Book: The Fighting Chance

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




“There is a spiritual strength,” said Plank timidly.

“I have never dreamed of denying it,” said Siward. “I have tried to find
it through the accepted sources--accepted by me, too. God has not helped
me in the conventional way or through traditional methods; but that has
not inclined me to doubt Him as the tribunal of last resort,” he added
hastily. “I don’t for a moment waver in faith because I am ignorant of
the proper manner to approach Him. The Arbiter of all knows that I
desire to be decent. He must be aware, too, that all anchors save one
have failed to hold me.”

“You mean--Miss Landis?”

“Yes. It may be weakness; it may be to my shame that the cables of pride
and self-respect, even the spiritual respect for the Highest, cannot
hold me when this one anchor holds. All I know is that it holds--so far.
It held me at Shotover; it holds me again, now. And the rocks were close
abeam, Plank--very close--when she spoke to me over the wires, through the
rain, that dark day in March.”

He moistened his lips feverishly.

“She said that I might see her. I have waited a long time. I have taken
my fighting chance again and I’ve won out, so far.”

He looked up at Plank, curiously embarrassed:

“Your body is normal; your intelligence wholesome, balanced, sane; and I
want to ask you if you think that perhaps, without understanding how, I
have found in her, or through her, in some way, the spiritual source
that I think might help me to help myself?”

And, as Plank made no reply:

“Or am I talking sentimental cant? Don’t answer, if you think that. I
can’t trust my own mind any more, anyway; and,” with an ugly laugh,
“I’ll know it all some day--the sooner the better!”

“Don’t say that!” growled Plank. “You were sane a moment ago.”

Siward looked up sharply, but the other silenced him with a gesture.

“Wait! You asked me a perfectly sane question--so wholesome, so normal,
that I’m trying to frame an answer worthy of it! I intimated that after
the physical, the mental, the ethical phenomena, there remained always
the spiritual instinct. Like a wireless current, if a man can establish
communication it is well for him, whatever the method. You assented, I
think.”

“Yes.”

“And you ask me if I believe it possible that she can be the medium?”

“Yes.”

Plank said deliberately: “Yes, I do think so.”

The silence was again broken by Plank: “Siward, you have asked me what I
think. Now you must listen to the end. If you believed that through
her--her love, marrying her--you stood the best chance in the world to win
out, it would be cowardly to ask her to take the risk. As much as I care
for you I had rather see you lose the fight than accept such a risk from
her. Now you know what I think--but you don’t know all. Siward, I say to
you that if you are man enough to take her, take her! And I say that of
the two risks she is running to-day, the chance she might take with you
is infinitely the lesser risk. For with you, if you continue slowly
losing your fight, the mental suffering only will be hers. But if she
closes this bargain with Quarrier, selling to him her body, the light
will go out of her soul for ever.”

He leaned heavily toward Siward, stretching out his powerful arm:

“You marry her; and keep open your spiritual communication through her,
if that is the way it has been established, and hang on to your God that
way until your body is dead! I tell you, Siward, to marry her. I don’t
care how you do it; I don’t care how you get her. Take her! Yours, of
the two, is the stronger character, or she would not be where she is.
Does she want what you cannot give her? Cure that desire--it is more
contemptible than the craving that shatters you! I say, let the one-eyed
lead the blind. Miracles are worked out by mathematics--if you have faith
enough.”

He rose, striding the length of the room once or twice, turned, holding
out his broad hand:

“Good-bye,” he said. “Harrington is about due at my office; Quarrier
will probably turn up to-night. I am not vindictive; I shall be just
with them--as just as I know how, which is to be as merciful as I dare
be. Good-bye, Siward. I--I believe you and she are going to get well.”

When he had gone, Siward lay back in his chair, very still, eyes closed.
A faint colour had mounted to his face and remained there.

It was late in the afternoon when he went down-stairs, using his
crutches lightly. Gumble handed him a straw hat and opened the door, and
Siward cautiously descended the stoop, stood for a few moments on the
sidewalk, looking up at the blue sky, then wheeled and slowly made his
way toward Washington Square. The avenue was deserted; his own house
appeared to be the only remaining house still open in all that old-
fashioned but respectable quarter.

He swung leisurely southward, a slim, well-built young fellow, strangely
out of place on crutches. The poor always looked at him; beggars never
importuned him, yet found him agreeable to watch. Children, who seldom
look up into the air far enough to notice grown people, always became
conscious of him when he passed; often smiled, sometimes spoke. As for
stray curs and tramp cats, they were for ever making advances. As long
as he could remember, there was scarcely a week in town but some
homeless dog attached himself to Siward’s heels, sometimes trotting
several blocks, sometimes following him home--where the outcast was
always cared for, washed, fed, and ultimately shipped out to the farm,
where scores of these “fresh-air” dogs resided on his bounty and rolled
in luxury on his lawns.

