The Bachelors: A Novel

by William Dana Orcutt

"We have a thousand members—" Baker protested.

"What has that to do with the present discussion?"

"Why pick on me?"

"Which is the misfit in my combination with Monty?" Cosden demanded.

"I'm not labeling you fellows," the speaker disclaimed—"I couldn't if I tried; but each of you is so different from the other that such a friendship seems inconsistent."

There was a twinkle in Huntington's eye as he listened to the persistent cross-examination. "We are bachelors," he said quietly. "That should explain everything; for what is a bachelor's life but one long inconsistency? If our friends were all alike what would be the need of having more than one? This friend gives us confidence in ourselves, another gives us sympathy; this friend gives us the inspiration which makes our work successful, another is the balance-wheel which prevents us from losing the benefit which success brings us. Each fills a separate and unique place in our lives, and, after all, the measure of our life-work is the sum of these friendships."

The two responses demonstrated the difference between the men. William Montgomery Huntington came from a Boston family of position where wealth had accumulated during the several generations, each steward having given good account to his successor. He had taken up the practice of law after being graduated from Harvard—not from choice or necessity, but because his father and his grandfather had adopted it before him. His practice had never been a large one, but the supervision of certain trust estates, handed over to his care by his father's death, entailed upon him sufficient responsibility to enable him to maintain his self-respect.

It would have been a fair question to ask what Montgomery Huntington's manner of life would have been if his father had not been born before him. He lived alone, since his younger brother married, in the same house into which the family moved when he was an infant in arms. Modern improvements had been introduced, it is true, in the building just as in the generation itself; but the walls were unchanged. The son succeeded to the father's place in directorates and on boards of trustees in charitable institutions, and he performed his duties faithfully, as his predecessor had done. Now, at forty-five, he had reached a point where he found it difficult to distinguish between his working and his leisure hours.

Cosden's heritage had been a healthy imagination, a robust constitution, and an unbelievable capacity for work. Even his uncle Conover, from whom he had a right to expect compensation for the indignity of wearing his name throughout a lifetime, had left him to work out his own salvation. His parents had never worn the purple, but, being sturdy, valuable citizens, they spent their lives in fitting their son to occupy a position in life higher than they themselves could hope to attain; and Cosden had made the most of his opportunities. Seven years Huntington's junior, he had succeeded in a comparatively short time in extracting from his commercial pursuits a property which, from the standpoint of income, at least, was hardly less than his friend's. He, too, was a product of the university, but his name would be found blazoned on the annals of Harvard athletics rather than in the archives of the Phi Beta Kappa. His election as captain of the football team was a personal triumph, for it broke the precedent of social dominance in athletics, and laid the corner-stone for that democracy which since then has given Harvard her remarkable string of victories. The same dogged determination, backed up by real ability, which forced recognition in college accomplished similar results in later and more serious competitions. In the business world he was taken up first because he made himself valuable and necessary, and he held his advantage by virtue of his personal characteristics.

Cosden was not universally popular. He won his victories by sheer force of determination and ability rather than by diplomacy or finesse. In business dealings he had the reputation of being a hard man, demanding his full pound of flesh and getting it, but he was scrupulously exact in meeting his own obligations in the same spirit. To an extent this characteristic was apparent in everything he did; but to those who came to know him it ceased to be offensive because of other, more agreeable qualities which went with it. They learned that, after all, money to him was only the means to an end which he could not have secured without it.