Book: The Fighting Chance

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




“I’m tired of clubs.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“Very well, I won’t,” said Siward, smiling. “Tell me what is
happening--out there,” he made a gesture toward the window; “all the
gossip the newspapers miss. I’ve talked Dr. Grisby to death; I’ve talked
Gumble to death; I’ve read myself stupid. What’s going on, Billy?”

So Fleetwood sketched for him a gay cartoon of events, caricaturing
various episodes in the social kaleidoscope which might interest him. He
gossiped cynically, but without malice, about people they both knew,
about engagements, marriages, and divorces, plans and ambitions; about
those absent from the metropolis and the newcomers to be welcomed. He
commented briefly on the opera, reviewed the newer plays at the
theatres, touched on the now dormant gaiety which had made the season at
nearby country clubs conspicuous; then drifted into the hunting field,
gossiping pleasantly in the vernacular about horses and packs and drag-
hunts and stables, and what people thought of the new English hounds of
the trial pack, and how the new M. F. H., Maitland Gray, had managed to
break so many bones at Southbury.

Politics were touched upon, and they spoke of the possibility of Ferrall
going to the Assembly, the sport of boss-baiting having become
fashionable among amateurs, and providing a new amusement for the idle
rich.

So city, State, and national issues were run through lightly, business
conditions noticed, the stock market speculated upon; and presently
conversation died out, with a yawn from Fleetwood as he looked into his
empty glass at the last bit of ice.

“Don’t do that, Billy,” smiled Siward. “You haven’t discoursed upon art,
literature, and science yet, and you can’t go until you’ve adjusted the
affairs of the nation for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Art?” yawned Fleetwood. “Oh, pictures? Don’t like ’em. Nobody ever
looks at ’em except débutantes, who do it out of deviltry, to floor a
man at a dinner or a dance.”

“How about literature?” inquired Siward gravely. “Anything doing?”

“Nothing in it,” replied Fleetwood more gravely still. “It’s another
feminine bluff--like all that music talk they hand you after the opera.”

“I see. And science?”

“Spider Flynn is matched to meet Kid Holloway; is that what you mean,
Stephen? Somebody tumbled out of an air-ship the other day; is that what
you mean? And they’re selling scientific jewelry on Broadway at a dollar
a quart; is that what you want to know?”

Siward rested his head on his hand with a smile. “Yes, that’s about what
I wanted to know, Billy--all about the arts and sciences. … Much obliged.
You needn’t stay any longer, if you don’t want to.”

“How soon will you be out?” inquired Fleetwood.

“Out? I don’t know. I shall try to drive to the office to-morrow.”

“Why the devil did you resign from all your clubs? How can I see you if
I don’t come here?” began Fleetwood impatiently. “I know, of course,
that you’re not going anywhere, but a man always goes to his club. You
don’t look well, Stephen. You are too much alone.”

Siward did not answer. His face and body had certainly grown thinner
since Fleetwood had last seen him. Plank, too, had been shocked at the
change in him--the dark, hard lines under the eyes; the pallor, the
curious immobility of the man, save for his fingers, which were always
restless, now moving in search of some small object to worry and turn
over and over, now nervously settling into a grasp on the arm of his
chair.

“How is Amalgamated Electric?” asked Fleetwood, abruptly.

“I think it’s all right. Want to buy some?” replied Siward, smiling.

Plank stirred in his chair ponderously. “Somebody is kicking it to
pieces,” he said.

“Somebody is trying to,” smiled Siward.

“Harrington,” nodded Fleetwood. Siward nodded back. Plank was silent.

“Of course,” continued Fleetwood, tentatively, “you people need not
worry, with Howard Quarrier back of you.”

Nobody said anything for a while. Presently Siward’s restless hands,
moving in search of something, encountered a pencil lying on the table
beside him, and he picked it up and began drawing initials and scrolls
on the margin of a newspaper; and all the scrolls framed initials, and
all the initials were the same, twining and twisting into endless
variations of the letters S. L.

“Yes, I must go to the office to-morrow,” he repeated absently. “I am
better--in fact I am quite well, except for this sprain.” He looked down
at his bandaged foot, then his pencil moved listlessly again, continuing
the endless variations on the two letters. It was plain that he was
tired.

Fleetwood rose and made his adieux almost affectionately. Plank moved
forward on tiptoe, bulky and noiseless; and Siward held out his hand,
saying something amiably formal.