Cats, too, were prone to notice him, rising as he passed to hoist an
interrogative tail and make tentative observations.

In Washington Square, these, and the ragged children, knew him best of
all. The children came from Minetta Lane and the purlieus south and west
of it; the cats from the Mews, which Siward always thought most
appropriate.

And now, as he passed the marble arch and entered the square, glancing
behind him he saw the inevitable cat trotting, and, at his left, a very
dirty little girl pretending to trundle a hoop, but plainly enough
keeping sociable pace with him.

“Hello!” said Siward. The cat stopped; the child tossed her clustering
curls, gave him a rapid but fearless sidelong glance, laughed, and ran
on in the wake of her hoop. When she caught it she sat down on a bench
opposite the fountain and looked around at Siward.

“It’s pretty warm, isn’t it?” said Siward, coming up and seating himself
on the same bench.

“Are you lame?” asked the child.

“Oh, a little.”

“Is your leg broken?”

“Oh, no, not now.”

“Is that your cat?”

Siward looked around; the cat was seated on the bench beside him. But he
was accustomed to that sort of thing, and he caressed the creature with
his gloved hand.

“Are you rich?” asked the child, shaking her blond curls from her eyes
and staring up solemnly at him.

“Not very,” he answered, smiling. “Why do you ask?”

“You look rich, somehow,” said the child shyly.

“What! With these old and very faded clothes?”

She shook her head, swinging her plump legs: “You look it, somehow. It
isn’t the clothes that matter.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Siward, laughing “I’m rich enough to buy
all the hokey-pokey you can eat!” and he glanced meaningly at the pedlar
of that staple who had taken station between a vender of peaches and a
Greek flower-seller.

The child looked, too, but made no comment.

“How about it?” asked Siward.

“I’d rather have something to remember you by,” said the girl
innocently.

“What?” he said, perplexed.

“A rose. They are five cents, and hokey-pokey costs that much--I mean,
for as much as you can eat.”

“Do you really want a rose?” he said amused.

But the child fell shy, and he beckoned the Greek and selected a dozen
big, perfumed jacks.

Then, as the child sat silent, her ragged arms piled with roses, he
asked her jestingly what else she desired.

“Nothing. I like to look at you,” she answered simply.

“And I like to look at you. Will you tell me your name?”

“Molly.”

But that is all the information he could extract. Presently she said she
was going, hesitated, looked a very earnest good-bye, and darted away
across the park, her hoop over one arm, the crimson roses bobbing above
her shoulders. Something in her flight attracted the errant cat, for
she, too, jumped down and bounded after the little flying feet, but,
catlike, halted half-way to scratch, and then forgetting what she was
about, wandered off toward the Mews again, whence she had been lured by
instinctive fascination.

Siward, intensely amused, sat there in the late sunlight which streamed
through the park, casting long shadows from the elms and sycamores. It
was that time of the day, just before sunset, when the old square looked
to him as he remembered it as a child. Even the marble arch, pink in the
evening sun, did not disturb the harmony of his memories. He saw his
father once more, walking home from down town, tall, slim, laughingly
stopping to watch him as he played there with the other children--the
nurses, seated in a row, crocheting under the sycamores; he saw the old-
fashioned carriage pass, Mockett on the box, Wands beside him, and his
pretty mother leaning forward to wave her hand to him as the long-
tailed, long-maned horses wheeled into Fifth Avenue. Little unimportant
scenes, trivial episodes, grew in the spectral garden of memory: the
first time he ever saw Marion Page, when, aged five, she was attempting
to get into the fountain, pursued by a shrieking nurse; and a certain
flight across the grass he had indulged in with Leila Mortimer, then
Leila Egerton, aged six, in hot pursuit, because she found that it bored
him horribly to be kissed, and she was bound to do it. He had a fight
once, over by that gnarled, old, silver poplar-tree, with Kemp
Ferrall--he could not remember what about, only that they ended by
unanimously assaulting their nurses and were dragged howling homeward.

