Part 21

While Huntington's spirits sank lower and lower Cosden's rose to a point which made him oblivious to the cares and worries of the world around him. He had passed through the probationary period with Edith Stevens with marked success, and this opportunity of consecutive days with her amid such congenial surroundings filled him with a delight which he had never found in his business successes. Edith was right, Huntington was right, Cosden admitted, in their contention that there was something finer and more satisfying than business ideals; but he gave Edith the credit for having proved it to him.

He went to extremes in this swing of the pendulum as in all others, but the net result was a smoothing down of many of the rough corners, and a tempering of the aggressive individualism which had often offended. Cosden sized himself up correctly when he remarked to Edith, "I never expect to be the finished product Monty is, but I'm going to quit advertising the fact."

Edith could but admire the persistency with which he worked upon his disagreeable problem. Her curiosity to see "how deep it went" developed during the course of several other experiences together, into a complete willingness to forget past delinquencies, and a real desire to encourage him in the pursuit of his new course. It interested her to see that the same forcefulness which had made itself disagreeable before was the very agent which had accomplished the change she admired; that it was this same dogged determination which maintained the present poise and gave him the new dignity.

Marian was delighted by the way her guests grouped themselves, and everything seemed to play wonderfully into her hands. Edith appropriated Cosden and appointed herself his hostess; brother Ricky enjoyed himself hugely motoring around the country in one of the Thatcher automobiles, and did not ask to be considered except at meals; Philip kept his boy friends engaged in an absorbing series of outdoor activities which prevented Billy from interfering with her plans for Merry; Mr. Thatcher was so engrossed with business matters that he became almost a negligible quantity, which his guests understood and overlooked; Huntington so far, Marian rejoiced to admit, had carried himself admirably, dividing his time between Merry, Hamlen and herself in such a way as to be really helpful instead of a menace to her plans. Never had she entertained a group of friends so accommodating, and she was more deeply appreciative at this time than she cared to state.

Edith and Cosden strolled down a leaf-covered walk, flanked by antique statuettes, to an attractive pavilion at the end of the vista. Here they seated themselves after a leisurely walk about the estate. Edith knew she was taking chances, but as she felt quite capable of defending her position she saw no reason why she should not enjoy Cosden's continued devotion.

"I've ordered tea served here," she announced. "We seem to be a little early."

"I'm in no hurry," Cosden replied cheerfully; "are you?"

"I have forgotten how to hurry, after these delicious weeks here," Edith answered, leaning back in her rustic chair. "I think it agrees with me to be deliberate, as Marian is. I am going to cultivate it."

"You are deliberate with me, all right," he declared. "I don't quite understand myself nowadays. Usually when I find that I am making little progress along one line I shift onto another, but now I seem perfectly contented to sit back and watch you act your part. That shows that there's something deeper in all this, doesn't it?"

"You might shift back to Merry," she replied calmly.

"No," he said with decision; "I've learned the rules now, and you don't catch me revoking.--Tell me, if you don't like me, why do you let me hang around like this, and if you do like me, what's the use of putting me off so long?"

"There are loads of people I don't even take the trouble to like or dislike, whom I 'put off,' as you call it."

"Do you really dislike me?"

"No," Edith drawled slowly, as if deliberating; "I can't say that. In fact I think I rather like you--in spots."

Cosden leaned forward eagerly. "Isn't it stronger than that?" he demanded.

"I can't say it is," she replied, her voice manifesting the same interest which she might show if he had asked any other commonplace question; "but don't get down on your knees now, for here comes the tea and I loathe demonstration before servants."

"All right," Cosden said with resignation but without losing his cheerfulness; "you don't discourage me a bit. I guess counsel is just collecting a little extra fee for that break in Bermuda. I'll wait."

"I know how many lumps you take in your tea, and I know that you prefer cream, but shall I pass you the raspberry jam?"

"No, thank you," he replied promptly. "My mother always used to dose me up with calomel disguised in raspberry jam, and I can't eat it now without tasting the medicine."

