The Bachelors. William Dana Orcutt

is a certain gratification which comes to the experienced man of the world of twenty-two when he finds himself a martyr; and Monty Huntington enjoyed this gratification to the utmost. He was conscientious in believing himself to be wretchedly unhappy, but as a matter of fact he had in the instant become a hero to himself. Women were faithless: misogamists in prose and poetry had so chronicled the fact, and he had already, at this early age, become the victim of their perfidy. Marian Seymour should have known the depth of his love for her; she should have known that he would have told her of his affection had she given him the opportunity; and the mere fact that he had never so declared himself was not of the slightest importance. She had deliberately disregarded his impassioned though unexpressed sentiments toward her, and had thrown herself away on a man he did not even know!

      Fortunately, Time treats with kindly hand those tragedies which are imagined as well as those which actually exist. Each year added to the luster of the memory. Marian Seymour herself would not have recognized her own face could Huntington have translated it out of the figments of his mind upon the crude medium of canvas. And, be it said, had Huntington come face to face with the original during these years, it is doubtful whether he would have recognized her; for the idealization had become absolutely real to him. No sculptor had ever modeled hand and arm so perfect as that which the yellowed glove had held; no foot was ever shaped with graceful line equal to that which once the satin slipper had incased. The faithlessness of woman had long since been forgotten, and the sanctity of this romance, which might have been, provided all the details which it would otherwise have lacked. Each year made it more real, until now there was no doubt about it. Other men worshiped at the shrine of departed dear ones with no greater sincerity than did Montgomery Huntington revere this near-romance of his life.

      So, as he sat there, he was not the bachelor his friends considered him, but rather a man bereft of wife and children. Cosden, knowing nothing of this secret grief, had wantonly torn the veil aside and exposed the wound. Yet, with the sorrow of the widower and the childless, there must have come back to Huntington some memories which were not sad, for when Dixon happened upon him in the morning, soundly sleeping in his favorite chair with this curious exhibit before him, and with a pink slipper firmly grasped within his hand, there was a smile as if of happiness upon his face. And Dixon, discreet valet that he was, showed no surprise, a half-hour later, when he found the table and its strange contents carefully put away without his aid, or when his master summoned him to his room, where he appeared to be just rising as usual from a sleep as restful as it had been unportentous.

III

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      "Then I shall leave Bermuda feeling that my beautiful dream is wholly incomplete."

      Mrs. Henry Thatcher spoke with a degree of resignation, but her tone signified that the apparent retreat was only to gain strength for a final advance which was sure to gain her point. She knew that this discussion with her husband would end as all their differences of opinion ended, and so did he. Perhaps his opposition was the inevitable expression of his own individuality which every married man likes to make a pretense of preserving; perhaps it pleased him to see his wife's half-playful, half-serious attack upon his own judgment in gently forcing him into a position where her wishes became his desires.

      "Better to have your dream incomplete than his privacy invaded," was the apparently unmoved reply. "When an owner plants a sign, 'Private Property,' conspicuously at the entrance to his estate, he is sure to have some idea in the back of his head which is as much to be respected as your curiosity is to be gratified."

      "It is a compliment in itself that we wish to see the grounds," she persisted; "the owner, whoever he is, could not consider it otherwise."

      "A compliment which has evidently been repeated often enough to become a nuisance—hence the sign."

      Marian Thatcher sighed heavily as she threw herself back in the victoria. Her husband was holding out longer than usual.

      "I simply must see the view from that point," she declared; "and until I can examine that gorgeous bougainvillea at closer range I refuse to return to New York."

      "There!" laughed Edith Stevens, looking mischievously into Thatcher's face, "that is what I call an ultimatum! Come, Ricky,"—speaking to her brother—"let us walk back to the hotel. It will be humiliating to see Marian disciplined in public!"

      "You all are making me the scapegoat," Marian protested. "You know that you are just as eager to get inside those walls as I am. Look!" she cried, leaning forward in the carriage. "Isn't that—Yes, it is a century plant, and it's in bloom! Oh, Harry! you wouldn't make me wait another hundred years to see that, would you?"

      "Let me be the dove of peace," Stevens suggested, manifesting unusual comprehension and activity as he stepped out of the carriage. "I'll run in and beard the jolly old lion in his den."

      Thatcher shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly, Marian clapped her hands with delight, and Edith Stevens smiled indulgently as they settled back to await the result of the embassy.

      This midwinter pilgrimage to Bermuda was the result of a sudden impulse made while the Stevenses were their box-guests at the opera in New York two weeks before. They had exhausted the superlatives forced from their lips by the dramatic transformation from December to June—from ice and snow to roses and oleanders; they had followed the beaten track, touching elbows with the happy bride and the inquisitive traveler, seeing the sights in true tourist fashion; they had passed through the stage of quiet contentment, satisfied to sit on the broad sun-piazza of the "Princess" in passive lassitude, watching others experience what they had seen, learning the regulation forms of recreation indulged in by those who settled down more permanently. From the same point of vantage they had watched the great sails of the pleasure-boats pass so close beside them that they could have tossed pennies upon their decks; they saw the gorgeous sunsets behind Gibbs' Hill, with the ravishing changes of color and light and shade thrown upon the myriad of tiny islands scattered picturesquely throughout the bay.

      Then the period of inaction turned into a desire to learn more deeply of the beauties which the tourist never sees, and they poked through the narrow "tribal" lanes and unfrequented roads on foot, on bicycles, or en voiture, searching for the unexpected, and finding rich rewards at the end of every quest. It was one of these expeditions which led them to the highest rise of Spanish Point, where they stopped their carriage before the entrance to a private estate, within the walls of which they saw evidences of what the hand of man can do in supplementing Nature's work.

      Presently Stevens could be seen coming toward them, waving his hat as a signal for their advance. The driver turned in through the gateway.

      "He's a mighty decent sort," Stevens announced as he met the approaching vehicle. "Can't make out whether he's English or American, but he offered no objections whatever."

      "There!" Marian cried triumphantly; "of course he feels complimented! If his grounds were merely the commonplace no one would want to disturb his 'privacy,' as Harry calls it. Did you ever see such a spot?"

      "Wonderful!" echoed Edith, equally impressed by the luxuriant bloom on either side of the driveway. "Thank Heaven here is a man who knows how not to vulgarize flowers."

      As they reached the front of the coraline stone house the owner stepped forward to greet them. He was a man of striking appearance, and his visitors found their attention at once diverted from the beauty surrounding them to the personality which manifested itself even in this brief moment of their meeting. He was fairly tall, but slight, the narrowness of his face being accentuated by the closely-cropped beard. As he removed his broad panama he disclosed a heavy head of hair, well turned to grey, which, with the darkness of his complexion, was set off by the white doe-skin suit he wore. As he came nearer his visitors were instinctively impressed by the expression of his face, for the high forehead, the deep, restless, yet penetrating eyes, the refined yet unsatisfied lines of the mouth, belonged to the ascetic rather than to the cottager, to the spiritual seeker for the unattainable rather than to the owner of an estate