Book: The Fighting Chance

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




She moved slightly in her saddle to look at him, and for an instant
fancied that there was something furtive in his eyes; only for an
instant, for he quietly picked up the thread of conversation where she
had dropped it, saying that it had been raining for the last ten
minutes, and that they might as well turn their horses toward shelter.

“I don’t mind the rain,” she said; “there is a spring-like odour in it.
Don’t you notice it?”

“Not particularly,” he replied.

“I was miles away a moment ago,” she said; “years away, I mean--a little
girl again, with two stiff yellow braids, trying to pretend that a big
arm-chair was my mother’s lap and that I could hear her whispering to
me. And there I sat, on a day like this, listening, pretending, cuddled
up tight, and looking out at the first rain of the year falling in the
backyard. There was an odour like this about it all. Memory, they say,
is largely a matter of nose!” She laughed, fearing that be might have
thought her sentimental, already regretting the familiarity of thrusting
such trivial and personal incidents upon his notice. He was probably too
indifferent to comment on it, merely nodding as she ended.

Then, without reason, through and through her shot a shiver of
loneliness--utter loneliness and isolation. Without reason, because from
him she expected nothing, required nothing, except what he offered--the
emotionless reticence of indifference, the composure of perfect
formality. What did she want, then--companions? She had them. Friends?
She could scarcely escape from them. Intimates? She had only to choose
one or a hundred attuned responsive to her every mood, every caprice.
Lonely? With the men of New York crowding, shouldering, crushing their
way to her feet? Lonely? With the women of New York struggling already
for precedence in her favour?--omen significant of the days to come, of
those future years diamond-linked in one unbroken, triumphant glitter.

Lonely!

The rain was falling out of the hanging mist, something more than a
drizzle now. Quarrier spoke of it again, but she shook her head, walking
her horse slowly onward. The train of thought she followed was slower
still, winding on and on, leading her into half light and shadow, and in
and out through hidden trails she should have known by this time--always
on, skirting the objective, circling it through sudden turns. And now
she was becoming conscious of the familiar way; now she recognised the
quiet, still by-ways of the maze she seemed doomed to wander in forever.
But, for that matter, all paths of thought were alike to her, for,
sooner or later, all ultimately led to him; and this she was already
aware of as a disturbing phenomenon to consider and account for and to
provide against--when she had leisure.

“About that Amalgamated Electric Company,” she began without prelude;
“would you mind answering a question or two, Howard?”

“You could not understand it,” he said, unpleasantly disturbed by her
abruptness.

“As you please. It is quite true I can make nothing of what the
newspapers are saying about it, except that Mr. Plank seems to be doing
a number of things.”

“Injunctions, and other matters,” observed Quarrier.

“Is anybody going to lose any money in it?”

“Who, for example?”

“Why--you, for example,” she said, laughing.

“I don’t expect to.”

“Then it is going to turn out all right? And Mr. Plank and Kemp Ferrall
and the major and--the other people interested, are not going to be
almost ruined by the Inter-County people?”

“Do you think a man like Plank is likely to be ruined, as you say, by
Amalgamated Electric?”

“No. But Kemp and the major--”

“I think the major is out of danger,” replied Quarrier, looking at her
with the new, sullen narrowing of his eyes.

“I am glad of that. Is Kemp--and the others?”

“Ferrall could stand it if matters go wrong. What others?”

“Why--the other owners and stockholders--”

“What others? Who do you mean?”

“Mr. Siward, for example,” she said in an even voice, leaning over to
pat her horse’s neck with her gloved hand.

“Mr. Siward must take the chances we all take,” observed Quarrier.

“But, Howard, it would really mean ruin for him if matters went badly.
Wouldn’t it?”

“I am not familiar with the details of Mr. Siward’s investments.”

“Nor am I,” she said slowly.

He made no reply.

Lack of emotion in the man beside her she always expected, and therefore
this new, sullen note in his voice perplexed her. Too, at times, in his
increasing reticence there seemed to be almost a hint of cold
effrontery. She felt it now--an indefinite suggestion of displeasure and
the power to retaliate; something evasive, watchful, patiently hostile;
and, try as she might, she could not rid herself of the discomfort of
it, and the perplexity.

She spoke about other things; he responded in his impassive manner.
Presently she turned her horse and Quarrier wheeled his, facing a warm,
fine rain, slanting thickly from the south.

