The Fighting Chance

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

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She recovered herself, avoiding his eyes, and moved backward, shielding
her face with pretty upflung elbows out-turned. "I told you it was
becoming a habit with you!" The loud beating of her pulses marred her
voice. "Must I establish a dead-line every time I commit the folly of
being alone with you?"

"I'll draw that line," he said, taking her in his arms.

"I--I beg you will draw it quickly, Mr. Siward."

"I do; it passes through your heart and mine!"

"Is--do you mean a declaration--again? You are compromising yourself, you
know. I warn you that you are committing yourself."

"So are you. Look at me!"

In his arms, her own arms pressed against his breast, resisting, she
raised her splendid youthful eyes; and through and through her shot
pulse on pulse, until every nerve seemed aquiver.

"While I'm still sane," he said with a dry catch in his throat, "before
I tell you that I love you, look at me."

"I will, if you wish," she said with a trembling smile, "but it is
useless--"

"That is what I shall find out in time. . You must meet my eyes. That is
well; that is frank and sweet--"

"And useless--truly it is. . Please don't tell me--anything."

"You will not listen?"

"There is no chance for you--if you mean love. I--I tell you in time, you
see. . I am utterly frivolous--quite selfish and mercenary."

"I take my chance!"

"No, I give you none! Why do you interfere! A--a girl's policy costs her
something if it be worth anything; whatever it costs it is worth it to
me. . And I do not love you. In so short a time how could I?"

Then in his arms she fell a-trembling. Something blinded her eyes, and
she turned her head sharply, only to encounter his lips on hers in a
deep, clinging embrace that left her dazed, still resisting with the
fragments of breath and voice.

"Not again--I beg--you. Let me go now. It is not best. Oh! truly, truly it
is all wrong with us now." She bent her head, blinded with tears,
swaying, stunned; then, with a breathless sound, turned in his arms to
meet his lips, her hands contracting in his; and, confronting, they
paused, suspending the crisis, young faces close, and hearts afire.

"Sylvia, I love you."

For an instant their lips clung; she had rendered him his kiss. Then,
tremblingly, "It is useless . even though I loved you."

"Say it!"

"I do."

"Say it!"

"I--I cannot! . And it is no use--no use! I do not know myself--this way.
My eyes--are wet. It is not like me; there is nothing of me in this girl
you hold so closely, so confidently. . I do care for you--how can I help
it? How could any woman help it? Is not that enough?"

"Until you are a bride, yes."

"A bride? Stephen!--I cannot--"

"You cannot help it, Sylvia."

"I must! I have my way to go."

"My way lies that way."

"No! no! I cannot do it; it is not best for me--not best for you. . I do
care for you; you have taught me how to say it. But--you know what I have
done--and mean to do, and must carry through. Then, how can you love a
girl like that?"

"Dear, I know the woman I love."

"Silly, she is what her life has made her--material, passionately
selfish, unable to renounce the root of all evil. . Even if this--this
happiness were ours always--I mean, if this madness could last our
wedded life--I am not good enough, not noble enough, to forget what I
might have had, and put away. . Is it not dreadful to admit it? Do you
not know that self-contempt is part of the price? . I have no money. I
know what you have. . I asked. And it is enough for a man who remains
unmarried. . For I cannot 'make things do'; I cannot 'contrive'; I will
not cling to the fringe of things, or play that heartbreaking role of
the shabby expatriated on the Continent. . No person in this world ever
had enough. I tell you I could find use for every flake of metal ever
mined! . You see you do not know me. From my pretty face and figure you
misjudge me. I am intelligent--not intellectual, though I might have
been, might even be yet. I am cultivated, not learned; though I care for
learning--or might, if I had time. . My role in life is to mount to a
security too high for any question as to my dominance. . Can you take me
there?"

"There are other heights, Sylvia."

"Higher?"

"Yes, dear."

"The spiritual; I know. I could not breathe there, if I cared to climb.
. And I have told you what I am--all silk and lace and smooth-skinned
selfishness." She looked at him wistfully. "If you can change me, take
me." And she rose, facing him.

