Kitobni o'qish: «Rich Man, Poor Man»

I

Promptly at six every week-day evening in the year Mr. Mapleson came down the stairs of the L road station on the corner and trudged up the side street toward his home. He lived at Mrs. Tilney's, the last house but one in the block; but though for more than sixteen years Mr. Mapleson had boarded there, none of the landlady's other patrons – or the landlady either, for that matter – knew much about their fellow-guest. Frankly he was a good deal of a puzzle. The others thought him queer in his ways besides. They were right perhaps.

He was a little man, round-shouldered, elderly and spare, with an air of alert, bustling energy quite birdlike in its abruptness. Uppish you might have judged him, and self-important too; yet in his tired eyes as well as in the droop of his small sensitive mouth there was something that belied the vanity of a pompous, confident man. Nor was his briskness so very convincing, once you had closely scanned him, for beneath it all was a secret, furtive nervousness that bordered at times on the panicky. He was, in short, shy – shy to a last degree; a self-conscious, timorous man that on every occasion shrank mistrustfully from the busy world about him. A castaway marooned on a desert island could scarcely have been more solitary, only in Mr. Mapleson's case, of course, the solitude was New York.

There are many such. No quarter of the city, indeed, is without its Mr. Maplesons. They are to be seen caged behind the grilles of every bank and counting-room; they infest, as well, the hivelike offices of the big insurance companies; soft-footed, faithful, meek, they burrow dustily among the musty, dusty back rooms and libraries of the law. Mere cogs in the machine, their reward is existence, nothing else. Then when the cog is broken, its usefulness at an end, it is cast carelessly on the scrapheap, while the machine goes grinding on. O tempore! O mores! Mr. Mapleson was a clerk in a Pine Street real-estate office. His salary was twenty-eight dollars a week, and his employers thought it high!

But enough! Tonight it was Christmas Eve; and as Mr. Mapleson descended from the L road station and trudged westward on his way, a smile as secret, as furtive as himself, quivered radiantly on his lips. Overhead, through a rift in the fleecy, racing clouds, a host of stars blazed down like the lights of an anchored argosy; and when he looked up and saw them there the little man's eyes blinked and twinkled back at them. Then a gust of the night's raw wind swooped along the street, and he had bent his head to it and was hurrying when a fleck of snow like a knife-point stung him on the cheek. "Hah!" cried Mr. Mapleson, his face beaming, "a white Christmas, eh?" And with a quick look upward, as if to assure himself, he critically examined the sky.

Afterward he chuckled, a silvery tinkle, and tightly clutching the bundles in his arms Mr. Mapleson hurried on, his slender feet padding the pavement like a bunny cottontail's. A little agitated you would have thought him, a little feverish perhaps; and yet, after all, why not? Remember, Christmas comes but once a year; and as the slight figure passed swiftly under a street lamp standing near his door, there was a glow in the gray furrowed face that one would have wagered sprang from a heart filled only with kindliness, with the night's spirit of goodwill.

Still smiling, Mr. Mapleson opened the door with his latchkey and stepped into Mrs. Tilney's hall. Then a curious thing occurred. Closing the door, Mr. Mapleson for a moment stood poised in an attitude of acute attention. It was not only furtive, it was a little crafty too. Then his eyes, roaming about him, fled down the dingy hall to where in the dim light of the single gas jet a stair was to be seen, Obviously it led to the kitchen floor below, for there arose from it not only a potent scent of cooking but the sound of a shrill, flustered voice, a woman's. Evidently its owner reigned in an advisory capacity over the kitchen's busy doings. At any rate, the voice lifting itself in shriller complaint, the words became intelligible.

"Is everything on earth going to ruin? Mary Mangin, don't you hear me? Do as I tell you now!"

"I'm a-doin' ut, ain't I?" an aggrieved voice returned.

Then came an interlude. The kitchen door was slammed, while from elsewhere belowstairs arose yet a third voice, a girl's.

She sang, lilting like a lark:

 
One shoe off and one shoe on,
Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John.
 

