Book: The Fighting Chance

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




“See here, old man,” said Plank, extending a huge highly coloured hand,
“is all square between us now?”

“I think so,” muttered Mortimer.

But Plank would not relinquish his hand.

“Then tell me how to draw that cheque! Great Heaven, Mortimer, what is
friendship, anyhow, if it doesn’t include little matters like
this--little misunderstandings like this? I’m the man to be sensitive,
not you. You have been very good to me, Mortimer. I could almost wish
you in a position where the only thing I possess might square something
of my debt to you.”

A few minutes later, while he was filling in the cheque, a dusty youth
in riding clothes and spurs came in and found a seat by one of the
windows, into which he dropped, and then looked about him for a servant.

“Hello, Fleetwood!” said Mortimer, glancing over his shoulder to see
whose spurs were ringing on the polished floor.

Fleetwood saluted amiably with his riding-crop; including Plank, whom he
did not know, in a more formal salute.

“Will you join us?” asked Mortimer, taking the cheque which Plank
offered and carelessly pocketing it without even a nod of thanks. “You
know Beverly Plank, of course? What! I thought everybody knew Beverly
Plank.”

Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Plank shook hands and resumed their seats.

“Ripping weather!” observed Fleetwood, replacing his hat and rebuttoning
the glove which he had removed to shake hands with Plank. “Lot of jolly
people out this morning. I say, Mortimer, do you want that roan hunter
of mine you looked over? I mean King Dermid, because Marion Page wants
him, if you don’t. She was out this morning, and she spoke of it again.”

Mortimer, lifting a replenished glass, shook his head, and drank
thirstily in silence.

“Saw you at Westbury, I think,” said Fleetwood politely to Plank, as the
two lifted their glasses to one another.

“I hunted there for a day or two,” replied Plank, modestly. “If it’s
that big Irish thoroughbred you were riding that you want to sell I’d
like a look in, if Miss Page doesn’t fancy him.”

Fleetwood laughed, and glanced amusedly at Plank over his glass. “It
isn’t that horse, Mr. Plank. That’s Drumceit, Stephen Siward’s famous
horse.” He interrupted himself to exchange greetings with several men
who came into the room rather noisily, their spurs resounding across the
oaken floor. One of them, Tom O’Hara, joined them, slamming his crop on
the desk beside Plank and spreading himself over an arm-chair, from the
seat of which he forcibly removed Mortimer’s feet without excuse.

“Drink? Of course I want a drink!” he replied irritably to
Fleetwood--“one, three, ten, several! Billy, whose weasel-bellied pinto
was that you were kicking your heels into in the park? Some of the
squadron men asked me--the major. Oh, beg pardon! Didn’t know you were
trying to stick Mortimer with him. He might do for the troop ambulance,
inside! … What? Oh, yes; met Mr. Blank--I mean Mr. Plank--at Shotover, I
think. How d’ye do? Had the pleasure of potting your tame pheasants.
Rotten sport, you know. What do you do it for, Mr. Blank?”

“What did you come for, if it’s rotten sport?” asked Plank so simply
that it took O’Hara a moment to realise he had been snubbed.

“I didn’t mean to be offensive,” he drawled.

“I suppose you can’t help it,” said Plank very gently; “some people
can’t, you know.” And there was another silence, broken by Mortimer,
whose entire hulk was tingling with a mixture of surprise and amusement
over his protégé’s developing ability to take care of himself. “Did you
say that Stephen Siward is in Westbury, Billy?”

“No; he’s in town,” replied Fleetwood. “I took his horses up to hunt
with. He isn’t hunting, you know.”

“I didn’t know. Nobody ever sees him anywhere,” said Mortimer. “I guess
his mother’s death cut him up.”

Fleetwood lifted his empty glass and gently shook the ice in it. “That,
and--the other business--is enough to cut any man up, isn’t it?”

“You mean the action of the Lenox Club?” asked Plank seriously.

“Yes. He’s resigned from this club, too, I hear. Somebody told me that
he has made a clean sweep of all his clubs. That’s foolish. A man may be
an ass to join too many clubs but he’s always a fool to resign from any
of ’em. You ask the weatherwise what resigning from a club forecasts.
It’s the first ominous sign in a young man’s career.”

“What’s the second sign?” asked O’Hara, with a yawn.

