Rich Man, Poor Man. Foster Maximilian

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      Varick seemed suddenly to recollect.

      "Thanks!" he said; and in turn she laughed back: "You're welcome!"

      She had just spoken when out in the dimly lighted hall Bab saw Mr. Mapleson emerge suddenly from the stairway, and on stealthy tiptoes dart out of view toward the kitchen. A muffled exclamation escaped her, and as he heard it Varick looked at her vaguely.

      "I beg pardon?" he inquired.

      "Nothing – it was just someone in the hall," Bab evasively answered; and her face thoughtful now, she finished arranging the table. Planted on the hearthrug, Varick watched her. However, though she was quite conscious of this, she gave little heed to it. Her brow puckered itself still more in thought.

      "You're not going to be home tonight, are you?" she inquired presently. When Varick said no, that he'd be out all the evening, Bab perched herself on the serving table in the corner, and sat swinging her shapely, slender heels. "I suppose you're going to a party, aren't you?" she suggested.

      Again he smiled.

      "Why, yes, Bab – why?"

      "Oh, I don't know," she murmured as aimlessly. Then her eyes growing vague, she drew a little breath.

      "There'll be a tree, I suppose?" Varick nodded. Yes, there would be a tree. "And you'll dance besides, I shouldn't wonder?" added Bab, drawing in her breath again, a pensive sigh. "I imagine, too, there'll be a lot of girls there – pretty girls?"

      She could see him stare, curious at her tone, her questioning; but now she hardly cared. There was something Bab meant to ask him presently, though how she was to do it she still was not quite sure.

      "Funny," she murmured, her tone as if she mused; "do you know, I've never been at a dance!"

      Varick stared anew. "Really?"

      "Honor bright!" said Bab, aware of his astonishment. She had a way, when others amused her, of drolly twisting up one corner of her mouth; and then as her smile broadened, rippling over her face, Bab's small nose would wrinkle up like a rabbit's, obscuring temporarily the freckles on each side of it. "Give you my word!" she avowed.

      Leaning back, then, she sat clicking her heels together, her eyes roving toward the ceiling.

      "Don't laugh," she murmured; "but often I've wondered what a dance was like – a real dance, I mean. You see, ever since I was a kid everyone round me has been too busy or too tired to think of things like that. Sometimes they've been too worried too; so the only dances I've ever been at have been just dream dances – make-believes. You know how it is, don't you, when you have no other children to play with? I'd make believe I was in a huge ballroom, all alone, and then somewhere music would begin to play! Oh, I can hear it yet – Strauss, the Blue Danube!" Bab's look was misty, rapt; and then with a slender hand upraised she began to beat time to the sensuous measure of the melody drifting in her mind. "Lights, music, that huge ballroom," she laughed at the memory; "music, the Blue Danube. Yes – and then I'd dance all alone, all by myself! Can't you see me – me in my pigtails and pinafore, dancing! Funny, wasn't it?"

      "Funny?" repeated Varick, and she saw his face was grave. "I don't think so. Why?"

      But Bab did not heed. Her face rapt, she still sat smiling at the ceiling.

      Strangers often wondered about Bab. It was not only her face, however, that roused, that held their interest. They marveled, too, that in the dim and dingy surroundings of the boarding house the landlady's little ward had acquired an air, a manner so manifestly above her surroundings. But Bab's history, vague as it was, gave a hint of the reason. Her mother, a woman who had died years before at Mrs. Tilney's, leaving her child in Mrs. Tilney's hands, manifestly had been a woman of refinement. In other words, despite environment Bab's blood had told; and that it had was evidenced by Varick's interest in her. During his months at Mrs. Tilney's he had, in fact, managed to see a good deal of his landlady's pretty ward.

      However, not even this interest, the pleasure he had found in her company, had obscured in the least Bab's perception of the facts. She knew thoroughly her own position. She knew, too, his – that and the gulf it put between them. Young, attractive, a man; the fact that he now was poor had not much altered his social standing. It would remain as it was, too, until he married. Then when he did, his position would be rated by the wealth – that or the lack of it – of the woman who became his wife.

      So, though Varick single might exist with propriety in a boarding house, there was a vast difference between that and a Varick married – a Varick setting up for life, say, in a four-room Harlem flat. And Bab, too, don't forget, was a boarding-house keeper's nameless ward.

      "Tell me something," she said.

      Slipping from her perch, she drew up a chair and, seating herself, bent forward with her chin on her hands.

      "You've heard of the Beestons, haven't you – that family uptown. By any chance do you know them?"

      "The Beestons!"

      She saw him frown, his air amazed. However, though she wondered at the moment at his air, her interest was entirely in what he would answer.

      "Why do you ask?" he inquired.

      "I wanted to know," Bab returned slowly. "I wanted to find out something. Do they ever give parties – dances like the one you're going to tonight? And do you ever go to them?"

      Varick's look grew all the more amazed. He not only knew the Beestons, he had often been in the huge house they occupied in one of the uptown side streets off the Avenue. But though that was true, for some reason the fact did not seem to afford him any great satisfaction. His face suddenly had grown hard.

      "Who told you about them?" he demanded.

      Bab smiled vaguely.

      "There's a boy, isn't there?" she parried. "Old Mr. Beeston's grandson?"

      The look of wonder in his face grew.

      "Who? David Lloyd, you mean? How did you know him?" he questioned.

      "I don't," said Bab, smiling at his vehemence; "I've only heard about him. He's a cripple, isn't he – a hopeless cripple?"

      It proved that all his life Varick had known the boy – the man rather – whom she meant.

      "Look here, Bab," he directed, puzzled, "why do you ask me about those people? I'd like to know that! Will you tell me?"

      She deliberated for a moment.

      "It was something I heard," she said then, hesitating.

      "Here? In this house?" he questioned, all the more amazed; and Bab nodded.

      "I heard Mr. Mapy say it," she returned.

      Varick in return gazed at her, his face a picture.

      "Mr. Mapy," he knew, meant Mr. Mapleson. He knew, too, like the other boarders, Bab's interest in the quaint, gray-faced little man, his next-door neighbor upstairs. True, Bab often laughed blithely at Mr. Mapleson, teasing him endlessly for his idiosyncrasies; but otherwise, as also Varick knew, her heart held for the queer, curious little man a deep well of tenderness, of love and gentle understanding. However, that was not the point. What had Mapleson to do with David Lloyd? What had a musty, antiquated Pine Street clerk to do with any of the Beestons? Now that he thought of it, there was СКАЧАТЬ