Andrew was glancing through an evening paper, and his aunt conscientiously studying thatmorning'sScotsman. Suddenly she exclaimed:
"The Cromarty Highlanders have come to Glasgow!"
Andrew stared at her.
"Not the second battalion?"
"Yes, Frank's regiment."
"But they weren't to leave India for three years yet."
Mrs. Andrew looked over her shoulder.
"Oh, I saw they'd been ordered home some time ago."
"You didn't mention it to me," said Andrew.
She looked a little surprised, for she knew that Frank's was not a name mentioned in that house.
"I didn't think you'd be interested."
"I am not in the least," replied her husband.
His eye reproved her coldly. She exchanged with his aunt one of those sympathetic glances that pass between indulgent but comprehending women. "He is a noble creature, but at moments a little inconsistent," they mutually confided. And then she wrote the names of Lord and Lady Kilconquar on their card.
And that is how Jean might have been spending her evenings too, had she had proper principles.
The gentlemen entered the drawing-room, bringing a faint aroma of Andrew's excellent cigars. The ladies' conversation died away to the whispered ends of one or two stories too interesting to be left unfinished, and then with a deeper note and on manlier topics the flood of talk poured on again.
It had been a most successful dinner—soup excellent, fish first-rate, everything good. Of course the wines were unexceptionable, while the company recognized itself as a homogeneous specimen of all that was best in the city—with the Ramornies of Pettigrew thrown in. Here they were now, the whole twenty-two of them from old Lord Kilconquar, most eminent of judges, down to that rising young Hector Donaldson, bearing implicit testimony to the status of Andrew Walkingshaw. He stood there beside Lady Kilconquar's chair gravely discoursing on a well-chosen topic of local interest and bending solemnly at intervals tohear her comments. You could see at once from the attitude of all who addressed him that he was recognized as far from the least distinguished member of the company. He had touched the very apex of his career.
"Hush, Andrew," murmured his wife. "Mrs. Rivington is going to sing."
Hector opened the piano, and Mrs. Rivington sat down and touched the keyboard. Then she looked around for silence, and it fell completely. All the eye-witnesses present are agreed that it was in the moment of this pause that the drawing-room door opened, and they heard the butler announce the name of Mr. Walkingshaw.
The company turned with one accord and beheld a tall youth, attired in tweeds, march confidently into the room. In fact, he seemed so much at home, that, though naturally surprised (especially at his unorthodox costume), they never dreamt of any but the most obvious and simple explanation. They scrutinized him as he advanced, merely wondering what cousin—or could it be brother?—he was.
"Surely that's not Frank?" murmured Lord Kilconquar.
It certainly was not Frank; and yet it wassome one who looked strangely familiar to one or two of the older people present. He made straight for Andrew, his hand outstretched.
"Don't you know me?" he asked; and the voice recalled strange memories too.
Andrew was not altogether unprepared for some such apparition appearing some day, though scarcely on such a horribly ill-timed occasion. Somehow, he had always imagined the dread possibility as happening in his office. But he remembered exactly how he had decided to confront it. He pulled his lip hard down, his eyes contracted dangerously, and then he merely shook his head.
"What!" cried the young man, with a touching note of rebuffed affection. "Don't you recognize your own son?"
Andrew's brain reeled. His mouth fell open, and his stare lost all traces of formidableness.
"Father!" said the stranger in a moving voice.
Incoherently Andrew burst out.
"You—you—you're not my son!"
His disclaimer seemed so evidently sincere that the sense of the company was already in sympathy with the victim of this outrageous intrusion, when—alas for him!—his aunt chose that fatal moment,of all others, to rush out of her chronic background.
"Andrew!" she cried, her cheeks suddenly very pink, her eyes strangely excited, her voice trembling with the fervor of her appeal. "He must be—oh, he must be! Look—look at the likeness to your father! Oh, Andrew, what if it is irregular; surely you wouldn't deny the living image of poor Heriot!"
"By Gad! So he is," exclaimed Lord Kilconquar.
A general murmur instinctively confirmed this verdict. They wished to be charitable—but what a family resemblance!
"I—I—I tell you it's a put-up job!" stammered their host.
"Who put it up, father?" asked the strange youth plaintively.
