The Fighting Chance

Plank gaped until the tension became unbearable.

“But—what?” he blurted out.

“Plank,” said Mortimer solemnly, and his voice vibrated with feeling, “Let me do a little thinking before I ask you a—a vital question.”

But Plank had become agitated again, and he said something so bluntly that Mortimer wheeled on him, glowering:

“Look here, Plank: you don’t suppose I’m capable of repeating a confidence, do you?—if you choose to make me understand it’s a confidence.”

“It isn’t a confidence; it isn’t anything; I mean it is confidential, of course. All there’s in it is what I said—or rather what you took me up on so fast,” ended Plank, abashed.

“About your being in love with Syl—”

“Confound it!” roared Plank, crimson to his hair; and he set his heavy spurs to his mount and plunged forward in a storm of dust. Mortimer followed, silent, profoundly immersed in his own thoughts and deductions; and as he pounded along, turning over in his mind all the varied information he had so unexpectedly obtained in these last few days, a dull excitement stirred him, and he urged his huge horse forward in a thrill of rising exhilaration such as seizes on men who hunt, no matter what they hunt—the savage, swimming sense of intoxication which marks the man who chases the quarry not for its own value, but because it is his nature to chase and ride down and enjoy spoils.

And all that afternoon, having taken to his room on pretence of neuralgia, he lay sprawled on his bed, thinking, thinking. Not that he meant harm to anybody, he told himself very frequently. He had, of course, information which certain degraded men might use in a contemptible way, but he, Mortimer, did not resemble such men in any particular. All he desired was to do Plank a good turn. There was nothing disreputable in doing a wealthy man a favour.... And God knew a wealthy man’s gratitude was necessary to him at that very moment—gratitude substantially acknowledged.... He liked Plank—wished him well; that was all right, too; but a man is an ass who doesn’t wish himself well also.... Two birds with one stone.... Three! for he hated Quarrier. Four!… for he had no love for his wife.... Besides, it would teach Leila a wholesome lesson—teach her that he still counted; serve her right for her disgusting selfishness about Plank.

No, there was to be nothing disreputable in his proceedings; that he would be very careful about.... Probably Major Belwether might express his gratitude substantially if he, Mortimer, went to him frankly and volunteered not to mention to Quarrier the scene he had witnessed between Sylvia Landis and Stephen Siward at three o’clock in the morning in the corridor; and if, in playful corroboration, he displayed the cap and rain-coat and the big fan, all crushed, which objects of interest he had discovered later in the bay-window.... Yes, probably Major Belwether would be very grateful, because he wanted Quarrier in the family; he needed Quarrier in his business.... But, faugh! that was close enough to blackmail to rub off!… No!… No! He wouldn’t go to Belwether and promise any such thing!… On the contrary, he felt it his duty to inform Quarrier! Quarrier had a right to know what sort of a girl he was threatened with for life!… A man ought not to let another man go blindly into such a marriage.... Men owed each other something, even if they were not particularly close friends.... And he had always had a respect for Quarrier, even a sort of liking for him—yes, a distinct liking!… And, anyhow, women were devils! and it behooved men to get together and stand for one another!

Quarrier would give her her walking papers damned quick!… And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn’t snap up Plank in such a fix?… And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier?… But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money.... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have.... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had cut his wisdom teeth, by God!

As for Siward, he amounted to nothing; probably was one of that contemptible sort of men who butted in and kissed a pretty girl when he had the chance. He, Mortimer, had only disgust for such amateurs of the social by-ways; for he himself kept to the highways, like any self-respecting professional, even when a tour of the highways sometimes carried him below stairs. There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-rol about him. Women learned what to expect from him in short order. En garde, Madame!—ou Mademoiselle—tant pis!

He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion. And most of all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife’s astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the triumph of Quarrier’s elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.

“Haw! haw!” roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his environment with a subdued grin.

Everything seems easy when it seems funny. After all, the matter was simple—absurdly simple. A word to Quarrier, and crack! the match was off! Girl mad as a hornet, but staggered, has no explanation to offer; man frozen stiff with rage, mute as an iceberg. Then, zip! Enter Beverly Plank—the girl’s rescuer at a pinch—her preserver, the saviour of her “face,” the big, highly coloured, leaden-eyed deus ex machina. Would she take fifty cents on the dollar? Would she? to buy herself a new “face”? And put it all over Quarrier? And live happy ever after? Would she? Oh, not at all!

And Mortimer rolled over in another paroxysm; which wasn’t good for him, and frightened him enough to lie still awhile and think how best he might cut down on his wine and spirits.

