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Maker of Opportunities

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<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> 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. One quiet afternoon, early in August, she was sailing alone down toward Sorrento. It was one of those brilliant New England days when every detail of water and sky shone clear as an amethyst. Here and there a sail cut a sharp yellow rhomboid from the velvet woods. Patricia listened idly to the lapping of the tiny waves and found herself thinking again rather uncomfortably of the one person[94] who had caught her off her guard and kept her there. If he had only stayed in Philadelphia one week more, she could at least have retired with drums beating and colors flying. A sound distracted her. She looked to leeward under the lifting sail and on her bow, well out in the open off Stave Island, she could make out the lines of an overturned canoe and two figures in the water. She quickly loosed the sheet and shifted her helm and bore down rapidly upon the unfortunates. She could see a man bearing upon one end of the canoe lifting the other into the air, trying to get the water out; but each time he did so, a bull terrier dog swam to the gunwale and overturned it again. She sped by to leeward and, skilfully turning her little craft upon its heel, came up into the wind alongside. “How do you do?” said the moistful person, smiling. The hair was streaked down into his eyes. He hardly wondered that she didn’t recognize him. [95] “Mr. Crabb!” she said at last, rather faintly, “how did you happen——” “It was the dog,” he said cheerfully. “I thought he understood canoes.” “He might have drowned you. Why, it’s Jack Masters’ ‘Teddy,’” she cried. “Here, Teddy, come aboard at once, sir.” She bent over the low freeboard and by dint of much hauling managed to get him in. In the meantime, the catboat had drifted away from the canoe. Crabb had at last succeeded in getting in and was now bailing with his cap. “Won’t you come over?” shouted Patricia. “Oh, I’m all right,” he returned. “It was the dog I was worried about.” Then for the first time he was aware that the paddle had drifted off and was now floating a hundred yards away. “I’m sorry, but my paddle is adrift.” So Patricia, amid much barking from the rejuvenated Teddy, came alongside again. There sat the bedraggled and dripping[96] Crabb in three inches of water, his empty hands upon the gunwales, looking rather foolishly up at the blue eyes that were smiling rather whimsically down. She could not resist the temptation to banter him. Had she prayed for vengeance, nothing could have been sent to her sweeter than this. “You look rather—er—glum,” she said. “I’m not,” he replied, calmly. “I’ve not been so happy in months.” “What on earth is there to prevent my sailing off and leaving you?” she laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m all right. I’ll swim for the paddle when I’m rested.” “Have you thought I might take that with me, too?” she asked sweetly. “All right,” he laughed, trying to suppress the chattering teeth. “Somebody’ll be along presently.” “Don’t be too sure. You’re really very much at my mercy.” “You were not always so unkind.” [97] “Mr. Crabb!” Patricia retired in confusion to the tiller. “You’re impudent!” She hauled in her sheet and the boat gathered headway. “Please, Miss Wharton, please!” he shouted. But Patricia did not move from the tiller, and the catboat glided off. He watched her sail down and recover the paddle and then head back toward him. “Won’t you forgive me and take me in?” “I suppose I must. But I’m sure I’d rather you’d drown. I’m hardly in the mood for coals of fire.” “I am, though,” he chattered, “for I’m d—deucedly c—cold.” “You don’t deserve it. But if you were drowned I suppose I’d be to blame. I wouldn’t have you on my conscience again for anything.” “Then please take me on your boat.” “Will you behave yourself?” “I’ll try.” “And never again refer to—to——” [98] “Um——” “Then please come in—out of the wet.” <hr class="tb" /> It was toward the end of August when the southeast wind had raised a gray and thunderous sea, that two persons sat under the lee of a rock near Great Head and watched the giant breakers shatter themselves to foam. They sat very close together, and the little they said was drowned in the roar of the elements. But they did not care. They were willing just to sit and watch the fruitless struggles of the swollen waters. “Won’t you tell me,” said the girl at last, “about that dinner? Didn’t you really ask Mrs. Hollingsworth to send you in with me?” The man looked amusedly off at the jagged horizon. “No, I really didn’t,” he said, and then, after a pause, with a laugh: “but Nick did.” “Whited sepulcher!” said the girl. Another pause. This time the man questioned: “There is another thing—won’t you tell[99] me? About the parasol last summer—did you forget it, really—or—or—just leave it?” “Mortimer!” she cried, flushing furiously. “I didn’t!” But he assisted her in hiding her face, smiling down benevolently the while. “Really? Honestly? Truly?” he said, softly. “I didn’t—I didn’t,” she repeated. “Didn’t what?” he still persevered. She looked up at him for a moment, flushed more furiously than before and sought refuge anew. But the muffled reply was perfectly distinguishable to the man. “I—I—didn’t—forget it.” But the Great Head rocks didn’t hear. Thus Mortimer Crabb, having spent much of his time in making opportunities for other people, had at last succeeded in making one for himself. He had the pleasure of knowing, too, that he was also making one for Patty—not that this was Miss Wharton’s first opportunity,[100] for everyone knew that her rather sedate demeanor concealed a capricious coquetry which she could no more control than she could the music of the spheres. But this was going to be a different kind of opportunity, for Crabb had decided that not only was she going to be engaged to him, but that when the time came she was going to marry him. This decision reached, he spent all of his time in convincing her that he was the one man in the world exactly suited to her protean moods. The sum of his possessions had not been made known to her, and he delighted in planning his surprise. So that when the Blue Wing appeared in the harbor, he invited her for a sail in her own catboat, calmly took the helm in spite of her protests, and before she was aware of it, had made a neat landing at his own gangway. Jepson poked his head over the side and welcomed them, grinning broadly, and, following Crabb’s inviting gesture, Patricia went up on deck feeling very much like the lady who had married[101] the Lord of Burleigh. Then Jepson gave some mysterious orders and before long she was reclining luxuriously in a deck chair and the Blue Wing was breasting the surges which showed the way to the open sea. “‘All of this,’” quoted Crabb gayly, with a fine gesture which comprehended the whole of the North Atlantic Ocean, “‘is mine and thine.’” “It’s very nice of you to be so rich. 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?” [102] “But you found me first,” he laughed. “Did I?” archly. “If you still doubt it, there’s the parasol!” The mention of the parasol always silenced her. <hr class="chap" />[103] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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