Book: The Fighting Chance

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




The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping
of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the
room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.

Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac
and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously,
resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether
buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale
until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly
wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.

“Old ass!” he muttered; “his chop whiskers look like the chops of a
Southdown ram--and he’s got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear
you fell into no end of a scrape in town--”

“Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!”

“Just as you like old chap!” returned his lordship unabashed. “All I
meant was--anything Voucher and I can do--of course--”

“You’re very good. I’m not dead you know.”

“‘Not dead, you know’,” repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them
with his sprightly step; “that reminds me of a good one--” He sat down
and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance
as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began
another endless story.

Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a
wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word
before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.

Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy
expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin
and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his
listener’s overwhelming hilarity.

The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of
such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was
sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable
noise. This, being the major’s cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand
raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to
whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar too masculine and mighty for
the ears of such a sex.

“Ass!” muttered Alderdene, getting up and pattering about the room in
his big, shiny pumps. “Give me a peg--somebody!”

Mortimer swallowed his brandy, lingered, lifted the decanter,
mechanically considering its remaining contents and his own capacity;
then:

“Bridge, Captain?”

“Certainly,” said Captain Voucher briskly.

“I’ll go and shoo the major into the gun-room,” observed
Ferrall--“unless--” looking questioningly at Siward.

“I’ve a date with your wife,” observed that young man, strolling toward
the hall.

The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card
table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack
lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside
it, not neglected.

O’Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in
the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.

About the rooms were distributed girls en tête-à-tête, girls eating bon-
bons and watching the cards--among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely
clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier’s elbow to observe and profit
by an expert performance.

As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled
in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancé’s game.

A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the mêlée,
she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering
somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and
disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe
the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier’s game.

But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his
hostess: “I shall be very glad to read my mother’s letter at any time
you choose.”

“It must be later, Stephen. I’m to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has
a lot of letters to attend to. … Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia
Landis?”

“I like her, of course,” he replied pleasantly.

Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a
great success, didn’t it?” And she laughed under her breath.

“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed--”

“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He’s such a muff, you know,
that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his
complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”

“I don’t think you’d best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward.
“He’s not my cousin you know.”

Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”--she said
curiously--“who was that girl?”

“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very
incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her
boyish sunburn and freckles.

“You won’t tell me I suppose?”

“I’m sorry--”

“Was she pretty, Stephen?”

“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn’t--”

“Nonsense! Do you think I’m going to let you off without some sort of
confession? If I had time now--but I haven’t. Kemp has business letters:
he’ll be furious; so I’ve got to take his cards or we won’t have any
pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”

She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the
house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.

“You minx!” she whispered; “aren’t you ashamed?”

“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the
starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess’ meaning, for she
laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.

“You don’t suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have--”

“Yes I do. You always do.”

“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won’t.”

Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the
wrong man to play with--”

They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess’ arm linked
in the arm of the younger girl.

“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her
straight brows beginning to bend inward.

“I didn’t mean that--exactly. You know how much I care for his mother--and
for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue
gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.

“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.

“Nothing. There was an affair--”

“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”

“Yes--for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For
goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t cross examine me that way! I care a great
deal for that boy--”

“So do I. I’ve made him take my dog.”

There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.

“I mean it--really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”

“Dearest, you mean it generously--with your usual exaggeration. You have
heard that he has been foolish, and because he’s so young, so likable,
every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to--to be nice to him--”

“And if that were--”

“There is no harm, dear--” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes
softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It’s rather pathetic,”
she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he’s foredoomed--like all the
Siwards. It’s an hereditary failing with him,--no, it’s hereditary
damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know--”
She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of my
grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and--doomed! His own father
was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered
when stupefied--a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of
Stephen’s means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New
York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous--it means that the
master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never
admit it to his mother.”

The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her,
but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.