His silky, Vandyke beard was all wet with the moisture. She noticed it,
and unbidden arose the vision of the gun-room at Shotover: Quarrier’s
soft beard wet with rain; the phantoms of people passing and repassing;
Siward’s straight figure swinging past, silhouetted against the glare of
light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the
vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly
against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing--spectres of dead
hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and wearing
Siward’s features!

She must stop it! What was all this crowding in upon her as she rode
forward through the driving rain--all this resurgence of ghosts long
laid, long exorcised? Had the odour of the rain stolen her senses,
awakening memory of childish solitude? Was it that which was drugging
her with remembrance of Siward and the rattle of rain in the bay-window
above the glass-roofed swimming-pool?

She opened her eyes wide, staring straight ahead into the thickening
rain; but her thoughts were loosened now, tuned to the increasing rhythm
of her heart: and she saw him seated there, his head buried in his hands
as she stole through the dim corridors to her first tryst; saw him look
up; saw herself beside him among the cushions; tasted again the rose-
petals that her lips had stripped from the blossoms; saw once more the
dawn of something in his steady eyes; felt his arm about her, his
breath--

Her horse, suddenly spurred, bounded forward through the rain, and she
rode breathless, with lips half parted, as if afraid, turning her head
to look behind--as though she could outride the phantom clinging to her
stirrup, masked like youth, wearing the shadowy eyes of Love!


In her drenched habit, standing before her dressing-room fire, she heard
her maid soliciting entrance, and paid no heed, the door being locked--as
though a spectre could be bolted out of rooms and houses! Pacing the
floor, restless, annoyed, and dismayed by turns, she flung her wet skirt
and coat from her, piece by piece, and stood for awhile, like some
slender youth in riding breeches and shirt, facing the fire, her fingers
resting on her hips.

In the dull light of a rainy noon-day the fire reddened the ceiling,
throwing her giant shadow across the wall, where it towered, swaying,
like a ghost above her. She caught sight of it over her shoulder, and
watched it absently; then gazed into the coals again, her chin dropping
on her bared chest.

At her maid’s repeated knocking she turned, her boots and the single
spur sparkling in the firelight, and opened the door.

An hour later, fresh from her bath, luxurious in loose and filmy lace,
her small, white feet shod with silk, she lunched alone, cradled among
the cushions of her couch.

Twice she strolled through the rooms leisurely, summoned by her maid to
the telephone; the first time to chat with Grace Ferrall, who, it
appeared, was a victim of dissipation, being still abed, and out of
humour with the rainy world; the second time to answer in the negative
Marion’s suggestion that she motor to Lakewood with her for the week’s
end before they closed their house.

Sauntering back again, she sipped her milk and vichy, tasted the
strawberries, tasted a big black grape, discarded both, and lay back
among the cushions, her naked arms clasped behind her head, and dropping
one knee over the other, stared at the ceiling.

Restlessness and caprice ruled her. She seldom smoked, but seeing on the
table a stray cigarette of the sort she kept for any intimates who might
desire them, she stretched out her arm, scratched a match, and lighted
it with a dainty grimace.

Lying there, she tried to make rings; but the smoke only got into her
delicate uptilted nose and stung her tongue, and she very soon had
enough of her cigarette.

Watching the slow fire consume it between her fingers she lay supine,
following the spirals of smoke with inattentive eyes. By-and-by the
lengthening ash fell, powdering her, and she threw the cigarette into
the grate, flicked the ashes from her bare, round arm, and, clasping her
hands under her neck, turned over and closed her eyes.

Sleep?--with every pulse awake and throbbing, every heart-beat sending
the young blood rushing out through a body the incarnation of youth and
life itself! There was a faint flush in the hollow of each upturned
palm, where the fingers like relaxed petals curled inward; a deepening
tint in the parted lips; and under the lids, through the dusk of the
lashes, a glimmer of blue.

Lying there, veiled gaze conscious of the rose-light which glowed and
waned on the ceiling, she awaited the flowing tide on which so often she
had embarked and drifted out into that golden gloom serene, where,
spirit becalmed, Time and Grief faded, and Desire died out upon the
unshadowed sea of dreams.

It is long waiting for the tide when the wakeful heart beats loudly,
when the pulses quicken at a memory, and the thousand idle little
cellules of the brain, long sealed, long unused, and consigned to the
archives of What Is Ended, open one by one, releasing each its own
forgotten ghost.

