It was in the long, spacious dining-room of the "Princess" that Cosden pointed out the Thatcher party to Huntington, and Hamlen was with them. Naturally enough Huntington's eyes first rested on the girl's face, and in it he found enough that was reminiscent to cause a start. It was Marian Seymour as she must have looked when he knew her, but not at all as he had come to think of her during the intervening years. How ridiculously young she was! But Huntington had discovered that young people were getting to look younger every year now. It almost annoyed him, whenever he went to Cambridge to straighten out some mix-up of nephew Billy's, to see how much smaller and younger the students were to-day than when he was there. He remembered distinctly that he and his mates had been men when he was in college; but the present generation was made up of youngsters who should not be allowed abroad without their nurses.
Miss Thatcher, whom Cosden pointed out to him, came within the same category. She carried herself with a dignity not always seen in girls of her age, but she was undeniably young. Then his glancepassed from her to the older woman whom he took to be her mother, and he found himself guilty of staring shamelessly. This was undoubtedly the Marian Seymour of sainted memory, now delightfully matured into an extremely attractive matron of thirty-eight or forty. The slight figure had changed but little from what he remembered; the face still showed traces of its former mischievous vivacity, even though it had become more decorous. Such changes as he saw were only those which come in the natural development of a charming girl into a well set-up woman of the world. So this was the genius who would have presided over his household if he had happened to find her at home upon either of those two momentous occasions, or if he had happened to discover her in Europe on that eventful trip and had happened to tell her of his devotion, and, incidentally, she had happened to respond to his declaration of undying affection.
His inspection was as complete and analytic as the distance between the two tables would permit. She was a fascinating woman, he acknowledged, and yet—she was so different from what he had pictured her. The wife with whom he had mentally lived these twenty years he himself had created out of the all-too-scanty materials of memory, added to substantially by what his imagination had skilfully selected of what he thought she ought to be. He had not been more successful in his creation than Nature herself, he was forced to admit, but while looking at Mrs. Thatcher he experienced the mortifying sensation of being a self-convicted bigamist.
Curiously, he had never thought of her as growingolder along with him. His glance returned to the daughter's face, and in it he found a closer semblance to what his mind had pictured. She was more mature than her mother had been, yet she possessed many of the same physical characteristics. Was it possible that she might have been his daughter? Here came the third distinct shock. For the first time he had something against which to measure his own age, and involuntarily he touched his heavy head of hair to reassure himself that baldness, that advertisement of advancing years, had not overtaken him in the moment.
"Well," Cosden interrupted his reveries; "I'm waiting to hear your first impressions."
Huntington started guiltily, as if his friend had witnessed the gymnastics his mind had executed. It was natural that Cosden, being nearest to him, should come in for the force of the reaction.
"How do you suppose I can express an opinion on a girl half-way across a room the size of this?" he answered with as much asperity as ever crept into the evenness of his tone.
Cosden looked up surprised. "Why, Monty!" he expostulated, "don't get peevish!"
"Don't bother me with foolish questions," was the ungracious rejoinder. "I'm studying the situation. Later I'll give you my impressions."
"But you've seen her," Cosden persisted. "What do you think of the perspective?"
"She is very young," Huntington replied, regaining his composure and realizing that to fall in with Cosden's mood was easier than to explain his own.
"She's twenty—just the right age for a man thirty-eight,"was the complacent reply. "I've figured it all out. A woman grows old faster than a man, and eighteen years is just the proper handicap."
"Which is her husband?" Huntington asked.
"Her husband?" Cosden repeated after him.
"I mean her mother's husband," Huntington corrected hastily; "which one is Mr. Thatcher?"
"The man with the smooth face; I don't know the others. We'll meet them later."
As the party left the dining-room Mr. Thatcher recognized Cosden and fell behind to greet him.
"Well met!" he exclaimed cordially, after being presented to Huntington. "It is a relief to see some one I know. Down here on a vacation trip, I suppose?"
"Why—yes," Cosden hesitated, seeing some deeper meaning behind the bromidic question; "that is, I thought so until I saw you. Now I'm not quite sure."
Thatcher laughed. "I had the same idea, but I can't seem to get away from business; it pursues me! I've stumbled onto something—not very tremendous, but still it may be a good thing. I'd be glad to have you look it over with me if you care to. We'll discuss it later if you don't object to talking shop during leisure hours."
Cosden's face assumed that keen, resourceful expression which his friends knew so well. "I'm never too much at leisure to discuss business," he said.
"Good! Now, when you and Mr. Huntington have finished dinner, join us on the piazza and we'll all have our coffee together."
Huntington looked at his friend significantly as Thatcher moved away. "I didn't come down here on a business trip," he suggested.
"It won't interfere with you at all," Cosden reassured him. "Thatcher is a big man, and has a good eye for things. What he has in mind may be well worth looking into."
"So long as you don't let it divert us from our main purpose I won't object," Huntington conceded gravely; "but the spirit of the chase is on me, and I can't mix sport and business. This is the first time I have ever approached a girl from a matrimonial point of view, even vicariously. I'm beginning to enjoy it and I refuse to be thrown off the scent."
There is no moon like a Bermuda moon. The contrast between its soft yet brilliant light—as it fell first upon the harbor, throwing the islands into silhouette, then flooding the piazza—and the electric glare, out of which the two men stepped ten minutes later, made a deep impression upon Huntington. The eyes of his friend, however, were focused upon the little party, chatting merrily about the table, awaiting their arrival.
"I had them postpone our coffee," Thatcher explained as he presented Cosden to the Stevenses and to Hamlen, and Huntington to each. "We shall enjoy it the more for having you with us."
Huntington found himself sitting between the daughter and Hamlen, while Cosden sat next to Mrs. Thatcher across the table. There had been no recognition, and Huntington was glad of it; hepreferred to introduce the subject in his own way and at his own time. The girl, however, had already discovered a bond.
"Aren't you Billy Huntington's uncle?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted; "but where in the world did you meet him?"
