The Bachelors Part 4

"Go back with us when we sail for New York week after next. Leave things here just as they are, and keep this wonderful spot as a retreat when life becomes too strenuous. Harry and I will return here with you if you wish us to, and will introduce so many serpents into your Garden of Eden that you'll relegate us to the cliff while you take refuge in your library. But between now and that time go back with us into that life which is your life. Place yourself where you can feel the compet.i.tion of what goes on about you. Try pus.h.i.+ng against the current, and learn the joy of contact with something which opposes. Study the people around you, and make friends--it's not too late, with your splendid personality and with me to show you how. Come and get acquainted with your namesake.

Help him to learn from you what you can teach him better than any one I know, and learn from him what his youthfulness can teach you. Will you do it, Philip? Will you let this wonderful work you've done here be the means and not the end? Will you put your accomplishments where they can be of value, instead of h.o.a.rding them, as a miser does his gold?"

He stood watching her wonderful animation as she spoke with a conviction which swept him off his feet. In the past she had listened to him, and he could but be conscious of the domination which his mind had held over hers; now he knew their positions to be reversed. Was this what the world had given her? And the boy--Philip, named after him. Why was it that the lessons he had taught himself during all these years proved so inadequate to combat the yearning which he felt within him?

Marian was not slow to sense the conflict in his heart, nor to follow up her advantage.

"What have you really accomplished, Philip?" she asked quietly. "Be generous in sharing your splendid development with us."

"I could not give this up," he protested.

"Of course you couldn't, and you should not," she a.s.sented. "Give up nothing, but simply add to what you have by a.s.similating from others. I want you to know my husband, my children, and my friends, and I want them to know you. Say that you will return with us, Philip."

He gazed at her helplessly, then turned his head aside. The emotion against which he had fought for twenty years had escaped from his control, and he was ashamed that another should see what he knew his face betrayed.

"It is impossible," he said, when he was himself again; "it would not be fair."

"To whom?" she demanded.

"To you--or to your husband--"

"Nonsense! We all understand one another too well for that! It is the boy who needs you and whom you need."

Hamlen turned to her again. "The boy," he repeated after her--"Philip!

You would let him come into my life?"

"I desire nothing so much," she answered resolutely, a great joy surging in her heart as she seemed to see the barrier between him and life crumbling before her attack.

"Would the boy permit it? I might not be able--"

"Let me be judge of that," she smiled.

The man pa.s.sed his hand wearily over his eyes as Mrs. Thatcher watched his uncertainty with fearfulness and yet with eager expectancy. She knew that she could say no more, that there was danger in bringing further pressure upon this spirit already extended to its extremest tension; and yet she longed to take advantage of what she had gained in awakening the latent human element and in disturbing the complacency which habit had established upon premises so false.

"Oh, Marian!" Hamlen cried at length, in a voice so full of suffering that it staggered her; "the world is not to be trusted even when you hold it up so temptingly before me. It always has been false and always will be so for me. Each time I have given it the chance it has struck me a harder blow than before. No, Marian, I can't expose myself again. If I could make myself a part of some one else--if this boy-- No, no! I couldn't take the risk. You mustn't ask me. You mean it kindly, but--"

"Trust me," Marian said softly. "Come," she continued, nodding in the direction of the returning party. "I will tell Harry that you are dining with us to-night at the 'Princess.'"

IV

It was in the long, s.p.a.cious dining-room of the "Princess" that Cosden pointed out the Thatcher party to Huntington, and Hamlen was with them.

Naturally enough Huntington's eyes first rested on the girl's face, and in it he found enough that was reminiscent to cause a start. It was Marian Seymour as she must have looked when he knew her, but not at all as he had come to think of her during the intervening years. How ridiculously young she was! But Huntington had discovered that young people were getting to look younger every year now. It almost annoyed him, whenever he went to Cambridge to straighten out some mix-up of nephew Billy's, to see how much smaller and younger the students were to-day than when he was there. He remembered distinctly that he and his mates had been men when he was in college; but the present generation was made up of youngsters who should not be allowed abroad without their nurses.

