Book: The Fighting Chance

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




Aghast, they turned in the darkness, peering toward the lighted space
beyond. Leroy Mortimer, his face shockingly congested, stood unsteadily
balancing there, confronting his wife, who sat staring at him in horror.
At the same instant Plank rose and laid a hand on Mortimer’s shoulder,
but Mortimer shook him off with a warning oath.

“You and I will settle with each other to-morrow!” he said thickly,
pointing a puffy finger at Plank. “You’ll find me at the Algonquin
Trust. Do you hear? That’s where you’ll settle this matter--in the
president’s office!” He stood swaying and leering at Plank, repeating
loudly: “In Quarrier’s office! Understand? That’s where you’ll settle
up! See?”

Leila, white face quivering, shrank as though he had struck her, and he
turned on her again, grinning: “As for you, you come home! And that’ll
be about all for yours.”

“Are you insane, to make a scene like this?” whispered Plank.

But Mortimer swung on him insultingly: “That’s about all from you, too!”
he said. “Leila, are you coming?”

He stepped heavily toward her; but Plank’s sudden crushing grip was on
his fat arm above the elbow, and he emitted a roar of surprise and pain.

“Don’t touch him! Don’t, in Heaven’s name!” stammered Leila, as Plank,
releasing him, stepped back beside her chair. “Can’t you see that I must
go with him! I--I must go.” She cast one terrified glance around her,
where scores of strange faces met hers; and at every table people were
standing up to see better.

Plank, who had dropped Mortimer’s arm as the latter emitted his bellow
of amazement, stepped toward him again, dropping his voice as he spoke:

“You go! Do you hear?” he said quietly. “I’ll do what you ask me,
to-morrow! I will do what you ask, if you’ll go now!”

“You come--do you hear!” snarled Mortimer, turning on his wife, who had
already risen. “If you don’t I’ll make a row here that you’ll never hear
the end of as long as you live! And there’ll be nothing to talk over in
Quarrier’s office, if I do.”

Leila looked at Plank, rose, and moved swiftly toward the veranda steps,
her head resolutely lowered, the burning shame flaming in her face.
Mortimer cast one triumphant glance at Plank, then waddled unsteadily
after his wife.

“Hold on,” he growled; “I’ve a Mercedes here! I’ll drive you back--wait!
Here it is! Here we are!” And to Quarrier’s machinist he said: “You get
into the tonneau. I want to show Mrs. Mortimer what night-driving is. Do
you hear? I tell you I’m going to drive this machine and show you how!”

Leila scarcely heard him. She obeyed the impulse of his hand on her arm,
and mounted to the seat, staring straight ahead of her with dazed and
straining eyes that saw nothing.

Then Mortimer clambered to his seat, and, without an instant’s warning,
opened up and seized the wheel.

Unprepared, the machinist attempted to swing aboard, missed his footing
in the uncertain light, and fell sprawling on the gravel. Plank saw him
from the veranda and instantly vaulted the rail to the lawn below.

“You damn fool!” yelled Mortimer, looking around, “what in hell do you
think you’ll do?” And he clapped on full speed as Plank made a leap for
the car and missed.

Mortimer laughed, and turned his head to look back, and the next instant
something seemed to wrench the steering-wheel from its roots. There was
a blinding glare of light, a scream, and the great machine bounded into
the air full length, turned completely over, and lay across a flower-
bed, partly on one side.

Something was afire, too. Men were rushing from the verandas, women
screamed, and stood up wringing their hands; a mounted policeman came
galloping through the darkness; people shouted: “Throw sand on it! Get
shovels, for God’s sake! Lift that tonneau! There’s a woman under it.”

But they were mistaken, for Leila lay at the foot of the slope, one
little bloody hand clutching the dead grass; and Plank knelt beside her,
giving his orders quietly to those who came running down the hill from
the roadway above, which was now fiercely illuminated by burning
gasoline. At last they got sand enough to quench the fire and men
sufficient to lift the weight from the dead man’s neck, and drag what
was left of him onto the grass.

