Читать книгу: «Rich Man, Poor Man», страница 9

XVI

As in a dream, the tides of confusion coming and going in her face, Bab watched him as he crossed the room, threading his way among the dancers. Varick, she saw, had many friends in that throng. On every side the men called him a greeting as he passed; the girls, their partners, waving him a gay, friendly welcome. In spite of this, however, Varick's air was hardly what one would call festive.

A smile, half grim, half disdainful, lurked in his eyes. It was as if his presence there somehow grotesquely seemed amusing, and about him, too, was a look of stubborn purpose she had never seen before. If Bab, after their last encounter, had thought to find him ill at ease she was doomed to disappointment. However, the thoughts in her mind were of quite a different nature. What was he doing there, she was asking herself. How came he to be in that house? Her mind working swiftly even in its bewilderment, she recalled that moment, only a few days past, when she herself had heard Beeston say Varick should not set foot inside his door. And yet here he was! That David had not asked him was evident. She was standing there, her mind still a maze, when she heard David speak. Obviously his astonishment was as great as hers.

"Varick!" he exclaimed.

Varick's air had not altered. But for all its grimness he returned the greeting cheerfully.

"Hello, Davy!"

Then he turned to Bab. As Bab looked at him she saw the hardness fade from his face. A look of sadness, of regret took its place, as if in that glimpse of her, his first for days, his resolution, whatever it may have been, had died.

"Why, Bab," he said, his eyes eloquent now; "you are lovely!"

Bab offered a limp hand to him.

"How do you do, Mr. Varick?" she returned.

A hobbledehoy could not have done worse. Self-conscious, nettled that she had been so awkward, she snatched away her hand. Varick, however, seemed too absorbed to notice. Then to her relief she again heard David speak. "It's good of you to have come, Bayard," he said hesitatingly. "I didn't know you would."

Varick looked at him queerly.

"I suppose you know I wasn't asked," he returned slowly, his tone deliberate.

"Not asked?"

A low murmur of embarrassment escaped David, and Bab, watching, saw his eyes flutter uncomfortably.

"Then my aunt didn't send you a card?"

Varick shook his head.

"No, Davy; it's as I say, I just came."

She looked on in wonder. So he had come uninvited then. After that she saw Varick and David exchange a long, steady look. In it comprehension seemed to pass from one to the other, for, his eyes uneasy, his brow clouded with its growing shadow of disquiet, David slowly nodded.

"I understand," he said. "You've seen my father then?"

"Yes, I've seen him," assented Varick; and Bab moved restlessly, her lips parting in dull wonder.

However, if the riddle, the mystery, were still a mystery to her, it was all clear now to Varick. Downtown that night, there in Mrs. Tilney's parlor, Lloyd's visit had in a flash laid it all bare to him. It was, of course, Lloyd who first had suspected the fraud. It was Lloyd, too, of course, who had set those detectives on the trail. In his gnawing self-interest, incensed that another now would share in the Beeston money, he had been quick to seize on, to nourish the smallest seed of suspicion. The lawyers Mr. Mapleson might delude; Mr. Mapleson might even cozen Mrs. Tilney. Envy and greed, though, boast a sharper eye than goodwill. In not more than a few days after Lloyd had set out sniffing suspiciously along the trail he struck the scent of Mr. Mapleson's early downfall, that first forgery that had sent him off to jail. After that the rest was simple.

Lloyd's presence at Mrs. Tilney's was easily explained. For one thing, he wished no scandal; he sought merely to rid himself of Bab. The reason, however, for his tempestuous haste was not so evident.

"You go get that girl tonight!" directed Lloyd; though why, he did not say.

But Varick had asked no explanations. Neither had he let Mr. Mapleson ask them. His face tortured, his frightened eyes turned to Lloyd in doglike entreaty, the little man had sought to appeal to Lloyd's tender mercies. It was for Bab, however, not himself, that he supplicated.

"Don't be cruel!" cried Mr. Mapleson. "Don't turn her out like that! Can't you see she had no hand in it!"

Varick with a contemptuous gesture silenced him. The contempt, though, was not for the little man.

"Hush!" he ordered. "You waste your breath!" Then he turned sternly to Lloyd. "Now what is it we're to do?" he demanded.

"Just what I say," Lloyd retorted. "Unless that girl's taken away tonight I'll see that you all regret it."

And now Varick was there to get her.