Miss Thatcher, whom Cosden pointed out to him, came within the same category. She carried herself with a dignity not always seen in girls of her age, but she was undeniably young. Then his glance pa.s.sed from her to the older woman whom he took to be her mother, and he found himself guilty of staring shamelessly. This was undoubtedly the Marian Seymour of sainted memory, now delightfully matured into an extremely attractive matron of thirty-eight or forty. The slight figure had changed but little from what he remembered; the face still showed traces of its former mischievous vivacity, even though it had become more decorous.

Such changes as he saw were only those which come in the natural development of a charming girl into a well set-up woman of the world. So this was the genius who would have presided over his household if he had happened to find her at home upon either of those two momentous occasions, or if he had happened to discover her in Europe on that eventful trip and had happened to tell her of his devotion, and, incidentally, she had happened to respond to his declaration of undying affection.

His inspection was as complete and a.n.a.lytic as the distance between the two tables would permit. She was a fascinating woman, he acknowledged, and yet--she was so different from what he had pictured her. The wife with whom he had mentally lived these twenty years he himself had created out of the all-too-scanty materials of memory, added to substantially by what his imagination had skilfully selected of what he thought she ought to be. He had not been more successful in his creation than Nature herself, he was forced to admit, but while looking at Mrs.

Thatcher he experienced the mortifying sensation of being a self-convicted bigamist.

Curiously, he had never thought of her as growing older along with him.

His glance returned to the daughter's face, and in it he found a closer semblance to what his mind had pictured. She was more mature than her mother had been, yet she possessed many of the same physical characteristics. Was it possible that she might have been his daughter?

Here came the third distinct shock. For the first time he had something against which to measure his own age, and involuntarily he touched his heavy head of hair to rea.s.sure himself that baldness, that advertis.e.m.e.nt of advancing years, had not overtaken him in the moment.

"Well," Cosden interrupted his reveries; "I'm waiting to hear your first impressions."

Huntington started guiltily, as if his friend had witnessed the gymnastics his mind had executed. It was natural that Cosden, being nearest to him, should come in for the force of the reaction.

"How do you suppose I can express an opinion on a girl half-way across a room the size of this?" he answered with as much asperity as ever crept into the evenness of his tone.

Cosden looked up surprised. "Why, Monty!" he expostulated, "don't get peevis.h.!.+"

"Don't bother me with foolish questions," was the ungracious rejoinder.

"I'm studying the situation. Later I'll give you my impressions."

"But you've seen her," Cosden persisted. "What do you think of the perspective?"

"She is very young," Huntington replied, regaining his composure and realizing that to fall in with Cosden's mood was easier than to explain his own.

"She's twenty--just the right age for a man thirty-eight," was the complacent reply. "I've figured it all out. A woman grows old faster than a man, and eighteen years is just the proper handicap."

"Which is her husband?" Huntington asked.

"Her husband?" Cosden repeated after him.

"I mean her mother's husband," Huntington corrected hastily; "which one is Mr. Thatcher?"

"The man with the smooth face; I don't know the others. We'll meet them later."

As the party left the dining-room Mr. Thatcher recognized Cosden and fell behind to greet him.

"Well met!" he exclaimed cordially, after being presented to Huntington.

"It is a relief to see some one I know. Down here on a vacation trip, I suppose?"

"Why--yes," Cosden hesitated, seeing some deeper meaning behind the bromidic question; "that is, I thought so until I saw you. Now I'm not quite sure."

Thatcher laughed. "I had the same idea, but I can't seem to get away from business; it pursues me! I've stumbled onto something--not very tremendous, but still it may be a good thing. I'd be glad to have you look it over with me if you care to. We'll discuss it later if you don't object to talking shop during leisure hours."

Cosden's face a.s.sumed that keen, resourceful expression which his friends knew so well. "I'm never too much at leisure to discuss business," he said.

"Good! Now, when you and Mr. Huntington have finished dinner, join us on the piazza and we'll all have our coffee together."