He laughed to himself, a laugh unpleasant to hear, and taking up another cigar, went on smoking.
He had been away twenty years, this Carl Walraven, over the world, nobody knew where. A reckless, self-willed, headstrong boy, he had broken wild and run away from home at nineteen, abruptly and without warning. Abruptly and without warning he had returned home, one fine morning, twenty years after, and walking up the palatial steps, shabby, and grizzled, and weather-beaten, had strode straight to the majestic presence of the mistress of the house, with outstretched hand and a cool "How are you, mother?"
And Mrs. Walraven knew her son. He had left her a fiery, handsome, bright-faced lad, and this man before her was gray and black-bearded and weather-beaten and brown, but she knew him. She had risen with a shrill cry of joy, and held open her arms.
"I've come back, you see, mother," Mr. Carl said, easily, "like the proverbial bad shilling. I've grown tired knocking about this big world, and now, at nine-and-thirty, with an empty purse, a light heart, a spotless conscience, and a sound digestion, I'm going to settle down and walk in the way I should go. You are glad to have your ne'er-do-well back again, I hope, mother?"
Glad! A widowed mother, lonely and old, glad to have an only son back! Mrs. Walraven had tightened those withered arms about him closer and closer, with only that one shrill cry:
"Oh, Carl—my son! my son!"
"All right, mother! And now, if there's anything in this house to eat, I'll eat it, because I've been fasting since yesterday, and haven't a stiver between me and eternity. By George! this isn't such a bad harbor for a shipwrecked mariner to cast anchor in. I've been over the world, mother, from Dan to—What's-her-name! I've been rich and I've been poor; I've been loved and I've been hated; I've had my fling at everything good and bad under the shining sun, and I come home from it all, subscribing to the doctrine: 'There's nothing new and nothing true.' And it don't signify; it's empty as egg-shells, the whole of it."
That was the story of the prodigal son. Mrs. Walraven asked no questions. She was a wise old woman; she took her son and was thankful. It had happened late in October, this sudden arrival, and now, late in November, the fatted calf was killed, and Mrs. Walraven's dear five hundred friends bidden to the feast.
And they came. They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in his ancestral halls. He was a very hero of romance—a wealthy hero, too—and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling prize.
The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and darkness, were one blaze of light at last. Flowers bloomed everywhere; musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was a conservatory where alabaster lamps made a silver moonlight in a modern Garden of Eden; there was a supper-table spread and waiting, a feast for the gods and Sybarites; and there was Mrs. Walraven, in black velvet and point lace, upright and stately, despite her sixty years, with a diamond star of fabulous price ablaze on her breast. And there by her side, tall, and dark, and dignified, stood her only son, the prodigal, the repentant, the wealthy Carl Walraven.