"Very well," Edith laughed, "try some honey. But please tell me what has put your friend Monty in the dumps. At Bermuda he was stimulating, but down here he's as cheerful as a crutch."

"Monty in the dumps?" Cosden echoed, surprised. "Why, I hadn't noticed it. Just before Hamlen came to visit him, he was way down,--bemoaned his age, and all that sort of thing. I thought we'd got him out of that. I must look him over and see what the trouble is.--Here come our hostess and Hamlen. Did you ever see such a change in any one?"

Marian approached with her brightest smile. "I'm glad Edith is keeping you from being bored," she said. "I'm afraid I've been very remiss."

"I don't see how you could divide yourself into much smaller bits, Mrs. Thatcher," Cosden replied. "This is a big family you have at present."

"The bigger the better," she exclaimed brightly. "I hoped I should find you out here, and as I see the tea is still hot perhaps Edith will let us join you. Philip and I have been walking and talking until we are really tired."

"I am entranced with all this," Hamlen said, turning to Edith. "I had no idea, when I paraded my few acres at Bermuda, that I was competing with an estate like Sagamore. I wonder some one didn't rebuke me for my presumption!"

"Isn't that a pretty compliment!" Marian cried. "You have put yourself into every inch of your beautiful place, Philip; Harry and I have only done that to a very small extent. It is beautiful, I admit, and I love it just as I love the beauties with which you have surrounded yourself at home."

"It makes little difference, after all, where one finds it, so long as it is beauty," Hamlen replied. "'The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' I used to think Emerson must have written that in Bermuda, but it might have been written here."

Edith caught the expression on Cosden's face and almost laughed.

"What's the use?" he whispered to her without being detected. "This pace is too swift for me! He reeled that off as easily as I could the latest quotations on copper!"

"Oh, Philip!" Mrs. Thatcher exclaimed, "I can't tell you what it means to me to see you yourself again after that awful shock you gave me at Bermuda! Truly, when we left you behind us I gave up hope."

"What hope there was you took away with you, so I was forced to follow."

"Come, Cossie--Connie--," Edith stumbled,--"if I'm to call you by your given name you'll have to change it to something reasonable,--this is no place for us."

"Don't let us drive you away," Marian protested.

"That's all right; we want to be driven away. If we stay longer, and Mr. Hamlen talks like that, Mr. Cosden will become sentimental.--Bye, bye."

Mrs. Thatcher and Hamlen watched them as they strolled leisurely up the path, Edith swinging her parasol and Cosden walking meekly beside her. Finally Marian turned to him and laughed.

"What a dance that girl is leading him!"

"Do you think she cares for him?"

"In her way; but if he marries her he will have earned her!--He went down to Bermuda on purpose to become engaged to Merry."

"He did!" Hamlen exclaimed, surprised; "why, they were never together when I saw them."

"Nor often at other times. Of course, it was ridiculous,--but with you, Philip, she'll be the happiest girl in all the world."

His eyes dropped quickly as she turned the conversation, and the expression on his face completely changed.

"You are wrong, Marian," he protested; "no happiness can ever come to any woman through me."

"Don't disparage yourself," she answered gently. "You are a different man from what you were. Do you think I would counsel this if I were not sure?"

"You believe it, Marian," he conceded, "and I wish I shared your confidence. But I know myself. The time when I might have made something of what I had passed long ago. If I am to go on at all it must be with my real self suppressed, and the only way to do this is to plod my path alone."

"Why slip back, Philip? Why suppress your real self?"

"I know the danger of permitting it to assume control."

"When last we talked you seemed willing to accept my judgment."

"I am still, in everything but this. I appreciate your desire for my happiness, Marian, but you are taking a responsibility beyond what is wise. I am complimented by your daughter's willingness to listen to an offer of marriage from me, but if the test really came she could not meet it."

"She would, Philip,--she would."