“Would you like to have me come again?” asked Plank, red with
embarrassment, yet so naively that at first Siward found no words to
answer him; then--

“Would you care to come, Mr. Plank?”

“Yes.”

Siward looked at him curiously, almost cautiously. His first impressions
of the man had been summed up in one contemptuous word. Besides, barring
that, what was there in common between himself and such a type as Plank?
He had not even troubled himself to avoid him at Shotover; he had merely
been aware of him when Plank spoke to him; never otherwise, except that
afternoon beside the swimming pool, when he had made one of his rare
criticisms on Plank.

Perhaps Plank had changed, perhaps Siward had; for he found nothing
offensive in the bulky young man now--nothing particularly attractive,
either, except for a certain simplicity, a certain direct candour in the
heavy blue eyes which met his squarely.

“Come in for a cigar when you have a few moments idle,” said Siward
slowly.

“It will give me great pleasure,” said Plank, bowing.

And that was all. He followed Fleetwood down the stairs; Wands held
their coats, and bowed them out into the falling shadows of the winter
twilight.

Siward, sitting beside his window, watched them enter their hansom and
drive away up the avenue. A dull flush had settled over his cheeks; the
aroma of spirits hung in the air, and he looked across the room at the
decanter. Presently he drank some of his tea, but it was lukewarm, and
he pushed the cup from him.

The clatter of the cup brought the old butler, who toddled hither and
thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and
pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She
pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the
mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a
spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed it,
shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and
footstool, and nodded thanks and dismissal.

“Gumble, are you there?” he asked carelessly.

The butler entered from the hallway. “Yes, sir.”

“You may leave that decanter.”

But the old servant may have misunderstood, for he only bowed and ambled
off downstairs with the decanter, either heedless or deaf to his
master’s sharp order to return.

For a while Siward sat there, eyes fixed, scowling into vacancy; then
the old, listless, careworn expression returned; he rested one elbow on
the window-sill, his worn cheek on his hand, and with the other hand
fell to weaving initials with his pencil on the margin of the newspaper
lying on the table beside him.

Lamplight brought out sharply the physical change in him--the angular
shadows flat under the cheek-bones, the hard, slightly swollen flesh in
the bluish shadows around the eyes. The mark of the master-vice was
there; its stamp in the swollen, worn-out hollows; its imprint in the
fine lines at the corners of his mouth; its sign manual in the faintest
relaxation of the under lip, which had not yet become a looseness.

For the last of the Siwards had at last stepped into the highway which
his doomed forebears had travelled before him.

“Gumble!” he called irritably.

A quavering voice, an unsteady step, and the old man entered again. “Mr.
Stephen, sir?”

“Bring that decanter back. Didn’t you hear me tell you just now?”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. Stephen, sir.”

There was a silence.

“Gumble!”

“Sir?”

“Are you going to bring that decanter?”

The old butler bowed, and ambled from the room, and for a long while
Siward sat sullenly listening and scoring the edges of the paper with
his trembling pencil. Then the lead broke short, and he flung it from
him and pulled the bell. Wands came this time, a lank, sandy, silent
man, grown gray as a rat in the service of the Siwards. He received his
master’s orders, and withdrew; and again Siward waited, biting his under
lip and tearing bits from the edges of the newspaper with fingers never
still; but nobody came with the decanter, and after a while his tense
muscles relaxed; something in his very soul seemed to snap, and he sank
back in his chair, the hot tears blinding him.

He had got as far as that; moments of self-pity were becoming almost as
frequent as scorching intervals of self-contempt.

So they all knew what was the matter with him--they all knew--the doctor,
the servants, his friends. Had he not surprised the quick suspicion in
Fleetwood’s glance, when he told him he had slipped, and sprained his
ankle? What if he had been drunk when he fell--fell on his own
doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants,
drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood’s business. It was
none of the servants’ business. It was nobody’s business except his own.
Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor
him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide
decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle
with him? Of what concern to them were his vices or his virtues?

The tears dried in his hot eyes; he jerked the old-fashioned bell
savagely; and after a long while he heard servants whispering together
in the passageway outside his door.

He lay very still in his chair; his hearing had become abnormally acute,
but he could not make out what they were saying; and as the dull,
intestinal aching grew sharper, parching, searing every strained muscle
in throat and chest, he struck the table beside him, and clenched his
teeth in the fierce rush of agony that swept him from head to foot,
crying out an inarticulate menace on his household. And Dr. Grisby came
into the room from the outer shadows of the hall.

