The Fighting Chance Part 37

"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.

Tone and words so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to him--an actress, a woman of common antecedents?

She had sometimes idly speculated in an indefinitely innocent way as to just what a well-born man could find to interest him in such women; what he could have to talk about to persons of that sort, where community of tastes and traditions must be so absolutely lacking.

Gossip, scandal of that nature, hints, silences, innuendoes, the wise shrugs of young girls oversophisticated, the cool, hard smiles of matrons, all had left her indifferent or bored, partly from distaste, partly from sheer incredulity; a refusal to understand, an innate delicacy that not only refrains from comprehension, but also denies itself even the curiosity to inquire or the temptation of vaguest surmise on a subject that could not exist for her.

But now, something of the uncomfortable uneasiness had come over her which she had been conscious of when made aware of Marion Page's worldly wisdom, and which had imperceptibly chilled her when Grace Ferrall spoke of Siward's escapade, coupling this woman and him in the same scandal.

She took it for granted that there must be, for men, an attraction toward women who figured publicly behind the foot-lights, though it appeared very silly to her. In fact it all was silly and undignified--part and parcel, no doubt, of that undergraduate foolishness which seemed to cling to some men who had otherwise attained discretion.

But it appeared to her that Siward had taken the matter with a seriousness entirely out of proportion in his curt closure of the subject, and she felt a little irritated, a little humiliated, a little hurt, and took refuge in a silence that he did not offer to break.

Early twilight had fallen in the room; the firelight grew redder.

"Sylvia," he said abruptly, reverting to the old, light tone hinting of the laughter in his eyes which she could no longer see, "Suppose, as you suggested, I did ambush you--say after the opera--seize you under the very nose of your escort and make madly for a hansom?"

"I know of no other way," she said demurely.

"Would you resist, physically?"

"I would, if n.o.body were looking."

"Desperately?

"How do I know? Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume.

Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in saddle and afoot.

"I should advise you to chloroform me," she said defiantly. "You don't realise my accomplishments with the punching-bag."

"So you mean to resist?"

"Yes, I do. If I were going to surrender at once, I might as well go off to church with you now."

"Wenniston church!" he said promptly. "I'll order the Mercedes."

She laughed, lazily settling herself more snugly by the fire. "Suppose it were our fire?" she smiled. "There would be a dog lying across that rug, and a comfortable Angora tabby dozing by the fender, and--you, cross-legged, at my feet, with that fascinating head of yours tipped back against my knees."

The laughter in her voice died out, and he had risen, saying unsteadily: "Don't! I--I can't stand that sort of thing, you know."

She had made a mistake, too; she also had suddenly become aware of her own limits in the same direction.

"Forgive me, dear! I meant no mockery."

"I know.

After a while a man finds laughter difficult."

"I was not laughing at--anything. I was only pretending to be happy."

"Your happiness is before you," he said sullenly.

"My future, you mean. You know I am exchanging one for the other.

And some day you will awake to the infamy of it; you will comprehend the depravity of the monstrous trade I made.

And then--and then--"

She pa.s.sed one slim hand over her face--"then you will shake yourself free from this dream of me; then, awake, my punishment at your hands will begin.

Dear, no man in his right senses can continue to love a girl such as I am. All that is true and ardent and generous in you has invested my physical attractiveness and my small intellect with a magic that cannot last, because it is magic; and you are the magician, enmeshed for the moment in the mists of your own enchantment. When this fades, when you unclose your eyes in clear daylight, dear, I dread to think what I shall appear to you--what a dreadful, shrunken, bloodless sh.e.l.l, hung with lace and scented, silken cerements--a jewelled mummy-case--a thing that never was!

Do you understand my punishment a little, now?"

"If it were true," he said in a dull voice, "you will have forgotten, too."

"I pray I may," she said under her breath.

And, after a long silence: "Do you think, before the year is out, that you might be granted enough courage?" he asked.

"No. I shall not even pray for it. I want what is offered me! I desire it so blindly that already it has become part of me. I tell you the poison is in every vein; there is nothing else but poison in me. I am what I tell you, to the core. It is past my own strength of will to stop me, now. If I am stopped, another must do it. My weakness for you, being a treachery if not confessed, I was obliged to confess, horribly frightened as I was. He might have stopped me; he did not.

And now, what is there on earth to halt me? Love cannot. Common decency and courage cannot. Fear of your unhappiness and mine cannot. No, even the cert.i.tude of your contempt, some day, is powerless to halt me now. I could not love; I am utterly incapable of loving you enough to balance the sacrifice. And that is final."

Grace Ferrall came into the room and found a duel of silence in progress under the dull fire-glow tinting the ceiling.

"Another quarrel," she commented, turning on the current of the drop-light above the desk from which Siward had risen at her entrance.

"You quarrel enough to marry. Why don't you?"

"I wish we could," said Sylvia simply.

Grace laughed. "What a little fool you are!" she said tenderly, seating herself in Siward's chair and dropping one hand over his where it rested on the arm. "Stephen, can't you make her--a big, strong fellow like you?

Oh, well; on your heads be it! My conscience is now clear for the first time, and I'll never meddle again." She gave Siward's hand a perfunctory pat and released him with a discreetly stifled yawn. "I'm disgracefully sleepy; the wind blew like fury along the coast. Sylvia, have you had a good time at Shotover--the time of your life?"

Sylvia raised her eyes and encountered Siward's.

"I certainly have," she said faintly.

"C'est bien, cherie. Can you be as civil, Stephen--conscientiously? Oh, that is very nice of you! But there's one thing: why on earth didn't you make eyes at Marion? Life might be one long, blissful carnival of horse and dog for you both. Oh, dear! there, I'm meddling again! Pinch me, Sylvia, if I ever begin to meddle again! How did you come out at Bridge, Stephen? What--bad as that? Gracious! this is disgraceful--this gambling the way people do! I'm shocked and I'm going up to dress. Are you coming, Sylvia?"

The dinner was very gay. The ceremony of christening the Shotover Cup, which Quarrier had won, proceeded with presentation speech and a speech of acceptance faultlessly commonplace, during which Quarrier wore his smile--which was the only humorous thing he contributed.

The cup was full. Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking struggle so sure to follow.

Marion received the cup, lifted it in both hands, and said distinctly, "Good Hunting!" as she drank to Quarrier. Her brother Gordon took it, and drank entirely too much. Then Sylvia lifted it, her white hands half buried among the orchids: "To you!" she murmured for Siward's ear alone; then drank gaily, mischievously, "To the best shot at Shotover!" And Siward took the cup: "I salute victory," he said, smiling, "always, and everywhere! To him who takes the fighting chance and wins out! To the best man! Health!" And he drank as a gentleman drinks, with a gay bow to Quarrier, and with death in his heart.

Later, the irony of it struck him so grimly that he laughed; and Sylvia, beside him, looked up, dismayed to see the gray change in his face.

"What is it?" she faltered, catching his eye; "why do you--why are you so white?"

But he only smiled, as though he had misunderstood, saying:

"The survival of the fittest; that is the only test, after all. The man who makes good doesn't whine for justice. There's enough of it in the world to go round, and he who misses it gets all that's due him just the same."