Chapter XXXIX

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."

* * * * *