Opportunity has been depicted as a sturdy youth, girded for swift
flight, tapping lightly at one's door at uncertain intervals; then, when
one opens as quickly as may be, more often than not showing but a pair
of mischievous heels retreating into the mists of yesterdays--"Gone," we
are told solemnly, "never to return!" A truer philosophy recognizes
opportunity as the child of desire, and wholly dependent for continued
existence upon its parent. So when opportunity comes a-knocking (as
happens every day and wellnigh every hour of the day) let desire make
haste to run and open to its child, knowing well that opportunity is but
a weakling, and must be sheltered and nourished lest it perish with cold
and hunger on the very threshold that gave it birth.
A lover, whether or no he be an acknowledged lover in his own eyes and
in the eyes of his world, needs no teaching as to the relationship his
eager desires bear to his fleeting opportunities. In his case, at least,
opportunity obeys desire, as a child should ever obey its parent; and
this, if the mad world would only pause to examine, is the chief reason
why lovers are of all men happy.
All of which is submitted as a simple preamble to a simpler statement;
_videlicet_: because John Everett wished to see and converse with the
unconfessed object of his affections, he found ample opportunity to do
so, and this despite the fact that Jane Blythe herself did not wish it.
And here it should be observed that there is a wide disparity in the
quality and character of desire. John Everett's desire to know Jane was
natural, strong, vigorous, true. Jane's desire to keep the young man at
a distance was--to put it in the form of a vulgar
colloquialism--something of a fake. Therefore being a mere creature of
straw it stood no sort of a chance against the bold, aggressive,
opportunity-seeking wishes of John--as, indeed, it did not deserve.
Fraud, even though it be a nice, modest, girlish, innocent little fraud
like the one Jane was cherishing in her heart of hearts, should never be
tolerated.
And so, although Jane frowned upon John on every suitable occasion, John
the more determinedly smiled upon Jane, and she, being young and lovely
and, after all, a mere woman, grew (quite stealthily) prettier and
sweeter and more worthy to be smiled upon with every passing hour. And
this despite the vinegar and gall which she was forced to mingle with
her daily food partaken of in the Belknap kitchen under the glowering
eyes of Mary MacGrotty.
But opportunity when worthily fathered and properly nourished, as has
been noted, frequently grows into surprising stature and, moreover,
develops aspects which astonish even its fondest well-wisher. It is at
this point that Providence, luck, fate--what you will--is apt to take a
hand, and then--things happen.
The thirtieth day of May dawned clear and beautiful after a week of rain
and cloudy weather, and Mrs. Belknap looking anxiously from her window
in the early morning gave a girlish shout of joy. "What a glorious day
for our ride with the Sloans in their new motor car!" she cried. "You
haven't seen it, Jimmy; but it is the darlingest thing, all shiny and
cushiony, with big lunch baskets on the side and a lovely, deep, horn
arrangement that trails out behind on the breeze like an organ chord."
"The lunch baskets appeal to my most esthetic sensibilities," observed
Jimmy blandly. "I suppose the organ chord arrangement is designed to
distract the mind of the stationary public from the beastly smell of the
thing. Did you say the kid was asked too?"
"Certainly Buster is going," said his wife. "Do you think for a moment
I'd go off pleasuring and leave that blessed lamb at home all day?
But"--lowering her voice--"Mrs. Sloan didn't invite Jack, and I'm
_awfully worried_!"
"About what, dear? Jack won't mind; he can put in the day in any one of
a dozen ways."
"Of course he _can_; but there's one way I don't want him to put it in."
"What do you mean, dear girl? Don't look so doleful! One would suppose
you'd planned to spend the day in the cemetery."
"That's really the way one ought to spend it, I suppose," said Mrs.
Belknap patriotically. She was still drawing her pretty brows together
in a worried little frown; then she turned suddenly upon her husband.
