George Gibbs

“ Patricia had decided that Aurora North was to marry Steve Ventnor, and this resolution made she left no stone unturned to bring the happy event to a consummation. The skilful maker of opportunities she remembered sometimes trusted to opportunity to make itself. Propinquity, she knew, was her first lieutenant and the unobtrusive way in which these two young people were continually thrown together must have been a surprise even to themselves. ”

“ 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 package fell to the floor amid the fluttering bills. Patricia’s knees trembled and she would have fallen had not a pair of strong arms gone about her and held her up.
“It’s only Mort, Patty,” said a voice. “Don’t you understand? It’s all been a deception and mistake. There isn’t any John Doe. It’s only your husband——”
“Oh, how could you, Mort?” sobbed Patricia. “How could you be so hard—so—so cruel?”
Crabb’s answer was to push the veil back from his wife’s face and kiss away her tears. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII Thus ended the might-have-beens. And the thing that Patricia had taken to be the phantom of romance went up in the smoke of John Doe’s fire. Mortimer Crabb never volunteered any information as to how he got the letters, nor any information as to what became of Heywood Pennington. For one horrible moment the thought crossed Patricia’s brain that perhaps there had never been any letters of hers in the package her husband had burned, but she dismissed it at once as reflecting unpleasantly upon the quality of her intelligence. ”

“ There have been a few bright spots”—Crabb smiled at his cigar ash—“a very few, and far between.”
“Bored as ever, Crabb?”
“Immitigably. To live in the thick of things and see nothing but the pale drabs and grays. No red anywhere. Oh, for a passion [35] that would burn and sear—love, hate, fear! I’m forever courting them all. And here I am still cool, colorless and unscarred. Only once”—his gray eyes lit up marvelously—“only once did I learn the true relation of life to death, Burnett; only once. That was when the Blue Wing struggled six days in a hurricane with Hatteras under her lee. ”

“ Patricia realized, too, that the famous gold cup might not be the only prize at stake.
“And now,” she said wrathfully, “she’ll probably marry that person.” Mr. McLemore would have withered could he have seen the expression in Patricia’s eyes, for when Patricia called any human being a “person,” it meant that her thoughts were unutterable.
“I suppose so,” said Penelope.
“I’ve no patience with Aurora North,” said Patty, “she’s absolutely lacking in a sense of proportion. Imagine letting one’s life happiness hang on the fate of a single putt.”
“And Steve is such a dear.” ”

“ At the veranda steps Mortimer Crabb took him in tow and brought him to the table where Penelope and Patricia were mournfully absorbing lemonade.
“Too bad, Steve,” said Patricia with a brightness that failed to deceive. “Nobody with mere blood in his veins can expect to compete with a hydraulic ram. He’s a wonderful piece of mechanism—Jimmy is—but I’m always tortured with the fear that he may forget to wind himself up some morning. Mort, couldn’t you have dropped a little sand in his bearings?” ”

“ Few women who have been adored as Patricia had been are willing too abruptly to shut the door upon the memory of the might-have-beens. The coquette in her was dying hard—as it sometimes does in childless women. She still liked the attentions to which she had been accustomed, and her husband saw that she was constantly amused—provided with clever men from his clubs as dance partners for the Philadelphia girls who visited them. Stephen Ventnor, who was selling bonds down-town, had been persuaded at last to forget his troubles and now came frequently to dinner. ”

“ She dropped out of the pose. “Are you ill?”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. With the setting aside of the brushes and palette, Burnett seemed to put away the shadow that had been hanging over his thoughts all the morning. He stood beside her and was looking frankly into her eyes. She saw something in his that had not been there before, for she looked away, past the chimneys and apartment houses, past the clouds, and into the void that was beyond the blue. ”

“ 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! ”

“ From the alley the pair would not have presented an appearance which accorded [50] with the quiet splendor of the room. He found himself peering around, his ears straining for the slightest sound.
A glance revealed the dispatch-box, heavy, squat and phlegmatic, like its owner. Crabb had tiptoed over to the door of the adjoining room. Burnett saw the eyes dilate and the warning finger to his lips.
From the inner apartment, slowly and regularly, came the sound of heavy breathing. There, in a broad armchair by the foot of the bed, sprawled the baron’s valet, in stertorous sleep. ”

