Book: The Fighting Chance

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




“In what?”

“In self-analysis, for example.”

There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.

“As for our friendship, we’ll do the best we can for it, no matter what
occurs,” he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced
up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the
veranda above.

There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss
Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a
situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the
girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.

“If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better
change, Mr. Siward,” she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.

So he took his congé, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and
mounted to his room.

In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business
correspondence and was returning to the card-room.

“Here’s a letter that Grace wants you to see,” he said. “Read it before
you turn in, Stephen.”

“All right; but I’ll be down later,” replied Siward passing on, the
letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and
found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent
vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod
and dry, he was ready to descend once more.

The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl
had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her
engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides
he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him--of her
rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish
philosophy.

Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of
the born drifter, momentarily at anchor--the temporary inertia of the
opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things
and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the wholesome
ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain
unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not
Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and
innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank,
and unworldly friendliness for himself.

Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for
being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But
let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious
intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the
cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his
slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude
she had so prettily displayed.

Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top
drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother’s letter, and locking the
drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter
when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming
through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him
through his mother’s favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was the
use of dragging in the sad old questions again--of repeating his
assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation
and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the
letter await his bed time--his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher
the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that
an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is
any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.

So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any
suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia
Landis’ path before being committed.

She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender,
apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the gun-
room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the volatile
odours from decanters.

There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord
Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves;
stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green
explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy
inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: “Cut out that
‘widow,’ and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack
triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there’s a decent chap!”

So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon
her winged wheel; and the cards ran high--so high that stacks dwindled or
toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder, and
Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene’s face wore a
continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound’s tooth, and the
ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.

It was late when Quarrier “sat in,” with an expressionless
acknowledgment of Siward’s presence, and an emotionless raid upon his
neighbour’s resources with the first hand dealt, in which he
participated without drawing a card.

And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him,
his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical
pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth
blank forehead.

It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing
deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the
annoying contempt in Quarrier’s woman-like eyes. He felt that he was
making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow--but with more racket
than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and
a decanter.

It was time for him to go--unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an
explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too
much noise, too much laughter.

Besides he had a matter to attend to--the careful perusal of his mother’s
letter to Mrs. Ferrall.

Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself
entering his room.

The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and break,
but he got the letter, sank down on the bed’s edge and strove to
read,--set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he
could make nothing of it--nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who
came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full
glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the
stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother’s letter
crushed in his nerveless hand.



CHAPTER IV THE SEASON OPENS

Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom trays
were sent, was served in the English fashion--any other method or
compromise being impossible.

Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually
had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable
to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene
and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a
concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although the
custom had already become practically universal in American country
houses where guests were entertained.

But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants,
always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented
human bric-à-brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants
hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched,
frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar
cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.

“We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white
man’s country,” he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste
and his wife’s absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual
foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. “You’ll load your own
guns and you’ll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs
will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee’s
opinion on shooting driven birds from rocking-chairs or potting tame
deer from grand-stands, they can have it right now!”

Usually nobody wanted his further opinion; and sometimes they got it and
sometimes not, if his wife was within earshot. Otherwise Ferrall
appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his
pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if
some considered his vigour in business to be lacking in mercy, that
vigour was always exercised within the law. He never transgressed the
rules of war, but his headlong energy sometimes landed him close to the
dead line. He had already breakfasted, when the earliest risers entered
the morning room to saunter about the sideboards and investigate the
simmering contents of silver-covered dishes on the warmers.

The fragrance of coffee was pleasantly perceptible; men in conventional
shooting attire roamed about the room, selected what they cared for, and
carried it to the table. Mrs. Mortimer was there consuming peaches that
matched her own complexion; Marion Page, always more congruous in field
costume and belted jacket than in anything else, and always, like her
own hunters, minutely groomed, was preparing a breakfast for her own
consumption with the leisurely precision characteristic of her whether
in the saddle, on the box, or grassing her brace of any covey that ever
flushed.

Captain Voucher and Lord Alderdene discussed prospects between bites,
attentive to the monosyllabic opinions of Miss Page. Her twin brothers,
Gordon and Willis, shyly consuming oatmeal, listened respectfully and
waited on their sister at the slightest lifting of her thinly arched
eyebrows.

Into this company sauntered Siward, apparently no worse for wear. For as
yet the Enemy had set upon him no proprietary insignia save a rather
becoming pallor and faint bluish shadows under the eyes. He strolled
about, exchanging amiable greetings, and presently selected a chilled
grape fruit as his breakfast. Opposite him Mortimer, breakfasting upon
his own dreadful bracer of an apple soaked in port, raised his heavy
inflamed eyes with a significant leer at the iced grape fruit. For he
was always ready to make room upon his own level for other men; but the
wordless grin and the bloodshot welcome were calmly ignored, for as yet
that freemasonry evoked no recognition from the pallid man opposite,
whose hands were steady as though that morning’s sun had wakened him
from pleasant dreams.

