Gibbs George
The Maker of Opportunities

CHAPTER VI

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 smiling at, or with her? 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 were its 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 the contretemps.

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 enough to 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 both with and at her.

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.

The blood flew to her face again and it was with an embarrassment, a gaucherie, 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 has all 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.

CHAPTER VII

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 – which New 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 the Blue Wing was 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 wondering if 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 certain Philadelphia 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 their cachet and 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 a fine 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.”

“All of 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 really was somebody. 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 he was 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 dancers interwove, 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.

CHAPTER VIII

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

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

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

A little disconcerted but undismayed, he continued:

“Because of the manner of our meeting.”

“Our meeting!” she said uncertainly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This time he fairly set her weapon flying.

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

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

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

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

She flushed a little before returning to the attack.

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

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

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

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

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

“How could I know you did?”

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

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

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

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

“And if I don’t forgive you?”

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

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

He looked the question.

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

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

“You mean – ”

She continued gazing at him steadily.

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

Patricia bowed her head.

“How could I have done so?” he urged.

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

“Yes, but I fail to see – ”

“Will you deny it?”

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

“For long?” she asked politely.

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

“Perhaps – ”

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

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

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