The Fighting Chance

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

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Miss Landis sat very still, her small head bent, a flush still
brightening her fair face.

She recalled a few of the details now--the scandal--something of the
story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some
men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting
beside her had accepted it--and won it, by bringing into the sacred
precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a
man's evening dress.

That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but
worst of all was the publicity, the club's name smirched, the young man
expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.

To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little
to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her
own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in a
new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did
such men as he--such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he--do that
sort of thing?

There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which
waved a little at the temples--a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a
cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close--a good
face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What
eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?

"Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?" she said impulsively.

"It appears that I was; I don't know what I am--or may be."

"The pity of it!" she said, still swayed by impulse. "Why did you
do--didn't you know--realize what you were doing--bringing discredit on
your own club?"

"I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis."

The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or
disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she
fully understand why he chose to use it--unless that he meant it in self-
punishment.

"It's rather shameful!" she said hotly.

"Yes," he assented; "it's a bad beginning."

"A--beginning! Do you mean to go on?"

He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent
for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward's feet, its brown
eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and the
man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog's head,
caressing the silky ears.

Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals
could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too,
she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against
precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar
to neither sex and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such
matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men who
dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress
habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said,
innocently: "What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I
do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort.
The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally
condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward.
You know that, of course."

"For what do you drop men?"

"For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty."

"And you don't drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the
two best clubs in town has expelled him?"

She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: "But you are still a
member of the other, are you not?" Then hardening: "It was common!
common!--thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!"--and with every
word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was
chastening; "it was not even bad--it was worse than being simply bad; it
was stupid!"

He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog's head where it lay across
his knees.

She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: "So now I
know the worst about you; do I not?" she concluded.

He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth.
Had she been too severe? She wondered. "You may help me to my feet," she
said sweetly. She was very young.

He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly
impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the
purple dusk of the uplands--two people young enough to take one another
seriously.

"Let me tell you something," she said, facing him, white hands loosely
linked behind her. "I don't exactly understand how it has happened, but
you know as well as I do that we have formed a--an acquaintance--the sort
that under normal conditions requires a long time and several
conventional and preliminary chapters. . I should like to know what you
think of our performance."

"I think," he said laughing, "that it is charming."

"Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to
know is why I find it so, too?"

"Do you?" A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.

"Certainly I do. Is it because I've had a delightful chance to admonish
a sinner--and be--just a little sorry--that he had made such a silly
spectacle of himself?"

He laughed, wincing a trifle.

"Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me," she concluded. "So
now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go.
. Don't you?"

They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the
dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy,
partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at
all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the
terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had
never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a
temporary interest in Siward--the interest that women always cherish,
quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented
to overlook.

As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene
lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the
scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.

"Our shooting-party has returned," she said.

They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps;
people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of
game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two
in shooting-tweeds or khaki.

As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable
smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she
left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.

CHAPTER III SHOTOVER

The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who
favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite
perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not
expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.

Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of
draining a glass, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward. He
finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched:
"Hello, Stephen! Heard you'd arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with
Sylvia Landis! That's all right, too, but you should have come for the
opening day. Lots of native woodcock--eh, Blinky?" turning to Lord
Alderdene; and again to Siward: "You know all these fellows--Mortimer
yonder--" There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer,
red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his glass and came over,
followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles
and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a "tic." Captain Voucher,
a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day,
came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands
shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And
last of all Tom O'Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a
pair of trooper's spurs over the floor--relics of his bloodless Porto
Rico campaign with Squadron A.

It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined
to ignore Siward's recent foolishness, which indicated that he might
reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of
which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the
few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not
likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable
to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of
the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of
course in New York.

So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and
found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and
fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through
his shooting-goggles at everybody.

"These little brown snipe you call woodcock," he began; "we bagged nine
brace, d'you see? But of all the damnable bogs and covers--"

"Rotten," said Mortimer thickly; "Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps,
and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--"

"Where do you expect to find native woodcock?" demanded Ferrall,
laughing.

"On the table hereafter," growled Mortimer.

"Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants," retorted Ferrall
amiably; "Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking."

"Not I," said Voucher; "the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit
the beggars--"

"Oh, everybody misses in snap-shooting," observed Ferrall; "that is,
everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack!
and," turning to Alderdene, "it's like taking money from you, Blinky--
which reminds me that we've time for a little Preference before
dressing."

