The Maker of Opportunities

“What is it?” asked Crabb. “You are not cold?”

“Oh, no,” she said quietly. “I think I am a little tired.”

“Come,” he said. “There’s a beautiful spot – just here.” He led her across the lawn and through an opening in the trees to a garden-bench in the shadow, a spot which none of the other maskers had discovered. Through the leafy screen they could see the gay figures floating like will-o’-the-wisps across the golden lawn, but here they were quiet and unobserved. Patricia sank upon the bench with a sigh, while Crabb sat beside her.

“Are you happy?” he asked after awhile.

“Perfectly,” she murmured. “What a beautiful party!” She placed her hand in his and moved a little closer to him, then sat listlessly, her eyes seeking the spaces between the branches where the people were. “I don’t want to grow old too soon,” she was saying. “The whole world is in short clothes to-night. Wouldn’t it be good to be young forever?”

Crabb smiled indulgently.

“Yes,” he said. “It is good to be young. But isn’t it anything to take your place in the world? I want you to know all a man can do for the woman he loves. Won’t you let me? Soon?” He bent over her and took the rounded arm in his strong hand. She did not withdraw it, but something told him a link of sympathy was lacking in the chain. As she did not reply he straightened and sat moodily looking before him.

“Don’t think me capricious, please,” she began. “You’re everything I can hope for – and yet – ”

“And yet?” he repeated.

She paused a moment, then broke in, “Forgive me, won’t you? I don’t know what it is. Something has affected me strangely.” She leaned against the back of the bench, rested her head in her hand, away from him, and Crabb turned jealously toward her.

“You were thinking – of him – of the other.”

“Why shouldn’t I be honest with you? I can’t help it. Something has suddenly brought him into my mind. I was wondering – ”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering where he is now – to-night. It is so beautiful here. Everything has been done to make us happy. I was thinking that perhaps if I had written him a line I might have saved him some terrible trial. It was only a boy-and-girl affair, of course, but – ”

Patricia suddenly stopped speaking, and both of them turned their heads toward the dark bank of bushes behind them.

“What was it?” she asked.

“A dead branch falling,” he replied.

They listened again, but all they heard was the sound of the orchestra and the voices of the dancers.

“You’re teaching me a lesson in patience,” Crabb began again soberly. “I can wait, of course. I’m not jealous of him,” he said. “I was only wondering how you could think of him at all.”

“I don’t think of him – not in that way. I believe I haven’t thought of him at all – until to-night. To-night, I can’t help thinking of others less fortunate than ourselves. I suppose it’s only the natural thing that he should suffer. He never seemed to get things right, somehow; his point of view was always askew. He was a wild boy – but he was human.”

She paused and clasped her hands before her. Crabb sat silent beside her, but his brow was clouded. When he spoke it was in a voice low and constrained.

“Do you think it kind – wise to speak of this now?”

“I was thinking that perhaps if he’d had a little luck – ”

“He might have come back to you?”

Patricia turned toward him and with a swift movement took one of his hands in both of hers.

“Don’t speak in that way,” she pleaded. “You mustn’t.”

But his fingers still refused to respond to her pressure.

“If I think of him at all, it is because I have learned how great a thing is love and how much the greater must be its loss. You know,” she whispered, timidly, “you know I – I love you.”

“God bless you for that,” he murmured.

They were so absorbed that they did not hear the sound behind them – a suppressed moan like that of an animal in pain.

“Will you forgive me?” asked the girl, at last. “It is all over now. I shall never speak of it again. I’ve spoiled your evening. You don’t regret?”

Crabb laughed happily.

“I’ll promise to be good,” she said, softly. “I’ll do whatever you ask me – ”

“Will you marry me next month?”

“Yes,” she murmured, “whenever you wish.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. They stood for some time deaf to all voices but those in their hearts. There was a breaking of tiny twigs under the trees behind them and a drab figure came out into the open on the other side and vanished into the darkness by the garden wall. And as they walked back into the house neither guessed just what had happened except that some new miracle, which, really, is very old, had happened to them.

As a matter of fact, when Patricia announced the miracle in the form of her engagement to Mortimer Crabb a prayer of thanksgiving went up from at least three young women of her acquaintance. And though these feminine petitioners were left as much to their own devices as before the announcement, there was a certain comfort in knowing that she was out of the way – at least, that she was as much out of the way as it was possible for Patricia to be, bound or untrammeled. Jack Masters went abroad, Steve Ventnor actually went to work, and various other swains sought pastures new.

