For a moment there was no sound. The burglars looked at the Baron and the Baron looked at the burglars, mouths and eyes open alike. Then, even before Crabb could display his intimidating revolver, the German had disappeared through the door screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Quick! Out of the window!” said Crabb, helping Burnett over the sill. “Down you go—I’ll follow. Don’t fall. If you miss your footing, we’re ruined.”
Burnett scrambled out, over the coping and down the ladder, Crabb almost on his fingers. But they reached the yard in safety and were out in the alley running in the shadow of the fence before a venturesome head stuck forth from the open window and a revolver blazed into the vacant air.
“The devil!” said Crabb. “They’ll haveevery copper in the city on us in a minute. This way.” He turned into a narrow alley at right angles to the other. “Off with the coat as you go—now, the mustache and grease paint. Take your time. Into this sewer with the coats. So!”
Two gentlemen in light topcoats, one in a cap, the other in a hat, walked up N street arm in arm, thickly singing. Their shirt fronts and hair were rumpled, their legs were not too steady, and they clung affectionately to each other for support and sang thickly.
A window flew up and a tousled head appeared.
“Hey!” yelled a voice. “Burglars in the alley!”
“Burglars!” said one of the singers; and then: “Go to bed. You’re drunk.”
More sounds of windows, the blowing of night whistles and hurrying feet.
Still the revelers sang on.
A stout policeman, clamorous and bellicose, broke in.
“Did you see ’em? Did you see ’em?” he cried, glaring into their faces. Bleary eyes returned his look.
“W-who?” said the voices in unison.
“Burglars,” roared the copper. “If I wasn’t busy I’d run ye in.” And he was off at full speed on his vagrant mission.
“Lucky you’re busy, old chap,” muttered Crabb to the departing figure. “Do sober up a little, Ross, or we’ll never get away. And don’t jostle me so, for I clank like a bellwether.”
Slowly the pair made their way to Thomas Circle and Vermont Avenue, where the sounds of commotion were lost in the noises of the night.
At L Street Burnett straightened up. “Lord!” he gasped. “But that was close.”
“Not as close as it looked,” said Crabb, coolly. “A white shirt-front does wonders with a copper. It was better than a knock on the head and a run for it. In the meanwhile, Ross, for the love of Heaven, help me withsome of the bric-à-brac.” And with that he handed Burnett a gold pin tray, a silver box and a watch fob.
Burnett soberly examined the spoils. “I only wish we could have done without that.”
“And had Arnim know what we were driving for? Never, Ross. I’ll pawn them in New York for as little as I can and send von Schlichter the tickets. Won’t that do?”
“I suppose it must,” said Burnett, dubiously.
By three o’clock they were on theBlue Wingagain, Burnett with mingled feelings of doubt and satisfaction, Crabb afire with the achievement.
“Rasselas was a fool, Ross, a malcontent—afainéant. Life is amazing, bewitching, consummate.” And then, gayly: “Here’s a health, boy—a long life to the new ambassador to the Court of St. James!”
But Ross did not go to the Court of St.James. In the following winter, to the surprise of many, the President gave him a special mission to prepare a trade treaty with Peru. Baron Arnim, in due course, recovered his bric-à-brac. Meanwhile Emperor William, mystified at the amazing sagacity of the Secretary of State in the Eastern question, continues the building of a mighty navy in the fear that one day the upstart nation across the ocean will bring the questions complicating them to an issue.
But life was no longer amusing, bewitching or consummate to Crabb. The flavor of an adventure gone from his mouth, the commonplace became more flat and tasteless than before. Life was all pale drabs and grays again. To make matters worse he had been obliged to make a business visit in Philadelphia, and this filled the cup of insipidity to the brim. He was almost ready to wish that his benighted forbears had never owned the coal mines in Pennsylvania to which he had fallen heir, for it seemed there were manymatters to be settled, contracts to be signed and leases to be drawn by his attorney in the sleepy city, and it would be several days, he discovered, before he could get off to Newport. Not even theBlue Wingwas at his disposal, for an accident in the engine room had laid her out of commission for two weeks at least.
