean?" he shrilled, and Varick shrugged his shoulders disgustedly.

"Just what I say!" he returned. "You don't know, do you, it was that man, that scoundrel, who ruined my father? You don't know, do you, he was the one who trimmed him in Wall Street? And now you've given her to him!"

Mr. Mapleson stared at him appalled.

"Ruined? He? Your father?" he stammered brokenly. "Beeston?"

The sweat started suddenly on Varick's brow.

"Don't you know I love her?" he cried. "Don't you know I want her? You don't think they'd let me have her now, do you?"

But the little man did not heed. All at once he tossed up both his hands.

"What have I done?" he groaned. "Oh, what have I done?"

VI

The wayfarer familiar with the highways and byways of New York will recall that in one of the widest, the most select of the uptown side streets opening off Fifth Avenue there is a row of brownstone double dwellings of imposing grandeur and magnitude, and of the most incredible ugliness as well. Not even Mayfair in London can show worse; for that matter, neither can Unter den Linden or even Pittsburgh. A wide stairway with swollen stone balustrades guards the street front of each; and above these the houses themselves rise flatly, their façades chiefly notable for their look of smug, solid respectability – that and a wide acreage of plate-glass windows. Formerly a vast variety of rococo tutti-frutti decoration in the stonecutter's best art ornamented these fronts; but today the weather, as well as a sluggish uneasiness awakening in the tenants' minds, has got rid of the most of it; so that now the houses look merely commonplace, merely rich. But be that as it may, this particular Christmas Eve it was to the largest, the richest, and most formidable of these dwellings that the Beeston limousine brought Bab. For Bab had come home.

The ride, brief as it was, up the lighted, glittering Avenue, Bab felt she ever would remember with a vividness that not even time could mar. It was her first opportunity to get her mind in order. She a Beeston? She, the little boarding-house waif, heir to a goodly fortune? Bab felt she had only to say "Pouf!" to burst, to shatter into air the frail, evanescent fabric of that bubble!

So many things had happened! So many, too, had happened all at once! The excitement fading now, she began to feel herself languid and oppressed. And yet, as she knew, the night's ordeal had scarcely begun. In a few minutes now she was to see her father's own father, that grim and masterful figure, Peter Beeston. What would happen then?

In the newspapers that day Bab had read that the old man was at death's door. If this had been true, though, there was now a surprising change. Peter Beeston was not dead, neither was he dying; instead, the news having got to him that his son's child had been found, it had roused him like an elixir. "Bring her here!" he'd said. When they had protested, fearful of the effect on him, the man had turned in smoldering wrath. "Bring her, d'ye hear!" he'd rumbled fiercely. "You bring her, I say!" So Bab, as he'd ordered, was being brought.

It would be difficult to tell how much she dreaded it! If only Mr. Mapy could have come with her! To be sure, Miss Beeston had been kind, she had been gentle; but still Bab wished she could have with her in the coming ordeal someone she had always known. Curiously, however, Mr. Mapy had disappeared. Neither she nor anyone else for hours had laid eyes on him.

She vaguely wondered why. As she remembered now, on her way downstairs that night she had met him coming up; Mr. Mapy was running, helter-skelter too. Besides, she recalled how queer his face had looked – agitated, quite fearful, in fact. More than that, though she'd tried to speak to him he hadn't heeded her. He had rushed on up the stairs.

But then Mr. Mapy was not the only one that night who'd acted curiously. There was Varick too. The impression crept over her that for what had happened, her good fortune, Varick had seemed even sorry. That was it – sorry! Why?

It was when he came downstairs, dressed ready to go out, that he had said good-by.

They met on the stairs, and for a moment she had stood with him in the dim light on the landing. His face was grave, silent, grim. It looked to her, too, as if he'd had something he would have liked to say to her. But he didn't. Awkwardly he put out his hand.

"Good-by, Bab," he'd said.

"Good-by, Mr. Varick," she had answered, clumsily at a loss for anything else to say; and again he had smiled, a dry, dusty smile.

