"Hush!" she whispered, and came close up to him. "Father has suddenly been taken very ill."
At that moment Andrew also appeared, to see who had entered. He looked portentously grave.
"Well," he said, "what have I been saying? It's happened just exactly as anybody but a fool might have known it would—just precisely. He's no one to blame but himself for it—and his precious Mrs. Dunbar."
He rubbed his hands almost pleasantly.
"That quack's done for him—and his wine to-night finished the job. Well, I warned him against both. People that will not take advice must bide the consequences. Are you going to stay up for Dr. Mackenzie, Jean?"
"Of course," she said.
"Well then, I might as well get off to my bed. If there's any immediate danger,"—his face grew very solemn,—"if the end's expected in the night, or anything like that, just knock on my door."
The junior partner bade them a grave good-night and retired; and such imaginative persons as are not satisfied with this bald record of facts, may picture him either as offering up a brief prayer for his father's happy recovery, or meditating upon the image of his betrothed—or both.
Fortunately, it proved unnecessary to disturb the junior partner during the night, but next morning, when he had heard the doctor's report and personally visited the sick-bed, he took the most serious view of the situation. He summoned his two married sisters, urging them to lose no time; he spent only half an hour at the office; and then he sat down with hisScotsmanin the library (his Bible accessible in case of emergencies) to await the developments that he grieved to think were now practically inevitable. The doctor had paid a second visit and given the gloomiest report. Put in a nutshell, it came to this: that he could make neither head nor tail of his patient's symptoms, but that, as they were clearly the result of a course of treatment at the hands of an unqualified practitioner, it was improbable that Mr. Walkingshaw would recover from the consequences of his error.
In the afternoon he was told that his father would like to see him. He had finished theScotsmanand begun a conversation with his betrothed in a gently facetious vein, but it took him not a moment to adjust his features to the rigidity of an urn, and save for the faint squeaking of his boots, he ascended the stairs with noiseless solemnity. He found Mr. Walkingshaw propped up on pillows and breathing heavily. The demeanor of both was exactly becoming to the situation.
"Are you suffering much pain?" inquired the son in a hushed voice.
"It comes and goes," sighed the father. "It was just diabolical a few minutes ago; now it's a wee thing better, thanks."
"A kind of temporary relief," suggested the son.
"Possibly, possibly. I'd like to think it was going to last, though."
"I wish I could hold out hopes," said Andrew sympathetically.
Mr. Walkingshaw stirred suddenly.
"The doctor's not given me up yet, surely?" he exclaimed in a louder voice.
"Hush, hush! It'll only hurry things if you let yourself get excited."
"But, Andrew, my dear boy, tell me what he said to you."
The junior partner shook his head, kindly but resolutely.
"No, no; not yet awhile. So long as your mind remains clear, just keep composed; and then, when you feel any decided change, I'll hold nothing back from you, and we can get the rest of the family round the bedside. You'll agree that's the best thing."
The orthodoxy of this programme ought, one would think, to have soothed the W.S. But it is strange what fancies sick men take.
"I don't agree at all," said Mr. Walkingshaw warmly. "In fact, I may tell you Cyrus warned me there might be kind of temporary complications."
He looked at his son for a moment and then added, with sudden decision—
"Andrew, I'd like to see Cyrus."
A grim smile dilated Andrew's cheeks.
"You'll have to catch him first. He's off."
"Off?"
"Bolted this morning as soon as he heard he'd done for you. I hear he owes a couple of hundred pounds in the town, one way and another. That's your Professor for you!"
Mr. Walkingshaw groaned. His son thought itwell to improve the occasion, since he did not expect to have many more.
"Him and his radio-electricity! What was it he was going to do—renew the cells of the body?"
"Well, why shouldn't cells be renewed?" protested the invalid weakly.
"There will be," said his son facetiously. "He'll find himself in one again or I'm mistaken."
Mr. Walkingshaw lay silent for a few minutes. Then suddenly he groaned.
"Another of them coming on!" he muttered, and twisted his face away.
It was a few minutes more before he spoke again.
"I trust they'll catch the rascal! Andrew, my boy, can you not do anything to assist the police?"
It was impressive to see how adequately the junior partner handled each fresh development of the situation. At these last words he looked exceedingly grave.
"Had your thoughts not better be turning to other things?" he suggested.
The invalid's head started forward from the pillow.
"Will you have the kindness to mind your own—" he began; and then, in judgment, another spasm assailed him.
Andrew closed his eyes, drew down the corners of his mouth, and his lips moved silently but evidently piously. It was impossible to remain callous to such an elevating influence.
"You are right, Andrew; you are right," said his father. "And now, just supposing I was taken, you'll see that affair of Guthrie and Co. through the way we decided on?"
Andrew opened his eyes immediately and exhibited a fresh instance of his adaptability to each changing circumstance.
"I've just been thinking of a better method still," he answered promptly. "Why should the creditors get any more than they're legally entitled to? You mind yon five thousand pounds invested in the Grand Trunk Railway?"
"Perfectly, perfectly."
"Well, when one goes into the thing, they've really no more than a moral right to that; and if one once begins on moral rights, there's no end to them."
"That sounds a bit worldly-wise, Andrew; but as you like—as you like."
His junior partner regarded him severely.
"I may remind you that I'm only following your own precepts."
"One says things in health that one repents of on a bed of sickness. Manage Guthrie and Co. as you like, but don't quote me if you mean to neglect moral obligations. I had the decency never to quote my own father, and it's the least you can do for yours, Andrew."
Andrew still looked displeased. It seemed to his fastidious ears that there was an unpleasant smack of something remotely resembling cynicism in this speech. It sounded almost as though he were expected to acquiesce in the outrageous proposition that members of his family occasionally allowed moral to be overridden by practical considerations. He could not conceive of himself admitting the possibility of such a thing even in the secret recesses of his soul. It was most uncomfortable to listen to his own father going on like this. He must be very ill indeed—evidently at death's door.