The main thing, after all, was to promise Plank his opportunity, but not tell him how he was to obtain it; for Mortimer had an uneasy idea that there was something of the Puritan deep planted under the stolid young man’s hide, and that he might make some absurd and irrelevant objection to the perfectly proper methods employed by his newly self-constituted guide and mentor. No; that was no concern of Plank’s. All he had to do was to be ready. As for Quarrier, anybody could forecast his action when once convinced of Sylvia’s behaviour.

He lay there pondering several methods of imparting the sad but necessary information to Quarrier. One thing was certain: there was not now time enough before the house-party dissolved to mould Plank into acquiescent obedience. That must be finished in town—unless Plank invited him to stay at the Fells after his time was up at Shotover. By Heaven! That was the idea! And there’d be a chance for him at cards!… Only, of course, Plank would ask Leila too.... But what did he care! He was no longer afraid of her; he’d soon be independent of her and her pittance. Let her go to the courts for her divorce! Let her—

He sat up rather suddenly, perplexed with a new idea which, curiously enough, had not appealed to him before. The astonishing hint so coolly dropped by his wife concerning her fearlessness of divorce proceedings had only awakened him to the consciousness of his own vulnerability and carelessness of conduct.

Now it occurred to him, for the first time, that if it were not a mere bluff on Leila’s part, this sudden coquetting with the question of divorce might indicate an ulterior object. Was Leila considering his elimination in view of this ulterior object? Was there an ulterior gentleman somewhere prepared to replace him? If so, where? And who?

His wife’s possible indiscretions had never interested him; he simply didn’t care—had no curiosity, as long as appearances were maintained. And she had preserved appearances with a skill which required all the indifferent and easy charity of their set to pretend completely deceived everybody. Yes, he gave her credit for that; she had been clever. Nobody outside of the social register knew the true state of affairs in the house of Leroy Mortimer—which, after all, was all anybody cared about.

And so, immersed in the details of his dirty little drama, he pondered over the possibility of an ulterior gentleman as he moved heavily to and fro, dressing himself—his neuralgia being much better—and presently descended the stairs to find everybody absent, engaged, as a servant explained, in a game of water basket-ball in the swimming pool. So he strolled off toward the north wing of the house, which had been built for the squash-courts and swimming pool.

There was a good deal of an uproar in the big gymnasium as Mortimer walked in, threading his way through the palms and orange-trees; much splashing in the pool, cries and stifled laughter, and the quick rattle of applause from the gallery of the squash-courts.

The Page boys and Rena and Eileen on one side were playing the last match game against Sylvia, Marion Page, Siward, and Ferrall on the other; the big, slippery, glistening ball was flying about through storms of spray. Marion caught it, but her brother Gordon got it away; then Ferrall secured it and dived toward the red goal; but Rena Bonnesdel caught him under water; the ball bobbed up, and Sylvia flung both arms around it with a little warning shout and hurled it back at Siward, who shot forward like an arrow, his opponents gathering about him in full cry, amid laughter and excited applause from the gallery, where Grace Ferrall and Captain Voucher were wildly offering odds on the blue, and Alderdene and Major Belwether were thriftily booking them.

Mortimer climbed the slippery, marble stairway as fast as his lack of breath permitted, anxious for his share of the harvest if the odds were right. He ignored his wife’s smilingly ironical offer, seeing no sense in bothering about money already inside the family; but he managed to make several apparently desirable wagers with Katharyn Tassel and one with Beverly Plank, who was also obstinately backing the blues, the losing side. Sylvia played forward for the blues.

Agatha Caithness, sleeves rolled up, tall and slim and strangely pale in her white flannels, came from the squash-court with Quarrier to watch the finish; and Mortimer observed her sidewise, blinking, irresolute, for he had never understood her and was always a trifle afraid of her. A pair of icicles, she and Quarrier, with whom he had never been on betting terms; so he made no suggestions in that direction, and presently became absorbed in the splashing battle below. Indeed, such a dashing of foam and showering of spray was taking place that the fronds of the big palms hung dripping amid drenched blossoms overweighted and prone on the wet marble edges of the pool.

Suddenly, through the confused blur of foam and spray, the big, glistening ball shot aloft and remained.

“Blue! Blue!” exclaimed Grace Ferrall, clapping her hands; and a little whirlwind of cries and hand clapping echoed from the gallery as the breathless swimmers came climbing out of the pool, with scarcely wind enough left for a word or strength for a gesture toward the laughing crowd above.

Mortimer, disgusted, turned away, already casting about him for somebody to play cards with—it being his temperament and his temper to throw good money after bad. But Quarrier and Miss Caithness had already returned to the squash-courts, the majority of the swimmers to their several dressing-rooms, and Grace Ferrall’s party, equipped for motoring, to the lawn, where they lost little time in disappearing into the golden haze which a sudden shift of wind had spun out of the cloudless afternoon’s sunshine.

