The Bachelors Part 9

"No," Huntington disclaimed promptly; "poetry is the one contagious disease of youth which I have escaped. But Mrs. Thatcher has helped me to set back my clock of life more than twenty years, and that is an achievement of which I feel justly proud."

VII

Sunday morning found the party possessed of divers minds regarding the proper use to make of the wonderful sunshine and the mild yet bracing air, delicately scented with thousands of blooms on every side. Mr. and Mrs. Thatcher announced definitely that they proposed to hear the band concert at the Barracks, which gave a certain basis upon which to hang other plans. Billy Huntington suggested to Merry that they walk to Elba Beach, and Cosden, with the cordial disapproval of Edith Stevens and Billy, invited himself to accompany the young people on their walk.

Huntington accounted for himself by reporting that Hamlen had telephoned, asking him to make the promised visit that morning, so the Stevenses joined forces with the Thatchers, and the plans were complete.

Hamlen was visibly ill at ease when Huntington arrived. It was the only time during the twenty years of his residence there that any guest had been received at his villa by invitation of its owner. The new experience excited him, but the sincerity of Huntington's admiration of the grounds, and the friendliness of his att.i.tude, made it impossible for any barrier long to exist between them. A touch of the old-time bitterness pa.s.sed through Hamlen's mind, soon after Huntington's arrival, as he thought what it would have meant to him during any one of those four years at college to have had Monty Huntington come to his room in the same spirit of comradeship! Yet, he admitted to himself, the tragedies of that small world did lose some of their poignancy in retrospect, just as Huntington had said. He had been at a disadvantage in that the world into which he had been graduated was not the great world of which his cla.s.smate spoke, but rather another little one, smaller even than that which had tortured him,--so small that he had remained still instead of growing, as the others had, into an estate from which he might look back with broader vision.

This much at least had borne fruit from the conversation at the hotel, but beyond this there was an impression still deeper which increased Hamlen's spirit of unrest. From the time when he began to feel things strongly there had existed in him a sense of justice which completely dominated his other attributes. By the time he entered college this sense had a.s.sumed exaggerated proportions, and he had reached a point where he was looking for injustices, and was quick to resent them. He might have made a place for himself in athletics had he not expected some one else to take the initiative; he might have made friends except that he waited to be sought out. When he saw other fellows around him succeed where he had failed, the sensitiveness of his nature placed his cla.s.smates on trial, appointed himself judge, and condemned them as guilty of injustice, the most heinous crime in the category of sin. As a penalty, he had banished them from his life. The fact that they bore their punishment with seeming indifference served only to twist the knife in the wound.

His devotion to Marian Seymour gave his strange nature its only outlet.

Her father and his had been bosom friends in boyhood, and they had hoped to see their children bound together in even closer ties. The tense, deep nature of the boy dominated,--even more so after he went to college and she to school, and they saw less of each other. He was different from other boys she knew, and at first it pleased her vanity that he had no thought for any one else, even though he demanded so much of her.

Then she became fairly terrified by his intensity, and when she broke the engagement, just after his graduation, she welcomed her release.

Her engagement and marriage to Thatcher supplied the final evidence that the whole world was built upon a structure of injustice, and Hamlen fled from it with a sense of leaving behind a thing despised. During all these years the judge had worn his ermine, and the world represented the condemned prisoner, working out its sentence, but somehow failing to gain salutary results from its long chastis.e.m.e.nt. Now a belated witness appears, supplying testimony which shakes the integrity of the judicial decision. Huntington presents the case from a position new to the self-appointed judge, and Hamlen had spent many hours since that eventful meeting wondering whether the world had really been on trial or he himself. Many of the words which Marian had spoken, which had not made their impression when he first heard them came back with redoubled force after Huntington had added his testimony to hers. "Was it their failure to understand you or your failure to give them the opportunity?"

she asked. "The citizens of the college world are young, untried boys,"

Huntington explained, "trying to conduct themselves like full-grown men." What right had he to condemn them because in their youth and inexperience they had fallen below the standard older men had set? Had he a right to expect them to search him out any more than they a right to demand the same of him? "You drew me to you with irresistible force,"

Marian admitted, only to make the agony the more unbearable when she added, "Then you repelled me by your intolerance of all those lighter interests which were natural to youth of our age." Intolerance! That was a form of injustice, and he had judged her guilty upon the same indictment! "Each member of the Cla.s.s measures up his fellow-members by what they have done since they have left college," Huntington had said.

