Part 9

Hamlen flushed. "There are many of these which I don't know well yet," was his reply. "Until then why should I accept counterfeits?"

Huntington had already found the shelf which held the _incunabula_ and the later examples of printing.

"Jenson, Aldus--ah, here is the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' and a splendid copy! That is the only illustrated volume Aldus ever issued," he explained to Merry as he turned the pages. "Here is where you found that half-diamond formation of the type," he added, speaking to Hamlen, and pointing to the printed page.

Hamlen bent forward. "I didn't even remember that it had ever been used," he said. "I simply felt the necessity of filling out my page."

"So did Aldus," Huntington answered significantly. "Here is one of Etienne's Greek books. Splendid work, isn't it? And yet, after giving France the crown of typographical supremacy which Italy had lost, he had to flee for his life because he wouldn't let his books be censored!"

"My father had a fine copy of Plantin's 'Polyglot Bible.'" Hamlen drew one of the massive volumes from the shelf.

"Yes," Huntington replied, glancing critically at it and then at several of the other books; "your father must have known his subject well, for these examples follow the supremacy of printing from Italy down to modern times. See, starting with Aldus, you have one of Etienne's, then one of Plantin's, representing the period when Belgium snatched the prestige from France, then here is a 'Terence' of Elzevir's, printed when Holland was supreme; then Baskerville's 'Vergil,' which gave England the crown in the eighteenth century--"

"Where does Caxton come in?" Merry asked.

"He belongs to the period of Aldus, but his work was distinctly inferior to that of his Italian rival.--I say, Hamlen, where did your father go, after Baskerville?"

Huntington, continuing his examination of the volumes, answered his own question. "Here it is,--a beautiful example of Didot's 'Racine,' printed in that type which he and Bodoni cut together. Splendid judgment your father showed! This explains everything: you come naturally by your genius. What you have called instinct is really inheritance. Now the next; what is it?" Huntington became impatient in his eagerness.

"That is as late as my father's collection went."

"But surely you have a Kelmscott 'Chaucer'?"

"Yes; I bought one when I was in England."

"Put it up here just after the 'Racine.' There you are: except for Gutenberg's 'Mazzarine Bible,' which you may be excused for not possessing because of its rarity, you have a complete set representing the best printing which has been done in each epoch."

"You see how little I realized it," Hamlen apologized.

"You expressed your realization in the most tangible way possible, my dear fellow! You produced examples which are worthy to stand on the same shelf with those masterpieces. We won't put any living printer's work there yet, until Time has placed its value upon it, but I'll wager that when the next selection is made the books of Philip Hamlen will receive consideration."

"I wish I might believe that," Hamlen said with deep feeling; "it would mean everything to me."

"You must believe it. When you come to Boston, and find out how other collectors regard your work, you'll think my praise is tame. Until then, believe what I tell you, and take out of it the gratification which belongs to you.--I want you to go back to Boston with me, Hamlen, and pay me a visit. Will you do it?"

The change in subject was so abrupt that it took his host entirely unawares.

"Do you mean that, Huntington?" he asked.

"Of course I mean it. In fact, I insist upon it. I want to take you home to exhibit to my jealous friends as my own discovery.--Then it's all agreed."

"I couldn't leave here," Hamlen said soberly.

"I'll wait for you," Huntington replied. "I'm really in no hurry at all."

Hamlen laughed, and it was the first time Huntington had seen his reserve break down. He could not help contrasting it with the burst of emotion which had preceded his departure only the day before.

"You are a hard man to resist," Hamlen said lightly; "but that is something for the future. Let me have it to look forward to."

"Well, I haven't left Bermuda yet, and I don't want to go without you.--Now, Miss Merry, I must get you safely back to the hotel. Do you feel equal to another walk?"

"I'm eager for it," she replied.

At the door Hamlen managed to have a word alone with Huntington.

"You knew her mother when she was a girl, you said?"

"Yes;--slightly," was the guarded reply.

"She was wonderful!" he exclaimed with much feeling. Then he added, "The daughter is very like her, don't you think?"

* * * * *

XIII

* * * * *

Hamlen's remark remained in Huntington's mind long after it was spoken. He himself had been impressed by Merry's resemblance to her mother as they set out on their afternoon's pilgrimage; yet his reply to Hamlen's question was a prompt denial. Huntington's mind centered itself upon this paradox as they walked down the long driveway, and he wondered why he had impulsively yet deliberately given an impression so at variance with what he knew to be the facts. Seeking for self-justification, he turned his head slightly so that he might inspect his companion more closely without attracting her attention. After all, he satisfied himself, the resemblance was occasioned more by certain intangible characteristics than by any similarity of features. Marian Seymour possessed a beauty of more startling type than her daughter; indeed, until that afternoon Huntington had thought of Merry as an attractive rather than a beautiful girl. Now that the subject forced itself upon him he realized she was both, and that the type proved so satisfying that he had been content to enjoy it without the temptation of analysis.

