Book: The Fighting Chance

R >> Robert W. Chambers >> The Fighting Chance




The dull shock of surprise halted her as Siward rose to his feet, still
dazed, the sand running from his brown shooting-clothes over his tightly
strapped puttees.

“Have you the faintest idea that I supposed you were here?” she asked
briefly. Then, frank in her disappointment, she looked up at the cliffs
overhead, where her line of retreat lay.

“Why did you not go with the others?” she added, unsmiling.

“I--don’t know. I will, if you wish.” He had coloured slowly, the frank
disappointment in her face penetrating his surprise; and now he turned
around, instinctively, also looking for the path of retreat.

“Wait,” she said, aware of her own crude attitude and confused by it;
“wait a moment, Mr. Siward. I don’t mean to drive you away.”

“It’s self-exile,” he said quietly; “quite voluntary, I assure you.”

“Mr. Siward!”

And, as he looked up coolly, “Have you nothing more friendly to say to
me? Is your friendship for me so limited that my first caprice oversteps
the bounds? Must I always be in dread of wounding you when I give you
the privilege of knowing me better than anybody ever knew me--of seeing
me as I am, with all my faults, my failings, my impulses, my real self?
… I don’t know why the pleasure of being alone to-day should have meant
exclusion for you, too. It was the unwelcome shock of seeing anybody--a
selfish enjoyment of myself--that surprised me into rudeness. That is
all. … Can you not understand?”

“I think so. I meant no criticism--”

“Wait, Mr. Siward!” as he moved slowly toward the path. “You force me to
say other things, which you have no right to hear. … After last
night”--the vivid tint grew in her face--“after such a night, is it
not--natural--for a girl to creep off somewhere by herself and try to
think a little?”

He had turned full on her; the answering colour crept to his forehead.

“Is that why?” he asked slowly.

“Is it not a reason?”

“It was my reason--for being here.”

She bit her bright lip. This trend to the conversation was ominous, and
she had meant to do her drifting alone in still sun-dreams, fearing no
witness, no testimony, no judgment save her own self in court with
herself.

“I--I suppose you cannot go--now,” she reflected innocently.

“Indeed I can, and must.”

“And leave me here to dig in the sand with my heels? Merci!”

“Do you mean--”

“I certainly do, Mr. Siward. I don’t want to dream, now; I don’t care to
reflect. I did, but here you come blundering into my private world and
upset my calculations and change my intentions! It’s a shame, especially
as you’ve been lying here doing what I wished to do for goodness knows
how long!”

“I’m going,” he said, looking at her curiously.

“Then you are very selfish, Mr. Siward.”

“We will call it that,” he said with an odd laugh.

“Very well.” She seated herself on the sand and calmly shook out her
skirts.

“About what time would you like to be called?” he asked smilingly.

“Thank you, I shall do no sun-dreaming.”

“Please. It is good for you.”

“No, it isn’t good at all. And I am grateful to you for waking me,” she
retorted with a sudden gay malice that subdued him. And she, delicate
nose in the air, laughingly watching him, went on with her punishment:
“You see what you’ve done, don’t you?--saved me from an entire morning
wasted in sentimental reverie over what might have been. Now you can
appreciate it, can’t you?--your wisdom in appearing in the flesh to save
a silly girl the effort of evoking you in the spirit! Ah, Mr. Siward, I
am vastly obliged to you! Pray sit here beside me in the flesh, for fear
that in your absence I might commit the folly that tempted me here.”

His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a
gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear
of him she had been barely conscious of.

“Do you know,” he said, “that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?”

“Did I? And can’t you resume them?”

“You save me the necessity.”

“Oh, that is a second-hand compliment,” she said disdainfully--“a weak
plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really
asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder.”

He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed
about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for
himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the
sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his
eyes.

“Upon--my word!” she breathed aloud.

He unclosed his eyes. “Now you may dream; you can’t avoid it,” he
observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor
questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him
from his immobility.

She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her
thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze,
arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm,
through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart
echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.

She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden
threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her,
settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred,
groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and
through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours
seemed to beckon.

Now lost, now restless, conscious of the perils of the shining path she
followed, the rhythm of an ocean soothing her to false security, she
dreamed on awake, unconscious of the tinted sea and sky which stained
her eyes to hues ineffable. A long while afterward a small cloud floated
across the sun; and, in the sudden shadow on the world, doubt sounded
its tiny voice, and her ears listened, and the enchantment faded and
died away.