"I do not give you up," he said, with a savage note hardening his voice;
and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body
leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling,
confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in
his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last,
responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the
white lids--these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed
flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

"Good night. Love me while you can--and forgive me! . Good night. . Where
are we? All--all this must have stunned me, blinded me. . Is this my
door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear--to be here under the
light again. . If you take me again, my knees will give way. . And I
must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it! . Good night . good
night. I--I love you!"

CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened
to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield
he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had
become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion;
his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's
snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.
Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss,
and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the end.
That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And,
following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished
with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in
the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet
done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him
within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to
the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air
made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a
pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired
of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room,
with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether,
always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly
dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer
sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance of
his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, unobtrusively carrying
Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy
mornings now too frequent along the coast.

Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the
financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But,
plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income through
confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even
Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did
not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing
point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short,
lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas
out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous
to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in
hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when
opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.

Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had
snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field
was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale
and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion
Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who,
knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and
sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman of
forty-eight--until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled everything,
as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and perplexed between
doubt and disgust.

Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found
encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality.
There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York;
but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at
the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at closer
quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much
discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not
a question as to "which would be good to him," observed Major Belwether,
with his misleading and benevolent mirth; "it was, which would be
goodest quickest!"

And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token,
displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her
husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.

But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently
had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the
situation with his wife--perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal
arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible
alliance.

The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests
had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only
was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the
card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and
port had disagreed with him.

As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an
aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated,
bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his
room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb
over last week's sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.

But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber. He
walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at the rain-
smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly flavoured
cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in pity's name,
was he to do?

Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife's locked and
bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to
fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his
houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!

He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under
the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife's bed-chamber. He
listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness to
wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the
subdued rustle of the departing maid.

Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his
wife's door and knocked discreetly.

Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for
the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.

"What is the matter?" she asked quietly.

"Are you point-shooting to-morrow?"

"I wanted to chat with you."

"I'm sorry. I'm driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly
Plank, and I need sleep."

"I want to talk to you," he repeated doggedly.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting
gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily
apprehensive but resolved.

She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over
the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her
slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black
eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.

"Leila," he said, "why can't we have--"

"A cigarette?" she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.

He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her own
from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue smoke-
rings jetting upward to the ceiling.

"About this man Plank," he began, louder than he had intended through
sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of
caution, which subdued his voice instantly. "Why can't we take him up
--together, Leila?" he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in a
matter which might concern him vitally.

"I see no necessity of your taking him up," observed his wife serenely.
"I can do what may be useful to him in town."

"So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen--"

"I can manage such matters much better."

"You can't manage everything," he insisted sullenly. "There are chances
of various sorts--"

"Investments?" asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.

"See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make
damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to. . It becomes you to
be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I
want you to listen, too."

A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. "I am listening," she
said.

"Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to
me. . I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is
to have a frank, honourable--"

"A--what?"

"--An honourable understanding with you, I said," he repeated, reddening.

"Oh!" She snapped her cigarette into the grate. "Oh! I see. And what
then?"

"What then?"

"Yes; what then?"

"Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town,
can't we?"

"And then?"

"Then--damn it!--the beggar can show his gratitude, can't he?"

"How?" she asked listlessly.

"By making good. How else?" he retorted savagely. "He can't welch
because there's little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he
can't ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can in
yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me
isn't going to cancel his obligations to you."

"I know him better than you do," she observed, bending her head and
pleating the lace on her knee. "There is Dutch blood in him."

"Not good Hollander, but common Dutch," sneered Mortimer. "And you mean
he'll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don't you?"

She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.

"Well, that's all right, too," laughed Mortimer easily; "let the Audubon
Society worry over the eagle. It's a perfectly plain business
proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can't do
for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila," he said, waving
a mottled fat hand at her.

"I--have," she said under her breath.

"Then, is it settled?

"Settled--how?"

"That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of
Plank?"

"I--I don't want to, Roy," she said slowly.

