For a moment he threw himself back in his chair, shading his eyes with his hand as if the mental picture was even more delectable than the sight of the actual objects before him. Then he sat upright again, with a deep sigh, and transferred from the open drawer to the top of the table a most remarkable collection of articles, which seemed to belong to any one else rather than to him.

There was a long white glove, which he reverently unfolded and placed at the further edge of the table-top; there was a bunch of faded flowers, the dried petals of which fell softly onto the white glove in spite of the delicacy of his handling; there was a yellowed envelope, from which he drew a brief note, read it word by word, shook his head sadly, replaced the note in its covering, and laid the envelope tenderly on the table beside its fellow-exhibits. A piece of pink ribbon followed the envelope, and then--fie! Monty Huntington! where did you get it?--then came a pink satin slipper; and the exhibition was complete.

The showman seemed well satisfied with what he saw before him, for he reached across to his smoking-table and found as if by instinct a well-burnt brier pipe, with stem of albatross wing, which he filled with his own mixture of Arcady and puffed contentedly, his eyes fixed upon the exhibits. Then the dim, flickering light and the incense of the tobacco accomplished their transmogrification. No longer was he William Montgomery Huntington, lawyer, man of affairs, director, trustee and--bachelor; he was Monty Huntington, senior in Harvard College, back in his rooms in Beck after his Senior Dance, stricken by the darts of that roguish Cupid who shot his shafts from the soft tulle folds of the gown worn that night by this same Marian, the casual mention of whose name even now caused him to forget his age and position and the dignity demanded in a bachelor of forty-five.

The cloud of fragrant smoke concealed the fact that the long white glove was empty now; the flickering light made golden the words of the brief note which thanked him for the evening which his escort had made so wonderful a memory in a young girl's heart; the faded flowers were things of color and fragrance, more sweetly redolent because they had risen and fallen with her breath of life; the pink ribbon seemed to have a dance-card at one end and to be tied to a graceful wrist at the other; and the slipper--yes, the slipper--the dreamer smiled as he recalled the fleeting figure which flew up the brownstone steps behind her chaperon when he had last seen her, in playful fearfulness because he had managed to whisper in her ear that she was the sweetest, dearest, most bewitching maiden he had ever seen. The slipper had dropped off, and remained in his possession by right of capture since the owner would not come outside the door to claim her own.

He had intended to make this selfsame slipper the excuse for following up what he was convinced was the romance of his life; but Marian Seymour had already returned home to New York when he called three days later.

This was a disappointment, still at that moment it seemed but a postponement after all, for he was sailing for Europe a fortnight hence and could easily reach New York a day or two earlier than he had planned. Thus far the idea was capital; but when the second call was paid, with the pink slipper safely reposing in his pocket, he found that the dainty foot to which the slipper belonged had stepped upon an ocean steamer which sailed the day before.

Even this second misadventure failed to dampen his ardor. Good fortune had arranged for him to follow in her direction, and surely, when once upon the same continent, the slipper would be a lodestone of sufficient potency to draw together two souls such as theirs. Yet he returned six months later without having had the expected happen, and soon after landing he learned of her engagement to a Mr. Thatcher.

There 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 impa.s.sioned 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 l.u.s.ter 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 sanct.i.ty 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

"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 emba.s.sy.

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 pa.s.sed through the stage of quiet contentment, satisfied to sit on the broad sun-piazza of the "Princess" in pa.s.sive la.s.situde, 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 pa.s.s 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 such as this.

"I am glad you discounted my apparent inhospitality," he said, with pleasant dignity. "The tourists would overrun me if I did not take some such measure to protect myself; but I am always glad to welcome any one whose interest is more than curiosity."

"It is good of you to make a virtue out of our presumption," Marian replied as their host a.s.sisted them to alight. Then their eyes met and there was instant recognition.

"Philip!" she cried in utter amazement. "Is it possible that this is you--here?"