He walked to the window and looked out gloomily upon the gray clouds driving over the black chimney-cans. The wind had risen to a moderate gale, and the air was filled with sounds. It struck him as a very uproarious day for a Writer to the Signet to be going to his long home. He had given his father credit for soberer tastes. In fact, he was reminded unpleasantly of the riotous peoplehe had heard of who passed away in company with a pint of champagne and a cigar. This sort of thing would really not do.
"About my will, Andrew," said his father's voice.
He turned with remarkable alacrity and a forgiving eye. At once he was the deferential offspring.
"You'll find you're left very well off," continued Mr. Walkingshaw.
His son's cheeks bulged in a melancholy smile; precisely the right smile under the circumstances.
"Not at the expense of the others, I hope," he answered modestly.
"Oh, I was meaning you'd be well off as a family."
The smile subsided.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Andrew.
"But of course you'll get the bulk."
The smile mournfully returned.
"You have the position to keep up, and I thought it only fair to you," said Mr. Walkingshaw.
Andrew bent his head in solemn acknowledgment of the truth of this observation and the justice of the arrangement.
"There's just one little addendum I want to make. This unpleasant affair of Jean's has set me thinking, and supposing I'm taken, Andrew—just supposing—"
"Assuming it's as we fear—I understand, I understand."
"Well, then, you see, I'll not be here myself to keep Frank and Jean from doing foolish-like things if they happen to have a mind to; and they're not like you and their sisters. You've all chosen sensibly, but they're in a kind of way different. I ought to have had them educated at home."
"What I've always said," his son agreed.
"Anyhow, it's too late now, and what I'll just have to do is this—introduce a clause making them forfeit their shares if they marry without your consent in the next five years."
"Would ten not be safer?" suggested Andrew.
"We'll say seven, then. And of course you'll not withhold your consent unreasonably? I'll trust you for that."
Andrew's attitude expressed to such perfection the confidence that might be reposed in him that his father shed him a satisfied smile.
"And now," said he, "I wonder had you notbetter get me my will?—or we might wait till to-morrow, and see how I'm feeling then."
If the junior partner had looked grave before, he looked funereal now.
"Your mind's clear now," he said. "I wouldn't put it off."
"Well, well," said Mr. Walkingshaw, "there are my keys on the dressing-table: you know where to find the will."
Andrew went downstairs as solemnly as he had come up, and with the same faint squeak.
It never occurred to Frank and Jean to blame their father in any way for electing so boisterous a day for his probable decease. Clearly they had not so fine an instinct for respectability as their brother. Their orthodoxy, compared with his, was built upon a sandy foundation: warm hearts can never hope to sustain, in its impressive equipoise, the head of an Andrew Walkingshaw. One might as well expect to find sap running up the legs of his office stool.
That afternoon they instinctively drifted away from the others and sat unhappily together. The gusty booming of the wind and the clash of branches in the garden across the gale-scourged street tormented them with fancies. It seemed as though a thousand riotous misfortunes were buffeting their hearts.
"Rain!" cried Jean, with a little start and then a shiver.
"Isn't it beastly?" muttered Frank, his eyes on the carpet.
It came on with the sudden violence of a thunder-clap. In a moment the tossing trees became gesticulating ghosts seen dimly through a veil of glistening rods of water sharply diagonal—nearly horizontal; and even through the musketry rattle on the window-panes they could hear the pavement hiss beneath their deluge.
"Oh, Frank dear!" murmured Jean.
Giving way to illogical tenderness, the young soldier took her hand and held it.
Of course, the least turn for hard argument would have reassured them. The storm would blow over; they could find new lovers; their father, even suppose he died, would receive suitable interment. Besides, they would be the richer by his decease. But they remained foolishly moved.
"If anything does happen to father," said Jean sorrowfully, "I shall never forgive myself."
Frank looked surprised.
"Forgive yourself—for what?"
"For not loving him more. I almost hated him yesterday."
Her voice sank very low and she looked apprehensively at her brother. But he did not rebuke her as he ought.
"It's jolly difficult to love him sometimes," he admitted sadly.
She seemed to gain courage.
"Frank," she said, "have youeveractually felt as affectionate about him as one ought?"
He shook his head.
"He never struck me as wanting that kind of thing. I've respected him, of course."
"Oh, so have I—enormously."
"Well," said Frank, "that's all he wanted out of us, I fancy."
"Still," she murmured, "we might have given him something more."
"'Pon my word, I don't know what he'd have done with it."
She could not but admit that that, in fact, was just the difficulty. The cultivation of sentiment had not been included in Mr. Walkingshaw's youthful curriculum. His father before him had enjoyed but two forms of relaxation from his daily burden of obligations to clients and Calvin—a glass of good claret, and a primitive form of golf played with a missile of feathers in the interstices of a tract of whins. His mother had not even these amusements. Small wonder HeriotWalkingshaw found it a little difficult to sympathize with soft creatures who demanded hot-water bottles at night and affection by day. Jean had a weakness for both, and had only managed to obtain the hot bottle—and even that was a secret.
The deluge continued and the wind bellowed. Lower and lower sank their spirits.
"I sometimes wish I were more like Andrew," sighed Jean.
The young soldier started.
"Oh, Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed, and then in a moment added in a low voice, "I wish I had his luck, though."
Jean softly pressed his hand. She understood.
"I wish you had, Frank," she whispered.
As if in rebuking answer to these impious desires, the portly form of Andrew filled the doorway. He looked like the reincarnation of all the mourners who had ever followed a hearse.
"He is worse," he said in a sepulchral voice. "The end's not far off. You had better come up and see him."