“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present
fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall
thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop
him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident,
happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary,
there’s not a chance in the world for him. … It’s a pity. I know he
meant to make himself the exception to the rule--and look! Already one
carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”

Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”

“Yes, child,” she answered absently.

“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches
me very closely?”

Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a
startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.

“You--you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”

“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august
mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity--the danger
of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done--before I
came into the world they found so amusing.”

“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your
uncle thought it best for you to know.”

“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather.
In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they
usually found the way--rather unconventionally. There was, if I
understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and
irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I
might care to claim--”

“Sylvia!”

The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I’m sorry, but could I help
it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well;
I’m doing it, am I not?--practically scared into the first solidly
suitable marriage offered--seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands
for fear he’d get away and leave me alone with only a queer family
record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why
everybody, in my case, didn’t go about with sanctimonious faces and
dolorous mien repeating: ‘Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away.
Poor child, she’s doomed! doomed!’”

“Sylvia, I--”

“Yes--why didn’t they? That’s the way they talk about that boy out
there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.

“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you--”

“So did I--nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might
have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him
--I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from
compromising myself! Can you count them?--all those indiscretions when
mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter--and only my uncle
and you to break me in!”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don’t think Mr. Siward
is getting what is known as a square deal?”

“No, I don’t. Major Belwether has already hinted--no, not even that--but
has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”

Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her--now very lovely and flushed
in her suppressed excitement.

“After all,” she said, “you are going to marry somebody else. So why
become quite so animated about a man you may never again see?”

“I shall see him if I desire to!”

“Oh!”

“I am not taking the black veil, am I?” asked the girl hotly.

“Only the wedding veil, dear. But after all your husband ought to have
something to suggest concerning a common visiting list--”

“He may suggest--certainly. In the meantime I shall be loyal to my own
friends--and afterward, too,” she murmured to herself, as her hostess
rose, calmly dropping care like a mantle from her shoulders.

“Go and be good to this poor young man then; I adore rows--and you’ll
have a few on your hands I’ll warrant. Let me remind you that your uncle
can make it unpleasant for you yet, and that your amiable fiancé has a
will of his own under his pompadour and silky beard.”

“What a pity to have it clash with mine,” said the girl serenely.

Mrs. Ferrall looked at her: “Mercy on us! Howard’s pompadour would stick
up straight with horror if he could hear you! Don’t be silly; don’t for
an impulse, for a caprice, break off anything desirable on account of a
man for whom you really care nothing--whose amiable exterior and
prospective misfortune merely enlist a very natural and generous
sympathy in you.”

“Do you suppose that I shall endure interference from anybody?--from my
uncle, from Howard?”

“Dear, you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Don’t be emotional;
don’t let loose impulses that you and I know about, knew about in our
school years, know all about now, and which you and I have decided must
be eliminated--”

“You mean subdued; they’ll always be there.”

“Very well; who cares, as long as you have them in leash?”

Looking at one another, the excited colour cooling in the younger girl’s
cheeks, they laughed, one with relief, the other a little ashamed.

“Kemp will be furious; I simply must cut in!” said Mrs. Ferrall, hastily
turning toward the gun-room. Miss Landis looked after her, subdued,
vaguely repentant, the consciousness dawning upon her that she had
probably made considerable conversation about nothing.

“It’s been so all day,” she thought impatiently; “I’ve exaggerated; I’ve
worked up a scene about a man whose habits are not the slightest concern
of mine. Besides that I’ve neglected Howard shamefully!” She was walking
slowly, her thoughts outstripping her errant feet, but it seemed that
neither her thoughts nor her steps were leading her toward the neglected
gentleman within; for presently she found herself at the breezy veranda
door, looking rather fixedly at the stars.

The stars, shining impartially upon the just and the unjust, illuminated
the person of Siward, who sat alone, rather limply, one knee crossed
above the other. He looked up by chance, and, seeing her star-gazing in
the doorway, straightened out and rose to his feet.

Aware of him apparently for the first time, she stepped across the
threshold meeting his advance half-way.