He turned, looking across to where the gray towers of the University
once stood. There had been an old stone church there, too; and, south of
that, old, old houses with hip-roofs and dormers where now the high
white cliffs of modern architecture rose, riddled with tiny windows,
every vane glittering in the sun. South, the old houses still remained,
now degraded to sordid uses. North, the square, red-brick mansions, with
their white pillars and steps, still faced the sunset--the last
practically unbroken rank of the old régime, the last of the old guard,
standing fast and still confronting, still resisting the Inevitable
looming in limestone and granite, story piled on story, aloft in the
kindling, southern sky.

A cab, driven smartly, passed through the park, the horses’ feet
slapping the asphalt till the echoes rattled back from the marble arch.
He followed it idly with his eyes up Fifth Avenue; saw it suddenly halt
in the middle of the street; saw a woman spring out, stand for a moment
talking to her companion, then turn and look toward the square.

She stood so long, and she was so far away, that he presently grew tired
of watching her. A dozen ragged urchins were prowling around the
fountain, casting sidelong glances at a distant policeman. But it was
not hot enough that evening to permit the children to splash in the
water, and the policeman drove them off.

“Poor little devils!” said Siward to himself; and he rose, adjusted his
crutches, and started through the park with a vague idea of seeing what
could be done.

As he limped onward, the sun level in his eyes, he heard somebody speak
behind him, but did not catch the words or apply the hail to himself.
Then, “Mr. Siward!” came the low, breathless voice at his elbow.

His heart stopped as he did. The sun had dazzled his eyes, and when he
turned on his crutches he could not see clearly for a second. That past,
he looked at Sylvia, looked at her outstretched hand, took it
mechanically, still staring at her with only a dazed unbelief in his
eyes.

“I am in town for a day,” she said. “Leila Mortimer and I were driving
up town from the bank when we saw you; and the next thing that happened
was me, on Fifth Avenue, running after you--no, the next thing was my
flying leap from the hansom, and my standing there looking down the
street and across the square where you sat. Then Leila told me I was
probably crazy, and I immediately confirmed her diagnosis by running
after you!”

She stood laughing, flushed, sunburned, and breathless, her left hand
still in his, her right hand laid over it.

“Oh,” she said, with a sudden change to anxiety, “does it tire you to
stand?”

“No. I was going to saunter along.”

“May I saunter with you for a moment? I mean--I only mean, I am glad to
see you.”

“Do you think I am going to let you go now?” he asked, astonished.

She looked at him, then her eyes evaded his: “Let us walk a little,” she
said, withdrawing her hand, “if you think you are strong enough.”

“Strong! Look, Sylvia!” and he stood unsupported by his crutches, then
walked a little way, slowly, but quite firmly. “I am rather a coward
about my foot, that is all. I shall not lug these things about after to-
day.”

“Did the doctor say you might?”

“Yes, after to-day. I could walk home now without them. I could do a
good many things I couldn’t do a few minutes ago. Isn’t that curious?”

“Very,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

He laughed. She dared not look at him. The excitement and impetus of
sheer impulse had carried her this far; now all the sadness of it was
clutching hard at her throat and for awhile she could not speak--walking
there in her dainty, summer gown beside him, the very incarnation of
youth and health, with the sea-tan on wrist and throat, and he, white,
hollow-eyed, crippled, limping, at her elbow!

Yet at that very moment his whole frame seemed to glow and his heart
clamour with the courage in it, for he was thinking of Plank’s words and
he knew Plank had spoken the truth. She could not give herself to
Quarrier, if he stood firm. His was the stronger will after all; his was
the right to interfere, to stop her, to check her, to take her, draw her
back--as he had once drawn her from the fascination of destruction when
she had swayed out too far over the cliffs at Shotover.

“Do you remember that?” he asked, and spoke of the incident.

“Yes, I remember,” she replied, smiling.

“Doctors say” he continued, “that there is a weak streak in people who
are affected by great heights, or who find a dizzy fascination drawing
them toward the brink of precipices.”

“Do you mean me?” she asked, amused.

But he continued serenely: “You have seen those pigeons called ‘tumbler
pigeons’ suddenly turn a cart-wheel in mid-air? Scientists say it’s not
for pleasure they do it; it’s because they get dizzy. In other words,
they are not perfectly normal.”

She said, laughing: “Well, you never saw me turn a cart-wheel!”

“Only a moral one,” he replied airily.

“Stephen, what on earth do you mean? You’re not going to be
disagreeable, are you?”

“I am going to be so agreeable,” he said, laughing, “that you will find
it very difficult to tear yourself away.”

“I have no doubt of it, but I must, and very soon.”

“I’m not going to let you.”

“It can’t be helped,” she said, looking up at him. “I came in with
Leila. We’re asked to Lenox for the week’s end. We go to Stockbridge on
the early train to-morrow morning.

