The Prodigal Father Part 23

"Oh, I don't mean that. I mean--well, everything has its compensating disadvantages. Mine is that my contemporaries are outgrowing me.

Charlie and I started the evening in capital style; he was up to anything, and I was on for anything. But by the end of the night we were quite out of sympathy. The fact is, he is still in the sixties. However, my duty has been done; I've seen him, and that's over."

He helped himself to some more fish, and continued with animation--

"Now I can carry out my idea! I may or may not set about it the right way, but I do want to make you all happy Frank."

It was perhaps well for his continued equanimity that during the first part of this speech Frank was lost in contemplation of a singularly vivid image of Ellen Berstoun. She had a distracting habit of appearing like that to the young soldier, of which he was unable to cure her. He started out of his reverie with the last words.

"My dear father, you're the best sportsman I know," he replied warmly.

Mr. Walkingshaw looked highly gratified at this compliment.

"That's what I'm aiming at," he answered.

He leaned over the table and continued confidentially--

"Of course you are happy, Frank. There's really nothing Providence could do for you except put a little money in your pocket, and give you a good time--eh?"

"Oh--er--nothing."

"What's the matter? That doesn't sound very cheerful."

"I a.s.sure you I'm as cheerful as--er--er--anything," said Frank heroically.

"I was sure of it. But poor Jean--she's got her troubles, eh, Frank?"

Frank warmed up at his sister's name.

"She has," he admitted.

Mr. Walkingshaw thoughtfully piled several slices of bacon on his plate.

It would have rea.s.sured Colonel Munro greatly to have seen him.

"I wish I was sure that Vernon was good enough for her."

Frank looked up quickly.

"I don't think anybody is quite good enough for Jean; but Lucas Vernon is really a deuced fine fellow."

Mr. Walkingshaw still seemed doubtful.

"A bit lazy, I'm afraid."

"I a.s.sure you he's not," said Frank. "He works, sir, like the very d.i.c.kens."

"He can't sell his pictures," replied his father. "I'll never believe in an artist till he can sell what he paints."

"The difficulty for a painter is to get hold of the right man--the fellow with the money," urged Frank.

"That's a mere matter of time," said his father; "they are sure to meet sooner or later, and then the point is, has he painted anything worth selling? If Vernon can manage to prove that, I may begin to believe in him. If he's a fraud it is time the thing was stopped for Jean's sake."

He looked much more like the old Heriot Walkingshaw than he had for some weeks. Then he smiled, though still with an exceedingly shrewd air.

"Well," he concluded, "we'll see."

CHAPTER IV

There is a by-street which opens out of the King's Road, Chelsea, and for a short distance pursues a course as respectable as the early career of Mr. Walkingshaw. Then, not unlike that gentleman, it diverges at right angles; and having once begun, goes on doubling for the remainder of its existence, shedding, as it gets round each corner, the more orthodox houses that once bore it company, till at last it becomes a mere devious lane, the haunt of low eccentric buildings; in places, owing to a casual tree or two, positively shady. The eccentric buildings, one is not greatly surprised to hear, are nothing more decorous than the studios of Bohemian painters. Such are the dangers of deviating from a straight and adequately lamp-lit route.

In one of these studios a young man fiercely painted. His powerful, loosely clad figure stepped nervously back and forward, his brush now poised trembling in the air, now dabbing and swishing on the long-suffering canvas. His mop of brown hair had started the day brushed back and comparatively sleek; it was now a mere tousel. His b.u.t.terfly tie had been a thing of some esthetic pretensions; it was become a tangle of silk. His smile had been bland and his manner courteous; he now resembled a buffalo with a bullet in it.

"The beastly thing won't come right!" he roared.

Another young man reclined upon a deck-chair in company with three cushions. His appearance was equally artistic, but he seemed less strenuous. He was pale, slim, rather pretty than handsome, and engagingly polite.

"Cheer up, dear old fellow," he suggested.

"d.a.m.n!" muttered Lucas.

He toiled in agitated silence for some minutes, and then burst out again.

"No one will ever exhibit the thing; no one will ever look twice at it; there's not a fool big enough in England to buy it! And it's all but the best bit of work I've ever done."

"That 'all but' lets you down, I suppose," observed the other gently.

"One could fill a lunatic asylum with you alone," replied the painter.

"Why don't you go off and do some work instead of exhibiting your incompetence here?"

"I told you I'd a headache," said the young man in the chair languidly.

"What the devil's in your head to ache beats me," declared Lucas, accompanying this unkind speech by a brutal onslaught on the canvas.

"Dear Lucas!" smiled his friend. "You seem to have come under some softening influence lately. Can you be in love?"

The painter turned and confronted him with a less furious air.

"You know I am," he replied, and strode to the end of the studio and back, while the other contemplated him in pitying silence.

"I feel a fraud, Hillary," he resumed.

"So long as you aren't found out--" began Hillary.

"I have found myself out," retorted Lucas. "I boasted I could make an income for her--and look at this daub!"