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.
"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."