Part 11

"Well, Monty," he said, slapping him on the back, "you've got that off your mind, and it's a good thing to have happen. What you want is to take your endorsement off my social note; that's all right,--consider it done. Your sentimental notions are great in story-books but less valuable in every-day life. You stick to your ideals, and I will to mine. I've made up my mind to get married, and you know what happens when once my mind is made up."

"You are absolutely hopeless!" Huntington cried despondently.

"Hopeful, you mean," laughed Cosden, "in spite of your gloomy forebodings. What you say ought to shake my confidence in myself, no doubt, but somehow I think I'd rather hear it direct from Miss Thatcher herself. Hello!" he exclaimed as he looked at his watch, "it's time to start. Cheer up, Monty! Really, things aren't half as bad as they look from where you sit!"

* * * * *

XVI

* * * * *

However abrupt Cosden's action may have appeared to Miss Stevens or to Huntington, in his own mind he believed himself to have selected the psychological moment for which he had patiently waited. It was true that he had seen comparatively little of Merry Thatcher, but the time had been well spent in preparation for the grand event. Now, particularly since Huntington had spoken as he did, Cosden was eager to put his new-found knowledge to the test, and to disprove his friend's contention.

It was a business axiom with Cosden that an order must be half sold before the salesman approached the prospective buyer. "People don't buy anything these days," he hammered into his sales-manager; "they have to be sold." And Cosden was a man who practised what he preached. The frankly-admitted lack of familiarity on his part with the particular market in which he proposed to trade was offset, he believed, by the expert coaching he had received from Miss Stevens; and this should have prepared him for any emergency. After all, were not the principles the same the world over? Somewhere, back in the hazy, academic past when Latin had been compulsory, he remembered that a certain gentleman whose name he could not then recall had plunged _in medias res_. He remembered distinctly how much this act had won his admiration; now he proposed to emulate his illustrious predecessor.

Even granting that Cosden's self-analysis was correct to the extent that he possessed no romance in his make-up, the present surroundings were such as to suggest the "psychological moment" even to the most obtuse. The sloop, after running before the wind, was skilfully guided in and out among the little islands and past the beautiful shores of Boaz and Somerset by a hand on the tiller to which sailing was evidently second-nature. The girl rested against the gunwale, her eye alert, her face lighted by a smile of quiet contentment, her white, lithe figure brightly contrasted against the varying background of blue water and the green of the islands as they were left behind.

"Where did you learn to handle a boat?" Cosden asked her, interrupting the silence which she seemed content to accept.

"Oh, there's nothing to it here," she answered. "I wonder if they have a breeze like this all the time in Bermuda? It seems to be ready-made for the visitors. But I think it would become monotonous, don't you? I like something to work against."

"You have evidently sailed a boat before."

"I'm on the water a good deal every summer. Father gave me a knockabout two years ago, and I've had lots of fun in her. It isn't always as simple on Narragansett Bay as it appears to be here."

"You seem to be pretty good at anything you undertake."

"Oh, no!" Merry laughed deprecatingly. "I play at everything, and perhaps that is why I am not particularly good at anything. Phil says I have more courage than judgment."

"That sounds like jealousy! I'll wager you can beat him in most games, unless he is better than the youngsters I know."

"I can, in some," she admitted, "but Phil is a great oarsman. He's on the crew at Harvard, you know," she added with a pride which amused Cosden; "he will probably row against Yale again this year. But Phil doesn't go at other sports as hard as I do. I have to go at them hard. I simply must be doing something. Mother calls it restlessness and Father says it's because I haven't grown up yet. Perhaps they are both right; but whatever it is I just can't help it."

"I hope you will never grow up, if to lose your enthusiasm is the penalty."

"Then you don't think it's unwomanly?" she asked, grateful for his approval.

"On the contrary," Cosden asserted. "It is enthusiasm which wins in everything to-day. Confidence in one's self, belief in one's subject, enthusiasm in its presentation; that is my daily creed."

"But you are a man," Merry protested. "You have made your success, so you have a right to have confidence in yourself--"

"My success is only partially complete," Cosden interrupted, quick to seize the easy opening. "When I left college I undertook to make money: I did make it. Then I undertook to compel that money to earn me a place in the business world: I made that dream come true. Now I have reached the third effort. My money is of value only so far as it secures for me what I want, and a part of what I want I can't get alone: that is a home, with the right woman in it. A man can make his clubs and all that sort of thing by himself, but it takes a woman to secure for him the social life which he ought to have. I'm looking for that woman now, and I intend to get her."

A smile crossed Merry's face as Cosden concluded his matter-of-fact statement. "You are demonstrating your daily creed," she said.

"Of course I am. If I didn't you would accuse me of inconsistency."

"Have you found the woman you--intend to get?"