And how can the heart rest, the pulse sleep, startled to a flutter, as
one by one the tiny cells unclose unbidden, and the dead remembrance,
from its cerements freed, brightens to life?

Words he had used, the idle lifting of his head, the forgotten
inflection of his voice, the sunlight on his hair and the sea-wind
stirring it; his figure as it turned to move away, the half-caught echo
of his laugh, faint, faint!--so that her own ears, throbbing, strained to
listen; the countless unimportant moments she had thought unmarked, yet
carefully stored up, without her knowledge, in the magic cellules of her
brain--all, all were coming back to life, more and more distinct,
startlingly clear.

And she lay like one afraid to move, lest her stirring waken a vague
something that still slept, something she dared not arouse, dared not
meet face to face, even in dreams. An interval--perhaps an hour, perhaps
a second--passed, leaving her stranded so close to the shoals of slumber
that sleep passed only near enough to awaken her.

The room was very still and dim, but the clamour in her brain unnerved
her, and she sat up among the cushions, looking vacantly about her with
the blue, confused eyes, the direct, unseeing gaze of a child roused by
a half-heard call.

The call--low, imperative, sustained--continued softly persistent against
her windows--the summons of the young year’s rain.

She went to the window and stood among the filmy curtains, looking out
into the mist; a springlike aroma penetrated the room. She opened the
window a little way, and the sweet, virile odour enveloped her.

A thousand longings rose within her; unnumbered wistful questions
stirred her, sighing, unanswered.

Aware that her lips were moving unconsciously, she listened to the words
forming automatic repetitions of phrases long forgotten:

“And those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the door shall
be shut in the streets.”

What was it she was repeating?

“Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in
the way.”

What echo of the past was this?

“… And desire shall fail: because--”

Intent, absorbed in retracing the forgotten sequence to its source, she
stood, breathing the thickening incense of the rain; and every breath
was drawing her backward, nearer, nearer to the source of memory. Ah,
the cliff chapel in the rain!--the words of a text mumbled deafly--the
yearly service for those who died at sea! And she, seated there in the
chapel dusk thinking of him who sat beside her, and how he feared a
heavier, stealthier, more secret tide crawling, purring about his feet!

Enfin! Always, always at the end of everything, He! Always, reckoning
step by step, backward through time, He! the source, the inception, the
meaning of all!

Unmoored at last, her spirit swaying, enveloped in memories of him, she
gave herself to the flood--overwhelmed, as tide on tide rose, rushing
over her--body, mind, and soul.

She closed her eyes, leaning there heavily amid the cloudy curtains; she
moved back into the room and stood staring at space through wet lashes.
The hard, dry pulse in her throat hurt her till her under lip, freed
from the tyranny of her small teeth, slipped free, quivering rebellion.

She had been walking her room to and fro, to and fro, for a long time
before she realised that she had moved at all.

And now, impulse held the helm; a blind, unreasoning desire for relief
hurried into action on the wings of impulse.

There was a telephone at her elbow. No need to hunt through lists to
find a number she had known so long by heart--the three figures which had
reiterated themselves so often, monotonously insistent, slyly
persuasive; repeating themselves even in her dreams, so that she awoke
at times shivering with the vision in which she had listened to
temptation, and had called to him across the wilderness of streets and
men.


“Is he at home?”

“--!”

“Would you ask him to come to the telephone?”

“--!”

“Please say to him that it is a--a friend. … Thank you.”

In the throbbing quiet of her room she heard the fingers of the prying
rain busy at her windows; the ticking of the small French clock, very
dull, very far away--or was it her heart? And, faintly ringing in the
receiver pressed against her ear, millions of tiny stirrings, sounds
like instruments of an elfin orchestra tuning, echoes as of steps
passing through the halls of fairy-land, a faint confusion of human-like
tones; then:

“Who is it?”

Her voice left her for an instant; her dry lips made no answer.

“Who is it?” he repeated in his steady, pleasant voice.

“It is I.”

There was absolute silence--so long that it frightened her. But before
she could speak again his voice was sounding in her ears, patient,
unconvinced:

“I don’t recognise your voice. Who am I speaking to?”

“Sylvia.”

There was no response, and she spoke again:

“I only wanted to say good morning. It is afternoon now; is it too late
to say good morning?”

