Cosden pursued the subject now uppermost in his mind with the same relentless energy which he applied to other and more agreeable undertakings. He had no desire to make himself a "ladies' man," such as Edith Stevens described her brother and as he knew him to be; but this idea that he was unfitted to enter into any circle he might choose, provided he could force the entrance, was as novel as it was disagreeable. When Huntington first intimated that he lacked certain qualities Cosden had not taken him seriously. Monty was a Brahmin, albeit one of the best of fellows, and this cla.s.s had never been an object of his envy nor considered by him an example to be emulated.

Cosden had discovered that those who const.i.tuted it were eager enough to know him and to be intimate with him when once they came to realize, in a business way, that this relationship might serve their own best interests. Born outside the sacred circle, he expected nothing else, and the fact of his friendship with Huntington, and his close acquaintanceship with others of the same stamp, seemed to him a triumph of merit over birth. If a man could trace his ancestry back to the right people he became a member of this group automatically, and in spite of lack of personal achievement. How much more credit, Cosden argued, to the man who forced recognition through sheer accomplishment alone.

For this reason he felt that Monty's criticism, if it was to be taken as such, was the expression of a cla.s.s rather than an individual. It was not to be expected that his friend, reared in so unpractical an atmosphere, should sympathize with or even understand this common-sense approach to the subject of marriage. It was natural, indeed, that he should be shocked by it; yet it had been a surprise to have the easy-going Monty rouse himself to the extent of making definite objections to the method of procedure. But Cosden had observed that Huntington's conscience every now and then, like his liver, became overburdened, and on these rare occasions he was liable to make remarks which would sting if taken seriously.

Now, however, it had been brought home to him that perhaps, after all, his friend's comments might contain a grain of truth. The fact was forced home not so much by what Merry Thatcher said to him as the wide divergence of viewpoint which became apparent as a result of their discussion. Cosden instinctively felt himself in the presence of something higher and finer than himself, and this feeling put him at a disadvantage. When he had ridden to Elba Beach with Merry and Billy they were companions and all met on the same footing; now, with Merry alone, he realized that the girl looked upon him as a man with ideas rather than ideals, and with a creed of life which she neither understood nor cared to understand. Yet he was not the first man to apply business principles to this all-important partnership, and others had not made themselves ridiculous. "Your business has been your religion and you are branded with its ear-marks," Monty told him. It was the branding which caused the trouble, Cosden concluded. The "finer instincts" could not be bought, perhaps, but surely they might be acquired. He had been too crude in the manner of expression. It came down to a question of finesse in this as in any other transaction of life, and when reduced to this medium he thought he understood.

To arrive at this point required time. After a brief and silent luncheon with Huntington Cosden set out by himself for a long walk, returning in season for dinner in what appeared outwardly his normal mental condition. In the evening he visited with the little group which had formed the habit of taking their coffee together on the piazza, however far their paths might diverge during the day. Even Edith Stevens was deceived, but Huntington knew his friend's temperament well enough to realize that he was working everything out in his mind preparatory to the next step, by which he would endeavor to regain the lost ground.

By the following morning Cosden had arrived at several definite conclusions, and his courage returned. He breakfasted at his usual early hour, and Edith Stevens, for some reason best known to herself, came down-stairs at about the same time. After breakfast, as had become almost a habit, they sat together on the piazza, he with his cigar, she with an infinite nothing upon which from time to time she plied a not overworked needle.

"Well," he said at length, knocking off the ash from his cigar and regarding it contemplatively for some moments before he continued,--"Monty gave it to me good and straight yesterday, didn't he?"

"You asked him to--"

"I know I did. You remember the man who said he didn't get what he expected, and some one told him he was lucky not to get what he deserved? Well, I got both."

"Mr. Huntington had to say what he thought; you forced him to."

"But I didn't really believe he did think it. I've been bowling along all these years, and I suppose I've become too complacent. When I called myself names yesterday I hadn't the slightest idea that any one would agree with me. It was a case where I wanted to be contradicted."

"Oh!" was all that Edith said, but the exclamation conveyed more to Cosden regarding her real att.i.tude than a whole vocabulary.

"Then you agree with Monty?" he demanded.

Edith had expected this crisis to come, so it did not find her wholly unprepared. In fact she had been awaiting it as the point from which his education was to be continued, as she had explained to Huntington. She pursed her lips a little as she replied.

"Yes--and no," she answered slowly, showing a serious consideration of the subject which impressed Cosden. "I think he was right in saying that business has left its mark upon you, but entirely wrong in his a.s.sumption that what you lack can't be acquired."

"Of course it can," Cosden agreed emphatically; "and what is more, it's going to be acquired. I don't intend to have anything stand in my way.

The only thing to consider is just how and when."

"Exactly," she encouraged him,--"just how and when. These are the questions. Have you answered them?"

"Not yet. I'm trying first to understand what Monty meant. I thought I had learned the game. While, as I've told you, I started out with the definite intention of making money, I've bent over backwards to conduct my affairs so that they should be absolutely above criticism. I believed that in doing this I proved that I had those 'finer instincts' which mean so much to Monty. I've made other people play the game square with me, but I've always played it square with them. My principle has been to fix things so that the other fellow would do right because he had to, and I would do right because I wanted to. You have to do that because the other fellow doesn't always want to. Take one case for example: I had a contract for a number of years with a house to supply them with goods of a certain standard, made in accord with a fixed formula. Six months ago my superintendent told me that by some mistake at the factory these goods had been ten per cent. below the standard called for, covering a period of nearly five years. My customer had made no complaint--he supposed he was getting what the contract called for, and so did I. The natural thing to do was to make all future deliveries up to standard and to let it go at that; but that isn't my way. The man had paid for something he hadn't received, and it was up to me to make good.

