THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DEBUT AT HOME
That took place upon a Thursday. On the Thursday following, as Dick was
walking by appointment, earlier than usual, in the direction of the
cottage, he was appalled to meet in the lane a fly from Thymebury,
containing the human form of Miss M'Glashan. The lady did not deign to
remark him in her passage; her face was suffused with tears, and
expressed much concern for the packages by which she was surrounded. He
stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might portend. It
was so beautiful a day that he was loth to forecast evil, yet something
must perforce have happened at the cottage, and that of a decisive
nature; for here was Miss M'Glashan on her travels, with a small
patrimony in brown paper parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied hot
battle and unqualified defeat. Was the house to be closed against him?
Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector made his appearance
from among the millions of Europe? It is the character of love to loathe
the near relatives of the loved one; chapters in the history of the
human race have justified this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in
particular, has frequently met with censure from the independent
novelist. Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret;
whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the change would be for the worse. He
hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew upon him with every
step; as he entered the garden a voice fell upon his ear, and he was
once more arrested, not this time by doubt, but by an indubitable
certainty of ill.
The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.
Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment; but Esther
kept a bright look-out when her lover was expected. In a twinkling she
was by his side, brimful of news and pleasure, too glad to notice his
embarrassment, and in one of those golden transports of exultation which
transcend not only words but caresses. She took him by the end of the
fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her great preoccupation was
to save time), she drew him towards her, pushed him past her in the
door, and planted him face to face with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of
French country velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.
Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in the way of
joy, Esther turned and ran out of the room.
The two men remained looking at each other with some confusion on both
sides. Van Tromp was naturally the first to recover; he put out his hand
with a fine gesture.
"And you know my little lass, my Esther?" he said. "This is pleasant,
this is what I have conceived of home. A strange word for the old rover;
but we all have a taste for home and the homelike, disguise it how we
may. It has brought me here, Mr. Naseby," he concluded, with an
intonation that would have made his fortune on the stage, so just, so
sad, so dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, "and
you see a man who is content."
"I see," said Dick.
"Sit down," continued the parasite, setting the example. "Fortune has
gone against me. (I am just sirrupping a little brandy--after my
journey.) I was going down, Mr. Naseby; between you and me, I was
_decave_; I borrowed fifty francs, smuggled my valise past the
concierge--a work of considerable tact--and here I am!"
"Yes," said Dick, "and here you are." He was quite idiotic.
Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.
"Are you glad to see him?" she whispered in his ear, the pleasure in her
voice almost bursting through the whisper into song.
"Oh yes," said Dick; "very."
"I knew you would be," she replied; "I told him how you loved him."
"Help yourself," said the Admiral, "help yourself; and let us drink to a
new existence."
"To a new existence," repeated Dick; and he raised the tumbler to his
lips, but set it down untasted. He had had enough of novelties for one
day.
Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet, holding her
knees in her arms, and looking with pride from one to the other of her
two visitors. Her eyes were so bright that you were never sure if there
were tears in them or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body;
sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat, sometimes threw back her
head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that state when it is said of
people that they cannot contain themselves for happiness. It would be
hard to exaggerate the agony of Richard.
And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.
"I never forget a friend," said he, "nor yet an enemy: of the latter, I
never had but two--myself and the public; and I fancy I have had my
vengeance pretty freely out of both." He chuckled. "But those days are
done. Van Tromp is no more. He was a man who had successes; I believe
you knew I had successes--to which we shall refer no further," pulling
down his neckcloth with a smile. "That man exists no more: by an
exercise of will I have destroyed him. There is something like it in the
poets. First, a brilliant and conspicuous career--the observed, I may
say, of all observers including the bum-baily: and then, presto! a
quiet, sly, old, rustic _bonhomme_, cultivating roses. In Paris, Mr.
Naseby----"
"Call him Richard, father," said Esther.
"Richard, if he will allow me. Indeed, we are old friends, and now near
neighbours; and, _a propos_, how are we off for neighbours, Richard? The
cottage stands, I think, upon your father's land, a family which I
respect--and the wood, I understand, is Lord Trevanion's. Not that I
care; I am an old Bohemian. I have cut society with a cut direct; I cut
it when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut it with
dignity in my declension. These are our little _amours propres_, my
daughter: your father must respect himself. Thank you, yes; just a
leetle, leetle tiny--thanks, thanks; you spoil me. But, as I was saying,
Richard, or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust; her
aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard, her distrust of
me; my nature and that of the duenna are poles asunder--poles! But, now
that I am here, now that I have given up the fight, and live henceforth
for one only of my works--I have the modesty to say it is my best--my
daughter--well, we shall put all that to rights. The neighbours,
Richard?"
