The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
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I do whether love is usually a sedative.”
“Am I normal—after what I have confessed?” she asked. “Can’t love be well-bred?”
“Perfectly I should say—only perhaps you are not an expert—”
“In what?”
“In self-analysis, for example.”
There was a vague meaning in the gaze they exchanged.
“As for our friendship, we’ll do the best we can for it, no matter what occurs,” he added, thinking of Quarrier. And, thinking of him, glanced up to see him within ear-shot and moving straight toward them from the veranda above.
There was a short silence; a tentative civil word from Siward; then Miss Landis took command of something that had a grotesque resemblance to a situation. A few minutes later they returned slowly to the house, the girl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced.
“If your shoes are as wet as my skirts and slippers you had better change, Mr. Siward,” she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase.
So he took his congé, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and mounted to his room.
In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business correspondence and was returning to the card-room.
“Here’s a letter that Grace wants you to see,” he said. “Read it before you turn in, Stephen.”
“All right; but I’ll be down later,” replied Siward passing on, the letter in his hand. Entering his room he kicked off his wet pumps and found dry ones. Then moved about, whistling a gay air from some recent vaudeville, busy with rough towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod and dry, he was ready to descend once more.
The encounter, the suddenly informal acquaintance with this young girl had stirred him agreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration. Even her engagement to Quarrier added a tinge of malice to his interest. Besides he was young enough to feel the flattery of her concern for him—of her rebuke, of her imprudence, her generous emotional and childish philosophy.
Perhaps, as like recognises like, he recognised in her the instincts of the born drifter, momentarily at anchor—the temporary inertia of the opportunist, the latent capacity of an unformed character for all things and anything. Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and unworldly friendliness for himself.
Not that he objected to her marrying Quarrier; he rather admired her for being able to do it, considering the general scramble for Quarrier. But let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the cheap notoriety which he had brought upon himself. Let him sponge his slate clean and begin again a better record, flattered by the solicitude she had so prettily displayed.
Whistling under his breath the same gay, empty melody, he opened the top drawer of his dresser, dropped in his mother’s letter, and locking the drawer, pocketed the key. He would have time enough to read the letter when he went to bed; he did not just now feel exactly like skimming through the fond, foolish sermon which he knew had been preached at him through his mother’s favourite missionary, Grace Ferrall. What was the use of dragging in the sad old questions again—of repeating his assurances of good behaviour, of reiterating his promises of moderation and watchfulness, of explaining his own self-confidence? Better that the letter await his bed time—his prayers would be the sincerer the fresher the impression; for he was old-fashioned enough to say the prayers that an immature philosophy proved superfluous. For, he thought, if prayer is any use, it takes only a few minutes to be on the safe side.
So he went down-stairs leisurely, prepared to acquiesce in any suggestion from anybody, but rather hoping to saunter across Sylvia Landis’ path before being committed.
She was standing beside the fire with Quarrier, one foot on the fender, apparently too preoccupied to notice him; so he strolled into the gun-room, which was blue with tobacco smoke and aromatic with the volatile odours from decanters.
There were a few women there, and the majority of the men. Lord Alderdene, Major Belwether, and Mortimer were at a table by themselves; stacks of ivory chips and five cards spread in the centre of the green explained the nature of their game; and Mortimer, raising his heavy inflamed eyes and seeing Siward unoccupied, said wheezily: “Cut out that ‘widow,’ and give Siward his stack! Anything above two pairs for a jack triples the ante. Come on, Siward, there’s a decent chap!”
So he seated himself for a sacrifice to the blind goddess balanced upon her winged wheel; and the cards ran high—so high that stacks dwindled or toppled within the half-hour, and Mortimer grew redder and redder, and Major Belwether blander and blander, and Alderdene’s face wore a continual nervous snicker, showing every white hound’s tooth, and the ice in the tall glasses clinked ceaselessly.
It was late when Quarrier “sat in,” with an expressionless acknowledgment of Siward’s presence, and an emotionless raid upon his neighbour’s resources with the first hand dealt, in which he participated without drawing a card.
And always Siward, eyes on his cards, seemed to see Quarrier before him, his overmanicured fingers caressing his silky beard, the symmetrical pompadour dark and thick as the winter fur on a rat, tufting his smooth blank forehead.
It was very late when Siward first began to be aware of his increasing deafness, the difficulty, too, that he had in making people hear, the annoying contempt in Quarrier’s woman-like eyes. He felt that he was making a fool of himself, very noiselessly somehow—but with more racket than he expected when he miscalculated the distance between his hand and a decanter.
It was time for him to go—unless he chose to ask Quarrier for an explanation of that sneer which he found distasteful. But there was too much noise, too much laughter.
Besides he had a matter to attend to—the careful perusal of his mother’s letter to Mrs. Ferrall.
Very white, he rose. After an indeterminate interval he found himself entering his room.
The letter was in the dresser; several things seemed to fall and break, but he got the letter, sank down on the bed’s edge and strove to read,—set his teeth grimly, forcing his blurred eyes to a focus. But he could make nothing of it—nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother’s letter crushed in his nerveless hand.
CHAPTER IV THE SEASON OPENS
Breakfast at Shotover, except for the luxurious sluggards to whom trays were sent, was served in the English fashion—any other method or compromise being impossible.
Ferrall, reasonable in most things, detested customs exotic, and usually had an Englishman or two about the house to tell them so, being unable to jeer in any language except his own. Which is partly why Alderdene and Voucher were there. And this British sideboard breakfast was a concession wrung from him through force of sheer necessity, although the custom had already become practically universal in American country houses where guests were entertained.
But at the British breakfast he drew the line. No army of servants, always in evidence, would he tolerate, either; no highly ornamented human bric-Ã -brac decorating halls and corners; no exotic pheasants hustled into covert and out again; no fusillade at the wretched, frightened, bewildered aliens dumped by the thousand into unfamiliar cover and driven toward the guns by improvised beaters.
“We walk up our game or we follow a brace of good dogs in this white man’s country,” he said with unnecessary emphasis whenever his bad taste and his wife’s absence gave him an opportunity to express to the casual foreigner his personal opinions on field sport. “You’ll load your own guns and you’ll use your own legs if you shoot with me; and your dogs will do their own retrieving, too. And if anybody desires a Yankee’s