Part 20

As she listened Merry's mind was working fast. What were the relations existing between them? She admired her mother tremendously, and was proud of the attention her beauty excited wherever they went. She respected her, for no wife or mother ever carried herself in these positions with greater regard for the proprieties. Did she love her? Of course! what a question to come to a girl's mind! Did she? The question repeated itself insistently. Merry wondered. If this were disloyalty, then the thought itself formed the offense; to analyze it was imperative before putting it aside. The girl knew that she was face to face with the crisis of her life, that the question now in mind had really been the cause of that unrest she had failed to understand.

"Is this something which you ask me to do?" Merry inquired at length.

"No, my dear; that would be exceeding a mother's rights."

"But you wish it?"

"Yes; that is a different matter."

"I wonder if it is," the girl said soberly.

"It is a very different matter," Marian insisted. "I am thinking only of you, dear child. Unless you felt convinced, as I do, that your marriage would mean your happiness, I should be the last one to wish it."

"Why don't you let me wait, as other girls do, until I find the man I love?"

"Because you're not like other girls, Merry--"

"I've always been a disappointment to you, haven't I, Momsie?" she asked suddenly.

"Not that, dear," Marian disclaimed. "Of course it has worried me that you would never be intimate with young people your own age. I have never understood it--"

"That is because I never had any girlhood, Momsie," Merry explained seriously. "I grew up too soon. When I was little I couldn't play like other children because my governess was always teaching me manners; so I had nothing to do but think."

"What are you talking about, child!" Mrs. Thatcher protested. "You are a perfect tomboy, even to-day!"

"I've had to make up for lost time, Momsie. You never saw me play when I was little; that came after I became old enough to have my own way. Then I learned games, but not as a child learns them; they were serious problems, to be thought out because I had formed the habit of thinking. While I was away at school I felt older than the other girls there, and I wasn't interested in what interested them; that gave me a chance to think some more. Then I came home, and you gave me that wonderful coming-out party! It was after that I disappointed you most, wasn't it, Momsie? I couldn't live the life the other debutantes did--talking silly nonsense until early morning with men who hadn't any sense at all, rushing to _thes dansants_ smoking cigarettes, and all that sort of thing."

"I never knew that you did smoke cigarettes," Marian said severely.

"I don't suppose the mothers of the other girls knew it either; it was the secrecy which made it sporty and gave the smoking its only interest. I couldn't stand it, Momsie! I had to be doing something worth while! Finally you let me have my own way, very much against your will, and since then I've been a tomboy, as you say. Father gave in on the boat, and I've spent hours in her, all by myself, trying to find out what the things worth while are. I haven't been very successful yet, Momsie, but I do know that it is a waste of time to fool around with boys like Ted Erskine when one may find a chance to talk with a real man like Mr. Huntington."

"Mr. Hamlen is a real man, too, Merry. If you knew something of life--"

"It's because I know too much of life, and understand too little. Mr. Huntington has helped me to understand."

"I had hoped that by being so much with him, you would be the more prepared to appreciate Mr. Hamlen," Mrs. Thatcher said.

"I wish I might have been more with you, dearie."

Marian looked up quickly. "What do you mean by that?" she demanded. "Haven't I given all my leisure to my family?"

"You have had so very little leisure, Momsie."

"I have had my own interests, of course--"

"I'm not criticising you, dearie," Merry hastened to interpose; "I'm only trying to explain myself to you."

"I have done my best to prepare my children for the life they would naturally enter--"

"Isn't life what we live every day, Momsie? It isn't all made up of worldly things, is it?"

"Upon my word!" Marian cried. "One would think that I had entirely neglected my family!"

"No, Momsie; you have been most ambitious for us, and have made sure that we could have everything you thought we ought to have. Truly it isn't that I don't appreciate what you have done; I simply can't understand why any one should want the things you consider essential. Why, for instance, are you so anxious for me to be married?"

"Because it is natural at this time in your life, Merry." Mrs. Thatcher was determined to have no quarrel, in spite of what she considered just provocation. "It is a mother's duty to advise her daughter when she sees her on the verge of a mistake."

"Suppose I felt that I didn't care to marry, Momsie, that I should be happier to go through life expressing my own individuality?"

"Don't let us get started on that," Marian protested. "You know how little patience I have with feminism in any form. I do wish we might discuss some subject in a normal way as other mothers and daughters do, Merry," she continued, softening. "I have your interests on my mind all the time, I want to help you to understand yourself and life, I love you so, dear child,--and yet, whenever we try to talk anything over, it always turns into an argument. What I have suggested to-day I have thought of for months, I have considered it from every standpoint before presenting it to you, but you give me no credit for that. Before you even know how you feel about it you are ready to dismiss it. I really think my efforts for your happiness are entitled to more consideration."

