"She is coming here to see you as soon as I tell her you are strong enough."

"Coming here?" he echoed; "I can't believe it! And the girl--can she ever understand?"

"On that point I can rea.s.sure you with even greater certainty, for I am to be the subst.i.tute bridegroom!"

Hamlen looked at him steadily to make sure he was in earnest.

"You are to marry Miss Thatcher?" he asked deliberately.

"The G.o.ds have been good to me, Hamlen; they have given me the one gift I craved."

"Then you have loved her all these weeks?"

"Since first I saw her."

"My friend!" Hamlen raised himself unsteadily in his weakness, refusing a.s.sistance, until he stood upon his feet. Then supporting himself with one hand, he raised the other to his forehead in salute.

"You, sir, are a great man!" he said with dramatic fervor. "You not only possess ideals, but actually live up to them! A world that can produce one such as you is ent.i.tled to my respect, and is a place worth living in!"

"Cease!" Huntington cried, genuinely embarra.s.sed by Hamlen's tribute.

"Leave me out of this, for this is your day. To rise superior to the habit of twenty years, to let the world knock you down time after time, and finally come up smiling with an acknowledgment that it was your fault after all, to stand ready to pool issues with that world which you have always considered your enemy, is an exhibition of character which puts you so far beyond the rest of us that you couldn't see us if we saluted you.--I thought my happiest moment came when I discovered unexpectedly that Merry loved me; now you have taken me to heights beyond.

"I believe you," Hamlen answered him, his voice weak from the strain of the interview, but his eyes bright with excitement and his face radiant,--"I believe every word you say. For one of your great brotherhood to find himself at last means more to you than any personal happiness,--such is the strength of the fetish! I wonder if the girl is big enough to share you with your other idol!"

"Have no fears," Huntington laughed contentedly. "She will worship at the shrine with devotion equal to my own, and my fellow-worshipers shall bow the knee to her."

The nurse gave Huntington a reproving glance when she came for her patient, but Hamlen would not permit even a suggestion that his friend had been unmindful of his weakness.

"It's all right," he rea.s.sured her. "I know I'm excited, I know that I've pulled too hard on my strength, but something has come to me--inside here--which no doctor could ever give me. You'll see. Take me away now and I'll be as docile as a child.--But, Huntington, please telephone Marian that instead of coming to see me, I'd rather go to her.

I would prefer to tell her what I have to say down there where the trees are cousins to my trees, and the language of the flowers can fill in the words when I find my own speech inadequate.--She'll understand."

XL

It was another fortnight before the fugitive was able to return to Sagamore Hall. Huntington telephoned, as he had promised, but he also found it necessary to run down there himself, to explain in detail the miracle which had happened. Mrs. Thatcher appreciated his thoughtfulness of her, Merry expressed her full approval, and incidentally he found the experience agreeable, so the necessity of his appearance in person was unanimously conceded. Still, the satisfaction of this visit was completely overshadowed by his feeling of triumph when Hamlen actually accompanied him.

The drone of the motor-car brought Mr. and Mrs. Thatcher and Merry to the door to greet them, for Marian wished their welcome to express to the fullest the fact that whatever had occurred was forgotten. Hamlen read it so, and it helped him.

"I have to move a bit slowly yet," he explained as he rose cautiously in the tonneau. "Another month and I'll be as good as new."

They a.s.sisted him up the steps and through the hallway to a great easy chair on the piazza beyond. Then, after a few moments of general conversation, they left him alone with Marian.

"Isn't it wonderful?" he exclaimed with frank delight. "I'm as pleased with myself as a kitten with two tails."

"You well may be!" she laughed at his expression, which in its nature was eloquent of the changed mental att.i.tude. "And our rejoicing is not far behind yours."

"I know it; that is the most wonderful part of the whole thing. No matter how idiotic my actions, you and Huntington have stuck right by me, and have proved me wrong by the bigness of your hearts."

"Forget the past," Marian urged, "and start things from to-day."

"No; I wouldn't want to do that, even if I could."

He paused for a moment, and played with a ta.s.sel which fell across his lap from the cushion she had placed in the chair.

"Of course," he said without looking up, "much of it will always seem like a delirious dream, but after all it is the past which has given me the present. And except for the past I should not have Huntington."

There was a wealth of feeling in his words which showed Mrs. Thatcher how strong a hold his friend had gained upon him.

"Does he know how much he means to you, I wonder?"

Hamlen looked up quickly. "He hasn't the slightest conception," he answered. "I have never seen a man so oblivious to the power he exercises over others, or to the results which he obtains. He really thinks I've come through this crisis because of some latent strength of character, when in reality it has been the reflection of his own. He would tell you that when I was dying of shame and mortification I took myself by the boot-straps and pulled myself out of the abyss, and he would never believe it was the result of the philosophy he demonstrated by every word and act. He positively made me ashamed to do anything but respond. And now that I am out, he has fired me with a desire to use the years which remain in doing something for some one else. Can you wonder that I love him?"

Marian's face reflected the pleasure his words gave her. "This is the real Philip Hamlen I have seen behind his mask," she exclaimed; "this is the Philip I tried in my mistaken way to rescue from the chaos of confused ideals. I failed but Mr. Huntington succeeded; my grat.i.tude to him pa.s.ses all bounds."

"You must take some of the credit whether you wish to or not," Hamlen insisted. "When you invaded my Garden of Eden last winter and made those disturbing statements, you weakened the barrier of false beliefs with which I had surrounded myself. You could have restored the structure had I permitted it, but I wasn't ready for it then. You were entirely right when you said that I had forgotten the teachings of the masters I venerated, that I was blind to the difference between the means and the end. But, Marian--" for the first time his voice quavered--"that was before I had a friend! Think of living all those years without a friend!

It was through your invasion that my horrible tranquillity was disturbed; it was through you that I met the one man in all the world who could take advantage of that condition to build a human structure upon such ruins."

"Give me all the credit you can, Philip. I need it to help me to forget."

"Tut! tut!" he chided her. "I may touch upon the past, but to you it is forbidden! Through you"--he went on--"I gained my friend, and, as if to demonstrate the philosophy he lives, in giving him to me you gained him too; for to your daughter is a.s.sured the most wonderful of companionships. Now, by the same token, in giving him to her, I shall expect the reward of being admitted to full friendship in this family whose members mean the world to me."

"We already count you one of us, Philip, and we shall accept nothing less."

"Then am I rich in friendship!" he exclaimed. "The law of compensation gives a greater joy of realization to one who has drifted than to him who has lived a normal existence: such a man is spared the depths, but he can never reach the heights."

Two duster-clad, begoggled figures burst unceremoniously through the hallway onto the piazza where Marian and Hamlen had been scrupulously left alone by a comprehending family.

"Well, I'm glad to find some signs of life!" cried a familiar voice.

"Edith!" Marian exclaimed. "Where on earth did you come from? And Mr.

Cosden!"

"Connie and I crept up on the house to surprise you," she explained, as greetings were exchanged all around, "but we began to think the joke was on us and we'd struck the morgue by mistake. Where are the people anyhow? We can't stay but a minute."

"Here we are!" Merry answered her, and as if by magic the entire family appeared from various directions.

"Where did you come from, where are you going, and why can't you stay but a minute?" Huntington demanded of Cosden as he grasped his hand.

Cosden grinned and looked at Edith.

"Oh, go ahead and tell them if you want to," she remarked indifferently.

"They're sure to find it out some time, and it might as well be now."