A YOUNG PRODIGAL COMES HOME
Once upon the platform, Van Patten looked around with the query,
“Which way you going?”
“Up your way,” answered Barnes, nodding in the direction of the brick
house. “Won’t you walk a bit with me?”
“I don’t know but what I will,” answered the other. “I haven’t anything
but a dress-suit case, and I feel like stretching my legs.”
Barnes led the way, and the other fell into step at his side. The road
was going in the right direction now. It was as though every dusty
fern, every whispering birch, every stalwart pine pointed towards the
brick house. And Eleanor herself seemed very close to him. It was as
though she were keeping pace the other side of him. How the old world
sang of her! The sun was dropping towards the horizon line, seeking, as
he knew, her black hair. An oriole, high in an elm, was caroling her
name. The lazy locusts were rattling like gray-haired crones over their
tea--of her.
He felt his attitude towards Van Patten changing. The keen sentences
which he had framed by the bedside of the sick father lost their edge
with every foot he neared her. All the passion and bitterness went
from them. There still remained the fact of the thoughtless wording
of the letter, but he seemed to be less and less the man to play the
judge upon it. This man by his side was not he whom he had pictured
by the letter-box. Yet he kept repeating to himself that the son had
not come back at a sick man’s call; that he had left his father to
his loneliness. There still remained the duty, which surely fell upon
him rather than her, of telling this man what had happened. He braced
himself to this task.
“Lord,” exclaimed Van Patten after they had proceeded the matter of a
hundred rods in silence, “father will be surprised. Eleanor wrote that
his eyes had gone back on him. It’s hard luck to be blind at such a
time of year, isn’t it?”
“I think there’s also a bit of a surprise waiting for _you_,” said
Barnes.
The boy stopped in his tracks.
“A surprise?” he repeated anxiously. “You don’t mean to tell me that
father--that anything--”
“He has partially recovered his sight,” put in Barnes, glad to relieve
the look in the young man’s eyes.
Van Patten dropped his suit-case. He took out a handkerchief and ran it
over his forehead.
“Gad!” he exclaimed. “You frightened me. But that--why, that’s the best
news ever. That’s something like.”
“There’s still another surprise,” began Barnes. “I--perhaps we’d better
sit down here by the side of the road a minute. There are two or three
things you ought to know before you see your father.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing serious,” Barnes reassured him, “but what I’ve got to tell you
may strike you as a bit queer. I haven’t got used to it yet myself.”
Barnes sat down beneath a big pine and Van Patten, watching him
uneasily, took a place beside him.
“You see,” began Barnes, “when your letter came a month ago, affairs at
the house were in a bad way.”
“Guess I was a bit hasty in that letter,” stammered Van Patten.
“Under the circumstances, you were,” agreed Barnes. “Your father was in
bad shape--sort of pining away for you.”
“For me? I didn’t think he cared that much.”
“He cared a great deal,” said Barnes. “So, for that reason, we didn’t
show him your letter.”
“You didn’t?” exclaimed Van Patten eagerly.
“We tore it up.”
Van Patten gave a sigh of relief, but the next second he looked
curiously at this stranger who evidently had played so important a part
in his personal affairs.
“Excuse me,” he said finally, “but just where did _you_ come in?”
“At the arrival of the letter,” answered Barnes. “I happened to be
passing.”
“Where?”
“The letter-box.”
“But I don’t see--”
“Your sister received the letter. She was crying over it when I came
along. She was afraid if she read it to your father it would kill him.”
“Gee! I didn’t know it was that bad. I was busted and sore and--but I
didn’t mean to make it that bad.”
“Sometimes letters sound worse than we intend when we write them.”
“But you?” persisted Van Patten.
“I was a stranger, but when I heard your sister crying, I stopped. She
was very much excited, and on the spur of the moment she confided in
me. I advised her to tear up the letter.”
“Thank God for that!” exclaimed the boy, “but I don’t see yet where you
came in.”
“Then we talked over how we could prevent your father from knowing you
didn’t intend to come home. You see if he had learned that he would
have just dropped his head back on the pillow and died.”
“And I thought he never wanted to lay eyes on me again!”
“He grew young while he was sick,” explained Barnes. “He came back home
while he was sick, and he wanted you again.”
“But how did you manage it? How--”
“I played the prodigal,” explained Barnes, simply. “I took your part.”
“You made him believe you were me?”
“Exactly.”
“And he _did_ believe it?”
“He was blind and very anxious. So he believed.”
For a moment Van Patten stared at Barnes in silence. Then he stammered,
“Stranger, I reckon I owe you more than Dad does.”
“Neither of you owes me anything,” answered Barnes.
“We’ll settle that later,” said Van Patten, earnestly. “But Dad--didn’t
he call your bluff at all?”
“No. I left when his sight began to improve.”
“How’d you work that?”
“I told him I had to go to New York on business. From New York I wired
you, and--here you are.”
“I never got your wires,” answered Van Patten, “but, thank God, here I
am.”
“You’ll have to back me up in what I told him about Alaska,” smiled
Barnes.
“Lord,” gasped Van Patten, “you did go the limit. But trust me to play
out the game.”
Barnes stared dreamily across the road.
“I suppose,” he hesitated, “I ought to go along with you for a day or
two.”
“I’ll need you,” said the boy, reaching for his hand.
