The Bachelors Part 46

"Monty in the dumps?" Cosden echoed, surprised. "Why, I hadn't noticed it. Just before Hamlen came to visit him, he was way down,--bemoaned his age, and all that sort of thing. I thought we'd got him out of that. I must look him over and see what the trouble is.--Here come our hostess and Hamlen. Did you ever see such a change in any one?"

Marian approached with her brightest smile. "I'm glad Edith is keeping you from being bored," she said. "I'm afraid I've been very remiss."

"I don't see how you could divide yourself into much smaller bits, Mrs.

Thatcher," Cosden replied. "This is a big family you have at present."

"The bigger the better," she exclaimed brightly. "I hoped I should find you out here, and as I see the tea is still hot perhaps Edith will let us join you. Philip and I have been walking and talking until we are really tired."

"I am entranced with all this," Hamlen said, turning to Edith. "I had no idea, when I paraded my few acres at Bermuda, that I was competing with an estate like Sagamore. I wonder some one didn't rebuke me for my presumption!"

"Isn't that a pretty compliment!" Marian cried. "You have put yourself into every inch of your beautiful place, Philip; Harry and I have only done that to a very small extent. It is beautiful, I admit, and I love it just as I love the beauties with which you have surrounded yourself at home."

"It makes little difference, after all, where one finds it, so long as it is beauty," Hamlen replied. "'The dawn is my a.s.syria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' I used to think Emerson must have written that in Bermuda, but it might have been written here."

Edith caught the expression on Cosden's face and almost laughed.

"What's the use?" he whispered to her without being detected. "This pace is too swift for me! He reeled that off as easily as I could the latest quotations on copper!"

"Oh, Philip!" Mrs. Thatcher exclaimed, "I can't tell you what it means to me to see you yourself again after that awful shock you gave me at Bermuda! Truly, when we left you behind us I gave up hope."

"What hope there was you took away with you, so I was forced to follow."

"Come, Cossie--Connie--," Edith stumbled,--"if I'm to call you by your given name you'll have to change it to something reasonable,--this is no place for us."

"Don't let us drive you away," Marian protested.

"That's all right; we want to be driven away. If we stay longer, and Mr.

Hamlen talks like that, Mr. Cosden will become sentimental.--Bye, bye."

Mrs. Thatcher and Hamlen watched them as they strolled leisurely up the path, Edith swinging her parasol and Cosden walking meekly beside her.

Finally Marian turned to him and laughed.

"What a dance that girl is leading him!"

"Do you think she cares for him?"

"In her way; but if he marries her he will have earned her!--He went down to Bermuda on purpose to become engaged to Merry."

"He did!" Hamlen exclaimed, surprised; "why, they were never together when I saw them."

"Nor often at other times. Of course, it was ridiculous,--but with you, Philip, she'll be the happiest girl in all the world."

His eyes dropped quickly as she turned the conversation, and the expression on his face completely changed.

"You are wrong, Marian," he protested; "no happiness can ever come to any woman through me."

"Don't disparage yourself," she answered gently. "You are a different man from what you were. Do you think I would counsel this if I were not sure?"

"You believe it, Marian," he conceded, "and I wish I shared your confidence. But I know myself. The time when I might have made something of what I had pa.s.sed long ago. If I am to go on at all it must be with my real self suppressed, and the only way to do this is to plod my path alone."

"Why slip back, Philip? Why suppress your real self?"

"I know the danger of permitting it to a.s.sume control."

"When last we talked you seemed willing to accept my judgment."

"I am still, in everything but this. I appreciate your desire for my happiness, Marian, but you are taking a responsibility beyond what is wise. I am complimented by your daughter's willingness to listen to an offer of marriage from me, but if the test really came she could not meet it."

"She would, Philip,--she would."

"I cannot comprehend it," he continued; "she has seen me at my worst."

"She understands you, and appreciates the wonderful qualities you possess. She is too young to know the depth of love, but old enough to recognize what a man like you can become to her. If you would only speak with her you too would understand."

Hamlen moved uncomfortably in his chair, and was silent for what seemed an interminable period. When at last he turned he spoke with a conviction which shocked her.

"No, Marian," he said deliberately; "it can never be. Let us end this farce before it goes too far."

"Philip!" she cried, seeing her work of months crumbling before her, and reading in his determined face the miscarriage of what she believed to be predestined. "I can't permit you to destroy the years which remain to you."

She leaned over and took his hand in hers. Success had been so near that she could not see it slip away from her now without a supreme effort.

Merry needed such a man as this and Hamlen needed her. Why should these false ideas, created by years of self-depreciation, stand in the way of what she knew was best?

"I can't let you destroy the years which remain to you," she repeated earnestly. "I can't see my child's happiness marred by your foolish insistence upon ideals which rest on conditions now long since pa.s.sed away. Philip, if you loved me once, show it now by your confidence in my judgment, by your faith in my purpose. Tell me one reason why this should not be."

"If I loved you once?" he echoed her words with a force which startled her. "Tell you one reason why this should not be? The one answers the other, Marian; for that love, intensified by the denial of twenty years, is now a power I can't withstand."

"Philip!" she cried, striving to release her hand which he held in a grip which hurt her, "you don't mean that you still--"

"I mean that I have never ceased to love you, Marian. Look at me now and tell me if you doubt it. Even while I cursed you for ruining my life, I loved you. Every day of the twenty years I have lived alone I have had your face before me, I have held out my arms beseeching you to come to me, I have beaten my head against the wall in despair that the one longing of my heart could never hope for realization."

"You never told me--I did not know--"

"I have at least been strong enough to keep my secret, Marian; but it is sacrilege for you to talk to me of marriage to your daughter. Now that you know the truth you will urge no further. Could anything be more dishonorable than to offer myself to her when even to-day my love for you is beating at my heart until I can scarcely contain it? No, no! let us have an end to all this mockery! In the name of a life's devotion, in the name of the love you once had for me--"

"Release me, Philip," she entreated, frightened by his tenseness; but he only tightened his grip upon her hand. She realized the importance of terminating this impossible situation, regardless of the pain it might inflict.

"I never loved you, Philip," she said deliberately. "At the time, I thought I did; but it was my mind and not my heart you dominated."

He dropped her hand as if she had struck him, and, dazed, supported himself against the rustic chair.

"You never loved me?" he repeated brokenly after her. "You never--oh, G.o.d! why did you tell me that! Why did you come back into my life to stir up those forces which had crushed me, but which I had at last subdued!"

Then he turned his eyes upon her, full of the reproach which he dared not trust himself to speak.

"If it was the domination of my mind then, why should it not be now?" he asked in a voice which trembled with emotion. "Look at me, Marian!"

"Don't, Philip, I entreat of you; you frighten me!