"You think this would be for Mr. Hamlen's happiness too?" Merry asked soberly.

"I am sure of it," Marian replied, seeming to see a sign of yielding in the girl's question.

"Why hasn't he spoken to me himself?" Merry asked at length.

"He will speak, of course; but to meet with another disappointment would undo all the advance he has made."

"I can't think of Mr. Hamlen as a married man," Merry continued; "I can't believe that he would be happy under conditions changed from what they are now. If he could only go on living with Mr. Huntington--"

"That is out of the question, of course," Mrs. Thatcher answered. "Mr. Huntington has accomplished a miracle in bringing him out of his old obsession, and if it were possible to surround him now with normal conditions there is no limit to the heights he might reach."

"Has he told you that he cared for me?"

"Not in so many words," her mother admitted; "that is scarcely to be expected. I understand him so much better than he does himself. He disparages his abilities, which is not a bad characteristic in a husband, and without some assurance of success I doubt if he would ever mention the subject to you. But you know what it would mean to him. I shall never urge you against your will, my dear," she repeated with real feeling,--"you know that without my telling you; but I do feel my own responsibility so keenly! He was a boy of such promise, as he is to-day a man of rare capabilities if the right one could only guide him in making use of his talents. Haven't you felt this yourself, my dear, when you have been with him?"

Merry passed her hand wearily over her forehead. She could not understand why she did not at once protest against what she felt to be an unnatural suggestion. Still, the constancy of the lover, the sympathy which she had felt for Hamlen since their first meeting in Bermuda, and her own state of uncertainty combined in a confused way in the girl's mind. Huntington's face was before her as her mother spoke of Hamlen, his voice was in her ears, his words echoed in her heart: "I found the girl too late!" Mrs. Thatcher thought Merry's hesitation came from a consideration of the arguments just advanced, but what Huntington had said formed the greatest argument of all. This closed for her all hope of happiness coming as a direct response to the craving of her heart, and left her only the possibility of attaining it through the indirect means of giving happiness to some one else.

"That is what he would do," she whispered; and the thought brought comfort.

"Haven't you felt this?" Mrs. Thatcher repeated at length, to recall the girl to herself. "You have always seemed so much more at home with older men, and he must have appealed to you. He would respond so quickly to the sympathy you could give him."

"Wouldn't it be wrong to marry a man you didn't love?" Merry asked quietly.

"But you respect him, don't you, dear? And respect is the first step toward love. I wouldn't have you marry him unless that came, but there is plenty of time before the wedding need be considered."

"I am very unhappy!" Merry exclaimed suddenly, with a little catch in her voice.

"Unhappy, my dear!" Mrs. Thatcher cried with real sympathy, drawing the girl's head upon her shoulder. "Why should you be unhappy? Tell Mother."

"I don't know, myself," Merry admitted, crying softly. "I've been unhappy ever so long. Now and then things have seemed to straighten out, but never for long at a time. Now I'm more unsettled than I have ever been, and I don't feel as if I could be much of a success in making any one else happy while I feel so miserable myself."

"This may be just what you need to help you find yourself, my dear," Mrs. Thatcher answered, kissing her affectionately. "Oftentimes, when we are wretched ourselves, we find happiness in giving it to others. Don't promise me anything, dear child, except that you will think the matter over carefully, and be prepared to settle it wisely when the time comes. Let me say again, unless you decide for yourself that your life will be made richer and brighter by marrying Philip Hamlen, of course I should not wish you to consider it."

Unconsciously Mrs. Thatcher had touched upon the same argument Merry had used with herself. The girl had striven for happiness and failed to find it; she had evolved a creed which called for ideals which she had come to believe did not exist; she had demanded something for herself before she thought of giving of herself. In her failure she had proved her fallacy. The one person who had it in his power to disprove her present contentions must consider her a visionary without the character to make the visions real. Romance had already come to him, and having found the girl too late that chapter in his life was closed. He was happy because he always thought of others rather than himself. That was the only royal road after all. There was nothing repellent about Hamlen. He had many attributes which compelled admiration, and if he once became settled, that in itself might release the indisputable abilities he possessed to accomplish the great work which might lay before him. But would marriage give that to him? Was she the one to bring about the metamorphosis which her mother so confidently predicted? Would happiness come to her as a result of giving it to him?

The thoughts and the questions crowded through her mind in such numbers and with such conflicting incoherence that she could hope to find no answers. But her decision need not be made now--that one fact remained clear and she clung to it. Perhaps another day would bring relief.