The man bowed until his face almost touched the hand he still held, and the surprise seemed for the moment to deprive him of power of speech. He courteously motioned his guests to precede him through an arbor of _poinsettia_ into a tropical garden on a cliff overhanging the water.

"Harry," Marian continued, still excited by her experience, "this is Philip Hamlen--you've heard me speak so many times of him. My husband, Mr. Thatcher, Philip," she added, as the two men shook hands; then she presented him to the Stevenses.

Outwardly Hamlen showed none of the confusion which Marian so plainly manifested. He was the self-contained host, seemingly interested in the coincidence of the unexpected meeting, but by no means exercised over it.

"Welcome to my Garden of Eden," he said, smiling, as the magnificent expanse of cliff and sea greeted them--"thrice welcome, since to two of us this is in the nature of a reunion."

It was a revelation even in spite of their expectations. Involuntarily the eye first took in the turquoise water and the crumbling, broken sh.o.r.e-line undershot by the caves formed by the pounding of centuries of waves against the layers of animal formation. Except for the great dry-dock and the naval barracks across the entrance to Hamilton Harbor, all seemed as Nature had intended it.

Then, as the vision narrowed to its immediate surroundings, the visitors realized how much art had accomplished in making the garden into which their host had shown them seem so completely in harmony with the brilliant setting of its location. They had thought of Bermuda as the home of the Easter lily, not realizing that this is but a seasonal incident; they could not have believed it possible to make the luxuriant bloom of the tropical trees, shrubs, and flowers so subservient to the beauty of their foliage, yet so marvelous a finish to the brilliancy of the whole. The great rubber-tree extended its awkward branches in exactly the right directions to add quaint picturesqueness; the _poincianas_, as graceful as the rubber-tree was _gauche_, lifted their smooth, bare branches like elephant trunks, from which the great leaves hung down in magnificent cl.u.s.ters; the calabash, with its own ungainly beauty, proved its right by exactly fitting into the landscape at its own particular corner and the row of giant cabbage-palms stood like sentinels, adding a quiet dignity suggestive of the East. Between these and other ma.s.sive trunks the smaller trees and flowering shrubs were interspersed in so original and bewildering a manner that each glance forced a new exclamation of delight. The night-blooming cereus crawled like an ugly reptile in and out among the branches of the giant cedars, but the bursting buds gave evidence that at nightfall they would redeem the hideous suggestiveness of the trailing vine. Cacti and sago-palms formed brilliant backgrounds for the lilies of novel shapes and colors, and for the other flowers which vied with one another for preference in the eye of their beholder.

The conversation was commonplace in its nature, and in it Marian took little part. The vivacity which usually made her conspicuous in any group had entirely left her. Her interest in the view from the Point and in the magnificent vegetation had vanished, and her eyes followed Hamlen as he indicated each special beauty to his guests. Edith Stevens was the only one who sensed the unusual; the men were too discreet or too occupied by the novelty of their experience.

"Do you mind, Harry," Marian said aloud, turning to her husband, "if the gardener shows you around the grounds? It has been years since I last saw Mr. Hamlen, and there are some matters I simply must talk over with him."

Nothing Marian Thatcher asked or did ever surprised her husband or her friends. The abruptness of the question, and the certainty she manifested that her request would at once be complied with, were characteristic. In the present instance, however, it was obvious that the unexpected meeting touched some hidden spring which took her back to a time in her life before they themselves had claims upon her, and they respected her desire to be alone with her revived friendship. A few moments later, with jocose chidings that she had appropriated for herself the chief attraction of the estate, they moved off under the guidance of the gardener, who was proud of the interest manifested in the results of his work in carrying out his master's plans.

"Please don't come back for at least half an hour," Marian called after them. Then she turned to her companion.

"So this is where you disappeared to?"

Hamlen bowed his head. He was not so careful now to conceal his emotions, and it was evident that old memories were stirred within him, as well.

"Could I have found a more beautiful exile?" he asked.

"How many years have you been here?" she demanded.