Every word seemed seared into Hamlen's brain as he put himself through this fierce a.n.a.lysis. "What have you really accomplished?" was Marian's question.

So Hamlen had struggled with himself during the intervening hours, and now Huntington came to him as a cla.s.smate, as a friend, claiming kinship and insisting upon recognition of his claim. If Monty Huntington had been what Hamlen believed him to be in college, he would not now have forced himself upon him in spite of his own rude disclaimers of any present desire for recognition. If he had misjudged Huntington had he not misjudged his other cla.s.smates, had he not misjudged the world at large?

This was the doubt which had been raised in Hamlen's mind, and with it came a sense of responsibility and the necessity of rest.i.tution should that doubt turn into a certainty. Forty-eight hours earlier he had asked Marian, "What do I owe the world?" and it was from Huntington he received his answer. It was uncanny how closely the two opinions of the case, made by persons widely separated in viewpoint and environment, dovetailed each into the other. This interview with Huntington would settle all doubt, he was convinced, and if the injustice proved to be vested in himself alone, what was there left for him out of the wreck he had made of life? What wonder that he was ill at ease; what wonder that his heart beat more quickly as he realized that the moment of his own conviction might be at hand!

They walked about the grounds, as the others had done, and Huntington's exclamations were no less enthusiastic; yet it was obvious that this was but a prelude to the real purpose of his visit. They paused for a moment as they came back through the garden, and the hesitation forced the question from Hamlen's lips.

"Don't you care to see the view from the Point?"

"Not to-day," Huntington answered frankly. "I want to come again and examine every cranny; but to-day, Hamlen, my interest lies in something deeper. You have shown me what you are by profession; now show me what you are by nature. You remember the old Greek adage, 'Would you know a man, give him power.' My version of it is 'Would you know a man, give him leisure'; for leisure is the expression of power, the stored-up capital of that unmeasured treasure called Time whose currency is in the blood and which promotes life itself. Here, in these grounds, your work has been similar to that of any one of us in his office. Now I want to know the man. Take me to his workshop."

Hamlen understood him beyond the necessity of further words. He had told Marian that it was in his books that he found his relaxation, but it was not to his library that he now silently led his guest. It was to a small room on the back of the villa, in which Huntington found cases of type, a hand-press, and a bench containing every description of binder's tools. As they entered Hamlen closed the door behind them.

"I don't know why I brought you here," he spoke apologetically, "except that by what you just said you seemed to know this place existed. No one else has ever entered with me, for I have a sentiment about it which would seem ridiculous to any one except myself."

"It is a miniature printing-office and bindery combined!"

"This is where I spend my leisure. This is where I withdraw into a solitude even more complete than that in which I live. These books"--pointing to a case near by--"represent the pitifully meager contribution which I have made to the world while you and my other cla.s.smates have taken the positions to which you are ent.i.tled. That I show them to you now is a confession of the narrow outlook I have always had on life."

Huntington was busy examining the volumes, one by one, giving no sign that he heard the crisp words. He turned the leaves critically, he examined the bindings, he studied the typography and the designs. Then at length he looked up.

"I was mistaken when I said I did not know you," he remarked.

"I don't understand," Hamlen replied.

"Printing as an art has always been a hobby of mine," Huntington explained. "With two exceptions I have every one of these books in my collection at home."

The color came into Hamlen's face. "You mean--" he began.

"I mean that these splendid examples of the bookmaker's art have attracted much attention among those of us who understand what they represent, and I count myself fortunate to be the first to solve the mystery which has surrounded them, when I next meet with my fellow-collectors."

"How is it possible," demanded Hamlen, "that any of these should have fallen into your hands?"

"Were they not placed upon the market?"

"I did not suppose any of them reached America," Hamlen explained. "Out of curiosity to see what would happen I sent the first volumes to a dealer in London, and he has been kind enough to take the subsequent volumes as they have been issued."