"You know what I said to you about Jack? I've been watching him, and I'm
awfully afraid----"
Mr. Belknap was shaving, and at this unlucky instant he cut himself
slightly. "Nonsense, Margaret!" he exclaimed in an appropriate tone of
voice, "Jack doesn't need watching any more than I do; and if he did, it
isn't your place to do it."
"Why, Jimmy Belknap, how can you say such an unkind thing! Am I not
Jack's only sister? Of course I ought to care whether he is happy or
not, and I----"
"He seems to be happy enough lately," hazarded Mr. Belknap, pausing to
strop his razor with a slight access of irritation.
"That's exactly what I mean," put in his wife triumphantly; "don't you
see, dear? Jack _does_ seem happy, and that is why I am so uneasy."
"Do I understand you to say that as his only sister you wish to file a
demurrer in the case? If so, I'll----"
"_Jimmy!_"
Mr. Belknap leaned forward and eyed his lathered countenance intently as
he applied the glittering edge of his blade to his outstretched throat.
"It always makes me shiver to see you do that," breathed Mrs. Belknap;
"if that horrid thing should slip! But as I was saying, Jimmy, I can't
think how to manage about the girls to-day. It seems a pity to ask them
to stay at home; though, of course, we shall be awfully hungry for
dinner when we get home, and if Mary goes out, more than likely she'll
not be back in time to get dinner at all. And as for Jane----"
"By all means let them both go out for the day, my dear; you've really
no right to keep them in on a legal holiday. But I confess I don't
follow your 'as I was saying'; you weren't saying a word about the
servants. You were talking about Jack, and about Jack's being happy."
Mrs. Belknap looked justly offended. "If you would pay a little more
attention to what I say to you, Jimmy, you wouldn't appear so stupid on
occasions. No; I'll not explain further; you'd merely make it an excuse
to tease, and very likely you'd report the whole conversation to Tom
Sloan as a huge joke, and the two of you would roar over it; then I
should be obliged to explain to Mrs. Sloan, and she's a perfect sieve.
The whole affair would be all over town in no time, and that I simply
could not endure."
"I'm safe this time, Margaret," he assured her solemnly; "for, honest
Injin, I haven't a ghost of an idea as to what you're trying to get at!"
"I know what I'll do," cogitated his wife, waving him aside. "I'll
manage it so that the girls shall leave the house a full hour before we
do; they'll go to the city, of course. And I'll keep Jack here till
we're off; by that time Jane will be well out of the way, and----"
"O _Jane_!"
"I see you are beginning to understand _now_!" said Mrs. Belknap; then
she added plaintively, "I _wish_ I'd _never_ hired that girl, Jimmy!"
"I suppose there's very little use in asking why you persist in hanging
on to her?" said Mr. Belknap.
"Don't you _see_, dear, it wouldn't do a bit of good to send her away
now; indeed, I feel as if it were almost my _duty_ to keep her." Mrs.
Belknap said this with the resigned air of a martyr; and Mr. Belknap
wisely forebore to make any comment upon the surprising statement.
* * * * * *
It was delightfully fresh and breezy on the trolley car; and Jane on the
front seat keenly enjoyed the noisy rush through the green, daisied
fields and woods cool with shade and fragrant with wild flowers and
young ferns. In the streets of the villages through which the car passed
on its way to the ferry there was a brilliant flutter of flags, the
unfamiliar stars and stripes looking strange and foreign in Jane's
English eyes. Everywhere there were holiday crowds, little girls in
white frocks and shoes, bearing wreaths and bunches of flowers; little
boys in their best clothes with tiny flags in their buttonholes; women
carrying babies, and men carrying lunch baskets, and other and bigger
babies; showily dressed young girls with their beaux; besides a
multitude of the unattached eagerly going somewhere. Jane felt herself
to be very small and lonely and far from home in the midst of it all.