"He is a particular friend of my brother Philip's," she explained. "Philip is a year ahead of him at Harvard, you know, but they are great pals. My brother always has him at the house whenever he's in New York."
"Well, well!" laughed Huntington. "The young rascal never told me anything about it! But wait a minute—Phil Thatcher—why, of course! Billy has had him in to dine with me several times. So he's your brother!"
"Yes; I was sure I was right," she smiled. "We're friends already, aren't we?"
"We are," Huntington acquiesced gravely; "and I shall do something particularly nice for Billy to show my appreciation of what he has done for me."
Mrs. Thatcher caught the general drift of her daughter's conversation, and she leaned across the table.
"Are you not a Harvard man, Mr. Huntington?" she asked. "If so, you and Mr. Hamlen must have been in college at about the same time."
"Yes," Huntington replied; and turning to Hamlen he gave the year of his graduation.
"That was my Class also," was the reply; but there was nothing in Hamlen's manner to invite reminiscence.
"Hamlen—Philip Hamlen," Huntington repeatedmeditatively. "I don't believe we knew each other, did we? But the name is familiar. I have it! You are the lost Philip Hamlen our Class Secretary has been searching for; I have seen the name in the list of missing men each time a Class Report has been issued. You must send him your history, my dear fellow. We're proud of our Class, and we don't want to lose sight of a single member."
There was a bitterness in Hamlen's voice as he replied. "My history would interest no one; it is better that I remain among the 'missing men.'"
Huntington sensed at once what lay behind his classmate's response. "No college graduate can afford to do that," he expostulated. "Whether one wishes it so or not, he has accepted a heritage which carries with it responsibilities, and these force him to his capacity for the honor of his Class and of his Alma Mater."
Mrs. Thatcher was following the conversation not only with interest, but with a certain degree of anxiety.
"Mr. Huntington is right, Philip," she added; "you know that he is right."
Hamlen moved uneasily in his chair. "It is curious how much more interested our classmates become in us after we separate than while we are together in college," he said significantly.
"Why is it curious?" Huntington persisted. "Why is it not the natural sequence of events?"
"You could not understand." Hamlen spoke with rising emotion. "You had everything in college; I had nothing. You remember my name only because you've seen it listed amongst the 'missing men';but I knew you the moment I saw you. Back there you were Monty Huntington, manager of the crew, member of all the exclusive societies, in everything, a part of everything. Your classmates courted your acquaintance, and the four years at Cambridge meant something to you. To me they meant nothing except what I learned in the class-rooms. You as an alumnus owe all that you say to the Class and to the Alma Mater, for both gave you much; I owe them nothing, for they gave me nothing."
"My dear fellow!" Huntington expostulated hastily, "forgive me for touching on so tender a subject; yet I am glad I did, for it is only fair that you let me set you right. The college world is a small one, and its citizens are young, untried boys. They are sometimes selfish and cruel and unreasonable without meaning it, while they are enjoying what is to most of them their first freedom, and they are trying to conduct themselves like full-grown men. There are heartburns which at the time seem tragedies. Then the undeveloped citizens of this little world, the biggest of them, pass out into the great world, for which the college life is only a training-school, and become infinitesimal parts of it. There the ratio becomes readjusted. What seemed essentials—like the clubs, for instance, or athletics—become non-essentials as the men look back upon them; become simply pleasant memories of delightful companionship. The next few years represent the real trying-out period, and each member of the Class measures up his fellow-members by what they have done since college. The mere fact of being members of the same Class is the bond. I don't care what you didin college, Hamlen; but I sha'n't let you get away from me until you tell me what you've done since, or until you promise that I shall see you when next you come to Boston. The fact that I didn't know you in college makes me the more keen to know you now."
"I thank you a thousand times!" Mrs. Thatcher cried impulsively. "What you have said in five minutes will do more to set Mr. Hamlen right than weeks of argument from me. I found him to-day in a veritable paradise which he has built here, and where he has lived alone practically since he left college. I am trying to persuade him to come back into the world again, and you can help me to accomplish it."
Hamlen was visibly affected by Huntington's cordiality. "This has been a bewildering day," he said. "For over twenty years I have lived alone, nursing a resentment toward college and life in general until it has come to be a religion. This afternoon Mrs. Thatcher finds me unexpectedly and begins to batter down my defenses; now Mr. Huntington, without realizing it, attempts to complete the demolition. Don't wonder that I'm not myself to-night; but I thank my classmate for what he has said, just as I thank Mrs. Thatcher for her earlier efforts."
"Mr. Huntington," Thatcher remarked, "you have given Stevens and me a new idea of the value of a college degree. I wasn't especially keen about having my boy go to college, but now, by George! I wouldn't have it otherwise."
"Huntington is a living propagandum for Harvard," Cosden said lightly, realizing the desirability of leading the conversation into a less serious channel."My degree represents simply an additional tool to use in carving out success, to him it means idolatry. If Huntington's house was on fire, I should expect to see him climbing down the firemen's ladder in his pink pajamas with his precious sheepskin under his arm carried as tenderly as a mother would a child."
"Oh, you may make light of it," Huntington replied good-naturedly, "but Hamlen and I are treading on sacred ground. The one weakness of college life is that the opportunities it offers come before we are competent to appreciate or embrace them. That is what brings about the condition which he has misunderstood. It would be much better if we all could have two years of college when we're seventeen and the other two when we're forty."
The conversation drifted into smoother channels, but by the time the party separated the acquaintance had developed to a point far beyond an ordinary first meeting. Underneath it different elements were at work in each one's mind and heart, put in motion by the unexpected intensity of almost the earliest words which had been exchanged. Hamlen was the first to leave. He said good-night casually to the group, but managed to separate Huntington from the others.
"You have done much for one of your classmates to-night," he said simply. "I thank you for it."
"Nonsense!" Huntington protested. "I'm more than delighted to have this opportunity to know you—and I want to know you better."
"Will you come to my villa some day this week?"
