The Maker of Opportunities

She pulled impatiently at her long gloves and arose with an air of finality. And so Miss Wharton put the importunate Mr. Crabb entirely from her mind; until the following Thursday night at the dinner at the Hollingsworths’.

“Patty, dear, have you met Mr. Crabb?” Mrs. Hollingsworth was saying.

Miss Wharton had, at the Assembly.

Mr. Crabb politely echoed; and Patricia hated him for the nebulous smile which seemed to contain hidden meanings. But she rose to the occasion in a way which seemed to disconcert her companion – who only answered her rapid fire of commonplaces in monosyllables. At the table she found her refuge upon the other side to be an Italian from the embassy at Washington, whose French limped but whose English was a cripple. And so they minced and stuttered, Ollendorf fashion, through the oysters and soup, while Crabb occupied himself with the daughter of the house upon his other side. But at last Patty was aware that Mr. Crabb was speaking.

“Miss Wharton,” he began, “I fear I’ve been put somewhat under a cloud.”

“Really,” she answered sweetly, “how so?”

A little disconcerted but undismayed, he continued:

“Because of the manner of our meeting.”

“Our meeting!” she said uncertainly.

“At the Assembly, you know. I thought perhaps that – you thought – I’d asked to be presented.”

“Didn’t you? Then, how did we happen to meet?”

He could not but admire her sang-froid. She was smiling a non-committal smile at the centerpiece.

“Er – I should explain. I was adrift and Barclay came to my rescue. I give you my word, I had no notion it was to you he was taking me. It was all over in a second.”

“Then you really didn’t wish to meet me? I’m so sorry.”

She had turned her face slowly to his and was looking him levelly in the eyes. It was a challenge, not a petition. He met her thrust fairly.

“My dear Miss Wharton,” he smiled, “how could I know what you were like – er – if I’d never seen you?”

This time he fairly set her weapon flying.

“What I wish you to understand,” he continued, steadily, “is that I didn’t know that Barclay was taking me to you. I wish credit for a certain delicacy. I should not have cared to force myself upon you.”

“I’m sure I shouldn’t have minded in the least,” she said, lightly. “I’m not so difficult as all that.”

As soon as she had spoken she knew she had overshot her mark.

“That’s awfully good of you, you know. I’m sure you’ll admit I had no means of knowing,” he added, “how difficult you were.”

She flushed a little before returning to the attack.

“Of course a girl wishes to know a little something about a man before – ”

“Before she permits herself to misjudge him.” He smiled. “Candidly, do you feel in any better position to judge me now than you did before – ”

“Before the Assembly?” she interrupted. “I think so. You don’t eat with your knife,” laughing. “You’ve a respect for the napkin. People say you’re clever. Why shouldn’t I believe them?”

“If this is your creed of morality, I’m respectability itself. Can you doubt me? Why won’t you be frank? If I’m respectable why shouldn’t you have cared to meet me?”

“I’m not sure I thought very much about it. How did you know I didn’t wish to meet you?”

“How could I know you did?”

She looked up at him, a new expression on her face.

“I didn’t,” she said quietly, “I – I – abhorred the very thought of you.”

Crabb looked contemplatively at his truffle. “I thank you for your candor,” he replied at last.

Then after a pause, “If you’ll forgive me, I’ll promise not to mention the subject again.”

“And if I don’t forgive you?”

“You’re at my mercy for this hour at least,” he laughed.

“I can still fly to Italy,” she replied. “I could forgive you, I think, but for one thing.”

He looked the question.

“This dinner. Is it to chance that I’m indebted for the – the – honor of your society?”

Crabb’s gaze had dropped to the table, but she had seen just such a sparkle in them once before. Nor when he looked at her had it disappeared.

“You mean – ”

She continued gazing at him steadily.

“You mean – did I arrange it?” he asked.

Patricia bowed her head.

“How could I have done so?” he urged.

“Isn’t Nick Hollingsworth an intimate friend of yours?”

“Yes, but I fail to see – ”

“Will you deny it?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to take me a little on faith,” he pleaded. “At any rate you will not suffer long. I’m leaving town in a few days.”

“For long?” she asked politely.

“For good, I think. Won’t you let me come in to see you before then?”