“Don’t look,” whispered Siward, drawing Sylvia back.

He and she both had put their shoulders to the tonneau along with the
others; and now they stood there together in the shifting lantern-light,
sickened, shivering under the summer stars, staring at the gathering
crowd around that shapeless lump on the grass.

Plank passed them, walking beside an improvised stretcher, calm, almost
smiling, as Sylvia sprang forward with a little sob of inquiry.

“There’s the doctor, over there; that man is a doctor; he knows,”
repeated Plank with studied deliberation, looking down at Leila’s
deathly face. “He says it’s all right; he says he’ll get a candle, and
that he can tell by the flame’s effect on the pupils of the eyes what
exactly is the matter. No,” to Siward beside him, pressing forward
through the crowd which eddied from the dead man to the stretcher; “no,
there is not a bone broken. She is stunned, that’s all; she fell in the
shrubbery. We’ll have an ambulance here pretty quick. Stephen,” using
his first name unconsciously, “won’t you look out for Sylvia? I’m going
back on the ambulance. If you’ll find somebody to drive my machine, I
wish you would take Sylvia back. No, I don’t want you to drive,
Stephen--if you don’t mind. Get that machinist, please. I’m rattled, and
I don’t want you to drive.”

Leila lay on the stretcher, her bloodless face upturned to the stars.
Beyond, under a blanket, something else lay very still on the lawn.

Plank beckoned a policeman, and whispered to him.

Then, far away in the darkness, a distant clamour grew on the night air,
nearer, nearer.

Plank, standing beside the stretcher, raised his head, listening to the
ambulance arriving at full speed.



CHAPTER XV THE ENEMY LISTENS

In September, her marriage to Siward excitingly imminent, Sylvia had
been seized with a passion for wholesale renunciation and rigid self-
chastisement. All that had been so materially desirable to her in life,
all that she had heretofore worshipped, in and belonging to her own
world, she now denied. Down went the miniature golden calf from the
altar in her private shrine, its tiny crashing fall making considerable
racket throughout her world, and the planets and satellites adjacent to
that section of the social system which she had long been expected to
dominate.

The spectacle of their youthful ruler-elect in sackcloth as the future
bride of a business man had more than disconcerted them. The amazing
announcement of Quarrier’s engagement to Agatha Caithness stupefied the
elect, rendering in one harrowing instant null and void the thousand
petty plans and plots, intrigues and schemes, upon which future social
constructions on the social structure had been based.

The grief and amazement of Major Belwether, already distracted by his
non-participation, through his own fault, in Plank’s consolidation of
Amalgamated with Inter-County, was pitiable to the verge of the
unpleasant. Like panic-stricken rabbits, his thoughts ran in circles,
and he skipped in their wake, scurrying from Quarrier to Harrington,
from Harrington to Plank, from Plank to Siward, in distracted hope of
recovering his equilibrium and squatting safely somewhere in somebody’s
luxuriantly perpetual cabbage-patch. He even squeezed under the fence
and hopped humbly about old Peter Caithness, who suddenly assumed
monumental proportions among those who had so long tolerated him.

But Quarrier coldly drove him away and the increasing crowds besieging
poor, bewildered old Peter Caithness trod upon the major, and there was
nothing for him to do but to scuttle back to his own brush-heap and
huddle there, squeaking pitifully.

As for Grace Ferrall, she lost no time in tears, but took Agatha
publicly to her bosom, turned furiously on Quarrier in private, and for
the first time in her life permitted herself the luxury of telling him
exactly what she thought of him.

“You had your chance,” she said; “but you are all surface! There’s
nothing to you but soft beard and manicuring, and the reticence of
stupidity! The one girl for you--and you couldn’t hold on to her! The one
chance of your life--and it’s escaped you, leaving a tuft of pompadour
hair and a pair of woman’s eyes protruding from the golden dust-heap
your father buried you in. Now you’d better sit there and let it cover
your mouth, and try to breathe through your nose. Agatha is looking for
a new sensation; she’s tried everything, now she’s going to try you,
that’s all. She will be an invaluable leader, Howard, and we shall not
yawn, I assure you. But, oh! the chance you’ve lost, for lack of a drop
of red blood, and a barber to give you the beard of a man!”