He was very small, very meagre, very bald, and clean-shaven, with a face
like a nut-cracker; and the brown wig he wore was atrocious, and curled
forward over his colourless ears. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, each
glass divided into two lenses; and he stood on tiptoe to look out
through the upper lenses on the world, and always bent almost double to
use the lower or reading lenses.

Besides that, he affected frilled shirts, and string ties, which nobody
had ever seen snugly tied. His loose string tie was the first thing
Siward could remember about the doctor; and that the doctor had
permitted him to pull it when he had the measles, at the age of six.

“What’s all this racket?” said the little old doctor harshly. “Got
colic? Got the toothache? I’m ashamed of you, Stephen, cutting capers
and pounding the furniture! Look up! Look at me! Out with your tongue!
Well, now, what the devil’s the trouble?”

“You--know,” muttered Siward, abandoning his wrist to the little man, who
seated himself beside him. Dr. Grisby scarcely noted the pulse; the
delicate pressure had become a strong caress.

“Know what?” he grunted. “How do I know what’s the matter with you? Hey?
Now, now, don’t try to explain, Steve; don’t fly off the handle! All
right; grant that I do know what’s bothering you; I want to see that
ankle first. Here, somebody! Light that gas. Why the mischief don’t you
have the house wired for electricity, Stephen? It’s wholesome. Gas
isn’t. Lamps are worse, sir. Do as I tell you!” And he went on
loquaciously, grumbling and muttering, and never ceasing his talk, while
Siward, wincing as the dressing was removed, lay back and closed his
eyes.

Half an hour later Gumble appeared, to announce dinner.

“I don’t want any,” said Siward.

“Eat!” said Dr. Grisby harshly.

“I--don’t care to.”

“Eat, I tell you! Do you think I don’t mean what I say?”

So he ate his broth and toast, the doctor curtly declining to join him.
He ate hurriedly, closing his eyes in aversion. Even the iced tea was
flat and distasteful to him.

And at last he lay back, white and unstrung, the momentarily deadened
desperation glimmering under his half-closed eyes. And for a long while
Dr. Grisby sat, doubled almost in two, cuddling his bony little knees
and studying the patterns in the faded carpet.

“I guess you’d better go, Stephen,” he said at length.

“Up the river--to Mulqueen’s?”

“Yes. Let’s try it, Steve. You’ll be on your feet in two weeks. Then
you’d better go--up the river--to Mulqueen’s.”

“I--I’ll go, if you say so. But I can’t go now.”

“I didn’t say go now. I said in two weeks.”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you give me your word?” demanded the doctor sharply.

“No, doctor.”

“Why not?”

“Because I may have to be here on business. There seems to be some sort
of crisis coming which I don’t understand.”

“There’s a crisis right here, Steve, which I understand!” snapped Dr.
Grisby. “Face it like a man! Face it like a man! You’re sick--to your
bones, boy--sick! sick! Fight the fight, Steve! Fight a good fight.
There’s a fighting chance; on my soul of honour, there is, Steve, a
fighting chance for you! Now! now, boy! Buckle up tight! Tuck up your
sword-sleeve! At ’em, Steve! Give ’em hell! Oh, my boy, my boy, I know;
I know!” The little man’s voice broke, but he steadied it instantly with
a snap of his nut-cracker jaws, and scowled on his patient and shook his
little withered fist at him.

His patient lay very still in the shadow.

“I want you to go,” said the doctor harshly, “before your self-control
goes. Do you understand? I want you to go before your decision is
undermined; before you begin to do devious things, sly things, cheating
things, slinking things--anything and everything to get at the thing you
crave. I’ve given you something to fight with, and you won’t take it
faithfully. I’ve given you free rein in tobacco and tea and coffee. I’ve
helped you as much as I dare to weather the nights. Now, you help me--do
you hear?”

“Yes … I will.”

“You say so; now do it. Do something for yourself. Do anything! If
you’re sick of reading--and I don’t blame you, considering the stuff you
read--get people down here to see you; get lots of people. Telephone ’em;
you’ve a telephone there, haven’t you? There it is, by your elbow. Use
it! Call up people. Talk all the time.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Good! Now, Steve, we know what’s the matter, physically, don’t we? Of
course we do! Now, then, what’s the matter mentally?”

“Mentally?” repeated Siward under his breath.

“Yes, mentally. What’s the trouble? Stocks? Bonds? Lawsuits? Love?” the
slightest pause, and a narrowing of the gimlet eyes behind the lenses.
“Love?” he repeated harshly. “Which is it, boy? They’re all good to let
alone.”