Ross Burnett was best man and, when the ceremony and breakfast were over, saw the happy couple off upon the Blue Wing, for their long Southern cruise. They offered him conduct as far as Washington, whither he was bound, but he knew from the look in their eyes that he was not wanted, and with a promise to meet them in New York when they returned, he waved them a good-by from the pier and took up the thread of his Government business where it had been dropped. It is not often that good comes out of villainy, and the memory of the adventure in which Crabb had involved him, often troubled his conscience. What if some day he should meet Baron Arnim or Baron Arnim’s man and be recognized? At the State Department Crowthers had asked him no questions and he had thought it wise not to offer explanations. But certain it was that to that adventure alone was his present prosperity directly due. His South American mission successfully concluded, he had returned to Washington with the assurance that other and even more important work awaited him. His point of view had changed. All he had needed was initiative, and, Crabb having supplied that deficiency, he had learned to face the world again with the squared shoulders of the man who had at last found himself. The world was his oyster and he would open it how and when he liked.

It was this new attitude perhaps which enabled him to take note of the taming of Mortimer Crabb, for when he visited the bride and groom in their sumptuous house in New York, he discovered that Crabb had formed the habit of the easy-chair after dinner, and that the married life, which all his days he had professed to abhor, was the life for him. It took the combined efforts of Burnett and Patricia to dislodge him.

“He’s absolutely impossible,” said Patricia. “He says that he has solved the problem of happiness – that he has done with the world. It’s so like a man,” and she stamped her small foot, “to think that marriage is the end of everything when – as everyone knows – it’s only the beginning. He’s getting stout already, and I know, I’m positive that he is going to be bald. Won’t you help me, Mr. Burnett?”

“That’s a dreadful prospect – Benedick, the married man. You only need carpet slippers and a cribbage-board, Mort, to make the picture complete. Have you stopped seeking opportunities?”

“Ah, yes,” drawled Crabb, “Patty is the only opportunity I ever had – at least – er – the only one worth embracing – ”

“Mortimer!”

“And don’t you ever go to the Club?” laughed Ross.

“Oh, no. I’m taboo there since I lived in Philadelphia. Besides, I’m not a bachelor any more, you know. If Patty only wouldn’t insist on dragging me out – ”

Patricia laughed.

“Twice, Ross, already this winter,” Crabb continued. “It’s cruelty, nothing less.” But the perpetrator of the outrage was smiling, and she leaned forward just then and laid her hand in that of her husband, saying with a laugh, “Mort, you know we’ll have to get Ross married at once.”

“Me?” said Burnett, in alarm.

“Of course. A bachelor only sneers at a Benedick when he has given up hoping – ”

“Oh, I say now – I’m not so old.”

“Then you do hope?”

“Oh, no, I only wait – for a miracle.”

“This isn’t the age of miracles,” remarked Patty thoughtfully, “at least not miracles of that kind. How can you expect anyone to fall in love with you if you go on leaping from one end of the earth to the other. No girl wants to marry a kangaroo – even a diplomatic kangaroo.” She paused and examined him with her head on one side. “And yet you know you’re passably decent looking – ”

“Oh, thanks!”

“Even distinguished – that foreign way of wearing your mustache is really quite fetching. You’ll do, I think, with some coaching.”

“Will you coach me?”

“I object,” interrupted Crabb, lazily.

“I will. You’re quite worth marrying – I’m at least sure you wouldn’t condemn your wife to her own lares and penates.”

“Not I. She’d get the wanderlust – or a divorce.”

“Don’t boast, worse vagabonds than you have been tamed – come now, what shall she be – blonde or brunette?”

Burnett shrugged his shoulders. “I’m quite indifferent – pigment is cheap nowadays.”

“Now you’re scoffing.”

Ross Burnett leaned back in his chair and smiled at the chandelier. Women had long ago been omitted from his list of possibilities. But Patricia was not to be denied.

“Married you shall be,” she said with the air of an oracle, “and before the year is out. I swear it.”

“But why do you want me to – ”

“Revenge!” she said tragically. “You helped marry me to Mort.”

And the young matron was as good as her word, though her method may have been unusual.