Which merely deepened the fear and hatred which Quarrier had entertained
for his pretty cousin from the depths of his silk-wadded cradle. As for
Kemp Ferrall, now third vice-president of Inter-County, he only laughed
with the tolerance of a man in safety; and, looking at Quarrier through
the pickets of the financial fence, not only forgot how close his escape
had been, but, being a busy and progressive young man, began to consider
how he might ultimately extract a little profit from the expensive
tenant of the enclosure.

Grace made the journey to town to express herself freely for Sylvia’s
benefit; but when she saw Sylvia, the girl’s radiant beauty checked her,
and all she could say was: “My dear! my dear, I knew you would do it! I
knew you would fling him on his head. It’s in your blood, you little
jade! you little jilt! you mix of a baggage! I knew you’d behave like
all the women of your race!”

Sylvia held Mrs. Ferrall’s pretty face impressed between both her hands,
and looking her mischievously in the eyes, she whispered:

“‘Comme vous, maman, faut-il faire?--Eh! mes petits-enfants, pourquoi,
Quand j’ai fait comme ma grand’ mère, Ne feriez-vous pas comme moi?’”

“O Lord!” said Mrs. Ferrall, “I’ll never meddle again--and the entire
world may marry and take the consequences!” Then she drove to the Santa
Regina, where Marion was to join her in her return to Shotover; and she
was already trying to make up her disturbed mind as to which might prove
the more suitable for Marion--Captain Voucher, gloomily recovering from
his defeat by Quarrier, or Billy Fleetwood, who didn’t want to marry
anybody.

In the meanwhile, Siward’s new duties as second vice-president of Inter-
County had given him scant leisure for open-air convalescence. He was
busy with Plank; he was also busy with the private investigation stirred
up at the Patroons’ Club and the Lenox, and which was slowly but
inevitably resulting in clearing him, so that his restoration to good
standing and full membership remained now only a matter of formal
procedure.

So Siward was becoming a very busy man among men; and Plank, still
carrying on his broad shoulders burdens unbearable by any man save such
a man as he, shook his heavy head, and ordered Siward into the open. And
Siward, who had learned to obey, obeyed.

But September had nearly ended, when Leila, in Plank’s private car,
attended by Siward and Sylvia and two trained nurses, arrived at the
Fells. The nurses--Plank’s idea--were a surprise to Leila; and the day
after her arrival at the Fells she dismissed them, got out of bed, and
dressed and came downstairs all alone, on a pair of sound though
faltering legs.

Sylvia and Siward were in the music-room, very busily figuring out the
probable cost of a house in that section of the city east of Park
Avenue, where the newly married imprudent are forming colonies--a just
punishment for those reckless brides who marry for love, and are obliged
to drive over two car-tracks to reach their wealthy friends and
relatives of the Golden Zone.

And Leila, in her pretty invalid’s gown of lace, stood silently at the
music-room door, watching them. Her thick, dark hair was braided, and
looped up under a black bow behind; and she looked like a curious and
impertinent schoolgirl peeping at them there through the crack of the
door, bending forward, her joined hands flattened between her knees.

“Oh,” she said at length, in a frankly disappointed voice, “is that all
you do when your chaperone is abed?”

“Angel!” cried Sylvia, springing up, “how in the world did you ever
manage to come downstairs?”

“On the usual number of feet. If you think it’s very gay up there--” She
laid her hands in Sylvia’s, and looked at Siward with all the old
mockery in her eyes--eyes which slanted a little at the corners,
Japanese-wise: “Stephen, you are growing positively plump. You’d better
not do that until Sylvia marries you. Look at him, dear! He’s getting
all smooth in the cheeks, like a horrid undergraduate boy!”