“Perhaps – ”

But Mrs. Hollingsworth had cast her glance down the line and drawn back her chair.

When the men came down into the drawing room, Mr. Crabb discovered that Miss Wharton had carefully ensconced herself in the center of a perimeter of skirts, which defied disintegration and apportionment. There was music and afterwards a call for carriages. So Mr. Crabb saw no more of Miss Wharton upon that night. Nor, indeed, did Patricia see him again. The following day he called. She was out. Then came a note and some roses. Business had called him sooner than he had expected. He begged to assure her of his distinguished consideration; would she forgive him now that he was gone, accept this new impertinence and forget all those that had gone before?

Patricia accepted the impertinence; and for many days it filled her little white room with seductive odors that made his last admonition more difficult.

CHAPTER IX

The months of winter passed and Crabb returned not. July found the Whartons again at Bar Harbor. Patricia would go out for hours in her canoe or her sailboat, rejoicing with bronzed cheek and hardening muscles in the buffets and caresses of Frenchman’s Bay. It was a very tiny catboat that she had learned to manage herself and in which she would tolerate no male hand at the helm except in the stiffest blows.

One quiet afternoon, early in August, she was sailing alone down toward Sorrento. It was one of those brilliant New England days when every detail of water and sky shone clear as an amethyst. Here and there a sail cut a sharp yellow rhomboid from the velvet woods. Patricia listened idly to the lapping of the tiny waves and found herself thinking again rather uncomfortably of the one person who had caught her off her guard and kept her there. If he had only stayed in Philadelphia one week more, she could at least have retired with drums beating and colors flying.

A sound distracted her. She looked to leeward under the lifting sail and on her bow, well out in the open off Stave Island, she could make out the lines of an overturned canoe and two figures in the water. She quickly loosed the sheet and shifted her helm and bore down rapidly upon the unfortunates. She could see a man bearing upon one end of the canoe lifting the other into the air, trying to get the water out; but each time he did so, a bull terrier dog swam to the gunwale and overturned it again. She sped by to leeward and, skilfully turning her little craft upon its heel, came up into the wind alongside.

“How do you do?” said the moistful person, smiling.

The hair was streaked down into his eyes. He hardly wondered that she didn’t recognize him.

“Mr. Crabb!” she said at last, rather faintly, “how did you happen – ”

“It was the dog,” he said cheerfully. “I thought he understood canoes.”

“He might have drowned you. Why, it’s Jack Masters’ ‘Teddy,’” she cried. “Here, Teddy, come aboard at once, sir.” She bent over the low freeboard and by dint of much hauling managed to get him in.

In the meantime, the catboat had drifted away from the canoe. Crabb had at last succeeded in getting in and was now bailing with his cap.

“Won’t you come over?” shouted Patricia.

“Oh, I’m all right,” he returned. “It was the dog I was worried about.” Then for the first time he was aware that the paddle had drifted off and was now floating a hundred yards away.

“I’m sorry, but my paddle is adrift.”

So Patricia, amid much barking from the rejuvenated Teddy, came alongside again.

There sat the bedraggled and dripping Crabb in three inches of water, his empty hands upon the gunwales, looking rather foolishly up at the blue eyes that were smiling rather whimsically down.

She could not resist the temptation to banter him. Had she prayed for vengeance, nothing could have been sent to her sweeter than this.

“You look rather – er – glum,” she said.

“I’m not,” he replied, calmly. “I’ve not been so happy in months.”

“What on earth is there to prevent my sailing off and leaving you?” she laughed.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m all right. I’ll swim for the paddle when I’m rested.”

“Have you thought I might take that with me, too?” she asked sweetly.

“All right,” he laughed, trying to suppress the chattering teeth. “Somebody’ll be along presently.”

“Don’t be too sure. You’re really very much at my mercy.”

“You were not always so unkind.”

“Mr. Crabb!” Patricia retired in confusion to the tiller. “You’re impudent!” She hauled in her sheet and the boat gathered headway.

“Please, Miss Wharton, please!” he shouted. But Patricia did not move from the tiller, and the catboat glided off. He watched her sail down and recover the paddle and then head back toward him.

“Won’t you forgive me and take me in?”