“Squadron talk; and you’re full of it,” retorted Fleetwood--“‘I said to
the major,’ and ‘The captain told the chief trumpeter’--all that sort of
thing--and those Porto Rico spurs of yours, and the ewe-necked
glyptosaurus you block the bridle-path with every morning. You’re an
awful nuisance, Tom, if anybody should ask me.”

Under cover of a rapid-fire exchange of pleasantries between Fleetwood
and O’Hara, Plank turned to Mortimer, hesitating:

“I rather liked Siward when I met him at Shotover,” he ventured. “I’m
very sorry he’s down and out.”

“He drinks,” shrugged Mortimer, diluting his mineral water with Irish
whisky. “He can’t let it alone; he’s like all the Siwards. I could have
told you that the first time I ever saw him. We all told him to cut it
out, because he was sure to do some damfool thing if he didn’t. He’s
done it, and his clubs have cut him out. It’s his own funeral. … Well,
here’s to you!”

“Cut who out?” asked Fleetwood, ignoring O’Hara’s parting shot
concerning the decadence of the Fleetwood stables and their owner.

“Stephen Siward. I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to
land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the gutter is
public property.”

“It’s a damned sad thing,” said Fleetwood slowly.

After a pause Plank said: “I think so, too. … I don’t know him very
well.”

“You may know him better now,” said O’Hara insolently.

Plank reddened, and, after a moment: “I should be glad to, if he cares
to know me.”

“Mortimer doesn’t care for him, but he’s an awfully good fellow, all the
same,” said Fleetwood, turning to Plank; “he’s been an ass, but who
hasn’t? I like him tremendously, and I feel very bad over the mess he
made of it after that crazy dinner I gave in my rooms. What? You hadn’t
heard of it? Why man, it’s the talk of the clubs.”

“I suppose that is why I haven’t heard,” said Plank simply; “my club-
life is still in the future.”

“Oh!” said Fleetwood with an involuntary stare, surprised, a trifle
uncomfortable, yet somehow liking Plank, and not understanding why.

“I’m not in anything, you see; I’m only up for the Patroons and the
Lenox,” added Plank gravely.

“I see. Certainly. Er--hope you’ll make ’em; hope to see you there soon.
Er--I see by the papers you’ve been jollying the clergy, Mr. Plank.
Awfully handsome of you, all that chapel business. I say: I’ve a
cousin--er--young architect; Beaux Arts, and all that--just over. I’d
awfully like to have him given a chance at that competition; invited to
try, you see. I don’t suppose it could be managed, now--”

“Would you like to have me ask the bishops?” inquired Plank, naively
shrewd. And the conversation became very cordial between the two, which
Mortimer observed, keeping one ironical eye on Plank, while he continued
a desultory discussion with O’Hara concerning a very private dinner
which somebody told somebody that somebody had given to Quarrier and the
Inter-County Electric people; which, if true, plainly indicated who was
financing the Inter-County scheme, and why Amalgamated stock had tumbled
again yesterday, and what might be looked for from the Algonquin Trust
Company’s president.

“Amalgamated Electric doesn’t seem to like it a little bit,” said
O’Hara. “Ferrall, Belwether, and Siward are in it up to their necks; and
if Quarrier is really the god in the machine, and if he really is doing
stunts with Amalgamated Electric, and is also mixing feet with the
Inter-County crowd, why, he is virtually paralleling his own road; and
why, in the name of common sense, is he doing that? He’ll kill it;
that’s what he’ll do.”

“He can afford to kill it,” observed Mortimer, punching the electric
button and making a significant gesture toward his empty glass as the
servant entered; “a man like Quarrier can afford to kill anything.”

“Yes; but why kill Amalgamated Electric? Why not merge? Why, it’s a
crazy thing to do, it’s a devil of a thing to do, to parallel your own
line!” insisted O’Hara. “That is dirty work. People don’t do such things
these days. Nobody tears up dollar bills for the pleasure of tearing.”

“Nobody knows what Quarrier will do,” muttered Mortimer, who had tried
hard enough to find out when the first ominous rumours arose concerning
Amalgamated, and the first fractional declines left the street
speechless and stupefied.

O’Hara sat frowning, and fingering his glass. “As a matter of fact,” he
said, “a little cold logic shows us that Quarrier isn’t in it at all. No
sane man would ruin his own enterprise, when there is no need to. His
people are openly supporting Amalgamated and hammering Inter-County;
and, besides, there’s Ferrall in it, and Mrs. Ferrall is Quarrier’s
cousin; and there’s Belwether in it, and Quarrier is engaged to marry
Sylvia Landis, who is Belwether’s niece. It’s a scrap with Harrington’s
crowd, and the wheels inside of wheels are like Chinese boxes. Who knows
what it means? Only it’s plain that Amalgamated is safe, if Quarrier
wants it to be. And unless he does he’s crazy.”