"I'm not sure. What kind of woman do you think she ought to be?"

Merry's face sobered, and she became thoughtfully serious. "First of all, a woman who loved you," she said at length; "that goes without saying."

It was Cosden who smiled this time. "I see you still have some old-fashioned ideas left; I had looked upon you as absolutely up-to-date."

"Is love old-fashioned?"

"Love is a result rather than a cause. It comes from the combination of one or more causes: propinquity, similarity of tastes, natural attributes, I might go on indefinitely. Two natures are attracted to each other before marriage, but love really comes as a result of the closer companionship which follows. Could anything be more common-sense or scientific than that?"

"Is that what men believe?" she asked.

"Not all; which explains the appalling list of matrimonial bankrupts."

They were out beyond Ireland Island now, past the great dry-dock and the barracks. The girl brought the boat about and started on the homeward tack.

"That is a very interesting idea," she said soberly as she shifted to starboard. "It never occurred to me that love had become a commodity. That is very interesting."

"But you haven't told me what kind of woman you think my wife should be," Cosden insisted.

"She should be a poor girl, of good birth and personal attractions," she answered promptly.

"Why poor?"

"Because otherwise she would be giving everything and you nothing. You must supply something which she lacks or it wouldn't be a fair trade, would it? If a woman loves a man, there is no need to measure what she gives against what she receives, but your 'common-sense' plan suggests it, and from a 'scientific' standpoint I should think it absolutely essential."

"But your statement is not correct, Miss Merry," Cosden protested earnestly. "You would do me an injustice if you stopped at that point: am I not offering her my name and my protection?"

"Of course all this is an imaginary situation," Merry laughed mischievously, "or I shouldn't dare to speak so freely; but in justice to my sex I can't stop now: suppose her name is as good as yours, and that she is entirely competent to protect herself?"

"Great Scott! Don't tell me you are a suffragist!"

"But you would want this woman you--intend to get to be a suffragist, wouldn't you?"

"Not under any circumstances!"

"Still, your marriage is to be on an up-to-date common-sense, scientific basis: can it be unless you and your wife stand on equal terms?"

"I never saw such a girl to ask questions," Cosden protested almost petulantly. "You must have been going to woman's suffrage meetings all winter."

Merry laughed outright. Her triumph was too obvious not to be enjoyed; but she quickly checked herself.

"I have been very rude," she said contritely; "but what you said so completely destroys the vision which every girl has in her heart that I couldn't resist the temptation to tease you. No, Mr. Cosden; I'm not a suffragist, and I never attended a public meeting in my life. Mother thinks I'm too young to enter into such things; but I've read a good deal, and I can't see why, in this scientific age, men and women shouldn't stand side by side at the ballot-box as well as elsewhere. For myself, I'm not quite ready for it, but I admit that it is nothing but sentiment--a holding on to a bit of old-fashioned precedent if you like--which holds me back. It seems to mar that vision I just spoke of, Mr. Cosden, even as your ideas completely destroy it."

She was in earnest now, and the girlish, mischievous attitude had completely vanished. Her grasp upon the tiller tightened, her eyes looked far ahead and Cosden knew that in this mood she would have welcomed a young typhoon--anything to struggle with, rather than the smooth lapping of the water against the sides of the boat as the light wind bore them tranquilly on toward their landing. Even to him, unaccustomed as he was to the finer sensibilities which expressed themselves in every feature of the girl's face, the surging thoughts which forced so tense a silence commanded silence in his own response. It was the closest he had ever come into a woman's inner shrine, and instinctively he respected it.

It was her own movement--a brushing back of a strand of hair which the breeze had loosened and blown across her face--which finally broke the tension, but her eyes did not drop. Still looking far ahead of her she spoke again, but the words seemed addressed more to herself than to her companion.

"I can't bear to give that vision up," she said quietly, "and yet I never expect to see it realized."

"Tell me what it is," Cosden urged as she paused. "Visions aren't exactly in my line, but perhaps you can make me see this one."

"It's silly of me; you wouldn't be interested, of course."

"But I am," he insisted. "Please go on."

"Well," the girl said consciously, "since you have confided your creed to me, I'll tell you what my vision is,--but you mustn't laugh at it for it means a great deal to me."

"I promise--cross my heart," Cosden replied.

"In this vision each one of us atoms, man or woman, has a distinct individuality, and each atom is intended to express its own individuality alone and in its own way unless two atoms become joined together by laws of natural attraction. In that case these two continue on their way together, each strengthened by the combination, and thus enabled to express their joint individuality as neither could do alone. But love must be the crucible, Mr Cosden. Common-sense won't merge them, science won't do it. The two atoms can't be made into one without the crucible."

