The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William

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      “If such a friendship as ours is to become worth anything to you—to me, why should it trouble you that I know—and am thinking of things that concern you? Is it because the confidence is one-sided? Is it because you have given and I have listened and given nothing in return to balance the account? I do give—interest, deep interest, sympathy if you ask it; I give confidence in return—if you desire it!”

      “What can a girl like you need of sympathy?” he said smiling.

      “You don’t know! you don’t know! If heredity is a dark vista, and if you must stare through it all your life, sword in hand, always on your guard, do you think you are the only one?”

      “Are you—one?” he said incredulously.

      “Yes”—with an involuntary shudder—“not that way. It is easier for me; I think it is—I know it is. But there are things to combat—impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort—never even deep emotion.”

      “You are in love!”

      “Yes, thoroughly,” she added with conviction, “but not violently. I—” she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through the dusk; and: “Mr. Siward! are you laughing?” She rose and he stood up instantly.

      There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there under the stars.

      “Mr. Siward,” she breathed, “I don’t know what I am laughing at; do you? Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me—for I never knew a man like you before?”

      “You don’t know what you were laughing at?” he repeated. “It was something about love—”

      “No I don’t know why I laughed! I—I don’t wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say—anything you may infer—”

      “I don’t infer—”

      “You do! You made me say something—about my being ignorant of deep, of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly, thoroughly in love—”

      “Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?”

      “You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you—”

      “What did I do then?” he asked, far too humbly.

      “You—you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too ignorant of it to know what I’m talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what you have done to me to-night.”

      “I—I’m sorry—”

      “Are you?”

      “I ought to be anyway,” he said.

      It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.

      “How can you laugh!” she said. “How dare you! I don’t care for you nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly—too intimately. There is too much mockery in you—” She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre alteration of his face; and, “Have I hurt you?” she asked penitently.

      “No.”

      “Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it.” The attitude, the words, slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment’s silence, stirred him.

      “I’m rather ignorant myself of violent emotion,” he said. “I suspect normal people are. You know better than 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 СКАЧАТЬ