IX
It was from her grandfather that this revelation came. The holidays had passed. January with its cold and snow was gone; February followed, in turn giving way to a mild, spring-like March; and daily gaining strength, Beeston was up and out of doors. Overwork was the man's chief trouble; his vitality literally had burned him out. What he needed was rest, much rest. Every afternoon, tucked up in the corner of a big motor landau with the top let down, he drove in the park and on Riverside Drive, Bab and David with him. Bab before long learned to look forward with pleasure to these excursions.
By now she had lost the feeling of uneasiness that Beeston once had roused in her; and in its place had risen a deep affection for the dark, lonely, grim old man. Of his son he no longer asked now, silenced when once he realized she could tell him nothing; nor did he ever probe her about her own experiences. The past, it seemed, he had accepted as a closed book. It was as if he had resolved to rouse no sleeping dogs, but meant to take out of what was left him of life whatever happiness it held. Bab, for all his prickly ways, could not have had a kindlier, more devoted relative. Certainly he let her want for nothing. All that money meant was hers. Beeston every day made sure of that.
"Happy?" he'd rumble at her.
"Happy!" she'd return.
To see her few indeed would have thought any shadow hovered in her heart—not David, not Beeston, at any rate. Perched up between them in the motor, she laughed and chatted, her face radiant, the slim figure in its furs, its jaunty little toque, a charming, animated picture. Indeed, with David's gentleness, with her grandfather's gruff, amused indulgence, there were times when she could almost forget that shadow; when, in fact, she was forgetfully happy, almost as happy as she averred.
It was on a day, a ride just such as this, then, that Bab first got that hint about Varick. That day David had not gone with them. The Lloyds having closed their town house, transferring themselves to their country place out on Long Island, David was spending the day there. Alone with Bab, Beeston all at once grew communicative.
A smile, lurking and sardonic, had crept into his face. Curiously, though, as Bab was to learn, it was at himself that Beeston smiled. The man, it appeared, had been trying to do a kindly turn; and this, the cause of his cynical amusement, seemed to have been no less than an effort to reward Mrs. Tilney and Mr. Mapleson for what they'd done for Bab. To his amazement, however, the two had declined, Mrs. Tilney refusing stiffly, not to say indignantly, the offer made by Beeston's lawyers, Mr. Mapleson, for his part, growing suddenly agitated.
Bab pricked up her ears. Mr. Mapleson's queerness long had been an old story with her. Of late, though, in her visits to Mrs. Tilney's, she had noted he had grown still more queer. Why was it? What had happened that made them all so queer? Why the last time she had gone there she had happened suddenly on Mr. Mapleson, and the little man was in tears! And then, too, that was but a part of it.