The Fighting Chance

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

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He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but
necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not
now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into
acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town--unless Plank
invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By
Heaven! That was the idea! And there'd be a chance for him at cards! .
Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too. . But what did he care! He
was no longer afraid of her; he'd soon be independent of her and her
pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her--

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously
enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly
dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings
had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and
carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere
bluff on Leila's part, this sudden coquetting with the question of
divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his
elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior
gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife's possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply
didn't care--had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained.
And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the
indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived
everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody
outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the
house of Leroy Mortimer--which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered
over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and
fro, dressing himself--his neuralgia being much better--and presently
descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant
explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he
strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built
for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer
walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much
splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle
of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last
match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the
other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through
storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away;
then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena
Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung
both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at
Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about
him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery,
where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the
blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of
breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were
right. He ignored his wife's smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense
in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to
make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one
with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the
losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in
her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch
the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute,
for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A
pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on
betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and
presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a
dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds
of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and
prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big,
glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

"Blue! Blue!" exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little
whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the
breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind
enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing
crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody
to play cards with--it being his temperament and his temper to throw good
money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to
the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several
dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall's party, equipped for motoring, to the
lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze
which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon's
sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a
practice of taking away his money--Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene.
He hadn't particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play
with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not
that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least
permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he
had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank's game, and Siward,
seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with
Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division
of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always
instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank's sort whom she
occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who
had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her,
found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of
persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which
instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had
been responsible, in Sylvia's brief life, for more mistakes than
anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake
that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were
particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly
enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and
whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also
appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a
wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl's responsive and delicious
laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could
be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the
while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick,
amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had
turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without
a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural
and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an
informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy
and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she
had proved, why--why--

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of
what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which
included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for
dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted
his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to
climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his
climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which
had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had
concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his
obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had
come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry
him through sheer merit to the inner temple--that inner temple of raw
gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!

Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which
Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man's
infatuation as he sat there on the pool's marble edge, exchanging
trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome
except when she made it so for her husband's benefit. Features, person,
personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with
their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom,
the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the
audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise,
or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming
because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been
very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the
danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the
frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so
naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an
agreeable after-taste--a sort of gay understanding which almost
invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something
appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage--something of
the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with
significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of
Plank's calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer's bored smile had
lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed
her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a
shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward's eyes;
and during a moment's hesitation they considered one another with an
increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her
eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward's: "Oho, my friend! So it
bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to
Howard Quarrier!"

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly
narrowed in vexed retaliation: "Speak for yourself, my lady! You're no
more pleased than I am!"

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There
had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No;
a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a
fortnight's time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the
brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing
with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed
her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not
at all certain. . But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself,
and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from
her shrinking lips. Who knows! "Stephen," she said under her breath, "I
didn't mean to hurt you. . Don't scowl. Listen. I have already entirely
forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please."

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed
critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a
rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so
skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had
been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a
perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant
retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the
decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he
had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming
a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to
laugh consciously:

"What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?"

"He'd be an ornament to a stock farm," replied Siward, out of humour.

"How brutal you can be!" she mused, smiling.

"Nonsense! He's a plain bounder, isn't he?"

"I don't know. . Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly--even
pathetically; they usually do, that sort. . As though the trouble they
took could ever be worth the time they lose! . There are dozens of men I
know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust
young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of
things--like degenerate horses, you know--always pathetic to me; but
they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same
genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. .
And if I were a donkey I'd sing and cavort with my own kind, and let
horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of
things. . Now I have been brutal. But--I'm easily coloured by my
environment."

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked
skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

"Are you reconciled?" she asked presently.

"To what?"

"To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all
go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my
poor friend:

"'Yon rising moon that looks for us again--How oft hereafter will she
wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same
mansion--and for one in vain!'"

"That is I--the one, you know. You may be here again; but I--I shall not
be I if I ever come to Shotover again."

Her stockinged heels beat the devil's tattoo against the marble sides of
the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch
of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white
blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: "I'm accustoming myself to this
most significant perfume," she said, looking at him askance. And she
deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his
sullen face.

"If you had the courage of a sparrow you'd make life worth something for
us both," he said.

"I know it; I haven't; but I seem to possess the remainder of his
lordship's traits--inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct
for Fifth Avenue nest-building--all the feathered vices, all the
unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype. .
Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage."

"I don't know how much courage it requires to do what you're going to
do," he said sulkily.

"Don't you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that it
may require no more courage than I am capable of. . And sometimes--I
don't know."

She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning
forward thoughtfully above the water.

"Our last day," she mused; "for we shall never be just you and I
again--never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden. .
I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in
the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the
white birches put on their gold crowns next year." She smiled, turning
to him, a little gravely: "When the Lesser Children return with April, I
shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on
them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me. . Nor your charity
for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,--under the glamour of a
spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me. . I can
answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have
come and gone--until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts--as long as
any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can
answer for my constancy as long as that. . Afterwards, the snow!--symbol
of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first."

He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their
wedding date had been set for the coming winter.

"A year's engagement?" he repeated, unconvinced.

"It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned."
Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour:
"A year is little enough," she said impatiently. "I--what has happened to
us requires an interval--a decent interval for its burial. . Death is
respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no
resurrection under the snow. . So I bring to the burial my tribute--a
year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I
could have given you had I been worth it." She looked up, flushed, the
forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. "Sentiment in such a woman
as I! 'A spectacle for Gods and men,' you are saying--are you not? And
perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent
ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use." She was
laughing easily. "No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for
that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it
once served its purpose, too. . Stephen Siward, what do you think of me
now?"