Turning, she looked across the sand at the man lying there; her eyes
considered him--how long she did not know, she did not heed--until,
stirring, he looked up; and she paled a trifle and closed her eyes,
stunned by the sudden clamour of pulse and heart.

When he rose and walked over, she looked up gravely, pouring the last
handful of white sand through her stretched fingers.

“Did you dream?” he asked lightly.

“Yes.”

“Did you dream true?”

“Nothing of my dream can happen,” she said. “You know that, … don’t
you?”

“I know that we love … and that we dare not ignore it.”

She suffered his arm about her, his eyes looking deeply into hers--a
close, sweet caress, a union of lips, and her dimmed eyes’ response.

“Stephen,” she faltered, “how can you make it so hard for me? How can
you force me to this shame!”

“Shame?” he repeated vaguely.

“Yes--this treachery to myself--when I cannot hope to be more to you--when
I dare not love you too much!”

“You must dare, Sylvia!”

“No, no, no! I know myself, I tell you. I cannot give up what is
offered--for you!--dearly, dearly as I do love you!” She turned and caught
his hands in hers, flushed, trembling, unstrung. “I cannot--I simply
cannot! How can you love me and listen to such wickedness? How can you
still care for such a girl as I am--worse than mercenary, because I have
a heart--or had, until you took it! Keep it; it is the only part of me
not all ignoble.”

“I will keep it--in trust,” he said, “until you give yourself with it.”

But she only shook her head wearily, withdrawing her hands from his, and
for a time they sat silent, eyes apart.

Then--“There is another reason,” she said wistfully.

He looked up at her, hesitated, and--“My habits?” he asked simply.

“Yes.”

“I have them in check.”

“Are you--certain?”

“I think I may be--now.”

“Yet,” she said timidly, “you lost one fight--since you knew me.”

The dull red mantling his face wrung her heart. She turned impulsively
and laid both hands on his shoulders. “That chance I would take, with
all its uncertainty, all the dread inheritance you have come into. I
love you enough for that; and if it turned out that--that you could not
stem the tide, even with me to face it with you; and if the pity of it,
the grief of it, killed me, I would take that chance--if you loved me
through it all. … But there is something else. Hush; let me have my say
while I find the words--something else you do not understand. … Turn your
face a little; please don’t look at me. This is what you do not
know--that, in three generations, every woman of my race has--gone wrong.
… Every one! and I am beginning--with such a marriage! … deliberately,
selfishly, shamelessly, perfectly conscious of the frivolous, erratic
blood in me, aware of the race record behind me.

“Once, when I knew nothing--before I--I met you--I believed such a
marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor
me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am
fashioned to become--autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now! and
now! I don’t know--truly I don’t know what I may become. Your love forces
my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all
the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real
self. … Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run the risk of what
I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all I have renounced.
If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what you cost me.
Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him bear with me
when I remember that he cost me you!”

She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched
hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair,
heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny
close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth,
childlike contour and mould--rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body
and limb--all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.

Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out--perhaps a
tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of
aspiration to better things. Whatever it was, material, spiritual, was
gone now, and where it had glimmered for a night, the old accustomed
twilit doubt crept in--the same dull acquiescence--the same uncertainty
of self, the familiar lack of will, of incentive, the congenial tendency
to drift; and with it came weariness--perhaps reaction from the recent
skirmishes with that master-vice.

“I suppose,” he said in a dull voice, “you are right.”

“No, I am wrong--wrong!” she said, lifting her lovely face and heavy
eyes. “But I have chosen my path. … And you will forget.”

“I hope so,” he said simply.

“If you hope so, you will.”

He nodded, unconvinced, watching a flock of sand-pipers whirling into
the cove like a gray snow-squall and fearlessly settling on the beach.

After a while, with a long breath: “Then it is settled,” she concluded.

If she expected corroboration from him she received none; and perhaps
she was not awaiting it. She sat very still, her eyes lost in thought.

And Mortimer, peeping down at them over the thicket above, yawned
impatiently and glanced about him for the most convenient avenue of
self-effacement when the time arrived.