Bab, still plunged in hazy bewilderment, gazed at them with troubled eyes. Why had David's father gone to Varick? What was the significance of that fact? Then in its perplexity her mind of a sudden stumbled on a memory. It was the remembrance, a vivid one, of the first morning she had spent there in that house, the Christmas morning when Lloyd had put to her a dozen questions, each searching into Varick's life at Mrs. Tilney's. Yes, but why? What was Lloyd's interest in Varick? Bab did not dream the truth. She had no hint that she was the one concerned. Varick was gazing at David fixedly.

"Then you know?" he asked.

"Yes," answered David, "I know."

"And the others," persisted Varick; "do they know?"

"Upstairs? You mean them?"

"Yes, all of them."

"No," assured David, his voice weary; "but tonight they'll know. He means to tell them everything."

Bab could stand no more. She had as yet no inkling of what the meaning was of this veiled, guarded colloquy of theirs, but by now she had dully lost interest. Just as Varick was about to speak she interrupted.

"If you don't mind," she said abruptly, "I think I'll find Aunt Vira."

Anything to escape! By now the emotion Varick's presence had roused in her had become unbearable, and she feared her agitation would betray itself. Too much had happened that night. There was, first, that interview with Beeston, itself distracting. Then had followed her talk with David, the words that turned him, a cousin, into a lover. And this was but a part. There was the dinner, the dance with it, her first party! Finally, as if all this by itself had not been enough, unasked and unexpected, like a wraith risen from the past, here had come Varick!

How she had once dreamed of an occasion like this one! To dance with him, to have him there – that was why she had so longed to have her party. It had been for him then – just for him alone. That, too, was why, until she had them, she had longed so for possessions, the things that would make her attractive in his eyes – the wealth and the position it would bring that would lift her to his level. But now he had come to her party, that dance she so long had dreamed about, and his coming had only troubled her. Strange! Strange, indeed, the reality! It was not at all the dream as Bab had dreamed it.

"Wait!" said Varick as she turned to go. There was in his voice a note of authority, abrupt and peremptory, that Bab never before had heard; and as she paused she saw him glance hurriedly toward the drawing-room door. "I'm going with you! I've something to tell you!" he said; then he turned to David. "Your father – has he come back?" he asked; and when David said that his father had returned Varick added: "I'll have to hurry then!"

A moment later Bab found herself walking with him toward the ballroom door. David, his mouth set fixedly, had made no protest. Silently he watched them go.

The orchestra still was playing. The air, a waltz, rose and fell, throbbing seductively, its swinging measure alluring to Bab in every beat; and as she heard it the shadow in her eyes grew deeper. Her pique had left her, and somehow she had lost as well her one-time scorn of Varick. Incensed once that he had sought to marry her, not for herself but, as she had thought, for what she had, she no longer felt that anger. All that her mind now could dwell upon was the music and the fact that he was with her. That they were together again! Bab's eyes grew misty, and she bit her trembling lip. A moment later Varick felt her touch him impulsively on the arm.

"Bayard," said Bab, and her voice broke tremulously, "won't you ask me to dance just once?"

"I?"

She was conscious that he turned swiftly, staring down at her. Then all the hardness in his face died out, the scowl, the trouble in his eyes; and the Varick she knew best stood there, the real Varick, smiling, friendly, kind. Indeed in his pity for her Varick's heart could have melted, for no one more than he knew what hung over Bab's innocent head. She saw his eyes flash then. Dance with her? There was nothing at the instant he rather would have done, and yet Varick hesitated. Again he glanced swiftly toward the drawing-room door.

"Please," pleaded Bab.

She looked up at him then, her eyes wistful and entreating, her lips parted in that old, familiar, twisted little smile of hers – the one that to him was so amusing in the way it wrinkled the tip of her little nose.

"You're not angry at me?" she pleaded. "Don't you want to dance?"

"Angry?" he echoed. His voice, filled with sudden feeling, startled her. "Do you think I could be angry with you?"

Bab didn't know. As he took her hand, his arm about her as they waited momentarily to catch the music's beat, she felt herself tremble at his nearness. She dared not speak, she dared not look at him. Her head low, her face against his sleeve, she breathed faintly, borne away by him, the music, half-heard, drumming distantly in her ears. She was not conscious that she danced. It was as if she clung to him and was carried on, drifting like a cloud. Then in her maze of vague, bewildering emotions she heard him speak, his voice coming to her distantly, small and penetrating like a bell's silver note.