"I am learning," he replied simply.

"What, if you please?"

"Learning a little about what I am losing."

"You mean--me?"

"Yes."

She bent forward impulsively, balancing her body on the pool's rim with
both arms, dropping her knee until her ankles swung interlocked above
the water. "Listen," she said in a low, distinct voice: "What you lose
is no other man's gain! If I warm and expand in your presence--if I say
clever things sometimes--if I am intelligent, sympathetic, and amusing--it
is because of you. You inspire it in me. Normally I am the sort of girl
you first met at the station. I tell you that I don't know myself
now--that I have not known myself since I knew you. Qualities of
understanding, ability to appreciate, to express myself without
employing the commonplaces, subtleties of intercourse--all, maybe, were
latent in me, but sterile, until you came into my life. . And when you
go, then, lacking impulse and incentive, the new facility, the new
sensitive alertness, the unconscious self-confidence, all will smoulder
and die out in me. . I know it; I realise that it was due to you--part of
me that I should never have known, of which I should have remained
totally ignorant, had it not blossomed suddenly, stimulated by you
alone."

Slowly the clouded seriousness of her blue eyes cleared, and the smile
began to glimmer again. "That is your revenge; you recommit me to my
commonplace self; you restore me to my tinsel career, practically a
dolt. Shame on you, Stephen Siward, to treat a poor girl so! . But it's
just as well. Blunted perceptions, according to our needs, you know; and
so life is tempered for us all, else we might not endure it long. . A
pleasantly morbid suggestion for a day like this, is it not? . Shall we
take a farewell plunge, and dress? You know we say good-bye to-morrow."

"Where do you go from here?"

"To Lenox; the Claymores have asked us for a week; after that, Hot
Springs for another two weeks or so; after that, to Oyster Bay. . Mr.
Quarrier opens his house on Sedge Point," she added demurely, "but I
don't think he expects to invite you to 'The Sedges.'"

"How long do you stay there?" asked Siward irritably.

"Until we go to town in December."

"What will you find to do all that time in Oyster Bay?" he asked more
irritably.

"What a premature question! The yacht is there. Besides, there's the
usual neighbourhood hunting, with the usual packs and inevitable set;
the usual steeple-chasing; the usual exchange of social amenities; the
usual driving and riding; the usual, my poor friend, the usual, in all
its uncompromising certainty. . And what are you to do?"

"When?"

"After you leave here?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know where you are going?"

"I'm going to town."

"And then?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, but haven't you been asked somewhere? You have, of course."

"Yes, and I have declined."

"Matters of business," she inferred. "Too bad!"

"Oh, no."

"Then," she concluded, laughing, "you don't care to tell me where you
are going."

"No," he said thoughtfully, "I don't care to tell you."

She laughed again carelessly, and, placing one hand on the tiled
pavement, sprang lightly to her feet.

"A last plunge?" she asked, as he rose at her side.

"Yes, one last plunge together. Deep! Are you ready?"

She raised her white arms above her head, finger-tips joined, poised an
instant on the brink, swaying forward; then, at his brief word, they
flashed downward together, cutting the crystalline sea-water, shooting
like great fish over the glass-tiled bed, shoulder to shoulder under the
water; and opening their eyes, they turned toward one another with a
swift outstretch of hands, an uncontrollable touch of lips, the very
shadow of contact; then cleaving upward, rising to the surface to lie
breathlessly floating, arms extended, and the sun filtering down through
the ground-glass roof above.

"We are perfectly crazy," she breathed. "I'm quite mad; I see that. On
land it's bad enough for us to misbehave; but submarine sentiment! We'll
be growing scales and tails presently. . Did you ever hear of a Southern
bird--a sort of hawk, I think--that almost never alights; that lives and
eats and sleeps its whole life away on the wing? and even its courtship,
and its honeymoon? Grace Ferrall pointed one out to me last winter, near
Palm Beach--a slender bird, part black, part snowy white, with long,
pointed, delicate wings like an enormous swallow; and all day, all
night, it floats and soars and drifts in the upper air, never resting,
never alighting except during its brief nesting season. . Think of the
exquisite bliss of drifting one's life through in mid-air--to sleep,
balanced on light wings, upborne by invisible currents flowing under the
stars--to sail dreamily through the long sunshine, to float under the
moon! . And at last, I suppose, when its time has come, down it whirls
out of the sky, stone dead! . There is something thrilling in such a
death--something magnificent. . And in the exquisitely spiritual
honeymoon, vague as the shadow of a rainbow, is the very essence and
aroma of that impalpable Paradise we women prophesy in dreams! . More
sentiment! Heigho! My brother is the weeping crocodile, and the five
winds are my wits. . Shall we dress? Even with a maid and the electric
air-blast it will take time to dry my hair and dress it."

When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the
hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the
library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a
memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to
learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.

He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and,
a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew
where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's
order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various
amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence
near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk
in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she
always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.

"I'm writing cheques," she said. "I suppose you're writing to your
mother."

"Why do you think so?" he asked curiously.

"You write to her every day, don't you?"

"Yes," he said, "but how do you know?"

She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. "You wrote every day. .
If it was to a woman, I wanted to know. . And I told Grace Ferrall that
it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of
my own pettiness that I can make to you."

"Did you really care to whom I was writing?" he asked slowly.

"Care? I--it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? 'Sisters
under our skin,' you know--I and the maid who dresses me. She would have
snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know
just the same. . But--that was before--"

"Before what?"

"Before I--please don't ask me to say it. . I did, once, when you asked
me."

"Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me. . You are
interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money,
and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close
accounts with Marion Page."

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