In the sick chamber they found already assembled Miss Walkingshaw, Mrs. Dunbar, Ellen (who kept in the background and never caught Frank's eye once), and their two elder sisters. Ofthis pair, Maggie, the eldest of them all, had long been coupled with Andrew as the two greatest credits to the family. She was the wife (and incidentally, it was said, the making) of Ramornie of Pettigrew, a laird of good estate in the kingdom of Fife. Her business capacity was almost equal to her brother's. She had extracted Pettigrew from the hands of the friends who had been "doing him no good," paid off the bonds on his property, presented him with three creditable children, including the necessary heir male, and would undoubtedly have put him into Parliament could she have ensured her own presence always at his side. But as he would have to deliver his speeches himself, even if she composed them, she was content with making him a deputy-lieutenant. In person this lady suggested the junior partner as well as in mind. She, however, was blonde, and though her cheeks took after his, her upper lip was not quite so substantial.
Gertrude, the second sister, was now Mrs. Donaldson, wife of Hector Donaldson, advocate. At the time, it was considered a middling sort of marriage; since his cross-examination of the co-respondent in Macphersonv.Macpherson and Tattenham-Welby, it had been considered a creditablemarriage; and if his practice continued its present rate of increase, it would soon become a good marriage. In any case, she had justified the Walkingshaw reputation for investing money or person soundly and shrewdly. She resembled her father, and he had always been considered a fine-looking man. Both Andrew and Maggie thought she got too many of her clothes in London. They made her a little conspicuous, and they hoped she could afford it. Still, one heard very encouraging things said of Hector nowadays.
Mr. Walkingshaw was evidently weakening. He lay back with his eyes closed till they were all assembled, and then Andrew, who seemed to have the entire management of the melancholy ceremony, stepped up to the bedside and, with lowered eyelids, murmured—
"They are all here now."
Mr. Walkingshaw opened his eyes.
"I'm likely to be taken," he said in a weak voice. "Andrew'll have told you."
He paused: and one little stifled sob was heard, too gentle to catch his ear. It came from Jean.
"I'd just like to say a word to you all beforeI go. I've tried my best to do my duty by my children and my sister and my kinsfolk."
At this specific inclusion of herself the sympathetic widow could keep silence no longer.
"Indeed you have, Heriot!" she murmured.
"Hush!" said Andrew sternly.
"Let them say what they feel, Andrew," said his father, with a glance of melancholy kindness at the widow. "It's natural enough."
Mrs. Ramornie at once took that hint, and her brief words of eulogy were corroborated by a general murmur.
"Thank you, thank you," said Mr. Walkingshaw. "I may possibly have made mistakes now and then—I am but human. At the same time, I think there's none will gainsay I've shown a kind of respectable example. It's a great thing to be thankful for if one can die without making an exhibition of oneself—a great thing to be thankful for."
The master of ceremonies by a grave glance indicated to the company that another approving murmur would be appropriate, and his own voice led the hum.
"I've another thing to be thankful for," resumedthe invalid, "and that's my eldest son. Andrew'll take good care of you all—of you and the business both. Oh, Frank, my lad, he's a fine example to you; just as your sister Maggie is to you, Jean. Mind you both follow them. You'll never give folks reason to talk about you then. Don't get yourselves talked about! That's the main thing. Of course, you'll take every opportunity of bettering yourselves, both of you; but do it in a kind of sober, decent way. Do it like Andrew: I can say no more than that."
All eyes were sadly fixed on the two distressed young people, but they made no answer, and the affecting scene now terminated with these last few words—
"If by any kind of chance it happens I'm given a year or two more after all, I'll take no more part in worldly matters. I'll leave things to you, Andrew, just the same as if I was gone. If I linger on, a chastened man, taking for a wee while an interest in your welfare, that's all that will be left to me—that's the whole I look forward to."
Andrew's sorrowful eyes replied, "And that's more than we do," as he silently shook his father's hand. Then the company tiptoed sadly out of the sick-room.
Of all the anticipatory mourners, the most demonstrative was the sympathetic widow. She could barely control her emotion till she reached the drawing-room. There she broke down quite.
"Oh, Mary, Mary!" she sobbed.
They were alone together—Mary, commonly styled Miss Walkingshaw, and she. The exemplary spinster was likewise distressed, but in a calmer manner, as became a lady who had shared Heriot's Spartan upbringing.
"Whisht, whisht," said she. "He'll maybe get over it yet."
"No—no, he won't! That horrible beast will see that he doesn't!"
Miss Walkingshaw started nervously.
"You're not meaning the nurse?"
"I mean that—ugh!—that Andrew!"
A bright pink spot appeared in each of Miss Walkingshaw's cheeks. But the widow was too agitated to observe either them or the horrified stare with which she greeted this outburst.
"I believe he wouldkillhim to spite me!"
"Madge!" said the exemplary spinster in a voice which for the first time reminded her of Heriot's.
Mrs. Dunbar collected herself. Doubtless she realized the injustice she was doing that excellent man.
"I am sorry, Mary," she said gently. "I don't know what I'm saying. I admire Andrew as much as any one. I didn't mean it. It was only that I felt Ihadto blame some one for this terrible sorrow."
Her friend continued to look at her with decidedly diminished warmth.
"Our religion forbids us—" she began austerely; but the sympathetic widow hurriedly anticipated her.
"I know, I know, dear—so it does. How true, Mary; oh, how true! How sweet of you to remind me."
She turned her large black eyes, glistening pathetically, full upon her friend; but for some reason Mary continued to regard her with a new and curious expression. A trace of suspicion seemed to be among its ingredients.
Meanwhile her slandered nephew was in thelibrary with his two elder sisters. The gas was now lit and the storm curtained out. Mrs. Ramornie and Andrew talked in decorously lowered voices; Mrs. Donaldson more loudly, and almost more airily, as became her dashing appearance and smart reputation. Yet she too had a nice sense of the solemnity of the occasion, and they forgave her elevated voice, since they knew several people of rank who talked like that.
"An irretrievable loss," Andrew was saying; "an irretrievable loss."
They agreed with him as heartily as people could who were feeling so depressed.
"A public loss," he added; and again they concurred.
"That will have to be taken into consideration in making the arrangements," he went on.