Huntington's further acquaintance with the daughter emphasized his disapproval of her mother's idea regarding her possible marriage to Hamlen, and this led him to make a comparison between Marian Seymour as she was to-day and the idealization with which he had been so long familiar. Her beauty still remained, her fascination was perhaps greater since experience had given substance to her girlish vivacity and charm, and her energy was such that she unconsciously dominated every situation of which she was a factor. She was evidently devoted to her husband and to her children, but her force of personality dominated them as it did all others with whom she came in contact. Huntington had rather admired this trait in a woman, but now it clashed with his own judgment. He gave her credit for believing that she would be acting in her daughter's interest, but her suggestion did shock him, for it seemed to show a lack of sympathetic understanding. The idea of Merry married to Philip Hamlen! The man was all right, in his way, of course. Eventually he might become less of the recluse and more nearly human; but obviously he was too old and too settled in his eccentricities to be inflicted on any woman, and least of all on a girl like this.

"But still, confound him!" Huntington said to himself, "he came out of his chrysalis far enough to take notice!"

Then his thoughts jumped from Hamlen to Cosden. Connie was more alive than Hamlen could ever be expected to become, but the same arguments applied to him in greater or less degree. It was easy enough to understand what had attracted him, for Connie always instinctively sensed in anything the really vital assets. Now that Huntington was becoming better acquainted with Merry he resented more and more the idea of this coldly-calculated courtship, and he wondered why this characteristic of Cosden's had not more often offended him in the past.

From this point it was an easy shift to Billy,--dear, lovable, spoiled, heedless Billy! Of course he loved Merry, just as he had always loved every beautiful object he had ever seen; and, naturally enough, he wanted this beautiful object just as he had wanted hundreds of others during his brief but meteoric career. And still of course, he looked to his Uncle Monty to gratify his whim in this as in all other cases! It was going to the other extreme: Billy was as much too young and irresponsible as the others were too old and unsuitable. This much Huntington was able to settle definitely in his mind, and his arrival at a conclusion brought with it a sense of relief.

Huntington suddenly became aware that his introspection had occupied more time than courtesy permitted, but Merry, absorbed in her own thoughts, had not noticed his abstraction. He tried to relieve the tension.

"'Silence is golden, speech is silvern,'" he quoted. "What do you say to our adopting a silver standard?"

Merry's laugh showed that the interruption was welcome. "You always say the least expected thing, Mr. Huntington!" she exclaimed. "My mind was a thousand miles from here."

"A thousand miles," Huntington repeated reflectively. "I'm fairly good in geography, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask you the direction before I locate the spot."

"Straight up," she responded, half entering into his mood, half returning to her serious vein,--"straight in that kingdom where desire to do the right and wise thing is not hampered by a lack of knowledge."

"You would like to help Hamlen?"

"Indeed I would!"

What a serious face it was! Huntington studied it with satisfaction yet with twinges of conscience.

"I should not burden you with my problem," he said penitently. "Why should youth be made to carry loads which belong to older shoulders?"

"Please--" the girl protested eagerly. "I want you to do it. I appreciate your confidence so much that I am eager to be of some real service."

"You like--responsibilities?" he queried.

"It isn't living to be without them, is it? They seem to come of their own accord to men: a woman usually has to work hard to find any that are worth while."

"Some women do," Huntington admitted; "others have more than their share without deserving them. Burdens usually seek and find the willing shoulders."

"Of course; but I mean the women who have been brought up as I have been. I've always had everything I wanted, and my parents have protected me against everything. They even protest when I rebel against my own uselessness by going into settlement work, and in other small ways try to express my individuality."

"Such as the course in bookbinding with Cobden-Sanderson?"

Merry smiled consciously. "That was such a poor attempt, because I had no ability. My squares were uneven, my backs were wrinkled, and it was really such sloppy work."

"Granting that what you say is true, yet the experience gained in doing it enabled you to understand Hamlen to-day far better than if you had never attempted it. That is the main point, isn't it?"

"I suppose nothing we do is ever wholly lost," she admitted. "I did understand Mr. Hamlen, but that understanding has brought me no nearer to the point where I can help him."

"You helped him to-day more than any one has ever done except myself.--You see how frankly I accept first glory."

"I helped him?" Merry protested. "Why, I only listened and allowed myself to be entertained."

"Yes; but there is a difference in the way one does even that. He hesitated to show you his work and yet he wanted to show it to you. That was the struggle between the habit of years to restrain his real feeling and the desire which your sympathetic personality created in him. And the desire won out. Each time the habit is broken its power over him becomes weaker. Now do you see the value of the service you rendered him?"