However, he got Marion, and also, as usual, the two men who had made a practice of taking away his money—Major Belwether and Lord Alderdene. He hadn’t particularly wanted them; he wanted somebody he could play with, like Siward, for example, or even the two ten-dollar Pages; not that their combined twenty would do him much good, but it would at least permit him the pleasures of the card-table without personal loss.

But the Pages had retired to dress, and Voucher was for motoring, and he had no use for his wife, and he was afraid of Plank’s game, and Siward, seated on the edge of the pool and sharing a pint of ginger-ale with Sylvia Landis, shook his head at the suggestion and resumed his division of the ginger-ale.

Plank and Leila Mortimer came down to congratulate them. Sylvia, always instinctively and particularly nice to people of Plank’s sort whom she occasionally encountered, was so faultlessly amiable, that Plank, who had never before permitted himself the privilege of monopolising her, found himself doing it so easily that it kept him in a state of persistent mental intoxication.

That slow, sweet, upward training inflection to a statement which instantly became a confided question was an unconscious trick which had been responsible, in Sylvia’s brief life, for more mistakes than anything else. Like others before him, Beverly Plank made the mistake that the sweetness of voice and the friendliness of eyes were particularly personal to him, in tribute to qualities he had foolishly enough hitherto not suspected in himself. Now he suspected them, and whatever of real qualities desirable had been latent in him also appeared at once, confirming his modest suspicions. Certainly he was a wit! Was not this perfectly charming girl’s responsive and delicious laughter proof enough? Certainly he was epigrammatic! Certainly he could be easy, polished, amusing, sympathetic, and vastly interesting all the while. Could he not divine it in her undivided attention, the quick, amused flicker of recognition animating her beautiful face when he had turned a particularly successful phrase or taken a verbal hurdle without a cropper? And above all, her kindness to him impressed him; her natural and friendly pleasure in being agreeable. Here he was already on an informal footing with one of the persons of whom he had been most shy and uncertain. If people were going to be as considerate of him as she had proved, why—why—

His dull, Dutch-blue eyes returned to her, fascinated. The conquest of what he desired and meant to have became merged in a vague plan which included such a marriage as he had dreamed of.

Somebody had once told him that a man who could afford to dress for dinner could go anywhere; meaning that, being a man, nature had fitted his feet with the paraphernalia for climbing as high as he cared to climb.

There was just enough truth in the statement to determine him to use his climbing irons; and he had done so, carrying his fortune with him, which had proved neither an impediment nor an aid so far. But now he had concluded that neither his god-sent climbing irons, his amiability, his obstinacy, his mild, tireless persistency, nor his money counted. It had come to a crisis where personal worth and sterling character must carry him through sheer merit to the inner temple—that inner temple of raw gold whose altars are served by a sexless skeleton in cap and bells!

Siward, inclined to be amused by the duration of the trance into which Plank had fallen, watched the progress of that bulky young man’s infatuation as he sat there on the pool’s marble edge, exchanging trivial views on trivial subjects with Mrs. Leroy Mortimer.

But her conversation, even when inconsequential, was never wearisome except when she made it so for her husband’s benefit. Features, person, personality, and temperament were warmly exotic; her dark eyes with their slight Japanese slant, the clear olive skin with its rose bloom, the temptation of mouth and slender neck, were always provocative of the audacity in men which she could so well meet with amusement or surprise, or at times with a fascinating audacity of her own wholly charming because of its setting.

Once, in their history, during her early married life, Siward had been very sentimental about her; but neither he nor she had approached the danger line closer than to make daring eyes at one another across the frontiers of good taste. And their youthful enchantment had faded so naturally, so pleasantly, that always there had remained to them both an agreeable after-taste—a sort of gay understanding which almost invariably led to mutual banter when they encountered. But now something appeared to be lacking in their rather listless badinage—something of the usual flavour which once had salted even a laughing silence with significance. Siward, too, had ceased to be amused at the spectacle of Plank’s calf-like infatuation; and Leila Mortimer’s bored smile had lasted so long that her olive-pink cheeks were stiff, and she relaxed her fixed features with a little shrug that was also something of a shiver. Then, looking prudently around, she encountered Siward’s eyes; and during a moment’s hesitation they considered one another with an increasing curiosity that slowly became tentative intelligence. And her eyes said very plainly and wickedly to Siward’s: “Oho, my friend! So it bores you to see Mr. Plank monopolising an engaged girl who belongs to Howard Quarrier!”

And his eyes, wincing, denying, pretending ignorance too late, suddenly narrowed in vexed retaliation: “Speak for yourself, my lady! You’re no more pleased than I am!”

