Rich Man, Poor Man

by Maximilian Foster

At the time of his first offense he had salved his conscience with the usual sophistries. It was a loan, he had whispered to himself. It would be returned at once. He had indeed paid back all but a few dollars when an accident exposed him. No excuse availed then; and the joke of it, too, was that when once his disgrace became public the politician, with characteristic effrontery, publicly disowned him! Thus broken, beaten, outraged, he had served a five-years' penalty; and emerging from jail, he had renounced not only his family but all else that connected him with the unhappy past. The day he had come forth from Sing Sing was, in fact, the day he first had shown himself at Mrs. Tilney's. And then?

There were those first years of Mr. Mapleson's stay in the boarding house. There was the coming, too, of that unknown woman—the widowed girl mother and her child; then the mother's death. Lonely and shy, a man at heart as tender as a woman, the child thus brought to Mr. Mapleson had given him all the love and tenderness that life theretofore seemed to have denied him. And comforted by it, with all that child's affection to cheer him, to heal the hurt he had felt, Mr. Mapleson had sought in every way to repay Bab for all she had been to him. The forgery, his second effort, was a guaranty of this.

"Diamonds and pearls!" That had been his promise. However, it was not merely to get these that the fraud had been committed. Bab's interest in Varick, the newcomer at Mrs. Tilney's, Mr. Mapleson had been quick to see. Beeston beginning then to advertise for news of his long-lost son, the little man had grasped at the chance of a desperate coup. Bab's people he had not found. What is more, he knew he never would. The story the mother herself had suggested—that she was a widow, that she had come to New York to earn a living, that neither she nor her husband had any kin left living—all this, Mr. Mapleson had assured himself, must be true. His fraud, therefore, had been deliberate. How in his cracked wits, though, he hoped to succeed with it, who knows or who can tell? It is enough that he not only had tricked the Beeston lawyers but, shrewd as Mrs. Tilney was, had managed to cozen her as well. And Bab had been entrenched in the Beeston household as firmly, it seemed, as if she had been born there.

But now—— Across the car aisle the two girls giggling and whispering there paused to nudge each other as Varick abruptly arose. Little wonder too! As the guard called his station and he wandered toward the door he had wrung his brows into a scowl, a frown of gathering disquiet. Why had that card been put beneath his door? What was it the Beestons knew? Had they so soon discovered the fraud, or was the message no more than a coincidence? It seemed to Varick inconceivable that David Lloyd should have sought him for any but the one reason. And yet why him? That in itself was startling. Why apply to him? Why not apply to the man responsible? Why?

With a swift look, turning as he left the car, Varick glanced behind him. Yes, he still was followed! That man, his shadow, still was there! He sped on toward Mrs. Tilney's, and, racing up the steps, was panting softly as he shut the street door behind him.

Why were they following him? Why had David Lloyd come to Mrs. Tilney's? More than that, if they knew, what was to happen to Bab? A moment later Varick rapped at Mr. Mapleson's door.

The Pine Street real-estate office that employed Mr. Mapleson at twenty-eight dollars a week, and long had thought these wages high, still further added to a reputation for free-handed generosity by making each Saturday in the spring and summer a half-holiday for their employees. These for years had been the joy of the little man's life. Swiftly he would put his desk in order, breathe a timid good-day to his fellow-clerks, then speed on his way uptown. There Bab would be waiting him.

The years had made little change. She had always been there—in the beginning as the Bab that Mr. Mapy had first known, the child in pigtails and pinafores, hanging over the gate and waving wildly when she saw him coming; then as a little bigger, a little older Bab, a stilty-legged young one who came running up the street to meet him. As soon as Mr. Mapleson had bolted luncheon, gobbling in his haste, he and Bab would sally forth, the man almost as eager as the child, bound together for an afternoon in the Park. Pennies in those days were scarce with the little man, but somehow he still managed to find enough for a voyage in the swan boats, a trip or two in the goat wagons, a mad whirl on the merry-go-round. "Who's got the brass ring? Ride again!" The first time Bab, by skill of arms, speared the treasured prize, Mr. Mapy was nearly beside himself with excitement.

"Who's got the brass ring? Why, she has!" he cried indignantly when the master of ceremonies monotonously chanted his cry. "My little girl's got it, of course!" snorted Mr. Mapy.

But time flies. There came a year when the carrousel even, with its gilded, splendid steeds, its giraffes, its stages, its flying dragons, gave way to other charms, more sedate, older, more grown up. On Saturdays then, Bab and Mr. Mapy wandered elsewhere, Bab now a slender, slim thing with dresses let down to her boot tops. It was to picture galleries and places like that, theaters too, that they now went, to see a good play that Mr. Mapy beforehand had made sure was good. For the little man, peculiar as he might be, in one respect had no delusions. Whether or not Bab fell heir to her diamonds and pearls, Mr. Mapleson meant her to grow up into a clean-minded, healthy-headed woman—the kind that looks you quietly in the face, clean, unafraid, as clear-eyed as Diana. She should be good, whatever else, vowed Mr. Mapy; and though the term be homely, as homely as his ambition, there is somehow about it a nobility at which even the most cynical of us may not sneer. Ave, John Mapleson! Salutamus!