“I suppose I must. But I’m sure I’d rather you’d drown. I’m hardly in the mood for coals of fire.”

“I am, though,” he chattered, “for I’m d – deucedly c – cold.”

“You don’t deserve it. But if you were drowned I suppose I’d be to blame. I wouldn’t have you on my conscience again for anything.”

“Then please take me on your boat.”

“Will you behave yourself?”

“I’ll try.”

“And never again refer to – to – ”

“Um – ”

“Then please come in – out of the wet.”

It was toward the end of August when the southeast wind had raised a gray and thunderous sea, that two persons sat under the lee of a rock near Great Head and watched the giant breakers shatter themselves to foam. They sat very close together, and the little they said was drowned in the roar of the elements. But they did not care. They were willing just to sit and watch the fruitless struggles of the swollen waters.

“Won’t you tell me,” said the girl at last, “about that dinner? Didn’t you really ask Mrs. Hollingsworth to send you in with me?”

The man looked amusedly off at the jagged horizon.

“No, I really didn’t,” he said, and then, after a pause, with a laugh: “but Nick did.”

“Whited sepulcher!” said the girl. Another pause. This time the man questioned:

“There is another thing – won’t you tell me? About the parasol last summer – did you forget it, really – or – or – just leave it?”

“Mortimer!” she cried, flushing furiously. “I didn’t!”

But he assisted her in hiding her face, smiling down benevolently the while.

“Really? Honestly? Truly?” he said, softly.

“I didn’t – I didn’t,” she repeated.

“Didn’t what?” he still persevered.

She looked up at him for a moment, flushed more furiously than before and sought refuge anew. But the muffled reply was perfectly distinguishable to the man.

“I – I —didn’t– forget it.”

Thus Mortimer Crabb, having spent much of his time in making opportunities for other people, had at last succeeded in making one for himself.

He had the pleasure of knowing, too, that he was also making one for Patty – not that this was Miss Wharton’s first opportunity, for everyone knew that her rather sedate demeanor concealed a capricious coquetry which she could no more control than she could the music of the spheres. But this was going to be a different kind of opportunity, for Crabb had decided that not only was she going to be engaged to him, but that when the time came she was going to marry him.

This decision reached, he spent all of his time in convincing her that he was the one man in the world exactly suited to her protean moods. The sum of his possessions had not been made known to her, and he delighted in planning his surprise. So that when the Blue Wing appeared in the harbor, he invited her for a sail in her own catboat, calmly took the helm in spite of her protests, and before she was aware of it, had made a neat landing at his own gangway. Jepson poked his head over the side and welcomed them, grinning broadly, and, following Crabb’s inviting gesture, Patricia went up on deck feeling very much like the lady who had married the Lord of Burleigh. Then Jepson gave some mysterious orders and before long she was reclining luxuriously in a deck chair and the Blue Wing was breasting the surges which showed the way to the open sea.

“‘All of this,’” quoted Crabb gayly, with a fine gesture which comprehended the whole of the North Atlantic Ocean, “‘is mine and thine.’”

“It’s very nice of you to be so rich. Why didn’t you tell me?” said Patricia.

“Because I had a certain pride in wanting you to like me for myself.”

“You think I would have married you for your money?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, promptly, “of course you would. A rich man has about as much chance of entering the Kingdom of Romance as the Biblical camel has to get through the eye of the needle.”

“Why is it then that I find you so very much more attractive now that I’ve found the Blue Wing?”

“But you found me first,” he laughed.

“Did I?” archly.

“If you still doubt it, there’s the parasol!”

The mention of the parasol always silenced her.

CHAPTER X

That was one of many cruises, and the Blue Wing contributed not a little to the gayety of the waning days of summer at Mount Desert. It was the Blue Wing, too, that in early September brought the Wharton family, bag and baggage, southward to Philadelphia, where Mortimer Crabb lingered, hoping to exact a promise of marriage before Christmas. But Patricia would make no promises. She had a will of her own, her fiancé discovered, and had no humor to forego the independence of her spinsterhood for the responsibilities which awaited her. It was in this situation that Crabb discovered himself to be possessed of surprising virtues in tolerance and tact. Patricia, he knew, had many admirers. The woods at Bar Harbor had been, both figuratively and literally, filled with them, and most of them had been eligible. Jack Masters, and Stephen Ventnor, who lived in Philadelphia, were still warm in pursuit of the fair quarry, who had not yet consented to an announcement of her engagement to Crabb.

