* * * * *
Huntington dared not extend his visit beyond a few blissful days, but
into these he crowded the full expression of his long-delayed romance.
The wonder of it never left him, the joy of it filled him with quiet
content.
The lovers watched Cosden's departure next morning, and by virtue of the
priority of their engagement, considered themselves entitled to tease
Edith who was not to leave until the following day.
"Well," Huntington remarked, as they turned back into the hallway, "as
Connie says, he usually gets what he goes after."
"Don't you think he's earned me?" Edith retaliated.
"And you him," Huntington retorted. "Everything is as it should be. You
are just the girl for him, and he will make you a husband in a thousand.
I need not tell you how cordially I have congratulated him."
"I don't think our Society proved very effective," she remarked dryly.
"On the contrary, it demonstrated its efficiency by the present most
satisfactory exceptions.--But you are giving me a great many mysteries
to explain to Merry!"
The evening before Huntington felt it necessary to return to his patient
he touched upon a subject which had been avoided.
"Mamma," he said to Mrs. Thatcher, "I think--"
"Don't you dare to call me that, Monty Huntington!" Marian exclaimed
vehemently. "If I am to go through life with a son-in-law older than I
am, at least I won't be called 'mamma'!"
"I'm trying to be respectful," Huntington explained mischievously.
"Never you mind that,--call me 'Marian.' That at least will give me the
benefit of the doubt."
"I'm sorry to mark my entrance into the family by causing
mortification," Huntington continued in mock-seriousness. "It never
occurred to me, if my prospective wife made no objections, that my age
would be offensive to her parents. But the case isn't so serious as Ned
Fordham's, is it?"
"He married Mrs. Eustis, didn't he?"
"Yes; and you remember that she has a married daughter and a small
grandchild. Ned said the idea of a ready-made family was fine, but he
thought it immoral for him to become a grandfather before he became a
father."
"Rather late for him to come to that conclusion, wasn't it?" Thatcher
laughed.
"Yes; but he found two other men in the same predicament, so the three
of them have formed a 'Society of Illegitimate Grandparents,' and now
they're looking for more members."
"Ned would joke at his own funeral!" chuckled Thatcher.
"It isn't your age I'm objecting to," Marian explained; "it's my own.
Merry's engagement makes me realize it."
"She and I are going to make you forget that you have any age at all,"
Huntington declared.--"But when you interrupted me I was going to speak
of a really important matter.--We mustn't be unmindful of poor Hamlen."
"No, indeed," Marian replied seriously. "Happiness is selfish, isn't it,
in making us temporarily forgetful? Poor Philip!"
"We are doing him no injustice," he reassured her; "in fact I think the
news I can take will please him. But I want you and Merry to go back to
Boston with me."
"Whatever you think is wise shall be done," she acquiesced, "but
wouldn't it be better for you to go ahead to prepare him for our
coming?"
"That is by far the wiser plan," Huntington assented promptly.
"Take me with you, Monty," Merry whispered; "I wish we never need be
separated again."
"Stay here, sweetheart, and plan out with the dear mother how soon that
day may be. I have been waiting too long already!"
* * * * *
The nurse met Huntington as he entered the door, and replied to the
question his face asked sooner than his lips.
"There is a remarkable improvement," she announced cheerfully. "The
doctor was here this morning, and left word for you that the progress is
beyond his understanding."
"Splendid!" he cried. "Where shall I find Hamlen?
"In the library, Mr. Huntington; it is all I can do to persuade him to
go anywhere else."
Huntington mounted the stairs two steps at time. "Hamlen!" he cried,
"where are you?"
"Here!" a well-contained voice replied as he entered the room, "in your
library, sitting in your favorite chair, eating your food, drinking your
rum--in short, exercising every prerogative a man can assume who has
unfettered himself from worldly responsibilities, and awaits the command
of his master."
"You certainly are better," Huntington exclaimed, looking at him
critically, astonished by the tone of his remark.
"Except for my weakness," Hamlen answered, holding out his hand, "better
than I've been in all my life."
"You amaze me!" Huntington exclaimed. "I hoped for an improvement, but
this return to more than your best self--"
"I've fought the fight, my friend, and this is the result."
"It is a positive triumph!" Huntington drew a chair beside the patient,
and regarded him with an expression of mystified gratification. "What in
the world has happened?"
"You went away and gave me a chance to think," Hamlen replied seriously.
"Do you know, Huntington, I'm convinced that there ought to be a law
condemning every human being to solitary confinement for a certain
period each year, to make him think. Deprive him of his companions, his
books, his writing materials--everything, and just force him to think.
We take things so much for granted, we accept so many half-truths, we so
easily lose our sense of proportion."
"That is a capital idea, but you've done your share of it already."
"My thoughts were misdirected. You not only gave me the opportunity but
something basic on which to build. I wonder if you realize how
pitilessly you laid me bare!"
"I had no intention, my dear fellow--"
"Oh, it was right; that was the very thing which saved me. I was sincere
in feeling myself sunk in degradation, in wanting to end it all, and I
hated you for standing in my way. But when you laid claim to my life,
which I valued so slightly, I began to analyze it to discover why you
cared to have it. You have done more for me, Huntington, than any human
being ever did for a fellow-creature, and why you did it was past my
comprehension."