"I will think it over, Momsie," she promised in a tired voice. "Forgive me if I haven't seemed considerate. I want to do the right thing, dear, but it is so hard to know what that is."

"You are a darling!" Mrs. Thatcher cried, kissing her affectionately. "Don't worry about that. Mother will help you to find out."

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XXXII

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Merry's promise to consider the suggestion was equivalent to a victory, in her mother's mind. True, it had not been won without a cost, for the girl's plain, straightforward comments left their sting; but, after all, they represented only a child's distorted viewpoint which failed to appreciate the manifold demands upon a parent's time. Marian knew that she had been a devoted mother, and she craved appreciation; but this was more than she could expect. Merry's strictures were merely another expression of her peculiar and unfathomable nature.

The promise was the most that Marian could ask for, and with this concession she did not doubt her ability finally to show the child that the older judgment was wise and far-sighted. She knew that Merry had not given the promise lightly, and that once given she would be conscientious in fulfilling it. Her yielding, even to this extent, atoned for many instances in the past where the girl had seemed self-willed in insisting upon following her own judgment in spite of advice from all the family to the contrary; but these were unimportant incidents compared with the one at issue. Marian was now quite content to let her daughter have her own way in anything and everything provided she did not interfere in the gratification of carrying this one great desire of her mother's life to a happy conclusion.

The relations which had existed between her and Philip Hamlen, and the responsibility she assumed for the aftermath, had become greatly magnified during these months. It was natural that she should feel a real satisfaction if she were able to repair the harm she had unwittingly inflicted; but Huntington's question, "Are you not thinking of him and of your obligation more than of your daughter?" proved so disquieting that before speaking to Merry she had made doubly sure in her own mind that the only way her responsibility affected her present actions was to color the result with the romance of the past. She was sincere in her conviction that at every step of her progress she had been guided solely by a desire for her daughter's complete and final welfare, and in her efforts she could find nothing other than a mother's natural love and anxiety.

There was another satisfaction, Marian admitted to herself, but it had no bearing upon the situation until after she became convinced that her attitude was justified from Merry's standpoint. She had never forgotten Hamlen's domination over her as a girl. At the moment when she met him so unexpectedly in Bermuda she felt the old-time sensation of dread she had experienced so many times when alone with him during their childhood days and the period of their engagement. She had never loved him; this knowledge had come clearly to her during the years which had intervened. When she accepted the tacit understanding of an engagement it was because of the dominating influence of his mind over hers rather than a response from her heart to his fierce devotion. The break came on the occasion of the Senior Dance at Harvard to which she accepted Monty Huntington's escort. Hamlen, bitter against college and college life, and having no interest in the graduating festivities, not only refused to attend the dance but forbade her to go without him. Her indignation gave her strength to rebel against his domination. Later she sailed for Europe, feeling a profound sense of relief that she had been able to break the fetters which had bound her, she then realized, against her will.

The Hamlen she met at Bermuda was not the unreasonable boy of twenty years before. He was still bitter, but they met on terms which gave her the ascendency. Those traits which she had admired were accentuated, and the fierce intensity had become modified. Now it was her mind which controlled and his which yielded. He had tried to hold out against her in refusing to come to America, but he had yielded; he was now trying to hold out against her judgment that his marriage to Merry would restore the lost equilibrium, but again he would yield.

Still, above all other considerations, the great fact stood out in Marian's mind that the match itself was ideal. Merry would find in him an intellectual force which would satisfy her natural predilections; she would give him in her spontaneity a leaven to perpetuate the normal expressions of life which Huntington had taught him to understand. She would give him the youth which he had lost, he would give her the response which her unusual development could never obtain from a younger man. The balance was perfect. The mother's heart rejoiced that her efforts could make so noble a gift to her daughter, while the woman's heart found equal satisfaction that these same efforts could pay the debt of years in ample measure.

It would have been a relief if her plans for entertaining the Bermuda party could have been carried through without including Huntington, but, entirely aside from the fact that this omission would have been a marked slight, his co-operation in bringing Hamlen to this satisfactory condition had been so conspicuous that there was no alternative. Mrs. Thatcher was apprehensive lest he take advantage of his influence with Hamlen to strengthen his will against her judgment; but this was a chance she had to take.

Could she have read his mind Marian would have found nothing to fear from Huntington. His familiarity with Merry's nature made him aware, soon after his arrival, of the fact that something of unusual moment had occurred. There was a hectic excitement in her welcome, a yearning in her eyes, otherwise unexplained, which went straight to his heart and prepared him for the climax in the great renunciation of his life.

"When the supreme test comes," she had told him, "I shall accept it"; and he was convinced that the test had come and been accepted.