“The most difficult shot in the world,” Alderdene was explaining, “is an
incoming pheasant, sailing on a slant before a gale.”

“A woodcock in alders doing a jack-snipe twist is worse,” grunted
Mortimer, drenching another apple in port.

“Yes,” said Miss Page tersely.

“Or a depraved ruffed cock-grouse in the short pines; isn’t that the
limit?” asked Mortimer of Siward.

But Siward only shrugged his comment and glanced out through the leaded
casements into the brilliant September sunshine.

Outside he could see Major Belwether, pink skinned, snowy chop whiskers
brushed rabbit fashion, very voluble with Sylvia Landis, who listened
absently, head partly averted. Quarrier in tweeds and gaiters, his
morning cigar delicately balanced in his gloved fingers, strolled near
enough to be within ear-shot; and when Sylvia’s inattention to Major
Belwether’s observations became marked to the verge of rudeness, he came
forward and spoke. But whatever it was that he said appeared to change
her passive inattention to quiet displeasure, for, as Siward rose from
the table, he saw her turn on her heel and walk slowly toward a group of
dogs presided over by some kennel men and gamekeepers.

She was talking to the head gamekeeper when he emerged from the house,
but she saw him on the terrace and gave him a bright nod of greeting, so
close to an invitation that he descended the stone steps and crossed the
dew-wet lawn.

“I am asking Dawson to explain just exactly what a ‘Shotover Drive’
resembles,” she said, turning to include Siward in an animated
conference with the big, scraggy, head keeper. “You know, Mr. Siward,
that it is a custom peculiar to Shotover House to open the season with
what is called a Shotover Drive?”

“I heard Alderdene talking about it,” he said, smilingly inspecting the
girl’s attire of khaki with its buttoned pockets, gun pads, and Cossack
cartridge loops, and the tan knee-kilts hanging heavily pleated over
gaiters and little thick-soled shoes. He had never cared very much to
see women afield, for, in a rare case where there was no affectation,
there was something else inborn that he found unpleasant--something
lacking about a woman who could take life from frightened wild things,
something shocking that a woman could look, unmoved, upon a twitching,
blood-soiled heap of feathers at her feet.

Meanwhile Dawson, dog-whip at salute, stood knee deep among his restless
setters, explaining the ceremony with which Mr. Ferrall ushered in the
opening of each shooting season:

“It’s our own idee, Miss Landis,” he said proudly; “onc’t a season Mr.
Ferrall and his guests likes it for a mixed bag. ’Tis a sort of picnic,
Miss; the guns is in pairs, sixty yards apart in line, an’ the rules is,
walk straight ahead, dogs to heel until first cover is reached; fire
straight or to quarter, never blankin’ nor wipin’ no eyes; and ground
game counts as feathers for the Shotover Cup.”

“Oh! It’s a skirmish line that walks straight ahead?” said Siward,
nodding.

“Straight ahead, Sir. No stoppin’, no turnin’ for hedges, fences, water
or rock. There is boats f’r deep water and fords marked and corduroy f’r
to pass the Seven Dreens. Luncheon at one, Miss--an hour’s rest--then
straight on over hill, valley, rock, and river to the rondyvoo atop
Osprey Ledge. You’ll see the poles and the big nests, Sir. It’s there
they score for the cup, and there when the bag is counted, the traps are
ready to carry you home again.” … And to Siward: “Will you draw for your
lady, Sir? It is the custom.”

“Are you my ‘lady’?” he asked, turning to Sylvia.

“Do you want me?”

In the smiling lustre of her eyes the tiniest spark flashed out at him--a
hint of defiance for somebody, perhaps for Major Belwether who had taken
considerable pains to enlighten her as to Siward’s condition the night
before; perhaps also for Quarrier, who had naturally expected to act as
her gun-bearer in emergencies. But the gaily veiled malice of the one
had annoyed her, and the cold assumption of the other had irritated her,
and she had, scarcely knowing why, turned her shoulder to both of these
gentlemen with an indefinite idea of escaping a pressure, amounting
almost to critical importunity.

“I’m probably a poor shot?” she said, looking smilingly, straight into
Siward’s eyes. “But if you’ll take me--”

“I will with pleasure,” he said; “Dawson, do we draw for position? Very
well then”; and he drew a slip of paper from the box offered by the head
keeper.