"We are bound by ties of a great brotherhood," Huntington explained.
"No man I ever saw before has considered them so sacred. You are an
idealist, Huntington. Your devotion to college and to college
responsibilities amounts to a fetish. But I thank God for your idealism:
it is not what college relations really are but what they ought to be!"
"I never will admit that, Hamlen."
"Of course you won't; if you did you would lose your idealism. I saw all
this, and it gave me my explanation: what you have done for me,
Huntington, you would have done for any other college man under the
same circumstances. It was not because of any claim the individual had
upon you, but rather the acknowledgment of the greater appeal made by
that brotherhood you venerate."
"No, Hamlen; you must not depreciate the appeal which your own
personality made from the first."
"I don't depreciate it,--I'm proud of it; but to understand your
idolatrous worship of the brotherhood makes it possible for me to accept
the heavy obligations under which you place me. When you left me I felt
that you must hate the sight of my haggard face, the sound of my
complaining voice, the burden of silly weakness which I foisted upon
your generous shoulders."
"I understood what lay beneath."
"You did, and to a wonderful extent; but it took me hours of bitter
fighting to understand. Then the bigness of the great central thing at
last came to me, and I recognized it. Sitting here in this chair I cried
out in my excitement. The littleness of my own previous viewpoint
overwhelmed me, and what had seemed tragedies assumed at last their
smaller proportions. The greatness of your own ideals, the claim which
the Alma Mater ought to have upon her sons, the right which the larger
world outside has to demand big things of those to whom it gives
advantages, made the petty failures of my life so insignificant that I
was ashamed to have paraded them in public. I have been lying down on my
weaknesses, Huntington, as no man ever has a right to do; but you have
seen the last of that. I'll stand up now and take my medicine, I'll pay
whatever penalty my latest indiscretion may demand, I'll practise some
of that idealism which makes you what you are, and lay the ghost which
for years has tortured me with pin-pricks."
"You give me too much credit, Hamlen," Huntington insisted firmly; "but
since you find relief in what I've said or done I rejoice in your
exaggeration."
"You claimed my life, my friend," Hamlen returned again to his earlier
statement, "and it belongs to you. In all honor, I must make it reflect
attributes which will give it value. With that accomplished, I stand
ready to make delivery; but with it you must also accept its
obligations. How will you have me pay them?"
"Your obligations are not so serious as you imagine," Huntington replied
with decision; "the only one as yet unpaid is to yourself. Had I not
seen this surprising evidence of your latent strength I should not have
believed you capable of meeting it; now I do."
"But Marian--the insult my actions gave her--"
"Forgotten, and forgiven,--if forgiveness be required."
"If I could see her once more, and she would listen to me--"
"She is coming here to see you as soon as I tell her you are strong
enough."
"Coming here?" he echoed; "I can't believe it! And the girl--can she
ever understand?"
"On that point I can reassure you with even greater certainty, for I am
to be the substitute bridegroom!"
Hamlen looked at him steadily to make sure he was in earnest.
"You are to marry Miss Thatcher?" he asked deliberately.
"The Gods have been good to me, Hamlen; they have given me the one gift
I craved."
"Then you have loved her all these weeks?"
"Since first I saw her."
"My friend!" Hamlen raised himself unsteadily in his weakness, refusing
assistance, until he stood upon his feet. Then supporting himself with
one hand, he raised the other to his forehead in salute.
"You, sir, are a great man!" he said with dramatic fervor. "You not only
possess ideals, but actually live up to them! A world that can produce
one such as you is entitled to my respect, and is a place worth living
in!"
"Cease!" Huntington cried, genuinely embarrassed by Hamlen's tribute.
"Leave me out of this, for this is your day. To rise superior to the
habit of twenty years, to let the world knock you down time after time,
and finally come up smiling with an acknowledgment that it was your
fault after all, to stand ready to pool issues with that world which you
have always considered your enemy, is an exhibition of character which
puts you so far beyond the rest of us that you couldn't see us if we
saluted you.--I thought my happiest moment came when I discovered
unexpectedly that Merry loved me; now you have taken me to heights
beyond.
"I believe you," Hamlen answered him, his voice weak from the strain of
the interview, but his eyes bright with excitement and his face
radiant,--"I believe every word you say. For one of your great
brotherhood to find himself at last means more to you than any personal
happiness,--such is the strength of the fetish! I wonder if the girl is
big enough to share you with your other idol!"
"Have no fears," Huntington laughed contentedly. "She will worship at
the shrine with devotion equal to my own, and my fellow-worshipers shall
bow the knee to her."
The nurse gave Huntington a reproving glance when she came for her
patient, but Hamlen would not permit even a suggestion that his friend
had been unmindful of his weakness.
"It's all right," he reassured her. "I know I'm excited, I know that
I've pulled too hard on my strength, but something has come to
me--inside here--which no doctor could ever give me. You'll see. Take me
away now and I'll be as docile as a child.--But, Huntington, please
telephone Marian that instead of coming to see me, I'd rather go to her.
I would prefer to tell her what I have to say down there where the trees
are cousins to my trees, and the language of the flowers can fill in the
words when I find my own speech inadequate.--She'll understand."
* * * * *