"It is wonderful how clearly you analyze things!" the girl exclaimed admiringly. "All I could see was depressing, but you found encouragement in everything."

"Surely those beautiful books encouraged you?"

"Yes; but they emphasized the awful pity of the deliberate repression of his full ability."

"Still; the fact that the demand for expression was as stronger than the will to repress it shows the character beneath."

"Then not to express one's individuality shows a lack of character?" Merry inquired soberly.

"I think I sense some personal application," Huntington answered guardedly. "I must know more before I utter further words of wisdom."

The girl looked up into his face inquiringly, and then laughed consciously. "I am really becoming frightened by your power to understand," she said, only half jokingly. "I do mean to make a personal application. I want to express myself individually, but, being a woman, I cannot find the opportunity. If I really had character I'm sure that I should force the opportunity."

Huntington realized that in hesitating to answer her question he had been wiser than he knew. The seriousness which appeared from time to time on the girl's face, then, was not a passing mood, but rather the index of warring emotions. An unguarded word at this moment might do much injury to a nature which was striving to find itself.

"Do you know yet what form you wish your individuality to take?" he asked cautiously.

"Not exactly," was the frank response. "What I object to, is that a girl isn't allowed to become interested in anything that is worth while. She is given her education and 'brought out,' after which, whether she likes it or not, she seems to be placed in a position of waiting for some man to come along to marry her. Why can't she be allowed to do something, just as a boy is, until she finds out whether she wants to marry or not?"

"That would be a fatal error!" Huntington explained with mock gravity, hoping to lighten the serious turn the conversation had taken. "If any such idea gained ground marriage would become the exception rather than the rule. How many girls do you think would ever marry if they were permitted to find any other real interest in life?"

"But I'm serious, Mr. Huntington," Merry protested, showing that she felt hurt by his flippancy. "I couldn't bear to be a nonentity all my days. Think of realizing one's own ambitions only by marrying a man who could fulfil them! I could not be happy unless I contributed my share to the real life which we jointly lived."

"You could do it," Huntington said with conviction, "but not every woman could.--See that old man bowing to us. Suppose we go and speak with him. Do you mind?"

"Every one is so courteous here," she exclaimed as they crossed the narrow road. "I never pass one of the natives without receiving a greeting of some kind, and the children are forever shyly forcing flowers or fruit upon me. It makes one love the place."

The old man was overjoyed to have attracted attention. He hobbled forward with difficulty as they approached, and bowed as low as his infirmities would permit.

"You are welcome to Bermuda," he said with a cracked, high-pitched voice. "We are pleased to have strangers visit us."

"Your visitors remain strangers but a little while," Huntington answered him, "because of your hospitality."

"Won't you come in and sit down?" the old man urged.

"Not to-day, thank you; but if we should not be intruding it would be a pleasure to return some other time."

"You could not intrude, sir," he insisted; "for I am only waiting."

"Waiting?" Huntington questioned.

"Yes; waiting for that," and he pointed to a tall cedar growing inside the yard, beside which was the stump of another tree.

"He wants to tell us something," Merry whispered.

"They were planted there sixty years ago," the old man continued, "the two of them. They were little slips, stuck in our wedding-cake as is our custom here, when my wife and I were married. We put them in the ground, for everything takes root in this soil, and they grew side by side for fifty years. Then that one fell"--pointing to the stump,--"and the next day my wife was taken sick and died. We made her coffin from the cedar wood of that tree, sir. Now I'm waiting for the other one to fall. That was ten years ago now, so it won't be long."

"Isn't that a beautiful idea?" Merry exclaimed, touched by the unconscious pathos of the old man's words. "We would like to come back and have you tell us about your wife."

"She was a sweet, young girl like yourself when I married her," he replied. "We were both born here and never left the island. But the maps aren't fair to us; we're not so small"--he straightened and waved his arm--"we're not so small, as you can see."

They left him happy over the unusual break in his monotony, and continued their walk to the hotel.

"Here is the other side to the picture," Huntington remarked. "This old man and his wife, and hundreds of others no doubt, live their lives out here happy and contented with their nineteen square miles of world, yet you and I are pitying Hamlen because of his self-exile under circumstances infinitely more acceptable!"

"It is a question of what one has within, isn't it?" Merry asked, "that something which keeps one from being satisfied with anything less than the most and the best that life can give him and he can give to life."

Huntington looked at her with undisguised admiration. "You couldn't have stated it better if you had taken all the college courses in the world," he said. "You're a wonderful little girl, Miss Merry, and if you don't let your heart play pranks with that well-balanced head of yours you will certainly achieve your great ambition."

They were near the hotel now, and the conversation had strayed so far from the original subject that the girl did not follow him.

"My great ambition?" she asked. "And that is--"

"I won't tell you until we're up the steps."

"Well?" she demanded archly, as at length they stood on the piazza.

