The Prodigal Father Part 38

Her expression altogether changed.

"What's the matter?" she exclaimed.

His mind calmed down. Composing his countenance, he shook his head sadly.

"I don't think he'll get over it."

She laid her hand upon his arm with a quick, involuntary gesture.

"But what has happened? Tell me!"

The wisdom of age and the shrewdness of youth twinkled together in Mr.

Walkingshaw's eye, but he managed to retain a decorously solemn air.

"You are really concerned this time?"

"Of course! I--I mean, naturally."

He drew her hand through his arm and led her along the fringe of the pine woods.

"Come and see," he said gently. "Poor boy he's had a bad fall."

"What! Is he here--with you?"

"Yes--yes," he answered, with an absent and melancholy air.

He led her a few paces into the trees, and there, seated on a fallen trunk, they saw the victim of fate smoking a cigarette with a meditative air. He sprang to his feet with a light in his eye that might have been the result of some acute disaster, but scarcely looked like it.

"Frank, my boy," said his father, "I have just been explaining to Ellen that you have fallen"--he turned to the girl with a merry air--"in love!" he chuckled, and the next moment they were listening to his flying footsteps and looking at one another.

CHAPTER II

High overhead the pines murmured gently, and Mr. Walkingshaw, strolling through the quiet colonnades below in solitude and shade, heard the strangest messages whispered down by those riotous tree-tops. He was no longer even middle-aged! Or at least his heart certainly was not. It seemed to keep a decade or so younger than his body, and Heaven knew that was growing younger fast enough! At this rate how much longer could he play the beneficent parent? Good Lord, he had jolly nearly fallen head over ears in love with sweet Ellen Berstoun in the course of five minutes' conversation! She wasn't a day too old for Heriot W. That's to say, he could do with a la.s.sie of that age fine, and, by Gad, he shouldn't wonder but Ellen mightn't have rather cottoned to him if her heart had been free. She looked deuced coy when she thought he was proposing. Yes, a girl like Ellen was the ticket for him. But in that case, what about Madge?

For several minutes Mr. Walkingshaw stood very solemnly studying the bark on an entirely ordinary pine, concluding his scrutiny by hitting it a sharp smack with his walking-stick and turning away from the sight of it with apparent distaste. However, a minute or two later he seemed to find one he liked better, for he placed his back against it, removed his hat, and gazed upwards at the softly murmuring branches. Once more their whispers made him smile. Sufficient for the day were the difficulties thereof! That was the way to look at it. Meanwhile, the spring was young, and the little flowers in the wood were young, and the blue sky that showed in peeps through the swinging tree-tops looked as young as any of them, and certainly it was a young and l.u.s.ty breeze that swayed them. By Jingo, what excellent company they all were for him!

And then he heard another murmuring sound, coming this time from behind him. He held his breath and caught the words--

"Ellen! I love you--I love you!"

He peeped round the tree, and for an instant saw them. A most gratifying tribute to his diplomacy--but devilish disturbing to a young fellow without a girl! Hurriedly he snapped a twig; he snapped another; he broke a branch; he whistled, he coughed, he shouted. And then they looked up, vaguely surprised to find there was another person in the world.

"Well, Frank," said his father, as they walked back together towards their inn, "are you not feeling happy now, my boy, eh?"

"Happy!" exclaimed Frank. "I'm stupefied with happiness!"

As Heriot Walkingshaw strode between the spring breeze and the murmuring pines, his son's arm through his, listening to his grat.i.tude and Ellen's praises, he too felt happier than ever before in his life. What a lot of pleasure he had learned how to give. And the way to give it was so simple once you found it out. Apparently you had merely to get in sympathy with people, and then do the things which naturally, under those circ.u.mstances, you would both like to be done. There was really nothing in it at all; still, it was jolly well worth doing.

Only as they neared the inn did a qualm begin to trouble Frank.

"It's deuced rough luck on Andrew, losing that girl," he said suddenly.

"Hang it, it would kill _me_!"

"It's only losing his money that'll ever hurt Andrew," replied his father cheerfully. "Don't you worry about what he'll say."

Unfortunately, Mr. Walkingshaw forgot that the provision for this happy marriage was, in fact, coming indirectly from Andrew's pocket. Even the youngest of us cannot foresee everything, or Heriot would not have been humming "Gin a laddie kiss a la.s.sie," quite so lightheartedly.

"I must say I funk having it out with him," remarked Frank.

"Just you leave it all to me. I'm a match for Andrew any day."

It would have been well if Mr. Walkingshaw had "touched wood" as he made this vaunt; but at that moment his confidence was so serene that he felt master of any emergency conceivable by man.

"Andrew's not the mate for Ellen," he said presently. "The young are for each other, Frank; that's the law of nature."

He smiled to himself.

"I learnt that this afternoon. By Jove, what a pretty girl Ellen is!"

And then again his young heart remembered the sympathetic widow, and he stopped smiling.

CHAPTER III

The backbone of our country is that band of civic heroes who, when turmoil rages and disaster threatens, are the last men to desert the desk. In this glorious company Andrew Walkingshaw was numbered. His father might tear up and down the country like a disreputable whirlwind, his widowed relative fume and plot, his sister disgrace the family by an unsuitable engagement, his betrothed leave his affectionate letters unanswered, his own soul writhe in decorous anguish at these calamities, but Casabianca himself was not more faithful to his post than he. It is true, indeed, that he had once tried the alternative policy and chased that cyclone, but he had taken to heart the lesson, and thenceforth closed his ears to disquieting rumors, his eyes to distressing symptoms, and went about his work, if possible, more conscientiously than ever.

That was the proper way to get through business--conscientiously. He was sickened with the people (clients of some eminence, but evidently with a screw loose) who kept deferring their more important concerns till the senior partner returned with his infernal headlong methods. Let them wait if they liked! Let them take their business elsewhere if they were such fools! Deliberately and calmly _he_ had washed his hands of his senior partner. That was the end of him so far as he was concerned, said Andrew to himself. But alas! you may wash your hands of a tornado, but supposing it retorts by blowing down your house?

It was about nine in the evening, and he sat by himself, severely scrutinizing the pleadings drawn up by his clerk for a forthcoming case, connected with so large a sum of money that it was a pleasure merely to read the imposing figures. The ladies were upstairs in the drawing-room.

So long as Mrs. Dunbar was among them, he was not likely to show his face _there_.

The door opened, and he turned, frowning at the interruption, and then sprang up with a troubled eye. It was his father certainly; but what a remarkable change since he had seen him last! For the first time Andrew realized the full enormity of his conduct in growing younger. His very appearance had become a crying scandal.

"Sweating away at your old papers?" inquired Heriot pleasantly.

Andrew stiffly resumed his seat.

"Yes, I am busy," he replied, and took up the pleadings again.

But his father ignored the hint. Straddling comfortably before the fire, he remarked--

"Frank and I have been up to Perths.h.i.+re."