So he resigned himself to the inevitable, and took a room at a hotel, grimly determined to see the matter through, conscious meanwhile of a fervid hope that the unusual might happen—the lightning might strike. Hate he had known and fear, but love had so far eluded him. Why, he did not know, save that he had never been willing to perceive that emotion when offered in conventional forms—and since no other forms were possible, he had simply ceased to consider the matter. Yet marry some day, he must, of course. But whom? Little he dreamed how soon he would know. Little did Miss Patricia Wharton think that she had anything to do with it.In fact, Patricia’s thoughts at that time were far from matrimony. Patricia was bored. For a month while Wharton père boiled out his gout at the sulphur springs, Patricia had dutifully sat and rocked, tapping a small foot impatiently, looking hourly less a monument of Patience and smiling not at all.
At last they were in Philadelphia. Wilson had opened two rooms at the house and a speedy termination of David Wharton’s business would have seen them soon at Bar Harbor. But something went wrong at the office in Chestnut Street, and Patricia, once a lamb and now a sheep of sacrifice, found herself at this particular moment doomed to another weary week of waiting.
To make matters worse not a girl Patricia knew was in town, or if there were any the telephone refused to discover them. Her aunt’s place was at Haverford, but she knew that an invitation to dinner there meant aged Quaker cousins and that kind of creaky informality which shows a need of oil at thejoints. That lubricant Patricia had no intention of supplying. She had rather be bored alone than bored in company. She found herself sighing for Bar Harbor as she had never sighed before. She pictured the cottage, cool and gray among the rocks, the blue bowl of the sea with its rim just at her window-ledge, the clamoring surf, and the briny smell with its faint suggestion of things cool and curious which came up newly breathed from the heart of the deep. She could hear “Country Girl” whinnying impatience from the stable when Jack Masters on “Kentucky” rode down from “The Pinnacle” to inquire.
Indeed, as she walked out into the Square in the afternoon she found herself relapsing into a minute and somewhat sordid introspection. It was the weather, perhaps. Surely the dog-days had settled upon the sleepy city in earnest. No breath stirred the famishing trees, the smell of hot asphalt was in the air, locusts buzzed vigorously everywhere, trolley bells clanged out of tune, and the sun wasleaving a blood-hot trail across the sky in angry augury for the morrow.
Patricia sank upon a bench, and poked viciously at the walk with her parasol. She experienced a certain grim satisfaction in being more than usually alone. Poor Patricia! who at the crooking of a finger, could have summoned to her side any one of five estimable scions of stupid, distinguished families. Only something new, something difficult and extraordinary would lift her from the hopeless slough of despond into which she had found herself precipitated.
Andromeda awaiting Perseus on a bench in Rittenhouse Square! She smiled widely and unrestrainedly up and precisely into the face of Mr. Mortimer Crabb.
A pleasant face it was, upon which, to her surprise, a smile very suddenly grew into being as though in response to her own. Patricia’s eyes dropped quickly—sedately, as became those of a decorous woman, and yet in that brief second in which the eyes of the tall young man met hers, she had noticed that they were gray, as though sun-bleached, but very clear and sparkling. And when she raised her own to look quite through and beyond the opposite bench, her conscience refused to deny that she had enjoyed the looking. Were the eyes smilingat, orwithher? In that distinction lay a question in morals. Was their sparkle quizzical or intrusive? She would have vowed that good humor, benevolence (if benevolence may be found in the eyes of two and thirty), and a certain polite interest wereits actual ingredients. It was all very interesting. She surprised herself in a not unlively curiosity as to his life and calling, and in a lack of any sort of misgiving at thecontretemps.
The shadows beneath the wilted trees grew deeper. The sun swept down into the west and suddenly vanished with all his train of gold and purple. Patricia stole a furtive look at her neighbor. Triumphantly she confirmed her diagnosis. The man was lost in the glow of the sunset. Importunity and he were miles asunder.
It may have been that Patricia’s eyes were more potent than the sunset, or that her triumphant deduction was based upon a false premise, or that the young man had been watching her all the while from the tail of his benevolent eye; for without the slightest warning, his head turned suddenly to find the eyes of the unfortunate Patricia again fixed upon his. However quickly she might turn aside, the glance exchanged was long enoughto disclose the fact that the sparkle was still there and to excite a suspicion that it had never been dispelled. Nor did the character of the smile reassure her. She was not at all certain now that he was not smiling bothwithandather.
