Part 16

It was the morning after one of Richard's off nights, when Edith sat leisurely finishing her late breakfast and reading the head-lines in the morning paper, that her brother put in his belated appearance.

"Morning, Ricky," she greeted him cheerfully. "Up for all day?"

"I think so," was the doubtful answer. "I'm awfully tired. I'd have been down sooner except that I couldn't decide whether to stay in bed until lunchtime and give up my breakfast, or get up and have my breakfast and give up my rest. Even now I believe I made a mistake, for I'm awfully tired and I don't feel hungry."

"You might go back to bed again," Edith suggested helpfully.

"No; I'm dressed now, and that would be too much trouble.--I think I'll make my breakfast off a jolly little bottle of Celestin."

Edith laughed. "Too much wine last night, Ricky?"

Stevens made a wry face. "I'll have to give up dancing or drinking, one or the other," he said emphatically; "it isn't scientific. Wine should be allowed to stand in the stomach just as it ought to stand in the bottle. This idea of churning it up by dancing is all wrong. I'd rather dance while I'm dancing and drink while I'm drinking; but every one else wants to do both things at the same time. It's all wrong.--That Celestin has a beastly bad taste this morning." He examined the bottle critically. "I was afraid the maid had brought me Hunyadi by mistake."

"I was in at Marian's yesterday," Edith remarked. "Mr. Hamlen has arrived, and she expects Philip and Billy Huntington at the house over Easter."

"Has Hamlen been there yet? He's a melancholy sort,--about as cheerful as a hearse. Feeling as I do this morning I think I'd rather like to see him; but I hope to feel better soon."

"No; he hasn't been there yet. Marian tried to get him out for dinner, but some other friends were to dine with her so he wouldn't come."

"He's a queer one,--but that reminds me: that Cosden man is in town."

"He is?" Edith exclaimed, arresting her coffee-cup on its way to her lips and poising it in mid-air. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I couldn't until now; it was only yesterday I saw him. He was much more civil than in Bermuda. Wanted to know about you and all that sort of thing. He's going to telephone you before he goes back."

"Very kind of him, I'm sure," Edith sniffed. "Perhaps I'll be in and perhaps I won't."

"Well that's your affair; you needn't see him on my account. But if you were to ask me, I'd say he's not such a bad sort."

"I didn't ask you, Ricky," Edith said significantly, and Stevens, with precedent to guide him, refrained from further discussion of the topic.

Yet in spite of the snap in her eyes when she commented on Cosden's inquiry it so happened that she was in when he telephoned, and she was also at home, arrayed in her most fetching afternoon gown, when he called an hour later. Not that he would notice whether she wore gingham or alpaca, she told herself, but she owed it to her self-respect to appear her best.

She had expected to see Cosden in his business suit with bulky contracts and other papers bulging from his pockets, rushing in and out again like a hurricane; but instead she beheld him entirely at his ease in cutaway and silk hat, with immaculate grey spats over his patent-leather boots. He carried himself with an air quite different from that she had become familiar with in Bermuda, and the reception she had planned for him--brief, matter-of-fact and bristling with satire--required a certain modification.

"I wasn't looking for a social call," Edith said guardedly after a non-committal greeting. "I thought perhaps you had some business matter to discuss."

"Still unforgiving!" Cosden smiled. "What can I do to make you forgetful?"

"Of what?" Edith asked with well-feigned surprise.

"Then suppose we assume that you have forgotten."

"Aren't you over here on business?"

"Yes; and pleasure, too. This is the pleasure."

Her mystification was genuine. Was this the self-assertive, vivified piece of machinery she had known three months before? Cosden could but see her surprise and it pleased him.

"I told you I should find out what was the matter with me. Have I partially succeeded?"

"Yes," she acknowledged frankly; "what did it?"

"Huntington and--you."

"But you couldn't change like this in so short a time; no one could."

"Most of it is probably on the surface," he admitted cheerfully. "Underneath is the same Cosden branded with the ear-marks of his business. But I'm on my way, and if there's enough of a change to have you notice it, then there's hope!"