They looked graver than ever.
"Something like Sir James Maitland's?" suggested Mrs. Donaldson.
"Something of the sort," said he.
"I only hope it will not be a wet day," said Mrs. Ramornie. "George caught lumbago at his last funeral—Lord Pitcullo's, you know."
George was the laird of Pettigrew. Nowadays his wife saw that he mixed with none but the mostdesirable company, whether it were alive or dead.
"Oh, my dear, he must come over for it!" said her sister.
"He will," replied Mrs. Ramornie; and they knew that point was settled.
"To tell the honest truth, I'm devoutly thankful for one thing," observed Andrew, with the first smile he had permitted himself, and even it was appropriately grim: "this will put Madge Dunbar's nose out of joint."
"Thank Heaven for that!" replied Mrs. Ramornie devoutly.
"She meant to get him," said Mrs. Donaldson. "I never saw a woman try harder."
"If you'd been living in the house, you'd have seen still more of her trying," replied her brother.
Another fierce shower beat upon the window, with it the gale rose higher and the branches clashed more noisily. Even behind curtains one felt in the presence of something elemental. Silence fell on the three, and when they spoke again it was more solemnly than ever.
"It will make a considerable difference to us all, of course," said Mrs. Donaldson.
Her brother seemed to take this as a question, for he nodded gravely and answered—
"Oh, decidedly it will make that."
She mused for a moment and then turned to her sister.
"What was the name of the shoot the Hendersons had last season?"
"Glenfiddle."
"They paid two hundred, didn't they?"
"Two hundred and twenty," said Andrew.
He was a mine of information on the affairs of his acquaintances, especially on what they paid for things.
"Can you not get enough invitations in the meantime?" asked Mrs. Ramornie.
"Oh, dozens. But we want a little shoot of our own—when we can afford it."
"I only mean to build that new conservatory we've always been talking about," said Mrs. Ramornie; and Andrew pursed his lips and nodded his approval. The pursing was meant as a hint of criticism on their too dashing sister.
It was at that moment that there came the first gentle tap upon the door.
"Come in," said Andrew, and the invalid's nurse entered.
"Mr. Walkingshaw would like a pint bottle of champagne," said she.
The junior partner stared first at her and then at his sisters. They in turn opened their eyes.
"Is it the—er—usual thing?" he inquired.
"The doctor said nothing about it. Who would ever imagine he was going to want champagne again?"
"Is it ever given?" asked Andrew cautiously.
"Oh, I know it's given," interposed Mrs. Ramornie decisively. "George's uncle drank it up to five minutes before he died."
George's uncle had been a very bad example. At the same time he had been a baronet, and Andrew swithered between the dissoluteness of the request and a certain stylishness it undoubtedly possessed.
"Mr. Walkingshaw is very determined for it," said the nurse.
"Very well," he answered. "I'll get it for you."
He went out with her and then returned to his sisters.
"Does it mean the end is near?" asked Mrs. Donaldson in a very hushed voice.
"It means it's nearer," he answered grimly.
Undoubtedly this was a wild end for one of the most respectable lives ever lived in Edinburgh.Outside, the gale was now positively shrieking; and inside, he presumed the cork was already popping.
"What a pity!" said Gertrude.
"Oh, I don't know about that," replied her sister. "It keeps them happy. George's uncle tried to sing after they thought all was over."
Her brother frowned. The possibility that the head of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower might exit singing exceeded his gloomiest forebodings. He wished women did not have that habit of talking about unpleasant things. Could they not keep the like of that to themselves?
Even as he frowned the second tap disturbed them.
"What is it now?" he snapped.
"Could you tell me," asked the nurse, "where Mr. Walkingshaw keeps his cigars?"
"Cigars!" he cried.
"He is very set upon one."
Andrew silently opened a cupboard and handed her a box of cigars. Then, still in silence, he seated himself before the fire and frowned at the dancing flames. Behind his back his sisters talked in low voices, but he seemed to have no taste for further conversation.
A few minutes later came the third tap, andthis time there was so curious a look in the nurse's face that the junior partner was on his feet in an instant.
"Is it—shall we come up?" he exclaimed.
"Mr. Walkingshaw would like to know what there's to be for dinner," said the nurse.
He looked at his sisters and they at him, and then he rang the bell. Nobody spoke till the butler came up.
"Will you ask the cook what's for dinner? Mr. Walkingshaw wants to know."
Andrew threw into this speech all the concentrated bitterness of his soul. Here was the quintessence of unorthodoxy in the very home of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower! The head of the firm proposed to die not merely drinking and smoking, but, if possible, feasting. They might be in some wretched Bohemian den.
In a few minutes the butler returned with a menu. Andrew read it with a sardonic smile.
"Tell him," he said, "that he can have cocky-leeky soup, boiled cod and oyster sauce, loin of mutton, apple charlotte, and cheese straws—any or all of them he likes."
"Thank you," said the nurse.
Andrew planted himself before the fire.
"A fine story this is to get about!" he exclaimed darkly.
"But surely father must be light-headed," said Mrs. Ramornie.
"Umph," he replied.
He clearly did not consider this a very creditable excuse.
"Or perhaps he is really feeling better," suggested Gertrude.
"Better! A man at death's door one minute—given up by the doctors—and wanting to eat his dinner the next!"
He started.
"I wonder's that nurse fooling us! I didn't like the look of the woman from the moment she came into the house. I don't believe in your good-looking nurses."
On this point his sisters cordially agreed with him. Still they didn't believe it was the nurse.
"Then what is it?" he demanded. "If he's light-headed, why does she pay any attention to him?"
The door opened, this time without a tap, and in petrified silence they beheld the portly form of Heriot Walkingshaw, arrayed in a yellow dressing-gown, holding between his fingers a cigar, andsmiling upon them with a curious blend of satisfaction and meekness.
"I have recovered," said he.