The quickly averted head, the toss of the chin, seemed all too inadequate to the situation; yet she availed herself of those bulwarks of maiden modesty in virtuous effort to refute the unconscious testimony of her unlucky eyes. Instinct suggested immediate flight. But Patricia moved not. Here indeed was a case where flight meant confession. She felt rather than saw his gaze search her from head to foot, and struggle as she might against it, the warm color raced to her cheek and brow. If she had enjoyed the situation a moment before, the impertinence, so suddenly born, filled her with dismay. By some subtle feminine process of reasoning, she succeeded in eliminating her share in the trifling adventure and now saw only the sin of the offending male.At last she arose, the very presentment of injured and scornful dignity and walked, looking neither to the left hand nor to the right.
There was a sound of firm, rapid footsteps and then a deep voice at her elbow.
“I beg pardon,” it was saying.
The lifted straw hat, the inclined head, the mellow tones, the gray eyes (again benevolent), however unalarming in themselves, filled her with very real inquietude. Whatever he had done before, this, surely, was insupportable. She was about to turn away when her eye fell upon his extended arm and upon her luckless parasol.
“I beg pardon,” he repeated, “but isn’t this yours?”
“‘I beg pardon,’ he repeated, ‘but isn’t this yours?’”“‘I beg pardon,’ he repeated, ‘but isn’t this yours?’”
The blood flew to her face again and it was with an embarrassment, agaucherie, the like of which she could not remember, that she extended her hand toward the errant sunshade. No sound came from her lips; with bent head she took it from him. But as she walked on, she found that he was walking, too—with her,directly at her side. For a moment she was cold with terror.
“I hope you’ll let me go along,” he was saying coolly, “I’m really quite harmless. If you knew—if you only knew how dreadfully bored I’ve been, you really wouldn’t mind me at all.”
Patricia stole a hurried glance at him, her fears curiously diminished.
“I’m what the fallen call a victim of circumstances,” he went on. “I ask no worse fate for my dearest enemy than to be consigned without a friend to this wilderness of whitened stoops and boarded doors—to wait upon your city’s demigod, Procrastination. This I’ve done for forty-eight hours with a dear memory of a past but without a hope for the future. If the Fountain of Youth were to gush hopefully from the office water-cooler of my aged lawyer, he would eye it askance and sigh for the lees of the turbid Schuylkill.”
However she strove to lift her brows, Patricia was smiling now in spite of herself.
“I’ve followed the meandering tide down the narrow cañon you call Chestnut Street, watched the leisurely coal wagon and its attendant tail of trolleys, or sat in my hotel striving to dust aside the accumulating cobwebs, one small unquiet molecule of disconsolation. I’m stranded—marooned. By comparison, Crusoe was gregarious.”
During this while they were walking north. All the way to Chestnut Street, Patricia was wondering whether to be most alarmed or amused. Of one thing she was assured, she was bored no longer. A sense of the violence done to her traditions hung like a millstone around her neck; and yet Patricia found herself peeping avidly through the hole to listen to the seductive voice of unconvention.
When Patricia succeeded in summoning her voice, she was not quite sure that it was her own.
“You’re an impertinent person,” she found herself saying.
“Can’t you forgive?”
“No.”
“Circumstances are against me,” he said, “but I give you my word, I’ve a place in my own city, a friend or two, and a certain proclivity for virtue.”
“Even if you do—speak to strange——”
“But I don’t. It was the blessed parasol. Otherwise I shouldn’t have dared.”
“And the proclivity for virtue——”
“Why, that’s exactly the reason. Can’t you see? It was you! You fairly exuded gentility. Come now, I’m humility itself. I’ve sinned. How can I expiate?”
“By letting me go home to dinner.”
Patricia was laughing this time. The man was looking at his watch.
“What a brute I am!” He stopped, took off his hat and turned away. And here it was that some little frivolous genius put unmeditated words upon Patricia’s tongue.
“I’m not so dreadfully hungry,” she said.
After all, he had been impertinent so very courteously.
In a moment he was at her side again.
“That was kind of you. Perhaps you’ve forgiven me.”
