The Prodigal Father Part 32

"Good heavens!" cried Lucas. "Read that."

Hillary read--

"Come immediately. Unfortunate complication here. Require you to explain fully.--HERIOT WALKINGSHAW."

He looked considerably sobered.

"Of course I didn't really mean what I was saying--"

Lucas interrupted him brusquely.

"I'm off. Look after things here. What the devil--"

He strode down the lane, hailed a cab, and drove off to an accompaniment of the most anxious speculations.

"This way, sir," said the attendant at the Hotel Gigantique.

Lucas followed him, still racking his brains for some explanation not too disastrous to his hopes. The man opened the door of a sitting-room and closed it quietly behind him. In the room there was only one person, a girl with the sunniest hair and the straightest little nose and the most delightfully astonished face imaginable.

"Jean!" he cried.

He took a quick step towards her and then remembered the gravity of the summons.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Then it was you!" she exclaimed.

"Me?"

"Father only told me that some one--a man--"

He held out the telegram abruptly.

"What do you make of that?"

She read it, and then read it again, and her bewilderment seemed to change into another emotion.

"What did your father tell you to do?" asked Lucas.

She gave him the queerest look.

"Get rid of the man if I could," she said.

He ran his fingers through his mop of brown hair.

"But I don't understand--what's the 'complication'?"

She began to smile shyly--

"Lucas, don't you think--don't you see--there's nothing else. _I_ must be the complication here."

"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Walkingshaw.

The lovers endeavored to look as though the artist had been merely posing his patron's daughter.

"Well?" inquired that patron genially.

Lucas had not altogether lost his ready audacity.

"I came at once, sir," he replied, "and I have explained fully. The complication has been cleared up."

Laughing gleefully, chattering away much more like the prospective best man than the future father-in-law, he led them (an arm thrown about each) towards the sofa, where they sat together, crowded but happy.

"What would you put your income at now, Lucas?" he inquired mischievously.

Lucas looked a little rueful.

"The same fluctuating figures, I'm afraid," he confessed.

"My dear fellow, don't worry," said Heriot kindly. "Money isn't everything in this world. Youth and love and pluck are the main things.

Hang it, what if you do get into debt occasionally? You've got a pretty oofy father-in-law. Of course, my dear chap, I don't encourage extravagance; far from it"--he glanced complacently at the chaste upholstery of the Hotel Gigantique. "I believe in paying your way, and laying by for a rainy day, and all that kind of thing, just as much as ever I did--in theory, anyhow. But in practice I may just as well tell you at once, to ease your mind, that Jean will have three hundred a year to keep the pot boiling."

He pooh-poohed their grat.i.tude with the most genial air.

"Don't mention it, my dear young people, don't mention it. It comes out of Andrew's share, so it's all right."

"But I couldn't dream of robbing Andrew!" cried Jean warmly.

"He spends his days in robbing our clients," chuckled the senior partner, "so you needn't worry about him. Besides, he doesn't know how to spend money even when he has got it." He lowered his voice confidentially. "Andrew hasn't a spark of the sportsman in him; he's all very well as a partner--one wants 'em tough; but as a son--good Lord!"

And then the good gentleman tactfully retired to the billiard-room, leaving behind him the two happiest people in London.

CHAPTER XII

Naturally, Lucas stayed to dinner, and naturally also he and Jean were left in uninterrupted occupation of the private sitting-room, while her father and Frank smoked and talked together in a quiet corner of the hall. Mr. Walkingshaw was radiant with the reflection of the happiness he had brought about. He could do nothing but make little plans for introducing Lucas to his picture-buying acquaintances, select eligible districts of London for their residence, and jot down various articles of furniture or ornament that he could spare them from his own mansion.

Frank seemed equally delighted, though his good spirits were occasionally interrupted by fits of reverie.

"Somehow or other," said Mr. Walkingshaw, "I feel more and more like a friend of Jean and you, and less and less like your father. Odd thing, isn't it, Frank?"

"A jolly fine thing," said Frank warmly. "By Jove, sir, I can't tell you how much I prefer it!"

"Do you really? Well, then, I won't worry about the feeling any more."