"I cannot comprehend it," he continued; "she has seen me at my worst."

"She understands you, and appreciates the wonderful qualities you possess. She is too young to know the depth of love, but old enough to recognize what a man like you can become to her. If you would only speak with her you too would understand."

Hamlen moved uncomfortably in his chair, and was silent for what seemed an interminable period. When at last he turned he spoke with a conviction which shocked her.

"No, Marian," he said deliberately; "it can never be. Let us end this farce before it goes too far."

"Philip!" she cried, seeing her work of months crumbling before her, and reading in his determined face the miscarriage of what she believed to be predestined. "I can't permit you to destroy the years which remain to you."

She leaned over and took his hand in hers. Success had been so near that she could not see it slip away from her now without a supreme effort. Merry needed such a man as this and Hamlen needed her. Why should these false ideas, created by years of self-depreciation, stand in the way of what she knew was best?

"I can't let you destroy the years which remain to you," she repeated earnestly. "I can't see my child's happiness marred by your foolish insistence upon ideals which rest on conditions now long since passed away. Philip, if you loved me once, show it now by your confidence in my judgment, by your faith in my purpose. Tell me one reason why this should not be."

"If I loved you once?" he echoed her words with a force which startled her. "Tell you one reason why this should not be? The one answers the other, Marian; for that love, intensified by the denial of twenty years, is now a power I can't withstand."

"Philip!" she cried, striving to release her hand which he held in a grip which hurt her, "you don't mean that you still--"

"I mean that I have never ceased to love you, Marian. Look at me now and tell me if you doubt it. Even while I cursed you for ruining my life, I loved you. Every day of the twenty years I have lived alone I have had your face before me, I have held out my arms beseeching you to come to me, I have beaten my head against the wall in despair that the one longing of my heart could never hope for realization."

"You never told me--I did not know--"

"I have at least been strong enough to keep my secret, Marian; but it is sacrilege for you to talk to me of marriage to your daughter. Now that you know the truth you will urge no further. Could anything be more dishonorable than to offer myself to her when even to-day my love for you is beating at my heart until I can scarcely contain it? No, no! let us have an end to all this mockery! In the name of a life's devotion, in the name of the love you once had for me--"

"Release me, Philip," she entreated, frightened by his tenseness; but he only tightened his grip upon her hand. She realized the importance of terminating this impossible situation, regardless of the pain it might inflict.

"I never loved you, Philip," she said deliberately. "At the time, I thought I did; but it was my mind and not my heart you dominated."

He dropped her hand as if she had struck him, and, dazed, supported himself against the rustic chair.

"You never loved me?" he repeated brokenly after her. "You never--oh, God! why did you tell me that! Why did you come back into my life to stir up those forces which had crushed me, but which I had at last subdued!"

Then he turned his eyes upon her, full of the reproach which he dared not trust himself to speak.

"If it was the domination of my mind then, why should it not be now?" he asked in a voice which trembled with emotion. "Look at me, Marian!"

"Don't, Philip, I entreat of you; you frighten me!

"Look at me!" he commanded, and she slowly raised her head and gazed into his face.

"Do you remember the last time you looked at me like that?" he asked quietly, but even in his low tones there was a compelling force she recognized.

"Come," he said rising, and drawing her toward him. "If it was not love which brought you to my arms before, then it must be the same impulse to-day. Come, Marian, it is not the daughter I want, it is you,--my beloved, my sweetheart of years gone by!"

"Philip!" she protested feebly, "Philip--I entreat--" but the old, irresistible influence was too strong, and he folded her in his arms.

In a moment his face changed as if touched by a magician's wand. The lines which years and disappointment had traced were miraculously smoothed away, and the expression of contentment was that which comes only when the seeker has at last reached the consummation of his quest. The lips moved silently, the eyes looked far into the distance. The past was forgotten, the future unheeded, but the wonderful present was his!

A convulsive sob from Marian finally brought him to himself. He loosened his hold, and gazed into her face with abject horror.