She had planned to spend her unexpected holiday with Bertha Forbes, and
when at the end of her journey she was informed by Miss Forbes's
landlady that Miss Forbes had departed to New Jersey for the day, she
turned away with a feeling of disappointment which almost amounted to
physical pain. What should she do? Where should she go, alone in the
great unfamiliar city of New York?
There were numberless excursions by boat and train and flag-decked
barges, and the throng of sightseers of every nationality jostled one
another good-humoredly, as they surged to and fro under the hot sun in
the narrow space at the terminals of the elevated and subway roads.
Jane's sad, bewildered little face under the brim of her unfashionable
hat attracted the attention of more than one passer-by, as she slowly
made her way to the ferry ticket office. She was going directly back to
Staten Island, with no better prospect in view then to pass the day
alone on the back porch of Mrs. Belknap's house, when the
might-have-been-expected unexpected happened; she came face to face with
John Everett, cool and handsome in his light summer suit and Panama hat.
The young man had evidently just landed from a Staten Island boat, and
his grim face brightened as his eyes lit upon Jane, hastily attempting
to conceal her small person behind a burly German woman bearing a
bundle, a basket, and a brace of babies in her capacious arms.
"_Jane!_" exclaimed Mr. Everett; "how glad I am to have met you. Where
were you going?"
"I am going back to Staten Island directly, sir."
"To do what?"
His eyes demanded nothing less than facts, and Jane, being
characteristically unable to frame a successful fib on the spur of the
moment, told the pitiful little truth.
"And so you were going back to stay all day on the outside of a locked
house--eh? A cheerful holiday you'd put in!"
"I meant to take a long, pleasant walk, of course," amended Jane,
"and----"
"Won't you take pity on me?" he pleaded. "I hadn't an idea how to spend
the day, so I'd started with an aimless notion of fetching up at the
country club and playing golf or tennis. But I don't care a nickel for
either. You've never seen New York, Jane, and now's your chance. You'll
be going back to England soon without ever having had a glimpse of this
town, and that would be really foolish, since you're here; don't you see
it would?"
Jane shook her head. "I--I couldn't," she hesitated; but her youthful
eyes shone wistfully bright, as all unknown to herself she turned to
cast a fleeting glance at the laughing holiday crowds pouring up to the
elevated and down to the subway stations.
"Why, of course you can!" he said positively; and before she knew what
had really happened she found herself, her weak objections overborne,
seated in a flying train which looked down upon the gay panorama of New
York's flag-decked streets.
"Where are--we going?" she asked him, and the little catch in her soft
voice raised John Everett to a seventh heaven of unreasoning happiness.
"How would you like," he asked, "to let this train carry us the entire
length of Manhattan Island--which is really the live heart of New York,
you know--and bring up at Bronx Park? I was there once with Buster, and
there are all sorts of queer birds and reptiles and animals to be seen,
and a pretty winding river--we'll go up it in a rowboat, if you like the
water; and we'll have our lunch in a little restaurant by the rocking
stone, and then----"
"But--I'm obliged to be at home by five o'clock," she told him with a
transient clouding of her bright eyes, "and--and I am afraid that Mrs.
Belknap----"
"Jane," he began, in a low, persuasive voice, "just listen to me for a
minute. You must have a reasonably independent character or you wouldn't
be here in America. You remember what you told me the other day of how
you came to leave your home in England; now that being the case, suppose
you make up your mind to forget all about my excellent sister and her
claims on you for just this one day and be yourself. Will you, Jane? It
will be a lot more fun for both of us, and it won't hurt anybody in the
world."
Jane drew a quick breath. "I'd like to," she said honestly.
At that very moment Mrs. Belknap, becomingly veiled and gowned and
leaning back complacently against the luxurious cushions of Mrs. Sloan's
new automobile, was saying to her hostess: "Oh, thank you so much for
thinking to inquire after my brother! Yes, John is spending the day at
the country club; he used to be a champion golf player--did you know it?
and he enjoys a day on the links beyond anything." Then this sapient
young matron permitted the carking cares of everyday life to trail away
into the dust-laden distance with the mellow honking of the great
horn--an experiment which Jane and John Everett were also trying to
their mutual satisfaction on the sun-lit reaches of the Bronx River.