They were almost at the "Princess" landing now, and Merry gave her full attention to her duties as skipper. As the boatman took possession, Cosden assisted her onto the landing and they walked slowly up the stone steps. At the top she turned to him suddenly, the brightest of smiles replacing her former seriousness. Cosden marveled at the rapidity with which her mood changed.

"That's my vision, Mr. Cosden," she said simply; "don't think it too foolish. I must have some guide just as you have your daily creed. I haven't confidence in myself, but I do believe in my subject, and you tell me that I have enthusiasm. Please let that atone."

"But that vision of yours--" Cosden demanded doubtfully. "You asked me if all men regard marriage as I do; let me ask you if all women have that vision, as you call it."

"I suppose they have. If not, why should they give up their independence?"

"I thought all women wanted to marry--"

"That is where _you_ are not up-to-date, Mr. Cosden," she laughed. "Perhaps the woman you--intend to get has no vision; if so, it will be that much easier. But she must be poor, Mr. Cosden,--you really mustn't take advantage of her!"

* * * * *

XVII

* * * * *

Huntington passed an uncomfortable half hour after watching Merry and Cosden start off on their sailing-trip, and he was glad to have Edith Stevens break in upon his unprofitable self-communion. Cosden had put into words a fact which until then Huntington had stubbornly refused to acknowledge: he had actually reached a point where he heartily disapproved of his friend. Connie had said it, and the realization that what he said was true shook the long-established friendship to the core.

As he analyzed the case Huntington found it difficult to explain why this complete change in conditions should suddenly have taken place. Cosden was no different from what he had been during all these years of their intimacy. In fact, he knew no one among his friends who was so absolutely consistent in conducting his life in accord with principles established before their friendship began. Others had commented on Cosden's commercial instincts, and Huntington always defended him, yet now these same traits caused him to criticise his friend even more severely than those whose attitude he had previously thought unwarranted.

The change, then, Huntington concluded was in himself rather than in Cosden; and from this point he tried to discover what that change really was. What had their relations been during these years? They had never come together in any business way, and Huntington now for the first time wondered why it would not have been natural for Cosden to turn over to his office some of his frequent cases in litigation. It had not previously occurred to him that he might have expected it, but now he wondered. This in itself was evidence that his friend did not consider him seriously in the practice of his profession. The real fact was that they had played together, and that their intimacy had stopped at that point. Huntington now recalled that in gratifying those characteristics which found enjoyment in music, art or literature he instinctively sought the companionship of other friends, and the same analysis revealed to him that Cosden had done likewise in turning to other and more kindred spirits in living that part of his life with which his friend had little sympathy. It had all happened so naturally that Huntington had never realized until now that in spite of their intimacy there was a side to each man's life into which the other never entered.

This was the explanation as Huntington thought it out, and the fact that it could be explained at all gave promise of readjustment. The present situation did not require any change in the relations of the two friends. It had been precipitated by the accidental pulling aside of a curtain which revealed a picture Huntington must always have known was there, but at which he had always steadfastly refused to look. The mistake came when Cosden insisted that he peer behind the curtain, and became intensified when he permitted himself to be drawn into that side of his friend's life in which he should have known he had no part. The friendship need be in no way affected: simply restore the old relations, use greater discretion in keeping them within the bounds which Nature had prescribed for them, and all would be as before.

Huntington abhorred an enigma because when once focused in his mind a mental impossibility was created to rid himself of it. He found it lurking behind his _Transcript_ in the evening, it tried to crystallize itself in the smoke of his last pipe before retiring, it flirted with him coyly over his coffee-cup the next morning. Until the figment became a reality and was dismissed it was a haunting menace to his peace of mind. Now that he had discovered an explanation of his disapproval of Connie and had found the antidote, that particular enigma was disposed of, and he should have been free to resume his normal state; but to his further discomfiture this was just what he found he could not do. He had cut off one of the Hydra's heads, but others remained which spat at him viciously.

Why was it that Cosden's attitude caused him such peculiar annoyance at this particular time? Had he been entirely straightforward with his friend, had he been quite frank in answering Hamlen's question regarding Merry's resemblance to her mother? Huntington's disgust with himself at that first slip became intensified by its repetition. He recalled De Quincey's arraignment of the murderer on the ground that murder so dulls the sensibilities that it is an easy step from this to falsehood. Huntington, with his Puritan ancestry, would have allowed himself to be torn by wild horses before he would deliberately tell an untruth, yet here, on two separate occasions, he had undeniably juggled with the facts.

