The Bachelors Part 29

"I never change it without reason," he replied. "And more than that, it is very unprofessional to desert a client just when he needs you most."

"When a client disregards his counsel's advice it is time to change counsel," she retorted with decision.

"Oh, dear, no!" Cosden replied in so conciliatory a tone that she was partly mollified. The words rang with greater sincerity than she had believed him to possess. "That isn't the way real counsels do at all, especially when the client is so contrite."

"What is their custom?" Edith asked, amused in spite of herself.

"They charge it up on the bill and make him pay handsomely for his presumption."

"Oh!" she said, weakening a little in the caustic att.i.tude she had a.s.sumed. "If it comes down to a matter of bookkeeping perhaps we can effect a compromise."

XX

"To-day, Connie, is Sat.u.r.day, to-morrow is the Sabbath, in which we are not permitted to toil, neither can we spin, and on the day which followeth we sail," Huntington remarked at luncheon.

Cosden regarded his companion critically. "It doesn't rhyme so I know it isn't poetry; then it must be Scripture."

"Freely paraphrased, it means that this afternoon is the last opportunity we shall have to exercise our golf-clubs on Bermudian soil."

"Enough said," Cosden answered sententiously; "I'll be ready whenever you are. What a relief it will be to play on a real course again when the season opens at home!"

"I admit that this is the one great deficiency of an otherwise admirably ordered resort," Huntington agreed. "Still, it is a whole lot better than no course at all, so let us be philosophers.--I'll be ready in an hour."

The afternoon's round proved an eventful one to Huntington. Not that his clubs were under better control, or that he was less penalized by the atrocious lies encountered so frequently. Not that he succeeded in defeating his opponent, which was usually the measure of an eventful day; but he found Cosden in a state of mind which gave him infinite relief.

The weak spots shown up by the a.n.a.lysis Huntington had made of his friendship with Cosden caused him real anxiety, explain them as he would. It was one thing to play with a man three times a week and another to live with him for a month of consecutive holidays. He had wondered whether their relations could ever return to what he had believed them to be before the shock came to his sense of propriety.

Cosden's new state of mind shifted the balance so that the scales hung even, and the hope thus engendered made him indifferent to sliced drives, bad lies, or topped approaches. To Huntington, a friendship such as this had been a.s.sumed the proportions of a trust, and to disturb it was to shake the foundations of his every-day life to a most disquieting extent.

"This visit to Bermuda hasn't been at all what I expected," Cosden confided to him; "but I'm inclined to think it has been a success after all."

"I have found much to interest me here," Huntington admitted.

"Between you and Miss Stevens I've learned a few things about myself I didn't know before. The experience hasn't been altogether palatable, but perhaps it will prove salutary."

"That is ancient history now, Connie," Huntington protested, following his usual custom of avoiding the unpleasant. "Why bring it up again?

Keep your mind on your game."

"It hasn't become ancient history yet," he insisted. "I want you to understand that I appreciate your friendliness in going out of your way to say disagreeable things when you thought I needed to hear them. It isn't every one who would have done it."

"That's all right; now let's forget it."

"I don't want to forget it. In fact I'm particularly keen on remembering it. I tackled a job before I knew how to handle it, with the inevitable consequences. Now I think I can come nearer to understanding what the game is."

He paused long enough to negotiate a particularly difficult stymie which Huntington had laid him on the third green. As the ball dropped into the cup he looked up with a satisfied smile.

"You see I can play a game that I do understand, don't you, Monty? I'm going to play this new game just as well after I'm on to it. You were right: that little Thatcher girl is all I thought she was, but we are absolutely unsuited. I had to find it out for myself, but now it is as clear to me as it has been to you from the beginning. And this isn't the only thing I've found out."

"The air is pretty clear down here, Connie; one can see a long ways."

"Yes, when he's supplied with a pair of binoculars like you and Miss Stevens. The thing I can see clearest now is that I'm not ready to marry any girl just at present."

Huntington stopped as he was about to swing, dropped his club, and seized Cosden by the shoulders.

"Then you aren't going to desert me!"

"Hold on!" Cosden cried as he released himself; "you're going too fast!

Don't overlook the fact that I said 'just at present.' It may be I shall never marry, but something tells me that there are wedding-bells for me before I get through with it. There's no doubt at all, however, that before that takes place I must acquire some of those flossy things you've taught me to look for. I'm going to take a few hundred shares in some humanizing company and see what it does for me. Then I'll find out just what there is in it, and let the future take care of itself."

