CHAPTER XI

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."