When Cosden suggested that there might be some deeper reason for his objections he promptly and equivocably denied the implication that he had any interest in Merry beyond that of an older friend; yet he now knew that the denial was absolutely false. What he told Cosden was what ought to be the case rather than what the case really was. This was his secret, and he had protected it in the easiest way, which as usual was a cowardly subterfuge. The fact that he had made a misstatement or that he had a secret to conceal had come to him only during this period of self-communion since the little sloop sailed away, leaving him alone with his reflections. What he said to Cosden, that he was equally unsuited to Merry and that he was old enough to be her father, expressed the cold, hard facts; but he needed no second-sight to tell himself that during these days of companionship, such as he had never before known, the girl's sweet personality had penetrated the sham armor of the cynic, and that he was face to face with an emotion far deeper than any he had experienced from time to time in his library, in front of that table with its curious exhibits, with the stage-like accessories of the albatross-stem pipe and the flickering light from the burning logs. How tinsel-like it all seemed to him now, compared with this flesh-and-blood experience in the open air, with its glorious setting of the sea and the beautiful island foliage!

He had reached this point in his mental activities when he saw Miss Stevens approaching, and he greeted her cordially. Face to face with this latest revelation, he disliked his own company. His responsibilities, which had seemed terrifying to him so short a time before, now appeared insignificant compared with the new responsibility with which he had saddled himself. He thought little at this moment of the burdens imposed upon him by Mrs. Thatcher, by Cosden, or by Billy: he must now protect the girl against himself, and that would be the hardest task of all.

Edith Stevens, as well as Huntington, found herself without her usual occupation this morning. Cosden told her, the evening before, of his plan to take Merry sailing, so she reverted to her natural habit of late rising, from which she had temporarily reformed herself, knowing that Cosden always breakfasted early and was usually looking for companionship. Seeing Huntington absorbed in self-contemplation she gravitated in his direction.

"We've lost our little playmates, haven't we?" she said cheerfully, as he rose and pulled up another piazza chair for her. "Why isn't this a good time for our Society to go into executive session?"

"Capital!" Huntington assented, replying only to the second part of her question. "Is the secret-service department ready to make its report?"

"I've found the girl," she announced bluntly; "but I imagine you know already who she is."

"The girl Connie is going to marry?" Huntington simulated a proper attitude of interrogation.

"The girl he thinks he wants to marry," she corrected.

"Oh! he only thinks so. That's it, is it?"

Edith raised her eyes from the toe of her buckskin shoe, which she had been poking vigorously with her sunshade, and smiled brightly.

"Yes," she said; "that's it."

"You speak with conviction."

"Well," Edith explained, "I know Mr. Cosden better now than when the Society last met. He wants to get married, and he thinks he has picked out the right girl, but--"

"But--what?"

"But--he hasn't; that's all." And again Edith smiled brightly into Huntington's face.

"Connie isn't in the habit of making mistakes; he usually gets what he goes after."

"So he told me," she admitted, with an expression on her face which Huntington thought significant; "but there's always a first time to everything; and this is where Mr. Cosden meets his Waterloo."

"I understood that you had been coaching him--"

"So I have."

"But I thought we agreed--"

"We did; and I've lived up to our agreement. You watch his face when he comes in! I'm oozing out the balance of the morning here simply to give myself that satisfaction."

"You must have some inside information which has not been incorporated in your report."

"Not exactly; but I know Mr. Cosden and I know Merry. When he begins to trade for a wife she won't understand the language, and if he tries to teach it to her--well, he may learn something himself."

"You think he will propose to her this morning?"

"If she lets him get as far as that. He's been working up to this point ever since he arrived, and the only way to cure him was to let him have his own way."

It was a novel experience to Huntington to see any one other than Cosden himself undertake to manage his personal affairs. The certainty with which Miss Stevens spoke evidenced a closer acquaintanceship with Connie than Huntington had realized existed.

"What will happen when this episode is over? Do you care to prophesy?" he asked.

"He will come back to his counsel to have his wounds bandaged, and then the education of Mr. Cosden will continue from the point where it was temporarily interrupted."

"You are assuming a great responsibility," Huntington suggested.

"I'm still retained," she answered demurely. "That's what you lawyers call it, isn't it?"

Edith rose and sat for a moment on the edge of the piazza rail, her eyes looking down the harbor. She was impatient for the returning boat, and made no attempt to conceal it. At last her vigilance was rewarded, and she returned to her chair.

"S-ssh! they're coming!" she said mysteriously, placing her finger on her lips. "We mustn't seem to be waiting for them. Talk to me!"

Huntington tried to obey her instructions during the intervening moments, but it was obvious that Miss Stevens heard little of what he said. She was intently watching the steps yet endeavoring to appear entirely unconcerned. Merry was the first to see them, and she came forward with her usual animation and enthusiasm.

"We've had a wonderful sail!" she said. "The morning was simply perfect, and it is such fun to play hide-and-seek among these little islands."

"She knows how to handle a boat all right," Cosden said from behind, but his tone did not reflect the girl's vivacity.