“Number seven!” said Sylvia, looking over his shoulder. “Come out to the
starting line, Mr. Siward. All the positions are marked with golf-discs.
What sort of ground have we ahead, Dawson?”

“Kind o’ stiff, Miss,” grinned the keeper. “Pity your gentleman ain’t
drawed the meadows an’ Sachem Hill line. Will you choose your dog, Sir?”

“You have your dog, you know,” observed Sylvia demurely. And Siward,
glancing among the impatient setters, saw one white, heavily feathered
dog, straining at his leash, and wagging frantically, brown eyes fixed
on him.

The next moment Sagamore was free, devouring his master with caresses,
the girl looking on in smiling silence; and presently, side by side, the
man, the girl, and the dog were strolling off to the starting line where
already people were gathering in groups, selecting dogs, fowling-pieces,
comparing numbers, and discussing the merits of their respective lines
of advance.

Ferrall, busily energetic, and in high spirits, greeted them gaily,
pointing out the red disc bearing their number, seven, where it stood
out distinctly above the distant scrub of the foreland.

“You two are certainly up against it!” he said, grinning. “There’s only
one rougher line, and you’re in for thorns and water and a scramble
across the back-bone of the divide!”

“Is it any good?” asked Siward.

“Good--if you’ve got the legs and Sylvia doesn’t play baby--”

“I?” she said indignantly. “Kemp, you annoy me. And I will bet you now,”
she added, flushing, “that your old cup is ours.”

“Wait,” said Siward, laughing, “we may not shoot straight.”

“You will! Kemp, I’ll wager whatever you dare!”

“Gloves? Stockings?--against a cigarette case?” he suggested.

“Done,” she said disdainfully, moving forward along the skirmish line
with a nod and smile for the groups now disintegrating into couples, the
Page boys with Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel, Marion Page followed
by Alderdene, Mrs. Vendenning and Major Belwether and the Tassel girl
convoyed by Leroy Mortimer. Farther along the line, taking post, she saw
Quarrier and Miss Caithness, Captain Voucher with Mrs. Mortimer, and
others too distant to recognise, moving across country with glitter and
glint of sunlight on slanting gun barrels.

And now Ferrall was climbing into his saddle beside his pretty wife, who
sat her horse like a boy, the white flag lifted high in the sunshine,
watching the firing line until the last laggard was in position.

“All right, Grace!” said Ferrall briskly. Down went the white flag; the
far-ranged line started into motion straight across country, dogs at
heel.

From her saddle Mrs. Ferrall could see the advance, strung out far
afield from the dark spots moving along the Fells boundary, to the two
couples traversing the salt meadows to north. Crack! A distant report
came faintly over the uplands against the wind.

“Voucher,” observed Ferrall; “probably a snipe. Hark! he’s struck them
again, Grace.”

Mrs. Ferrall, watching curiously, saw Siward’s gun fly up as two big
dark spots floated up from the marsh and went swinging over his head.
Crack! Crack! Down sheered the black spots, tumbling earthward out of
the sky.

“Duck,” said Ferrall; “a double for Stephen. Lord Harry! how that man
can shoot! Isn’t it a pity that--”

He said no more; his pretty wife astride her thoroughbred sat silent,
grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now
shoulder deep in the reeds.

“Was it--very bad last night?” she asked in a low voice.

Ferrall shrugged. “He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough
up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he’d been
struck by lightning. And yet--you see how he is this morning?”

“After a while,” his wife said, “it is going to alter him some
day--dreadfully--isn’t it, Kemp?”

“You mean--like Mortimer?”

“Yes--only Leroy was always a pig.”

As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: “Do
you know why Sylvia isn’t shooting with Howard?”

“No,” replied her husband indifferently; “do you?”

“No.” She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes
brightening with suppressed mischief. “But I half suspect.”

“What?”

“Oh, all sorts of things, Kemp.”

“What’s one of ‘em?” asked Ferrall, looking around at her; but his wife
only laughed.

“You don’t mean she’s throwing her flies at Siward--now that you’ve
hooked Quarrier for her! I thought she’d played him to the gaff--”

“Please don’t be coarse, Kemp,” said Mrs. Ferrall, sending her horse
forward. Her husband spurred to her side, and without turning her head
she continued: “Of course Sylvia won’t be foolish. If they were only
safely married; but Howard is such a pill--”

“What does Sylvia expect with Howard’s millions? A man?”

Grace Ferrall drew bridle. “The curious thing is, Kemp, that she liked
him.”

“Likes him?”