"Have you seen the Thatchers?" Edith asked, not knowing just how to answer him.

"I saw Mr. Thatcher yesterday. He asked me to dine with them to-night, but I thought I'd wait until next time I'm over. He says Mrs. Thatcher is planning to have our whole Bermuda party down at the shore in July. You will be there, of course?"

"If it's in July, I shall be. Marian has invited me to spend the month with her."

"Good! that was one of the things I called to find out."

"What are the others?"

"Whether you are forgiving and--forgetful."

Edith laughed at the serious way he asked the question.

"Are you laughing at me or with me?" he demanded half in earnest.

"Why, I don't know what to make of you."

"Make whatever you like,--it's in your hands!"

"But I feel we ought to become acquainted all over again.

"So do I; that is another one of the things I wanted to find out.--Will you dine with me to-night, and then go to the theater afterwards?"

"Why--" she hesitated.

"It's the best possible way to get acquainted over again," he insisted.

"I'm not sure that I want to," Edith retorted; "but I will admit that you've excited my curiosity."

"That's something," Cosden replied good-naturedly. "Why isn't an evening together the easiest way to satisfy it?"

"All right," Edith said with sudden decision. "I really must know more about this."

"The veneer may wear off before the evening is over."

"That's what I'm thinking," she answered frankly. "I'm wondering how deep it really goes."

* * * * *

XXV

* * * * *

Easter came to New York, as it did to other places, and with it came Billy Huntington and Philip to the Thatchers. "Always have something to radiate from," some one once advised, "if only a fly-speck." To Billy, Boston was the fly-speck, entirely satisfactory as a point of radiation but far too respectable, much too decorous, and altogether too near home to be associated with his idea of a good time. Billy's life had been running so long on high gear that the lower speeds had almost been forgotten. This was typical of the times rather than a suggestion that the boy himself exceeded the speed limit. It was the limit which insisted upon exceeding itself, and he simply extended his pace to keep up with everything around him,--the limit of yesterday kept becoming the commonplace of to-day.

In New York Billy always found the limit just enough ahead of what it was in Boston to give him the additional thrill which added zest to his life. The very atmosphere seemed charged with a different ozone, filled with microbes impelling incessant activity. Everything not already in motion seemed straining at its leash, impatient to dash forward at the earliest opportunity. No one ever seemed satisfied to where he was, but hurried onward to somewhere else or something different. It was the city of unrest but never of discontent, for the changing, kaleidoscopic conditions came as a result of a demand from those who had the price to pay. It fascinated Billy, as it fascinates its tens of thousands, and as he leaned back in the Thatchers' limousine, held up by the lines of traffic on Fifth Avenue, then dashing forward to make up for lost time between the intersecting streets, he turned his beaming face toward his friend and murmured contentedly, "This is the life!"

"The ride home gets worse every time I take it," was Philip's comment. "If things keep on they will have to make the Avenue a double-decker street."

"By that time New-Yorkers will ride home in their aeroplanes," Billy replied. "You can't hold them down by a little thing like congestion."

Billy loved it, and for him the car turned off the Avenue all too soon, in its final dash for the East Side. He wanted more time between his arrival at the Grand Central Station and his appearance at the Thatcher mansion to shake off what he felt to be his Boston provincialism, and to feel outwardly as well as inwardly the real New-Yorker which he craved to be.

"What are we doing to-night?" Billy asked as they drew near their destination.

"I wrote Dad to get tickets for some show. You said you wanted to see everything in town."

"Great! Merry will go, won't she?"

"I don't know. I can manage Mother and Dad all right, but when it comes to Merry, that's different."

"But she knows I'm coming--" Billy showed signs of feeling aggrieved.

"Oh, she'll probably go all right. Why fuss until we find out? But I don't think she's as crazy about you as you are about her."

"Girls always conceal their real feelings," Billy explained sagely.

"Perhaps," Philip conceded very little; "but Merry isn't like most girls. Sometimes she seems about my own age and sometimes old enough to be my mother. But have it your own way; I should worry."