Hamlen seemed to hang expectantly upon the answer.
"Of course," Huntington replied promptly. "If you hadn't asked me, I should have come anyhow. It's an inherent right which I demand."
Hamlen pressed his hand and turned to Mrs. Thatcher, who walked with him to the door.
"I don't know whether to thank you or to curse you, Marian," he said feelingly in a low voice. "Through you I have had more interjected into my life in this single day than in the twenty-odd years which have passed by. Is this the dawn of a to-morrow or the epitome of human suffering? Are you my Genius or my Nemesis? Before God I ask the question seriously. I myself cannot answer it."
"Don't try," she answered, smiling; "let Time do that!"
Cosden had been sitting on the hotel piazza half an hour when "Merry" Thatcher emerged from the dining-room, gazed about the almost total vacancy as if looking for some one, and then advanced, recognizing in the solitary smoker an acquaintance of the night before.
"I'm always the first one," she complained after greeting him. "We're going sailing this morning, but I might have known that no one else would be down for breakfast at anywhere near the appointed time."
"Why not cheer me up while you're waiting?" Cosden suggested. "I formed the habit of early rising years ago when I had to do it; now that I don't have to, the habit still sticks."
"Mr. Huntington hasn't appeared yet?" she inquired.
Cosden laughed, and then looked at his watch. "When you come to know Mr. Huntington better you will admire his mathematical precision: he is never late, but he never arrives a moment earlier than is necessary. The breakfast hour is over at nine-thirty; at nine-fifteen you will observe the gentleman leisurely strolling in the direction of his table,with every detail of his morning dress perfectly adjusted, as if the world had placed all its time at his disposal, when in reality he can just get his order in and have it served hot."
The girl smiled at the description of his friend. "Not many men are so dependable," she commented.
"There is only one William Montgomery Huntington," Cosden admitted cheerfully. "It would be exactly the same if the closing of the breakfast room was four-thirty instead of nine-thirty."
The smile on her face changed to a deeper expression as she looked out across the harbor. She turned to Cosden suddenly.
"Wasn't he splendid last evening when he talked about the responsibilities of college life! For the first time I wished I were a boy!"
"He is a very intense person on some subjects; that happens to be one of them."
The girl could not fail to interest Cosden, even if he were not already attracted by his previous slight acquaintance, for the present mood showed her at her best. The nickname "Merry," given to distinguish the younger Marian from her mother, scarcely served as a descriptive appellation, for underneath the girlish vivacity ran a serious vein which gave her unusual poise, and made her seem older than she was. To Cosden she appeared at that moment the embodiment of attractive girlhood, for the big panama, almost encircling her face, well set off the dark hair and the sympathetic brown eyes, while the color which plainly showed in her cheeks, despite the depth of the complexion, gavejust the touch needed to heighten the effect. The soft lines of the white flannel skirt and the pink silk sweater disclosed the youth and litheness of the figure. Cosden was surprised to find himself noticing these details so carefully, and accepted the fact as evidence that his interest in the girl was even deeper than he had supposed.
"I love intensity in men," she said simply; "so many seem ashamed to show it no matter how strongly they may feel!"
"That is due to the training of life," Cosden explained, caring little what direction the conversation took so long as they became better acquainted. "The higher up you go, the greater the repression. Diplomacy is the climax of gentlemanly concealment of one's real feelings, and the art among arts of courteous insincerity. In business, of course, there's a reason—"
"Can't a man be sincere in business?" she asked, looking at him with eyes so deep and straightforward in their expression that he found the question disconcerting.
"Why,—of course," he stumbled; "but 'sincerity' isn't exactly a business expression. If I let you know by my manner that I was eager to buy something which you wanted to sell, or to sell something you wanted to buy, it would naturally affect the price, wouldn't it?"
"Ought it to?" she persisted. "Why isn't that taking advantage?"
Cosden smiled indulgently. "Some time, if you like, I will give you a learned discourse on values and what affects them, but anything so eruditenow would take your mind off the gaieties of your sailing trip."
"Will you?" Merry exclaimed delighted. "Father always makes fun of me when I ask serious questions. I am sure I should hate business, because it seems always to be a question of taking advantage of some one else; but I should like to know something about it."
"You don't approve of taking advantage of some one else?"
"It is exactly the opposite of what we are taught to consider right, isn't it?"
"How about bargain-sales when you are home?" Cosden asked with apparent innocence. "Do you ever patronize them?"
"Why, yes," Merry replied frankly; "I frequently wait for them when I want some particular thing, and my allowance is running low."
Cosden laughed outright. "If consistency were really a jewel, then would woman go unadorned!"
"How in the world are you going to twist what I said into an inconsistency?"
"I'll let you make the demonstration yourself. Here is the problem: a dealer, believing a demand to exist for a certain article, lays in a stock to supply that demand. If you, and other dear ladies who really intend to buy the article, purchased when he first offered it for sale, his estimate of the demand would have been correct. But you all have learned the habits of the shops, so instead of rushing to his counters you play 'possum until the dealer really believes that he has over-estimated the demand, and down goes the value to him and consequently theprice to you. Then you rush frantically from your lairs and secure the article you have really wanted from the beginning at a bargain price. Don't you admit that you are taking advantage of the dealer?"
"Oh, you men do put things in such a disagreeable way!" Merry laughed. "We have to do that to protect ourselves against the outrageous prices they charge in the first place."
"It's all a game," Cosden said seriously, "and a mighty fascinating one. So long as you stick to the rules you may bluff all you choose, and the best bluffer takes the blue chips."
"I'm sure I should hate it," Merry repeated. "I'm going to learn to be a teacher, so that if some one outbluffs father I can fall back upon a respectable pursuit."
"Even then you'll still be in the bluffing game," chuckled Cosden. "Think of the knowledge a teacher has to assume which he doesn't possess!"