“No, liked him. I saw how it was; she took his silences for intellectual
meditation, his gallery, his library, his smatterings for expressions of
a cultivated personality. Then she remembered how close she came to
running off with that cashiered Englishman, and that scared her into
clutching the substantial in the shape of Howard. … Still, I wish I
hadn’t meddled.”

“Meddled how?”

“Oh, I told her to do it. We had talks until daylight. … She may marry
him--I don’t know--but if you think any live woman could he contented with
a muff like that!”

“That’s immoral.”

“Kemp, I’m not. She’d be mad not to marry him; but I don’t know what I’d
do to a man like that, if I were his wife. And you know what a terrific
capacity for mischief there is in Sylvia. Some day she’s going to love
somebody. And it isn’t likely to be Howard. And, oh, Kemp! I do grow so
tired of that sort of thing. Do you suppose anybody will ever make
decency a fashion?”

“You’re doing your best,” said Ferrall, laughing at his wife’s pretty,
boyish face turned back toward him over her shoulder; “you’re presenting
your cousin and his millions to a girl who can dress the part--”

“Don’t, Kemp! I don’t know why I meddled! … I wish I hadn’t--”

“I do. You can’t let Howard alone! You’re perfectly possessed to plague
him when he’s with you, and now you’ve arranged for another woman to
keep it up for the rest of his lifetime. What does Sylvia want with a
man who possesses the instincts and intellect of a coachman? She is
asked everywhere, she has her own money. Why not let her alone? Or is it
too late?”

“You mean let her make a fool of herself with Stephen Siward? That is
where she is drifting.”

“Do you think--”

“Yes, I do. She has a perfect genius for selecting the wrong man; and
she’s already sorry for this one. I’m sorry for Stephen, too; but it’s
safe for me to be.”

“She might make something of him.”

“You know perfectly well no woman ever did make anything of a doomed
man. He’d kill her--I mean it, Kemp! He would literally kill her with
grief. She isn’t like Leila Mortimer; she isn’t like most girls of her
sort. You men think her a rather stunning, highly tempered, unreasonable
young girl, with a reserve of sufficiently trained intelligence to marry
the best our market offers--and close her eyes;--a thoroughbred with the
caprices of one, but also with the grafted instinct for proper mating.”

“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Ferrall. “That’s the way I
size her up. Isn’t it correct?”

“Yes, in a way. She has all the expensive training of the
thoroughbred--and all the ignorance, too. She is cold-blooded because
wholesome; a trifle sceptical because so absolutely unawakened. She
never experienced a deep emotion. Impulses have intoxicated her once or
twice--as when she asked my opinion about running off with Cavendish, and
that boy and girl escapade with Rivington; nothing at all except high
mettle, the innocent daring lurking in all thoroughbreds, and a great
deal of very red blood racing through that superb young body. But,”
Ferrall reined in to listen, “but if ever a man awakens her--I don’t care
who he is--you’ll see a girl you never knew, a brand-new creature emerge
with the last rags and laces of conventionality dropping from her; a
woman, Kemp, heiress to every generous impulse, every emotion, every
vice, every virtue of all that brilliant race of hers.”

“You seem to know,” he said, amused and curious.

“I know. Major Belwether told me that he had thought of Howard as an
anchor for her. It seemed a pity--Howard with all his cold, heavy
negative inertia. … I said I’d do it. I did. And now I don’t know; I
wish, almost wish I hadn’t.”

“What has changed your ideas?”

“I don’t know. Howard is safer than Stephen Siward, already in the first
clutches of his master-vice. Would you mate what she inherits from her
mother and her mother’s mother, with what is that poor boy’s heritage
from the Siwards?”

“After all,” observed Ferrall dryly, “we’re not in the angel-breeding
business.”

“We ought to be. Every decent person ought to be. If they were,
inherited vice would be as rare in this country as smallpox!”

“People don’t inherit smallpox, dear.”

“Never mind! You know what I mean. In our stock farms and kennels, we
weed out, destroy, exterminate hereditary weakness in everything. We pay
the greatest attention to the production of all offspring except our
own. Look at Stephen! How dared his parents bring him into the world?
Look at Sylvia! And now, suppose they marry!”

“Dearest,” said Ferrall, “my head is a whirl and my wits are spinning
like five toy tops. Your theories are all right; but unless you and I
are prepared to abandon several business enterprises and take to the
lecture platform, I’m afraid people are going to be wicked enough to
marry whom they like, and the human race will he run as usual with money
the favourite, and love a case of ‘also-ran.’ … By the way, how dared
you marry me, knowing the sort of demon I am?”

The gathering frown on Mrs. Ferrall’s brow faded; she raised her clear
grey eyes and met her husband’s gaze, gay, humourous, and with a hint of
tenderness--enough to bring the colour into her pretty face.

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