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VIII

That Christmas Day's experience, the first with her new-found family, served as a good index to Bab of what she might expect thereafter from each of her new relatives. It placed accurately, for one thing, the two Lloyds – the husband and the wife. Obviously both her aunt and David's father resented her presence in the house; so that from them, she saw, she must expect nothing. However, though this were true, the division of forces showed she had little to fear. On her side were not only Miss Elvira and her grandfather, there was David Lloyd besides. And of him and his friendliness every instant she felt surer. Time only added to her certainty.

Christmas passed swiftly. After that singular encounter with her aunt and uncle the next event in that eventful day was the morning's visit to her grandfather. At her entrance a muffled growl arose from the pillows.

"Well, my girl!" Beeston mumbled; and with a quick movement, his manner gentle though gruff, he drew down her face to his. Then he seemed to divine, rather than to see, that David was with her. "Hah, Davy!" he cried.

David, again teetering on his crutches, lowered himself to the bed.

"Hello, partner!" he returned.

Bab pricked up her ears. Partner, eh? Her grandfather's feeling for David evidently was different from his feeling for David's father! Of his fondness for the cripple she had shortly, in fact, a rather disconcerting proof. Beeston lay there, his dark face lit momentarily with interest at their talk, when of a sudden she felt his gnarled fingers shut themselves on hers. Then with his other hand her grandfather reached out and touched David on the arm.

"Like her, Davy?" he demanded, a jerk of his head denoting Bab.

Startled, she felt herself crimson. David, too, seemed just a bit embarrassed. Then, the humor of it striking him, he threw back his head and roared.

"That's a nice question!" he laughed, adding then: "Of course I like Bab! Every bit of her! Why do you ask?"

A rumbling growl emerged from the depths of the pillows.

"I wanted to make sure," avowed her grandfather, grimly frank.

Flushed and confused, she was thankful when Beeston saw fit to turn to another topic. The fact is that her new place in life, even with its vast advantages, she had already begun to find trying. Presently she was to find it even more so.

Not only that day, it chanced, but for many days to come, a stream of limousines and smart broughams came trundling up to the Beeston door, their occupants, with well-bred though not the less eager interest, curious to have a look at her. Bab's story, it appeared, already was widely known. Of those who came, though, only a few, the most intimate of Miss Elvira's cronies, were admitted; but few as they were, to see them was in each instance an ordeal. Not that they were not kind – they were – but the girl felt as though she were something on exhibit; and to this Miss Elvira innocently contributed. Bab had a full share of good looks, and in addition to this an easy and charming manner; and of this Miss Elvira seemed with complete satisfaction to herself to be aware.

"Distinguished – a manner, eh?" she snapped at one of her cronies, an antiquated dowager who had remarked on Bab's savoir-faire. "Well, why shouldn't she have manner? Wasn't she born a Beeston?"

The dowager agreed hastily. Furthest from her intention was the wish to combat Vira Beeston in anything. It had been tried; but never had the result been fortunate.

However, David before long came to Bab's rescue. Having observed the way his Aunt Vira was promenading Bab before these ancient cronies of hers, he found occasion to protest vigorously.

"Why not hire a hall?" he suggested. "Why not hire a band, too; and get a ballyhoo to bark for your show?" Propped up on one crutch, with the other he began to gesticulate derisively. "Here y' are now, the only living Beeston heiress in captivity! Have a look, have a look!"

Miss Elvira did her best to scowl.

"David!" she protested.

"That's all right!" he retorted. "How would you like it yourself?" His aunt hadn't thought of that! "Think how absurd it is too!" he added. "Why, look at Bab, even she's laughing at you!"

After that when there were callers Bab found herself less frequently put to the ordeal of what David irreverently termed prancing. Nor were the callers themselves, even the softest, the most insinuating, allowed to satisfy in her their thinly veiled craving for the romantic. David, too, saw to that. At his heels usually was a small, sad-faced, rowdy-looking Irish terrier, Barney by name. "Sing, Barney!" David would say, pointing a finger at him; and Barney, lifting his head to heaven, would sing, "Ow! Ow,! Ow-wow!" One day when a visiting dowager had made to Bab the brilliantly intelligent remark: "How glad you must be they found you!" David secretly pointed a finger at Barney. Instantly Barney responded.

"Ow! Ow! Ow-wow!" he sang. "Ow! Ow-wow!"

"Mercy!" exclaimed the visitor. "What ails the animal?"

"Oh, he's glad too," answered David – "glad, you know, Bab was found!" Even the dowager had to laugh.