But these men caused him little anxiety. They were both quite young and quite callow and stood little chance with a cosmopolitan of Crabb’s caliber. But there was another man of whom people spoke. His name was Heywood Pennington, and for three years he had been off a-soldiering in the Philippines. It had only been a boy-and-girl affair, of course, and most people in Philadelphia had forgotten it, but from his well-stored memory Crabb recalled at least one calf-love that had later grown into a veritable bull-in-the-china-shop. It was not that he didn’t believe fully that Patricia would marry him, and it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in Patricia. It was only that he knew that for the first time in his life, his whole happiness depended upon that least stable but most wonderful of creatures, the unconscious coquette. Moreover, Mortimer Crabb believed firmly in himself, and he also believed that, married to him, Patricia would be safely fulfilling her manifest destiny.

But the Philippine soldier kept bobbing up into Crabb’s background at the most inopportune moments: once when the soldier’s name had been mentioned on the Blue Wing, and Patricia had sighed and turned her gaze to the horizon, again at a dinner at Bar Harbor, and later in Philadelphia, at the Club. Bit by bit Crabb had learned Heywood Pennington’s history, from the wild college days, through his short business career to the tempestuous and scarcely honorable adventures which had led to his enlistment under a false name in the regular army three years ago. It was not a creditable history for a fellow of Pennington’s antecedents, and when his name was mentioned, even the fellows who had known him longest, turned aside and dismissed him with a word.

The name of the soldier never passed between the engaged couple, and so far as Crabb was concerned, Mr. Pennington might never have existed.

Patricia lacked nothing which the most exacting fiancée might require. Roses and violets arrived regularly at the Wharton country place near Haverford, and in the afternoons Crabb himself came in a motor car, always cheerful, always patient, always original and amusing.

To such a wooing, placid, and ardent by turns, Patty yielded inevitably, and at last, late in September, consented to announce the engagement. The news was received in her own family circle with delighted amazement, for Mortimer Crabb had by this time made many friends in Philadelphia, and Miss Wharton had refused so many offers that her people, remembering Pennington, had decided that their handsome relative was destined to a life of single blessedness. They bestirred themselves at once in a round of entertainments in her honor, the first of which was a lawn party and masque at her uncle Philip Wharton’s country place, near Bryn Mawr.

Philip Wharton never did things by halves, and society, back from the seashore and mountains, welcomed the first large entertainment which was to mark the beginning of the country life between seasons.

The gay crowds swarmed out from the wide doorways, into the balmy night, liberated from the land of matter-of-fact into a domain of enchantment. Gayly caparisoned cavaliers, moving in the spirit of the characters they represented strode gallantly in the train of their ladies whose graceful draperies floated like film from white shoulders and caught in their silken meshes the shimmer of the moonbeams. Bright eyes flashed from slits in masks and bolder ones looked searchingly into them. All of the ages had assembled upon a common meeting ground; a cinquecento rubbed elbows with an American Indian, Joan of Arc was cajoling a Crusader, a nun was hazarding her hope of salvation in flirtation with the devil, the eyes of a Puritan maid fell before the glances of a matador. Nothing had been spared in costume or in setting to make the picture complete. The music halted a moment and then swept into the rhythm of a waltz. A murmur of delight and like a change in the kaleidoscope the pieces all converged upon the terrace.