CHAPTER VII PERSUASION

The days of the house-party at Shotover were numbered. A fresh relay of
guests was to replace them on Monday, and so they were making the most
of the waning week on lawn and marsh, in covert and blind, or motoring
madly over the State, or riding in parties to Vermillion Light. Tennis
and lawn bowls came into fashion; even water polo and squash alternated
on days too raw for more rugged sport.

And during all these days Beverly Plank appeared with unflagging
persistence and assiduity, until his familiar, big, round head and
patient, delft-blue, Dutch eyes became a matter of course at Shotover,
indoors and out.

It was not that he was either accepted, tolerated, or endured; he was
simply there, and nobody took the trouble to question his all-pervading
presence until everybody had become too much habituated to him to think
about it at all.

The accomplished establishment of Beverly Plank was probably due as much
to his own obstinate and good-tempered persistence as to Mrs. Mortimer.
He was a Harvard graduate--there are all kinds of them--enormously
wealthy, and though he had no particular personal tastes to gratify, he
was willing and able to gratify the tastes of others. He did whatever
anybody else did, and did it well enough to be amusing; and as lack of
intellectual development never barred anybody from any section of the
fashionable world, it seemed fair to infer that he would land where he
wanted to, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mortimer led him about with the confidence that was her
perquisite; and the chances were that in due time he would have house-
parties of his own at Black Fells--not the kind he had wisely denied
himself the pleasure of giving, with such neighbours as the Ferralls to
observe, but the sort he desired. However, there were many things to be
accomplished for him and by him before he could expect to use his great
yacht and his estates and his shooting boxes and the vast granite
mansion recently completed and facing Central Park just north of the new
palaces built on the edges of the outer desert where Fifth Avenue
fringes the hundreds.

Meanwhile, he had become in a measure domesticated at Shotover, and
Shotover people gradually came to ride, drive, and motor over the Fells,
which was a good beginning, though not necessarily a promise for
anything definite in the future.

Mortimer, riding a huge chestnut--he could still wedge himself into a
saddle--had now made it a regular practice to affect the jocular early-
bird squire, and drag Plank out of bed. And Plank, in no position to be
anything but flattered by such sans gêne, laboriously and gratefully
splashed through his bath, wallowed amid the breakfast plates, and
mounted a hunter for long and apparently aimless gallops with Mortimer.

His acquaintance among people who knew Mortimer being limited, he had no
means of determining the latter’s social value except through hearsay
and a toadying newspaper or two. Therefore he was not yet aware of
Mortimer’s perennial need of money; and when Mortimer laughingly alluded
to his poverty, Plank accepted the proposition in a purely comparative
sense, and laughed, too, his thrifty Dutch soul untroubled by
misgivings.

Meanwhile, Mortimer had come, among other things, on information; how
much, and precisely of what nature, he was almost too much ashamed to
admit definitely, even to himself. Still, the idea that had led him into
this sudden intimacy with Plank, vague or not, persisted; and he was
always hovering on the edge of hinting at something which might elicit a
responsive hint from the flattered master of Black Fells.

There was much about Plank that was unaffected, genuine, even simple, in
one sense; he cared for people for their own sakes; and only stubborn
adherence to a dogged ambition had enabled him to dispense with the
society of many people he might easily have cultivated and liked--people
nearer his own sort; and that, perhaps, was the reason he so readily
liked Mortimer, whose coarse fibre soon wore through the polish when
rubbed against by a closer, finer fibre. And Plank liked him aside from
gratitude; and they got on famously on the basis of such mutual
recognition. Then, one day, very suddenly, Mortimer stumbled on
something valuable--a thread, a mere clew, so astonishing that for an
instant it absolutely upset all his unadmitted theories and
calculations.

It was nothing--a vague word or two--a forced laugh--and the scared silence
of this man Plank, who had blundered on the verge of a confidence to a
man he liked.

A moment of amazement, of half-incredulous suspicion, of certainty; and
Mortimer pounced playfully upon him like a tiger--a big, fat, friendly,
jocose tiger:

“Plank, is that what you’re up to!”

“Up to! Why, I never thought of such a--”

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer. “If you could only see your face!”

And Beverly Plank, red as a beet, comfortably suffused with reassurance
under the reaction from his scare, attempted to refute the other’s
conclusions: “It doesn’t mean anything, Mortimer. She’s just the
handsomest girl I ever saw. I know she’s engaged. I only admired her a
lot.”

