He laughed and shook my hand again and again. He asked after my father and mother as though they were his dearest friends, and I contrasted his cordial mention of them with his once cavalier treatment, but when he made me sit beside him on the divan and meet and answer a rapid fire of questions as to myself and my occupation, the old prejudices began to disappear before his simple, unaffected kindness. Penelope was on his other side, and her hand was in his. I forgave him. I forgot the neglect of long ago. I forgot even the mystery of the letters. I forgot the fat, pompous, all-commanding man. This was a meeting of three rare old friends. Mrs. Bannister, too, had gone from my thoughts. If she still regarded me over the top of her cup, I was unconscious of it, for I was telling how I had come to meet Penelope again, and he was recalling the day when, as a small boy, I had resisted him so vigorously.
"It has all turned out well, eh, David?" Rufus Blight said, laying a hand upon my knee. "Here we are—the three of us—just as if we had never quarrelled—good friends; and it is good to find old friends. We haven't many old friends, Penelope and I. Indeed, but for Mrs. Bannister"—he bowed to the majestic woman—"we should have few new ones. An old one recovered is too precious to lose; and we are not going to lose you again—are we, Penelope?"
The color shot high on Penelope's cheeks as she laughingly assented, and I flattered myself that she had forgotten the boor who a few moments before had shown to such disadvantage under Mrs. Bannister's critical eye.
"You must come to us often," Rufus Blight pursued. "I shall be glad to see you any time. It is good to have an old friend about when time hangs so heavily on one's hands as it does on mine. Never go out of business, David. Take warning from me, and don't let yourself be stranded, with nothing to do but to play golf. Golf is a poor occupation. I was out to-day—couldn't find a soul around the club—had to take on the professional—spoiled my score by getting into the brook on the tenth hole, and came home utterly miserable and dissatisfied with life. But when you get well wetted you appreciate the kitchen stove, as old Bill Hansen, in our town, used to say—eh, Mrs. Bannister?"
From this I surmised that Mr. Blight as well as the ball had gone into the brook, and in the homely aphorism I divined a subtle purpose to bait Mrs. Bannister, which showed an astonishing courage in so mild-mannered a little man. Such was the awe in which I held Mrs. Bannister that I could have loved any one who dared in her presence to acknowledge an acquaintance with old Bill Hansen. If Mrs. Bannister did disapprove, she was careful not to show it. Her lips parted in a half smile and she observed to me that Mr. Blight had a jovial way of quoting Mr. Hansen, as though Mr. Hansen were his dearest friend.
"He is," declared Mr. Blight. "To be sure, I haven't seen him for years, but I always remember him as the wisest man I ever knew. Why, if it wasn't for Penelope I should go back to the valley, just to be near him. It would be better than golf—to sit with him on the store porch on a sunny day listening to the mill rumbling by the creek and the killdee whistling in the meadow, to watch the shadows crawl along the mountains, and now and then to hear Bill Hansen say something. That would be living—eh, David?"
Rufus Blight touched a train of thought which had been often in my mind. Here was a man who had won in the great fight and he seemed to be camping now on the field which he had taken. About him were the spoils—the Reynolds, the fireplace, the perfectly bound books, and the costly spaces of the great room. Yet he was voicing the same longing that I, whose fight was just beginning, had often felt—the longing to step aside from the struggle for vain things, the longing to turn from the smoke and grime of the conflict to the quiet and peace of the valley. Now I voiced that longing too, forgetting Mrs. Bannister and her evident creed that man's chief end was to know the right people.
"It would be living, indeed," I said with enthusiasm. "More than once I have been on the point of going back to stay. I don't suppose you ever knew my old friend Stacy Shunk, did you? When it comes to real wisdom I'd rather talk to Stacy Shunk than——"
Mrs. Bannister had half risen—I thought in horror. It was really the butler who had brought my eulogy of Stacy Shunk to a sudden close, for, appearing in half-drawn portières, he announced: "Mr. Talcott."
The mere entrance of Mr. Talcott carried us far from the valley and such rude associates as old Bill Hansen and his kind. I think that even Rufus Blight would have been too discreet to refer to them in his presence—for Penelope's sake, if nothing else. He was a slender young man of medium height, clean-shaven, perfectly groomed, and perfectly mannered. He was as much at ease as I had been ill at ease, and I envied him for it. He declined tea because he had just come from the club, and I envied him this delightful way of avoiding cake and embarrassing crumbs. Mrs. Bannister addressed him as Herbert, and I knew at once that he was Edward Herbert Talcott, whose name I had often seen in my paper-reading task. His claim to distinction was descent from the man whose name he bore, a member of the cabinet of one of our early presidents. A dead statesman in a family is always a valuable asset, and the longer dead the better. Statesmen, like wines, must be hidden away in vaults long years to be properly mellowed for social uses. I think that Mr. Secretary Talcott would have been astonished, indeed, could he have measured his influence after a century by the numbers, collateral and direct, who were proud to use his name. There were Talcott Joneses, and Talcott Robinsons, and Talcott Browns by the score in town, but one and all they acknowledged the primacy of this Edward Herbert Talcott, and never lost an opportunity of speaking of him as their cousin. He had written, I learned afterward, a monograph on his great-grandfather, which had given him a certain literary distinction in his own set, and it was generally understood that, while he might easily have earned a livelihood by his pen, he had been relieved of the necessity of doing it by his ancestors' investments in Harlem real estate.