"Why not?"

She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile
stuff clinging to her knee.

"Why not?" he repeated menacingly. Her unexpectedly quiescent attitude
had emboldened him to a bullying tone--something he had not lately
ventured on.

She raised her eyes to his: "I--rather like him," she said quietly.

"Then, by God! he'll pay for that!" he burst out, mask off, every
inflamed feature shockingly congested.

"Roy! You dare not--"

"I tell you I--"

"You dare not!"

The palpitating silence lengthened; slowly the blood left the swollen
veins. Heavy pendulous lip hanging, he stared at her from distended
eyes, realising that he had forgotten himself. She was right. He dared
not. And she held the whip-hand as usual.

For every suspicion he could entertain, she had evidence of a certainty
to match it; for every chance that he might have to prove anything, she
had twenty proven facts. And he knew it. Why they had, during all these
years, made any outward pretence of conjugal unity they alone knew. The
modus vivendi suited them better than divorce: that was apparent, or had
been until recently. Recently Leila Mortimer had changed--become subdued
and softened to a degree that had perplexed her husband. Her attitude
toward him lacked a little of the bitterness and contempt she usually
reserved for him in private; she had become more prudent, almost
cautious at times.

"I'll tell you one thing," he said with a sudden snarl: "You'd better be
careful there is no gossip about you and Plank."

She reddened under the insult.

"Now we'll see," he continued venomously, "how far you can go alone."

"Do you suppose," she asked calmly, "that I am afraid of a divorce
court?"

The question so frankly astonished him that he sat agape, unable to
reply. For years he had very naturally supposed her to be afraid of
it--afraid of not being qualified to obtain it. Indeed, he had taken that
for granted as the very corner-stone of their mutual toleration. Had he
been an ass to do so? A vague alarm took possession of him; for, with
that understanding, he had not been at all careful of his own behaviour,
neither had he been at any particular pains to conceal his doings from
her. His alarm increased. What had he against her, after all, except
ancient suspicions, now so confused and indefinite that memory itself
outlawed the case, if it ever really existed. What had she against him?
Facts--unless she was more stupid than any of her sex he had ever
encountered. And now, this defiance, this increasing prudence, this
subtle change in her, began to make him anxious for the permanency of
the small income she had allowed him during all these years--doled out
to him, as he believed, though her dormant fear of him.

"What are you talking about?" he said harshly.

"I believe I mentioned divorce."

"Well, cut it out! D'ye see? Cut it, I say. You'd stand as much chance
before a referee as a snowball in hell."

"There's no telling," she said coolly, "until one tries."

He glared at her, then burst into a laugh. "Rot!" he said thickly. "Talk
sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you
feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought--for old
times' sake--perhaps you'd--"

"Good night," she managed to say, her disgust almost strangling her.

And he went, furtively, heavy-footed, perplexed, inwardly cursing his
blunder in stirring up a sleeping lioness whom he had so long mistaken
for a dozing cat.

For hours he sat in his room, or paced the four walls, doubtful,
chagrined, furious by turns. Once he drew out a memorandum-book and
stood under a lighted sconce, studying the figures. His losses at
Shotover staggered him, but he had looked to his wife heretofore in such
emergencies.

Certainly the time had come for him to do something. But what?--if his
wife was going to strike such attitudes in the very face of decency?
Certainly a husband in these days was without honour in his own
household.

His uneasiness had produced a raging thirst. He punched an electric
button with his fleshy thumb, and prowled around, waiting. Nobody came;
he punched again, and looked at his watch. It astonished him to find the
hour was three o'clock in the morning. That discovery, however, only
appeared to increase his thirst. He opened the hall door, prepared to
descend into the depths of the house and raid a sideboard; and as he
thrust his heavy head out into the lighted corridor his eyes fell upon
two figures standing at the open door of a bedroom. One was Siward; that
was plain. Who was the girl he had kissed? One of the maids? Somebody's
wife? Who?

Every dull pulse began to hammer in Mortimer's head. In his excitement
he stepped half-way into the corridor, then skipped nimbly back, closing
his door without a sound.