So I figured out the difference between the two grades, and the volume of business, and sent him an explanation and a check for $6500."

"That must have been a pleasant surprise for him, and you made a customer for life."

"Yes," Cosden replied, with a queer expression on his face: "it was a pleasant surprise for him all right. He wrote me a beautiful letter, telling me what a n.o.ble, upright thing it was to do, and that he didn't believe another man in the trade would have done it. He even expressed his deep appreciation. Last month the contract came up to be renewed, and he canceled it because another house cut me a quarter of a cent a pound, and I wouldn't meet it."

"I never heard of such a thing!" Edith cried indignantly. "But you have the satisfaction of knowing that you did the right thing."

"Yes; I have the satisfaction and the other fellow has the contract. But I am only telling you about it to show you why I can't understand Monty.

I thought I was showing some of those finer things he says I don't possess. The man who canceled that contract was born with those wonderful 'instincts,' and exhales them with every breath."

"I don't believe you do understand just what Mr. Huntington means," she said quietly.

"Let me tell you something more," Cosden went on. "There is many a corporation right in the city of Boston that spends more money in lobbying at the State House than it does in producing its goods, yet the officers of those same corporations go around without having their best friends tell them they are 'branded with the ear-marks' of their business. They are just as commercial as I am, and some of them aren't nearly as careful to play the game straight. That is where I can't comprehend Monty's att.i.tude. If a man observes the 'finer instincts' in his business, as I believe I do, why isn't the brand it marks him with a hall-mark of respectability in any society in which he wants to mingle?"

Edith had been very busy with her fancy-work, and she did not look up when Cosden appealed to her for an answer.

"Now you're getting nearer to what Mr. Huntington means," she said with decision. "You know your business world,--its customs and its standards, and as you have just explained they are not always consistent. The same is true of the social world, and that, as I understand it, Mr.

Huntington knows better than you do. The social world has its customs and standards just the same, and in many cases they are equally inconsistent. You can't explain these inconsistencies in one any more than in the other; they simply exist. What you still have to do is to become familiar with them as you have with those in the business world."

"That is where the wife comes in,--that's what she's for," Cosden insisted. "That's the very reason I want to marry a woman who knows that end of the game. When I select a partner in my business I don't want him to handle my end, but rather some part of it which he can do better than I can. And the same thing ought to apply here."

"Perhaps it ought, Mr. Cosden, but that is just the point,--it doesn't; and the first thing Mr. Huntington would tell you is that the two don't mix. Here are two distinct worlds which touch each other very closely; the one admits the other to a certain extent, the other never admits the one."

"Then the wife won't do it?"

"Not alone. Many a wife has accomplished for her husband what he never could have gained for himself, but only when the man has permitted her to teach him how to leave his business behind him when he leaves his office. Business plays its part in the social world, but it is one of those polite amenities not to recognize the machinery which makes society possible."

Cosden moved uncomfortably in his chair. "I'm not a climber," he said.

"I haven't any desire to force myself in where I'm not wanted; but here I am, a member of some of the best clubs in my own city, recognized in the business world, and acquainted with every one who is worth knowing.

Until within twenty-four hours I supposed that I was as much a part of the social organization as I chose to be,--no more, no less. Now, the best friend I have in the world tells me point blank that the very thing I supposed was most to my credit is a bar across the path I have elected to take. I'm not ready yet to admit it. Monty says that I've lost something, but he's wrong: apparently the attributes he has in mind I never even possessed."

"Then the more reason to exert yourself until you do possess them."

"But if I lack them, why haven't I felt the lack before?" he appealed.

"I'm thrown all the time with the very men on whom the social life of Boston rests."

"Where, if I may ask?"

"In business, and at my clubs."

"But not in their homes?" Edith pursued.

"No," Cosden admitted; "there has never been any reason to meet them there."

Edith folded her work deliberately and looked squarely at her companion.

"My friend," she said with decision, "'the time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things.' Some one must set you right. You have too much knowledge in other directions to be so childlike in this. If you still look upon me as confidential adviser, I'll appoint myself that one."

"I should be eternally grateful."

"Then don't be offended if I speak plainly. I believe that I understand the situation exactly: you have pursued the even tenor of your way all these years, following a definite plan, and accomplishing your set purpose. In the confidence of having accomplished it, you decide that the moment has arrived to exercise a side of your nature which up to that moment has scarcely interested you, and you try to put your new thought into execution as mechanically as you have carried through every other purpose which you have ever had. Your election to your clubs, no doubt, was the result of careful and business-like plans, laid down when your name was first proposed, and followed up with the same irreproachable persistency which would be applied to any other business undertaking."

"Of course," he acknowledged: "that is the only way to put anything through."

"So your clubs, which you have looked upon to certain extent as social achievements, have been only a part of your every-day business routine, after all?"

"Yes; if you choose to put it that way."

"Then let me tell you that however intimate you become with any man, you are not admitted to his social circle until he has presented you to his wife or sisters, and has invited you to his home. Every woman knows that, and I supposed every man did."

"My ignorance is perhaps the best evidence of how crude I really am,"

Cosden said soberly.