"Bab!" he whispered. "Bab!"

The arm about her tightened then. She did not resent it. She had the feeling that after all somehow he was hers. Numbly the thought came to her of how long she had waited for this. From the first her dream had been of such a moment. She would be in his arms and he looking down at her; and then like that, too, he would whisper to her.

"Bab," he said again. "Bab, dear!"

His voice, though he had lowered it until it could barely be heard, rang to her like a trumpet. His face, she knew, too, was so close that it touched the soft stray filaments of her hair. She felt her heart throb ponderously.

"Happy, Bab?" he asked.

A quick breath, half a sob, escaped her. Happy? Varick gave no heed. A laugh, a small, joyous echo of contentment, rippled from his lips, and again she felt his arm tighten about her, possessive, confident. Round them were a hundred others, all elbow to elbow with them, all dancing to the strains of that same languorous, alluring music. But of this neither seemed aware. All Bab knew or cared was that he and she were there; that for this one moment, whatever else might befall, they two were together. What if it were only for her money that he wanted her? What if he had once asked her to marry him for that? It made little difference now. This was her night. This was what she had wanted. For it was of him she had dreamed. It was Varick, after all, she had wanted at her dance. Happy?

Bab's mouth quivered as she pressed it against his sleeve. Varick was still whispering to her softly.

"Bab, you remember the night, don't you, the Christmas Eve when you went away from Mrs. Tilney's? You remember you told me then when you were a little girl, a kid in pigtails and pinafores, you used to dance by yourself to the music of an unseen orchestra there all alone in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen. Remember, Bab?"

Yes, she remembered. She remembered, too, what else she had said that night. An inarticulate murmur escaped her.

"Bab, tell me now, is this like it?" he asked. "Is this the dream come true?"

Was it, indeed? She knew that in her dreams at Mrs. Tilney's a night like this would have seemed veritably a dream. Place, possessions, a name! All these she had now. She was sought after and desired as she had dreamed! Yet was it all as in her dreams she had seen it?

"Well?" asked Varick.

Her face against his sleeve, Bab debated.

"I don't know. Why?"

"I wondered, Bab. I wondered if anything could make you happier; if there were anything for which you'd give it up."

"Give it up?"

"Yes, Bab."

She looked up at him, a startled glance. Why should she give it up? Then, the thought leaping into her mind, she guessed – or thought she guessed – what he meant; and the color swept into her face. Conscious then, quivering, too, she dropped her eyes confusedly. Give it up for him?

The music still played. They still drifted in and out among the other dancers. She wondered whether, pressed tightly against his shoulder, he could not feel her heart. It was throbbing like a bird's.

"Bab, listen! A while ago I asked you to marry me, and you said no. You scorned me, you remember. You said that if I'd really loved you I'd have asked you when you were poor. But what if marrying me made you poor? What if by doing that you lost all this? Bab, would you take me then?"

She listened in dumb silence.

"Well, Bab?" he asked.

She still did not answer. She dared neither to speak nor to look at him. If she did she knew there would not be a soul in that ballroom who wouldn't guess what he was saying to her. He was pleading now, his voice urging her.

"Come with me, Bab! Marry me tonight! I want just you, don't you understand? I want you now!"

Tonight? Marry him like that? Run away with him? Varick could feel her tremble.

"It's not running away, Bab. Say yes, now! Say you'll marry me!" Even in her emotion, the distress that tore her now, Bab could not help but wonder at his haste, his persistency. "Don't be frightened, will you? Trust in me; I have everything ready, dear! And you won't have to go alone; I'll tell you something; it's all been fixed, Bab – I've brought Mr. Mapleson with me too."

"Mr. Mapy?" The name, the exclamation, burst from her, stifled, a startled cry. "You brought him?"

Again Varick's arm tightened itself about her, protecting, reassuring.

"Steady, dear!" he whispered. "They've begun to look at you."

She hardly heard him.

"You brought Mr. Mapy?" she repeated.

"Yes, Bab; he knows why I've come tonight. He's outside there, waiting in the cab." Then, careless of any eye that might see him, Varick pressed his cheek softly against the brown head that so long had been turned away from his. "Bab, will you say yes? Say you will, Bab! Come with me and we'll be married now!" He heard her catch her breath. The face against his sleeve pressed tighter to it. For an instant he felt her cling to him. "Will you come, Bab?"

Then she answered him.