His squinting lordship declined and took an easier position in his
chair, extending a pair of little bandy legs draped in baggy tweed
knickerbockers and heather-spats. Mortimer, industriously distending his
skin with whiskey, reached for the decanter. The aromatic perfume of the
spirits aroused Siward, and he instinctively nodded his desire to a
servant.

"This salt air keeps one thirsty," he observed to Ferrall; then
something in his host's expression arrested the glass at his lips. He
had already been using the decanter a good deal; except Mortimer, nobody
was doing that sort of thing as freely as he.

He set his glass on the table thoughtfully; a tinge of colour had crept
into his lean checks.

Ferrall, too, suddenly uncomfortable, stood up saying something about
dressing; several men arose a trifle stiffly, feeling in every joint the
result of the first day's shooting after all those idle months. Mortimer
got up with an unfeigned groan; Siward followed, leaving his glass
untouched.

One or two other men came in from the billiard-room. All greeted Siward
amiably--all excepting one who may not have seen him--an elderly, pink,
soft gentleman with white downy chop-whiskers and the profile of a
benevolent buck rabbit.

"How do you do, Major Belwether?" said Siward in a low voice without
offering his hand.

Then Major Belwether saw him, bless you! yes indeed! And though Siward
continued not to offer his hand, Major Belwether meant to have it, bless
your heart! And he fussed and fussed and beamed cordiality until he
secured it in his plump white fingers and pressed it effusively.

There was something about his soft, warm hands which had always reminded
Siward of the temperature and texture of a newly hatched bird. It had
been some time since he had shaken hands with Major Belwether; it was
apparent that the bird had not aged any.

"And now for the shooting!" said the Major with an arch smile. "Now for
the stag at bay and the winding horn--

'Where sleeps the moon On Mona's rill--'

Eh, Siward?

'And here's to the hound With his nose upon the ground--'

Eh, my boy? That reminds me of a story--" He chuckled and chuckled, his
lambent eyes suffused with mirth; and slipping his arm through the
pivot-sleeve of Lord Alderdene's shooting-jacket, hooking the other in
Siward's reluctant elbow, and driving Mortimer ahead of him, he went
garrulously away up the stairs, his lordship's bandy little legs
trotting beside him, the soaking gaiters and shoes slopping at every
step.

Mortimer, his mottled skin now sufficiently distended, greeted the story
with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into
that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain
vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his
listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that
the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard
Quarrier's even, colourless voice: "Ferrall, would you be good enough to
send Sagamore to your kennels?"

"Oh--he's your dog! I forgot," said Siward turning around.

Quarrier looked at him, pausing a moment.

"Yes," he said coldly, "he's my dog."

For a fraction of a second the two men's eyes encountered; then Siward
glanced at the dog, and turned on his heel with the slightest shrug. And
that is all there was to the incident--an anxious, perplexed puppy lugged
off by a servant, turning, jerking, twisting, resisting, looking
piteously back as his unwilling feet slid over the polished floor.

So Siward walked on alone through the long eastern wing to his room
overlooking the sea. He sat down on the edge of his bed, glancing at the
clothing laid out for him. He felt tired and disinclined for the
exertion of undressing. The shades were up; night quicksilvered the
window-panes so that they were like a dark mirror reflecting his face.
He inspected his darkened features curiously; the blurred and sombre-
tinted visage returned the stare.

"Not a man at all--the shadow of a man," he said aloud--"with no will, no
courage--always putting off the battle, always avoiding conclusions,
always skulking. What chance is there for a man like that?"

As one who raises a glass to drink wine and unexpectedly finds water, he
shrugged his shoulders disgustedly and got up. A bath followed; he
dressed leisurely, and was pacing the room, fussing with his collar,
when Ferrall knocked and entered, finding a seat on the bed.

"Stephen," he said bluntly, "I haven't seen you since that break of
yours at the club."

"Rotten, wasn't it?" commented Siward, tying his tie.

"Perfectly. Of course it doesn't make any difference to Grace or to me,
but I fancy you've already heard from it."

"Oh, yes. All I care about is how my mother took it."

"Of course; she was cut up I suppose?"

"Yes, you know how she would look at a thing of that sort; not that any
of the nine and seventy jarring sets would care, but those few thousands
invading the edges, butting in--half or three-quarters inside--are the
people who can't afford to overlook the victim of a fashionable club's
displeasure--those, and a woman like my mother, and several other decent-
minded people who happen to count in town."

Ferrall, his legs swinging busily, thought again; then: "Who was the
girl, Stephen?"

