Rich Man, Poor Man. Foster Maximilian

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СКАЧАТЬ want to be a fine lady!" Bab would answer.

      Usually after this was a little silence. Then Mr. Mapleson would hold out both his hands to her.

      "D'you want to break Mr. Mapy's heart?" he'd ask.

      That always fetched her. And thus had passed the years, one by one drifting by. Bab had just turned twenty, and Mr. Mapleson's promise had come true. "Diamonds and pearls! Diamonds and pearls!" he'd told her. They were to be hers now. Bab Wynne at last had found her people!

      She still lay with her brown head buried among the pillows; and Mr. Mapleson, his eyes gleaming like a bird's, bent above her, quivering, his slender hand gently touching her on the cheek.

      "Why, Babbie!"

      She looked up suddenly, her eyes suffused.

      "Oh, Mr. Mapy!" she whispered. "Is it true? Is it true?"

      He had left the door open, and had one looked closely it would have been seen in the light from outside that Mr. Mapleson started first, and that then the color fled swiftly from his face.

      "What do you mean?" he whispered; and rising from the pillow Bab bent closer to him, her face rapt, her lips parting with excitement.

      "I mean about me," she answered, her breast heaving gently – "about everything! Last night you were talking and I heard – I couldn't help listening! You were telling about the Beestons – about them – about me! Oh, Mr. Mapy, is it true?"

      Mr. Mapleson stared at her, his face like clay. He was shaking too. Then he spoke, and his voice when she heard it was thick and harshly broken. One would hardly have known it for his.

      "Yes," said Mr. Mapleson, and quivered; "it's true! You're old man Beeston's granddaughter. Your father was his son." And then Mr. Mapleson said a very curious thing. "Yes – God help me!" he croaked.

      Belowstairs all Mrs. Tilney's boarders sat at dinner, and in the room lit dimly by the single gas jet the two were quite alone – the white-faced, white-haired, faded little old man; the girl, youthful, lovely, alluring. But alone though they were, the whole world at that instant might have whirled about them, roaring, yet neither would have heard it.

      Bab presently spoke.

      "You mean," she said slowly, wondering – "you mean that I'm theirs? That they are coming to take me?"

      Mr. Mapleson said, "Yes."

      "And I'm to have everything now, really everything?" she asked. "You mean I'm to have pretty clothes? To go everywhere? To know everyone they know?"

      It was so; and his face convulsed, his mouth working queerly, Mr. Mapleson fell to nodding now like a mandarin on a mantelpiece.

      "Yes, yes – everything!"

      Again he bent over her, his expression once more rapt, once more transfigured.

      "Yes, and you can marry. You understand, don't you?" said Mr. Mapleson, his voice eager, clear. "You can marry anyone. You understand – anyone?"

      Then with a sudden gesture he held out his slender, pipelike arms; and Bab, her face suffused, crept into them. For a moment Mr. Mapleson patted the head hidden on his shoulder.

      "You are happy, then?" he asked.

      "Oh, Mr. Mapy! Mr. Mapy!" she whispered.

      IV

      The lawyers were to arrive at eight. Long before that hour came the conviction that something startling was in the wind had begun gradually to dawn in the minds of Mrs. Tilney's boarders. The dinner in itself was significant.

      Usually under Mrs. Tilney's practiced eye the meal progressed with order, with propriety. Not so tonight In fact, the longer it continued, the more it seemed to take on the haste, not to say the impulsiveness, of an Alpine avalanche. Food, plates, silverware, all were hurled across the terrain of the tablecloth as if discharged upon it by some convulsion of Nature.

      "Pardon!" said Miss Hultz, pausing abruptly in the middle of the repast. Then she grasped Lena, the waitress, firmly by the wrist. "You give me back that slaw!" directed Miss Hultz, her tone minatory. "The idea, the way you're snatching things before I'm finished!"

      Lena valiantly defended herself.

      "You needn't lay it on me, miss! There's folks callin' to see Mrs. Tilney at eight, I tell you, and I gotta git th' room cleared!"

      "That's all right too!" retorted Miss Hultz. "Mrs. T. can ask in the whole street if she's a mind, only I'm not going to give up eating! Pass th' bread, Mr. Backus!"

      Mr. Backus, the gentleman at Miss Hultz' left, was a plump, pasty young man who worked in Wall Street, and as he passed the bread he inquired:

      "What's th' madam giving, a soirée?"

      "Sworry" was what he called it, but Miss Hultz seemed to comprehend. Shrugging her shoulders, she raised at the same time her fine, expressive eyebrows.

      "Search me," she murmured indolently.

      The colloquy, it appeared, had not been lost on the others; neither had they missed the vague evidences that something unusual was happening in Mrs. Tilney's house.

      Mr. Jessup spoke suddenly.

      "Did you say someone was coming?" he abruptly asked. Then he added: "Tonight?"

      His tone was queer. His air, too, was equally curious; and Mrs. Jessup glanced up at him astonished.

      "What's that?" she asked.

      "I asked what was happening," said Mr. Jessup. Then, as no one seemed able to answer him, he looked round the table. "Where's Mr. Mapleson?" he suddenly inquired.

      No one seemed able to tell him this.

      "H'm!" said Mr. Jessup queerly, and picking up his knife and fork he silently went on eating. His face, however, still wore a strange expression.

      Varick arose. He too had been conscious throughout the dinner of the haste, the hurry that had filled it with confusion. However, he had given little heed to that. Assured that something was happening, he was at the same time little interested in its effect on Mrs. Tilney's table arrangements. For Mr. Mapleson's was not the only face that was absent. Bab, too, was missing.

      A growing worry, in spite of himself, had begun to nag and nettle Varick. He still pondered curiously over what had occurred between them there in the dining-room before dinner. Then, besides, what was it that was happening? Was she affected? His dinner half finished, he shoved back his chair from the table.

      "Hello, off for a party, I see!" knowingly cried Mr. Backus.

      Varick nodded.

      "Yes, just off," he returned; and glancing about the table, he bobbed his head, smiling shyly. "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

      Miss Hultz, for one, gave him a flashing smile, all her handsome teeth revealed.

      "Same to you, Mr. Varick! Many of them!"

      "Sure! And a happy New Year, son!" added Mr. Backus.

      All the others joined in, even crusty old Mr. Lomax, the broken-down, СКАЧАТЬ