The next moment they both regretted the pale flash of telepathy. There had been something wounded in his eyes; and she had not meant that. No; a new charity for the hapless had softened her wonderfully within a fortnight’s time, and a self-pity, not entirely ignoble, had subdued the brilliancy of her dark eyes, and made her tongue more gentle in dealing with all failings. Besides, she was not yet perfectly certain what ailed her, never having really cared for any one man before. No, she was not at all certain.... But in the meanwhile she was very sorry for herself, and for all those who drained the bitter cup that might yet pass from her shrinking lips. Who knows! “Stephen,” she said under her breath, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.... Don’t scowl. Listen. I have already entirely forgotten the nature of my offense. Pax, if you please.”

He refused to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless offspring was coquetting.

Then, without appearing to, she took Plank away from temptation; so skilfully that nobody except Siward understood that the young man had been incontinently removed. He, Plank, never doubting that he was a perfectly free agent, decided that the time had arrived for triumphant retirement. It had; but Leila Mortimer, not he, had rendered the decision, and so cleverly that it appeared even to Plank himself that he had dragged her off with him rather masterfully. Clearly he was becoming a devil of a fellow!

Sylvia turned to Siward, glanced up at him, hesitated, and began to laugh consciously:

“What do you think of my latest sentimental acquisition?”

“He’d be an ornament to a stock farm,” replied Siward, out of humour.

“How brutal you can be!” she mused, smiling.

“Nonsense! He’s a plain bounder, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.... Is he? He struck me a trifle appealingly—even pathetically; they usually do, that sort.... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose!… There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they’re still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. …And if I were a donkey I’d sing and cavort with my own kind, and let horses flourish their own heels inside the accomplished scheme of things.... Now I have been brutal. But—I’m easily coloured by my environment.”

She sat, smiling maliciously down at the water, smoothing out the soaked skirt of her swimming suit, and swinging her legs reflectively.

“Are you reconciled?” she asked presently.

“To what?”

“To leaving Shotover. To-day is our last day, you know. To-morrow we all go; and next day these familiar walls will ring with other voices, my poor friend:

“‘Yon rising moon that looks for us again—How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter, rising, look for us Through this same mansion—and for one in vain!’”

“That is I—the one, you know. You may be here again; but I—I shall not be I if I ever come to Shotover again.”

Her stockinged heels beat the devil’s tattoo against the marble sides of the pool. She reached up above her head, drawing down a flowering branch of Japanese orange, and caressed her delicate nose with the white blossoms, dreamily, then, mischievously: “I’m accustoming myself to this most significant perfume,” she said, looking at him askance. And she deliberately hummed the wedding march, watching the colour rise in his sullen face.

“If you had the courage of a sparrow you’d make life worth something for us both,” he said.

“I know it; I haven’t; but I seem to possess the remainder of his lordship’s traits—inconsequence, self-centred selfishness, the instinct for Fifth Avenue nest-building—all the feathered vices, all the unlovely personality and futility and uselessness of my prototype.... Only, as you observe, I lack the quality of courage.”

“I don’t know how much courage it requires to do what you’re going to do,” he said sulkily.

“Don’t you? Sometimes, when you wear a scowl like that, I think that it may require no more courage than I am capable of.... And sometimes—I don’t know.”

She crossed her knees, one slender ankle imprisoned in her hand, leaning forward thoughtfully above the water.

“Our last day,” she mused; “for we shall never be just you and I again—never again, my friend, after we leave this rocky coast of Eden. …I shall have hints of you in the sea-wind and the sound of the sea; in the perfume of autumn woods, in the whisper of stirring leaves when the white birches put on their gold crowns next year.” She smiled, turning to him, a little gravely: “When the Lesser Children return with April, I shall not forget you, Mr. Siward, nor forget your mercy of a day on them; nor your comradeship, nor your sweetness to me.... Nor your charity for me, nor all that you overlook so far in me,—under the glamour of a spell that seems to hold you still, and that still holds me.... I can answer for my constancy so far, until one more spring and summer have come and gone—until one more autumn comes, and while it lasts—as long as any semblance of the setting remains which had once framed you; I can answer for my constancy as long as that.... Afterwards, the snow!—symbol of our separation. I am to be married a year from November first.”

He looked up at her in dark surprise, for he had heard that their wedding date had been set for the coming winter.

“A year’s engagement?” he repeated, unconvinced.

“It was my wish. I think that is sufficient for everybody concerned.” Then, averting her face, which had suddenly lost a little of its colour: “A year is little enough,” she said impatiently. “I—what has happened to us requires an interval—a decent interval for its burial.... Death is respectable in any form. What dies between you and me can have no resurrection under the snow.... So I bring to the burial my tribute—a year of life, a year of constancy, my friend; symbol of an eternity I could have given you had I been worth it.” She looked up, flushed, the forced smile stamped on lips still trembling. “Sentiment in such a woman as I! ‘A spectacle for Gods and men,’ you are saying—are you not? And perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use.” She was laughing easily. “No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it once served its purpose, too.... Stephen Siward, what do you think of me now?”