CHAPTER IV
Andrew no longer walked to the office with his father in the mornings. Not that he had 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 his pace 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 electrical changes 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 suppose I'm going 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 should regulate the behavior of a man in my position, more discreet both in speech and conduct. The tongues of the libelous will be effectually silenced then."
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—"
"When you come to think of it, the situation is not without decided advantages," his father interrupted, springing up and pacing the room with an animated air. "Just think of the renewed opportunities for doing all kinds of useful and beneficial things! I might take a more prominent part in public life: I might even go in for politics. I certainly shall take a bit of salmon-fishing. The study of some of our classical authors suggests itself as a relaxation for my leisure moments. The subjects of aeroplanes and national defense are worthy of consideration, too. I should like to visit several of the continental countries—our own colonies are even more attractive; there wouldn't be the same difficulties about the language. Or, by Jingo, Andrew, I might learn French and Italian! Yes, the position is not without its compensations."
He stopped beside his son and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"I propose to widen greatly the scope of my energies, without in the least forfeiting the respect of my fellow-citizens. That is my ideal, Andrew. Ah, my boy, you and I will have some great times together! By that I mean, of course, some beneficial and profitable times."
He took a sudden step forward and kicked the wastepaper-basket into the fireplace.
"I might even take up football some day, if this goes on," he smiled, and then abruptly recovered his solemnity.
"Beneficial and profitable," he repeated gravely. "Those are to be our watchwords. Will you have a weed?"
The junior partner started out of the reverie into which he had fallen.
"Are you going to start smoking here?" he cried.
"Why the deuce shouldn't I? It's my own office. These old-fashioned ideas of yours about not smoking on business premises are getting out of date. Besides, it keeps the flies away. And now I must get on to my correspondence."
With a cigar in the corner of his mouth and humming something resembling an air, the senior partner dashed into his day's work with the ardor of an egg-collector.