"My God!" he cried, as he allowed her limp form to slip back into the chair. "What have I done! Marian, child, speak to me! Tell me that you forgive me! It was the years which did it, not I; Marian! speak to me! Tell me you forgive me!"

He gazed helplessly around as no response came. She lay there, her head resting on the back of the chair, sobbing hysterically but giving no sign that she even heard his words. He watched her until at last she opened her eyes and regained control. Then he spoke again.

"Leave it unspoken, Marian," he exclaimed with an agony in his voice which the suspense intensified. "I have said it to myself. I have made myself an outcast, a pariah! Let me take you to the house. Then you need never think of me again."

"No," she said brokenly; "leave me here."

"This is the end, Marian!" The words came short and crisp. "I ask your forgiveness no more. There are some things which are past forgiveness. I only ask you to forget.--Good-bye!"

* * * * *

XXXIV

* * * * *

The long, sleepless night which followed Marian's harrowing experience, painful as it was, proved the most vital moment of her life. From girlhood it had been hers to receive rather than to give. Her beauty and vivacity had always attracted attention and homage, her positive nature demanded and was given leadership, until she came to regard this as natural and to be expected. To have Huntington question her judgment was as novel as it was unpleasant, to have Merry suggest a worldliness in her approach to life struck her as absolutely incongruous. Mrs. Thatcher knew herself to be a competent woman, and as no one before had questioned her ethics, she accepted the successful outcome of her undertakings as conclusive proof that her judgment was correct.

She might pass Huntington's comment by as the expression of one who could look at any question only from a man's standpoint, she could make light of what Merry said on the ground that the girl knew so little of life; but in her experience with Hamlen she had come face to face with a mistake so real that it compelled a readjustment of her perspective. She could harbor no resentment against him: the climax had come as the direct result of her own error in judgment, and the responsibility belonged to her alone. Ever since that eventful meeting in Bermuda she had seen the battling of conflicting emotions. To her more than to any one else should have come knowledge of the limit beyond which this self-tortured soul could not be pressed. She had deceived herself in regard to the reclamation; Hamlen's condition remained unchanged; Huntington had simply developed him to a point where he had gained better control. Beneath the deceptive smoothness of the surface still surged the turmoil started twenty years before, seething with unsatisfied yearnings, and kept under only by the superb strength of will which she herself at last had broken down. Huntington had warned her of the danger but she refused to recognize its existence. Marian could blame no one but herself, and the fact that her intentions had been of the best did not mitigate the tragedy she had perpetrated. This latest buffet of the world would be conclusive evidence to Hamlen that he had no place in its daily routine.

Marian had reached this point in her mental struggle when the most awful thought of all suddenly came to her.

"Would the harm stop there!"

She sat bolt upright, staring ahead into the grey dawn which lighted the chamber through the long windows. "Merciful God!" she cried aloud,--"not that! not that!"

A moment later she sprang out of bed and threw a kimono about her. Then she opened the window-door and passed out onto the little balcony. The sun was just rising, and Marian unconsciously first felt the beauty of the breaking day. It had been long since she had seen a sunrise! She stood watching it for a brief moment, brushing back with her hand the mass of beautiful hair which fell about her shoulders and lay against her ashen cheeks. Then she stepped forward, and facing the East like a Sun-worshiper of old fell upon her knees in an agony of prayer. The God who made a world like this she supplicated, who flooded it with the radiance of such a day, would not so punish her for a single act of folly! Mistaken as it was, behind it all lay a desire to atone, an effort for the happiness of others. He would not ask for retribution such as that!

Relieved by her outburst she returned to her chamber. She must see Huntington. He would know what to do. He would be God's agent to prevent the awful climax. But it would be several hours before she could disturb him, and these hours must be endured.

Huntington responded promptly to the summons when it reached him, wondering what the occasion might be. Marian's explanation of Hamlen's disappearance the night before had been so diplomatic that he had accepted it, so the real story was a complete surprise. He listened intently as she told him everything, sparing herself in no degree, anxious only to receive from him some assurance that her fears were unwarranted.

