Part 19
These were not red-letter days for the boy. Ever since his visit to New York at Easter the times had been out of joint, and he blamed Merry's mother for it all. From his viewpoint the visit had been a "frost," and he nursed his resentment so successfully that he came to look upon it as a virtue. Uncle Monty noticed the change, but having no knowledge of the cause gave Billy credit for at last showing symptoms of growing up. Philip looked upon his tragedy as a huge joke, and made his friend's life wholly unendurable by frequent veiled allusions to the "inflammable age," rubbed in as only a college chum can do. The sympathy he craved was sadly lacking, so he sought compensation by sympathizing with himself.
Billy would have been better satisfied with the completeness of his martyrdom had he been able to include Merry among those who abused him, but he could discover no point where she had failed to preserve an aggravatingly consistent neutrality. She was always friendly, accepting his extravagant expressions of devotion with a good-natured indifference which robbed them of all significance She had taken no exceptions to her mother's humiliation of him, nor had she taken advantage of it; everything progressed with a disgusting sameness, when he had confidently expected that the result of his visit would be to acclaim him Merry's accepted suitor, and thus raise him to the seventh heaven of delight.
While Hamlen had been in Boston Billy found himself again side-tracked. Not only was Uncle Monty engaged, but Philip devoted much of his time to his new responsibility. Everything conspired to throw Billy back upon his own resources, and here he developed a decided hiatus. The boy's strongest point was his ability to fit in with some one else's plans, and of all his friends Philip proved most fertile in his suggestions.
Now Class Day was at hand, and as it was not his Class Day he felt himself eclipsed by the added glory which came to Philip and the other Seniors. As an under-class man he counted for absolutely nothing. When he was a freshman, the comparative size of the halos worn by his Class and the graduating students was an open question of debate; from a sophomore's standpoint, he was near enough the freshmen to be able to look down upon them with a gratifying sense of superiority; but as a Junior there was nothing to do but to wait for the coming year,--and waiting was a game not included among Billy's favorite indoor or outdoor sports. He had expected little from the visit of the New York friends, owing to the presence of "the Gorgon" as he christened Mrs. Thatcher, and in this expectation he was not disappointed. Merry herself was fully occupied, and her mother took every opportunity to prevent diverting influences from affecting what she considered a crucial moment. So Billy, thoroughly disgruntled, drew himself up with a dignity which he did not know he possessed, denied himself to the visiting friends, and permitted the procession to move on without him.
Philip himself, being at New London with the crew, was prevented from taking personal participation in the Class Day festivities, but the classmate whom he delegated as substitute proved an ideal host. In Philip's absence Huntington had no compunctions in joining with Hamlen in the Thatchers' celebration; had the boy been there he would have felt it an intrusion for any one outside the family to share with them the triumph which comes but once in a college man's life. So they passed together from spread to spread, in and out of the Yard, listening to the music, admiring the attractive costumes and the still more attractive girls, entering into everything with a spirit which even Hamlen felt, and which took Huntington back to his own Class Day, so many years before.
When the march to the Stadium was formed Huntington led Hamlen to that portion of the line where their own classmates were assembled, and presented him to each. Only a few remembered him, but all gave him a welcome which confirmed Huntington's predictions. Hamlen noticed who the men were standing side by side, and was impressed by the fact that while in college the groups had been made up quite differently. He and Huntington, then, did not form so grotesque a combination as he had imagined. Other members of his Class, who knew each other but slightly while in Cambridge, since then had discovered characteristics in each other which drew them together. As Huntington said to him in Bermuda, the ratio had become readjusted, the essentials only were remembered, and the real bond was the fact of being members of the great fellowship. Then the procession started, and he fell into step with the new life which it had taken him so long to find.
After the exercises at the Stadium, Cosden, at Huntington's suggestion, took Hamlen with him to the Varsity Club, where the athletic heroes of past and present congregated. There was a motive back of the suggestion, and the effect on Hamlen of seeing these men, whose importance college ideals had magnified, in their present relation to the world and to their fellow-men, justified the experiment. Some of the old captains or record-holders showed unmistakably their continued pre-eminence; others had fallen back into the ranks after their temporary standard-bearing. Hamlen could understand it now: what they did in college was of importance only to the extent that it fitted them for what was to follow; it was the use they made of this fitting in the after-life which produced the permanent effect. This was the difference between the means and the end which Marian tried to explain to him in Bermuda.
Then came Commencement as a crescendo. It would have meant little to Hamlen had it preceded Class Day, but each new experience gave him fuller understanding and richer enjoyment. He saw again the same members of his Class and felt now that he knew them; he met others, and was able to mingle freely as a fellow-classmate. On Class Day the alumni came as a unit, on Commencement they separated into Class groups, each with its own spread and reunion, offering greater opportunity for intimate exchanges of personal experience and mutual confidence.