It came about in the following manner, and Burnett’s brother and Miss Millicent Darrow were her unconscious agents. Miss Darrow had gone to the Academy Exhibit. The rooms were comfortably crowded. She entered conscious of a certain dignity and repose in the character of her surroundings. She brought forth her catalogue, resolutely opened it to the first page and in a moment was oblivious to the people about her. She did not belong to the great army “who know what they like.” She had an instinctive perception of the good, and found herself not a little amazed at the amount of masterly work by younger men whose names she had never heard. It was an unpleasant commentary upon the mentality and taste of the set in which she moved, and she was conscious of a sense of guilt; for was she not a reflection of the shortcomings of those she was so ready to condemn? “The Plain – Evening – William Hazelton” – a direct rendering of an upland field at dusk, between portraits by well-known men; “Sylvia – Henry Marlow” – a girl in a green bodice painted with knowledge and assurance.

In another room were the things in a higher key – she knew them at a glance; and on the opposite wall a full-length portrait that looked like a Sargent. She was puzzled at the color, which was different from that of any man she remembered. The Sargents she knew were grouped in another room – and yet there was here the force and breadth of the master. She experienced the same perplexity – “Agatha – Philip Burnett,” said the catalogue. She sank upon a bench before it and gave herself up to quiet rapture.

“If I were a man,” she said at last, “that is how I should wish to paint, the drawing of Sargent, the poetry of Whistler, the grace of Alexander, the color of Benson. Philip Burnett,” she apostrophized, “I’m a Philistine. Forgive me.”

CHAPTER XII

It was very pleasant under the subdued lights from above. She followed the sweep of the drapery with delighted eye, taking an almost sensuous pleasure in the relation of color and the grace of the arms and throat – the simplicity of the modeling and the admirable characterization.

She found herself repeating:

“‘And those that were good shall be happy,They shall sit in a golden chair;They shall splash at a ten-league canvasWith brushes of comet’s hair.’

“Philip Burnett, I wonder if you’re good? You ought to be. I’d be good if I could paint like that. I’d work for an age at a sitting, too. How could one ever be tired making adagios in color? Oh!” she sighed, “how good it must be to amount to something!”

A procession of agreeable, vacuous faces passed before the canvas, creatures of a common fate, garbed in the uniform of convention, carrying the polite weapons of Vanity Fair, each like the others and as uninteresting. The few who wore the bright chevrons of distinction had marched with the throng for a time, but had gone back to their own. She wondered if it would really matter if she never saw them again; of course, the women – but the men. Would she care?

Was there not another life? It beckoned to her. What was Philip Burnett like? Could he be young and handsome as well as gifted? The vacuous faces vanished and in their place she could see this young genius – Antinous and Hercules combined – standing before this canvas living for the mere joy of work. Here was her answer. Was she to flit through enchanted gardens other people had planted, sipping only at the perfumed petals while the honey to be garnered was in plain sight?

A voice broke in just beside her:

“It’s convincing, but I tell you, Burnett, the arm’s too long.”

“Perhaps. Not bad, though, for a new man. You know we Burnetts are an exceptional race.”

The men moved away and the other’s reply was lost in the murmur of the crowd. Miss Darrow turned to follow them with her eyes – what a big fellow he was! with an admirable profile, a straight nose, a waxed mustache, and a chin like the one on the mask of Brutus. Conceited, of course! All artists were conceited. And who was that with him – Mortimer Crabb? Yes, and there was the bride talking to the Pendergasts.

“Why, Milly, dear!” Mrs. Pendergast passed an incurious but observant eye over her acquaintance. “I thought you were in Aiken. What a lovely hat! Are you going to the Inghams? What will you wear? Isn’t it restful here?”

Miss Darrow politely acquiesced and attempted replies, but her eyes strayed toward the Burnett portrait.

“Stunning,” continued Mrs. Pendergast. “A new man just over. Quite too clever. Wonderful color, isn’t it? Like a ripe pomegranate.”

“Have you met him?”

“No. He belongs to the Westchester Burnetts, though. Mrs. Hopkinson. So glad. Is Frederick here?”