As he made this simple announcement he blew luxuriously through his nose two thin streams of smoke, while the meekness of his aspect seemed to make some conscious effort to keep on terms with the satisfaction.
A duet of questions and exclamations arose from the two ladies, and again some conscious restraint appeared to underlie the paternal calm with which he answered them.
"Yes," said he, "it is probably one of the most extraordinary recoveries on record. It began all of a sudden. The spasms passed completely away, my temperature fell to normal, and I felt a curious sensation almost of exhilaration. It grew stronger and stronger till at last I could keep in bed no longer. I felt livelier than I have for years."
He passed the cigar under his nose, drew in his breath, and smiled at it with a kind of partially chastened affection.
"Do you think could we not have dinner put on a little earlier, eh?"
A cry from the open door startled them. Thesympathetic widow, her black eyes dilated, was gazing at the patient.
"Heriot!" she exclaimed, and there was a note in her voice that came very near to damping the junior partner's enthusiasm at finding the head of his firm restored to him.
"Yes, Madge," said Mr. Walkingshaw, his beatific smile still blander, "I have indeed been spared."
He drew another deep whiff from his cigar, and added gently—
"For maybe a few more years of quiet usefulness."
Down the steep street where stands the office of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower, careers a hat. It is a silk hat and of a large size, the hat of a professional man of the most dignified standing and evident brain capacity. Nothing could show better the innate depravity of March winds than their choice of such a hat to play with. They had thousands to choose from—bowlers, caps, wideawakes, all kinds of commonplace head-gear—and here they have selected for their sport this cylinder of silk, symbolical of all most worthy of the city's respect. It leaps and bumps and slides, propelled by the breeze and the law of gravitation, down the decorously paved hill, in company with a little cloud of dust and some scraps of dirty paper. And behind it, now at a canter, now at a panting trot, ambles the portly form of Mr. Heriot Walkingshaw. The very devil must be in the wind to-day.
At the corner of Queen Street the hat met thefull force of the easterly blast, and bidding good-by to gravitation, turned at right angles and skimmed for forty yards through space as though the brothers Wright had mounted it. Then it resumed the action of a Rugby football, pitching now on its end and now on its middle, and behaving accordingly each time. Mr. Walkingshaw, perceiving that it was now bouncing in the direction he desired to go, fell for a moment to a walk and looked around for some assistant. But the only spectators within hail happened to be two errand boys who had not seen a circus for some time and evinced no desire to interrupt the entertainment. So off he started again, his white spats twinkling beneath his flapping overcoat, and covered the first fifty yards in such promising fashion that he was able to strike the revolving rim a series of smart raps with his umbrella before the wind had recovered its breath. Then suddenly up leapt the hat, cannoned from a lamp-post on to the railings of the Queen Street Gardens, from them across the pavement into the gutter, and there, getting nicely on edge, careered like a hoop, with the thud of Heriot's footsteps growing fainter behind.
Down the next cross street came two acquaintancesof the Writer to the Signet, and they stopped at the corner in amazement.
"Good God, that's Heriot Walkingshaw!" cried one.
"A man of his age!" replied the other; "he's running like a wing three-quarter—look at his stride!"
A benevolent lady half stopped the hat with her umbrella. The W.S. was up to it. He stooped to reach it—a quick grab and he had it by the rim.
"Well picked up, sir!" cried one of the acquaintances.
Mr. Walkingshaw did not hear. He was on the other side of the street and engrossed in brushing his quarry with his coat sleeve.
"It's a wonderful performance," remarked the other acquaintance; "but it ought just about to finish him."
"Will it? Look at him—he hasn't turned a hair!"
"It's amazing—positively amazing!" they murmured together as they watched their elderly friend not only replace his trophy on his head, but cock it at an angle that breathed reckless defiance to the March winds.
"Did you ever see Heriot Walkingshaw with his hat at that angle before?"
"As often as I've seen him do even time chasing it!"
Off he strode, breathing faster than usual, and his hat still a little ruffled, but otherwise as jaunty a figure as ever left an office; while his two acquaintances went away to narrate to the wondering city what their astonished eyes had seen.
Meanwhile the junior partner was unburdening his soul to the confidential clerk.
"That's the end of Guthrie and Co.!" he exclaimed wrathfully. "The whole thing settled in a fortnight—we might be a marriage registry! It's just been 'we agree to this,' 'we agree to that,' 'we agree to anything you suggest.' We haven't fought a single point. I'd have made those creditors whistle a bit before they saw yon five thousand pounds! But what's my father say? You heard him yourself—'moral obligation'—'might be fought!'—'get it settled.' He's botched the whole business."
Mr. Thomieson shook his grizzled head.
"It's certainly not been our usual way of doing business."
Andrew glowered at his desk.
"He said he was going to leave the business to me, and in forty-eight hours he was taking more responsibilities on his shoulders than he had for years! He barely has the decency to ask me for my opinion now; and when I give it, he tells me it's timid. Timid!" The junior partner's voice rose to a shout. "He just goes at things like a bull, and before I've time to get in two words edgeways, the thing is settled and he's out of the office whistling!"
"That whistling's a queer thing he's taken to," observed the clerk.
"He was doing it coming home from church last Sunday."
"Verra strange, verra strange," commented Mr. Thomieson.
He seemed more struck with the peculiarity of the senior partner's conduct; Andrew with its offensiveness.
"He shows a fine grasp of things all the same," added the clerk. "In that way it fairly does me good sir, to see him so speerited. It minds me of old times."
"A proper like business we'd have had to-day if he'd gone on like this in old times!" grumbledAndrew. "He gets through things quick enough, I admit; but I tell you he does not take the same interest in them. He talks of 'dry details'!"
"Is that so?" said Mr. Thomieson, his eyes opening.
"It's a fact. And he's started cracking jokes with the clerks."
"Aye, I heard him yesterday myself. It sounded awful bad in this office."
"I tell you what it'll end in," said Andrew. "It'll end in our losing our business—that'll be the end of it. And this is what he calls 'a few years of quiet usefulness'!"