The boat which they hired at a rickety little landing stage was an
unwieldy flat-iron shaped scow, designed with an eye to the safety of
the inexperienced public as well as the profit of the owner; but Jane,
bright-eyed and pink cheeked, seated in the big square stern, was not
too far away from John on the rower's seat, and the unwieldy craft
presently carried the two of them around a wooded bend, out of sight of
a group of roystering picnickers on the bank, into a quiet nook where
the tall trees looked down at their reflection in the lazily flowing
water.
"It reminds me," said Jane with a sigh, "of England; there is a river
like this near Uncle Robert's place in Kent, only it isn't muddy like
this."
"One has to be far from home to really appreciate its strong points," he
observed meditatively; "I never shall forget how I felt after nearly a
year abroad when I came suddenly upon the American flag waving over a
consulate building somewhere in Italy. I hadn't an idea up to that
moment that I was particularly patriotic, and I'd been enjoying my trip
immensely, but I could have fallen on the neck of the wizened little
chap inside just because he was born in Schenectady, New York. But as a
matter of fact, Jane, our rivers are not all muddy; you ought to travel
about and see more of America before you allow yourself to form
cast-iron opinions about it. You've seen nothing but our seamy side yet,
and quite naturally you can't help setting America down as a very
disagreeable place, and bunching all Americans as cads."
Jane's brilliant little face dimpled mischievously. "Oh, no, I don't,"
she said sweetly; "I have the highest possible esteem for Bertha Forbes.
She is an American and a very superior person, I am sure."
"You mean by that, I suppose, that you think her fair-minded and
kind-hearted; don't you?"
"I suppose I do," admitted Jane. "Bertha is clever, too, and
amusing--sometimes."
"Nearly all Americans are clever and amusing, in spots," he said
confidently, "and numbers of us can fill the rest of the bill clear down
to the ground; you'll see, Jane, when you come to know us better."
She shook her head. "I am going back to England in June," she said, "and
I never expect to come back."
"Do you mean that you never want to come back?"
Jane shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I might possibly return to travel
about sometime," she admitted, her mind reverting to Mr. Towles's
parting words. "I am very fond of travel."
"So am I," he said somewhat ruefully, "but I fear I'll not do much of it
for some years to come."
Jane's eyes remained pensively fixed upon the opposite shore. She was
apparently quite indifferent to Mr. Everett's future prospects, and
after a short pause, which he devoted to a careful study of the girl's
clear profile, he observed tentatively: "I hope you'll not lay it up
against Margaret--the way she treats you and all, I mean. She's really
an uncommonly good sort, when one comes to know her; but, of course, she
can't--I mean she doesn't understand----"
"I thought we were to forget Mrs. Belknap for this one day?" murmured
Jane, with a little curl of her pretty lips.
He flushed uncomfortably. "What I meant to say was this: it occurred to
me that it might be advisable for you to make a clean breast of the
whole thing; to--to tell Margaret all about yourself and how you came to
leave England, and so put yourself right. I--I wish you would, Jane."
She fixed her clear eyes upon him thoughtfully. "It has occurred to me,
too," she said; "but--there is really no need to say anything to Mrs.
Belknap. I shall try to do my work as well as I can while I am in her
house; after that,"--she paused, then went on deliberately--"I shall go
away, and that will be the end of it."
He dipped his oars strongly. "It shall not be the end of it," he told
himself determinedly. Aloud he said, with a fine show of indifference:
"You will, of course, do as you like; but I am sure Margaret would be
glad if you would take her into your confidence."
Jane smiled with a fine feminine understanding which was lost on the
man. "It will be much better not, I am sure," she said sweetly.