Читать книгу: «Rich Man, Poor Man», страница 8

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.

A little laugh, birdlike in its happiness, rippled from her. "What dears you all are! You're all wonderful! All my relatives are!" Then, hardly aware of what she did or what it would mean to him, this new-found cousin, Bab bent above him and laid her hand upon his cheek. The effect was instantaneous.

Poor Bab! In the time, now weeks gone by, when wounded and resentful she had thrown herself in David's way, hoping David might help her to forget, she had not even dreamed the effort ever would lead to this. But it had! At her touch, the soft warmth of her fingers laid upon his cheek, the long smoldering fire pent up in David's heart burst into flame.

"Bab!" She felt him quiver beneath her touch. The next instant, with both his hands he trapped hers in his, the man's strong, slenderly shaped fingers twining themselves with hers. "Bab! Bab!" he whispered. Then he looked up at her, and in David's face was something she had not seen there before. His voice, when again he spoke, rang like a harp string with emotion.

"Not just a cousin, Bab! Not that – can't you see!"

He made no effort, though he still held her hand, to draw her nearer to him. The man's feeling indeed had rocked him to the core, but he was fiercely striving to master it. He was trying to be gentle! He fought himself that he might not frighten her!

"Bab, can't you see how I love you!" said David, his voice thick. "Can't you?"

Bab slowly drew in her breath. Her lips parting, her breast heaving with the tumult of emotion that the fire in his had roused, she gazed down at him in troubled bewilderment. No need to tell her what she had done. One look at him was enough.

"Oh, Davy, Davy!" she murmured. "I didn't know! I didn't know!"

The cry came from her eloquent of the distress, the doubt that filled her mind with its conflict. There were indeed many things Bab didn't know! David as a cousin she might love, but did she love him otherwise? Cousin or lover, which was it to be? The weeks, the months he had been with her had shown how perfectly he in his gentleness could be the one; could he now be the other, too? Her eyes grew more troubled!

"I didn't know," said Bab again, murmuring as if to herself. "I didn't think that cousins loved like that!"

She saw him stir, moving uncomfortably.

"Cousins?" he echoed.

"Yes," whispered Bab; "I didn't think – "

A strange look came into his eyes.

"Look at me, Bab," he ordered; and as ordered Bab looked at him. "Now tell me," said David; "tell me the truth! If I – if I were not your cousin, then – then – "

He abruptly broke off. In his tone, too, was now something that filled her with disquiet.

"Then what?" she asked, her brow clouding.

David for a moment did not reply. It was as if he pondered something, as if he debated telling her what hovered on his lips. His dark eyes, turbulent with the feeling that still raised its storm within him, clung to hers as if to search out from her inner consciousness the real truth of what she felt for him.

"You love me, don't you?" he asked suddenly.

She did not answer.

"Bab, tell me you do," he pleaded.

Still she didn't answer.

"Won't you?" he asked.

It was not until he'd asked a third time that she replied.

"I don't know," she faltered then. "I care for you, David, but how I care I can't tell. Don't ask me now. Give me a little time."

His hand she felt suddenly tighten. Outside the doorbell had just rung; then the footsteps of Hibberd, the second man, could be heard squeaking discreetly along the hall.

"Will you tell me tonight?" demanded David.

"I don't know; I'll think," answered Bab.

David slowly drew in his breath.

"Promise me this then," he said laboriously. "Whether it's yes or no, if tonight my father tries to say anything to you promise me you'll not listen to him till you've sent for me! Will you promise?"

"Why, David!" Bab murmured, astonished.

"Have I your promise?"

"Why, yes, but – "

She broke off abruptly. The library door was opening and now Hibberd entered.

"Beg pardon, Miss Barbara, the guests will be arriving."

XV

And so it stood. Her answer she was to let David have that night. She had promised it. As Bab, the promise given, slipped from the library and made her way swiftly toward the drawing-room at the front, one needed only a glance to guess the ferment already working in her mind. Her eyes glowed. On each cheek again the color burned, now with a newer, more feverish brightness. Marry him? Her breath, at the thought, came fast!