The junior partner's upper lip seemed to hang like a curtain half covering his face. Behind it he swore so distinctly that the confidential clerk discreetly withdrew.
"It's quite remarkable how well I'm keeping—quite astonishing," said Mr. Walkingshaw to himself, as he continued his walk with his recovered hat perched at the angle that had so surprised his acquaintances.
A month had passed since the stormy afternoon when he had said farewell to his family, and he now looked back upon that adieu as the rashest and most premature act of his life. Andrew must have frightened him; that was the only conceivable excuse for his conduct, seen in the white light of his present rude health; and he secretly decided that the junior partner had been getting a little too much rope. If you once let these lads kick up their heels, the deuce was in it. He would do nothing unjust, but he would see that he didn't encourage Andrew to alarm him again. Thus does the virtue even of the most exemplary occasionally over-exert itself.
Meanwhile, it was uncommonly pleasant to be able to chase one's hat for a quarter of a mile andfeel not a twinge of gout or rheumatism after the merry pursuit. Mr. Walkingshaw felt half inclined to give his hat a start again. What a joke it would be to kick it over the railings next time! At this very undignified thought, he recollected himself and for a few minutes looked as decorously pompous as the head of the firm should. But somehow or other that run seemed to have stirred his blood. The fun of kicking his hat over the railings returned so forcibly that there spread over his ruddy face a smile which greatly surprised the wife of one of his most respected clients passing at that moment in her carriage. She too returned home to talk of Mr. Walkingshaw's curious demeanor in the public streets of his native city.
The kicking fancy, by a natural chain of thought, reminded him that the England and Scotland International was being played next Saturday. He must be there, of course; and wouldn't he shout himself hoarse for Scotland! He had a moment's dismay when he remembered that old Berstoun had made an appointment to come in on Saturday and see him about his confounded money affairs. Then he cheered up again. Let the old chap be hanged! He would wire and put him off. In fact, he must be put off. For had not Madge Dunbarpromised to come to the match with him? By this time he had reached the door of his house, and it occurred to him forcibly that afternoon tea was always a much pleasanter function if Madge were present. He hoped she wouldn't be out calling.
The dignified twilight of his hall sobered him considerably. He had been following a strangely frivolous line of thought, he told himself. Certainly he must never allow his hat to escape again. That run had quite upset his equanimity: he found himself going upstairs two steps at a time, and had to pause and shorten his stride.
In the drawing-room he found his sister and the widow.
"Hullo!" said the W.S. before he could recollect himself.
"Hullo!" smiled the widow archly.
He had felt ashamed of the exclamation the moment it escaped him, but finding it received so prettily, he secretly resolved to say it again some day—after a week or two had elapsed, perhaps; confining himself to more dignified remarks in the interval.
"You look as though you had heard good news," said Mrs. Dunbar.
"I've been chasing my hat," he chuckled.
He had meant to make no allusion to the undignified episode, and here he was blurting it out first thing! He began to feel puzzled by this odd persistence of high spirits.
"Not in the street, surely?" said Miss Walkingshaw, with her longest face.
"Oh, I hope it was in the street!" cried the widow. "I'd have loved to see you!"
Her dear friend regarded this speech with the strongest disapproval; in fact, she had never quite approved of Madge since those unlucky words of hers. But Mrs. Dunbar had ceased for some reason to show the same marked regard for her opinion. It was Heriot who had again refused to hear of her leaving, and she seemed content to win his approval.
"It was in the street," smiled Mr. Walkingshaw. "I chased it for quite half a mile, and ran it down single-handed. I wish you had been there, Madge. You'd have seen there was life in the old dog still!"
He had doubled the distance and forgotten the lady with the umbrella; but then, as Andrew had remarked, a distaste for dry detail had suddenly become characteristic of his recovered health.
"Too much life sometimes, I think!" she exclaimed coquettishly; and Mr. Walkingshaw winked in reply.
He was inwardly as surprised at the wink as he had been at the "hullo." These aberrations seemed to come quite spontaneously. He wished he could understand what caused them.
"Have you had a tiring day at the office?" asked the dry Scotch voice of his sister.
Her familiar accents instinctively banished the aberrations.
"Tolerably, tolerably," he said, with his old air. "We had the affairs of Guthrie and Co. to settle up. I settled them, though."
"Andrew would be a great help," she replied, with an apprehensive glance at him. She was much in her nephew's confidence at present.
"Andrew, pooh!" said his father. "He'd talk the hind leg off an elephant. When things need settling, I just settle them myself and leave him to grumble away to Thomieson."
Miss Walkingshaw gasped, and the widow gave the sweetest little laugh.
"Poor Andrew!" said she.
"Poor Andrew indeed," retorted her friend,with more indignation than she had almost ever permitted herself in the presence of her formidable brother.
He looked at her in genuine surprise. So subtly had his point of view altered that he quite failed to grasp her cause of complaint.
"What's the matter, Mary?" he asked.
"Oh, if you don't see, what's the good in my trying to explain?"
He merely stared at her, and the widow tactfully interposed.
"Of course you are going to the match on Saturday?" said she.
"Of course, Madge."
"Have you forgotten Mr. Berstoun is coming to see you?" asked Miss Walkingshaw.
He waved aside this objection with a dignified sweep of his hand. A piece of cake happened to be in it, and the icing flew across the floor. On the instant he was on his hands and knees collecting it.
"Berstoun's a mere nuisance," he answered from the carpet. "He'll never get out of debt if he lives to a thousand. What's the good in his coming to see me? Let him tell his creditors to go to the devil; that's the only sensible thing to do."
He rose chuckling—
"He'll go himself some day; so they'll meet again."
His sister's face was too much for the widow's gravity. She began to laugh hysterically, her black eyes dancing all the time in the merriest fashion at her host. It was so infectious that in a moment he had joined her.