“Business,” said Siward. But, being a Siward, he was obliged to add
“partly.”

“Business--partly,” repeated the doctor. “What’s the matter with
business--partly?”

“I don’t know. There are rumours. Hetherington is pounding
us--apparently. That Inter-County crowd is acting ominously, too. There’s
something underhand, somewhere.” He bent his head and fell to plucking
at the faded brocade on the arm of his chair, muttering to himself,
“somewhere, somehow, something underhand. I don’t know what; I really
don’t.”

“All right--all right,” said the doctor testily; “let it go at that!
There’s treachery, eh? You suspect it? You’re sure of it--as reasonably
sure as a gentleman can be of something he is not fashioned to
understand? That’s it, is it? All right, sir--all right! Very well--ver-y
well. Now, sir, look at me! Business symptoms admitted, what about the
‘partly,’ Stephen ?--what about it, eh? What about it?”

But Siward fell silent again.

“Eh? Did you say something? No? Oh, very well, ver-y well, sir. …
Perfectly correct, Stephen. You have not earned the right to admit
further symptoms. No, sir, you have not earned the right to admit them
to anybody, not even to yourself. Nor to--her!”

“Doctor!”

“Sir?”

“I have--admitted them.”

“To yourself, Steve? I’m sorry. You have no right to--yet. I’m sorry--”

“I have admitted them--admitted them--to her.”

“That settles it,” said the doctor grimly, “that clinches it! That locks
you to the wheel! That pledges you. The squabble is on, now. It’s your
honour that’s engaged now, not your nerves, not your intestines. It’s a
good fight--a very good fight, with no chance of losing anything but
life. You go up the river to Mulqueen’s. That’s the strategy in this
campaign; that’s excellent manoeuvring; that’s good generalship! Eh?
Mask your purpose, Steve; make a feint of camping out here under my
guns; then suddenly fling your entire force up the Hudson and fortify
yourself at Mulqueen’s! Ho, that’ll fix ’em! That’s going to astonish
the enemy!”

His harsh, dry, crackling laughter broke out like the distant rattle of
musketry.

The ghost of a smile glimmered in Siward’s haunted eyes, then faded as
he leaned forward.

“She has refused me,” he said simply.

The little doctor, after an incredulous stare, began chattering with
wrath. “Refused you! Pah! Pooh! That’s nothing! That signifies
absolutely nothing! It’s meaningless! It’s a detail. You get well--do you
hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you’ll see! And if
she is an idiot--in the event of her irrational persistence in an
incredible and utterly indefensible attitude”--he choked up, then fairly
barked at Siward--“take her anyway, sir! Run off with her! Dominate
circumstances, sir! take charge of events! … But you can’t do it till
you’ve clapped yourself into prison for life. … And God help you if you
let yourself escape!”

And after a long while Siward said: “If I should ever marry--and--and--”

“Had children, eh? Is that it? Oh, it is, eh? Well, I say, marry! I say,
have children! If you’re a man, you’ll breed men. The chances are they
may not inherit what you have. It skips some generations--some, now and
then. But if they do, good God! I say it’s better to be born and have a
chance to fight than never to come into the arena at all! By winning
out, the world learns; by failure, the world is no less wise. The
important thing is birth. The main point is to breed--to produce--to
reproduce! but not until you stand, sword in hand, and your armed heel
on the breast of your prostrate and subconscious self!”

He jumped up and began running about the room with short little bantam
steps, talking all the while.

“People say, ‘Shall criminals be allowed to mate and produce young?
Shall malefactors be allowed to beget? No!’ And I say no, too. Never so
long as they remain criminals and malefactors; so long as the evil in
them is in the ascendant. Never, until they are cured. That’s what I
say; that’s what I maintain. Crime is a disease; criminals are sick
people. No marriage for them until they’re cured; no children for them
until they’re well. If they cure themselves, let ’em marry; let ’em
breed; for then, if their children inherit the inclination, they also
inherit the grit to cauterise the malady.”

He produced a huge handkerchief from the tails of his coat, and wiped
his damp features and polished his forehead so violently that his wig
took a new and jaunty angle.

“I’m talking too much,” he said fretfully; “I’m talking a great deal--all
the time--continually. I’ve other patients--several--plenty! Do you think
you’re the only man I know who’s trying to disfigure his liver and make
spots come out all over inside him? Do you?”

Siward smiled again, a worn, pallid smile.