“I don’t care,” he said doggedly; “I’m not going to let you go yet.”

“If I took to my heels here in the park would you chase me, Stephen?”
she asked with mock anxiety.

“Yes; and if I couldn’t run fast enough I’d call that policeman. Now do
you begin to understand?”

“Oh, I’ve always understood that you were spoiled. I’m partly guilty of
the spoiling process, too. Listen: I’ll walk with you a little way”--she
looked at him--“a little way,” she continued gently; “then I must go.
There is only a caretaker in our house and Leila will be furious if I
leave her all alone. Besides, we’re going to dine there and it won’t be
very gay if I don’t give a few orders first.”

“But you brought your maid?”

“Naturally.”

“Then telephone her that you and Leila are dining out.”

“Where, silly? Do you want us to dine somewhere with you?”

“Want you! You’ve got to!”

“Stephen, it isn’t best.”

“It is best.”

She turned to him impulsively: “Oh, I do want to so much! Do you think I
might? It is perfectly delicious to see you again. I--you have no idea--”

“Yes, I have,” he said sternly.

They turned, walking past the fountain toward Fifth Avenue again.
Furtively she glanced at his hands with the city pallor on them as they
grasped the cross-bars of the crutches, then looked up at his worn face.
He was much thinner, but now in the softly fading light the shadows
under the eyes and cheek-bones seemed less sharp, his face fuller and
more boyish; the contour of head and shoulders, the short, crisp hair
were as she remembered--and the old charm held her, the old fascination
grew, tightening her throat, stealing through every vein, stirring her
pulses, awakening imperceptibly once more the best in her. The twilight
of a thousand years seemed to slip from the world as she looked out at
it through eyes opening from a long, long sleep; the marble arch burned
rosy in the evening glow; a fairy haze hung over the enchanted avenue,
stretching away, away into the blue magic of the city of dreams.

“There is no use,” she said under her breath; “I can’t go back to Leila.
Stephen, the dreadful part of it is that I--I wish she were in Jericho! I
wish the whole world were in Ballyhoo, and you and I alone once more!”

Under their gay laughter quivered the undertone of excitement. Sylvia
said:

“I’d like to talk to you all alone. It won’t do, of course; but I may
say what I’d like--mayn’t I? What time is it? If I’m dining with you
we’ve got to have Leila for convention’s sake, if not from motives of
sheer decency, which you and I seem to lack, Stephen.”

“We lack decency,” said Siward, “and we’re proud of it. As for Leila, I
am going to arrange for her very simply but very beautifully. Plank will
take care of her. Sylvia! There’s not a soul in town and we can be as
imprudent as we please.”

“No, we can’t. Agatha’s at the Santa Regina. She came down with us.”

“But we are not going to dine at the Santa Regina. We’re going where
Agatha wouldn’t intrude her colourless nose--to a thoroughly
unfashionable and selectly common resort overlooking the classic Harlem;
and we’re going to whiz thither in Plank’s car, and remain thither until
you yawn for mercy, whence we will return thence--”

“Stephen, you silly! I’m perfectly mad to go with you!”

“You’ll be madder when you get there, if the table has not improved.”

“Table! As though tables mattered on a night like this!” Then with
sudden self-reproach and quick solicitude: “Am I making you walk too
far? Wouldn’t you like to go in now?”

“No, I’m not tired; I’m millions of years younger, and I’m as strong as
the nine gods of your friend Porsena. Besides, haven’t I waited for
this?” and under his breath, fiercely, “Haven’t I waited!” he repeated,
turning on her.

“Do--do you mean that as a reproach?” she asked, lowering her eyes.

“No. I knew you would not come on ‘the first sunny day.’”

“Why did you think I would not come? Did you know me for the coward I
am?”

“I did not think you would come,” he repeated, halting to rest on his
crutches. He stood, balanced, staring dreamily into the dim perspective;
and again her fascinated eyes ventured to rest on the worn, white face,
listless, sombre in its fixedness.

The tears were very near her eyes; the spasm in her throat checked
speech. At length she stammered: “I did not come b-because I simply
couldn’t stand it!”

His face cleared as he turned quietly: “Child, you must not confuse
matters. You must not think of being sorry for me. The old order is
passing--ticking away on every clock in the world. All that inverted
order of things is being reversed. You don’t know what I mean, do you?
Ah, well; you will know when I grow into something of what you think you
remember in me, and when I grow out of what I really was.”

“Truly I don’t understand, Stephen. But then--I am out of training since
you went--went out of things. Have I changed? Do I seem more dull? I--it
has not been very gay with me. I don’t see--looking back across all the
noise, all the chaos of the winter--I do not see how I stood it alone.”