The welcome was hearty enough to satisfy even Billy, so the pessimism of his friend was at once forgotten. Mrs. Thatcher opened her arms wide to both boys, while Merry, though less demonstrative, was equally cordial in her reception.

"I'm awfully glad to see you," Billy said with a sincerity which could not be doubted, and grinning all over. "It seems ages since Mr. Cosden and Uncle Monty pushed me off the pier down at Bermuda."

Merry laughed. "That was a splendid idea of yours, Billy, to miss the steamer, but I was afraid you couldn't work it."

"S-ssh," Billy placed a finger on his lips. "Don't ever breathe that where Uncle Monty could hear you! I've made him believe it was a real accident."

"We're dining at seven, boys," Mrs. Thatcher interrupted; "that will give us comfortable time to reach the theater."

"Are we all going?" Phil asked.

"All but your father; he's feeling too tired to-night."

"Dad's well, isn't he?" Philip demanded quickly.

"Yes,--but tired," his mother answered. "He's all right. Now run along and dress or you'll be late for dinner."

On his way up-stairs Philip stopped in his father's room. "Hello, Dad!" he cried, pushing the door open unceremoniously. "Why, Dad,--you're not well! Mother said you were only tired."

Thatcher was sitting in front of the great, old-fashioned desk which Philip had associated with business and mystery since his childhood days, and when the door was unexpectedly thrown open it disclosed him resting his head upon his hands. The papers which Philip usually saw spread out on the desk were lacking, so the position his father had taken was the result of habit rather than present necessity. It was the expression on the elder man's face which forced the exclamation.

Thatcher rose quickly and stepped forward to greet his son. "Nonsense, boy! I'm all right," he exclaimed with an effort to speak lightly which did not escape Philip; "I'm just tired, as your mother said.--I didn't hear you come in or I would have been down-stairs to meet you."

"You're not all right," Philip protested stoutly, still holding his father's hand and looking squarely into his face. "You don't need to do this with me, Dad; I'm a man now, and we ought to talk together like men.--Has this anything to do with what you wrote me about my allowance?"

"We'll discuss it in the morning, Phil," Thatcher evaded. "Get dressed now, and later we'll talk things over like two men, as you say. It will help me to do that. Don't worry, boy; everything will come out all right."

"That's a promise, Dad?"

"Yes; we'll put our heads together in the morning."

Thatcher was as gay as the young people when they sat down to dinner, and entered into the enjoyment of the home-coming so heartily that Marian was relieved.

"All you needed, Harry, was to have Phil come home," she said. "Couldn't you telephone for another ticket and go with us?"

"Not to-night; I have work to do. To-morrow Phil is going to lend a hand, and then perhaps we'll have some play together.--Tell us of your uncle, Billy."

"Oh, Uncle Monty is all right,--except that he's become so terribly sober and serious. What did you people do to him down at Bermuda? He hasn't been the same since."

"He was serious down there," Merry asserted.

"Oh, he never was a cut-up, of course," Billy explained; "but he was always saying things to make you laugh, and I could jolly him just as if he was one of the fellows."

"Can't you do it now?" Mrs. Thatcher inquired.

"No; if I do he gets sore. Why, only the other night Phil and I went in there to dinner. I made some remark about his being a woman-hater, and he got huffed up in a minute. Didn't he, Phil?"

"Monty Huntington a woman-hater?" Mrs. Thatcher laughed. "No wonder he was 'huffed'!"

"But he never married, did he? Isn't that a sure sign that he's a woman-hater?"

"Oh, dear no!" Mrs. Thatcher insisted. "That may be taken quite as much as an evidence of his profoundest respect and veneration for woman. In fact, if fifty per cent. of the men who do marry would refrain from it no greater tribute could be paid us!"

The boy looked at her inquiringly. "Do all older people run marriage down like that?" he inquired. "Every time the subject comes up some one gives it a knock. With Uncle Monty, of course, it's sour grapes, because now he's so old no one would think of marrying him, but--"

"He's not so old," Merry interrupted unexpectedly and with such force that Billy was taken by surprise.