“N—no,” with rising inflection.
“Come now! Let’s be friends, just for this little while. Let’s begin at once to believe we’ve known each other always—just for to-night. I will be getting out of town to-morrow and we won’t meet again. I’m certain of that.”
“How can I be sure?” Patricia spoke as though thinking aloud.
“They’ve promised me this time. I’ll go away to-morrow. If my papers aren’t ready I’ll leave without them.”
“Will you give me your word?”
“Upon my honor.”
Patricia turned for the first time and looked directly up at him. What value could she set upon the honor of one she knew not?Whatever the feminine process of examination, she seemed satisfied.
“What can I do? It’s almost dusk.”
“I was about to suggest—er—I thought perhaps you might be willing to—er—go and have a bite—to eat—in fact, dinner.”
Patricia stopped and looked up at him in startled abstraction. The word and its train of associated ideas evolved in significant fashion from her mental topsy-turvy. Dinner! With a strange man in a public place! The prosaic word took new and curious meanings unwritten upon the lexicon of her code. There was the tangible presentation of her sin—that she might read and run while there was yet time. How had it all happened? What had this insolent person said to make it possible for her to forget herself for so long?
With no word of explanation her small feet went hurrying down the hill while his big ones strode protestingly alongside.
“Well?” he said at last.
But she gave him no answer and only walked the faster.
“You’re going?”
“Home—at once.” She spoke with cold incisiveness.
He walked along a few moments in silence—then said assertively:
“You’re afraid.”
For reply she only shook her head.
“It’s true,” he went on. “You’re afraid. A moment ago, you were willing to forget we had just met. Now in a breath you’re willing to forget that we’ve met at all.”
But she would not answer.
He glanced at the poise of the haughty head just below his own. Was it mock virtue? He felt thoroughly justified in believing it so.
They had reached a corner. Patricia stopped.
“You’ll let me go here, won’t you? You’ll not follow me or try to find out anything, will you? Say you won’t, please, please! It hasall been a dreadful mistake—how dreadful I didn’t know until—until just now. I must go—alone, you understand—alone——”
“But it is getting dark, you——”
“No, no! It doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid. How can I be—now? Please let me go—alone. Good-by!”
And in a moment she had vanished in the cross street.
Mortimer Crabb watched the retreating figure.
“H-m,” he said, “the Eternal Question—as usual—without the answer. And yet I would have sworn that that parasol in the Square——”
He had always possessed an attitude of amused and tolerant patronage for the City of Brotherly Love—it was the birthright of any typical New Yorker—and yet since that inconsiderable adventure in Rittenhouse Square, he had discovered undreamed-of virtues in the Pennsylvania metropolis. It was a city not of apartments, but of homes—homes in which men lived with their families and brought up interesting children in the old-fashioned way—a city of conservative progress, of historic association, of well-guarded tradition—an American city, in short—whichNew York was not. At the Bachelors’ Club he sang its praises, and mentioned a plan of wintering there, but was laughed at for his pains. Anything unusual and extraordinary was to be expected of Mortimer Crabb. But a winter in Philadelphia! This was too preposterous.
Crabb said nothing in reply. He only smiled politely and when theBlue Wingwas put in commission went off on a cruise with no other company but his thoughts and Captain Jepson. Jepson under ordinary circumstances would have been sufficient, but now Mortimer Crabb spent much time in a deck chair reading in a book of poems, or idly gazing at the swirl of foam in the vessel’s wake. Jepson wondered what he was thinking of, for Crabb was not a man to spend much time in dreaming, and the Captain would have given much that he possessed to know. He would have been surprised if Mortimer Crabb had told him. To tell the truth Crabb was thinking—of a parasol. He was wonderingif after all, his judgment had been erring. The lady in the Square had left the parasol, it was true. But then all the tribe of parasols and umbrellas seemed born to the fate of being neglected and forgotten, and there was no reason why this particular specimen of the genus should be exempt from the frailties of its kind. As he remembered, it was a flimsy thing of green silk and lace, obviously a French frippery which might be readily guilty of such a form of naughtiness.
It had long worried him to think that he might have misjudged the sleeping princess—as he had learned to call her—and he knew that it would continue to worry him until he proved the matter one way or another for himself. Had she really forgotten the parasol? Or had she—not forgotten it?