"Good-by; I won't see you again!"

It was not at all what she'd pictured – that parting.

Bab, however, had little time, little opportunity to mull over thoughts like these. She had no more than begun to reflect on Varick's curious attitude when the limousine, turning the corner, rolled up to the Beeston door.

"Ah, here we are!" the condescending voice of Mr. Lloyd announced; and the footman having thrown open the limousine door, Bab glanced past him at the house beyond. Dark, no light from its windows anywhere, it loomed like a cliff, a towering crag high above the pavement. She could have gasped at its magnitude.

Miss Elvira, who had sat during the drive sunk back in a corner of the car, arose briskly.

"Come!" she said, and the next instant, the street door opening from within, Bab stood gazing about her with breathless interest at the house which once had been her father's home.

If the place outside had seemed huge, within she felt engulfed by it. A drawing-room, now a vast vault of darkness, lay on one hand, while on the other was a reception room, itself cavernous in its immensity. Beyond, other rooms opened too. Bab glimpsed a library, then a dining-room, its sideboard and serving table glittering with silver. But of all this she had no more than a glance. A footman had opened the door for them, and in addition to him the butler stood in the hall. To him Miss Elvira turned abruptly.

"Well, Crabbe?" she demanded.

The man, a white-haired, pink-cheeked old fellow who had been staring round-eyed at Bab, got himself hastily together.

"The doctor's still upstairs – the assistant, that is, madam. The master's stronger, 'e says."

Miss Elvira did not tarry. With a sign to Bab the energetic lady went bustling up the stairs, the others trooping after her. Not more than half a minute later Bab found herself standing at her grandfather's bedside.

What happened upon that was swift, inexpressibly confusing. The room in which old Peter Beeston lay was huge, like all the rest of that house. It was a crypt-like impressive chamber, and was furnished darkly in the same massive way. And like his surroundings, the room and its furniture – the big dressing table, the vast writing desk, the massive four-poster that held him – the man himself was huge, a bulk of a man whose fierce, brooding face glowered about him as threatening as a thunder-cloud.

Bab gazed at him in awe. He lay outstretched, his limbs crossed like a Crusader's beneath the sheets; and though both age and illness had ravaged him the impression he gave was still of giant force, of giant fierceness too. His face, framed among the pillows, gazed up at her with a quick, inquiring look; and then, as he seemed to comprehend, Bab felt his eye drill through and through her with piercing intensity. His lips moved, his mouth worked momentarily, and he seemed about to speak. But when he did speak it was not to Bab.

Lloyd as well as Miss Elvira had accompanied Bab into the room, and of this Beeston instantly was aware. One gnarled, knotted hand raised itself from the coverlid, and, turning his eyes from Bab, he spoke. The speech came fiercely rumbling.

"Get out!" he said.

Lloyd's air thus far had been singularly curious, and now Bab saw him start.

"Do you mean me, sir?" he asked awkwardly. His manner, Bab thought, was uncomfortable, strangely uncertain for one heretofore so cocksure, so condescending; and she looked at him surprised.

Again Beeston spoke. The hand he had raised struck the coverlid a sudden blow, and the room rumbled with the echo of his voice.

"Get out, I say!" he repeated; and Lloyd, after a quick look at Bab, a glance the resentment of which she did not miss, withdrew abruptly.

Then old Beeston raised his hand, his forefinger beckoning.

"Vira," he said. "Vira!" And when his sister bent over him old Beeston growled thickly, his voice, if rough, still friendly: "Vira, you go too, old girl!"

So Bab found herself left alone with that grim, dark figure lying there – her grandfather.

"Come closer!" rumbled Beeston. "I want to look at you!"

A pause followed. Her heart beating thickly, Bab drew nearer to the bed, and as she stood there gazing down at the swart, fierce face staring darkly up at hers, pity for an instant welled into her heart. This was her father's father, she told herself; and troubled, she began to see now that if this masterful, unconquerable man had ruined others' happiness in his life, he had ruined his own as well.

The knotted hand upon the counterpane reached out suddenly.