That was all. It ended in a little laugh, a burst of merriment that rippled musically up the stairwell.

Mr. Mapleson abruptly moved. Tiptoeing to the stairhead he descended stealthily halfway to the foot. Here he turned, and laying down his parcels on a stair he removed his hat, which he placed on top of them. Afterward the little man hurriedly unbuttoned his coat, removing from the recesses of its inner pocket a newspaper. This he opened in the middle. Then with a painstaking precision, scrupulous with care, Mr. Mapleson compactly folded the newspaper so as to display one particular column among its advertisements.

Its heading, a single word printed in full-faced type, was significant.

PERSONAL

When he had replaced the paper in his pocket Mr. Mapleson picked up his hat and bundles and on tiptoe crept down the remainder of the stairs. A board partition inclosed the stairway, and on reaching the bottom the little man peered cautiously past the woodwork. The glance revealed to him Mrs. Tilney's dining-room, its lights lighted, its table set for dinner. In a few minutes now the bell would ring, the dozen guests come trooping to their meal. However, as if assured the room was vacant, Mr. Mapleson was just creeping into the basement hall when with a catch of his breath he shrank back suddenly.

On the hearthrug in front of the fireplace stood a girl. She was a young girl. In age she was nineteen perhaps, or it may have been a little more. But whatever her age, or whether you would or would not call her beautiful, there was one thing about her that was not to be mistaken. It was the allurement of her smile, a merriment that danced and rippled in her eyes like the sheen on sunlit silk. At the moment it happened that a young man in evening clothes stood before her, and with her arms uplifted, her slender form close to his, the girl was intently tying his necktie. All her attention was centered on the task as with deft fingers she molded the white lawn into a bow; but with the young man it was different. His face, so far from wearing the vacuous, bored expression seen on the faces of those who must have their neckties tied, seemed interested to an extreme. With parted lips, his eyes smiling, he was gazing down at the face now so near to his.

Mr. Mapleson peeped. Presently he saw the girl's quick slender fingers twist the tie into a bow, then give it a finishing pat; and as if yet fearful he should be seen, he was effacing himself, when the young man moved and he heard him draw a little breath.

"Thanks," said the young man briefly.

The girl's eyes leisurely lifted themselves. Briefly they dwelt on his, then their gray depths lighted suddenly. A moment later a tinkling ripple of merriment left her and she turned away.

"You're welcome!" she laughed; and she and the young man moving out of view, Mr. Mapleson made the best of his opportunity.

Gliding down the hallway, he quietly opened the door at the other end. Then, stepping inside, he as quietly closed it behind him. He was in Mrs. Tilney's kitchen, a sanctuary tabooed usually to Mrs. Tilney's guests. Across the floor the lady herself stood near the range shrilly exhorting her cook, a red-faced person of astonishing girth and – notably – impenetrable calmness.

"Mary Mangin, my Gawd!" Mrs. Tilney addressed her; "d'you wish to be the death of me? Enough's happening without your burning the soup! Take off that kettle at once, d'you hear me?"

Quaking as she moved, the behemoth emerged momentarily out of the vapors surrounding the cookstove.

"Be aisy, will ye!" admonished Mary Mangin. "What wit' y'r carryin' ons th' day 'twill be a wonder we're not worse an' all!"

It was at this moment that Mr. Mapleson spoke.

"Mrs. Tilney," he said.

The landlady turned. She was a small woman with sharp, inquiring features and shrewd, not unkindly eyes. Now, having peered at Mr. Mapleson from behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, Mrs. Tilney began to blink exactly like a small, startled barn owl. Obviously she had suddenly become agitated.

"Well?" she breathed.

Laying down his bundles, Mr. Mapleson removed his hat, after which he produced from his pocket the folded newspaper. Silently he pointed to the column headed "Personal," and as silently Mrs. Tilney read:

Benedict. A liberal reward will be paid for information concerning the present whereabouts, living or dead, of the person known variously as Randolph Benedict, Benedict Ames, or Ames Randolph, who, when last heard of in January, 1897, was about to embark from New York City presumably for some port in South America. All communications will be regarded as entirely confidential. Address Hill, Hamilton, Durand & Hill, Wall Street, New York.