The drawing-room, by the time she got there, was filling rapidly, and instilled with an animation that momentarily increased, she gayly greeted these arrivals, the first of the evening's guests. Her heart she could feel throb. A sense of exhilaration roused her. It was as if wine ran coursing through her veins; and her eyes dancing, her little head cocked sidewise like a bird's, she laughed and chatted, filled with a quick coquetry as new to her as it was charming. Bab never had looked more alluring.

She was in the midst of this, her face radiant, when she felt a hand touch her suddenly on the arm. The hand was Miss Elvira's; and as Bab looked up she found Miss Elvira gazing at her with an eye as dull and accusing as a haddock's. Her voice, when she spoke, was correspondingly morose.

"What's happened?" asked Miss Elvira guardedly in an aside.

Bab stared.

"Happened?" she echoed.

"Look at David!" rejoined Miss Elvira significantly.

Bab looked. In a corner across the drawing-room he sat, a figure of silence, nibbling his finger tips. A frown ruffled his brow; and though he was surrounded by half a dozen of the guests, young men and young women together, it was manifest that he was deaf to their laughter and talk. Miss Elvira gave Bab a swift, searching look.

"Have you two been up to anything?"

"I? David?"

"You two haven't had a tiff, have you?"

A tiff! Of course not! But Bab needed no second look at him to guess the cause of David's disquiet. She, too, felt that selfsame disturbance, that same tumult of the mind; but she, with a woman's art to aid her, had managed better to hide it. But now as Miss Elvira's eye, fishlike in its gloom, probed hers, Bab felt the color pour suddenly over her face and neck. A half-stifled "Humph!" escaped Miss Elvira, a mumble the significance of which was evident. Then, turning about abruptly, Miss Elvira resumed the task of greeting the last of the arrivals. That David should thus disclose his feelings, Bab saw, would never do. At the first opportunity, therefore, she hurried across the room. Bending swiftly over him, she touched him lightly on the shoulder.

"Spunk up!" whispered Bab. A flashing smile went with the words.

David, as it was evident, spunked up instantly. Bab returned to the other guests she had left. When again she looked across the room at him, he, too, was laughing and chatting, his mood now as exhilarant as hers. As her glance wandered away from him a pair of eyes encountered hers. Mrs. Lloyd stood gazing at her intently. Bab in spite of herself colored faintly.

Early that afternoon, long indeed before they'd been expected, the two Lloyds had motored in from their country place on Long Island. Evidently they had come in no little haste; and Lloyd, after a brief interview with David, had as hastily dashed off in the motor again. As for Mrs. Lloyd, almost at once she had retreated to her room, vouchsafing to Bab only a brief, not too exuberant greeting, a word or so purred indolently, as if with great effort. Bab by now owned to herself that she did not like the Lloyds. True, for David's sake she had tried to, but not even this had availed. Against the stone wall of their indifference she had only bruised herself.

The look that she had just surprised in her aunt's eyes, however, was not just indifferent. Mrs. Lloyd, after a quick stare at her son, had shot an equally swift glance at Bab, and there was in it something so searching that Bab felt herself start. Why should she be looked at like that? It was as if Mrs. Lloyd knew something. It was as if in that look she revealed the disdain that this knowledge gave her. What was it she knew? Had David told? At the thought a little chill touched her. If she should say yes to David, what then? What of their antagonism? But Bab, the thought once digested, at once rid herself of it. The Lloyds, to be sure, were David's parents, but why need she feel fear of them? Even if they were opposed to her, David wasn't! And that he wasn't was after all the main thing. Buoyant again, her animation reviving swiftly, Bab freed her mind of that passing shadow. A moment later Crabbe appeared at the drawing-room door and bent deferentially toward Miss Elvira.

"Madam is served!" announced Crabbe.

Her face aglow, Bab shot a glance at David. How splendid it all was! From then on it seemed to Bab that the events of that evening arranged and rearranged themselves with kaleidoscopic swiftness and confusion. The dinner slipped by as if hurried feverishly. Too much was happening, she felt. It seemed as though her mind could not encompass it all. Her glance, roving about the huge, dark dining-room, now transformed, dwelt on the flowers, the gleaming silver, the cut glass and snowy linen. All this for her! Already she had been asked for a dozen dances! Already, in evidence of what yet was to come, the music hidden behind the palms struck into a swaying, seductive measure. Her dance indeed! And then of a sudden came remembrance.

