CHAPTER XVIII
WHAT MAKES A PRODIGAL
Dr. Merriweather reported that Miss Van Patten had escaped with nothing worse than bruises and a wrenched ankle.
“But by the Lord, Harry!” he exploded, “it was nothing short of a miracle.”
“A miracle?” questioned Barnes. “What about Carl’s part in it?”
The doctor paused a moment. Then he smiled.
“Carl was the miracle,” he answered.
Langdon himself did not get off so easily; his arm was broken below the elbow and the danger did not so much lie in the break as in the stiffness which might result. The doctor did not realize as fully as Barnes what the sheer nimbleness of those fingers of the left hand meant to Carl. Like a good many country physicians, he was greater as a medical man than as a surgeon. He rather took this aftermath of a fracture for granted. Consequently he was a bit surprised at Barnes’ concern in the matter.
“We’ll have his arm out of a sling in six weeks,” declared the doctor. “May be a bit stiff, but—”
“Good heavens!” exploded Barnes. “You’d better amputate it and be done with it.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“I mean that if you take his fiddle away from him, you take away his soul.”
“His soul?”
“Exactly. He couldn’t sing without his fiddle any more than I could paint without my hands. What’s a soul without a song? And he—he has some big ones to sing during these next few years.”
“Steady. Steady. Don’t let that imagination of yours run away with you.”
Barnes studied the big-framed, big-faced man a second and continued more soberly.
“What you call imagination are the grim facts of life for him and for me, doctor. His fiddle isn’t a detail of his life—it’s life itself for him. Cripple his arm and you cripple his soul. You’ve got to fight as hard for those fingers as you would for his life.”
If Dr. Merriweather was at first only annoyed by what he took to be mere extravagance of speech, there was something now in the tense face of Barnes which made him pause and think.
“Carl didn’t say anything to me about that,” he observed.
“No,” answered Barnes, “because he didn’t wish it to get upstairs.”
“To Eleanor?”
“To Eleanor,” answered Barnes.
Dr. Merriweather held out his hand.
“Boy,” he said quietly, “now I understand the miracle. You’re a better physician in this household than I.”
“No. But when you live here day after day there are certain things you’re forced to see.”
“I wonder if you’ve diagnosed anything peculiar about Mr. Van Patten lately.”
Barnes moved uneasily.
“He seems better, that’s all.”
“Anything queer about his eyes?”
“I’ve noticed that every time anyone comes into the room he strains towards him as though trying to see.”
“Just so. Has it occurred to you that perhaps he does see?”
“That he can—actually can see?”
The doctor nodded.
“Why no!” exclaimed Barnes. “Why—that doesn’t seem possible!”
“If he continues to pull himself together at this rate, it’s coming. All I’m wondering about is if he isn’t even now playing possum.”
“Why should he do that?”
“I’m not saying that he is, mind you. But it wouldn’t surprise me if some day he surprised the rest of you.”
“But look here—this is serious. If once he sees me—”
“Even then he might not recognize you. He isn’t as alert mentally as he used to be; his new joy in life would force back every doubt; your acceptance here by Aunt Philomela and Eleanor—”
“But Good Heavens that would mean a terrible crash in prospect. I can’t stay on here forever.”
“It’s too much for me, my boy,” the doctor answered soberly.
“But if he can see now, why doesn’t he say so?”
“These old men get strange whims. Perhaps he’s waiting to make sure of his sight so as not to disappoint the others by raising their hope. Or it may be just an old man’s joke.”
Barnes smiled. It was something of an ironical smile.
“If one had the right point of view,” he remarked, “there are several things a man might think a good joke here.”
“And you,” answered the doctor with a good-natured grin, “are that man, I should say.”
“Perhaps.”
“Thank God it’s your type of man who’s playing this game,” concluded the doctor.
It was three days before Barnes was allowed to see Miss Van Patten. On the whole they were three of the most uncomfortable days he ever passed. The father demanded more and more of his time and succeeded, whether deliberately or not, in a pretty form of torture. He pressed him harder in his questioning both about Alaska and about Carl and never withdrew from his face those closed eyes which still seemed at times to flicker as though opened the tiniest crack. But that may have been pure imagination. There are holy images which if one gazes long enough upon them appear to move their eyes.
Between his visits to the father Barnes made at least one daily pilgrimage to Dr. Merriweather’s for a short talk with Carl. Here again he submitted to another kind of torture. Barnes understood Langdon as no one else on earth understood him, and this invited from the latter the frankest kind of confidence. He listened and he suffered.
Back in the house again, he must needs repeat to Aunt Philomela the greater part of his talk with Langdon.
“The dear boy!” she once exclaimed, “Eleanor is under very great obligations to him.”
“Very great,” answered Barnes. “He saved her life.”
“I hope he’ll soon be able to come over.”
“So do I,” Barnes answered honestly.
“He and Eleanor have always got on so well together. In all the time they have known one another they have never quarreled.”
“That is very well behaved of them.”
“So you see—” she concluded significantly.
“Yes,” he assured her hastily, “I see.”
During those three days, then, Barnes played his part like a good actor—fulfilled his duty like a good soldier, but he lived in dreary isolation. Aunt Philomela saw no change in him. If she had, it would have been some satisfaction to her. As it was they dined in solemn tête-à-tête and disagreed upon every topic proposed for conversation—except Carl. If anything, Barnes’ meek acquiescence on this subject irritated her more than an aggressive attitude on his part would have done. It was altogether too noticeable not to excite her suspicion. But for once she kept her counsel and waited.