A little gasp escaped Mrs. Tilney. She was still gaping at the paper when Mr. Mapleson took it from her and, turning the page, indicated a new item in another column:

BEESTON'S CONDITION CRITICAL

FAMILY SUMMONED TO THE

GREAT FINANCIER'S

BEDSIDE

There was a pause. Then with a jerk of his thumb Mr. Mapleson indicated the adjoining dining-room where again the girl's voice arose, tinkling with merriment.

"All hers," he said, and as he spoke his voice cracked thinly – "millions!"

Again Mrs. Tilney caught swiftly at her breath.

"Bab's?" she whispered. "My little Babbie Wynne?"

Mr. Mapleson slowly nodded.

"It's true," he said; "I phoned them, and it's as true as the Holy Writ! The lawyers are coming here at eight!"

II

Six o'clock had just struck when Bab, after a brief look at herself in the glass, opened the door of her bedroom and hurried out into the hall. Every evening it was her duty to see that the dining-room table was set properly and tonight she had been delayed. In spite of her hurry, however, her pace perceptibly slackened as she neared the head of the stairs. The room there was Mr. Varick's; and behind the door she could hear him briskly moving about, humming to himself a lively little air as he dressed:

 
La Donna è mobile,
Quam plume mal vento!
 

She smiled at his cheerfulness. How pleasant it always was to hear him!

Frankly Bab's interest in the young man was a bit deeper than the feeling she usually displayed toward the boarders at Mrs. Tilney's. The house, though comfortable enough in its homely way, was still not what one would call enlivening; nor were its patrons any the more inspiriting. They were, for the most part, clerks, breadwinners like Mr. Mapleson, with an occasional stenographer or saleswoman to lend variety. To these, however, Varick had proved the exception – notably so, in fact; and this Bab had been quick to see.

One ordinarily does not look to find a Varick in a boarding house. Indeed, until the day he arrived at Mrs. Tilney's Varick had never so much as put his nose in one. He was, in short, what Miss Hultz, the occupant of Mrs. Tilney's third-floor front, so aptly termed a "swell." And when she said swell Miss Hultz meant swell; there was no doubt of that. Being in the hat and feather department at Bimberg's – the Fifth Avenue Bim's of course – she consequently knew.

But then that Varick was a Varick, therefore of the elect, would probably have been evident even without Miss Hultz' authoritative say-so.

He was a slender, tall, gray-eyed fellow with a narrow, high-bred head and quiet, pleasant manners. Newcomers were not many at Mrs. Tilney's, for the house, if modest, was well kept, so that its guests remained on indefinitely. However, the instant Varick for the first time had entered its dining-room he was looked at with interest, the others divining immediately that he was a somebody. Moreover, Mr. Jessup, the gentleman at the head of the table, instantly had confirmed this.

With his wife, a plump, kindly little woman, Mr. Jessup tenanted Mrs. Tilney's second-floor back. Briefly he was a bookkeeper in the National Guaranty's R to Z Department; and looking up from his soup as Varick entered, Mr. Jessup had stared.

"Phew!" he'd whistled, whereat Mrs. J. had nudged him with her elbow. "Don't blow in your soup, Joe!" she'd admonished; "it isn't manners!"

A lot he cared! Months before, when Varick's father had died, Jessup had been called in to help untangle the old man's bank accounts. That they had been as involved as all this, though, he had not even dreamed. A Varick in a boarding house! Again Mr. Jessup had whistled. However, not even this vicissitude seemed to have crushed the young man. A quick smile lit up his face when the bookkeeper ventured to address him.

"Of course I remember you!" he exclaimed. Then he had turned to the bookkeeper's chubby lady in the same frank, friendly way. "Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Jessup!"