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed in despair. "Why be an iconoclast? You leave me nothing but matrimony—"
"The worst bluff of all," interrupted Huntington, stepping forward from behind their chairs, immaculate in white flannels and a panama which rivaled Merry's. "Seeing Mr. Cosden in an academic mood, I could not resist the temptation to snare the nuggets of wisdom which fell from his lips. This must be my excuse for eavesdropping."
"There he is," Cosden said significantly to Merry. "You'd never dream that he'd come within an ace of missing his breakfast, would you?"
"Missing what?" Huntington demanded. "Inwhat little pleasantry has my friendly critic been indulging himself?"
"Let the critic answer for himself," Cosden retorted. "I predicted to Miss Thatcher the exact moment when you would appear, thus proving myself a prophet."
"You take yourself too seriously, Connie. You're no prophet, nor even the son of a prophet; you're simply a good observer. Some men run a block and then wait five minutes for a car; I learned years ago that it was wiser to walk deliberately to the white post and arrive there at the precise moment. But I don't let that car get away from me, my friend."
"If my memory serves me right, Mr. Huntington, you were not always so deliberate," remarked Mrs. Thatcher significantly.
Huntington looked up quickly, unaware until then that the other late breakfasters had followed so closely on his heels.
"The night has been telling tales," he said.
"It was stupid of me not to recognize you before," she answered.
"Do you and Mother know each other?" Merry asked, much interested in the new turn of the conversation.
"Your mother," said Huntington gravely, "did me the honor to accept my escort to our Senior Dance—I won't tell you how many years ago. She deliberately broke my heart, sailed away to Europe, and then returned and married your father, just out of pique. Now that you know the story of my life, I ask you, why should I accelerate mymotions, as my captious companion seems to think I should, when your mother's quixotic conduct deprived me years ago of all possible incentive?"
"Then you are really the Monty Huntington I knew!" Mrs. Thatcher exclaimed. "I was sure of it when you spoke of your Class to Philip Hamlen."
"I was sure it was you before you spoke at all," he said quietly. "I recognized an aroma the moment I came into your presence—"
"An aroma?" Mrs. Thatcher interrupted questioningly.
"I know not whether it was fragrance or reminiscence, but either is equally sweet."
Huntington's gallantry, half assumed, half real, as it seemed to those who heard his words, passed simply as a pleasantry with all except Cosden, who knew his friend too well not to recognize the presence of something deeper beneath the lightly spoken expressions. But Thatcher's voice brought him back from his surmises.
"We are counting on you both to join us," he insisted. "Our party will be incomplete without you."
"Please come," Mrs. Thatcher added. "For the last twenty-four hours I have been renewing all my girlhood friendships, and poor Edith Stevens here hasn't had a chance even to express an opinion. That for Edith is real self-sacrifice."
"Edith is sitting back and learning a thing or two," Miss Stevens retorted calmly.
"Do come and give her a chance to demonstrate," Mrs. Thatcher appealed.
"I suppose bachelors are as necessary to the demonstrationas guinea-pigs to the laboratory," Huntington said. "Come on, Connie; let us take a chance."
No truer statement had ever been made in jest than that the previous twenty-four hours had been a period of self-sacrifice to Edith Stevens. She was younger than Mrs. Thatcher, and their friends accused them of accepting each other as foils to accentuate their contrasting characteristics. Miss Stevens was slight and erect, and was always gowned with a taste and skill which gave her an air of distinction; her friend possessed such striking fascination of person and manner that she gave distinction to any fashion she might adopt. Mrs. Thatcher's activities accomplished results; Edith's seemed simply the expression of an eternal unrest. The younger woman's hair was light, and her eyes blue, while Mrs. Thatcher was a perfect brunette; and the approach of the two women to the same subject was always from a different standpoint. Yet they had been the closest of friends from school days.
Except with Marian, Edith, as a rule, dominated the situation at all times. Now, however, she found herself absolutely side-tracked, while her friend occupied the center of the stage in the interesting character of past or present object of admiration from three perfectly good men. Men were a hobby with Edith Stevens. Her brother feelingly remarked that the only reason she never married was that no individual male possessed the composite attributes she demanded. To be one of three women, surrounded by five men, and not to be able to command the attention of any one of them except her brotherwas nothing less than irony. She had tried flirting with Thatcher years before, and had long since given him up in despair; Hamlen was annexed by Marian before she had even a chance to compete, and of the two remaining eligibles Huntington suddenly confessed himself a part of the flotsam her friend had left behind in her beblossomed path toward the altar.
"Take one more look at Mr. Cosden, Marian," she said maliciously, as the little party walked slowly down the steps toward the yacht. "Perhaps he, too, was an early admirer."
Mrs. Thatcher laughed. "No," she reassured her, "I'm sure he never crossed my horizon until last night. I'll renounce all claims on him, but don't you set your cap for Philip Hamlen; I have other plans for him."
"Where is Mr. Hamlen?" Edith demanded. "Didn't you invite him?"
"No," Marian replied quickly. "It would be cruel not to give him time to recover his balance after yesterday. Heigh ho!" she sighed. "I wonder whether I'm glad or sorry that I found him here."
"I've been waiting for a report on that reunion," Edith said suggestively. "I haven't forgotten the letters which we used to read together years ago."
"Weren't they wonderful?" Marian exclaimed. Then she added, after a pause, "I don't believe I realized until yesterday the depth of suffering which a sensitive soul can reach."
The sailing-party disembarked at the landing steps of the "Princess" shortly after six o'clock, and were greeted by a tall young man whose face was almost concealed by the broad brim of his hat, turned down as if to protect its owner from possible prostration from the sun. At the opposite end of the young man the white trouser-legs were turned up at least two laps higher than would have been expected, so that hat and trousers together made a normal average. Below the turn-up of the trousers showed a considerable expanse of white-silk hosiery, terminating in spotless white buckskin shoes; below the down-turned hat-brim was a grin which extended well across the boyish face. Altogether, the young man warranted the attention he attracted.
The skipper made so perfect a landing that the identity of those on board was disclosed only at the last moment; but the single glance the young man had was sufficient to reassure him, and he stepped forward eagerly.