Mortimer puffed stolidly at his cigar until the smoke got into his eyes
and inflamed them. He sat for a while, wiping his puffy eyelids with his
handkerchief; then, squinting sideways at Plank, and seeing him still
occupied with Fleetwood, turned bluntly on O’Hara:

“See here: what do you mean by being nasty to Plank?” he growled. “I’m
backing him. Do you understand?”

“It is curious,” mused O’Hara coolly, “how much of a cad a fairly decent
man can be when he’s out of temper!”

“You mean Plank, or me?” demanded Mortimer, darkening angrily.

“No; I mean myself. I’m not that way usually. I took him for a bounder,
and he’s caught me with the goods on. I’ve been thinking that the men
who bother with such questions are usually open to suspicion themselves.
Watch me do the civil, now. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Wait a moment. Will you be civil enough to do something for him at the
Patroons? That will mean something.”

“Is he up? Yes, I will;” and, turning in his chair, he said to Plank:
“Awfully sorry I acted like a bounder just now, after having accepted
your hospitality at the Fells. I did mean to be offensive, and I’m sorry
for that, too. Hope you’ll overlook it, and be friendly.”

Plank’s face took on the dark-red hue of embarrassment; he looked
questioningly at Mortimer, whose visage remained non-committal, then
directly at O’Hara.

“I should be very glad to be friends with you,” he said with an
ingenuous dignity that surprised Mortimer. It was only the native
simplicity of the man, veneered and polished by constant contact with
Mrs. Mortimer, and now showing to advantage in the grain. And it
gratified Mortimer, because he saw that it was going to make many
matters much easier for himself and his protégé.

The tall glasses were filled and drained again before they departed to
the cold plunge and dressing-rooms above, whence presently they emerged
in street garb to drive down town and lunch together at the Lenox Club,
Plank as Fleetwood’s guest.

Mortimer, very heavy and inert after luncheon, wedged himself into a
great stuffed arm-chair by the window, where he alternately nodded over
his coffee and wheezed in his breathing, and leered out at Fifth Avenue
from half-closed, puffy eyes. And there he was due to sit, sodden and
replete, until the fashionable equipages began to flash past. He’d
probably see his wife driving with Mrs. Ferrall or with Miss Caithness,
or perhaps with some doddering caryatid of the social structure; and
he’d sit there, leering with gummy eyes out of the club windows, while
servants in silent processional replenished his glass from time to time,
until in the early night the trim little shopgirls flocked out into the
highways in gossiping, fluttering coveys, trotting away across the
illuminated asphalt, north and south to their thousand dingy
destinations. And after they had gone he would probably arouse himself
to read the evening paper, or perhaps gossip with Major Belwether and
other white-haired familiars, or perhaps doze until it was time to
summon a cab and go home to dress.

That afternoon, however, having O’Hara and Fleetwood to give him
countenance, he managed to arouse himself long enough to make Plank
known personally to several of the governors of the club and to a dozen
members, then left him to his fate. Whence, presently, Fleetwood and
O’Hara extracted him--fate at that moment being personified by a
garrulous old gentleman, one Peter Caithness, who divided with Major
Belwether the distinction of being the club bore--and together they
piloted him to the billiard room, where he beat them handily for a
dollar a point at everything they suggested.

“You play almost as pretty a game as Stephen Siward used to play,” said
O’Hara cordially. “You’ve something of his cue movement--something of his
infernal facility and touch. Hasn’t he, Fleetwood?”

“I wish Siward were back here,” said Fleetwood thoughtfully, returning
his cue to his own rack. “I wonder what he does with himself--where he
keeps himself all the while? What the devil is there for a man to do, if
he doesn’t do anything? He’s not going out anywhere since his mother’s
death; he has no clubs to go to, I understand. What does he do--go to his
office and come back, and sit in that shabby old brick house all day and
blink at the bum portraits of his bum and distinguished ancestors? Do
you know what he does with himself?” to O’Hara.

“I don’t even know where he lives,” observed O’Hara, resuming his coat.
“He’s given up his rooms, I understand.”

“What? Don’t know the old Siward house?”

“Oh! does he live there now? Of course; I forgot about his mother. He
had apartments last year, you remember. He gave dinners--corkers they
were. I went to one--like that last one you gave.”

