II

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Huntington was unusually preoccupied during the period of dinner. Even

when alone he was in the habit of making the evening meal a function, in

which his man Dixon and his cook took especial pride. But to-night the

words of praise or gentle criticism were lacking, one course succeeding

another mechanically without comment of any kind. When Dixon followed

him up-stairs to the library with coffee and liqueur he found him with

his _Transcript_ still unfolded lying in his lap; and, whatever may have

happened in the mean time, the same attitude of abstraction prevailed

when Dixon returned, three hours later, received his final instructions,

and was dismissed for the night. Cosden had undoubtedly dropped off into

that slumber which belongs by right to the man whose day has presented

him with a brilliant inspiration; but Huntington still sat alone,

absorbed in his own thoughts.

The chronicler has already intimated that Huntington was possessed of a

sentimental nature, but were he to stop there he would understate the

real truth. Huntington was exceedingly sentimental--far more so than he

himself realized, which made it natural that his friends should be

deceived. He was a bachelor not from choice, as he would have the world

think, but from circumstance, and the absence of home and wife and

children represented the one lack in an otherwise entirely satisfactory

career. It was the only thing his father had not provided for him, and

he himself had not possessed sufficient energy to take the initiative.

The conversation on the way home from the Club brought matters fairly

before Huntington's mental vision. One moment it seemed monstrous that

his friend of so many years' standing should deliberately announce his

intention of entering into an estate from which he himself must perforce

be barred, yet while the treachery seemed blackest Huntington found

himself acknowledging that it was the proper step for Cosden to take,

and admiring that characteristic which saved him from committing his own

mistake. Yet, if years before he had only--but herein lies the most

extraordinary evidence of Huntington's sentimentality. If the story were

told--and it can scarcely be called a story--it would begin and end like

Sidney Carton's in one long "what might have been."

It was the mention of the name quite as much as the subject of their

conversation which started in motion all that mysterious machinery which

forces the present far out of its proper focus, disregards the future,

and brings into the limelight those events of the past which the

intervening years have magnified. No one can really explain it, and the

wise make no attempt. "Marian Thatcher," Cosden had said. She was Marian

Seymour when he had known her, twenty-odd years before, and the Marian

he had known married a man named Thatcher right under the very noses of

the legion of admirers, himself included, who fluttered about her. Of

course it was only a coincidence, this combination of names, for the

girl Cosden spoke of was only twenty; but just as substances combined by

chemists in their laboratories begin to ferment and produce unwonted

conditions, so did the combination of those two names start in

Montgomery Huntington's brain that series of mental pictures which

caused him to forget that the hour had come when sane persons of his age

and disposition sought repose.

This was not the first time that he had thus outraged Nature, and for

the selfsame cause. Not a year of the more than twenty had passed

without at least one mental pilgrimage to the shrine which had become

more and more sacred as time piled itself on time. Satisfied that he

alone was awake in the house, Huntington rose and drew a small table

before his chair, and with a key taken from his pocket unlocked the

drawer. It was a curious performance at that hour of night, and he

seemed to be filled with guilty apprehensions, for he glanced from time

to time at the closely-curtained door as if fearing interruption. The

lock yielded readily and the contents of the drawer lay in front of him.

Then, before seating himself again, he laid a fresh log on the open

fire, turned off the lights, and resumed his favorite seat, with the

table and the open drawer before him, illumined only by the flickering

glare from the fireplace.

For a moment he threw himself back in his chair, shading his eyes with

his hand as if the mental picture was even more delectable than the

sight of the actual objects before him. Then he sat upright again, with

a deep sigh, and transferred from the open drawer to the top of the

table a most remarkable collection of articles, which seemed to belong

to any one else rather than to him.

There was a long white glove, which he reverently unfolded and placed at

the further edge of the table-top; there was a bunch of faded flowers,

the dried petals of which fell softly onto the white glove in spite of

the delicacy of his handling; there was a yellowed envelope, from which

he drew a brief note, read it word by word, shook his head sadly,

replaced the note in its covering, and laid the envelope tenderly on the

table beside its fellow-exhibits. A piece of pink ribbon followed the

envelope, and then--fie! Monty Huntington! where did you get it?--then

came a pink satin slipper; and the exhibition was complete.