"Hello, everybody!" he cried cheerfully. "Wish you Happy New-Year!"
Merry was the first to grasp the significance of theexcitement. "Why, it's Billy Huntington!" she exclaimed.
"Of course," he admitted, still grinning; "who else would charge down here like a young dace just for the pleasure of wishing you the compliments of the season?"
The young man paused long enough to assist the ladies over the rail, with a greeting to each.
"There's your uncle," Merry said, nodding in the direction of the men; "don't you recognize him?"
"Surest thing you know," Billy answered, still hanging back. "I'm waiting to see if he will recognize me, under all the circumstances."
"Come here, you young rascal," Huntington responded to the implied question as he stepped on the pier; "come here and give an account of yourself."
"Well," Billy replied slowly, clinging to the extended hand as a refuge, "you see I didn't know Mr. Cosden came down with you, and it was vacation, and I thought you'd be awfully lonely here without me—"
"I see," his uncle said dryly; "it was all on my account."
Billy seemed to feel the necessity of further explanation. "Of course I knew Merry—the Thatchers were here. Phil told me—"
"Too bad Philip couldn't have come with you," Mrs. Thatcher remarked.
"Yes; he went up to the Lawrences' house-party for over Christmas as he planned."
"How did you leave your worthy parents?" Huntington inquired.
A look of dismay passed over the boy's face. "I forgot to telegraph them from New York, and I meant to cable just as soon as I arrived." Then an expression of relief came to his assistance: "But they'll know I'm with you—somewhere."
Huntington sighed. "Another reckoning for me when I return!" he said resignedly; "but it's worth it all to know that you 'charged down here like a young dace' as soon as you realized your poor uncle's 'awful loneliness.'"
"Then it was you who tried to signal us from the tender?" Merry came to his rescue.
"Yes; I thought it was you; I wigwagged until I almost plunged overboard. I've got to go back Monday, to reach Cambridge in time to register, so I hated to lose a whole day out of three."
"There's one thing about a college education which Mr. Huntington didn't mention last evening," Thatcher remarked to Cosden as they walked toward the bar for the anteprandial cocktail; "it gives a boy freedom of action and breadth of imagination."
"Huntington left out a whole lot of things he might have touched on," Cosden said testily. "That's a topic on which we don't agree, and never shall. There is a boy with many sterling qualities going to waste because Monty has more wishbone than backbone in the matter of discipline."
"Don't get started on that, Connie," Huntington's voice came from the rear. "I've no doubt it's deserved, but that boy keeps me from remembering that my own days of irresponsibility are so far behind me. I believe I enjoy him the more because I haven't a parent's duty to perform."
"It's a sort of reciprocity without personal liability," laughed Thatcher.
"Exactly. I wonder sometimes if what we gain by experience is worth what we lose in illusion.—Aren't you coming up-stairs to dress for dinner, Billy?" Huntington continued, as his nephew and Merry walked past them, engaged in an animated conversation.
"Don't wait for me," was the prompt response. "I'm a bear at dressing, and I'll be ready before Dixon has put in your collar-studs."
"I feel easier down here since I know that you're off duty, too, and not likely to upset my apple-cart while I'm away," Thatcher remarked to Cosden with a smile. "Did you know, Mr. Huntington," he continued, turning, "that your friend is a wrecker of other men's plans?"
"It's the best thing he does," Huntington agreed promptly. "That exactly explains my presence here."
Cosden was immensely pleased by Thatcher's acknowledgment of his importance, but he tried to carry it off lightly.
"Oh, well," he said indifferently, "you must let me have my innings once in a while. I have to get to you sometimes to make up for other bouts which I've been glad to forget."
"You'll join us, of course," Thatcher added, to Huntington.
"I can resist anything but temptation," Huntington replied soberly; "I love the enemy."
"This cocktail-drinking is a curious thing," Thatcher remarked. "In cold weather we take it towarm us up, in warm weather to cool us off; when we are depressed it is to cheer us, and when we're happy it's because we want to celebrate. And there you are.—How about the Consolidated Machinery deal?" Thatcher changed the subject abruptly, and spoke to Cosden. "Are we going to fight each other on that?"
"I'm afraid we'll have to," Cosden admitted frankly; "but I'll be glad to talk it over with you. From here, the interests look too far apart even to compromise."
Cosden and Huntington went up in the elevator together, leaving Thatcher on the piazza.
"What the devil did that young cub show up here for just at this time?" Cosden demanded.
"Didn't you hear?" Monty explained innocently. "He wanted to cheer me up in my 'awful loneliness.'"
"Lonely fiddlesticks!" Cosden protested irritably. "Don't you grasp the fact that his coming is going to mess things up?"
"Why, no," Huntington said slowly, pausing at the door of his room to give his friend opportunity to finish his remarks; "I can't for the life of me see that."
"Don't you see that it's Merry Thatcher the kid is making up to?"
"Oh, ho!" Huntington exclaimed. "So that's the situation! It was stupid of me not to understand."
"Well, that's it; and I won't have it."
"Of course you won't; but how are you going to stop it?"
"That's your job, Monty. It's up to you to send him about his business."
"That doesn't appeal to me as a sporting proposition," Huntington said after a moment's deliberation. "I didn't come down here to help you get a corner in anything, but merely as an observer, and to give you expert advice. Now you suggest a combination—trust, as it were—of two full-grown men against a half-baked boy. It isn't worthy of you, Connie, and I'm not sure that it isn't an illegal restraint of trade. Oh, no; I couldn't think of it."
"I'd like to see you in the same situation just once," growled Cosden. "Why the devil can't you send the boy home?"
"If I did, he'd come back so quick he'd meet himself going away," Huntington said gravely; "but as a matter of fact I understand that he plans to go on Monday, and there's no boat sailing before then anyhow."
He opened the door of his room and stepped inside.
"I might add, Connie," he continued, "that if you're afraid to take chances with a boy like that I don't feel much confidence in the final outcome of your benedictine expedition."