The cruise ended, the summer lengthened into fall, and winter found Mortimer Crabb established in residence at a fashionable hotel in Philadelphia.
Letters had come from New York to certainPhiladelphia dowagers in the councils of the mighty, to the end that in due course Crabb accepted for several desirable dinners, and before he knew he found himself in the full swing of a social season. And so when the night of the Assembly came around, he found himself dining at the house of one of his sponsors in a party wholly given over to the magnification of three tremulous young female persons, who were to receive theircachetand certificate of eligibility in attending that ancient and honorable function.
It was just at the top of the steps leading to the foyer of the ball-room that Crabb met Patricia Wharton in the crowd, face to face. The encounter was unavoidable. He saw the brief question in her glance before she placed him, the vanishing smile, the momentary pallor, and then was conscious that she had gone by, her eyes looking past him, her brows slightly raised, her lips drawn together, the very letter of indifference and contempt. It was cutting advanced to the dignity of afine art. Crabb felt the color rise to his temples and heard the young bud at his side saying:
“What is it, Mr. Crabb? You look as if you’d seen the ghost of all your past transgressions.”
“Allof them, Miss Cheston! Oh, I hope I don’t look as bad as that,” he laughed. “Only one—a very tiny one.”
“Do tell me,” cried the bud.
“First, let’s safely run the gantlet of the lorgnons.”
When the party was assembled and past the grenadiers who jealously guard the sacred inner bulwarks, Crabb was glad to relinquish his companion to another, while he sought seclusion behind a bank of azaleas to watch the moving dancers. So she reallywassomebody. He began, for a moment, to doubt the testimony of the vagrant glances and the guilty parasol. Could he have been mistaken? Had she really forgotten the parasol after all? The situation was brutal enough for her and hewas quite prepared to respect her delicacy. What he did resent was the way in which she had done it. She had taken to cover angrily and stood at bay with all her woman’s weapons sharpened. The curl of lip and narrowed eye bespoke a degree of disdain quite out of proportion to the offense. But he made a rapid resolution not to seek her or meet her eye. If his was the fault, it was the only reparation he could offer her.
As he whirled around the room with his little bud, he caught a glimpse of her upon the opposite side and so maneuvered that he would come no nearer. When he had guided his partner to a seat, it did not take him long to gratify a very natural curiosity.
“Will you tell me,” he asked, “who—no, don’t look now—the girl in the black spangly dress is?”
“Who? Where?” asked Miss Cheston. “Patricia, you mean? Of course! Miss Wharton, my cousin. Haven’t you met her?”
“Er—no! She’s good-looking.”
“Isn’t she? And the dearest creature—but rather cold and the least bit prim.”
“Pri—Oh, really!”
“Yes! We’re Quakers, you know. She belongs to the older set. Perhaps that’s why she seems a trifle cold and—er—conventional.”
“Convent—! Oh, yes, of course.”
“You know we’re really quite a breezy lot, if you only know us. Some of this year’s debs are really very dreadful.”
“How shocking, and Miss Wharton is not dreadful?”
“Oh, dear, no. But she is awfully good fun. Come, you must meet her. Let me take you over.”
But good fortune in the person of Stephen Ventnor intervened.
It was the unexpected which was to happen. Crabb was returning from the table with a favor. His eye ran along the line of chairs in a brief fruitless search. Mr. Barclay, who was leading the cotillion, caught his eye at this precise psychological moment.
“Stranded, Crabb? Let me present you to——”
He mentioned no name but was off in a moment winding in and out among those on the floor. Crabb followed. When he had succeeded in eluding the imminent dancers and had reached the other side of the room, there was Barclay bending over.
“Awfully nice chap—stranger,” he was saying, and then aloud, “Miss Wharton, may I present—Mr. Crabb?”
It was all over in a moment. The crowded room had hidden the black dress and the fair hair. But it was too late. Barclay was off in a second and there they were looking again into each other’s eyes, Patricia pale and cold as stone, Crabb a trifle ill at ease at the awkward situation which, however appearances were against him, was none of his choosing.
