Chapter XXIX

It was with real regret the following morning that Huntington watched his ball drop into the cup on the eighteenth green. The round had been too perfect, the experience too enjoyable to come to an end so soon.

"Five down," Merry remarked. "That looks to me like a real defeat."

"I'm glad to find some game I can play better than you," Huntington replied banteringly. "I'm still sore over our swimming-races in Bermuda. But in all fairness I must admit that this course is built for a man's game, and the premium on the length of the wooden clubs was all that saved me to-day."

"You are generous,--but I acknowledge my defeat. Do we have to go home now?"

"There is at least an hour between us and the rigid convention of luncheon," Huntington answered. "Shall we spend it on the piazza?"

"It is much nicer beneath one of these great trees," she said, suiting her action to the word and sitting down upon the grass. "Come. Let us imagine that we're back in Bermuda again!"

Huntington seated himself beside her, still rebellious that their moments together were passing so swiftly. He had wondered how she would appear to him when he saw her again, half hoping to find that the charm of the earlier setting had exaggerated her attractiveness, half dreading an awakening. This would have simplified his problem, but it would also have robbed his life of the richness which had entered it. Even though he saw his course plainly plotted out for him, there was a delicious joy in knowing that there existed one who had awakened in him that which alone is best and without which no man's experience can be complete.

But his half-hope was not to be gratified nor his half-dread realized. The girl was different, but the intervening months had done their work well. She seemed older and more mature, yet this passing of the girl into womanhood had been accomplished without marring those characteristics which he had before admired. His eyes rested on her face longer than he realized, as these thoughts passed through his mind, but until she spoke he had no idea that she had noticed the closeness of his scrutiny.

"Well," she said smiling, "do you approve?"

He made no apology, for they understood each other too well, but instead accepted her question seriously.

"Entirely," he replied with an air of sincerity which forced the color into her face. "The expression of the mouth, the tilt of the head, the sparkle in the eyes,--all is perfection. But you suggested that we imagine ourselves back in Bermuda. For myself, I should not dare to try it, for it could never be the same."

"Should we want it to be?" she asked earnestly. "An experience repeated must have something added or it fails to satisfy. To be the same would bring disappointment. I've argued that all out with myself, so I'm sure I'm right."

"Why should you have done that?" he demanded.

"Because those were the most wonderful days I have ever known," she explained simply and without embarrassment. "I found myself wishing them back; then I realized that if I could have my wish gratified it wouldn't satisfy me. I was unhappy when I went down there for no reason in the world except that I couldn't seem to find my place. With all their love no one at home has ever understood me, and I had reached a point where I didn't understand myself. Then you gave me the chance to know Mr. Hamlen, and in what you said to him and to me I saw what happens when one has no anchorage. That was what had made me unhappy,--I was drifting horribly."

"You concealed it well," Huntington said. "All the time we were together I never suspected that you had a care in the world."

"That is a compliment to yourself," the girl answered. "With your optimism you draw out the best in every one. See what you did with Mr. Hamlen down there, and what you have done with him since! You are the most completely happy person I have ever met, and--don't scold!--I have tried to imitate you. I haven't been very successful yet, but I'm trying. Some time, when the supreme test comes, I shall accept it, and then you will see what your example has accomplished."

The sincerity of the girl's words made Huntington uncomfortable. At first it pleased him to discover how genuine was her respect, but as she continued he found himself embarrassed by the character she gave him.

"I shall begin to think myself somebody if you go on," he expostulated. "You are crediting me with attributes I don't seem to recognize."

"That is because they come so naturally to you," she explained. "You are happy because your life is spent in making other people happy. That is the lesson I learned."

"You were doing that long before I met you, and you are doing it now."

"No," she insisted; "it may have seemed so to you, but I was really trying to find happiness for myself, and because I was thinking of myself it didn't come. Since I returned home I've tried your plan, and so far it has worked splendidly."

"But the supreme test," Huntington asked,--"what is that to be?"

"Oh, I don't know," she answered with an effort to speak indifferently; "being a girl I suppose it will be my marriage."

"That should be the supreme triumph of your happiness rather than the test."

"I used to think so but I've changed my mind. I had a vision once of what I thought marriage ought to be.--We spoke of it in Bermuda, and you made fun of it, don't you remember? I'm convinced now that it was all wrong."

"You said that you would marry only a man who would let you contribute your share to the real life which you would jointly live."

"Yes," Merry answered consciously; "and you laughed at me! But you were right. I ought not to think so much of myself." She paused a moment. "The man I really loved probably wouldn't care for me at all," she continued soberly, her eyes averted. "If I am convinced that I can make the man I marry happy, then I am more certain of finding happiness myself. That is making a tremendous compromise with sentiment, but don't you think it more sensible, after all?"

"Then the supreme test, as I understand it, would be to marry a man you thought you could make happy whether you cared for him or not?"

Merry nodded her head in affirmation. A sudden suspicion came into Huntington's mind, and he looked at the girl curiously.

"Has your mother been talking to you upon this subject?" he demanded with more directness than he had a right to use.

"Why, no," she answered, showing her surprise. "She thinks me too indifferent to men; but we have never discussed the matter seriously because there has been no occasion."

Huntington was relieved by her words but her ideas were not reassuring. He started to tell her that she was entirely wrong, but he checked himself because he realized that differing with people had now come to be a habit with him. Two days before he had carefully explained to Hamlen how erroneous his convictions were only to discover that he himself had been in error. Yesterday he had differed with Mrs. Thatcher, and now he found his ideas at variance with Merry's. Instead, he lifted the girl's left hand, which rested on the grass beside him, and gently pointing to the third finger he looked earnestly into her deep eyes.

"Merry," he said calling her by her name for the first time, "when the moment comes for some man to slip a gold band on there I want you to remember what I tell you now. You have pictured me as an apostle of optimism and as the happiest person you know. I could tell you something about that, but instead I'll try to live up to your picture. But this much is gospel truth, and I want you to remember it: that gold band will stand as a symbol and the circle means completeness. It doesn't stand for sacrifice, or for supreme tests, or for anything of that sort,--it does stand for just what you saw in your 'vision.' A very wise person once said that marriage was either a complete union or a complete isolation, and he was right. My friends think me a cynic on this subject, but my cynicism is a result of the complete isolation I see every day in the lives of my friends. I want your marriage to be a complete union, little girl, and that can't come if you apply your present ideas to a sacrament so sacred that every-day principles become meaningless. Marriage is the merging of all that is beautiful in two lives, and unless the love on each side strives to outdo the other in contributing to the joint account, the beauty fades, and the gold circlet stands as a symbol of slavery instead of representing the most wonderful relation which mortals are permitted to enjoy."

"Mr. Huntington!" she exclaimed in a low tone, "I had no idea you looked upon marriage like that! I didn't believe any man did! It makes me have more faith in my vision. Still, after all, that doesn't change the fact itself, for you are the exception. But, feeling as you do, I know now that the only reason you are not married is that you have never found the girl."

Huntington looked full into her face before he turned his head aside. "I did find the girl," he answered with a depth of feeling in his voice; "but I found her too late."

"Forgive me!" Merry cried impulsively, convinced that she had torn open a concealed wound.

"There is nothing to forgive, dear child," he said quickly. Then with that smile which took the world in its embrace he added, "Don't waste your sympathy on me; life has already given me more than I deserve."

"I am so sorry," Merry replied soberly. "She must have been a wonderful girl to win such a love."

"She was," he answered.

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