The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William

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СКАЧАТЬ it may have been, she had summoned him. And now he was on his way to get his answer, the best whip, the most eagerly discussed, and one of the wealthiest unmarried men in America.

      Lingering irresolutely, considering with idle eyes the shadows lengthening across the sun-shot moorland, the sound of Siward’s even voice aroused her from a meditation bordering on lassitude.

      She answered vaguely. He spoke again; all the agreeable, gentle, humourous charm dominant once more—releasing her from the growing tension of her own thoughts, absolving her from the duty of immediate decision.

      “I feel curiously lazy,” she said; “perhaps from our long drive.” She seated herself on the turf. “Talk to me, Mr. Siward—in that lazy way of yours.”

      What he had to say proved inconsequent enough, an irrelevant suggestion concerning the training of field-dogs for close covert work and the reasons for not breaking such dogs on quail. Then the question of cross-breeding came up, and he gave his opinion on the qualities of “droppers.” To which she replied, sleepily; and the conversation veered again toward the mystery of heredity, and the hopelessness of escape from its laws as illustrated now by the Sagamore pup, galloping nose in the wind, having scented afar the traces of the forbidden rabbit.

      “His ancestors turned ‘round and ‘round to flatten the long reeds and grasses in their lairs before lying down,” observed Siward. “He does it, too, where there is nothing to flatten out. Did you ever notice how many times a dog turns around before lying down? And there goes the carefully schooled Sagamore, chasing rabbits! Why? Because his wild ancestors chased rabbits.... Heredity? It’s a steady, unseen, pulling, dragging force. Like lightning, too, it shatters, sometimes, where there is resistance.”

      “Do you mean, Mr. Siward, that heredity is an excuse for moral weakness?”

      “I don’t know. Those inheriting nothing of evil say it is no excuse.”

      “It is no excuse.”

      “You speak with authority,” he said.

      “With more than you are aware of,” she murmured, not meaning to say it.

      She stood up impulsively, her fresh face turned to the distant house, her rounded young figure poised in relief against the sky.

      “Inherited or not, idleness, procrastination, are my besetting sins. Can’t you suggest the remedy, Mr. Siward?”

      “But they are only the thieves of Time; and we kill the poor old gentleman.”

      “Leagued assassins,” she repeated pensively.

      Her gown had caught on the cliff briers; he knelt to release it, she looking down, noting an ugly tear in the fabric.

      “Payment for my iniquities—the first instalment,” she said, still looking down over his shoulder and watching his efforts to release her. “Thank you, Mr. Siward. I think we ought to start, don’t you?”

      He straightened up, smiling, awaiting her further pleasure. Her pleasure being capricious, she seated herself again, saying: “What I meant to say was this: evils that spring from heredity are no excuse for misconduct in people of our sort. Environment, not heredity, counts. And it’s our business, who have every chance in the world, to make good!”

      He looked down, amused at the piquant incongruity of voice and vernacular.

      “What time is it?” she asked irrelevantly.

      He glanced at his watch. She turned her eyes toward the level sun, conscious, and a little conscience-stricken that it was too late for her to drive to Black Fells Crossing—unless she started at once.

      The sun hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into undulating flight.

      The zenith turned shell pink; through clotted shoals of clouds spread spaces of palest green like calm lakes in the sky.

      It grew stiller; the wind went down with the sun.

      Doubtless he had forgotten to tell her the time; she had almost forgotten that she had asked him. With the silence of sunset a languor, the indolence of content, crept over her; she saw him close his watch with the absent-minded air which she already associated with him, and she let the question go from sheer disinclination for the effort of repetition—let the projected drive go—acquiescent, content that matters shape themselves without any interference from her. The sense of ease, of physical well-being invaded her with an agreeable relaxation as though tension somewhere had slackened.

      They chatted on, casually, impersonally, in rather subdued tones. The dog returned now and then to see that all was well. All was well enough, it appeared, for she sat beside Siward, quite content, knees clasped in her hands, exchanging impressions of life with a man who so far had been sympathetically considerate in demanding from her no intellectual effort.

      The conversation drifted illogically; sometimes he stirred her to amusement, even a hushed laughter; sometimes she smilingly agreed with his views, sometimes she let them go, uncriticised; or, intent on her own ideas, shook her small head in amused disapproval.

      The stillness over all, the deepening mellow light, the blessed indolence of the young world—and their few years in it—Youth! That was perhaps the key to it all, after all.

      “To-morrow,” she mused aloud, knees cradled in her clasped fingers, “to-morrow they’ll shoot—with great circumstance and fuss—a few native woodcock—there’s 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 СКАЧАТЬ