The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
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no flight yet from the north!—a few grouse, fewer snipe, a stray duck or two. Others will drive motor cars over bad roads; others will ride, sail, golf—anything to kill the eternal enemy.”
“And you?”
“Je n’en sais rien, monsieur.”
“Mais je voudrais savoir.”
“Pourquoi?”
“To lay a true course by the stars”; he looked at her blue eyes and she laughed easily under the laughing flattery.
“You must seek another compass—to-morrow,” she said. Then it occurred to her that nobody could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and she partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under the white lids.
She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such brief acquaintance.
“You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don’t you?” she inquired.
“Who are they?”
She began: “The Leroy Mortimers?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?”
“Yes.”
“Rena Bonnesdel, the Tassel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning—all sorts, all sets.” And, with an effort: “If I’m to drive, I should like—to—to know what time it is?”
He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to forget.
His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment as though he had taken something for granted.
Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn’t exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human machine.
And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting fewer creaks.
“You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?” she began thoughtfully.
“Not well.”
“I—hope you will like him, Mr. Siward.”
“I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to.”
She looked up, suddenly remembering: “Oh—since that scrape? What has Mr. Quarrier to do—” She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence followed; she was trying to remember the details—something she had paid small attention to at the time—something so foreign to her, so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.
She looked at Siward; it was impossible that anything very bad could come from such a man. And, pursuing her reasoning aloud: “It couldn’t have been very awful,” she argued; “something foolish about an actress, was it not? And that could not concern Mr. Quarrier.”
“I thought you did know; I thought you—remembered—while you were driving me over from the station—that I was dropped from my club.”
She flushed up: “Oh!—but—what had Mr. Quarrier to do with that?”
“He is a governor of that club.”
“You mean that Mr. Quarrier had you—dropped?”
“What else could he do? A man who is idiot enough to risk making his own club notorious, must take the consequences. And they say I took that risk. Therefore Mr. Quarrier, Major Belwether—all the governors did their duty. I—I naturally conclude that no governor of the Patroons Club feels very kindly toward me.”
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