“ I feel like a feudal baron with a captured princess. Here are you, that most inaccessible of persons, the Woman of Society, doomed every morning for two weeks to play Darby and Joan with a man you’ve known only three days. How on earth can a fellow survive seeing a girl he likes behind cups of tea! It’s rough, I think. Society seems to accomplish every purpose but its avowed one. Instead of which everybody plays puss-in-the-corner. A fellow might have a chance if the corners weren’t so far apart. ”

“ In Burnett’s laugh all restraint was liberated to the winds.
“Of course. All artists squint. It’s like the circular sweep of the thumb—a symbol of the craft.”
He walked behind her and adjusted the screen, taking away the crimson drapery and putting a greyish-green one in its place.
“There,” he cried, “just as you are. It’s stunning.”
She was leaning forward with an elbow on the chair arm, her hands clasped, one slender wrist at her chin.
“Really! You’re awfully easy to please—I wonder if I shall do as well as Agatha.” ”

“ CHAPTER IX 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don’t like the man—really I don’t—not at all.”
He looked in her eyes and believed her. “You always get your way in the end, don’t you?” he said, after a pause.
“Of course I do. What would be the use of a way, if one didn’t have it?”
That seemed unanswerable logic, so Crabb grinned.
“You’re a queer one, Patty,” which, as Patricia knew, meant that she was the most extraordinary and wonderful of persons. So she smiled at the back of his head as he went out because she agreed with him. ”

“ 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 the Blue Wing again, Burnett with mingled feelings of doubt and satisfaction, Crabb afire with the achievement.
“Rasselas was a fool, Ross, a malcontent—a fainéant. Life is amazing, bewitching, consummate.” ”

“ Patricia sank upon the [116] 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? ”

“ In twenty minutes Mortimer Crabb had aged as many years, and now bore the phiz of a shaggy rum-sot. The long coat, soft hat and rough bandanna completed the character. The fever of the adventure had mounted in [45] Burnett’s veins. He sprang to his feet with a reckless gesture of final resolution.
“Give me my part!” he exclaimed. “I’ll play it!”
The aged intemperate smiled approval. “Good lad!” he said. “I thought you’d be game. If you hadn’t been I was going alone. It’s lucky you’re clean shaved. Come and be transfigured.” ”

“ Pennington’s lazy humor had turned to a reckless unconvention which had somewhat startled her. Her secret declaration of independence had led her a little out of her depth, and she began to feel more and more like the child with the jam-pot—only the jam-pot was out of all proportion to real jam-pots and the smears seemed to defy the most generous use of soap and water. This horrible Doe was the neighbor’s boy who told, and [175] Mortimer Crabb was suddenly invested with a newly-born parental dignity and wisdom. Mort! It made her shudder to think of her husband receiving those letters. ”

“ Patricia meanwhile had taken out her watch. “This, my dear children,” she said, indicating with a fine gesture, the Sphynx’s apple-tree, “is one of the hazards of the New Game of Golf. There is only an hour and a half to finish in. Play the game, you two, I must wait.”
“It wouldn’t be the sporting thing,” said Steve, struggling with a desire to obey.
“I’d like to know who is as good a judge [268] of the rules of a game as its inventor,” said Patricia. “Am I right, Aurora?”
Aurora by this time was fingering at the strap of Ventnor’s golf bag. ”

“ I care for [215] her as one cares for a lovely flower—but the mind—the soul, Madame, I have found them—elsewhere,” he leaned forward and touched her fingers with his own.
Patricia’s gaze was far away. It seemed as though she was unconscious of his touch. “It is a pity,” she said, softly, “a great pity. I am very sorry.”
“Could you not learn to care a little?”
She turned on him then, but her voice was still gentle.
“We are not in France, Monsieur,” she said coldly.
“What does that matter?” he urged. “Love knows nothing of geography. Love is a cosmopolite. ”

“ 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 the Blue Wing?” ”