Lord Kilconquar shook his head, and again the startled company followed his lead.
"Look, Andrew!" cried his aunt, pointing to a tinted photograph of James Heriot Walkingshaw at the age of twenty, which hung above the mantelpiece. "Oh, just look at the resemblance!"
The young man regarded this work of art with evident emotion.
"My sainted grandfather!" he murmured, though quite loud enough for the company to hear.
The poor lady stretched her thin clasped hands beseechingly under Andrew's very nose.
"He says it himself—he says it himself!" she pleaded. "For Heriot's sake, don't disown him!"
There was a rustle of silk, decisive and ominous. It was caused by the skirt of the chaste lady of Pettigrew.
"Good-night," she said.
She only touched her brother's hand with the tips of her fingers, and her stony glance gave him his first clear vision of the appalling chasm that yawned beneath his feet.
"Maggie!" he besought her, "you don't believe it?"
"Can you not disgrace yourselfquietly?" she hissed, and a moment later was gone.
Andrew realized that he was already in the chasm, hurtling downwards with fearful velocity. One after another, his guests followed the example of his scandalized sister; and their host was too unmanned to hold up his head and carry off the partings with the air of injured innocence that alone might have given his reputation another (though a feeble) chance.
As they left the hang-dog figure that so lately was a respected Writer to the Signet, they said to one another that all was over socially with Andrew Walkingshaw. And it had been so public, so dramatic, that they feared—of course they hoped against hope, but still they feared that the fine old business could not but suffer too. In London one might disgrace oneself and yet retain one's clients; but could one here? Well, anyhow, that and many other interesting aspects of the case would be debated by all Edinburgh to-morrow morning.
Meanwhile, the unhappy victim of fate was left alone with his wife, his aunt, and his long-lost offspring. A desperate gesture dismissed Miss Walkingshaw; yet, though she trembled beneath his wrathful eye, she could not refrain from beseeching him again—
"He must be, Andrew—he must be! Just compare him with the picture."
And then she shrank out of the drawing-room.
"Leave us," he commanded his wife.
Her pale eyes gazed on him defiantly.
"I certainly shall not. I demand a full explanation, Andrew!"
"Go away, will you!"
For answer she sat down firmly upon the sofa.
"Papa, papa, don't be rough with her," expostulated the youth.
Andrew confronted him indignantly.
"That's enough of this nonsense!" he thundered. "What d'ye mean? Who are you?"
"Doesn't the voice of nature tell you?" the youth inquired sadly.
"The voice of nature be damned!"
The young man turned to the cold lady on the sofa.
"Stepmother," he asked, "will you protect me?"
She looked at him at first stonily, and then suddenly more kindly. He was remarkably good-looking, with such nice bright eyes, and a manner difficult to resist.
"I shall certainly see that justice is done you," she replied.
The young man seated himself beside her and took her hand.
"Thank you," he murmured affectionately.
Andrew swore aloud and vigorously, but the pale eyes never flinched.
"Do you mean deliberately to tell me you don't know who this young man is?" she demanded.
Put in that form, the question made him hesitate for an instant. The hesitation did honor to his sense of veracity, but it finally cost him the remains of his character.
"You needn't trouble to answer!" she cried. "Youdoknow who he is. Come, you had better tell me all about it at once. I presume you have not beenmarriedpreviously?"
The youth spoke quickly.
"You don't think father was so scandalous as not to marry her?"
"Did you?" she demanded.
The luckless Writer fell into the trap. It seemed to him a gleam of hope—a chance of saving his precious reputation.
"Er—ye—es," he stammered.
"You were married?" she cried.
There was a dreadful pause, and then abruptly she demanded, "What became of her?"
A dark frown answered this pertinent inquiry. She turned to the young man.
"Do you know?"
He seemed to have some difficulty in controlling his voice as he answered—
"She lives in London."
"Lives!" shrieked the lady. "Andrew—youare a bigamist! And I—I am not lawfully—"
She leapt up and gave him one terrible look; and before he could speak she had swept wrathfully from the room.
And then the most surprising thing occurred. Instead of continuing his filial overtures, the young man sank into the corner of the sofa and burst into peal upon peal of boyish laughter.
