The Fighting Chance

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

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Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of
cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat
packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips
expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and
glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in
counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to
his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother--the same tender,
affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of
confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on
the heels of the letter.

In his first letter to her from Shotover he had spoken casually of a
Miss Landis. It seemed the name was familiar enough to his mother, who
asked about her; and he had replied in another letter or two, a trifle
emphatic in his praise of her, because from his mother's letters it was
quite evident that she knew a good deal concerning the very
unconventional affairs of Sylvia's family.

Of his swift and somewhat equivocal courtship he had had nothing to say
in his letters; in fact recently he had nothing to say about Sylvia at
all, reserving that vital confidence for the clear sympathy and
understanding which he looked forward to when he should see her, and
which, through dark days and bitter aftermaths, through struggle and
defeat by his master-vice, had never failed him yet, never faltered for
an instant.

So he brought his letter to a close with a tender and uneasy inquiry
concerning her health, which, she had intimated, was not exactly
satisfactory, and for that reason she had opened the house in town in
order to be near Dr. Grisby, their family doctor.

Sealing and directing the letter, he looked up to see Sylvia standing at
his elbow. She dropped a light hand on his shoulder for a second, barely
touching him--a fugitive caress, delicate as the smile hovering on her
lips, as the shy tenderness in her eyes.

"More letters to your sweetheart?" she asked, abandoning her hand to
him.

"One more--the last before I see her. . I wish you could see her,
Sylvia."

"I wish so, too," she answered simply, seating herself on the arm of his
chair as though it were a side-saddle.

They sat there very silent for a few moments, curiously oblivious to the
chance curiosity of any one who might enter or pass.

"Would she--care for me--do you think?" asked the girl in a low voice.

"I think so,--for your real self."

"I know. She could only feel contempt for me--as I am."

"She is old-fashioned," he said reverently.

"That means all that is best in a woman. . The old fashion of truth and
faith; the old fashion of honour, and faith in honour; the old, old
fashion of--love. . All that is best, Stephen; all that is worth the love
of a man. . Some day somebody will revive those fashions."

"Will you?"

"Dear, they would not become me," she said, the tenderness in her eyes
deepening a little; and she touched his head lightly in humourous
caress.

"What shall we do with the waning daylight?" she asked. "It is my last
day with you. I told Howard it was my last day with you, and I did not
care to be disturbed."

"You probably didn't say it that way," he commented, amused.

"I did."

"How much of that sort of thing is he prepared to stand?" asked Siward
curiously.

"How much? I don't know. I don't believe he cares. It is my uncle, Major
Belwether, who is making things unpleasant for me. I had to tell Howard,
you know."

"What!" exclaimed Siward incredulously.

"Certainly. Do you think my conduct has passed without protest?"

"You told Quarrier!" he repeated.

"Did you imagine I could do otherwise?" she asked coolly. "I have that
much decency left. Certainly I told him. Do you suppose that, after what
we did--what I admitted to you--that I could meet him as usual? Do you
think I am afraid of him?"

"I thought you were afraid of losing him," muttered Siward.

"I was, dreadfully. And the morning after you and I had been imprudent
enough to sit up until nearly daylight--and do what we did--I made him
take a long walk with me, and I told him plainly that I cared for you,
that I was too selfish and cowardly to marry you, and that if he
couldn't endure the news he was at liberty to terminate the engagement
without notice."

"What did he say?" stammered Siward.

"A number of practical things."

"You mean to say he stands it!"

"It appears so. What else is there for him to do, unless he breaks the
engagement?"

"And he--hasn't?"

"No. I was informed that he held me strictly and precisely to my
promise; that he would never release me voluntarily, though I was, of
course, at liberty to do what I chose. . My poor friend, he cares no
more for love than do I. I happen to be the one woman in New York whom
he considers absolutely suitable for him; by race, by breeding, by
virtue of appearance and presence, eminently fitted to complete the
material portion of his fortune and estate."

Her voice had hardened as she spoke; now it rang a little at the end,
and she laughed unpleasantly.

"It appears that I was a little truer to myself than you gave me credit
for--a little truer to you--a little less treacherous, less shameless,
than you must have thought me. But I have gone to my limit of decency; .
and, were I ten times more in love with you than I am, I could not put
away the position and power offered me. But I will not lie for it, nor
betray for it. . Do you remember, once you asked me for what reasons I
dropped men from my list? And I told you, because of any falsehood or
treachery, any betrayal of trust--and for no other reason. You remember?
And did you suppose that elemental standard of decency did not include
women--even such a woman as I?"

She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it,
staring at space across his shoulders.

"That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you.
There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was
all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was
sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only,
and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I--I suppose,
from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever
touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me. . He will
be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned," she added
naively. "It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its
degradation."

Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both
hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing
her hot cheeks against his hands--a moment only; then slipping to her
feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back,
blue gaze concentrated on him.

"The thing for you to do," she said, "is to ambush me some night, and
throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you
for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife."

"I may do that yet," he said, lifting his head from his hands.

"You've a year to do it in," she observed. . "By the way, you're to take
me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked
Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago,
wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and
perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to
Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear, . I didn't mean to hurt
you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your
badness--your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just
better smile. . How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt
you! . Besides, you are probably unrepentant."

She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, "Are you
unrepentant?"

"About what?"

"About your general wickedness? About--" she hesitated--"about that girl,
for example."

"What girl?" he asked coldly.

"That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her."

"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in
its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.

Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into
which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a
significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he
had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to
him--an actress, a woman of common antecedents?

She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to
just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what
he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of
tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.

Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise
shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of
matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste,
partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate
delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies
itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest
surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.

But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her
which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly
wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke
of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.

She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction
toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it
appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and
undignified--part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness
which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.

But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a
seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the
subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little
hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.

Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.

"Sylvia," he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of
the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, "Suppose, as you
suggested, I did ambush you--say after the opera--seize you under the very
nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?"

"I know of no other way," she said demurely.

"Would you resist, physically?"

"I would, if nobody were looking."

"Desperately?

"How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of
his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume.
Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own
wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in
saddle and afoot.

"I should advise you to chloroform me," she said defiantly. "You don't
realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag."

"So you mean to resist?"

"Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off
to church with you now."

"Wenniston church!" he said promptly. "I'll order the Mercedes."

She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. "Suppose
it were our fire?" she smiled. "There would be a dog lying across that
rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and--you,
cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped
back against my knees."

The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily:
"Don't! I--I can't stand that sort of thing, you know."

She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her
own limits in the same direction.

"Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery."

"I know. . After a while a man finds laughter difficult."

"I was not laughing at--anything. I was only pretending to be happy."

"Your happiness is before you," he said sullenly.

"My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other. . And
some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the
depravity of the monstrous trade I made. . And then--and then--"

She passed one slim hand over her face--"then you will shake yourself
free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands
will begin. . Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a
girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has
invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic
that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician,
enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this
fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to
think what I shall appear to you--what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless
shell, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements--a jewelled mummy-
case--a thing that never was! . Do you understand my punishment a
little, now?"

"If it were true," he said in a dull voice, "you will have forgotten,
too."

"I pray I may," she said under her breath.

And, after a long silence: "Do you think, before the year is out, that
you might be granted enough courage?" he asked.

"No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire
it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the
poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am
what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop
me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being
a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly
frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not. . And now,
what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and
courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the
certitude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I
could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance
the sacrifice. And that is final."

Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress
under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.

"Another quarrel," she commented, turning on the current of the drop-
light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance. "You
quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?"

"I wish we could," said Sylvia simply.

Grace laughed. "What a little fool you are!" she said tenderly, seating
herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested
on the arm. "Stephen, can't you make her--a big, strong fellow like you?
Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first
time, and I'll never meddle again." She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory
pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. "I'm disgracefully
sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a
good time at Shotover--the time of your life?"

Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.

"I certainly have," she said faintly.

"C'est bien, cherie. Can you be as civil, Stephen--conscientiously? Oh,
that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you
make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse
and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me,
Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge,
Stephen? What--bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful--this gambling
the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you
coming, Sylvia?"

The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup,
which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech
of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his
smile--which was the only humorous thing he contributed.

The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing
no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of
contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a
bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation
of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of
scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the
waking struggle so sure to follow.

Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly,
"Good Hunting!" as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it,
and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half
buried among the orchids: "To you!" she murmured for Siward's ear alone;
then drank gaily, mischievously, "To the best shot at Shotover!" And
Siward took the cup: "I salute victory," he said, smiling, "always, and
everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the
best man! Health!" And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to
Quarrier, and with death in his heart.

Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia,
beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.

"What is it?" she faltered, catching his eye; "why do you--why are you so
white?"

But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:

"The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man
who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the
world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the
same."

Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him
to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened, tearing
ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall,
finishing his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if
needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly
unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he
were not ill.

He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to
pass through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to
leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's
farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not
prove an interruption--a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he passed out,
a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially
formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.

Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now,
delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his
own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena
felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he
had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages,
exasperated.

In the big hall he passed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.

No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the
two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably
not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less. . Of course
he'd come to see her when she returned to town. . And it had been a
jolly party, and it was a shame to sound "lights out" so soon! Good-bye.
. Good night. And that was all.

And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with
Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer--and very intent on the
dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.

So--that was all, then.

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of
the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.

In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on
his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and
every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without
it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from
Quarrier's loving-cup.

The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that
occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in
the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat
starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across
the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that
he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved
blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he
stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy
awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a
glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at
him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into
something resembling self-command.

"Damn you!" he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his
reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down,
resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through
the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among
the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared
and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed
desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly--for he was deadly tired--"What am I
making the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you making the fight for?"
echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all,
it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now--and now?--his heart beat
out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open,
fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his
mother's grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to
do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his
confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation
was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons
unassigned.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull
report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad
enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort
of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance? . And what would
his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a
deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied
acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered
where the brunt of the disgrace would fall--where the centre of suffering
must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled,
almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to
realise what it would mean to his mother. A passion of remorse and
resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some
way--some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through
him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What
were the governors of the Lenox about--a lot of snivelling hypocrites,
pandering to the horrified snobbery at the Patroons! Who were they,
anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the
two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of passion and mortification passed, too, leaving him
standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his
shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do
something--something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor,
turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod
almost imperceptible.

"Quarrier!" he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

"Could you give me a moment--here in my room? I won't detain you."

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly
retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently
confronting its pallid tenant.

"Will you sit down a moment?"

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found
a chair opposite.

"Quarrier," said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on
his visitor, "I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You
know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for."

"Yes, I know."

"When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter,
if I could, you were sitting on that Board."

"Yes."

"I denied the charge, but refused to explain. . You remember?"

Quarrier nodded coldly.

"And I was dropped by the club!"

A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.

"Now," said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, "I shall tell you
unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially."
And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features
became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as
though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back
into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps
defiant.

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