The Prodigal Father Part 43

The injured lady met her betrayer with marked constraint. She seemed to antic.i.p.ate little pleasure from the interview, but had evidently made up her mind to go through with it as a duty she owed her reputation and her friend Mr. Brown. This gentleman was grave, elderly, and of an unmistakably professional aspect. In a vague way Heriot fancied he had seen his face before, though he could not recollect where.

"Well," said Mr. Walkingshaw genially, "here we all are; and now what's the business before the meeting?"

"I understand," replied Mr. Brown, in a calm and gentle voice, "that you have broken off your engagement with this lady. Now, as a--well, I may say, as an interested friend of Mrs. Dunbar, I should very much like to have your reasons."

Heriot smiled.

"Will you undertake to believe them?"

"I undertake to give them my closest professional consideration, whatever they are."

"May I ask if you are a lawyer?"

Mr. Brown coughed once or twice before replying.

"He is," said Andrew decisively, and Mr. Brown seemed content to let this reply pa.s.s as his own.

"You can talk to me with the utmost frankness," he said; "in fact, I infinitely prefer it."

"Well," began Heriot, "the simple fact of the matter is that I am growing rapidly younger."

"Ah?" commented Mr. Brown.

It was curious that he should exchange a quick glance, not with the lady whose interests he was representing, but with her errant lover's faithful son.

"Yes," said Mr. Walkingshaw, warming to his narrative, "I am literally racing backwards. It is like a drive over a road one has pa.s.sed along before, only in the opposite direction and much faster. I simply whizz past the old milestones. Now, a man who is behaving like that has no business to marry an already mature lady, who is growing older at the rate of, say one, while he is growing younger at the rate of, say ten; has he, Mr. Brown?"

"No," replied Mr. Brown emphatically, "I honestly don't think he has."

Heriot was delighted with this confirmation of his judgment. He threw a glance at the widow to see how she took it, but her eyes were cast down, and she displayed no emotion whatever.

"That's the long and the short of the matter, Mr. Brown. I make the profoundest apologies to my charming relative; but if you agree that I acted for the best, I suppose we might as well adjourn and have a cup of tea."

"Just one moment," said Mr. Brown gently. "I should like to have a few more particulars regarding this very interesting phenomenon, if you don't mind."

"Not a bit, my dear sir. It's a very natural curiosity."

"You feel, of course, a considerable exhilaration of spirits in consequence of this change?"

"I'm simply bursting with them."

"Naturally, naturally. And you propose, no doubt, to exercise your activities in some beneficial way?"

"In a dozen ways. I've already been the means of securing two happy engagements for my youngest children."

"And breaking off two," said Andrew.

His father turned to him with a frown. This was hardly the support he expected. To his great pleasure, the sympathetic Mr. Brown also disapproved of the interruption.

"One thing at a time, please," said he, and resumed his intelligent inquiries. "These young persons to whom your children have become engaged--they are hardly the matches you would have made at one time, are they?"

"I'm afraid I was a bit of an a.s.s at one time," Mr. Walkingshaw confessed.

"I see, I see. And now, as to the engagements you have broken off--you felt yourself inspired, prompted from within, as it were, to bring them to an end, I take it?"

"You've put it deuced well," said Heriot.

"Did you feel in any way inspired from without--any visions or voices, so to speak, any manifestations or appearances--anything of that kind?"

Mr. Walkingshaw looked a little puzzled.

"The voices of romance and love, and that sort of thing, I certainly heard."

"Quite so, quite so, Mr. Walkingshaw. You heard them, did you? Well, it's not every one who hears these things."

He smiled pleasantly, and Mr. Walkingshaw became confirmed in his opinion that this was quite one of the most agreeable men he had met for a long time.

"May I ask whether you propose to take any more steps to put this poor world of ours to rights?" inquired Mr. Brown.

"He is taking control of the business again," said Andrew.

"Again?" retorted Heriot. "When did I ever lose control of the business, I'd like to know? I've had my holiday, and now I'm going to make things hum in the office."

"You are going to make them hum?" asked Mr. Brown. "Do you mean you are going to override your partner's decisions, and so on?"

"My dear Mr. Brown, if I waited for his decisions, I'd be kicking up my heels in the office half the day. Metaphorically speaking, my son is somewhat like a man who fills his bath from a teacup instead of turning on the tap. I don't override his decisions, I simply antic.i.p.ate them."

"That is his account of it," said Andrew darkly.

"Well, well," smiled Mr. Brown, "I think I understand. And now, Mr.

Walkingshaw, may I ask if there is anything else you propose to do?"

This time he glanced at Andrew, as if courting information.

"He is altering his will," said the junior partner.

"Ah!" remarked his visitor again.

Mr. Walkingshaw drew himself up.

"That is my own affair," he said, with dignity.

"Quite so--quite so," replied Mr. Brown in that peculiarly soothing voice he had at his command. "We would wish to make no inquiries into that. Only, there's just one thing I'd like to know--you don't mean to let the gra.s.s grow under your feet, I take it?"

"No fears," said Heriot. "What I mean to do, I'm going to do at once.

By Jingo, I'll be under age in a few years! I've got to do things promptly."

"Thank you," replied Mr. Brown suavely, "I think that is all I want to know. We needn't detain you any longer, Mr. Walkingshaw."