“Would you care to go down to the rocks?” he asked. “The surf is
terrific.”

“No--I don’t think I care--”

They stood listening a moment to the stupendous roar.

“A storm somewhere at sea,” he concluded.

“Is it very fine--the surf?”

“Very fine--and very relentless--” he laughed; “it is an unfriendly
creature, the sea, you know.”

She had begun to move toward the cliffs, he fell into step beside her;
they spoke little, a word now and then.

The perfume of the mounting sea saturated the night with wild fragrance;
dew lay heavy on the lawns; she lifted her skirts enough to clear the
grass, heedless that her silk-shod feet were now soaking. Then at the
cliffs’ edge, as she looked down into the white fury of the surf, the
stunning crash of the ocean saluted her.

For a long while they watched in silence; once she leaned a trifle too
far over the star-lit gulf and, recoiling, involuntarily steadied
herself on his arm.

“I suppose,” she said, “no swimmer could endure that battering.”

“Not long.”

“Would there be no chance?”

“Not one.”

She bent farther outward, fascinated, stirred, by the splendid frenzy of
the breakers.

“I--think--,” he began quietly; then a firm hand fell over her left hand;
and, half encircled by his arm she found herself drawn back. Neither
spoke; two things she was coolly aware of, that, urged, drawn by
something subtly irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff,
and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own
keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over
hers remained a sensation still--a strong, steady, masterful imprint
lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though
her hand still tightened under his--and she was conscious, too, that
nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no
tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or
suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in
some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a
woman without a reaction of faint discomfort.

“Was I in any actual danger?” she asked curiously.

“I think not. But it was too much responsibility for me.”

“I see. Any time I wish to break my neck I am to please do it alone in
future.”

“Exactly--if you don’t mind,” he said smiling.

They turned, shoulder to shoulder, walking back through the drenched
herbage.

“That,” she said impulsively, “is not what I said a few moments ago to a
woman.”

“What did you say a few moments ago to a woman?”

“I said, Mr. Siward, that I would not leave a--a certain man to go to the
devil alone!”

“Do you know any man who is going to the devil?”

“Do you?” she asked, letting herself go swinging out upon a tide of
intimacy she had never dreamed of risking--nor had she the slightest idea
whither the current would carry her.

They had stopped on the lawn, ankle deep in wet grass, the stars
overhead sparkling magnificently, and in their ears the outcrash of the
sea.

“You mean me,” he concluded.

“Do I?”

He looked up into the lovely face; her eyes were very sweet, very
clear--clear with excitement--but very friendly.

“Let us sit here on the steps a little while, will you?” she asked.

So he found a place beside her, one step lower, and she leaned forward,
elbows on knees, rounded white chin in her palms, the starlight giving
her bare arms and shoulders a marble lustre and tinting her eyes a
deeper amethyst.

And now, innocently untethered, mission and all, she laid her heart
quite bare--one chapter of it. And, like other women-errant who believe
in the influence of their sex individually and collectively, she began
wrong by telling him of her engagement--perhaps to emphasise her pure
disinterestedness in a crusade for principle only. Which naturally
dampened in him any nascent enthusiasm for being ministered to, and so
preoccupied him that he turned deaf ears to some very sweet platitudes
which might otherwise have impressed him as discoveries in philosophy.

Officially her creed was the fashionable one in town; privately she had
her own religion, lacking some details truly enough, but shaped upon
youthful notions of right and wrong. As she had not read very widely,
she supposed that she had discovered this religion for herself; she was
not aware that everybody else had passed that way--it being the first
immature moult in young people after rejecting dogma.

And the ripened fruit of all this philosophy she helpfully dispensed for
Siward’s benefit as bearing directly on his case.

Had he not been immersed in the unexpected proposition of her impending
matrimony, he might have been impressed, for the spell of her beauty
counted something, and besides, he had recently formulated for himself a
code of ethics, tinctured with Omar, and slightly resembling her own
discoveries in that dog-eared science.