"Oh, my dear Andrew!" he gasped. "Oh, I can't help it—you a bigamist! Poor respectable old blighter! I say, what a joke! Oh, Andrew, Andrew, my bonny, bonny boy!"
In silence through it all, Andrew gazed darkly down at the late Heriot Walkingshaw.
"When you have finished," said Andrew grimly.
He looked a nasty customer to tackle now, but the laugher on the sofa merely subsided into a friendly smile.
"Shake hands, Andrew," he cried, jumping up.
Andrew placed his hands behind his back, and his glowering eyes answered this overture.
"What!" said Heriot, "won't you even shake hands?"
Andrew still stared darkly.
"You'd rather have it war than peace?"
"I had rather conclude this conversation as soon as possible."
Heriot looked at him for a moment, and then shook his head with a smile compounded of sorrow and humor.
"You're a hopeless case," said he. "Well, your blood be on your own head!"
Andrew's lip grew longer and longer.
"I admit you've made a fool of me," he said,"if that's any satisfaction. But you'll make nothing out of me; not a shilling, not a halfpenny. Do you hear?"
"Is that all?"
"Practically; but I may just as well point out, to let you see where you stand, that as you have now done your worst, there's no use trying on blackmail or anything of that kind. You have been so very clever, you've thrown away any hold you might fancy you had. Do you quite understand that?"
Heriot began to smile again, and Andrew's face grew grimmer.
"You can provenothing. You may say you're my father if you like—"
"God forbid!" Heriot interrupted devoutly. "I've had enough of fathering a bogle. Claim any sire you like from Lucifer downwards, but don't put the blame on me. I won't be disgraced with you again; not at any price."
For a few moments Andrew seemed to be in travail of a fitting repartee. When it appeared it possessed all the practical characteristics of its parent.
"In that case," he retorted, "you had better clear out of my house as quick as you can."
Heriot regarded him with extreme composure.
"Do you actually imagine you are going to get off as easy as this?" he inquired, "Man Andrew, I haven't been senior partner in Walkingshaw & Gilliflower for nothing. You're just a rat in a trap. That's precisely your position at this moment."
"I'd be glad to hear you explain how you make that out," said Andrew.
Heriot smiled humorously as he produced a bulky pocket-book. Out of this he selected one of many letters it contained.
"Do you know the writing?" he asked.
Andrew turned a thought more solemn, but his only answer was a wary sidelong glance.
"Don't be afraid to say. A hundred people can swear to it. There's no secret to be kept."
"It is my late father's hand," said Andrew gravely.
His guest burst into a shout of laughter, and then with an effort pulled himself together again.
"Read it," he said, "and by the way, I may just as well tell you I've plenty more like it, so there's no point in putting it in the fire."
Andrew took it with gingerly suspicion, which changed into a different emotion as he read:
"Dear Harris,—I write to let you know that I have reached this city in safety and am slowly recovering from the mental anguish I have undergone. As regards my wretched and ungrateful son Andrew, I still disagree with you. No, Harris, I cannot bring myself to expose the infamy of my eldest boy to a thunder-struck world; I simply cannot do it. His immorality and dishonesty temporarily unhinged my mind. I am exiled through his perfidy, but I forgive him, Harris; I forgive him. Hoping to see you again someday,—"Your unhappy friend,"J. Heriot Walkingshaw."
"Dear Harris,—I write to let you know that I have reached this city in safety and am slowly recovering from the mental anguish I have undergone. As regards my wretched and ungrateful son Andrew, I still disagree with you. No, Harris, I cannot bring myself to expose the infamy of my eldest boy to a thunder-struck world; I simply cannot do it. His immorality and dishonesty temporarily unhinged my mind. I am exiled through his perfidy, but I forgive him, Harris; I forgive him. Hoping to see you again someday,—
"Your unhappy friend,
"J. Heriot Walkingshaw."
The address was an hotel in Monte Video, and the date about two years before.
"What—what's all this rigmarole?" gasped Andrew. "It's sheer nonsense from beginning to end."
His unwelcome guest was again shaken with boyish laughter.
"Prove it!" he cried. "Prove it's nonsense! Eh? How'll you manage that?"