But David always was forgiven. His aunt's cronies all adored him. Pink-cheeked little old ladies in bonnets would simper and smile and look arch when he laughed and joked with them; tall, grenadier-like females, classic dowagers, would titter and shake and look rollicking when he poked good-natured fun at their foibles. He had, indeed, to him a human, friendly side that few who came near him could resist; and day by day Bab felt her liking grow for her crippled cousin – a sunny, cheerful figure, the most courageous she had ever known. However, that was but a part of it. As time went on and those first days turned themselves into weeks Bab began to realize how much David had done and still was doing for her. His consideration never flagged. His thoughtfulness seemed instinctive. All his time; indeed, he stood ready to give to her.

It was a vivid period to her – that first month or so of her new life. For one thing it made her realize clearly what the power, the persuasion of wealth like the Beestons' meant. Fifth Avenue, the Fifth Avenue that would have turned up its nose at Bab the boarding-house waif, now turned itself inside out for Barbara, old Peter Beeston's grandchild. Modistes, milliners, bootmakers, all that horde of outfitters that batten on the rich, swarmed at the Beeston door. Clothes, hats, gloves, laces, what not were showered upon Bab. She had music lessons, she had dancing lessons; lessons in French, and in Italian, too, she took daily. Miss Elvira saw to all this. Bab, indeed, might have a manner; she might, indeed, be born to it; but even so, Miss Elvira was still determined there should be no mistake about it. Bab at times felt as if her head were whirling.

"It's ridiculous!" she protested. "I'm just living my life in hatshops! What do I need with so many things?" Indeed, as she pointed out, already she had enough for a dozen débutantes. "You try on that hat!" Miss Elvira directed grimly, adding that by the time she'd finished with Bab, Bab would look like someone.

Bab thought so too – either that, or Miss Elvira would destroy them both. However, all that her aunt did could not compare with the aid David lent. What he did was invaluable. It was he who first helped Bab make friends in that big world about them – girls whom he himself knew, men who were his own friends. Miss Elvira had wished to achieve this by a single, magnificent coup.

"Why not give a dance?" she suggested; but David put his foot down firmly. Bab happened to overhear him.

"Don't be an old silly!" he laughed, at the same time playfully pinching Miss Elvira's cheek. "A dance when she doesn't know a soul? Why, she'd feel as if she were alone in New York!"

"Well!" retorted his aunt. "What do you expect when you keep her always to yourself?"

The remark seemed provocative. At any rate after this on every pretense David went out of his way to have her meet his friends. To them, it appeared, Bab was for many reasons an object of more than passing interest. Good taste usually restrained them from probing too intimately into her past, but when curiosity got the better of them Bab laughingly revealed what they longed to hear.

One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair, a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a thoughtful smile.

"A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?"

"Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the boarders who brought me up!"

"Not really?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a boarding-house keeper?"

"They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and after a gasp the other recovered herself.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"

Bab knew she hadn't.

Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously. Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house.

"What's that?" he grumbled.

Miss Elvira happened to be with him.

"It's Barbara," she answered – "she and David. They have some friends with them."

There was a pause. "Huh," said Beeston. Then: "The old tomb seems waking up, don't it?" It did, indeed. Now that she had caught her breath, found the time to look about her and to see what life, this new and wonderful existence, held in store for her, Bab's spirits soared buoyantly. And yet even in the midst of it, as the time sped on and the flitting days had changed themselves into weeks, then into that first vivid month, a shadow, a little cloud, began all at once to creep hazily over the spirit of her dream. Varick – where was he? She had not seen him once! She had not even heard from him! Why?

In those swiftly changing hours, the time that had so swiftly sped, Bab's greatest delight had been to think that the friends she had made were his friends too; that this life she was living was his life also. Eagerly she waited to see him. Eagerly too, as eagerly as she had wished for that, she had wished to have him see her. Vanity was no fault of Bab's; but she wanted him to know that the Bab at Mrs. Tilney's had been transformed, transfigured, into a different sort of a Bab. As well as Miss Elvira she divined what the new hats, the new dresses, all these and the rest had done for her. No need to look in the glass to know that! Already she had seen the eyes, frankly admiring, that followed her wherever she went. Even David had shown it! The first night she had walked into the drawing-room, her slender throat and round, girlish, white shoulders revealed in the first dinner dress she had ever had on, David had stared. For a long moment he had gazed; then his lips parted.

"Bab!" he'd cried. "Why, you're lovely!"

At the compliment, breathed low in admiration, the color had crept faintly into her delicate face, tinting it to a hue lovely in its contrast with the soft pale ivory of her neck and shoulders. If Varick only could have seen her then! But Varick apparently had vanished.

After that encounter – her first day's surprising experience with the Lloyds – it was clear to Bab that she was not the only one toward whom their feeling was antagonistic. That Varick was included seemed clear. That he was suspected of something seemed as evident. Nor was that all. His attitude had itself been curious.