“No. I’m badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?”

“Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I--I thought--”

“Yes, I am listening.”

“I don’t know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you
a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you
up--out of the vasty deep?”

The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same
trailing sweetness of inflection--could he doubt his senses any longer?

“I know you, now,” he said.

“I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you
are--if you don’t mind saying?”

“Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?”

“Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is
in rags--make-up rags! Isn’t that a disagreeable remark? But I’ll come to
the paint-brush too, of course. … We all do. Doesn’t anybody ever see
you any more?”

She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: “Does anybody want
to?”

“Everybody, of course! You know it. You always were spoiled to death.”

“Yes--to death.”

“Stephen!”

“Yes? “

“Are you becoming cynical?”

“I? Why should I?”

“You are! Stop it! Mercy on us! If that is what is going on in a certain
house on lower Fifth Avenue, facing the corner of certain streets, it’s
time somebody dropped in to--”

“To--what?”

“To the rescue! I’ve a mind to do it myself. They say you are not well,
either.”

“Who says that?”

“Oh, the usual little ornithological cockatrice--or, rather, cantatrice.
Don’t ask me, because I won’t tell you. I always tell you too much,
anyway. Don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. Everybody spoils you and so do I.”

“Yes--I am rather in that way, I suppose.”

“What way?”

“Oh--spoiled.”

“Stephen!”

“Yes?”

And in a lower voice: “Please don’t say such things--will you?”

“No.”

“Especially to me.”

“Especially to you. No, I won’t, Sylvia.”

And, after a hesitation, she continued sweetly:

“I wonder what you were doing, all alone in that old house of yours,
when I called you up?”

“I? Let me see. Oh, I was superintending some packing.”

“Are you going off somewhere?”

“I think so.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, Sylvia.”

“Stephen, how absurd! You must know where you are going! If you mean
that you don’t care to tell me--”

“I mean--that.”

“I decline to be snubbed. I’m shameless, and I wish to be informed.
Please tell me.”

“I’d rather not tell you.”

“Very well. … Good-bye. … But don’t ring off just yet, Stephen. … Do you
think that, sometime, you would care to see--any people--I mean when you
begin to go out again?”

“Who, for example?”

“Why, anybody?”

“No; I don’t think I should care to.”

“I wish you would care to. It is not well to let go every tie, drop
everybody so completely. No man can do that to advantage. It would be so
much better for you to go about a bit--see and be seen, you know; just to
meet a few people informally; go to see some pretty girl you know well
enough to--to--”

“To what? Make love to?”

“That would he very good for you,” she said.

“But not for the pretty girl. Besides, I’m rather too busy to go about,
even if I were inclined to.”

“Are you really busy, Stephen?”

“Yes--waiting. That is the very hardest sort of occupation. And I’m
obliged to be on hand every minute.”

“But you said that you were going out of town.”

“Did I? Well, I did not say it, exactly, but I am going to leave town.”

“For very long?” she asked.

“Perhaps. I can’t tell yet.”

“Stephen, before you go--if you are going for a very, very long
while--perhaps you will--you might care to say good-bye?”

“Do you think it best?”

“No,” she said innocently; “but if you care--”

“Do you care to have me?”

“Yes, I do.”

There was a silence; and when his voice sounded again it had altered:

“I do not think you would care to see me, Sylvia. I--they say I am--I
have--changed--since my--since a slight illness. I am not over it yet, not
cured--not very well yet; and a little tired, you see--a little shaken. I
am leaving New York to--to try once more to be cured. I expect to be
well--one way or another--”

“Stephen, where are you going? Answer me!”

“I can’t answer you.”

“Is your illness serious? “

“A--it is--it requires some--some care.”

Her fingers tightening around the receiver whitened to the delicate
nails under the pressure. Mute, struggling with the mounting impulse,
voice and lip unsteady, she still spoke with restraint:

“You say you require care? And what care have you? Who is there with
you? Answer me!”

“Why--everybody; the servants. I have care enough.”

“Oh, the servants! Have you a physician to advise you?”

“Certainly--the best in the world. Sylvia, dea--, Sylvia, I didn’t mean to
give you an impression--”

“Stephen, I will have you truthful with me! I know perfectly well you
are ill. I--if I could only--if there was something, some way--Listen: I
am--I am going to do something about it, and I don’t care very much what
I do!”