Andrew's face grew darker and darker.
"Who does 'Harris' profess to be, I'd like to know?"
"Grandson of Mrs. Harris!" laughed Heriot.
"What Mrs. Harris?"
"Sarah Gamp's pal."
"You are drunk," said Andrew.
Heriot regarded him with portentous solemnity.
"Mr. Harris was the kind gentleman who befriended my grandfather on his voyage to South America. He received afterwards many letters from your papa, Andrew; and very, very thoughtfully handed them to me. They prove, my boy, that you treated your parent outrageously. They prove that you must have been a shocking bad hat yourself. Some of them prove that your kind and forgiving parent is still alive at this moment; others prove that he expired under heart-rending circumstances six months ago; and I propose to use whichever alternative seems best—that's to say, whichever will flatten you out most effectively. And that's who Harris is."
For some minutes Andrew studied the letter in silence. He felt like a heavy-weight boxer in the grip of a professor of Ju-Jitsu. What use was a lifelong apprenticeship to common sense, respectability, and the law of Scotland, when it came to wrestling with a juggler of this kind? he asked himself bitterly. One ought to have led a life of crime! The longer he looked at the preposterousepistle, the more diabolical did it appear. At last he spoke—
"This is an impudent forgery."
"There are some hundreds of specimens of your father's hand to compare it with," said Heriot calmly; "I am perfectly willing to let any expert judge whether it's genuine or not."
The heavy-weight tried another wriggle.
"This is the letter of a lunatic. I have a certificate to prove it. I can call Dr. Downie to prove it."
"You needn't go to so much trouble. You'll find that plot against my grandfather's liberty fully described in some of the letters. The point that will be put to you by the cross-examining Counsel is, if you thought him off his chump, why did you only pretend to put him in an asylum?"
"I did put him," snapped Andrew.
Heriot rose and rang the bell.
"What's that for?" asked Andrew; but he was only answered by a smile.
"Show up the other two gentlemen," said Heriot.
The discreet butler glanced at his master, but he was too dumbfounded to give any indication of his pleasure one way or the other.
A minute later, Frank and Lucas entered. They nodded coolly, but Andrew only stared.
"Now, Lucas, dear boy," said Heriot genially, "tell this old cockalorum who you saw off on a steamer for South America."
Lucas smiled grimly at his brother-in-law to be.
"Heriot Walkingshaw," he replied.
"Swear to it?" smiled Heriot.
Lucas nodded, his blue eyes glittering on Andrew all the time; and there followed a pause in the conversation.
"What do you propose to do?" asked Andrew.
"Make you disgorge, old cock," said Heriot.
"Disgorge what?"
"Every single penny you inherited!"
Andrew made a last convulsive struggle.
"I'll not do it!"
"In that case, the following interesting facts will immediately be made public: that you lied when you said your father was in an asylum, and lied again when you said he was dead; that he suffered indescribable agonies in consequence of your ill-treatment; that he is either alive at this moment or died a death that will bring tears to the eyes of all Edinburgh; and that, in any case, you helped yourself to his fortune with precisely as much justificationas a burglar who opens a safe. The matter will then be placed in the hands of Thompson, Gilray, & Young."
This choice of a vindictive rival firm struck Andrew as the most diabolical artifice of all. His eyes blinked and his cheeks twitched; and when he spoke his voice reminded them painfully of the professional mendicant of the pavement.
"Would you ruin me?"
"Ruin be hanged! Your wife has two thousand pounds a year, and you've got the lion's share of the business. But you've got to shell out every brass farthing you bagged from your poor dear father, and settle it in equal shares on Frank and Jean."
Frank made a quick movement of gratitude and protest.
"Shut up," said Heriot jovially. "You mind your own business, Frank. This is my shout."
"My dear Frank—" his brother began solemnly.
"Andrew!" thundered Heriot, "if you make any miserable whining appeal to your brother, I'll tell Lucas to kick you. Are you ready, Lucas?"
"Quite," said the artist.