The more she thought of it the more queer seemed his manner when he had learned of her relationship to the Beestons. What had happened? What had he done? Why was he no longer welcome in that house? In learning who she was Bab's first thought had been: "Now I'll see him there! Now he'll come to see me!" But Varick had not come. However, though he hadn't, Bab had said nothing to anyone. Not for worlds would she have shown the ache that day by day, hour by hour, ate gradually into her heart. It was not like him to have done that. Why had he? Then, finally she learned!

IX

It was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed, in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to look forward with pleasure to these excursions.

By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had accepted as a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs, but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier, more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that.

"Happy?" he'd rumble at her.

"Happy!" she'd return.

To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her heart – not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture. Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow; when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she averred.

It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their country place out on Long Island, David was spending the day there. Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.

A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously, though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled. The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this, the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.

Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears! And then, too, that was but a part of it.

"Yes, ran up the stairs!" Beeston was saying, still speaking of Mr. Mapleson. "The lawyers tell me the man looked downright terrified!"

Bab spoke then. "Dad" – it was thus she called him – "dad," she demanded, "what's wrong? Why Is it that Mr. Varick never comes to our house? He used to, you know!"

Varick! At the name she saw a quick gleam spring in Beeston's eyes, and then, his brows thickening, he scowled. But Bab now had forgotten caution in her determination to know. Assuredly there must be some good reason why Varick had avoided her.

"Huh!" said Beeston abruptly. "What difference is it to you what that fellow does?"

"Only that I like him, dad! That's enough, isn't it?" Bab answered deliberately; and Beeston, from under his shaggy brows, gave her another sharp stare.

"Oh, so you like him, eh?" he returned, his eyes lowering. "That's how the land lies, is it? And why do you like him, let me ask?"

"Why shouldn't I?" Bab retorted quietly. Then without calculating the consequences of what she said, she added: "So would you have liked him if he had been as kind, as pleasant as he always was to me!"

The statement seemed to hit Beeston as significant Again his eyes lit darkly and he gazed at her, his face sneering.

"Huh, I see!" he drawled. "Made love to you, I suppose, down in that boarding house! Eh? So that's it, is it?" At his brusqueness, the blunt, brutal frankness of his scorn, Bab felt all the blood in her body rush hotly into her face. Before she could answer him, however, Beeston spoke again.

"Yes," he rumbled, "it'd be like a Varick to want to do me dirt!" His voice came thickly, contempt and hatred bubbling together in his tone. "You don't know, I suppose, why that fellow's living in that house? Eh? Well, I'll tell you why. His father set out to trim me and I turned the tables on him. That's why. Lord!" growled Beeston. "And now, I take it, the son wants to get back at me! Trying to get you and your money, isn't he?"

But this, it happened, was too much.

"That's not true!" said Bab. "You shan't say that!"

She would have said more but Beeston, with a scornful laugh, cut her short.

"You don't think, do you, he'd marry you without your money? If you do," he sneered, "then why didn't he do it when he had the chance? He was there in that house with you, wasn't he?"

Each word, as he drawled it slowly at her, seemed barbed with a venom calculated to destroy. Her face white, Bab heard him in wonder. Curiously she had no answer. When she tried she could not find the words. Beeston, leaning forward, tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"Drive home!" he ordered.

Was it true? Was it, indeed, that Varick never would marry her except that she had money? She knew it was! How could she disguise it? She herself had said as much in the days when she had been only Bab, Mrs. Tilney's unknown ward. The words, the phrases of that very thought kept recurring to her now. A Varick single and living in a boarding house was far different from a Varick married, living in a four-room Harlem flat!

That was it, then. If he married her it would be only for her money? Bab couldn't believe it! He was not that sort. She didn't care who said it, Varick was not a vulgar fortune hunter. Yes, but if he wasn't, then why hadn't he married her when she was only Bab – Bab of the boarding house? Why? Why? Why?

Her face like stone, Bab sat out the remainder of that drive plunged in those gnawing reflections. Beeston, too, seemed stricken into silence. His brows drawn together, his murky eyes peering from beneath their heavy lids, he was slouched down in his seat, staring straight ahead of him. What visions stalked before him, wraiths of his dead, stormy past, Bab had no guess; but that hatred stirred thickly in his heart one had but to see his face to know. Bab, though, gave little heed to that. Deep in her own heart, too, poison bubbled.

It was true! He never, never would marry her but that she had money! And if marry her he did, never would she know whether it was for herself or for her money. She was still thinking of it, mulling it all over and over in her mind, when the motor rolled up to the Beeston door. Beeston, leaning heavily on the footman's arm, alighted. Bab, still plunged in reflection, sat where she was.

"You coming in?" her grandfather demanded.

Bab shook her head. She had something to do, she said; and saying no more Beeston turned away. She watched him hobble up the stairs and, still on the footman's arm, disappear indoors. Then when he was gone, when the door was shut and the servant had returned to the car, Bab, as the man touched his hat to her, sat up, suddenly alert. She knew what she must do.

"Drive to Mrs. Tilney's," she said.