Crabb inclined his head and extended the hand which carried his favor. They both glanced down, seeking in that innocent trinket a momentary refuge from the predicament.It was then for the first time that Crabb discovered the thing he was offering her—a little frivolous green silk parasol.
She looked up at him again, her eyes blazing, but she rose to her feet and looked around her as though seeking some mode of escape. He fully expected that she would refuse to dance, and was preparing to withdraw as gracefully as he might when, with chin erect and eyes which looked and carried her spirit quite beyond him, she took the parasol and followed him upon the floor.
But the subtlety of suggestion which seemed to possess Crabb’s particular little comedy was to be still more amusingly developed. The figure in which they became a part was a pretty vari-colored whirl of flowers and ribbons, in which the green parasols were destined to play a part. For a miniature Maypole was brought and the parasols were fastened to the depending ribbons in accordance with their color.
As the figure progressed and the dancersinterwove, Crabb could not fail to note the recurrent intentional snub. He felt himself blameless in the unlucky situation, and this needless display of hostility so clearly expressed seemed made in very bad taste. Each time he passed the flaunted shoulder, the upcast chin, or curling lip, he found his humility to be growing less and less until as the dance neared its end he glowed with a very righteous ire. If she had meant to deny him completely, she should have chosen the opportunity when he had first come up. And as he passed her, he rejoiced in the discovery that she had inadvertently chosen the other end of the ribbon attached to the very parasol which he bore. When the May dance was over, Miss Wharton found Mr. Crabb at her side handing her the green parasol precisely as he had handed her that other one in the Square six months before.
“I beg pardon,” he was saying quizzically, “but isn’t this yours?”
The accent and benevolent eye were unmistakable.If there were any arrow in her quiver of scorn unshot, his effrontery completely disarmed her. If looks could have killed, Crabb must have died at once. Assured of the depths of his infamy, she could only murmur rather faintly:
“I shall go to my seat, at once, please.” Indeed, Crabb was a very lively corpse. He was smiling coolly down at her.
“Certainly, if you wish it. Only—er—I hope you’ll let me go along.”
How she hated him! The words uttered again with the same smiling effrontery seemed to be burned anew into her memory. Could she never be free from this inevitable man? Her seat was at the far end of the room.
“I think you have done me some injustice,” he said quietly, and then, “It has been a pleasant dance. Thank you so much.”
“Thank you,” replied Patricia acidly, and he was gone.
Miss Wharton rather crossly dismissed her weary maid, and threw herself into an armchair. Odious situation! Her peccadillo had found her out! What made the matter still worse was the ingenuous impeccability of her villain. On every hand she heard his praises sung. And it vexed her that she had been unable to contribute anything to his detriment. Of course, after seeing her leave the parasol it would have been stupid of him to—to let her forget it. In her thoughts that adventure had long since been condoned. It was this newrencontrewhich had so upset her. It angered her to think how little delicacy he gave her credit for when he had asked Jack Barclay to present him. If they had met by chance, it would have been different. She would have been sharply civil, but not retrospective; andwould have trusted to his sense of the situation to be the same. That he had assailed her helpless barriers, wrote him down a brute, divested him of all the garments of sensibility in which she had clothed him. It angered her to think that her fancy had seen fit to make him any other than he was. But mingled with her anger, she was surprised to discover disappointment, too. It was this—this person who shared with her the secret of her one iniquity.
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 sherose 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 hersang-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 creditfor 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.
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 personwho 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 drippingCrabb 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 tellme? 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.”
But the Great Head rocks didn’t hear.
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 theBlue Wingappeared 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 marriedthe Lord of Burleigh. Then Jepson gave some mysterious orders and before long she was reclining luxuriously in a deck chair and theBlue Wingwas 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 theBlue Wing?”
“But you foundmefirst,” he laughed.
“Did I?” archly.
“If you still doubt it, there’s the parasol!”
The mention of the parasol always silenced her.
That was one of many cruises, and theBlue Wingcontributed not a little to the gayety of the waning days of summer at Mount Desert. It was theBlue 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, andmost 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 theBlue 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 ofentertainments 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. Tothose 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 heisclever. 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 mindin a disordered procession, all culminating in the incident which had brought him to ruin. Every detail ofthatat 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 gossipychauffeur 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.