So it was, when she was most eloquent, most earnestly inspired--nay in
the very middle of a plea for sweetness and light and simple living,
that his reasonings found voice in the material comment:

“I never imagined you were engaged!”

“Is that what you have been thinking about?” she asked, innocently
astonished.

“Yes. Why not? I never for one instant supposed--”

“But, Mr. Siward, why should you have concerned yourself with supposing
anything? Why indulge in any speculation of that sort about me?”

“I don’t know, but I didn’t,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t; you’d known me for about three hours--there on the
cliff--”

“But--Quarrier--!”

Over his youthful face a sullen shadow had fallen--flickering, not yet
settled. He would not for anything on earth have talked freely to the
woman destined to be Quarrier’s wife. He had talked too much anyway.
Something in her, something about her had loosened his tongue. He had
made a plain ass of himself--that was all,--a garrulous ass. And truly it
seemed that the girl beside him, even in the starlight, could follow and
divine what he had scarcely expressed to himself; or her instincts had
taken a shorter cut to forestall his own conclusion.

“Don’t think the things you are thinking!” she said in a fierce little
voice, leaning toward him.

“What do you mean?” he asked, taken aback.

“You know! Don’t! It is unfair--it is--is faithless--to me. I am your
friend; why not? Does it make any difference to you whom I marry? Cannot
two people remain in accord anyway? Their friendship concerns each other
and--nobody else!” She was letting herself go now; she was conscious of
it, conscious that impulse and emotion were the currents unloosed and
hurrying her onward. And with it all came exhilaration, a faint
intoxication, a delicate delight in daring to let go all and trust to
impulse and emotions.

“Why should you feel hurt because for a moment you let me see--gave me a
glimpse of yourself--of life’s battle as you foresee it? What if there is
always a reaction from all confidences exchanged? What if that miserable
French cynic did say that never was he more alone than after confessing
to a friend? He died crazy anyhow. Is not a rare moment of confidence
worth the reaction--the subsidence into the armored shell of self? Tell
me truly, Mr. Siward, isn’t it?”

Breathless, confused, exhilarated by her own rapid voice she bent her
face, brilliant with colour, and very sweet; and he looked up into it,
expectant, uncertain.

“If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you--to me,
why should it trouble you that I know--and am thinking of things that
concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because
you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to
balance the account? I do give--interest, deep interest, sympathy if you
ask it; I give confidence in return--if you desire it!”

“What can a girl like you need of sympathy?” he said smiling.

“You don’t know! you don’t know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you
must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your
guard, do you think you are the only one?”

“Are you--one?” he said incredulously.

“Yes”--with an involuntary shudder--“not that way. It is easier for me; I
think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses, a
recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not
know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never
even deep emotion.”

“You are in love!”

“Yes, thoroughly,” she added with conviction, “but not violently. I--”
she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through
the dusk; and: “Mr. Siward! are you laughing?” She rose and he stood up
instantly.

There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that
glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the
storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there
under the stars.

“Mr. Siward,” she breathed, “I don’t know what I am laughing at; do you?
Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is
it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me--for I
never knew a man like you before?”

“You don’t know what you were laughing at?” he repeated. “It was
something about love--”

“No I don’t know why I laughed! I--I don’t wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not
desire to laugh at anything you have made me say--anything you may
infer--”

“I don’t infer--”

“You do! You made me say something--about my being ignorant of deep, of
violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly,
thoroughly in love--”

“Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?”

“You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you--”

“What did I do then?” he asked, far too humbly.

“You--you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too
ignorant of it to know what I’m talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what
you have done to me to-night.”

“I--I’m sorry--”

“Are you?”

“I ought to be anyway,” he said.

It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch
them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.

“How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don’t care for you
nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would
not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately. There
is too much mockery in you--” She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre
alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked penitently.

“No.”

“Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words,
slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment’s silence,
stirred him.

“I’m rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect
normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a
sedative.”

“Am I normal--after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can’t love be
well-bred?”

“Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--”

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