The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
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Captain?”
“Certainly,” said Captain Voucher briskly.
“I’ll go and shoo the major into the gun-room,” observed Ferrall—“unless—” looking questioningly at Siward.
“I’ve a date with your wife,” observed that young man, strolling toward the hall.
The Page boys, Rena Bonnesdel, and Eileen Shannon were seated at a card table together, very much engaged with one another, the sealed pack lying neglected on the green cloth, a vast pink box of bon-bons beside it, not neglected.
O’Hara and Quarrier with Marion Page and Mrs. Mortimer were immersed in the game, already stony faced and oblivious to outer sounds.
About the rooms were distributed girls en tête-à -tête, girls eating bon-bons and watching the cards—among them Sylvia Landis, hands loosely clasped behind her, standing at Quarrier’s elbow to observe and profit by an expert performance.
As Siward strolled in she raised her dainty head for an instant, smiled in silence, and resumed a study of her fiancé’s game.
A moment later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the mêlée, she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe the brilliancy of Mr. Quarrier’s game.
But Siward, outside on the veranda, was saying at that moment to his hostess: “I shall be very glad to read my mother’s letter at any time you choose.”
“It must be later, Stephen. I’m to cut in when Kemp sends for me. He has a lot of letters to attend to.... Tell me, what do you think of Sylvia Landis?”
“I like her, of course,” he replied pleasantly.
Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a great success, didn’t it?” And she laughed under her breath.
“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed—”
“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He’s such a muff, you know, that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”
“I don’t think you’d best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward. “He’s not my cousin you know.”
Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”—she said curiously—“who was that girl?”
“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her boyish sunburn and freckles.
“You won’t tell me I suppose?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Was she pretty, Stephen?”
“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn’t—”
“Nonsense! Do you think I’m going to let you off without some sort of confession? If I had time now—but I haven’t. Kemp has business letters: he’ll be furious; so I’ve got to take his cards or we won’t have any pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”
She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.
“You minx!” she whispered; “aren’t you ashamed?”
“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess’ meaning, for she laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.
“You don’t suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have—”
“Yes I do. You always do.”
“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won’t.”
Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the wrong man to play with—”
They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess’ arm linked in the arm of the younger girl.
“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her straight brows beginning to bend inward.
“I didn’t mean that—exactly. You know how much I care for his mother—and for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.
“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.
“Nothing. There was an affair—”
“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”
“Yes—for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t cross examine me that way! I care a great deal for that boy—”
“So do I. I’ve made him take my dog.”
There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.
“I mean it—really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”
“Dearest, you mean it generously—with your usual exaggeration. You have heard that he has been foolish, and because he’s so young, so likable, every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to—to be nice to him—”
“And if that were—”
“There is no harm, dear—” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It’s rather pathetic,” she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he’s foredoomed—like all the Siwards. It’s an hereditary failing with him,—no, it’s hereditary damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know—” She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and—doomed! His own father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered when stupefied—a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of Stephen’s means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous—it means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never admit it to his mother.”
The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.
“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident, happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary, there’s not a chance in the world for him.... It’s a pity. I know he meant to make himself the exception to the rule—and look! Already one carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”
Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”
“Yes, child,” she answered absently.
“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches me very closely?”
Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.
“You—you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”
“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity—the danger of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done—before I came into the world they found so amusing.”
“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your uncle thought it best for you to know.”
“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather. In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they usually found the way—rather