She released one hand and greeted Siward. “Thank you,” she said
serenely, replying to his inquiry, “I am perfectly well. You pay me no
compliment when you ask me, after you have seen me.” And to Sylvia,
looking at her white flannels: “What have you been playing? What do you
find to do with yourself, Sylvia, with that plump sun-burned boy at your
heels all day long? Are there no men about?”

“One’s coming to-day,” said Sylvia, laughing; and slipping her arm
around Leila’s waist, she strolled with her out through the tall glass
doors to the terrace, with a backward glance of airy dismissal for
Siward.

Plank had wired from New York, the night before, that he was coming; in
another hour he would be there. Leila knew it perfectly well, and she
looked into the wickedly expressive young face of the girl beside her,
eyes soft but unsmiling.

“Child, child,” she murmured, “you do not know how much of a man a man
can be!”

“Yes, I do!” said Sylvia hotly.

Leila smiled. “Hush, you little silly! I’ve talked Stephen and praised
Stephen to you for days and days, and the moment I dare mention another
man you fly at me, hair on end!”

“Oh, Leila, I know it! I’m perfectly mad about him, that’s all. But
don’t you think he is looking like himself again? And, Leila, isn’t he
strangely attractive?--I don’t mean just because I happen to be in love
with him, but give me a perfectly cold and unbiassed opinion, dear,
because there is simply no use in a girl’s blinding herself to facts, or
in ignoring certain fixed laws of symmetry, which it is perfectly
obvious that Mr. Siward fulfils in those well-known and established
proportions which--”

“Sylvia!”

“What?” she asked, startled.

“Nothing. Only for two solid weeks--”

“Of course, if you are not interested--”

“But I am, child--I am! desperately interested! He is handsome! I knew
him before you did, and I thought so then!”

“Did you?” said Sylvia, troubled.

“Yes, I did. When I wore short skirts I kissed him, too!”

“Did you? W--what did he wear?”

“Knickerbockers, silly! You don’t think he was still in the cradle, do
you? I’m not as aged as that!”

“I missed a great deal in my childhood,” said Sylvia naïvely.

“By not knowing Stephen? Pooh! He used to pinch me, and then we’d put
out our tongues in mutual derision. Once--”

“Stop!” said Sylvia faintly. “And anyhow, you probably taught him. …
Look at him as he saunters across the lawn, Leila--look at him!”

“Well? I see him.”

“Isn’t he almost an ideal?”

“He is. He certainly is, dear.”

“Do you think he walks as though he were perfectly well?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Leila thoughtfully. “Sometimes people whose
walk is a gracefully languid saunter develop adipose tissue after
forty.”

“Nonsense! Really, Leila, do you think he walks like a perfectly well
man?”

“He may be coming down with whooping-cough--”

Sylvia rose indignantly, but Leila pulled her back to the sun-warmed
marble bench:

“A girl in love loses her sense of humour temporarily. Sit down, you
little vixen!”

“Leila, you laugh at everything when I don’t feel like it.”

“I’m not in love, and that’s why.”

“You are in love!”

Leila looked at her, then under her breath: “In love, am I--with the
whole young world ringing with the laughter I had forgotten the very
sound of? Do you call that love?--with the sea and sky laughing back at
me, and the wind in my ears fairly tremulous with laughter? Do you, who
look out upon the pretty world so seriously through those sea-blue eyes
of yours, think that I can be in love?”

“Oh, Leila, a girl’s happiness is serious enough, isn’t it? Dear, it
frightens me! I was so close to losing it--once.”

“I lost mine,” said Leila, closing her eyes for a moment. “I shall not
sigh if I find it again.”

They sat there in the sun, Leila’s hand lying idly in Sylvia’s, the soft
sea-wind stirring their hair, and in their ears the thunderous undertone
of the mounting sea.