Now that Cosden had come to these eminently satisfactory conclusions Huntington was too wise to offer any advice. His courage rose as this responsibility rolled away from his overburdened shoulders, and he dared hope that before he reached New York Mrs. Thatcher would voluntarily abandon her quixotic notion concerning Merry and Hamlen. This would leave him free to pull the strings for Billy,--but here he sighed. Could he hope ever to bring the boy up to the standard he himself would insist upon before permitting any thought of an alliance? And was the sigh all because of doubts of Billy? Forty-five must give way to twenty, but he admitted to himself that the supreme burden of all remained. If some of those years could only be turned back! But he knew himself now, and in that knowledge rested power.

Sunday dawned bright and clear, one of those superlative days which Bermuda produces now and then as an aggravation to her departing visitors, and to demonstrate that she herself can improve even upon her own perfection. Those who had planned to devote the morning to packing against the morrow's sailing found the voice of duty too weak to make itself heard above the irresistible call to the open. Mr. and Mrs.

Thatcher seized the opportunity to drive again to Harrington Sound, Merry and Huntington took a final walk to Elba Beach, while Cosden insisted that Edith Stevens permit him to escort her to the Barracks and the band concert. This left Ricky Stevens entirely out in the cold, but he was so accustomed to it that he did not even notice that it had happened again. Cheerfully lighting a cigarette, after the others had departed, and swinging his stick with an energy deserving of better things, he devoted the morning to making a final round of the tobacco-shops, laying in a huge amount of additional smoking materials.

By afternoon all were again united, and set off together for Hamlen's villa. Their host elected to receive them in the garden instead of at the house, and as the guests pa.s.sed through the rustic arbor, vivid in the coloring of the _poinsettia_ which bore it down, each felt in varying degree the dramatic effect of the reception. Hamlen stepped quietly forward to receive them, clad in the familiar white doe-skin suit which was never so effective as against its present background. His manner was courtly, but the reserve his friends had seen broken down during their visit again possessed him, and his face, even when he smiled to welcome them, was reminiscent of some great renunciation.

"Forgive me for not meeting you when you first drove up," Hamlen said to Marian. "In my sentimentality I preferred to greet you here. These trees, these shrubs, these flowers," he indicated, "I planted one by one. I tended them in their infancy, I have watched them in their growth. To me they have personalities as much as human beings. They represent my family, they are all I have, and, as I told you yesterday, I want them to join me in this last meeting before you depart and leave us to ourselves."

Their host's att.i.tude was not fully appreciated except by the three who knew him best, so it was natural that by degrees the party separated in such a way that Mrs. Thatcher, Merry and Huntington were left with him while the others explored the grounds in greater detail.

"For the first time in my life, Marian," Hamlen said, "I shall regret to see a steamer pa.s.s my Point and leave me cut off from the world. As I told you, always before I have gloried in it. To-morrow--"

"We shall be waving to you to-morrow, Philip, and wishing you were with us."

"It won't be long," Huntington added, "before you will be on one of those same steamers on your way to us."

"I hope so," was the non-committal reply.

"We do want you, all of us," Merry smiled persuadingly. "We have come to know each other so well here that we shall miss not being where we can run in to disturb you in your work."

"I shall miss those interruptions too, and the work will be all I shall have to fall back upon. Somehow," he added, turning to Huntington,--"somehow I haven't been able to do the same work since you have been here. I don't understand it. I have been happier during these weeks than in all the years which preceded them, yet my work has not been so good. Why is it?"

"The reason is obvious," Huntington answered quietly, but with a degree of satisfaction in his tone. "In what you say I find a pledge that you will come to us. Our visit, Hamlen, has disturbed the equilibrium of your life; it can never be the same again. Your work now is not so good because your mind has found a new horizon, and refuses to confine itself within the narrow compa.s.s which it had before. You can't do as good work again until your life finds new anchorage. Then you will reach heights beyond your dreams; but it will be through your friends that the new anchorage will come. We can afford to be patient, Hamlen, for you must surely turn to us; you cannot avoid it no matter how hard you try."

Huntington's magnetic voice affected Hamlen as deeply as his words. His vision seemed so clear, his domination so complete that it startled the weaker man. Mrs. Thatcher and Merry knew at that moment that, if he chose, Huntington could have compelled Hamlen to follow him to the ends of the earth; and the response their host made showed that he recognized it too.

"You won't force me, Huntington?" he appealed.

"It must come only when you wish it," was the rea.s.suring reply; "but when that moment does arrive, know well, dear friend, how hearty a welcome awaits you."

Hamlen took his hand in both his own and gazed for a long moment into Huntington's face. "Cla.s.smate--friend," was all he said, but those who heard the words knew them to be enough.