It was here that a diversion occurred. A laugh went up from a group upon the steps and their glances were turned in one direction. Seated upon the balustrade in the glow of the Chinese lanterns sat a tramp, drinking a glass of punch from the refreshment table close at hand. It was a wonderful disguise that he wore. The shirt of some dark material, was stained and torn, the hat, of the brown, army type, was battered out of shape, and many holes had been bored into the crown. The trousers had worn to the color of dry grass and the boots were old, patched, and yellow with mud and grime. In place of the conventional black mask, he wore a bandanna handkerchief tied around his brow, with holes for the eyes. The ends of the handkerchief hung to his breast and hid his features, but under its edges could be seen a brown ear and a patchy beard. As the crowd watched him he lifted his glass aloft solemnly and made the motions of drinking their health. There was a roar of applause. A whimsical arrogance in the pose of the squarely-made shoulders and the tilt of the head gave an additional interest to the somber figure. He looked like a drawing from the pages of a comic weekly, but the ostentation of his gesture gave him a dignity that made the resemblance less assured. As the people crowded around him and sought to pierce his disguise, he got down from his perch and strolled away into the shadows. When the music stopped again he was surrounded by a curious group, but he towered in their center grotesque, and inscrutable. To those who questioned him too closely he mumbled at their meddling and told them to be off. Then he tightened his belt and asked when supper would be ready.

“Are you hungry?” someone asked. He glared at the questioner.

“What kind of a tramp would I be if I wasn’t hungry?” he growled, and those around him laughed again. So they took him to a table and fed him. He ate ravenously. They got him something to drink and it seemed to vanish down his throat without even touching his lips.

“Isn’t he splendid?” said Patricia Wharton, who, with Mortimer Crabb, had just come up. “But who – ? I can’t think of anyone, and yet – ”

The tramp looked up at her suddenly and dropped his fork upon the table.

“Splendid,” he cried. “That’s me. Splendid. I sure glitter in this bunch, don’t I?”

There was something irresistibly comic in the gesture with which he swept the group.

Patricia was still watching him – a puzzled expression in her eyes.

“Who is he?” she asked; but Crabb shook his head. “I haven’t an idea – but he is clever. And look at those boots – they’re the real thing. I wouldn’t want to try to dance in them, though.”

The tramp drained his glass – set it down on the table and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand – rose and disappeared between the palms and hydrangeas into the darkness.

For a guest in good standing the tramp then behaved strangely, for when he had reached a sheltered spot, in the bushes at the end of the English Garden, he sank at full length upon the grass and buried his head in his hands, groaning aloud. It was three years since he had seen her – three years, and yet she was just as he had seen her last. Time had touched her lightly, only caressing her playfully, rounding her features to matured beauty, while he – A vision of camps, cities, skirmishes, orgies, came out of his mind in a disordered procession, all culminating in the incident which had brought him to ruin. Every detail of that at least was clear; the sudden rage where the bonds of patience had reached the snapping point – and then the blow. The tramp laughed outright. He could see now the smirk on the face of the drunken lieutenant as he toppled over backward and struck his head on the edge of the mahogany table. After that – irons, the court martial, the transport, Alcatraz, his chance, the friendly plank, the swim for the mainland, and freedom. He had never heard whether the man lived or died. He didn’t much care. He got what was coming to him.

The tramp was a fugitive still. He had walked since morning from Malvern station, where he had been thrown off the freight train on which he had worked a ride east from Harrisburg. At Bryn Mawr he had begged a meal – the irony of it had sunk into his soul – at the back door of a country house at which he had once been a welcome guest. A gossipy chauffeur had let him into his garage for a rest and had given him a cigarette over which he had learned the recent doings in the neighborhood. The thought of venturing into Philip Wharton’s grounds that night had entered his madcap brain while he lay in the woods along the Gulf Road, trying to make up his mind whether his tired feet would carry him the twelve miles that remained between him and the city.

Why had he returned? God knew. His feet had dragged him onward as though impelled by some force beyond his power to resist. Now that he was near the home of his boyhood it seemed as if any other place in the world would have been better. It was so real – the peaceful respectability of this country – so like Her. And yet its very peacefulness and respectability angered him. Was it nothing to have hungered and thirsted and sweated that the honor of these people and that of others like them might be preserved? Even Patricia’s blamelessness was intolerant – reproachful. The springs of memory that had gushed forth just now at the sight of her were dried in their source. There was a dull ache, a sinking of the spirit that was almost a physical pain; but the unreasoning fever of the wayward boy, the wrenching fury of the outcast soldier were lacking, and for a long time he lay where he had fallen without moving.

CHAPTER XI

Patricia Wharton stood a moment on the edge of the terrace after the dance, slipped her hand into Mortimer Crabb’s arm and came down upon the path, drawing a drapery across her white shoulders.