"Oh, ho!" Billy cried. "So that's the way the land lies! Now you've said a mouthful. This is a case of mutual admiration! Uncle Monty told us the other night that you were the finest girl he ever saw."

"He did!" Merry cried, the blood rushing into her cheeks and her face aglow with pleasure. "I wish I thought he really meant it!"

"He meant it all right," Philip corroborated. "Mr. Huntington doesn't make mouth-bets. He was calling me down for saying that you were just like other girls."

"Were you so ungallant as that?" Thatcher asked. "Whatever else happens, Phil, we must stand up for the family."

"Of course," he admitted; "but Billy was talking about Merry in superlatives as usual, and I was trying to quiet him down."

"Phil is doing his best to put me in wrong again," Billy protested. "Now I'll tell you just what happened and you can judge for yourselves: I was telling Uncle Monty how happy I was to be invited here for Easter, and how glad I should be to see you all--"

"You never said a word about any one but Merry," Philip interrupted.

Billy looked vindictively at his friend and then smiled sheepishly.

"I meant all of you, of course. Then Phil tried to jolly me about caring for girls and for Merry in particular--"

"Don't be foolish, Billy!" Merry exclaimed.

"My! but it's hard to tell a story here, but I'm going to do it if I burst a blood-vessel! Uncle Monty agreed with me, and then said that Merry was the finest girl he ever saw. That from him is some praise, because he never cuts in on girls at all; but you've made a hit with him, Merry, and you might as well know it."

"I'm glad he hasn't forgotten me," she said quietly, but the color remained in her face after the conversation turned upon other topics.

"What I said a moment ago isn't 'knocking,' as you call it, Billy," Mrs. Thatcher resumed; "it is experience. We older folk know from what we've seen, and from what we've been through, the dangers young people run during the inflammable age; so we sound the warning. You are at that age now, Billy, so your friends are trying to protect you. Philip apparently hasn't arrived there yet, but he will; and then we'll try to protect him from the idea that the 'only girl' is the one he happens to fancy while the period lasts."

"You're making me look like a flivver!" the boy said with mortification in his voice; "and before Merry, too!"

"No, my dear; you mustn't take it that way. I'm talking no more freely than you have been. We consider you one of the family, so I'm speaking to you just as I would to Philip."

Billy's face was fiery red, but he never flinched in his dogged determination.

"I don't care who knows how much I think of Merry," he said defiantly. "You've spoiled my visit! I'm not a bit ashamed--"

"Forgive me, Billy," she soothed him gently,--"of course you're not ashamed. I wouldn't speak to you like this if you weren't one of my own boys; but I do want you to realize that it is seldom that early fancies are more than impersonal idealizations. I'm glad you and Merry like each other, and I hope you will always be the best of friends; but, in applying our idealization to the one who at the moment comes nearest to the realization, a mistake is usually made because the one we are really looking for hasn't yet crossed our horizon."

"Sometimes, perhaps," Billy conceded; "but there are exceptions."

Mrs. Thatcher smiled at his persistency. She liked the boy, and had seized on this opportunity to spare him the greater disappointment which she felt sure would come.

"Yes," she answered kindly; "there are exceptions. I know of one in my own experience, but in this case it only made it more unfortunate. I knew a boy once who applied the idealization formed during the inflammable period to a girl who at that time thought she cared for him. Then her horizon broadened and she found and married the man she really loved; but the boy held on to his early ideal, becoming a recluse, embittered against the world and incapable of seeing that unless the ideal becomes a reality to both it can never safely amount to anything."

Thatcher looked at his wife questioningly, and Merry's eyes also fastened themselves upon her mother's face. Marian's voice as much as her words disclosed more than she intended. As she paused Philip, supposing the conversation to be concluded, mentioned the name which was in each one's mind except the boys'.

"By the way, Mother," he remarked, "Mr. Huntington wants me to meet a friend of his named Hamlen, who, he says, used to be a friend of yours."

"Yes," she said, looking up at him quickly,--"yes; I, too, wish you to meet Mr. Hamlen. He is in New York now. Perhaps you will see him before you return. I want you to know him well."

As Thatcher assisted them in getting off to the theater, he managed to draw Marian one side.