Thus it was that, impressed, a little awed perhaps, Mrs. Tilney's other guests learned they had a Varick among them. Not that Varick had tried either to awe or to impress. Like Jessup, he too was merely an employee in a bank now, and he made no bones of saying so. The bank was the Borough National. It was in Broad Street and it paid him twelve dollars a week. That was another reason why Varick was at Mrs. Tilney's.

But not even this – the fact, that is, of the twelve dollars and its contingent relation to his presence in the boarding house – seemed in the least to have marred his cheerfulness. Bab felt heartily she had never met anyone so responsive, so entertaining. As she went on down the stairs, hurrying to her task in the dining-room, she was still smiling, humming softly to herself the while the air she had heard him singing.

A few minutes later, while she was arranging the last knives and forks, the dining-room door opened and Varick himself stood there. His face lit instantly as he saw her.

"Hello, Bab!" he greeted. "I thought I heard you come down!"

He was in evening dress, his attire spick and span save for the one particular of his necktie. This, with its two ends askew, clung to his collar in a rumpled knot.

"Busy?" he inquired.

Bab laughed.

"You want your tie tied, I suppose!" she returned, warned by former experience. "I thought the last time I gave you a lesson!"

Varick nodded.

"I know. What I need, though, is not lessons – it's less thumbs. Now be a good fellow, won't you?"

Bab laughed again; and laying down the knives and forks in her hands, she reached up and began pulling and patting the soft lawn into shape. Finally she had it to her satisfaction.

"There!" she murmured.

Varick did not move away. Instead he stood looking down at her, his gray eyes dwelling on hers, and in them was a gleam of interest she had seen there more than once of late. It was as if recently Varick had found in her face something he had not found there before. That something, too, seemed to inspire in him a growing look of reflection.

Bab, in spite of her good looks, was not vain. At the same time, though, neither was she blind. She gazed at Varick curiously.

"Well?" she inquired presently.

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 something else, too, that Varick would have liked to know.

For the past ten days – for a fortnight, in fact – he had felt indefinably that something queer was going on in that room next to his. Night after night, long after Mrs. Tilney's other guests had sought their rest, he had heard Mr. Mapleson softly stirring about. Again and again, too, he could hear him whispering, mumbling to himself. What is more, Varick was not the only one who had been disturbed. A few nights before, quite late, too, he heard a hand rap abruptly at Mr. Mapleson's door. Startled, a moment later he had heard someone speak. It was Jessup!

"Mapleson," Jessup had demanded; "what are you up to, man?"

Varick had not caught the reply; for, after a startled exclamation, Mr. Mapleson had dropped his voice to a whisper. But Varick had heard enough. What, indeed, was Mr. Mapleson up to?

Bab's eyes grew vague. Then she laughed. The laugh, though, was a little strained, a little less free than usual. Then her eyes fell and a faint tide of color crept up into her face and neck.

"Honest Injun now," she again laughed awkwardly, "don't you know what's happening?"

Varick shook his head, and Bab, her eyes on his, bit her lip reflectively. That question she longed to ask him hovered on her lips now, and with it there had come into her face an air of wistfulness. Her blue eyes clouded faintly.

"Tell me," she said, and hesitated – "tell me something. If at the dance tonight – the dance you're going to – if – if things were changed; and I – you – "

Varick nodded quietly.

"Yes," he prompted, "if I – "

"If I were there," said Bab; "if things were changed and I – "

Again she paused. Her eyes, too, fell suddenly. Then she caught her lip between her teeth.

"Yes, Bab," encouraged Varick; "if what were changed?"

But Bab did not reply. Of a sudden, as she raised her eyes to his, a great wave of color rushed into her face, mantling her to the eyes. Of a sudden, too, the eyes fell, dropping before his look. Her confusion was furious and with an abrupt movement, swift and unexpected to him, she slipped from her chair and darted into the half-lit hall. Then the next instant she was gone, and Varick, his own face a study, stood gazing after her dumbfounded.

"Good Lord!" he murmured to himself.

For he was no fool, neither was he a coxcomb; and what Bab had let him read in her face had been a revelation.