days. Together these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing and scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.
After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence of his son one morning at his office. This office was in what had once been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out through the elms on to the square. Old-fashioned bookcases lined with musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.
The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room for various individuals from the different parts of the State who continually sought the counsel's presence.
“Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen,” his father remarked as an opening.
“Your—legal business compels you to travel a great deal,” answered Austen, turning from the window and smiling.
“Somewhat,” said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not lost. “You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it.”
“I know more about it than I did,” his son admitted.
The Honourable Hilary grunted.
“Caught a good many fish, haven't you?”
Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his father's chair.
“See here, Judge,” he said, “what are you driving at? Out with it.”
“When are you—going back West?” asked Mr. Vane.
Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's inscrutable face.
“Do you want to get rid of me?” he said.
“Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?” inquired the father.
“I've sowed a good many,” Austen admitted.
“Why not settle down?”
“I haven't yet met the lady, Judge,” replied his son.
“Couldn't support her if you had,” said Mr. Vane.
“Then it's fortunate,” said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary second in a quarrel. He knew his father, and perceived that these preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.
“Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for all I see of you,” said the Honourable Hilary.
“You ought to retire from business and try fishing,” his son suggested.
The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.
“You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings? You won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar. Come into the office.”
Austen did not answer at once. He suspected that it had cost his father not a little to make these advances.
“Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge? How long do you think it would last?”
“I've considered that some,” answered the Honourable Hilary, “but I won't last a great while longer myself.”
“You're as sound as a bronco,” declared Austen, patting him.
“I never was what you might call dissipated,” agreed Mr. Vane, “but men don't go on forever. I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am, and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you. It's a position of honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be proud.”
“My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel,” said his son.
“Didn't know as you had any precise ambition,” responded the Honourable Hilary, “but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a great railroad. I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else.”
“I don't know much about the duties of such a position,” said Austen, laughing, “but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how to answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal. To speak frankly, Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might otherwise prove a brilliant life in Ripton.”
The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.
“I tell you what I'll do,” he said; “you come in with me and agree to stay five years. If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you. But I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son of mine shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour. It's against American doctrine, and it's against my principles. You can go back to Pepper County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned you fairly.”
“You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge,” said Austen. “Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station in Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the other one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month. I shouldn't begrudge a cent of the money.”
“I suppose I was a fool to talk to you,” said the Honourable Hilary, getting up.
But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.
“Hold on, Judge,” he said, “that was just my way of saying if I accepted your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money. Thinking of it has never kept me awake nights. Now if you'll allow me to take a few days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal, in the nature of a compromise.”
“What's that?” the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.
“Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part of this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself. Of course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing to the lustre of your name. But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs.”
The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.
“It's a bargain, Austen,” he said.
“I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left it for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity. And I ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a fling. It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a sudden determination. Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that.”
Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office, nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and customs of prodigals. Needless to say, the practice did not immediately begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and sometimes had as many as five or six. There was an irresistible attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there, though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke out. Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room in the far corridor to the great man's own office.
These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were not all clients. Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went—fat and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced—who were neither clients nor lawyers. These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a hail-fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked to the Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat very close to his ear. Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's office instead of the anteroom,