Dick was understood to say that there were many good families in the
Vale of Thyme.
"You shall introduce us," said the Admiral.
Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which Esther
explained to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so set down to the
merit side of Dick's account, while she proceeded to detain him.
"Before our walk?" she cried. "Never! I must have my walk."
"Let us all go," said the Admiral, rising.
"You do not know that you are wanted," she cried, leaning on his
shoulder with a caress. "I might wish to speak to my old friend about
my new father. But you shall come to-day, you shall do all you want; I
have set my heart on spoiling you."
"I will take just _one_ drop more," said the Admiral, stooping to help
himself to brandy. "It is surprising how this journey has fatigued me.
But I am growing old, I am growing old, I am growing old, and--I regret
to add--bald."
He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his head--the habit of
the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther had already thrown on her hat,
and was ready, while he was still studying the result in a mirror: the
carbuncle had somewhat painfully arrested his attention.
"We are papa now; we must be respectable," he said to Dick, in
explanation of his dandyism: and then he went to a bundle and chose
himself a staff. Where were the elegant canes of his Parisian epoch?
This was a support for age, and designed for rustic scenes. Dick began
to see and appreciate the man's enjoyment in a new part, when he saw how
carefully he had "made it up." He had invented a gait for this first
country stroll with his daughter, which was admirably in key. He walked
with fatigue; he leaned upon the staff; he looked round him with a sad,
smiling sympathy on all that he beheld; he even asked the name of a
plant, and rallied himself gently for an old town-bird, ignorant of
nature. "This country life will make me young again," he sighed. They
reached the top of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun
was descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west; the hills
were modelled in their least contour by the soft, slanting shine; and
the wide moorlands, veined with glens and hazelwoods, ran west and north
in a hazy glory of light. Then the painter awakened in Van Tromp.
"Gad, Dick," he cried, "what value!"
An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so touching to
Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears: yes, here was the father of
whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had described; simple, enthusiastic,
unworldly, kind, a painter at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.
And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside, and
something depending over the house door which might be construed as a
sign by the hopeful and thirsty.
"Is that," he asked, pointing with his stick, "an inn?"
There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached some
importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should hear wit
or wisdom.
Dick said it was.
"You know it?" inquired the Admiral.
"I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all," replied Dick.
"Ah," said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head; "you are not
an old campaigner; you have the world to learn. Now I, you see, find an
inn so very near my own home, and my first thought is--my neighbours. I
shall go forward and make my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't
come; I shall not be a moment."
And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone with
Esther on the road.
"Dick," she exclaimed, "I am so glad to get a word with you; I am so
happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I want you to do me a
favour. Imagine, he has come without a paint-box, without an easel; and
I want him to have all. I want you to get them for me in Thymebury. You
saw, this moment, how his heart turned to painting. They can't live
without it," she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michelangelo.
Up to that moment she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's behaviour.
She was too happy to be curious; and his silence, in presence of the
great and good being whom she called her father, had seemed both natural
and praiseworthy. But now that they were alone, she became conscious of
a barrier between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
heart.
"Dick," she cried, "you don't love me."
"I do that," he said heartily.
"But you are unhappy; you are strange; you--you are not glad to see my
father," she concluded, with a break in her voice.
"Esther," he said, "I tell you that I love you; if you love me, you know
what that means, and that all I wish is to see you happy. Do you think I
cannot enjoy your pleasure? Esther, I do. If I am uneasy, if I am
alarmed, if----. Oh, believe me, try and believe in me," he cried, giving
up argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.
But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she pressed the
matter no further (indeed, her father was already seen returning), it by
no means left her thoughts. At one moment she simply resented the
selfishness of a man who had obtruded his dark looks and passionate
language on her joy; for there is nothing that a woman can less easily
forgive than the language of a passion which, even if only for the
moment, she does not share. At another, she suspected him of jealousy
against her father; and for that, although she could see excuses for it,
she yet despised him. And at least, in one way or the other, here was
the dangerous beginning of a separation between two hearts. Esther found
herself at variance with her sweetest friend; she could no longer look
into his heart and find it written in the same language as her own; she
could no longer think of him as the sun which radiated happiness upon
her life, for she had turned to him once, and he had breathed upon her
black and chilly, radiated blackness and frost. To put the whole matter
in a word, she was beginning, although ever so slightly, to fall out of
love.