The huge room, splendid with its profusion of costly flowers, glittering and brilliant with all its appurtenances of silver, glass and linen – all this with its lights, with the gay luster and coloring of the gowns, for an instant faded dimly. On an afternoon, a day now long past and almost forgotten, she saw herself in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen; and all by herself, and in pigtails and pinafore, she danced, pirouetting to the music of an unseen, far-off orchestra heard only in her fancy. With what stateliness she had trod that measure! With what delicious solemnity she had bowed and balanced to and fro! And now to think, here was the reality!

The thought was followed swiftly by another. Would David, had he seen her then, have been allured? Probably not! Stilty, scrubby little girls with spindling legs were scarcely what anyone would find alluring. Her thought went further. At any stage of her life at Mrs. Tilney's would David have been allured? She wondered indeed! Would he? Would his family have let him be? At the thought a queer smile dawned in Bab's blue eyes. It was not the Lloyds she thought about; it was the rest of David's family too. What, marry a boarding-house waif? Peter Beeston's grandson marry anyone like that! The idea! A nameless nobody?

But why think now of such things? Why let any cloud obscure her happiness? Her face once more radiant, she was glancing about her, her eyes dancing like elfin fires, when at the table adjoining a ripple of laughter arose. David sat there. Her lips parted as she looked at him.

Tonight the big table that usually filled the room had been carried out and its place filled with smaller tables. There were ten of these, six of the guests seated at each, but at none of the ten had the merriment been more evident, more spontaneous, than at David's. He had bent forward, his face alight with its animation; and the others, their eyes dancing, their lips parted as they listened, hung intently on what he was saying. Bab swiftly took in the scene. Opposite David sat Linda Blair, that bronze-haired, bizarre, attractive creature, among the first David had introduced to Bab. Her chin on her hands now, and her eyes veiled behind their long lashes, she was gazing, as if idly, at David. Behind that idleness, though, Bab at the first glance had seen something else. Linda Blair was a perfect example of the highly cultivated New York type. The life, the game that surrounded her she had been taught to play from the cradle up. From the days of bib and tucker to the time of her coming out she had been trained with a Spartan rigor to throttle every impulse. Her feelings she must hide. She must at no moment disclose herself. Bab, though she liked Linda Blair, often had thought her too impenetrable, too cold and self-contained.

But not so now! Her frail, high-bred features had for a moment fallen into repose; and off her guard now, the world might have read in Linda's face exactly what she felt. Her eyes alone were eloquent. They hung upon David, inexpressibly friendly and admiring; they were, indeed, even kindlier than that.

Bab looked at her in misty wonder. She had heard much about Linda Blair. David and she since childhood had been playmates – intimates, in fact. However, that either had felt for the other anything deeper than friendliness Bab had not even dreamed. She wondered now that David never had responded, for Linda was beautiful! More than that, Linda had all that birth and cultivation can give. The fact that David should seem to Linda desirable made him all the more so in Bab's eyes. And he had asked Bab to marry him! Would she? Indeed, why should she not? Cousins before this had married.

She was still looking on, still gazing with a discreet but rising interest at what unwittingly she had seen, when across the dining-room, framed in the background of the doorway, Bab beheld a figure, now well known to her, emerge abruptly into view. David's father had returned.

The dinner, after all but a preliminary to the night's real entertainment, was nearly over. Already, with the informality of such affairs, many of the guests had risen and were drifting about, visiting from table to table; and Lloyd, after a swift glance at Bab, then at his son, beckoned to Mrs. Lloyd. Evidently the signal was expected. She arose instantly, and disregarding a look of inquiry Miss Elvira gave her, made her way toward the hall. A moment later, conversing hurriedly, the two Lloyds disappeared. But Bab, though she saw them go, felt small concern.

Outside the orchestra again had struck up, and this time the music instantly had effect. It was a dance that was being played, a lively measure, and round the room heads began to nod, feet to tap, beating time to it. Bab no longer could wait.

"Come along, everyone," she cried, and pushing back her chair she arose.