“I wish I’d never given it,” said Fleetwood gloomily. “If I hadn’t, he’d
be a member here still. … What do you suppose induced him to take that
little gin-drinking cat to the Patroons? Why, man, it wasn’t even an
undergraduate’s trick! it was the act of a lunatic.”

For a while they talked of Siward, and of his unfortunate story and the
pity of it; and when the two men ceased,

“Do you know,” said Plank mildly, “I don’t believe he ever did it.”

O’Hara looked up surprised, then shrugged. “Unfortunately he doesn’t
deny it, you see.”

“I heard,” said Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette, “that he did deny it;
that he said, no matter what his condition was, he couldn’t have done
it. If he had been sober, the governors would have been bound to take
his word of honour. But he couldn’t give that, you see. And after they
pointed out to him that he had been in no condition to know exactly what
he did do, he shut up. … And they dropped him; and he’s falling yet.”

“I don’t believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing,”
repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that
all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its
highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to
cleanse his ponderous pink hands of chalk-dust.

“That’s what’s the matter with Plank,” observed O’Hara to Fleetwood as
Plank disappeared. “It isn’t that he’s a bounder; but he doesn’t know
things; he doesn’t know enough, for instance, to wait until he’s a
member of a club before he criticises the judgment of its governors. Yet
you can’t help tolerating the fellow. I think I’ll write a letter for
him, or put down my name. What do you think?”

“It would be all right,” said Fleetwood. “He’ll need all the support he
can get, with Leroy Mortimer as his sponsor. … Wasn’t Mortimer rather
nasty about Siward though, in his rôle of the alcoholic prophet? Whew!”

“Siward never had any use for Mortimer,” observed O’Hara.

“I’ll bet you never heard him say so,” returned Fleetwood. “You know
Stephen Siward’s way; he never said anything unpleasant about any man. I
wish I didn’t either, but I do. So do you. So do most men. … Lord! I
wish Siward were back here. He was a good deal of a man, after all,
Tom.”

They were unconsciously using the past tense in discussing Siward, as
though he were dead, either physically or socially.

“In one way he was always a singularly decent man,” mused O’Hara,
walking toward the great marble vestibule and buttoning his overcoat.

“How exactly do you mean?”

“Oh, about women.”

“I believe it, too. If he did take that Vyse girl into the Patroons, it
was his limit with her--and, I believe his limit with any woman. He was
absurdly decent that way; he was indeed. And now look at the reputation
he has! Isn’t it funny? isn’t it, now?”

“What sort of an effect do you suppose all this business is going to
have on Siward?”

“It’s had one effect already,” replied Fleetwood, as Plank came up,
ready for the street. “Ferrall says he looks sick, and Belwether says
he’s going to the devil; but that’s the sort of thing the major is
likely to say. By the way, wasn’t there something between that pretty
Landis girl and Siward? Somebody--some damned gossiping somebody--talked
about it somewhere, recently.”

“I don’t believe that, either,” said Plank, in his heavy, measured,
passionless voice, as they descended the steps of the white portico and
looked around for a cab.

“As for me, I’ve got to hustle,” observed O’Hara, glancing at his watch.
“I’m due to shine at a function about five. Are you coming up-town
either of you fellows? I’ll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second
Street, Plank.”

“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank:
“We’ll drive down town, you and I, and we’ll look up poor old Siward!
Shall we? He’s probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family
tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?”

O’Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed
into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.

“I’d like to, but I don’t think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do
that,” said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. “He might
misunderstand my going with you--as a liberty--which perhaps I might not
have ventured on had he been less--less unfortunate.”

Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him.
“See here,” he said, “you are going as a friend of mine--if you care to
look at it that way.”

“Thank you,” said Plank; “I should be very glad to go in that way.”

The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of
the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces
of the young men.

Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so
spoken of--a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions,
surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting of
the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete
pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive
wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled
upward to the roof, dividing the façade equally, and furnishing some
relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals of
window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood
sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of
the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement
windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of
the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained
portico.

An old New York house, in the New York sense. Old in another sense, too,
where in a rapid land Time outstrips itself, painting, with the
antiquity of centuries, the stone and mortar which were new scarce ten
years since.