“Alone?”

“N-not seeing you--sometimes.”

He looked at her with smiling, sceptical eyes. “Didn’t you enjoy the
winter?”

“Do you enjoy being drugged with champagne?”

His face altered so quickly that, confused, she only stared at him, the
fixed smile stamped on her lips; then, overwhelmed in the revelation:

“Stephen, surely, surely you know what I meant! I did not mean that!
Dear, do you dream for one moment that--that I could--”

“No. You have not hurt me. Besides, I know what you mean.”

After a moment he swung forward on his crutches, biting his lip, the
frown gathering between his temples.

They were passing the big, old-fashioned hotel with its white façade and
green blinds, a lingering landmark of the older city.

“We’ll telephone here,” he said.

Side by side they went up the great, broad stoop and entered the lobby.

“If you’ll speak to Leila, I’ll get Plank on the wire. Say that we’ll
stop for you at seven.”

She gave her number; then, at the nod of the operator, entered a small
booth. Siward was given another booth in a few moments.

Plank answered from his office; his voice sounded grave and tired but it
quickened, tinged with surprise, when Siward made known his plan for the
evening.

“Is Mrs. Mortimer in town?” he demanded. “I had a wire from her that she
expected to be here and I hoped to see her at the station to-morrow on
her way to Lenox.”

“She’s stopping with Miss Landis. Can’t you manage to come?” asked
Siward anxiously.

“I don’t know. Do you wish it particularly? I have just seen Quarrier
and Harrington. I can’t quite understand Quarrier’s attitude. There’s a
certain hint of defiance about it. Harrington is all caved in. He is
ready to thank us for any mercies. But Quarrier--there’s something I
don’t fancy, don’t exactly understand about his attitude. He’s like a
dangerous man whom you’ve searched for concealed weapons, and who knows
you’ve overlooked the knife up his sleeve. That’s why I’ve expected to
spend a quiet evening, studying up the matter and examining every
loophole.”

“You’ve got to dine somewhere,” said Siward. “If you could fix it to
dine with us--But I won’t urge you.”

“All right. I don’t know why I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I feel this
way about things. I--I rather felt--you’ll laugh, Siward!--that somehow I’d
better not go out of my own house to-night; that I was safer, better off
in my own house, studying this Quarrier matter out. I’m tired, I
suppose; and this man Quarrier has come close to worrying me. But it’s
all right, of course, if you wish it. You know I haven’t any nerves.”

“If you are tired--” began Siward.

“No, no, I’m not. I’ll go. Will you say that we’ll stop for them at
seven? Really, it’s all right, Siward.”

“I don’t want to urge you,” repeated Siward.

“You’re not. I’ll go. But--wait one moment tell me, did Quarrier know
that Mrs. Mortimer was to stop with Miss Landis?”

“Wait a moment. Hold the wire.”

He opened the door of the booth and saw Sylvia waiting for him, seated
by the operator’s desk. She rose at once when she saw he wished to speak
with her.

“Tell me something,” he said in a low voice; “did Mr. Quarrier know that
Leila was to stay overnight with you?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly, surprised. “Why?”

Siward nodded vaguely, closed the door again, and said to Plank:

“Yes, Quarrier knows it. Do you think he’ll be there to-night? I don’t
suppose Miss Landis and Mrs. Mortimer know he is in town.”

Plank’s troubled voice came back over the wire: “I don’t know. I don’t
know what to think. I suppose I’m a little, just a trifle, overworked.
Somebody once said that I had one nerve in me somewhere, and Quarrier’s
probably found it; that’s all.”

“If you think it better not to come--”

“I’ll come. I’ll stop for you in the motor. Don’t worry, old fellow!
And--take your fighting chance! Good-bye!”

Siward, absorbed in his own thoughts, rose and walked slowly out of the
booth, utterly unconscious that he had left his crutches leaning upright
in the corner. It was only the surprise dawning into tremulous delight
on Sylvia’s face that at last arrested him.

“See what you have done!” he said, laughing through his own surprise.
“I’ve a mind to leave them there now, and trust to your new cure.”

But she was instantly concerned and anxious, and entering the booth
brought out the crutches and forced him to take them.

“No risks now!” she said decisively. “We have too much at stake this
evening. Leila is coming. Isn’t it perfectly delightful?”

“Perfectly,” he said, his eyes full of the old laughing confidence
again; “and the most delightful part of it all is that you don’t know
how delightful it is going to be.”

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.