The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
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mean—”
“Yes I do. Hadn’t you suspected it?”
And as Sylvia had suspected it she remained silent.
“If any woman in this world could keep him to the mark, she could,” continued Mrs. Ferrall. “He’s a perfect fool not to see how she cares for him.”
Sylvia said: “He is indeed.”
“It would be a sensible match, if she cared to risk it, and if he would only ask her. But he won’t.”
“Perhaps,” ventured Sylvia, “she’ll ask him. She strikes me as that sort. I do not mean it unkindly—only Marion is so tailor-made and cigaretteful—”
Mrs. Ferrall looked up at her.
“Did he propose to you?”
“Yes—I think so.”
“Then it’s the first time for him. He finds women only too willing to play with him as a rule, and he doesn’t have to be definite. I wonder what he meant by being so definite with you?”
“I suppose he meant marriage,” said Sylvia serenely; yet there was the slightest ring in her voice; and it amused Mrs. Ferrall to try her a little further.
“Oh, you think he really intended to commit himself?”
“Why not?” retorted Sylvia, turning red. “Do you think he found me over-willing, as you say he finds others?”
“You were probably a new sensation for him,” inferred Mrs. Ferrall musingly. “You mustn’t take him seriously, child—a man with his record. Besides, he has the same facility with a girl that he has with everything else he tries; his pen—you know how infernally clever he is; and he can make good verse, and write witty jingles, and he can carry home with him any opera and play it decently, too, with the proper harmonies. Anything he finds amusing he is clever with—dogs, horses, pen, brush, music, women”—that was too malicious, for Sylvia had flushed up painfully, and Grace Ferrall dropped her gloved hand on the hand of the girl beside her: “Child, child,” she said, “he is not that sort; no decent man ever is unless the girl is too.”
Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: “He found me anything but difficult—if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t. Please don’t be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an opening. There’s really only one thing that worries me about it all.”
“What is that?” asked Sylvia without interest.
“It’s that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being useless, might be unwise.”
“I am… tempted.”
“Not seriously!”
“I don’t know.” She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. “Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I’m glad I’ve said it. The things he knows about and doesn’t know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I’ve said it; I’m glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice at Lenox. The truth is, he’s a horrid disappointment—and I’m bored to death at my brilliant prospects.”
The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits, she said in a subdued voice:
“Of course it’s my meddling.”
“Of course it isn’t. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible—which made the expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate.”
She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the revolt the more ominous.
“You don’t think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?”
“It is not that,” said the girl almost sullenly.
“But—”
“I’m afraid of myself—call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let a man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard, what might I do—”
“You are not that sort!” said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. “Don’t be exotic, Sylvia.”
“How do you know—if I don’t know? Most girls are kissed; I—well I didn’t expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don’t know what I am or shall be. I’m unsafe; I know that much.”
“It’s moral and honest to realize it,” said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; “and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn’t meddled; I’m meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don’t give Howard his congé for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the impulse of the moment.”
“I know it.”
“You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately, intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can’t stand it—talk the thing over with me again,” she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for it had been her heart’s desire to wed Sylvia’s beauty and Quarrier’s fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier, as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!—oh, vexation!—the neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour about her ears.
“Things never happen in real life,” she observed plaintively; “only romances have plots where things work out. But we people in real life, we just go on and on in a badly constructed, plotless sort of way with no villains, no interesting situations, no climaxes, no ensemble. No, we grow old and irritable and meaner and meaner; we lose our good looks and digestions, and we die in hopeless discord with the unity required in a dollar and a half novel by a master of modern fiction.”
“But some among us amass fortunes,” suggested Sylvia, laughing.
“But we don’t live happy ever after. Nobody ever had enough money in real life.”
“Some fall in love,” observed Sylvia, musing.
“And they are not content, silly!”
“Why? Because nobody ever had enough love in real life,” mocked Sylvia.
“You have said it, child. That is the malady of the world, and nobody knows it until some pretty ninny like you babbles the truth. And that is why we care for those immortals in romance, those fortunate lovers who, in fable, are given and give enough of love; those magic shapes in verse and tale whose hearts are satisfied when the mad author of their being inks his last period and goes to dinner.”
Sylvia laughed awhile, then, chin on wrist, sat musing there, muffled in her furs.
“As for love, I think I should be moderate in the asking, in the giving. A little—to flavour routine—would be sufficient for me I fancy.”
“You know so much about it,” observed Mrs. Ferrall ironically.
“I am permitted to speculate, am I not?”
“Certainly. Only speculate in sound investments, dear.”
“How can you make a sound investment in love? Isn’t it always sheerest speculation?”
“Yes, that is why simple matrimony is usually a safer speculation than love.”
“Yes, but—love isn’t matrimony.”
“Match that with its complementary platitude and you have the essence of modern fiction,” observed Mrs. Ferrall. “Love is a subject talked to death, which explains the present shortage in the market I suppose. You’re not in love and you don’t miss it. Why cultivate an artificial taste for it? If it ever comes naturally, you’ll be astonished