"I'm serious in this," Cosden snapped back. "My bump of humor evidently got light-struck in the developing. Billy has twenty years ahead of him to pick out a girl while I haven't, and he must understand that I mean business."
"Of course he must," agreed Huntington. "It hadn't occurred to me until you spoke of it that there was the remotest chance of having Billy show sense enough to become interested in any girl so wellcalculated to make a man of him. In fact, I doubt very much whether his own intellect has carried him so far. It's all right for you or me to contemplate committing matrimony, but a young man, in these days of increasing cost of everything, is likely to become a grandfather before he can afford to be a father. Only the other day, Connie, the thought came to me that if this high cost of living continues it will make death a necessity of life."
"You are evidently in no frame of mind to discuss anything serious now," Cosden retorted; "I'll wait until after dinner."
"Do!" Huntington's face brightened. "Look at the reproachful expression on the bosom of that beautiful white shirt which Dixon has laid out for me. Can't you almost hear the pathos in its tone as it asks to be filled?"
The door slammed, and Cosden's heavy tread could be heard as he disgustedly retreated down the hall to his own room.
One of the compensations of maturity is that the adjustment of proper proportions comes more quickly than to youth. It may be that Cosden saw the modicum of truth which lay beneath his friend's bantering; it may be that he was ashamed to have shown any uncertainty in his mind as to the final outcome of his embassy. At all events, he seemed to be in the best of humor when he dined with Huntington and the boy, and even accepted with good grace the unexpected announcement that Billy and Merry were to "take in" the dance at the "Hamilton." It may be that he was determined to demonstrate his strength of mind, for when the little party reassembledon the piazza, and the young people disappeared soon after the coffee, he devoted himself to Edith Stevens with an assiduity which caused Huntington to smile quietly to himself. Stevens and Thatcher, finding the ladies well provided for, went down-stairs for a game of billiards. Mrs. Thatcher cheerfully accepted Huntington's invitation to stroll to the pier, leaving Miss Stevens and Cosden by themselves.
"I've made an appointment for you on Monday morning," Thatcher remarked to Cosden as he passed by.
"Good! I'll keep it," was the prompt response.
"What do you think of Marian's resurrection?" Edith asked him when they were alone.
Cosden looked in the direction of the pier. "Do you mean—" he began.
"Oh, no!" she interrupted him. "That is merely a revival, which I imagine may develop into an experience meeting. I mean Mr. Hamlen. Think of a devotion that forces a man to bury himself for twenty years! I could throw myself on his neck for restoring my lost belief in the constancy of man."
"I hadn't heard that side of the story," Cosden observed.
"It was while we were at school together," Edith explained. "Marian was irresistible then—as now, and every man she met lost his head altogether; but for a time she and Mr. Hamlen were engaged. Then she married the last man we expected; but she and Harry have been very happy. It simply shows that you never can tell."
"Did you know Hamlen then?"
"No; but I heard enough about him. If he had been merely intelligent instead of intellectual he might have had her just as well as not. He simply frightened her out of it."
"Where did Monty come in?"
"I never heard of him; things couldn't have gone very far."
"You remember what he said just before we started out this morning? I know him pretty well and Monty doesn't speak like that unless there is something back of it."
"Well," Edith laughed, "I'm sure I should have known, even so. Why, I could reel off so many names that you would think Marian was a heartless coquette; but it wasn't that at all. She simply loved attention, as all women do."
"How about the daughter?" queried Cosden.
"Merry?" Miss Stevens interrogated. "Oh, Merry is an up-to-date, twentieth-century thoroughbred. Marian has never known just what to make of her because she isn't like other girls, but to my mind the comparison is all to her credit. I'm generous when I give the child so good a character, for I know she heartily disapproves of me."
Cosden was pleased with the intuition he had shown in his selection. "I should think young Huntington would bore her about as much as a youngster in kilts," he said, to draw her out.
"He is her brother's friend, she adores athletics and dancing, and she is exercising the prerogative of her age and sex."
There was a silence of several moments, during which time Cosden was debating with himselfwhether it was too late for him to bring his dancing of the vintage of the nineties up to the present confusion of innovations. He had scoffed at modern dances but it might become necessary to revise his views.
"What an unusual ring you have," Miss Stevens exclaimed, leaning over his hand which rested upon the arm of his chair. "Is there a romance connected with it?"
Cosden took it off and handed it to her. "No," he said. "When you know me better you will understand that romance doesn't come into my make-up. I bought that ring myself particularly to avoid any sentiment. I can take it off when I like, wear it or not as I choose, and if I lose it nobody's heart is broken."
"That is an original idea," she laughed; then her face sobered. "I used to think romance was everything," she said seriously. "Now I wonder if what we call romance isn't another word for illusion. As I look back at my girl friends and see how many romances became tragedies, and how many matter-of-fact marriages, like Marian's and Harry's, have developed into real unions, I'm inclined to think that romance is a form of hypnotism."
"You've expressed my idea to a dot," Cosden replied emphatically. "Huntington is a sentimentalist, and he stamps my common-sense ideas as evidences of a commercial instinct. I've seen just what you've seen, and I believe that the business of life rests on exactly the same basis as the business of trade."
"Take Harry Thatcher, for example," Edithcontinued her own conversation rather than replied to his; "there's nothing brilliant about him outside his business success, but you always know where to find him. He's a comfortable man to have around. With men, they say he dominates everything he goes into, but in his home,—well, every now and then he stands out just on principle, but as a matter of fact even his ideas are in his wife's name."
Mrs. Thatcher and Huntington approached them returning from their moon-bath on the steps of the pier.
"Did you ever see so wonderful a night, Edith?" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. "This atmosphere, and the renewing of my friendship with Mr. Huntington, make me feel like a girl again."
"Monty must have been composing poetry," Cosden remarked.
"No," Huntington disclaimed promptly; "poetry is the one contagious disease of youth which I have escaped. But Mrs. Thatcher has helped me to set back my clock of life more than twenty years, and that is an achievement of which I feel justly proud."