"You should have told me sooner," was the only criticism Huntington made, after learning the details.

"I was completely dazed," Marian explained helplessly. "This awful thought only came to me in the early morning. You don't think it too late! Don't tell me that!"

"It is useless to speculate," he answered gravely. "Knowing Hamlen as we do, and knowing how high his sense of honor, the next step seems inevitable. He will consider that he has sinned against the woman he loves, and will demand of himself an expiation beyond what he would exact from any one else. I shall do my best to find him. Let us hope it will be in time."

"Couldn't I go with you?--No, of course I couldn't,--but how can I endure it until I know? What can I do to help?"

Huntington had risen, ready to take his motor-car which had been summoned when first he learned the facts. There was no excitement in his manner, but an alert readiness to undertake his duty with the least possible delay. As Mrs. Thatcher asked the question a sternness seemed to come into his face, but his voice was kindly as he replied.

"Whatever you tell the others," he said with decision, "Merry must know the whole truth. There is another tragedy going on in that little girl's soul which needs a mother's care. That is where you can help.--I shall telephone you as soon as I have news."

As the crunching of the wheels on the gravel road died away Mrs. Thatcher rose and went to her daughter's room. Never before had she so promptly followed another's suggestion, but at that moment she felt an aversion to her own judgment, and welcomed the opportunity to follow rather than to lead.

* * * * *

"All this mystery is getting on my nerves," Edith remarked to Cosden as they sauntered out onto the piazza after a later breakfast. "Mr. Hamlen, after seeming perfectly rational with us in the _bosquet_ yesterday, rushes into the house, packs his belongings, and disappears without saying 'good-bye' to any one. Marian, also rational when we saw her yesterday, becomes invisible to the naked eye, and sends word she has a headache--the first I've ever known her to have. This morning she is down to breakfast before any one of us is up except Mr. Huntington, who by a strange coincidence also craves an early breakfast for the first time on record. Marian has gone up-stairs again, and our friend Monty has motored off to Heaven knows where. Now then, what's the answer?"

"Why not accept Mrs. Thatcher's explanation until you have a better one?" Cosden asked, drawing his chair nearer to hers.

"Because it's too fishy, and my curiosity is aroused."

"In that case I'm sure you'll find out all about it," he said smiling.

"Why aren't you interested?"

"I'm perfectly comfortable," he explained, "and so entirely satisfied with the present company that I can spare Hamlen, Monty, and even Mrs. Thatcher just as well as not."

"Then you're going to leave me to do the work?" she demanded. "That's just like a man!"

"I'm glad they're gone," Cosden admitted. "It gives me just the chance I've been waiting for: will you marry me?"

"Again?" Edith inquired.

"No; just this once."

"It would serve you right if I did!"

"I dare you to!"

"No! no! no! no!" she cried.

"Give me an option for thirty days."

"You silly!" she laughed. "For a sensible man you can be more kinds of foolish than any one I know."

"Flattery doesn't hurt anybody unless he swallows it," Cosden retorted complacently.

Whither their gibes would have carried them is needless to consider, for they were interrupted by the approach of a motor-car up the driveway.

"Monty has made a quick trip," Cosden observed, "now you can satisfy your curiosity."

"On the contrary," Edith retorted rising, "the plot thickens. That is Harry Thatcher. What in the world has happened to send him motoring down here at ten o'clock in the morning?"

They passed through the hallway to the _porte cochere_ on the opposite side of the house. Thatcher was just descending from the car.

"Hello!" he greeted Edith, who was ahead. "Where's Marian?"

"Up-stairs. What brings you home at this time of day?"

"Don't disturb her yet," he exclaimed, disregarding her question. "I want a word with Cosden first. You'll excuse us?"

Locking his arm through Cosden's Thatcher led him back onto the piazza which the two had just left.