Part 4 (2/2)
”Oh, you're going to take port too?”
”I am,” said Mr. Walkingshaw, and drinking his gla.s.s straight off, filled it afresh.
Andrew drew down the corners of his lips, raised his eyebrows, and glanced across at his brother; but Frank was staring abstractedly at the tablecloth.
The second gla.s.s seemed to revive their father. He smacked his lips over it with something of his old gusto, threw out his chest, frowned formidably, yet with a certain complacency, and said--
”I've had to perform an unpleasant duty this afternoon, Andrew.”
Andrew p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and looked sternly expectant. Yet on neither of them did the idea of an unpleasant duty seem to have a saddening effect.
”That fellow Vernon has been making love to Jean. I ordered him out of the house. He's off to London again, I'm thankful to say.”
”Upon my word!” said Andrew.
He looked as though he had been told of the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of the President of the Court of Session. But on Frank the news produced quite a different effect. He started out of his reverie and exclaimed--
”You ordered him out? Poor Jean!”
The two older and wiser men turned upon him together.
”Yes, sir,” said his father, ”I did order him out. It would have been 'poor Jean' if I hadn't.”
”I'd have kicked him downstairs!” said Andrew.
”You'd have had a devilish thin time if you'd tried,” retorted his brother. ”Vernon could take you across his knee. He's a good fellow--a deuced good fellow; he'd have made Jean a deuced good husband. Kick him downstairs? By Gad, you'd have squealed when the kicking began!”
He addressed himself entirely to his brother, though he had done no more than approve of the exiling of Lucas, and he spoke with a curious bitterness. Mr. Walkingshaw struck the table with his fist, not pa.s.sionately, in any disorder of mind, but sternly and effectively.
”Hold your tongue,” he said, and kept his eyes on him to see that he held it.
Frank rose.
”I beg your pardon,” he said to his father, and, not looking again at his brother, walked out of the room.
The two wiser heads, being then left undisturbed by the follies of youth, discussed at length and in complete accord the outrageous episode of the afternoon.
CHAPTER V
Frank strode hurriedly across the hall, flung into the library, and there relieved his feelings by a few crisp expletives. Gloom succeeded anger, but after a few minutes youth began to prevail even over these high emotions. He turned up the light, adjusted his tie and smoothed his hair before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and ran upstairs to the drawing-room. Outside the door he paused, looking now like the expectant watcher on the platform. Faintly he heard Ellen Berstoun's voice, and the same look came into his eyes as when he caught the distant roaring of the train. He straightened his neck, banished all expression from his face as a soldier should, and entered the room.
It is generally conceded by such as have enjoyed the privilege of sitting in a drawing-room waiting for the gentlemen to lay down their cigars that no period of the day is more immune from the bustle and turmoil of modern life. But the peace of an ordinary drawing-room was a bank holiday compared with the Walkingshaws'. Not too much gas was burned, or too much coal, since money is not made and well-born wives secured by waste of fuel. That leads to mere cheerfulness. The monastic atmosphere was completed by the Victorian upholstery and the hushed voices of the four ladies, so that even the young soldier instinctively trod more like a burglar than a Cromarty Highlander as he advanced towards one of the groups of two.
Near the fireplace sat Miss Walkingshaw and Mrs. Dunbar engaged on fancy-work, and occasionally murmuring references to ”my last cook”--”that tall girl Jane.” But it was not they that Frank approached.
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