"Won't they?" he kept asking through his chuckles. "Won't they, Madge?"
She kept nodding, choked with laughter, and another strange sensation began to puzzle Mr. Walkingshaw. It was not so much something new as something forgotten which was beginning to return, and it concerned this very sympathetic widow. She was an uncommonly nice woman—really uncommonly: and what an odd pleasure he began to feel in her society! He felt even more satisfaction than when he had run down his hat.
It was upon a fine April morning that Mr. Walkingshaw made his momentous discovery. His sister had left her room on her way to breakfast when she heard his voice calling her. It had so curious a note of excitement that she got a little flustered. Whatever could be the matter? She hurried to his dressing-room door and tapped with a trembling hand. She was not easily agitated as a rule, but her brother had been very disconcerting for the past few weeks, and now his voice was odd. She remembered reading of gentlemen lying on their dressing-room floors with razors in their hands—
"Come in!" he cried impatiently.
She found him dressed all but his coat, and he was standing by the window looking out over the street and the circular garden.
"Come here, Mary," he said, and pointed at the houses seen through the leafless trees. "Have they been doing anything to the Hendersons' house?"
"What doing to it?" she exclaimed.
"Painting it, or brightening it, or—or anything of that kind?"
"Who ever heard of painting a house!"
From which it may be gathered that the good lady was not in the habit of visiting other cities.
"Well then, washing it?"
"Mr. Henderson washing his house! Whatever would he do that for?"
"Tuts, tuts," said her brother, "I'm only asking you. It looks so uncommonly distinct. Can you not count the chimney-cans?"
"Me? You must get younger eyes than mine, Heriot."
"I can count them," he answered.
"Youcan! But I thought you'd been complaining you couldn't always recognize people across the street nowadays."
"I can count those chimneys," he repeated. "I've counted them five times, and they come to fourteen each time. I'd like to get some one younger to count them too. Where's Madge Dunbar?"
He started impetuously for the door.
"She's dressing!" cried the horrified lady. "You can't get her in here—you with your coat off, too!"
Mr. Walkingshaw turned back.
"Well, anyhow," said he, "I'll lay you half a crown there are fourteen chimneys on Henderson's house. Will you take it up?"
"When did you hear I'd taken to betting?" she gasped.
He waved aside the reproach airily, much as he waved aside everything she said nowadays, the poor lady reflected. His next words merely deepened her distress.
"Look at my face carefully," he commanded. "Study it—touch it if you like—examine it with a lens—give it your undivided attention while I count twenty."
He counted slowly, while she stared conscientiously, afraid even to wink. "Now, what have you observed?"
"You're looking very well, Heriot," she answered timidly.
"Did you ever see a man of my age look better?"
"N—no," she stammered.
"Well, don't be afraid to say so, for it's perfectly true. Do you mind a kind of deep wrinkle under my eyes? Where's that gone now?"
"I can't imagine, Heriot."
"Well, don't look distressed; it's bonnier away."
"Yes," she said in a flustered voice, "you do have a kind of smoother look."
"Smoother and harder," he replied, prodding his ribs with his fingers.
She gave a little cry of distress.
"You're growing thin! Your waistcoat's hanging quite loose. Oh, Heriot, it's terrible to see you that way!"
Her heart might be a little withered by all those northern winters, with never another heart to keep it warm, but it could still beat faster at a breath of suspicion cast upon her hospitality. She had not been feeding her only brother properly!
"Tell me yourself what you'd like for your dinner!" she entreated him.
He laughed at her genially.
"Pooh! Tuts! Did you ever in your life see me eat a better dinner than I've been taking lately? You might give one a suet pudding oftener, but that's all I have to complain of."
Heriot had always been addicted to suet pudding, but for a number of years past his doctor's opinion had been adverse to this form of diet for a gentleman of gouty habit.
"But what about your gout, Heriot?" she asked.
"Gout? Fiddle-de-dee! Who's got gout? Not I, for one."
He had been glancing complacently at his improved reflection in the mirror. Abruptly he stepped up close to the glass and examined his visage with unconcealed excitement.
"Good God!" he murmured.
Then, with much the expression Crusoe must have worn when he spied the footprint, he turned to his sister, and, grasping a lock of hair upon his brow, bent his head towards her, and demanded—
"What color's that?"
"Dear me," she said, "it looks quite brown. I didn't know you had any brown hair left."
He raised his head and looked at her in solemn silence till she began to feel dreadfully confused. Then he bent again.
"Do you notice anything else?"
"N—no; unless your hair's got thicker. But that's not likely at your time of life."
"It isnotlikely," said he. "It is most improbable—in fact, it is practically impossible; but it is thicker."
He rubbed his chin and gazed at her with thequeerest look. Mary had known him since he trundled a hoop, but she never remembered him go on like this before. As for Heriot, he seemed to be debating whether he should spring something still more surprising on her or not. But she looked so uncomfortable already, so totally without the least clue to his mysterious words, so unconscious of anything stranger about him than his shirt-sleeves and loss of weight, that he only uttered something between a gasp and a sigh, and, turning away from her, took up his brushes to smooth his augmented hairs.
"I'll be down to breakfast in a jiffy," he said.
Miss Walkingshaw thought that an odd kind of phrase for Heriot to be using.
Andrew no longer walked to the office with his father in the mornings. Not thathehad anything to do with the altered custom: in fact, he was always most careful to assure his friends that he had more than once waited as long as five minutes to give his father the opportunity of having his company—if he was wishing it. But Mr. Walkingshaw was never less than ten minutes late nowadays.
On this particular morning he set forth a full half-hour after his son. He had been very absent-minded after his talk with his sister,—not even Mrs. Dunbar could keep his attention for more than a moment,—and he had sat for the best part of twenty minutes thoughtfully putting on his boots. One or two acquaintances who saw him on the way from his house to his office often recalled his demeanor that morning. Now he would loiter along with bent shoulders, his hands behind his back, trailing his umbrella and brooding as though he contemplated bankruptcy. Then suddenly hispace would quicken, the umbrella whirled round and round like a Catherine wheel, and with his head held jauntily and the merriest smile he would swagger along like a young blood of twenty-six who had just been accepted by an heiress. And then abruptly he would lapse into his mournful gait.