The agreeable lady had made of the portion of the galleries in the neighborhood of the Burnett portrait a semblance of her own busy drawing-room. Other acquaintances came up and Miss Darrow was soon lost in the maze of small talk. A broad pair of shoulders were thrust forward into her group, and Miss Darrow found herself looking into a pair of quizzical gray eyes which were beaming a rather frank admiration into hers. “Miss Darrow – Mr. Burnett,” Patricia Crabb was saying; and Millicent Darrow was conscious that in a moment the new arrival had quietly and cleverly appropriated her and was taking her to the opposite side of the room where he found for her a Winslow Homer of rocks and stormy splendor.

“Why is it,” she asked, after her first enthusiasm, “that the work of the artist so seldom suggests its creator’s personality?”

“The perversity of the human animal,” he laughed. “That’s the system of justice of the great Republic of Art, Miss Darrow. If we lose a characteristic here, we gain it somewhere else. Rather a nice balance, don’t you think?”

“You hardly look the poet, Mr. Burnett – you don’t mind my saying so?” she laughed. “And if you do dream, you do it with your eyes very wide open.”

Mr. Burnett’s brows were tangled in bewilderment. “I’m really not much given to dreaming. I’m rather busy, you know.”

“It’s splendid of you. You’ve worked long?”

“Er – yes – since I left college,” he said, the tangle in his brows suddenly unraveling. A smile now illuminated his rather whimsical eyes. Miss Darrow found herself laughing frankly into them.

“Art is long – you must be at least – thirty.”

“Less,” he corrected. “Youth is my compensation for not being a lawyer – or a broker.”

She was conscious of the personal note in their conversation, but she made no effort to avoid it. This genius of less than thirty gave every token of sanity and good fellowship.

“Who is Agatha?” she asked suddenly.

“A – er – a friend of mine in Paris.”

“Oh!” she said, in confusion.

And then:

“The face is of the East – the Slav – did you choose her for that character?”

“Not at all. She was – er – just – just a sitter – a commission, you know.”

“How interesting!”

They had made the rounds of the room and were now facing the portrait again.

“It was lucky to have so good a model,” he continued. “One doesn’t always. Have you ever posed, Miss Darrow?”

“I? No, never. Father has been trying to get me painted this winter. But I’ve been so busy – and then we’re going South in two weeks – so we haven’t been able to manage it.”

“What a pity!” The subtle sparkle had died in his eyes, which from the shadow of their heavy lashes were regarding hers intently.

“You’re very kind. Would you really like to paint me?” said Miss Darrow. “Suppose I said you should. I want my portrait done. If you make me half as wonderful as Agatha, I shall die happy. Won’t you come in to-morrow at five? We can talk it over. I must be going now. No, not now, to-morrow. Au revoir.” She gave him her hand with a friendly nod, and threaded her way through the crowd, leaving Burnett staring at the card she had left in his hand.

On the way up-town in the machine Patricia examined him, smiling curiously.

“What a delusion you are, Ross Burnett! Railing in one moment at matrimony and in the next, tagging around like a tame bear at the heels of the first pretty girl that crosses your path.”

“She is pretty, isn’t she?” he admitted, promptly.

“And quite the rage – this is her third season you know. You seemed to be getting on very rapidly – ”

“Oh, it was all a mistake,” Burnett laughed. “She thought I was an artist.”

“An artist? What in the world – ”

“I’m going to do her portrait – ”

“You!” Patricia leaned forward eagerly. “What do you mean?”

“That I’m brother Philip – the chap that did the Agatha. She mistook me for him, and she was so nice about it that I didn’t like to interfere.”

Crabb was lighting a cigarette.

“I’m afraid, my dear Ross, that the East has sapped some of your moral fiber,” he said.

“It’s perfectly delightful,” laughed Patricia.

“But Ross can’t paint – ”

“I’d like to try,” said Burnett.

“Fiddlesticks!”

Patricia said no more, but all the way home her face wore a smile which would not come off. The miracle had happened. Had she searched New York she could not have found a girl more eminently suited to Ross Burnett. That night Mortimer had some writing to do, but Patricia and her guest sat for a long while talking earnestly in the library. They didn’t take Mortimer into their confidence, for Patricia had now gleefully donned the mantle her husband had so carelessly thrown aside. Here was an opportunity to make, and Patricia became the goddess in the machine.