Sunday morning found the party possessed of divers minds regarding the proper use to make of the wonderful sunshine and the mild yet bracing air, delicately scented with thousands of blooms on every side. Mr. and Mrs. Thatcher announced definitely that they proposed to hear the band concert at the Barracks, which gave a certain basis upon which to hang other plans. Billy Huntington suggested to Merry that they walk to Elba Beach, and Cosden, with the cordial disapproval of Edith Stevens and Billy, invited himself to accompany the young people on their walk. Huntington accounted for himself by reporting that Hamlen had telephoned, asking him to make the promised visit that morning, so the Stevenses joined forces with the Thatchers, and the plans were complete.
Hamlen was visibly ill at ease when Huntington arrived. It was the only time during the twenty years of his residence there that any guest had been received at his villa by invitation of its owner. The new experience excited him, but the sincerity of Huntington's admiration of the grounds, and the friendliness of his attitude, made it impossible forany barrier long to exist between them. A touch of the old-time bitterness passed through Hamlen's mind, soon after Huntington's arrival, as he thought what it would have meant to him during any one of those four years at college to have had Monty Huntington come to his room in the same spirit of comradeship! Yet, he admitted to himself, the tragedies of that small world did lose some of their poignancy in retrospect, just as Huntington had said. He had been at a disadvantage in that the world into which he had been graduated was not the great world of which his classmate spoke, but rather another little one, smaller even than that which had tortured him,—so small that he had remained still instead of growing, as the others had, into an estate from which he might look back with broader vision.
This much at least had borne fruit from the conversation at the hotel, but beyond this there was an impression still deeper which increased Hamlen's spirit of unrest. From the time when he began to feel things strongly there had existed in him a sense of justice which completely dominated his other attributes. By the time he entered college this sense had assumed exaggerated proportions, and he had reached a point where he was looking for injustices, and was quick to resent them. He might have made a place for himself in athletics had he not expected some one else to take the initiative; he might have made friends except that he waited to be sought out. When he saw other fellows around him succeed where he had failed, the sensitiveness of his nature placed his classmates on trial,appointed himself judge, and condemned them as guilty of injustice, the most heinous crime in the category of sin. As a penalty, he had banished them from his life. The fact that they bore their punishment with seeming indifference served only to twist the knife in the wound.
His devotion to Marian Seymour gave his strange nature its only outlet. Her father and his had been bosom friends in boyhood, and they had hoped to see their children bound together in even closer ties. The tense, deep nature of the boy dominated,—even more so after he went to college and she to school, and they saw less of each other. He was different from other boys she knew, and at first it pleased her vanity that he had no thought for any one else, even though he demanded so much of her. Then she became fairly terrified by his intensity, and when she broke the engagement, just after his graduation, she welcomed her release.
Her engagement and marriage to Thatcher supplied the final evidence that the whole world was built upon a structure of injustice, and Hamlen fled from it with a sense of leaving behind a thing despised. During all these years the judge had worn his ermine, and the world represented the condemned prisoner, working out its sentence, but somehow failing to gain salutary results from its long chastisement. Now a belated witness appears, supplying testimony which shakes the integrity of the judicial decision. Huntington presents the case from a position new to the self-appointed judge, and Hamlen had spent many hours since that eventful meeting wondering whether theworld had really been on trial or he himself. Many of the words which Marian had spoken, which had not made their impression when he first heard them came back with redoubled force after Huntington had added his testimony to hers. "Was it their failure to understand you or your failure to give them the opportunity?" she asked. "The citizens of the college world are young, untried boys," Huntington explained, "trying to conduct themselves like full-grown men." What right had he to condemn them because in their youth and inexperience they had fallen below the standard older men had set? Had he a right to expect them to search him out any more than they a right to demand the same of him? "You drew me to you with irresistible force," Marian admitted, only to make the agony the more unbearable when she added, "Then you repelled me by your intolerance of all those lighter interests which were natural to youth of our age." Intolerance! That was a form of injustice, and he had judged her guilty upon the same indictment! "Each member of the Class measures up his fellow-members by what they have done since they have left college," Huntington had said. Every word seemed seared into Hamlen's brain as he put himself through this fierce analysis. "What have you really accomplished?" was Marian's question.
So Hamlen had struggled with himself during the intervening hours, and now Huntington came to him as a classmate, as a friend, claiming kinship and insisting upon recognition of his claim. If Monty Huntington had been what Hamlen believed him to be in college, he would not now have forced himselfupon him in spite of his own rude disclaimers of any present desire for recognition. If he had misjudged Huntington had he not misjudged his other classmates, had he not misjudged the world at large?
This was the doubt which had been raised in Hamlen's mind, and with it came a sense of responsibility and the necessity of restitution should that doubt turn into a certainty. Forty-eight hours earlier he had asked Marian, "What do I owe the world?" and it was from Huntington he received his answer. It was uncanny how closely the two opinions of the case, made by persons widely separated in viewpoint and environment, dovetailed each into the other. This interview with Huntington would settle all doubt, he was convinced, and if the injustice proved to be vested in himself alone, what was there left for him out of the wreck he had made of life? What wonder that he was ill at ease; what wonder that his heart beat more quickly as he realized that the moment of his own conviction might be at hand!
They walked about the grounds, as the others had done, and Huntington's exclamations were no less enthusiastic; yet it was obvious that this was but a prelude to the real purpose of his visit. They paused for a moment as they came back through the garden, and the hesitation forced the question from Hamlen's lips.
"Don't you care to see the view from the Point?"
"Not to-day," Huntington answered frankly. "I want to come again and examine every cranny; but to-day, Hamlen, my interest lies in something deeper. You have shown me what you are by profession;now show me what you are by nature. You remember the old Greek adage, 'Would you know a man, give him power.' My version of it is 'Would you know a man, give him leisure'; for leisure is the expression of power, the stored-up capital of that unmeasured treasure called Time whose currency is in the blood and which promotes life itself. Here, in these grounds, your work has been similar to that of any one of us in his office. Now I want to know the man. Take me to his workshop."