"Hamlen's name is Philip, isn't it?" he asked.

She nodded, wondering at the question.

"Was that why you gave our boy the same name--and was it Hamlen you referred to just now?"

"Yes, Harry."

He drew her gently to him and kissed her. "Poor chap!" he said. "If I had known that I would have made a greater effort to be friendly with him."

* * * * *

XXVI

* * * * *

During these depressed months Thatcher was not the only man of affairs who saw the successes of his career threatened with disaster as a result of the unnecessary burdens imposed by inexperienced and impractical officials at Washington. Business groaned aloud as destructive control and regulation delayed and paralyzed commerce. Labor, hand in hand with its new ally Theory, stalked abroad through the land, demanding shorter hours and increased wages, receiving recognition as a privileged class from those in authority, exempt from respecting others' rights, which is necessary to create and preserve responsibility: substance when it struck at Capital, shadow when Capital in self-defense struck back. The corporations which formed the pulse of the country's life were so harassed that they paused in their constructive energies, wondering what new menace would rise up before them, and yet were expected to give better service while bound hand and foot by unwise legislative restrictions, and burdened by unnecessary legislative demands for increased expenditure. Samson, shorn of his strength by the shears of a legalized Delilah, was expected to hold up with his enervated arms the pillars of the temple which "psychological" complacency was pulling down.

The first serious rumors reached Thatcher in Bermuda, and when he returned to his office his far-sighted perception told him that the business world was face to face with a real crisis. Many of his enterprises were in a condition where to pause in aggressive action meant going backwards, entailing loss upon all concerned; yet to proceed in the face of conditions as they were was to invite disaster and even to imperil the stability of his firm.

Cosden had felt the result of the depression in decreased business, but he did not realize as soon as Thatcher the far-reaching results inevitable from the new governmental policy. His horizon was local compared to that of the New York operator, and he regarded the conditions as a phase of business life, bound to appear once in so often, rather than a blow at the basis upon which the commercial world rested. He cut down his expenses in proportion to his reduced volume of business, strengthened his relations at his banks, and considered his sails trimmed to weather any storm.

Thatcher had invited him to call, and Cosden had no idea other than to make the most of the intimacy which had developed in Bermuda. More than that, the machinery matter they had touched upon had progressed even better than he expected. If Thatcher was still curious to learn more about the details the time had now come when he could safely be told. But to Cosden's surprise the subject was not once directly referred to during their interview. Thatcher was cordial and affable, seemingly interested in the general conversation and frank in his discussion of various topics which presented themselves, but, as it appeared to Cosden, strangely reticent upon certain specific subjects on which he would have been glad to draw him out. It was only when Cosden paused for a moment at the door of the private office that Thatcher made any remark which gave his visitor an insight as to what was in his mind.

"The full meaning of these present conditions evidently has not struck Boston yet," he said. "Let me tell you that these are times when the wise man learns how to wait. Instead of blaming your customers who hesitate to give you the usual orders you should scrupulously investigate the credit of those who do."

"I can wait," Cosden said confidently. "I've always held myself back from spreading out too thin, and if there's a storm coming on top of this sloppy weather I'm fixed where I can meet it better perhaps than some others."

"You are to be congratulated," Thatcher told him with so much feeling that Cosden took it as a personal compliment and departed well satisfied with his interview.

When he next met Huntington in Boston they discussed this among other topics, and Cosden was surprised to have his friend ask him point-blank whether he had heard rumors regarding Thatcher's firm.

"You're dreaming, Monty," he replied with conviction. "Thatcher is a man who makes money whichever way the market turns. That's what I admire so much in him. I only win out when things go one way, but he wins coming and going. What in the world put that idea in your head?"

The chance remark which Billy had made regarding the reduction in Philip's allowance was too much in the nature of a confidence to be repeated, but it had left Huntington with a definite impression that Thatcher must be feeling the conditions acutely or he would not have begun to curtail expenses at home. To a man who lived as Thatcher did, Huntington knew that this would be the hardest duty he would find to perform. Cosden's question was answered lightly.