“But your father mustn’t meet me. It won’t do to allow him to make
comparisons. Once he sees you with his own eyes, he’ll put aside all
doubts. The others will have to know, of course, but we can keep them
quiet.”
“The others?” questioned Van Patten.
“Carl, for one,” answered Barnes. “Your sister, I understand, is
engaged.”
“Sis engaged?”
Van Patten made his feet.
“I guess,” he said, “it’s time I got home right away.”
The two started again and on the rest of the short walk Barnes devoted
himself more to details. As well as he was able, Barnes sketched
rapidly the minor events of those two weeks and repeated once more
stories he had made up for the father. Van Patten listened intently,
but he groaned at mention of three-fingered Bill and the description of
the hut.
“Gad!” he exclaimed, “it’s a crime to back up such yarns as those, but
I suppose you did the best you could.”
“The best I could,” answered Barnes, soberly.
“And it’s my fault anyway,” put in the boy quickly. “I’m not long on
religion, but if conversion means anything, I guess it means just the
changed way I feel now about father and home. I’ve got you to thank for
that.”
“I converted myself in the process,” smiled Barnes, “which is more than
some preachers do.”
He passed the place by the road where he had found the girl lying
bruised on the grass, and from this point on, his lips were set. But
when he came in sight once more of the little brick house, his jaws
relaxed a trifle. It looked as warm and peaceful and sunshiny as it had
the first day he saw it. He led the way to the little Dutch door, and
lifted the brass knocker. It sent an echo through the house which was
answered by John. The latter looked both startled and pleased.
“Is Eleanor able to come downstairs?” inquired Barnes.
“Yes, sir. She said she was expectin’ you.”
“Then you’ll ask her to step into the sitting-room?”
Van Patten followed his leader uneasily, and paced the room almost as
though fearing this interview. But when his sister appeared he had
reached her side in a jiffy.
“Sis,” he cried, “I’m back--back home!”
She hesitated the fraction of a second, her eyes upon Barnes. The
latter bowed without speaking.
“Joe,” she murmured doubtfully.
But the boy seized her in his arms almost fiercely.
“You aren’t afraid of me, little sister?” he exclaimed.
“Joe, Joe,” she trembled, and lifted her lips to his.
From upstairs came the fairy tinkle of a silver bell. Barnes started.
The girl looked wildly about.
“That’s Dad,” she exclaimed.
Barnes stepped forward.
“Your father sees quite clearly now?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” she gasped. “What--what are we going to do?”
“Joe must go to him,” insisted Barnes. “Send Aunt Philomela down to me.”
Joe himself looked frightened. He hesitated.
“Tell your father,” suggested Barnes, “that you’ve had word ‘The Lucky
Find’ is on its feet. He’ll be so glad for you that he’ll forget
everything else.”
“But if he suspects?” gasped Joe.
“If worst comes to worst,” said Barnes, “send for me. We’ll have to
tell him then.”
Joe turned towards the door. Barnes placed his hand upon the young
man’s shoulder.
“Keep your nerve,” he warned, “and play the game hard. That’s what
we’ve all been doing here--even Aunt Philomela.”
Eleanor escorted her brother to the old man’s room and without waiting
came down immediately with her aunt. Both women were quite breathless.
They stood close together as though half expecting to hear a scream.
Barnes crossed at once to Aunt Philomela and took her frail hand.
“Buck up,” he advised. “The boy will carry it through.”
“Oh,” she answered, “I’m so glad that _you_ are here!”
“Thank you,” answered Barnes. “Hadn’t you both better be seated?”
Aunt Philomela obeyed humbly and took a chair near the window. Eleanor
remained standing by her side.
Barnes thought the girl looked paler than when he had left. She seemed
less sure of herself. The strain of the last few weeks had told upon
her. He felt a strange lightness of the head as he noticed these
things. The phrases he had formulated to say on the way down here all
vanished and in their place came a dozen swift sentences which he had
no right to utter. Consequently, he was dumb and the silence became
embarrassing. Aunt Philomela broke the tension a little by exclaiming,
“I wouldn’t live through this last week again for a hundred million
dollars.”
“Nor I,” answered Barnes, briefly.
Aunt Philomela glanced up quickly.
“How does Joe look?” she demanded.
“Not at all as I feared,” stammered the girl.
“Blood tells,” nodded Aunt Philomela with a trace of her old spirit.
The two women listened. Barnes himself half expected to hear at any
second the warning tinkle of the silver bell. He roused himself.
“How is Carl’s arm?” he inquired.
Both women started. It was Aunt Philomela who replied,
“It is getting along very well, I believe.”
Miss Van Patten caught her breath and looked away. Barnes noticed it.
He sought her eyes with a question. She flushed scarlet. Upon the
moment he determined to see Carl as soon as he could leave.
Like three discussing a grave crisis in a sick room, they talked on
in strained, jerky little sentences until Joe came down again. At the
boy’s entrance, Aunt Philomela arose. It was clear at a glance that Van
Patten was unnerved, but it was also clear that he had succeeded. He
came direct to Aunt Philomela with his hand extended.
“Well, Joe?” she stammered.
“Aunt,” he answered unsteadily, “I’ve paid big for all my cussedness.”
The little old lady took his hand and patted his shoulder. He turned to
Barnes.
“And, ye gods,” he added solemnly, “Alaska has paid big, too!”