"I want to see Mr. Andrew," said he, as soon as he was seated in his private room.
The junior partner entered with a melancholy visage and a reproachful eye.
"Oh, you've come at last," he remarked, too quietly to be rude, too pointedly to be pleasant.
But his father seemed not to have heard.
"Sit down, sit down," he said; and then in an earnest manner and with the gravest face began, "I've something to tell you, Andrew, that I think you ought to know."
Andrew's visage relaxed. This gravity promised better than anything his father's behavior had led him to expect of late.
"Something most extraordinary has happened. You've noticed a little kind of difference in me of late, possibly?"
"I have," said Andrew, with an intonation that made his acquiescence particularly thorough.
"A sort of cheerfulness and healthiness, and so on?"
"And so on," assented Andrew.
"Well, I've accounted for it at last!"
"Oh?" said Andrew.
This did not strike him as quite so interesting. He thought of the papers he had left, and glanced at his watch.
"You mind my telling you about Cyrus's theory of the cells of the body—that all they needed was the proper kind of stimulation, and they'd be as good as new? Well, he went one better than that sometimes. I never told you what his idea was—it sounded kind of daft-like when you didn't hear him laying it down himself—but I'll tell you now."
His voice sank impressively, and his junior partner grew vaguely uneasy. This was a most unsuitable place and hour to be discussing quack medical theories. He didn't approve of it at all.
"His idea was that every cell of the body—mine and yours, Andrew,"—(Andrew grew exceedingly uncomfortable: this verged on the indecent),—"every single cell of them is just a kind of wee vessel in which chemical and electricalchanges are going on. While they keep brisk we keep young, and when they get off the boil, so to speak, we grow old. Well now, what's to hinder one stirring them up to boil faster and faster, instead of slower and slower? And if they once did that, of course you'd begin to grow young instead of going on getting old. Andrew, it's happened to me."
Andrew started.
"What has?"
"I'm growing young again!"
His junior partner looked at him for half a minute in dead silence. Then he decided that this statement had better be answered humorously.
"Is this story a sample?" he inquired.
"You don't believe me?"
Andrew's cheeks bulged in a faint smile.
"Am I expected to?"
"Look at my waistcoat—when did you ever see it as loose as that, and me healthier than I've been for years, and eating more? Look at my face—where are the wrinkles gone? Look at my head—how long is it since you've seen a patch of brown hair there?"
To complete this overwhelming series of proofs,he leapt up, and with an agile jump on one foot whirled the other leg clean over the back of his chair.
"It's twenty years and more since I last did that!"
Andrew was fairly startled out of his skepticism now. He had the eyes of a goldfish, and his upper lip and swelling cheeks twitched nervously.
"What an awful thing to happen!" he murmured.
"It has happened, though," said his father.
"But surely—oh, it must just be temporary. You don't think it will last, do you?"
"I think nothing," replied Mr. Walkingshaw, with conviction. "I have no settled opinions left. I am a mass of cells in active eruption."
He began to chuckle.
"I'm like a dashed volcano, Andrew!"
His son looked at him piteously. To suffer this sea change was bad enough, but to laugh about it was diabolical. Mr. Walkingshaw could not but sober down under such an eye. He gathered his countenance into an aspect as portentously solemn as his dwindled wrinkles could achieve. His son grieved afresh to see how their passing diminished the once overpowering respectability of his parent.
"It's an awful predicament," said Mr. Walkingshaw, shaking his bronzing head.
"Awful—just awful! What will people say?"
"That's just what I've been wondering. How am I going to break it to them?"
"You're not going to tell people!"
"But they'll notice for themselves."
Andrew gazed at him gloomily.
"It may pass off,"—his face cleared a little,—"in fact, it's certain to."
"It doesn't feel much like it at present: I'm fairly bursting with spirits," smiled Mr. Walkingshaw, and then recollected himself and grew grave again. "What's to be done supposing people do notice?" he asked.
"We'll just have to stretch a point," said Andrew somberly, "and give some other explanation."
"We might give some decent, respectable doctor the credit for it," his father suggested.
"They'd all be afraid to take it, if it went on any further. Imagine a respectable doctor admitting he'd made a man grow younger! I dare say they might be proud of such a performance in London, but they've more decency here!"
It seemed characteristic of Mr. Walkingshaw's calamity that he should bounce up like a tennis ball after each well-meant effort to depress him.
"In that case," said he cheerfully, "we'll just have to say I am trying to make myself more of a companion for you."
Andrew started violently.
"We'll say no such thing! Do you supposeI'mgoing to have my name mixed up with it?"
His father remained serene.
"Well then, what do you suggest?"
Andrew's cheeks drooped, carrying the corners of his mouth down with them.
"There's no good in suggesting. You can trust your friends to do that for you. Pretty stories they'll be circulating!"
Mr. Walkingshaw regarded him with dignity, mingled with a trace of good-natured contempt for such a lack of spirit.
"My dear Andrew," said he, "you need not be under the slightest apprehension. Whatever my external appearance may become—and I trust it will remain not altogether unpleasing—I shall see to it that my conduct rebuts any breath of scandal. I shall be, if possible, more circumspect, more scrupulously observant of the rules which shouldregulate the behavior of a man in my position, more discreet both in speech and conduct. The tongues of the libelous will be effectually silencedthen."
Mr. Walkingshaw accompanied these excellent sentiments by gently swinging himself to and fro in his revolving chair and rolling a scrap of blotting-paper into a pellet, which, at the conclusion of his speech, he absent-mindedly discharged at the office clock. His son seemed as impressed by these movements as by his words.
"You'll find it easier," he began bitterly, "to set people talking than to—"