"Ah, well!" he sighed deeply, "who am I to interfere?"

It was the second day after his arrival before they finally found themselves alone together, and he realized that Merry had been awaiting this opportunity to have with him one of those intimate conversations which previously he had so much enjoyed. Now, knowing what was coming, he dreaded it. Until the words were spoken he could at least deceive himself into believing that he might be wrong, and this self-deception was all he now had left.

"Let us sit down here in the sand," she said to him, "just as we used to at Elba Beach."

"I wish we were back there now," he answered feelingly, as he responded to her request.

"We always wish for something we have had, instead of something we are going to have, don't we?" she asked, her hand modeling indefinite figures in the damp sand. "I wonder why that is."

"Because the past is known, and we can select the happy moments as we choose. The future is unknown, and we must take it as it comes."

"Oh, if we could only look into that future!" she exclaimed suddenly. "If we could only be sure that in it we could correct our mistakes! How that would simplify the problems of the present!"

"Why speak so strongly?" he asked. "That belongs to those who have mistakes to correct."

"I have been thinking of myself all my life," she replied, at once making the personal application. "I formed an ideal which I insisted upon realizing, and when I found it at last it proved beyond my reach."

"To have found it at all is more than most of us can claim."

Her hand paused in its idle motions, and she looked up at him inquiringly.

"But you found yours."

"Don't!" he said softly, a twinge of pain crossing his face.

"I've hurt you again!" she cried impulsively. "Don't you see how selfish I am? That proves it! There is no one I wouldn't rather hurt than you, yet twice I've done it. Please forgive me; I'll not do it again."

"There is nothing to forgive," he insisted as he did before. "I'm too sensitive, that is all. Sometimes Life draws back the curtain and shows us a wonderful picture of what might have been, to test the strength of the philosophy the years should have taught us. The strong say, 'That is not for me,' and pass it by; the weak stretch out their arms and cry in vain for what they ought to know is not for them. I am among the weak."

"You among the weak!" she cried incredulously. "How little you appreciate yourself! It is of your strength which you must give me now, for I am trying to be true to what you have taught me by your example: by making some one else happy I am going to seek for happiness myself."

It had come! Huntington needed no further confidence to complete the avowal. He must be careful not to endanger the possibility of success coming to the efforts which this brave spirit was prepared to make. Hamlen was almost normal now. If this must be, Huntington knew that he had played his part in preparing his classmate for the supreme joy which ought to come to him in sharing the life of such a girl. At least he had made her happiness possible. But the irony of her reference to his teachings!

"Then you are ready for the supreme test?" he asked in a low voice.

"If it comes."

Then it had not come! The reaction took him to an absurd extreme until his sober sense returned and he realized that this made no change. If Hamlen were eliminated, still the years remained. He saw still more clearly that his opposition was not impartial. If Merry were to tell him of her engagement to some younger man of whom he might wholly approve, how could he take their hands in his and pronounce the banal benediction, "God bless you, my children!" His heart would cry out and his spirit rebel as bitterly in one case as in the other. Except for the question of age he must admit that Hamlen was eligible; that what he lacked in certain traits was offset by super-abundance in others. If Huntington were to be consistent he must efface himself; to interfere would be to accept greater responsibility than he had a right to assume.

"You are prepared to marry a man you do not love because you hope to make him happy, and thus gain happiness yourself?" he repeated the problem slowly, emphasizing every word.

"Yes," she replied deliberately; "and the reason I so want to peer into the future is to make certain that either one of these results is assured."

"I suppose Hamlen is the man," Huntington said soberly.

"He has spoken of it to you?"

"Yes; he mentioned it soon after he came to visit me."

"Then he does care for me? I had not realized that."

How could the question be answered? Even if Huntington felt himself free to repeat the confidence Hamlen had given him it would mar the perfection of the sacrifice for Merry to know the truth. Her very eagerness for happiness might bring it, and at whatever cost to himself he wanted that to come to her!

"When we spoke of it Mr. Hamlen was not in a condition to know what his feelings really were," Huntington replied guardedly. "He realized his limitations, and questioned, much as you do, the possibility of making any other person happy. Since he has learned more of the world he is greatly changed, but we have not again referred to the subject."

"With us both feeling our limitations, and with both striving to accomplish the same result, don't you think we ought to be successful?"

There was an appealing expression in Merry's face which besought a confirming answer. Huntington could not resist it.

"It must be so," he said with decision. He smiled into her tense face with a confidence his heart denied. "It must be so," he repeated. "Somewhere there must be a divinity which watches over gentle souls like yours, and brings them their reward."

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XXXIII

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