A few minutes later the present head of Walkingshaw& Gilliflower had appended his signature to the following document (the unaided composition of the late senior partner in the aforesaid firm):
"I, Andrew Walkingshaw, having the fear of this world and the next before my eyes, do hereby promise and swear that upon the morning following the above date of the month and year, at the hour of 10 a.m., I shall formally, legally, and irrevocably settle in equal shares upon my brother and sister, Frank and Jean Walkingshaw, the whole estate, real and personal, of my revered father, except such portion of it inherited and enjoyed by my sisters Margaret Walkingshaw or Ramornie and Gertrude Walkingshaw or Donaldson, and my aunt Mary Walkingshaw. This I do for the following consideration: that through their kindness and charity my despicable, unsportsmanlike, and criminal conduct may never be revealed. I humbly and sorrowfully confess that I had my estimable father aforesaid certified as insane when I knew his brain to be considerably sounder than my own; that I did this in order to diddle him and my younger brother and sister out of their money; that instead of putting him under restraint, I exiled him furth of Great Britain and Ireland, so that he therebysuffered discomforts and torments for whose virulence I take his word; that I announced his death knowing him to be alive; and that I then in a criminal and shameful manner appropriated his estate to my own use. May all wicked and foolish men be laid by the heels as I have been, and may their relatives be as forgiving as mine! This paper I sign cheerfully and penitently."
It was a pale and flabby-cheeked Writer to the Signet who laid down his pen after reading and signing this lucid document. He stalked solemnly to the door, and then with a chastened air addressed them—
"May Heaven forgive you."
Thus in a blaze of appropriate piety the star of Andrew Walkingshaw set. There is small probability of his ever becoming an Example again. At present it is his arduous task to live down, by the austerity of his demeanor and the judicious expenditure of his wife's income, the suspicions connected with the apparition at his dinner party, and his subsequent act of inexplicable magnanimity in divesting himself of his fortune and handing it to his brother and sister. It is with the greatest regret that the editor of these few simple facts finds himself unable to cap with a suitablereward the career of well-principled respectability so unfortunately interrupted; but his obligations to the illogical truth are peremptory.
"My dear old boys and jolly good sportsmen, and all the rest of it," said Heriot jovially, "don't mention it—don't mention it. What can you do to show your dashed gratitude? There's only one thing; one blooming favor I ask of you: send me to a good public school!"
The devious lane was filled with sunshine; the studio being lighted only from the north was filled instead with happiness. The same two sat there; but to-day she was no longer so demurely clad and all the aches and weariness were gone, and he no longer fumed.
"Is this better than scrubbing the floor of a ward?" he smiled.
"Buying a trousseau is harder work than you realize, Lucas," she answered, with that touch of reproof by which all good women remind man gently but daily that it is her part to suffer, his to misunderstand.
There followed a space of happy silence, and then she said—
"Didn't I tell you that everything would come right if we waited?"
"Yes," he admitted, "that was one of your good guesses."
She raised her delicate brows.
"Aren't you happynow?"
"Good heavens! I should think so."
"Then be more grateful, dear," she smiled.
Rapturously he confessed he had erred, and was even sufficiently in love to think he perceived how.
"I positively must go now," she said in a little, and, despite his protestations, rose.
"Shall we walk?" he asked.
"Haven't you a cab call?"
"But you haven't been out of a hansom all day, and it's only ten minutes—"
"Oh, bother the expense!" she cried. "I believe in being sensibly economical, but not in beingclose."
Again he cheerfully accepted the gentle rebuke as the reproof his inconsistency deserved.
And so off they whirled in a hansom.
At that very same hour, far, far to the northward, the winter sun was struggling in gleams through the pine-tops and falling in patches on the moss. For an instant one patch lit the hat of straw and gentle face of Ellen Berstoun; and though it was but a small patch, it also lit a large tweed cap a few inches higher up. Beneath the cap a voice murmured—
"Ellen!"
No more letters came to her now from India; and no longer she walked alone.
These incidents occurred nearly three years ago. Since then Mr. and Mrs. Frank Walkingshaw and Mr. and Mrs. Lucas Vernon have grown into comparatively old married couples.
As for the genial and sagacious author of their happiness, the latest report to hand informs the present editor that the name of James Heriot Walkingshaw stands first in the batting averages of a select preparatory school.
1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's intent.
2. A Table of Contents has been added to this etext version for the reader's convenience.