The climax came the following day with the boat-race at New London. The Thatchers had returned home immediately after Class Day with plans of their own still to be carried out, so Huntington and Cosden formed the body-guard which convoyed Hamlen to the great event. Huntington knew that he could not credit his friend's feverish anticipation wholly to the dawning interest in Harvard events, but was equally content to see how personal a triumph Philip's seat in the boat had become to him. Had Hamlen's nervousness been shared by his namesake and the other oarsmen the result of the race might have been foreshadowed! He changed his mind about going so many times that Huntington finally insisted upon a definite decision.
"Of course I want to go," he explained; "but I never saw a Harvard crew win and I can't believe I'm going to now."
"Perhaps you won't," was the frank disavowal of responsibility. "The worm must turn again some time, and it may be that this is the year, but Harvard has the habit of winning now, and that goes a long way."
"It would kill me to see Phil lose!" Harden said with deep feeling.
"Tell me," Huntington said,--"tell me frankly for my gratification, is your eagerness to see Harvard win to-morrow wholly on Phil's account, or have these days brought your crimson blood near enough to the surface to make you keen for the crew to win because it's a Harvard crew? Don't deceive yourself or me. I really want to know."
Hamlen hesitated before making reply, then he returned Huntington's look with a frankness which conveyed much. His eye was clear and responsive now; the haunting terror had left it. He met the question squarely.
"Until this moment," he said, "I supposed myself sincere in believing that my interest lay wholly in having that boy come through victorious, but as you put it to me now I know there is a reason which lies deeper still. Thanks to you, dear friend, notes in my life which have always before been mute have now been struck, and I am finding a wonderful joy in the melody produced. I have awakened to my heritage, and I realize what I have missed in denying myself its privileges. I want Harvard to win, Huntington, because it's Harvard. I shall always want Harvard to win for the same reason. It may be better for the sport to have the victories alternate, it may be impossible to defend anything so selfish as a desire for an unbroken line of victories for years to come; but still I want it. There is no occasion to argue it, there is no logic to support it; I just simply want it!"
Huntington regarded him with a satisfaction too deep for outward exuberance. "I knew the spirit was too strong to accept limitations!" he exclaimed quietly but with an exultant ring in his voice. "I knew that no man could once place himself within the influence of college ideals and not recognize their existence. You have tested my convictions, Hamlen, but my faith has remained 'calm rising through change and through storm.'"
The strength of Huntington's emotion impressed Hamlen deeply. His own dawning was so recent that at first he could not believe it possible for his friend to be so affected by the subject under discussion.
"Do other Harvard men feel as strongly as you do?" he demanded questioningly.
"Of course," Huntington replied; "but it isn't a question of Harvard any more than of other colleges. We shout for our Alma Mater, but no more lustily than the Yale or the Princeton man or the men of the smaller colleges shout for theirs. It is merely the expression of the spirit of loyalty and the sense of obligation, Hamlen. Not to express it is unnatural, not to feel gratified when another laurel wreath is placed upon the brow of our Dear Mother is a lack of filial devotion which I refuse to believe exists."
They elected to see the race from the observation-train, that they might watch the positions of the crews from beginning to end rather than at any fixed point. There was no novelty in the experience for Huntington or Cosden except the ever-present uncertainty of the outcome, but to Hamlen even the crowds which he had previously avoided added to his excitement by imparting to him the thrill of their repressed expectancy. He resented the calmness of his companions as they perused their morning papers on the train. He tried to follow their example, but found himself mechanically reading over and over again the statistics of the two crews. Harvard was the favorite, but that he took as a bad omen for he still remembered the Harvard teams which had gone into their contests with the odds on their side, and had failed to win the expected victories. Harvard overconfidence was a byword when he was in college, and it was overconfidence which he feared now.
They took their places on the improvised seats of the platform freight-cars, ready to be hauled to the point of vantage at the start, but the train seemed frightfully deliberate in getting under way. Hamlen glanced at his watch nervously and was surprised that so little time had elapsed since his last observation. Finally they found themselves opposite the judge's boat. Harvard was already nearing the mark and the Yale crew followed only a few lengths in her wake. Hamlen watched the manoeuvers, disturbed by the conflicting cheers coming in sharp staccato from every direction. At last the boats lined up in position. Hamlen fancied that he could hear the referee's challenge: "Ready, Harvard? Ready, Yale?" Then the pistol cracked out with reverberating echoes, the oars gripped the water, the shells shot forward, and the race was on!