"Sylvia Landis, by all that's holy!" he breathed to himself, and sat
down rather suddenly on the edge of the bed.

After a while he rose and crept to the door, opened it, glued his eyes
to the crack, in time to catch a glimpse of Siward entering his own
corridor alone.

And that night, Mortimer, lying awake in bed, busy with schemes, became
conscious of a definite idea. It took shape and matured so suddenly that
it actually shocked his moral sense. Then it scared him.

"But--but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that
sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? . And there are
men I know--women, too--scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that
information somehow; and make it pay, too. The scoundrels!"

He squirmed down among the bedclothes with a sudden shiver; but the
night had turned warm.

"Scoundrels!" he said, with milder emphasis. "Blackmailers! Contemptible
pups!"

He fell asleep an hour later, muttering something incoherent about
scoundrels and blackmail.

And meanwhile, in the darkened house, from all round came the noise of
knocking on doors, sounds of people stirring--a low voice here and there,
lights breaking out from transoms, the thud of rubber-shod heels, the
rattle of cartridges from the echoing gun-room. For the guests at
Shotover were awaking, lest the wet sky, whitening behind the east, ring
with the whimpering wedges of wild-fowl rushing seaward over empty
blinds.

The unusual stillness of the house in the late morning sunshine was
pleasant to Miss Landis. She had risen very late, unconscious of the
stir and movement before dawn; and it was only when a maid told her, as
she came from her bath, that she remembered the projected point-
shooting, and concluded, with an odd, happy sense of relief, that she
was almost alone in the house.

A little later, glancing from her bedroom window for a fulfilment of the
promise of the sun which a glimpse of blue sky heralded, she saw Leila
Mortimer settling herself in the forward seat of a Mercedes, and Beverly
Plank climbing in beside her; and she watched Plank steer the big
machine across the wet lawn, while the machinist swung himself into the
tonneau; and away they rolled, faster, faster, rushing out into the
misty hinterland, where the long streak of distant forest already began
to brighten, edged with the first rays of watery sunshine.

So she had the big house to herself--every bit of it and with it freedom
from obligation, from comment, from demand or exaction; freedom from
restraint; liberty to roam about, to read, to dream, to idle, to
remember! Ah, that was what she needed--a quiet interval in this hurrying
youth of hers to catch her breath once more, and stand still, and look
back a day or two and remember.

So, to breakfast all alone was delicious; to stroll, unhurried, to the
sideboard and leisurely choose among the fresh cool fruits; to loiter
over cream-jug and cereal; to saunter out into the freshness of the
world and breathe it, and feel the sun warming cheek and throat, and the
little breezes from a sunlit sea stirring the bright strands of her
hair.

In the increasing brilliancy of the sunshine she stretched out her
hands, warming them daintily as she might twist them before the fire on
the hearth. And here, at the fragrant hearth of the world, she stood,
sweet and fresh as the morning itself, untroubled gaze intensely blue
with the tint of the purple sea, sensitive lips scarcely parting in the
dreaming smile that made her eyes more wonderful.

As the warmth grew on land and water, penetrating her body, a faintly
delicious glow responded in her heart,--nothing at first wistful in the
serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the
unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively
unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her
to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers
uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young
figure straightened, confronting the sea.

Out over the rain-wet, odorous grass she picked her way, skirts swung
high above the delicate contour of ankle and limb, following a little
descending path she knew full of rocky angles, swept by pendant sprays
of blackberry, and then down under the jutting rock, south through
thickets of wild cherry along the crags, until, before her the way
opened downward again where a tiny crescent beach glimmered white hot in
the sun.

From his bedroom window Mortimer peeped forth, following her progress
with a leer.

As she descended, noticing the rifts of bronzing seaweed piled along the
tide mark, her foot dislodged a tiny triangle of rock, which rolled
clattering and ringing below; and as she sprang lightly to the sand, a
man, lying full length and motionless as the heaped seaweed, raised
himself on one arm, turning his sun-dazzled eyes on her.

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