"Bayard! Bayard!" whispered Bab. "I can't. Don't you understand how it was? I thought you hated me. I thought after what I'd said to you I'd never see you again. It was all my fault; I believed what they said of you. Forgive me, won't you? Oh, don't look at me like that!"

"Bab, what have you done?" he asked.

She looked up at him dully, her face filled with weary helplessness. Then she told him.

"I'm going to marry David. You didn't come and I didn't think you would, so a while ago I told him yes."

"You said you'd marry him?"

"Yes, Bayard. You don't know how kind and dear he's been. Then, too, you didn't come. So I said yes."

Again Varick had tried to save her, and again he had failed. Then, as he glanced toward the ballroom door, his face a study of bewilderment, he saw there what he had been expecting. Beeston had just entered and he had seen Varick and Bab.

XVII

The music had ended. In the stir that followed, the momentary confusion as the dancers, separating, strayed toward their seats, Varick glanced irresolutely about him. If he were to do anything he must do it quickly, he saw.

Beeston, his face menacing, was already halfway across the ballroom floor. The jig was up – that was evident. One needed but a look to see this, and Varick, as he caught the look on Beeston's face, felt his heart sink. It was not of himself, though, that Varick thought.

Bab stood there, gay in her borrowed plumes, the pearl, the great gem Beeston had given her, nestling on the snowy whiteness of her breast; and in spite of the cloud, the troubled bewilderment that still clung darkly to her eyes, Varick thought he had never seen her more brilliant, more bewitching. But now, it happened, not even her charm, her witchery, were to avail her.

Varick pondered swiftly. Should he tell her? It would be a mercy, he felt, however he told it, to forestall the brutal way he was sure Beeston would blurt it out. And that, too, was why he had come there, an unbidden guest, forcing his way into the house. It was to save Bab, it was to rescue her from just some such scene as this. But the instant Varick looked at her the words flocking to his lips died there. His heart failed him. He hadn't the courage to do it.

Tell her she was a fraud! Tell her she was a cheat, an impostor! He groaned to himself at the thought. Still irresolute, he had turned to glance apprehensively across the ballroom, when he felt a hand touch him quietly on the arm. David stood beside him.

From his place in the corner David, too, had seen Beeston enter the ballroom; and he too, it seemed, had divined instantly what brought his grandfather. Lloyd, David's father, had carried out his promise; he had told Beeston of the fraud. And David, knowing Beeston, knew too what they might expect of him now that he had learned. Surprisingly, however, it was for Varick, not Bab, that David was concerned. Bab he did not even seem to consider. As he touched Varick on the arm he spoke, and his voice was grave with warning.

"You'd better go," said David.

No need to tell Varick that. He had been convinced of this the instant he had glimpsed Beeston. Even so, however, this was not the question. It was, instead, how he could get Bab out of that ballroom, the house itself, too, so there should be no scene.

David interrupted his thoughts.

"There'll be no scene, don't worry – not with her," he said; and Varick, astonished, turned to him swiftly. No scene with her? Why, Bab would be the first of all Beeston would denounce. More than that, it would be like Beeston to denounce her publicly, there before her guests. However, there was no time now for explanations.

"Do as I tell you," said David sharply. "If you'll go there'll be no trouble. I'll look out for Bab."

Bab was still standing there, her eyes and her drawn brows filled with bewildered wonderment.

"Come, Bab," said David.

Then when as in a dream she moved away with him David looked back across his shoulder. Once again he signed imperatively to Varick; once more he waved to him to go. But Varick did not move. He stood there as if debating, as if in that brief moment something had dawned within his mind. Bab and David, slowly threading their way amid the throng on the ballroom floor, drifted toward the door. On the way there they passed close to Beeston, but Beeston did not so much as give the two a look. His eyes on Varick, he stamped swiftly toward him. A moment later the two stood face to face. A thick growl escaped Beeston, a rumble of rancorous dislike.

"Huh!" he said roughly. "What are you doing here?"

Outside, huddled in a cab, Mr. Mapleson sat waiting. A long line of motors thronged the street – huge limousines or smaller, equally smart landaulets, their chauffeurs and footmen clustered along the curb in groups. Beyond from the open windows of the Beeston house the strains of an orchestra poured forth; and through the hangings one had a glimpse of the crowded ballroom, the dancers gliding to and fro. Absorbed in his thoughts, however, Mr. Mapleson could not have been more solitary had he been plunged into the heart of the Sahara.

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!'"