Hamlen understood him beyond the necessity of further words. He had told Marian that it was in his books that he found his relaxation, but it was not to his library that he now silently led his guest. It was to a small room on the back of the villa, in which Huntington found cases of type, a hand-press, and a bench containing every description of binder's tools. As they entered Hamlen closed the door behind them.
"I don't know why I brought you here," he spoke apologetically, "except that by what you just said you seemed to know this place existed. No one else has ever entered with me, for I have a sentiment about it which would seem ridiculous to any one except myself."
"It is a miniature printing-office and bindery combined!"
"This is where I spend my leisure. This is where I withdraw into a solitude even more complete than that in which I live. These books"—pointing to a case near by—"represent the pitifully meager contribution which I have made to the world while youand my other classmates have taken the positions to which you are entitled. That I show them to you now is a confession of the narrow outlook I have always had on life."
Huntington was busy examining the volumes, one by one, giving no sign that he heard the crisp words. He turned the leaves critically, he examined the bindings, he studied the typography and the designs. Then at length he looked up.
"I was mistaken when I said I did not know you," he remarked.
"I don't understand," Hamlen replied.
"Printing as an art has always been a hobby of mine," Huntington explained. "With two exceptions I have every one of these books in my collection at home."
The color came into Hamlen's face. "You mean—" he began.
"I mean that these splendid examples of the bookmaker's art have attracted much attention among those of us who understand what they represent, and I count myself fortunate to be the first to solve the mystery which has surrounded them, when I next meet with my fellow-collectors."
"How is it possible," demanded Hamlen, "that any of these should have fallen into your hands?"
"Were they not placed upon the market?"
"I did not suppose any of them reached America," Hamlen explained. "Out of curiosity to see what would happen I sent the first volumes to a dealer in London, and he has been kind enough to take the subsequent volumes as they have been issued."
"And kind enough to himself," Huntington added,"to call the attention of all the leading collectors to the uniqueness of the work. Some time I will show you his circulars if you care to know what he thinks of you; and I may add that there is none of us who considers his claims exaggerated."
"Then the work is good?" Hamlen asked, unable to conceal his excitement.
"It is superb both in conception and execution; but its greatest merit is its originality. Most of the good printing and binding which we have to-day rests definitely in conception upon some one of the great master-printers or binders of the past: the work of Aldus, Jenson, Étienne, Plantin, Elzevir, Baskerville, Didot, William Morris, is drawn upon to greater or less degree by every modern printer, the volumes of Grolier, Maiolus, or Geoffroy Tory are revived in nearly every modern binding of importance; but your books are absolutely unique. Frankly, I don't sympathize with all of them, but there is not one which does not interest me. Tell me, where did you learn the art of bookmaking enough to make yourself a master?"
"Your praise is too high," Hamlen answered deprecatingly.
"I am not praising your work," Huntington insisted; "that would be presumptuous. Its merit has passed far beyond the point where praise from me could affect it. Each volume which comes into the market is hungrily snatched up, and we all have been eager to discover who the master was. Where did you learn so much?"
"I have been interested in the mechanics of printing ever since, as a boy, I had my first press,"explained Hamlen; "but I only turned to it seriously after I came here and felt the need of something to keep my mind engaged. I have in my library examples from probably most of the great printers and binders, but—I'm afraid you won't understand me when I say it—they have never interested me particularly, nor do they now. I am only interested in what I do myself; and when I explain I am sure you will not think me egotistical."
"Go on," Huntington urged as Hamlen paused, but there was a break before the speaker continued.
"You said a moment ago that you did not sympathize with some of my books; that is perfectly natural. I said just now that I was only interested in my own work; that, too, I believe, is natural. I have no knowledge of the greatincunabula, I know nothing of the history of printing, and in making these few books I have had no thought of producing examples of the printer's or the binder's art: they stand to me simply as symbolic of certain phases of myself,—some good, perhaps, some bad; but all representative of my mood when they were made. I tell you, Huntington"—Hamlen continued with deep intensity—"I tell you now what I have never before put into words, that those are not books at all; they are simply the expression of a something in my soul which demands an outlet, and it comes out through my finger-tips. That sounds absurd, but it is the solemn truth!"
"Absurd?" cried Huntington. "My dear fellow, what you have just said is the explanation of the books which we collectors, poor simple fools, haven'tbeen able to give. Don't you see that by your very act you have placed yourself among the masters? What else are the sculptures of Michelangelo, the paintings of Raphael, but the expression of their messages to the world made through the media with which they were familiar? With them it was stone and canvas, with you it is type and paper and leather. Thank God you couldn't write!"
Hamlen listened to him in amazement, unable to grasp at once the significance or the breadth of all he heard. It was natural that Huntington's last words should be the first in his hearer's mind.
"What do you mean,—'thank God you couldn't write'?"
"I mean that what you have just told me is the reason why the arts of painting, architecture and sculpture have stood still these four hundred and fifty years. Stop and think, man! Who in those arts has surpassed the work of the old masters within that limit of time? No one, I say; no one! And why? Think of your dates! Four hundred and fifty years take us back to the invention of printing. That was what did it! With all it accomplished for the cause of learning it was the death-knell to the further development of the arts; for with the invention of printing came an easier way to give to the world that message which the human soul contains. Since then the real artist, whoever he was, instead of laboring to express his message in stone, or bronze, or on canvas, has simply taken pen and ink and patient paper and given the outpourings of his soul to the dear public in the form of a book. Again I say, thank God you couldn't write!"
When Huntington turned to his companion he was amazed to see that he had dropped upon a stool, with bowed head resting on his hands, was sobbing like a child. With a woman's tenderness and intuition Huntington gently rested his hand upon his head.
"We have torn off the bandages too fast, my friend," he said quietly. "Philip Hamlen doesn't belong among the 'missing men'; he belongs among the masters of art of his generation."