CHAPTER XIII

Several days passed. Ross Burnett moved about the studio adjusting a canvas upon an easel, bringing out draperies, raising and lowering curtains, and peering into drawers and chests in a manner which betrayed an uncertain state of mind. At last he seemed to find what he was looking for – a drapery of soft gray material. This he cast over the back of the easel, walked back from it to the far side of the room where he put his head on one side and looked with half-closed eyes.

There was a clatter of the old French knocker. Burnett dropped his paint tubes and cigarette and opened the door.

“Am I late?” laughed Miss Darrow.

“You couldn’t come too early,” said Burnett. But he dubiously eyed the French maid who had entered bearing a huge portmanteau.

“I was so afraid to keep you waiting. You’re not very angry?”

“I’m sure I’ve been here since dawn,” he replied.

“Then let’s not waste any time. Oh, isn’t it charming! Where shall I go?”

He pushed open the door of the dressing room.

“I think you’ll find the mirror fair,” he said. “If there’s anything – ”

“How exciting! No. And I’ll be out in a jiffy.”

When the door was closed Burnett eyed the model-throne, the draperies, the chair, and the canvas, seeking a last inspiration before the imminent moment. He put a Japanese screen behind the chair and threw a scarlet drapery over one end of it, knocking at the rebellious folds to make them fall as he wished.

“Will I do?” asked the girl, radiantly emerging. She wore a black evening dress. The maid had thrown a filmy drapery over her which brought out the dull whiteness of the shoulders. “It is so different in the daytime,” she said, coloring; “but father has always wanted it so. You know I haven’t told him. It’s to be a surprise.”

Burnett’s color responded to hers. He bowed his head. “You are charming,” he murmured gallantly with a seriousness she could not fail to notice.

When Julie was dismissed to return at luncheon-time, Mr. Burnett conducted Miss Darrow to her throne and took his place before the canvas. She stood leaning easily upon the back of the chair, the lines of her slender figure sweeping down from the radiant head and shoulders into the dusky shadows behind her. She watched him curiously as he stood away from the easel to study the pose.

“If I only could – it’s splendid so,” he was murmuring, “but I wish you to sit.”

She acquiesced without question. “I feel like a specimen,” she sighed. “It’s a terrible ordeal. I’m all arms and hands. Must you squint?”

In Burnett’s laugh all restraint was liberated to the winds.

“Of course. All artists squint. It’s like the circular sweep of the thumb – a symbol of the craft.”

He walked behind her and adjusted the screen, taking away the crimson drapery and putting a greyish-green one in its place.

“There,” he cried, “just as you are. It’s stunning.”

She was leaning forward with an elbow on the chair arm, her hands clasped, one slender wrist at her chin.

“Really! You’re awfully easy to please – I wonder if I shall do as well as Agatha.”

He took up a charcoal – looked at its end, and made a slight adjustment of the easel. “Before we begin – there’s one thing I forgot.” He paused. “All painters are sensitive, you know. I’m rather queerer than most. I hope you won’t care.” The charcoal was now making rapid gyrations upon the surface of the canvas. “I’m awfully sensitive to criticism – in the early stages. I usually manage to pull out somehow – but in the beginning – when I’m drawing, laying in the figure – I don’t like my canvas seen. Sometimes it lasts even longer. You won’t mind not looking, will you?”

“I see. That’s what the grey thing is for. I don’t mind in the least; only I hope it will come soon. I’m wild to see. And please smoke. I know you want to.”

The grateful Burnett drew forth his cigarette-case and while his model rested busied himself among his tubes of paint, squeezing the colors out upon the palette.

“If you only knew,” he sighed, “how very difficult it seems.” But the large brush dipped into the paint and Burnett worked vigorously, a fine light glowing in his eyes. Miss Darrow watched the generous flow from the oil cup mingling with the colors.

“Hair,” he replied. He seemed so absorbed that she said no more, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or frown. Later she ventured:

“If it’s carroty I’ll never speak to you again. Please make it auburn, Mr. Burnett.”

He only worked the more rapidly. He seemed to be dipping into every color upon the palette, in the center of which had grown a brown of the color of walnut-juice. This he was applying vigorously to the lower part of the canvas. When the palette was cleared he put it aside and sank back in a chair with a sigh.

“Rest,” said the artist.

“I’m not in the least tired,” she replied.

“But I am. It takes it out of me to be so interested.”

“Does it?” She leaned back in her chair, regarding him with a new curiosity. “Do you know,” she added, “you are full of surprises – ”