David, too, had risen. After teetering uncertainly for an instant, he got his crutches tucked beneath his arms and started slowly toward the hall. Linda Blair was beside him. Her pace matched to his slow progress, she sauntered through the doorway and toward the drawing-room, her lithe, long-limbed grace queerly contrasted by his slow, cumbrous effort. Indeed she herself must have been conscious of it – she could not have helped being so; but if she was her look gave no hint of it. Her attitude toward him and his crutches was as if the crutches did not exist. Bab's eyes grew misty. Filled with pity, she was still gazing at him when her escort, the young man who had taken her in to dinner, faced her smilingly.

"Shall we try this?" he asked.

A nod was her answer. She dared not trust herself to speak. Then a moment later she found herself carried away on the orchestra's enlivening strains. By now nearly all in the room were dancing. Already, too, the guests asked in for the dance were beginning to arrive in little parties. Bab's dinner was not the only festivity that had preceded the dance; and as the newcomers, all in high spirits, rolled up to the door in their motors, the once grim, dark Beeston house awoke anew. Bab had circled the drawing-room not more than once when she was obliged to pause to greet the new arrivals. Then when they, partner and partner, had whirled off to the music, there were still others who must be greeted. But the time came when at last she was free; and the music again thrumming in her ears, she had turned to smile up at her escort, that patient, smiling young man, when she saw across the room, sitting alone and, as she thought, forgotten, her cousin, David.

Miss Elvira for the moment had withdrawn. The Lloyds, too, since the dinner had not reappeared. Nor was Linda Blair to be seen. David indeed had been deserted; and escaping from her partner with a brief apology, Bab sped across the drawing-room.

"Why, David," she murmured; "they've all left you! I didn't know!"

He looked up, smiling quietly.

"Why, I'm all right," he returned. "Linda's been with me, but just now I made her go dance. You go, too, won't you?"

But Bab said no; she meant to sit with him a while, and in spite of his protests she drew up a chair to the corner where he sat. It would be like David, she knew, to see that all the others enjoyed themselves while he was left to look on. Presently when he began to protest, "But this is your dance, dear, yours!" Bab gently laid a hand on his.

"Yes, but I wish to be with you, don't you see?"

She heard him catch softly at his breath.

"With me?"

His fingers closed on the hand that still touched his, but Bab made no effort to withdraw it.

"Babs," he said, and again, as if he feared to frighten her, his voice grew gentle – "Babs, I can make you happy; I can do everything in the world for you. Give me your answer now, won't you? You've got to give it tonight, you know, so why wait? The sooner the better, Babs."

She did not answer. Beneath the filmy chiffon of her dress she could feel her heart flutter like the wings of a captive moth. She dared not look at him. She knew that if she did she would betray herself to that throng of gay, careless dancers, these guests of hers, intent though they were on their gayety. But troubled, agitated at what he asked, she could not but wonder at his insistence on haste. Why was it so imperative that she should answer now? It all seemed so swift, so breathlessly unexpected too. His hands tightened on hers.

"Babs."

She still did not answer.

"Babs, dearest," he whispered.

Though his voice broke, deep with its entreaty, she still steeled herself. Then his fingers released hers slowly and he drew in a breath, a sigh.

"Well, if you won't even look at me," he said, and at that the walls of the city gave.

"Oh, David, David!" and she looked at him, her eyes suffused. "If only I can make you happy!"

"Happy?" he echoed hoarsely. His face was transfigured.

"Yes, if only I can," she said.

The music went on. Alone then, forgotten as it seemed in the midst of that rising gayety, the man and the girl sat silent, their faces tortured into an air of bland, conventional impassivity. Of the storm that racked them inwardly who saw or who in that room could have known? It was for them, for one of them at least, the greatest, the most potential moment that life can bring; but life – the life they led, that is – ordered that they must hide every hint of their emotion. Finally David, summoning his courage, looked at her. His voice when he spoke broke again. His face, too, in that moment had grown heavy and lined with care.

"You must go dance now, Babs," he said fixedly. "This mustn't spoil your party. Come!"

She tried weakly to protest.

"I'd rather not, David."

But David shook his head determinedly.

"Tonight's your night," he said; and giving in she arose.

"Very well, Davy," she was saying when, her eyes widening and her lips parting in slow wonder, she paused. Then the color crept slowly up into Bab's face, a suffusing crimson tide, and, her breath held, she stood like one in a trance. Across the room was Varick. And as he saw Bab he turned and came swiftly toward her.