Hamlen's face set grimly and he sat bolt upright, taking no part in the mad cheering or the boisterous excitement. His eyes followed every stroke of the oars, and he suffered keenly as the Yale boat took a lead of half-a-length at the quarter-mile. Then he saw Harvard settle down to her work with a stroke quickened enough to enable her to take the advantage. The same stroke kept the crimson boat forging steadily ahead. At the half-mile the positions were reversed, at the mile clear water showed between the shells, another mile added two lengths more, in spite of Yale's plucky efforts to close in on the gaping space. At three miles Harvard had five lengths to the good, and for the first time Hamlen relaxed his tense attitude.
"If it would not be a case of overconfidence," he said quietly to his companions, "I should say that Harvard was going to win!"
"Nothing but an act of God can save Eli now!" Cosden replied between his cheers. "Why don't you yell?"
"I can't," Hamlen said; "I feel it too much!"
Still the crimson boat gained, and the contest had changed into a procession.
"Do they ever lose with a lead like that?" he asked Huntington anxiously.
"Lose!" his friend shouted,--"lose! They're gaining every stroke! Rah! rah! rah! Harvard! Harvard! Harvard! There they go across the line!"
He threw his arms deliriously around Cosden and Hamlen and they performed a war-dance on the unsubstantial seats. Every Harvard sympathizer on the train had gone mad, and the Yale streamers were buried in the avalanche of crimson flags.
"Another one!" Huntington shouted; "another wreath for the Alma Mater, Hamlen! Rah, rah, rah! Harvard!"
Hamlen had caught the contagion and was as affected with delirium as those around him. He shouted his college yell over and over again, unconscious that it was the first time in his life he had ever done so. Huntington, the sedate Huntington, was cavorting like a two-year-old, yet Hamlen saw nothing incongruous in his conduct. Cosden was so hoarse that his cries resembled a wheezy calliope, yet they were sweet music in Hamlen's ears. Harvard had won, Philip had won, he had won!
At the station a crowd of undergraduates were singing hilariously:
"_Bring the bacon home, John, We cannot eat it all. We sometimes got a taste of it When you and I were small. But now you bring it home, John, In springtime and in fall. It seems an awful waste of it, We cannot eat it all._"
There was the hectic scramble for seats on the special train. Snatches of other songs came from here and there, and spasmodic cheering; but gradually the excitement settled down into the quieter calm of satisfied accomplishment. It was an orderly crowd which deserted the train at Back Bay, but the men bunched on the platform, before they separated, and again burst into song. The jibes were forgotten, the boastings hushed. These had their place only in the first expressions of exultant victory. A deeper sentiment seized the celebrating host, which was expressed with uncovered heads:
"_Fair Harvard! thy sons to thy jubilee throng, And with blessings surrender thee o'er, By these festival rites, from the age which is past To the age which is waiting before._"
Hamlen watched them in silence, touched with a new emotion by the sound of the words, familiar enough, but which now took on a different meaning. Huntington was right: it was not a boat-race he had just witnessed, it was not the celebration of a victory over Yale, it was a "festival rite," consecrating anew to its Alma Mater that brotherhood to which he belonged, in grateful acknowledgment of the character and power developed beneath her beneficent influence which placed within its reach "the Earth and all that's in it."
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XXXI
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In July, commercial stagnation increased, and the machinery of business which before had creaked dismally in its daily routine now groaned aloud in its travail; and the pity was that the conditions which caused it were artificially created. There was capital enough, but the banks hoarded it against possible contingencies; the crops were heavy, but it was suicidal for the railroads to move them at the rates legislated by the government; there were contracts to be let, but no one dared give them out or accept them because of the shadow which hung gloomily over every great industry in the shape of governmental paternalism and interference. Stocks representing property intrinsically valuable dropped lower and lower in the market, dividends which had been earned were diverted into surplus as further margin of safety against future developments, unknown and therefore to be feared. Incomes shrank in some cases almost to the vanishing-point, while Washington reveled in an orgy of those good intentions with which they say Hell is paved.
Cosden by this time had come to a full realization of the significance of Thatcher's warning, and he understood now why the New York operator had shown so little interest in the attack on the Consolidated Machinery corporation which had seemed inevitable. In view of conditions as they had developed, and as Thatcher had foreseen them, no new enterprise would be launched until opportunity presented itself to take advantage of its inherent strength. The old-established company need fear no competition while its own business was dropping off in such alarming proportions. So Cosden again reduced expenses, still further extended his bank affiliations, and settled back to meet whatever conditions might arise, knowing that his sagacity had placed him outside the pale of those fighting for their existence.