"You will marry a man who will let you contribute your share to the real life which you will jointly live."

The laughing response which he had looked for was not spoken, but to his amazement Merry turned from him without a word and disappeared within the hallway.

* * * * *

XIV

* * * * *

Thatcher and Cosden chartered one of the hotel carriages the next morning and started on a tour of inspection over the route plotted out by Duncan for the proposed trolley-line. After passing beyond the town limits, and with the long stretch of superb coral road ahead of them, Thatcher turned to his companion.

"Why can't we get together on the Consolidated Machinery?" he asked pointedly.

"The public demands that your nefarious trust be compelled to recognize its rights," Cosden replied smiling.

"Good!" Thatcher smiled in response. "Now that you have that piffle off your chest, please go on."

"This time we have the goods," Cosden added significantly.

"If you are so sure of it, why don't you show them to us? Then we can tell whether it's a real hold-up or merely an attempt."

"That's just the point, and the sooner your crowd realizes it the less time you will waste. This is not a hold-up game; we have the goods, and we can make a better thing by operating than by selling out."

"You have courage to buck up against an organization as strong as ours."

"Not only courage but capital enough to see us through."

The antiquated stage-coach, plying between St. George's and Hamilton, lumbered past them. Cosden smiled as he turned to his companion.

"There's a perfect illustration of the situation," he said. "Your machines belong to the same vintage as that old coach, yet by maintaining a monopoly, as you have been able to do until now, you have succeeded in forcing manufacturers to employ antique methods, and to pay you a whacking big royalty for the privilege of remaining twenty years behind the times. That stage-coach will stand as much chance of continuing on its beat, if our trolley scheme goes through, as your machines have of keeping out of the scrap-heap when ours once get on the market. This isn't any news to you, Thatcher, and that's what makes your whole crowd so anxious."

"If what Duncan tells us is correct," Thatcher retorted quickly, "we have just about as much show of pulling off the trolley scheme as you fellows have of putting this machinery game over on us. Somebody has been going to do this to us for twenty years, but somehow the manufacturers keep coming back to renew their contracts."

"Of course they do," Cosden admitted; "they haven't dared to do anything else. Look at the terms in your leases! Any manufacturer would have to be absolutely sure that the new machines were backed strongly enough to keep you from punishing him for his temerity. That can now be guaranteed, and with the element of fear eliminated they will flock to us, rejoicing that they have the opportunity to leave their shackles of bondage behind them."

"Another Emancipation Proclamation!" laughed Thatcher; but Cosden found the moment to impress the enemy with the strength of his position too opportune to allow himself to be diverted.

"Think of it, Thatcher," he cried with characteristic enthusiasm. "In less than two years they can save enough, through the economies of production, to buy their machines outright, instead of continuing year after year to pay you tribute with nothing at the end to show for it. We give them methods as well as machines, and show them how an ordinary workman can produce the high-grade output of a skilled operative by means of the improved automatic features of our machinery. The makers of medium-quality goods can now turn out work equal to that heretofore produced only by high-grade manufacturers."

"You're a grand salesman, Cosden," Thatcher said lightly. "Your company ought to put you on the road! Our people would pay you a big salary to handle the sales end of our organization."

"I shouldn't be worth ten dollars a week to them. There are three kinds of salesmen, Thatcher: one sells his concern, another sells his customers, and the third sells his goods. A man can't belong in the third class unless he himself believes in what he's selling. I've been making these machines for our crowd for five years, including the experimental period, and I know what I'm talking about. Four big plants are now being equipped, and when they once begin running you'll see your royalties dropping away from you like friends after a failure. The fact that you have had a monopoly has encouraged your people to keep their eyes on the stock-market instead of on the improvement of their machines, and our biggest asset is the fact that every manufacturer who is leasing from you to-day is sore over his treatment."

"That goes without saying," Thatcher admitted; "they would be sore if we gave them the machines outright. But if you are so sure your improvements are valuable, why go to the expense of duplicating our selling and manufacturing equipment when we stand ready to make a fair trade?"

"The new machines wouldn't be worth as much to you as they are to us."

"Why not?"

"Because you would never use them. The improved models would simply be side-tracked to keep them from competing against your antiques. You would be paying whatever it cost to get hold of them for hush money, just as you have done a hundred times before."

"Suppose we did: what difference would it make to you, so long as you get a good thing out of it? I don't understand that your company was organized for philanthropic purposes."

"No; business and philanthropy usually work better when they're given allowances for separate maintenance, but in this particular case the two seem to be walking along hand in hand. Self-interest, Thatcher, is the strongest motive in the world, and when you find a proposition which offers self-interest to the buyer as well as to the seller you have an irresistible argument."

"This is a great road-bed for a trolley-line," Thatcher remarked, leaning over the side of the carriage. "The construction problem ought to be a simple one."