“Nice old family mausoleum,” commented Fleetwood, descending from the
hansom, followed by Plank. The latter instinctively mounted the stoop on
tiptoe, treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but
long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank
stole a glance over the façade, where wisps of straw trailed from
sparrows’ nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where,
behind the lace pane-screens, shadowy edges of heavy curtains framed the
obscurity; where the paint had blistered and peeled from the iron
railings, and the marble pillars of the portico glimmered, scarred by
frosts of winters long forgotten.

“Cheerful monument,” repeated Fleetwood with a sarcastic nod. Then the
door was opened by a very old man wearing the black “swallow-tail”
clothes and choker of an old-time butler, spotless, quite immaculate,
but cut after a fashion no young man remembers.

“Good evening,” said Fleetwood, entering, followed on tiptoe by Plank.

“Good evening, sir.” … A pause; and in the unsteady voice of age: “Mr.
Fleetwood, sir. … Mr.--.” A bow, and the dim eyes peering up at Plank,
who stood fumbling for his card-case.

Fleetwood dropped both cards on the salver unsteadily extended. The
butler ushered them into a dim room on the right.

“How is Mr. Siward?” asked Fleetwood, pausing on the threshold and
dropping his voice.

The old man hesitated, looking down, then still looking away from
Fleetwood: “Bravely, sir, bravely, Mr. Fleetwood.”

“The Siwards were always that,” said the young man gently.

“Yes, sir. … Thank you. Mr. Stephen--Mr. Siward,” he corrected, quaintly,
“is indisposed, sir. It was a--a great shock to us all, sir!” He bowed
and turned away, holding his salver stiffly; and they heard him
muttering under his breath, “Bravely, sir, bravely. A--a great shock,
sir! … Thank you.”

Fleetwood turned to Plank, who stood silent, staring through the fading
light at the faded household gods of the house of Siward. The dim light
touched the prisms of a crystal chandelier dulled by age, and edged the
carved foliations of the marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished
mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher,
and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to
another, peering up at the dead Siwards in their crackled varnish.

“This is the real thing,” observed Fleetwood cynically, “all this Fourth
Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see
myself standing it. … Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over
there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house. … We’ve got some,
too, in several rooms, and I never go into ’em. They’re like a scene in
a bum play, or like one of those Washington Square rat-holes, where
artists eat Welsh-rabbits with dirty fingers. Ugh!”

“I like it,” said Plank, under his breath.

Fleetwood stared, then shrugged, and returned to the window to watch a
brand-new French motor-car drawn up before a modern mansion across the
avenue.

The butler returned presently, saying that Mr. Siward was at home and
would receive them in the library above, as he was not yet able to pass
up and down stairs.

“I didn’t know he was as ill as that,” muttered Fleetwood, as he and
Plank followed the old man up the creaking stairway. But Gumble, the
butler, said nothing in reply.

Siward was sitting in an arm-chair by the window, one leg extended, his
left foot, stiffly cased in bandages, resting on a footstool.

“Why, Stephen!” exclaimed Fleetwood, hastening forward, “I didn’t know
you were laid up like this!”

Siward offered his hand inquiringly; then his eyes turned toward Plank,
who stood behind Fleetwood; and, slowly disengaging his hand from
Fleetwood’s sympathetic grip, he offered it to Plank.

“It is very kind of you,” he said. “Gumble, Mr. Fleetwood prefers rye,
for some inscrutable reason. Mr. Plank?” His smile was a question.

“If you don’t mind,” said Plank, “I should like to have some tea--that
is, if--”

“Tea, Gumble, for two. We’ll tipple in company, Mr. Plank,” he added.
“And the cigars are at your elbow, Billy,” with another smile at
Fleetwood.

“Now,” said the latter, after he had lighted his cigar, “what is the
matter, Stephen?”

Siward glanced at his stiffly extended foot. “Nothing much.” He reddened
faintly, “I slipped. It’s only a twisted ankle.”

For a moment or two the answer satisfied Fleetwood, then a sudden,
curious flash of suspicion came into his eyes; he glanced sharply at
Siward, who lowered his eyes, while the red tint in his hollow cheeks
deepened.

Neither spoke for a while. Plank sipped the tea which Wands, the second
man, brought. Siward brooded over his cup, head bent. Fleetwood made
more noise than necessary with his ice.

“I miss you like hell!” said Fleetwood musingly, measuring out the old
rye from the quaint decanter. “Why did you drop the Saddle Club,
Stephen?”

“I’m not riding; I have no use for it,” replied Siward.

“You’ve cut out the Proscenium Club, too, and the Owl’s Head, and the
Trophy. It’s a shame, Stephen.”

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