The showman seemed well satisfied with what he saw before him, for he

reached across to his smoking-table and found as if by instinct a

well-burnt brier pipe, with stem of albatross wing, which he filled with

his own mixture of Arcady and puffed contentedly, his eyes fixed upon

the exhibits. Then the dim, flickering light and the incense of the

tobacco accomplished their transmogrification. No longer was he William

Montgomery Huntington, lawyer, man of affairs, director, trustee

and--bachelor; he was Monty Huntington, senior in Harvard College, back

in his rooms in Beck after his Senior Dance, stricken by the darts of

that roguish Cupid who shot his shafts from the soft tulle folds of the

gown worn that night by this same Marian, the casual mention of whose

name even now caused him to forget his age and position and the dignity

demanded in a bachelor of forty-five.

The cloud of fragrant smoke concealed the fact that the long white glove

was empty now; the flickering light made golden the words of the brief

note which thanked him for the evening which his escort had made so

wonderful a memory in a young girl's heart; the faded flowers were

things of color and fragrance, more sweetly redolent because they had

risen and fallen with her breath of life; the pink ribbon seemed to have

a dance-card at one end and to be tied to a graceful wrist at the other;

and the slipper--yes, the slipper--the dreamer smiled as he recalled the

fleeting figure which flew up the brownstone steps behind her chaperon

when he had last seen her, in playful fearfulness because he had managed

to whisper in her ear that she was the sweetest, dearest, most

bewitching maiden he had ever seen. The slipper had dropped off, and

remained in his possession by right of capture since the owner would not

come outside the door to claim her own.

He had intended to make this selfsame slipper the excuse for following

up what he was convinced was the romance of his life; but Marian Seymour

had already returned home to New York when he called three days later.

This was a disappointment, still at that moment it seemed but a

postponement after all, for he was sailing for Europe a fortnight hence

and could easily reach New York a day or two earlier than he had

planned. Thus far the idea was capital; but when the second call was

paid, with the pink slipper safely reposing in his pocket, he found that

the dainty foot to which the slipper belonged had stepped upon an ocean

steamer which sailed the day before.

Even this second misadventure failed to dampen his ardor. Good fortune

had arranged for him to follow in her direction, and surely, when once

upon the same continent, the slipper would be a lodestone of sufficient

potency to draw together two souls such as theirs. Yet he returned six

months later without having had the expected happen, and soon after

landing he learned of her engagement to a Mr. Thatcher.

There is a certain gratification which comes to the experienced man of

the world of twenty-two when he finds himself a martyr; and Monty

Huntington enjoyed this gratification to the utmost. He was

conscientious in believing himself to be wretchedly unhappy, but as a

matter of fact he had in the instant become a hero to himself. Women

were faithless: misogamists in prose and poetry had so chronicled the

fact, and he had already, at this early age, become the victim of their

perfidy. Marian Seymour should have known the depth of his love for her;

she should have known that he would have told her of his affection had

she given him the opportunity; and the mere fact that he had never so

declared himself was not of the slightest importance. She had

deliberately disregarded his impassioned though unexpressed sentiments

toward her, and had thrown herself away on a man he did not even know!

Fortunately, Time treats with kindly hand those tragedies which are

imagined as well as those which actually exist. Each year added to the

luster of the memory. Marian Seymour herself would not have recognized

her own face could Huntington have translated it out of the figments of

his mind upon the crude medium of canvas. And, be it said, had

Huntington come face to face with the original during these years, it is

doubtful whether he would have recognized her; for the idealization had

become absolutely real to him. No sculptor had ever modeled hand and arm

so perfect as that which the yellowed glove had held; no foot was ever

shaped with graceful line equal to that which once the satin slipper had

incased. The faithlessness of woman had long since been forgotten, and

the sanctity of this romance, which might have been, provided all the

details which it would otherwise have lacked. Each year made it more

real, until now there was no doubt about it. Other men worshiped at the

shrine of departed dear ones with no greater sincerity than did

Montgomery Huntington revere this near-romance of his life.

So, as he sat there, he was not the bachelor his friends considered him,

but rather a man bereft of wife and children. Cosden, knowing nothing of

this secret grief, had wantonly torn the veil aside and exposed the

wound. Yet, with the sorrow of the widower and the childless, there must

have come back to Huntington some memories which were not sad, for when

Dixon happened upon him in the morning, soundly sleeping in his

favorite chair with this curious exhibit before him, and with a pink

slipper firmly grasped within his hand, there was a smile as if of

happiness upon his face. And Dixon, discreet valet that he was, showed

no surprise, a half-hour later, when he found the table and its strange

contents carefully put away without his aid, or when his master summoned

him to his room, where he appeared to be just rising as usual from a

sleep as restful as it had been unportentous.

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