“You’re not the only man,” said Mortimer blandly, still striving to
reconcile his preconceived theories with the awkward half-confession of
this great, red-fisted, hulking horseman riding at his stirrup.

“I wouldn’t have her dream,” stammered Plank, “that I had ever thought
of such a--”

“Why not? It would only flatter her.”

“Flatter a woman who is engaged to marry another man!” gasped Plank.

“Certainly. Do you think any woman ever had enough admiration in this
world?” asked Mortimer coolly. “And as for Sylvia Landis, she’d be
tickled to death if anybody hinted that you had ever admired her.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Plank, alarmed; “You wouldn’t make a joke of it!
you wouldn’t be careless about such a thing! And there’s Quarrier! I’m
not on joking terms with him; I’m on most formal terms.”

“Quarrier!” sneered the other, flicking at his stirrup with his crop.
“He’s on formal terms with everybody, including himself. He never
laughed on purpose in his life; once a month only, to keep his mouth in;
that’s his limit. Do you suppose any woman would stand for him if a
better man looked sideways at her?” And, reversing his riding crop, he
deliberately poked Mr. Plank in the ribs.

“A--a better man!” muttered Plank, scarce crediting his ears.

“Certainly. A man who can make good, is good; but a man who can make
better is it with the ladies--God bless ‘em!” he added, displaying a
heavy set of teeth.

Beverly Plank knew perfectly well that, in the comparison so delicately
suggested by Mortimer, his material equipment could be scarcely compared
to the immense fortune controlled by Howard Quarrier; and as he thought
it, his reflections were put into words by Mortimer, airily enough:

“Nobody stands a chance in a show-down with Quarrier. But--”

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

“But--what?” he blurted out.

“Plank,” said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling,
“Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a--a vital question.”

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly
that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

“Look here, Plank: you don’t suppose I’m capable of repeating a
confidence, do you?--if you choose to make me understand it’s a
confidence.”

“It isn’t a confidence; it isn’t anything; I mean it is confidential, of
course. All there’s in it is what I said--or rather what you took me up
on so fast,” ended Plank, abashed.

“About your being in love with Syl--”

“Confound it!” roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy
spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer
followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and
deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the
varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few
days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward
in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no
matter what they hunt--the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which
marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because
it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of
neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he
meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of
course, information which certain degraded men might use in a
contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any
particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was
nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour. … And God knew a
wealthy man’s gratitude was necessary to him at that very
moment--gratitude substantially acknowledged. … He liked Plank--wished him
well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn’t wish
himself well also. … Two birds with one stone. … Three! for he hated
Quarrier. Four! … for he had no love for his wife. … Besides, it would
teach Leila a wholesome lesson--teach her that he still counted; serve
her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he
would be very careful about. … Probably Major Belwether might express
his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and
volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed
between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o’clock in the morning
in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap
and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he
had discovered later in the bay-window. … Yes, probably Major Belwether
would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he
needed Quarrier in his business. … But, faugh! that was close enough to
blackmail to rub off! … No! … No! He wouldn’t go to Belwether and
promise any such thing! … On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform
Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was
threatened with for life! … A man ought not to let another man go
blindly into such a marriage. … Men owed each other something, even if
they were not particularly close friends. … And he had always had a
respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him--yes, a distinct
liking! … And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get
together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick! … And, in her
humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn’t snap
up Plank in such a fix? … And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? …
But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very
nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to
be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his
money. … And Plank would be very, very grateful--very useful, a very good
friend to have. … And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had
cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that
contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he
had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the
social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-
respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes
carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-
rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En
garde, Madame!--ou Mademoiselle--tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows
and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all
he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife’s
astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the
triumph of Quarrier’s elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly
Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether,
too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated,
crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white
suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a
rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a
very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the
slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be
suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and
regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was
simple--absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was
off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer;
man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly
Plank--the girl’s rescuer at a pinch--her preserver, the saviour of her
“face,” the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she
take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new “face”?
And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh,
not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn’t good for him,
and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he
might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not
tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that
there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young
man’s hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection
to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted
guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank’s. All he had to do
was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when
once convinced of Sylvia’s behaviour.

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