"And kind enough to himself," Huntington added, "to call the attention of all the leading collectors to the uniqueness of the work. Some time I will show you his circulars if you care to know what he thinks of you; and I may add that there is none of us who considers his claims exaggerated."

"Then the work is good?" Hamlen asked, unable to conceal his excitement.

"It is superb both in conception and execution; but its greatest merit is its originality. Most of the good printing and binding which we have to-day rests definitely in conception upon some one of the great master-printers or binders of the past: the work of Aldus, Jenson, etienne, Plantin, Elzevir, Baskerville, Didot, William Morris, is drawn upon to greater or less degree by every modern printer, the volumes of Grolier, Maiolus, or Geoffroy Tory are revived in nearly every modern binding of importance; but your books are absolutely unique. Frankly, I don't sympathize with all of them, but there is not one which does not interest me. Tell me, where did you learn the art of bookmaking enough to make yourself a master?"

"Your praise is too high," Hamlen answered deprecatingly.

"I am not praising your work," Huntington insisted; "that would be presumptuous. Its merit has pa.s.sed far beyond the point where praise from me could affect it. Each volume which comes into the market is hungrily s.n.a.t.c.hed up, and we all have been eager to discover who the master was. Where did you learn so much?"

"I have been interested in the mechanics of printing ever since, as a boy, I had my first press," explained Hamlen; "but I only turned to it seriously after I came here and felt the need of something to keep my mind engaged. I have in my library examples from probably most of the great printers and binders, but--I'm afraid you won't understand me when I say it--they have never interested me particularly, nor do they now. I am only interested in what I do myself; and when I explain I am sure you will not think me egotistical."

"Go on," Huntington urged as Hamlen paused, but there was a break before the speaker continued.

"You said a moment ago that you did not sympathize with some of my books; that is perfectly natural. I said just now that I was only interested in my own work; that, too, I believe, is natural. I have no knowledge of the great _incunabula_, I know nothing of the history of printing, and in making these few books I have had no thought of producing examples of the printer's or the binder's art: they stand to me simply as symbolic of certain phases of myself,--some good, perhaps, some bad; but all representative of my mood when they were made. I tell you, Huntington"--Hamlen continued with deep intensity--"I tell you now what I have never before put into words, that those are not books at all; they are simply the expression of a something in my soul which demands an outlet, and it comes out through my finger-tips. That sounds absurd, but it is the solemn truth!"

"Absurd?" cried Huntington. "My dear fellow, what you have just said is the explanation of the books which we collectors, poor simple fools, haven't been able to give. Don't you see that by your very act you have placed yourself among the masters? What else are the sculptures of Michelangelo, the paintings of Raphael, but the expression of their messages to the world made through the media with which they were familiar? With them it was stone and canvas, with you it is type and paper and leather. Thank G.o.d you couldn't write!"

Hamlen listened to him in amazement, unable to grasp at once the significance or the breadth of all he heard. It was natural that Huntington's last words should be the first in his hearer's mind.

"What do you mean,--'thank G.o.d you couldn't write'?"

"I mean that what you have just told me is the reason why the arts of painting, architecture and sculpture have stood still these four hundred and fifty years. Stop and think, man! Who in those arts has surpa.s.sed the work of the old masters within that limit of time? No one, I say; no one! And why? Think of your dates! Four hundred and fifty years take us back to the invention of printing. That was what did it! With all it accomplished for the cause of learning it was the death-knell to the further development of the arts; for with the invention of printing came an easier way to give to the world that message which the human soul contains. Since then the real artist, whoever he was, instead of laboring to express his message in stone, or bronze, or on canvas, has simply taken pen and ink and patient paper and given the outpourings of his soul to the dear public in the form of a book. Again I say, thank G.o.d you couldn't write!"

When Huntington turned to his companion he was amazed to see that he had dropped upon a stool, with bowed head resting on his hands, was sobbing like a child. With a woman's tenderness and intuition Huntington gently rested his hand upon his head.

"We have torn off the bandages too fast, my friend," he said quietly.

"Philip Hamlen doesn't belong among the 'missing men'; he belongs among the masters of art of his generation."

VIII