“What sweet nonsense!” he laughed, but his voice was no steadier than
hers.

“Will you drive with me?” she asked impulsively, “some afternoon--”

“Sylvia, dear, you don’t really want me to do it. Wait, listen: I--I’ve
got to tell you that--that I’m not fit for it. I’ve got to be honest with
you; I am not fit, not in physical condition to go out just yet. I’ve
really been ill--for weeks. Plank has been very nice to me. I want to get
well; I mean to try very hard. But the man you knew--is--changed.”

“Changed?”

“Not in that way!” he said in a slow voice.

“H-how, then?” she stammered, all a-thrill.

“Nerve gone--almost. Going to get it back again, of course. Feel a
million times better already for talking with you.”

“Do--does it really help?”

“It’s the only panacea for me,” he said too quickly to consider his
words.

“The only one?” she faltered. “Do you mean to say that your
trouble--illness--has anything to do with--”

“No, no! I only--”

“Has it, Stephen?”

“No!”

“Because, if I thought--”

“Sylvia, I’m not that sort! You mustn’t talk to me that way. There’s
nothing to be sorry for about me. Any man may lose his nerve, and, if he
is a man, go after it and get it back again. Every man has a fighting
chance. You said it yourself once--that a man mustn’t ask for a fighting
chance; he must take it. And I’m going to take it and win out one way or
another.”

“What do you mean by ‘another,’ Stephen?”

“I--Nothing. It’s a phrase.”

“What do you mean? Answer me!”

“It’s a phrase,” he said again; “no meaning, you know.”

“Stephen, Mr. Plank says that you are lame.”

“What did he say that for?” demanded Siward wrathfully.

“I asked him. Kemp saw you on crutches at your window. So I asked Mr.
Plank, and he said you had discarded your crutches too soon and had
fallen and lamed yourself again. Are you able to walk yet?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Outdoors?”

“A--no, not just yet.”

“In other words, you are practically bedridden.”

“No, no! I can get about the room very well.”

“You couldn’t go down-stairs--for an hour’s drive, could you?”

“Can’t manage that for awhile,” he said hastily.

“Oh, the vanity of you, Stephen Siward! the vanity! Ashamed to let me
see you when you are not your complete and magnificently attractive
self! Silly, I shall see you! I shall drive down on the first sunny
morning and sit outside in my victoria until you can’t stand the
temptation another instant. I’m going to do it. You cannot stop me;
nobody can stop me. I desire to do it, and that is sufficient, I think,
for everybody concerned. If the sun is out to-morrow, I shall be out
too! … I am so tired of not seeing you! Let central listen! I don’t
care. I don’t care what I am saying. I’ve endured it so long--I--There’s
no use! I am too tired of it, and I want to see you. … Can’t we see each
other without--without--thinking about things that are settled once and
for all?”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Then you’d better learn to! Because, if you think I’m going through
life without seeing you frequently you are simple! I’ve stood it too
long at a time. I won’t go through this sort of thing again! You’d
better be amiable; you’d better be civil to me, or--or--nobody on earth
can tell what will happen! The idea of you telling me you had lost your
nerve! You’ve got to get it back--and help me find mine! Yes, it’s gone,
gone, gone! I lost it in the rain, somewhere, to-day. … Does the scent
of the rain come in at your window? … Do you remember--There! I can’t
say it. … Good-bye. Good-bye. You must get well and I must, too. Good-
bye.”


The fruit of her imprudence was happiness--an excited happiness, which
lasted for a day. The rain lasted, too, for another day, then turned to
snow, choking the city with such a fall as had not been seen since the
great blizzard--blocking avenues, barricading cross-streets, burying
squares and circles and parks, and still falling, drifting, whirling
like wind-whipped smoke from cornice and roof-top. The electric cars
halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy
wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out;
and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency men
with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and
Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.

All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky
above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of
water glimmered black in their white setting. As she sat at her desk she
could see them drifting into and out of the gray squares of sky framed
by her window-panes. Two days ago she had seen them stemming the sky
blasts, heralding the coming of unfelt tempests, flapping steadily
through the fragrant rain. Now, the false phantom which had mimicked
spring turned on the world the glassy glare of winter, stupefying hope,
stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things.
The first vague summons, the restlessness of awakening aspiration, the
first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility.

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