"They say you're my son's child," said Peter Beeston. "Well, are you?"

His voice carried in it a note of intimidation, of truculent disbelief, but now she felt no fear of him. The hand that held hers she could feel quiver too.

"Yes," she said.

Again a pause. He wet his lips, his tongue running on them dryly, eagerly; and then of a sudden his eyes left hers and went drifting toward the ceiling. His voice when again he spoke broke thickly.

"Tell me about him, about my son!" said Beeston.

Bab looked at him hesitantly. It was this that she had dreaded.

"What shall I tell you?" she asked.

Beeston's eyes still were on the ceiling.

"Dead, isn't he?" he demanded.

Yes, he was dead, as the man lying there long must have known; and her trouble growing, Bab stared silently at him. But the grim eyes gave no sign.

"You don't look like him!" said her grandfather suddenly, so abruptly that she started. "You must look like that woman, eh!"

Bab gazed at him steadily.

"You mean my mother, don't you?" she inquired. She had been prepared for this, and in her voice was a tone of quiet decisiveness she meant him clearly to see. "You mustn't speak like that," she said clearly. "My mother did you no wrong!"

She saw his eyes leap from the ceiling to her and back again. Then a smile, a grim effigy of merriment, dawned in his somber face. A growl followed it.

"So you're self-willed, eh?" he rumbled. "You're all Beeston, I see!" Then a grunt, a sneer escaped him. "I'd be careful, young woman! I'm all Beeston too, and I've seen what comes to us self-willed folk! Your own father, because of it, ruined himself. That's not all either. Because of it, too, my daughter is married to a fool! Oh, I've seen enough of it!" he rumbled.

Bab was startled. She knew, she thought, the fool he meant, but to that she gave but momentary heed. Struggling up, his face dark, convulsed, no doubt, with the thoughts rioting in his mind, Beeston turned and shook roughly into place the pillows that supported him. And this was the man they had thought dying! Grumbling, growling thickly, he lay back then, the growls subsiding presently like thunder muttering away among the depths of distant hills.

She was still gazing at him, absorbed, startled, when she saw a change steal upon the man's distorted face. It was as if that instant's rage, flaming hotly, must have lighted in the dim recesses of his mind some forgotten cell; for of a sudden the smoldering anger of his eyes passed and he sat staring at the wall.

"Well, won't you tell me?" he asked heavily. "I want to know about my son."

But Bab knew nothing to tell. That was why the ordeal she had faced that night had filled her so with dread. The little she knew of either of her parents was what they had told her at Mrs. Tilney's. Vaguely they'd had the impression that the mother had come from somewhere upstate; where, they did not know. But scant as this information was and shadowy, what they'd learned of the father was even less. Of his history they had gathered nothing, not even an impression. As for herself, she remembered nothing of him. Nor did she know when he had died or how. She could not, in fact, even tell where her father's grave was; and, sunken among the pillows, Beeston lay staring at the ceiling. Then suddenly he stirred.

"You mean you can't tell me anything? Answer me!" he said, his voice breaking thickly. "He was my son; I drove him from me! Don't you understand? I want to know! I've got to; he was my boy!"

Bab strove to free her hand from his.

"You're hurting me," she said, and at that he abruptly recovered himself.

"Eh?" he said, as if awakening.

He dropped her hand then, and, his eyes closing, he lay back among the pillows, his breast heaving with the tumult of emotions that had tortured him. But now that the struggle had passed the man's face changed anew with one of those astonishing transformations that so often marked his character. He smiled wanly. The fierceness waned from his face. And as Bab, pitying anew, sat gazing down at him, Beeston's hand again crept out and softly closed on hers. Drawing her toward him, he laid his cheek to hers.

"Don't be afraid," whispered Peter Beeston. "Don't be afraid! You're my boy's girl – his! You need never be afraid of me!"

Ten minutes later, when Miss Elvira and the nurse looked into the room, they found Bab perched on the bed talking to Beeston as if she had always known him. A smile played about the corners of the man's grim mouth. He held her hand in his.