The Prodigal Father Part 5

On two chairs very close together and far removed from the others, Jean and Ellen talked. Their voices, too, were hushed, but the subject of their conversation was evidently more agitating than cooks. In fact, there was something very like a sob more than once in Jean's voice, and Ellen held her hand and gently pressed it. But when poor Jean saw her favorite brother coming towards her with a warm sympathy in his eyes that told her he knew her trouble, she could control herself no longer.

Up she jumped, and throwing him one wry, tearful smile as she pa.s.sed, ran out of the room.

The two elder ladies looked up and then down again at their work. They had not yet heard of the painful episode. Frank came forward and took his sister's chair, which had been drawn so very close to Ellen's. He was thus able, by exercising caution, to take up the confidential conversation.

"I suppose she has told you?" he muttered, with a wary glance towards his aunt.

"Yes," murmured Ellen. "I'm so sorry!"

She looked nearly as distressed as Jean, and her gentle voice made her words sound like a sweet lament for all unhappy loves.

"I call it the deuce of a shame!" said the soldier.

"Can't we do anything to persuade your father?"

He was conscious of a little glow at being adopted so instinctively as an ally.

"I've told him what I think about it."

"Have you?"--there was a sparkle in her eyes.--"How good of you! What did he say?"

"Told me to hold my tongue."

Her face fell.

"I must talk to Andrew about it."

Frank smiled sardonically.

"I'm afraid you won't find him very sympathetic either."

She looked down at her little pointed shoe and said nothing.

"Who isn't very sympathetic, Frank?" asked Miss Walkingshaw, suddenly looking up.

He started guiltily.

"Oh--er--a lot of fellows one can think of," he explained.

Mrs. Dunbar looked at the two young people curiously. She knew whom she herself did not consider sympathetic, and jumped to a conclusion. There was nothing the junior partner would dislike more than being critically discussed by that dear girl who was so much too nice for him, and that engaging boy who was so infinitely better-looking. It seemed a pity they could not enjoy their conversation without interruption.

"Would you like me to play you something, dear?" she asked.

"Oh yes, dear," said Miss Walkingshaw. "Do, please!"

They were the most affectionate of friends. Indeed, it was touching to see how devoted Madge was to Heriot's wintry sister. n.o.body else had ever seen so much in her to love.

The music began, and, once started, showed no sign of stopping. Over the top of her music Mrs. Dunbar's black eyes smiled a discreet approval of the confidential pair. She only wished that Andrew, gagged and bound beneath his brother's chair, was here to listen to them. She was sure they must be discussing something it would do him good to hear.

"Is Mr. Vernon a very nice man?" asked Ellen.

"One of the best. These artist fellows are apt to be a bit swollen-headed for my taste, but Lucas Vernon's a sportsman."

She appreciated the distinction succinctly indicated.

"He does sound nice," she said. "Oh, I wish everybody had enough money!"

Frank drew another distinction.

"Everybody who deserved it, anyhow."

"Well," said Ellen softly, "if I had the arrangement of things, I would risk it and give _everybody_ enough. It makes me so unhappy to see people longing for things they can never possibly get--whether they deserve them or not."

The young soldier looked at her oddly from the corner of his eye. Could it be possible that two people could sit so close together and speak in such hushed confidence, and yet that one of them could be so strangely oblivious as not to know when she had laid her slender little finger on the other's open wound? He had the strictest notions of duty and of honor: it was absolutely essential she never should realize: but, alas!

the sympathetic widow was playing the most divinely romantic waltz. To complete the horrible temptation, Ellen looked suddenly at him with her tender eyes shining and her delicate skin gently flushed and murmured--

"It makes me wretched--I pity them so!"

The waltz grew more romantic with every note, the temptation to feel this pity soothe his own wound more irresistible.

"I'm one of 'em," he said.

He endeavored to compromise with duty by throwing the most unfeeling ferocity into his confession; but even the best drilled soldier cannot simultaneously advance and stand where he was.

Ellen's eyes were riveted on him now.

"I'm sorry. Have I said anything I shouldn't?"

She looked distressed, and he realized he had overdone the ferocity.

"No, no, I a.s.sure you. I only meant I--I--well, one can't have everything."

He wished that delirious waltz would stop. It made it so hard to collect one's thoughts, and especially to recover the blank countenance he had managed to a.s.sume before he took this chair and heard that music and looked into those eyes. She smiled with playful kindness.

"Are you so frightfully hard up?"

"It isn't money! Oh, can't you--"

He didn't finish his sentence; nor did he need to. A sudden light dawned in Ellen's eyes; her lips instinctively parted; and then she turned her face away. And thus they sat for what seemed an hour, while the sympathetic widow poured out voluptuous harmonies without cessation.

In reality it was only two minutes later that Mr. Walkingshaw and Andrew entered: the senior partner looking, for a habitual diner-out, curiously flushed after his mild indulgence in port; the junior partner's full cheeks bulging with the backwash of a lover's smile. Frank sprang up, and his brother, smiling even more affectionately, took his chair. At the same moment the widow stopped playing, and the scales seemed suddenly to fall from the young soldier's eyes. He saw himself as the most despicable villain in Europe, and Ellen as lost for ever, whether as sister or friend. So distraught was he that he had nearly tried to open a mid-Victorian cabinet before he discovered it was not the door.

Downstairs he hurried wildly, threw on an ulster and cap, and the front door banged behind him.

The unhappy young man looked up at the circle of solemn mansions which towered above him, black against the dark gray heavens, and it seemed to him that each one as he pa.s.sed it silently rebuked him; while the trees across the street, even though they were decidedly less solid, gave vent to their displeasure audibly. He had been brought up in the severest Scotch traditions, and though life in the army had vastly changed his outlook, it had in certain particulars but subst.i.tuted "form" for "duty." To-night both standards rose spectrally and shook their awful fingers at him. He had let his heart get the better of his head! No member of his family (save luckless Jean) whom he ever knew or heard of had done such a thing before. Or if they had, the indiscretion had been judiciously hushed up, and the family escutcheon kept stainless. As for the divinity he had scandalized, she would never forgive him; she would always think of him as a traitor to his respectable brother!

At this point a little star peeped out of the hurrying clouds and vanished again instantly. It was as though some power above had winked.

On he strode through the steep, empty streets, lines of black freestone houses, built by regular church-goers and unbreathed upon by scandal ever since, frowning upon him perpetually; and the wind, which had risen greatly, wailing and booming all sorts of morals. And now a fresh trouble agitated him. He was growing less contrite! He kept seeing his brother's bulging cheeks, and Ellen's innocent, kind smile, and all sorts of backslidings suggested themselves. He had been criminal enough to fall in love, and now was added another crime--he could not fall out again. Never had he dreamt of such depths of depravity in him, Frank Walkingshaw.

Again a little star twinkled for an instant.