It was on the fourth morning that, as she was rising from the breakfast table, she announced,
“My niece wished me to tell you that she will see you for a few minutes this morning if you care to come up.”
Barnes caught his breath.
“And you waited all this time before you told me!” he exclaimed.
Aunt Philomela raised her eyebrows.
“She is hardly ready at this moment to see you,” she observed haughtily.
“I know but—”
Barnes did not finish. What he was going to say was that by delaying the news she had deprived him by just so much of anticipation. On second thought he realized that this would probably not make her feel so badly as it did him.
“Very well, Aunt Philomela,” he returned with dignity, “kindly convey my compliments to your niece and tell her I shall be pleased to pay my respects at any time she may suggest.”
“Which means I suppose that you’ll come up at about eleven.”
“At about eleven,” he agreed.
It took the tall clock in the library almost a day to compass the arc between eight and eleven but it was finally accomplished. Before the clock had ceased striking Barnes was on his way upstairs. He was met at the door by Aunt Philomela who escorted him to her sitting-room where Eleanor lay upon a couch looking not one whit worse for her adventure. The color in her cheeks was even deeper if anything; her eyes full and lustrous, if a bit startled; and her hand-clasp firm.
“It seems silly to lie here,” she smiled, “but between Aunt Philomela and Dr. Merriweather, what can one do?”
“Nothing,” he agreed. “One might as well be in the hands of Fate.”
He took a chair at the head of the couch and Aunt Philomela picking up a bit of lace upon which she was at work sat by the window and proceeded still further to symbolize Fate.
“It’s been very dull in Alaska these last three days,” he observed.
“In Alaska?”
“Downstairs is Alaska,” he explained.
“But Aunty says that between father and Carl, you’ve been very busy.”
“I’ve had a great many things to think about,” he admitted. “One of them concerns your father.”
“Daddy?”
Aunt Philomela glanced up from her knitting.
“Yes,” he nodded, “it may be necessary for me to make my excuses and leave before very long.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Aunt Philomela.
“I mean that Mr. Van Patten is getting very much better. I mean that he may see more than we think he sees.”
“His eyesight is returning?” exclaimed the girl, “Oh, that is too good to be true.”
“His eyesight,” gasped Aunt Philomela flushing red, “you mean—you mean he may yet detect us in this fraud?”
“For all I know he may already have done so,” answered Barnes.
The girl rose to her elbow. Aunt Philomela looked upon the point of jumping from the window. “I’ve noticed,” stammered the latter, “that he has made me very uncomfortable these last few days.”
“That may be only your conscience,” suggested Barnes. “But I—I have no conscience and yet he has made me very uncomfortable.”
“Dr. Merriweather knows this?” asked the girl.
“He has suspected it. He left it for me to tell you.”
“Why, it would be like getting Dad home from a foreign land,” cried the girl.
“He would be almost like another prodigal,” smiled Barnes.
“Only,” she objected, “father has not wasted his substance in riotous living.”
“That isn’t what makes the prodigal,” answered Barnes. “The prodigal needn’t be really prodigal. It’s the journey away from home into the far country that makes the prodigal.”
“You take great liberty with the Scriptures,” snapped Aunt Philomela more to relieve her feelings than anything else.
“Like every artist,” answered Barnes unruffled, “I have learned the Bible almost by heart. Do you remember what the father exclaimed when he saw his son?”
Aunt Philomela pretended to resume her knitting.
“Perhaps you can quote it,” suggested Barnes.
“Perhaps you will,” put in the girl to save her aunt’s feelings.
“He said,” resumed Barnes, slowly. “He said, ‘This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and he is found.’ Nothing about riotous living. The boy had gone away and came back again. That was all that counted. That is all that will count when Mr. Van Patten comes back from the darkness to you.”
So in his own life, he thought, his father was as much the prodigal as he, the son, was. But he said nothing of this.
“If it should be true!” stammered the girl again.
She lost sight of all the complications this involved—lost sight of all the other complications which had worried her before Barnes came upstairs with this news.
“Aunty,” she determined, “I must go in at once and see him.”
But Barnes motioned her to lie down again.
“Not yet,” he advised, “let’s determine first what is best to be done. Aunt Philomela—what do you say?”
Aunt Philomela frowned.
“I say it’s all a pretty pickle,” she answered.
“What do you say?” asked Eleanor.
“This,” answered Barnes. “First of all, I must leave before he recognizes me. Secondly, we must get his real son back to him as soon as possible.”
“Yes,” agreed the girl. “But will Joe come?”
“I shall send him a wire every day until he does come,” said Barnes.
“And when he does come, what will Carl say?” demanded Aunt Philomela.
Barnes smiled.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I fear he will be somewhat embarrassed.”
Miss Van Patten looked troubled. Here was another uncomfortable situation to add to the long list of which Barnes was either the direct or indirect cause. She looked at him with what he interpreted as an appeal.
“Perhaps that isn’t a very important matter anyway,” he suggested.
“Important,” snapped Aunt Philomela, “I should call it very important.”
“How?” inquired Barnes.
“Because my niece and Mr. Langdon are engaged,” she exploded.