“I can stand it while you are here, doctor, but when I’m alone
it’s--hard. One of those crises is close now. I’ve a bad night ahead--a
bad outlook. Couldn’t you--”

“No!”

“Just enough--”

“No, Stephen.”

“--Enough to dull it--just a little? I don’t ask for enough to make me
sleep--not even to make me doze. You have your needle; haven’t you,
doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Then, just this once--for the last time.”

“No.”

“Why? Are you afraid? You needn’t be, doctor. I don’t care for it except
to give me a little respite, a little rest on a night like this. I’m so
tired of this ache. If I could only have some sleep, and wake up in good
shape, I’d stand a better chance of fighting. … Wait, doctor! Just one
moment. I don’t mean to be a coward, but I’ve had a hard fight, and--I’m
tired. … If you could see your way to helping me--”

“I dare not help you any more that way.”

“Not this once?”

“Not this once.”

There was a dead silence, broken at last by the doctor with a violent
gesture toward the telephone. “Talk to the girl! Why don’t you talk to
the girl! If she’s worth a hill o’ beans she’ll help you to hang on.
What’s she for, if she isn’t for such moments? Tell her you need her
voice; tell her you need her faith in you. Damn central! Talk out in
church! Don’t make a goddess of a woman. The men who want to marry her,
and can’t, will do that! The nincompoop can always be counted on to
deify the commonplace. And she is commonplace. If she isn’t, she’s no
good! Commend me to sanity and the commonplace. I take off my hat to it!
I honour it. God bless it! Good-night!”

Siward lay still for a long while after the doctor had gone. More than
an hour had passed before he slowly sat up and groped for the telephone
book, opened it, and searched in a blind, hesitating way until he found
the number he was looking for.

He had never telephoned to her; he had never written her except once, in
reply to her letter in regard to his mother’s death--that strange, timid,
formal letter, in which, grief-stunned as he was, he saw only the
formality, and had answered it more formally still. And that was all
that had come of the days and nights by that northern sea--a letter and
its answer, and silence.

And, thinking of these things, he shut the book wearily, and lay back in
the shadow of the faded curtain, closing his sunken eyes.



CHAPTER IX CONFESSIONS

In a city in transition, where yesterday is as dead as a dead century,
where those who prepare the old year for burial are already taking the
ante-mortem statement of the new, the future fulfils the functions of
the present. Time itself is considered merely as a by-product of horse-
power, discounted with flippancy as the unavoidable friction clogging
the fly-wheel of progress.

Memory, once a fine art, is becoming a lost art in Manhattan.

His world and his city had almost ceased to think of Siward.

For a few weeks men spoke of him in the several clubs of which he had
lately been a member--spoke of him always in the past tense; and after a
little while spoke of him no more.

In that section of the social system which he had inhabited, his absence
on account of his mother’s death being taken for granted, people laid
him away in their minds almost as ceremoniously as they had laid away
the memory of his mother. Nothing halted because he was not present;
nothing was delayed, rearranged, or abandoned because his familiar
presence chanced to be missing. There remained only one more place to
fill at a cotillion, dinner, or bridge party; only another man for opera
box or week’s end; one man the more to be counted on, one more man to be
counted out--transferred to the credit of profit and loss, and the ledger
closed for the season.

They who remembered him, among those who had not yet lost that old-
fashioned art, were very few--a young girl here and there, over whom he
had been absent-mindedly sentimental; a débutante or two who had adored
him from a distance as a friend of elder sister or brother; here and
there an old, old lady to whom he had been considerate, and who perhaps
remembered something of the winning charm of the Siwards when the town
was young--his father, perhaps, perhaps his grandfather--these thought of
him at intervals; the remainder had no leisure to remember even if they
had not forgotten how to do it. Several cabmen missed him for a while;
now and then a privileged café waiter inquired about him from gay, noisy
parties entering some old haunt of his. Mr. Desmond, of art gallery and
roulette notoriety, whose business is not to forget, was politely
regretful at his absence from certain occult ceremonies which he had at
irregular intervals graced with votive offerings. And the list ended
there--almost, not quite; for there were two people who had not forgotten
Siward: Howard Quarrier and Beverly Plank; and one other, a third, who
could not yet forget him if she would--but, as yet, she had not tried
very desperately.

The day that Siward left New York to visit everybody’s friend, Mr.
Mulqueen, in the country, Plank called on him for the second time in his
life, and was presently received in the south drawing-room, the library
being limited to an informality and intimacy not for Mr. Plank.

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