"I don't think the papers mentioned her name," said Siward gravely.

"Oh--I beg your pardon; I thought she was some notorious
actress--everybody said so. . Who were those callow fools who put you up
to it? . Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they
are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to
face the governors I think--"

"No, I think not."

Ferrall, legs swinging busily, considered him.

"Too bad," he mused; "they need not have dropped you--"

"Oh, they had to. But as long as the Lenox takes no action I can live
that down."

Ferrall nodded: "I came in to say something--a message from
Grace--confound it! what was it? Oh--could you--before dinner--now--
just sit down and with that infernal facility of yours make a sketch
of a man chasing a gun-shy dog?"

"Why yes--if Mrs. Ferrall wishes--"

He walked over to the desk in his shirt-sleeves, sat down, drew a blank
sheet of paper toward him, and, dipping his pen, drew carelessly a gun-
shy setter dog rushing frantically across the stubble, and after him,
bare-headed, gun in hand, the maddest of men.

"Put a Vandyke beard on him," grinned Ferrall over his shoulder. "There!
O Lord! but you have hit it! Put a ticked saddle on the cur--there!"

"Who is this supposed to be?" began Siward, looking up. But "Wait!"
chuckled his host, seizing the still wet sketch, and made for the door.

Siward strolled into the bath-room, washed a spot or two of ink from his
fingers, returned and buttoned his waistcoat, then, completing an
unhurried toilet, went out and down the stairway to the big living-room.
There were two or three people there--Mrs. Leroy Mortimer, very fetching
with her Japanese-like colouring, black hair and eyes that slanted just
enough; Rena Bonnesdel, smooth, violet-eyed, blonde, and rather stunning
in a peculiarly innocent way; Miss Caithness, very pale and slimly
attractive; and the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, delightfully shy and
interested, and having a splendid time with any woman who could afford
the intellectual leisure.

Siward spoke pleasantly to them all. Other people drifted down--Marion
Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen
Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay
lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did
not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost
boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of an
adolescent.

She gave Siward one pretty sun-browned hand and laid the other above
his, holding it a moment in her light clasp.

"Stephen! Stephen!" she said under her breath, "it's because I've a few
things to scold you about that I've asked you to Shotover."

"I suppose I know," he said.

"I should hope you do. I've a letter to-night from your mother."

"From my mother?"

"I want you to go over it--with me--if we can find a minute after dinner."
She released his hand, turning partly around: "Kemp, dinner's been
announced, so cut that dog story in two! Will you give me your arm Major
Belwether? Howard!"--to her cousin, Mr. Quarrier, who turned from Miss
Landis to listen--"will you please try to recollect whom you are to take
in--and do it?" And, as she passed Siward, in a low voice, mischievous
and slangy: "Sylvia Landis for yours--as she says she didn't have enough
of you on the cliffs."

The others appeared to know how to pair according to some previous
notice. Siward turned to Sylvia Landis with the pleasure of his good
fortune so plainly visible in his face, that her own brightened in
response.

"You see," she said gaily, "you cannot escape me. There is no use in
looking wildly at Agatha Caithness"--he wasn't--"or pretending you're
pleased," slipping her rounded, bare arm through the arm he offered.
"You can't guess what I've done to-night--nobody can guess except Grace
Ferrall and one other person. And if you try to look happy beside me, I
may tell you--somewhere between sherry and cognac--Oh, yes; I've done two
things: I have your dog for you!"

"Not Sagamore?" he said incredulously as he was seating her.

"Certainly Sagamore. I said to Mr. Quarrier, 'I want Sagamore,' and when
he tried to give him to me, I made him take my cheque. Now you may draw
another for me at your leisure, Mr. Siward. Tell me, are you
pleased?"--for she was looking for the troubled hesitation in his face
and she saw it dawning.

"Mr. Quarrier doesn't like me, you know--"

"But I do," she said coolly. "I told him how much pleasure it would give
me. That is sufficient--is it not?--for everybody concerned."

"He knew that you meant to--"

"No, that concerns only you and me. Are you trying to spoil my pleasure
in what I have done?"

"I can't take the dog, Miss Landis--"

"Oh," she said, vexed; "I had no idea you were vindictive--"

There was a silence; he bent forward a trifle, gravely scrutinising a
"hand-painted" name card, though it might not have astonished him to
learn that somebody's foot had held the brush. Somewhere in the vicinity
Grace Ferrall had discovered a woman who supported dozens of relatives
by painting that sort of thing for the summer residents at Vermillion
Point down the coast. So being charitable she left an order, and being
thrifty, insisted on using the cards, spite of her husband's gibes.

