CHAPTER VIII
A luggage-laden cab clattered over the granite cubes and passed out of the ring of tall mansions and the shadow of the stately trees within the garden. The career of Heriot Walkingshaw, W.S., was ended, and shocked respectability could lower again her up-rolled eyes and see nothing more outrageous than a prowling cat. May her troubles always end as happily! Undoubtedly, had the full facts been there and then made public, a statue of the junior partner (completely clad) would have adorned that decorous garden.
But his modest reticence was remarkable. He stood in the somber hall listening intently to make sure that the cab really did ascend the steep street towards the station, when his ally, after peering over the banisters, ran downstairs to meet him. He was just heaving a deep sigh of relief.
"Did some one go away in a cab?" she asked.
He looked at her sharply.
"Quite possibly."
In her eyes gleamed a sudden hint of suspicion.
"Was it Heriot?"
He took his time before answering very deliberately—
"It was."
"Where is he going?"
Again he paused. As every moment took his father farther from them, so every moment was precious.
"Can you not guess?"
"What!" she cried. "You're actually putting him into an asylum?"
"It's the best place for him."
She seized his arm.
"Did you give him the alternative?"
With a chaste movement he withdrew the arm.
"I gave him an alternative, certainly."
Her black eyes seemed to pierce into his brain. He disliked being looked at like that exceedingly.
"Our alternative?"
"Our?" he questioned.
"The alternative we discussed last night?"
"We discussed a good many things."
She kept following him up till his back was nearly against the front door.
"Did you offer him the alternative of keeping his promise to me?"
"Look out," he muttered. "Some of the servants may be coming."
"Did you?"
"Would you marry a man that's off his head?"
"He isn't; he was only pretending!"
"That's not what Dr. Downie thought."
"Dr. Downie! What did he know!"
"He certified him."
He was backed against the front door now.
"Did you offer Heriot that alternative?"
He paused for a moment. Heriot must be at the station by now, and he had not many spare minutes before the train started.
"No, I did not," he answered.
The sympathetic widow's hand shot out; there was a smack and then a thud. The smack was caused by a momentary encounter between the hand and his spherical cheek, the thud by a meeting of his head and the door.
"You miserable creature!" she hissed.
With a look such as only the righteous can ever hope to wear, and that in the moment of martyrdom, he watched her rush upstairs sobbing.
And thus the coalition, having served its beneficent purpose, came abruptly to an end. A great deal might be written in this connection, adducing this instance to illustrate the wider fields of statecraft, but unfortunately the present narrative is a simple record of facts, and not a philosophical treatise. The immediate consequence of the episode was that on the following morning Mrs. Dunbar set out for the west of Ross-shire to pay a long-promised visit to a third cousin who possessed several thousand acres of moorland in that vicinity.