In this latter class was Thatcher. The very success of his varied interests now made them shining lights to attract the attention of the authorities in Washington. One by one he saw them attacked, and day by day he watched the dropping values of the stocks, called on by the banks to increase his collateral, drawing deeper and deeper into his personal resources which he had considered ample for any emergency. The strain was terrific yet the only break he permitted himself was during the week of his son's graduation.
The question of the summer home gave Thatcher much concern. The heavy expense of its upkeep made it an item to be considered at this time, yet he could not bring himself to the point of doing what he knew would be an act of wisdom. In their town house the Thatchers lived the usual formal life which belonged to their position, but it was Sagamore Hall they always meant when they spoke of "home." To relinquish it, even temporarily, seemed to Thatcher nothing less than sacrilege.
The estate consisted of some sixty acres wonderfully located on Narragansett Bay with nearly a mile frontage on the sea. A rolling, close-cropped lawn, bordered on either side by avenues of trees, ran back three hundred yards from the beach before the stately, old English, half-timbered mansion was reached, the broad expanse of green carpeting making a perfect harmony of perspective. The two great end gables of the house formed a shallow forecourt, filled in by a brick terrace with balustrade. Between these gables, the central facade, a double-storied loggia of stone, reminiscent of a Dorsetshire manor house, was strikingly beautiful with its splendid sculptured decorations.
The opposite front of the mansion faced the road, though removed some distance from it, and was approached through a gateway and a winding avenue in keeping with the dignity of the building itself. To the south, connected by shaded walks, was an unusual garden, the boundaries of which were marked by rare trees and shrubs so arranged that they formed a pyramidal mass of verdure, against which perennial blooms of rare and beautiful plants showed their bewildering colors to the best advantage. This garden represented what Marian had put of herself into the estate during the twenty years they had lived there, and to her and to Thatcher each flower, shrub or tree represented something personal and recalled some happy experience.
At Sagamore Hall Marian really lived, keeping out of doors most of the time, entertaining her friends in a manner which made every one feel that each of the many attractions had been arranged for his own special enjoyment. Here the Bermuda party was again united. Thatcher still kept his wife in ignorance of the business complications which now seemed certain to overwhelm him. Marian noticed that he was tired and worried, but this had happened so many times before that she had come to look upon these conditions as deplorable but none the less inevitable factors in her husband's business life. In fact he had so explained on earlier occasions when she questioned him, and had discouraged her from showing too much concern. She recognized that he was scarcely in a mood for the reunion she had planned, but justified her insistence on the ground that he needed the relaxation; while he deemed it wise to yield rather than attempt an explanation.
Edith Stevens had been their guest for a fortnight before the other members of the party arrived. Philip was entertaining several of his college chums, including Billy Huntington, but Mrs. Thatcher particularly requested her daughter to have no guests during this visit, holding herself free to assist in the entertainment.
Since her return home after the Class Day festivities Merry had shown little interest in what went on around her. Had her mother noticed it she would have passed it over lightly as "one of the child's moods," but Mrs. Thatcher was too completely engrossed in her own great scheme to be keenly sensitive to anything around her. In fact Merry's attitude seemed peculiarly receptive, and encouraged her, a few days before Hamlen was expected, to take her daughter into her confidence.
In answering Huntington's question Marian expressed greater confidence in Merry's acquiescence than she really felt. To herself she admitted that she did not understand her daughter. Since the elaborate plans for Merry's social life fell through because of the girl's lack of interest and failure to respond, Marian had almost given up in despair. Merry was unlike the daughters of the Thatchers' friends, who might be counted on at all times to do the expected thing when given the expected conditions; with her it was always the unexpected which happened. She loved athletics, not because of the companionship of boys, as other girls did, but for the games themselves; she was fond of dancing, but she would as soon dance with another girl as with a man,--it was the rhythmic motion of the dance itself which fascinated her; she had no interest nor ability in making "small talk," but was always eager to discuss problems which her mother felt she might better leave alone; she tolerated young people of her own age, but expressed her real self only when thrown with older friends. Mrs. Thatcher worried more over her daughter's future than over any other phase of the family life, and the solution which now seemed to offer itself contained so much promise that Marian believed it to be foreordained.
It was not easy to broach the subject, but when once accomplished Marian talked on for some time without waiting for Merry to enter into the discussion. It was important, she felt, that the girl should know the whole story before being permitted to express an opinion. As the full significance of her mother's words dawned upon Merry there was an instinctive recoil, but she listened with outward calm. Marian believed herself to be suggesting nothing save deepest concern for her daughter's future; Merry heard nothing but a personal appeal for sacrifice. The romance of her mother's early experience, the results which came from the breaking of the engagement, her own interest and participation in Hamlen's new life,--all went to strengthen the appeal, but still it asked for sacrifice.