“Look at Stephen!” murmured Sylvia, her enraptured eyes following him as
he strolled hatless and coatless along the cliff’s edge, the sun
glimmering on his short hair, a tall, slim, well-coupled, strongly knit
shape against the sky and sea.

But Leila’s quick ear had caught a significant sound from the gravel
drive behind her, and she stood up, a delicious colour tinting her face.

“Are you going in?” asked Sylvia. Then she, too, heard the subdued
whirring of a motor from the front of the house, and she looked at Leila
as she turned and recrossed the terrace, walking slowly but erect, her
pretty head held high.

Then Sylvia faced the sea again and presently descended the terrace,
crossing the long lawn toward the headland, where Siward stood looking
out across the water.

Leila, from the music-room, watched her; then she heard Plank’s voice,
and his step on the stair, and she called out to him gaily:

“I am downstairs, thank you. How dared you send me those foolish
nurses!”

She was laughing when he came into the room, standing there erect, head
high, a brilliant colour in her cheeks; and she offered him both hands
which he took between his own, holding them strongly, and looking into
her face with steady, questioning eyes.

“Well?” she said, still smiling, but her scarlet under-lip trembled a
little; then: “Yes, you may say what you wish--what I--I wish you to say.
… There can be no harm in talking about it. But--will you be very gentle
with me? Don’t m-make me cry; I h-have--I am t-trying to remember how it
feels to laugh once more.”


Sylvia, lying in the hot sand on the tiny crescent beach under the
cliffs, listened gravely to Siward’s figures, as, note-book in hand, he
went over the real-estate problem, commenting thoughtfully as he
discussed the houses offered.

“Twenty by a hundred and two; good rear, north side of the street--next
door to the Tommy Barclays, you know, Sylvia; only they’re asking forty-
two-five.”

“That is an outrage!” said Sylvia seriously; “besides, I remember there
was a wretched cellar, and only a butler’s pantry extension. I’d much
rather have that little house in Sixty-fourth Street, where the
Fetherbraynes live--next house on the west, you know. Then we can pull it
down and build--when we want to.”

“We won’t be able to afford to build for a while, you know,” said Siward
doubtfully.

“What do we care, dear? We’ll have millions of things to do, anyway, and
what is the use of building?”

“As many things to do as that?” he said, looking over his note-book with
a smile.

“More! Are we not just beginning to live, and open our eyes, silly?
Listen: Books, books, books, from top to bottom of the house, that is
what I want first of all--except my piano.”

“Do let us have a little plumbing, dear,” he said so seriously that for
a fraction of a second she was on the verge of taking him seriously.

“Why extravagant plumbing when books furnish sufficient circulation for
the flow of soul, dear?” she retorted gravely.

“Nobody we know will ever come to see us, if they think we read books,”
said Siward.

“Isn’t it delightful!” sighed Sylvia. “We’re going to become frumps! I
mustn’t forget the blue stockings for my trousseau, and you mustn’t
forget the California claret for the cellar, dear. We will need it when
we read Henry James to each other.”

Siward, resting his weight on one hand, laughed, and looked out at the
surf drenching the reefs with silver.

“To think,” he said, “that I could ever have been enough afraid of the
sea to hate it! After all, at low tide the reef is always there in the
same place and none the worse for the drenching. All that surf only
shows how strong a rock can be.”

He smiled, and turned to look at Sylvia; and she lay there, silent, blue
eyes looking back into his. Suddenly they glimmered with tears, and she
stretched out both arms, drawing his head down to hers convulsively, her
quivering mouth crushed against his lips. Then she rose to her knees, to
her feet, dazed, brushing the tears from her eyes.

“To think--to think,” she stammered,” that I might have let you face the
world alone! Dearest, dearest, we must fight a good fight. The sea is
always there--always, always there!”

He looked straight into her eyes, fearlessly, tenderly, and she looked
back with the divine, untroubled gaze of a child, laying her slender,
sun-tanned hands in his.

And, deep in his body, as he stood there, he heard the low challenge of
his soul on guard; and he knew that the Enemy listened.

THE END

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