The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
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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.
The hostess arose; a rustle and flurry of silk and lace and the scraping of chairs, a lingering word or laugh, and the colour vanished from the room leaving a circle of men in black standing around the table.
Here and there a man, lighting a cigarette, bolted his coffee and cognac and strolled out to the gun-room. Ferrall, gesticulating vigorously, resumed his preprandial dog story to Captain Voucher; Belwether buttonholed Alderdene and bored him with an interminably facetious tale until that nobleman, threatened with maxillary dislocation, fairly wrenched himself loose and came over to Siward, squinting furiously.
“Old ass!” he muttered; “his chop whiskers look like the chops of a Southdown ram—and he’s got the wits of one. Look here, Stephen, I hear you fell into no end of a scrape in town—”
“Tu quoque, Blinky? Oh, read the newspapers and let it go at that!”
“Just as you like old chap!” returned his lordship unabashed. “All I meant was—anything Voucher and I can do—of course—”
“You’re very good. I’m not dead you know.”
“‘Not dead, you know’,” repeated Major Belwether coming up behind them with his sprightly step; “that reminds me of a good one—” He sat down and lighted a cigar, then, vainly attempting to control his countenance as though roguishly anticipating the treat awaiting them, he began another endless story.
Tradition had hallowed the popular notion that Major Belwether was a wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he was very wealthy.
Siward watched him with mixed emotions; the lambent-eyed, sheepy expression had given place to the buck rabbit; his smooth baby-pink skin and downy white side whiskers quivered in premature sympathy with his listener’s overwhelming hilarity.
The Page boys, very callow, very much delighted, and a little in awe of such a celebrated personage, laughed heartily. And altogether there was sufficient attention and sufficient laughter to make a very respectable noise. This, being the major’s cue for an exit, he rose, one sleek hand raised in sprightly protest as though to shield the invisible ladies, to whose bournes he was bound, from an uproar