People were now inspecting them with more or less curiosity; Siward
found his "hand-painting" so unattractive that he had just tipped it
over to avoid seeing it, when a burst of laughter from Lord Alderdene
made everybody turn. Mrs. Vendenning was laughing; so was Rena Bonnesdel
looking over Quarrier's shoulder at a card he was holding--not one of the
"hand"-decorated, but a sheet of note-paper containing a drawing of a
man rushing after a gun-shy dog.

The extraordinary cackling laughter of his lordship obliterated other
sounds for a while; Rena Bonnesdel possessed herself of the drawing and
held it up amid a shout of laughter. And, to his excessive annoyance,
Siward saw that, unconsciously, he had caricatured Quarrier--Ferrall's
malicious request for a Vandyke beard making the caricature dreadfully
apparent.

Quarrier had at first flushed up; then he forced a smile; but his
symmetrical features were never cordial when he smiled.

"Who on earth did that?" whispered Sylvia Landis apprehensively. "Mr.
Quarrier dislikes that sort of thing--but of course he'll take it well."

"Did he ever chase his own dog?" asked Siward, biting his lip.

"Yes--so Blinky says--in the Carolinas last season. It's Blinky!--that's
his notion of humour. Did you ever hear such a laugh? No wonder Mr.
Quarrier is annoyed."

The gay uproar had partly subsided, renewed here and there as the sketch
was passed along, and finally, making the circle, returned like a bad
penny to Quarrier. He smiled again, symmetrically, as he received it,
nodding his compliments to Alderdene.

"Oh, no," cackled his lordship; "I didn't draw it, old chap!"

"Nor I! I only wish I could," added Captain Voucher.

"Nor I--nor I--who did it?" ran the chorus along the table.

"I didn't do it!" said Sylvia gravely, looking across at Quarrier. And
suddenly Quarrier's large, handsome eyes met Siward's for the briefest
fraction of a second, then were averted. But into his face there crept
an expressionless pallor that did not escape Siward--no, nor Sylvia
Landis.

Presently under cover of a rapid fire of chatter she said: "Did you draw
that?"

"Yes; I had no idea it was meant for him. You may imagine how likely I'd
be to take any liberty with a man who already dislikes me."

"But it resembles him--in a very dreadful way."

"I know it. You must take my word for what I have told you."

She looked up at him: "I do." Then: "It's a pity; Mr. Quarrier does not
consider such things humourous. He--he is very sensitive. . Oh, I wish
that fool Englishman had been in Ballyhoo!"

"But he didn't do it!"

"No, but he put you up to it--or Grace Ferrall did. I wish Grace would
let Mr. Quarrier alone; she has always been perfectly possessed to
plague him; she seems unable to take him seriously and he simply hates
it. I don't think he'd tolerate her if she were not his cousin.

"I'm awfully sorry," was all Siward said; and for a while he gloomily
busied himself with whatever was brought to him.

"Don't look that way," came a low voice beside him.

"Do I show everything as plainly as that?" he asked, curiously.

"I seem to read you--sometimes."

"It's very nice of you," he said.

"Nice?"

"To look at me--now and then."

"Oh," she cried resentfully, "don't be grateful."

"I--really am not you know," he said laughing.

"That," she rejoined slowly, "is the truth. You say conventional things
in a manner--in an agreeably personal manner that interests women. But
you are not grateful to anybody for anything; you are indifferent, and
you can't help being nice to people, so--some day--some girl will think
you are grateful, and will have a miserable time of it."

"Miserable time?"

"Waiting for you to say what never will enter your head to say."

"You mean I--I--"

"Flirt? No, I mean that you don't flirt; that you are always dreamily
occupied with your own affairs, from which listlessly congenial
occupation, when drawn, you are so unexpectedly nice that a girl
immediately desires to see how nice you can be."

"What a charming indictment you draw!" he said, amused.

"It's a grave one I assure you. I've been talking about you to Grace
Ferrall; I asked to be placed beside you at dinner; I told her I hadn't
had half enough of you on the cliff. Now what do you think of yourself
for being too nice to a susceptible girl? I think it's immoral.

They both were laughing now; several people glanced at them, smiling in
sympathy. Alderdene took that opportunity to revert to the sketch,
furnishing a specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running
accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina,
until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him.
All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned
his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then dropped them.

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