The Fighting Chance Part 38

Later, at cards, the aromatic odour from Alderdene's decanter roused him to fierce desire, but he fought it down until only the deadened, tearing ache remained to shake and loosen every nerve. And when Ferrall, finis.h.i.+ng his usual batch of business letters, arrived to cut in if needed, Siward dropped his cards with a shudder, and rose so utterly unnerved that Captain Voucher, noticing his drawn face, asked him if he were not ill.

He was leaving on an earlier train than the others, having decided to pa.s.s through Boston and Deptford, at which latter place he meant to leave Sagamore for the winter in care of the manager of his mother's farm. So he took a quiet leave of those to whom the civility might not prove an interruption--a word to Alderdene and Voucher as he pa.s.sed out, a quick clasp for Ferrall and for Grace, a carefully and cordially formal parting from the Page boys, which pleased them ineffably.

Eileen and Rena, who had never had half a chance at him, took it now, delighted to discipline their faithful Pages; and he submitted in his own engagingly agreeable way, and so skilfully that both Eileen and Rena felt sorry that they had not earlier understood how civilly anxious he had been to devote himself to them alone. And they looked at the Pages, exasperated.

In the big hall he pa.s.sed Marion, and stopped to take his leave.

No, he would do no hunting this season either at Carysford or with the two trial packs at Eastwood. Possibly at Warrenton later, but probably not; business threatened to detain him in town more or less.

Of course he'd come to see her when she returned to town.

And it had been a jolly party, and it was a shame to sound "lights out" so soon! Good-bye.

Good night. And that was all.

And that was all, unless he disturbed Sylvia, seated at cards with Quarrier and Major Belwether and Leila Mortimer--and very intent on the dummy, very still, and a trifle pallid with the pallor of concentration.

So--that was all, then.

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed him a letter bearing the crest of the Lenox Club. He pocketed it unopened and continued his way.

In the darkness of his own room he sat down, the devil's own clutch on his shrinking nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot. He had been too long without it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught from Quarrier's loving-cup.

The awakened fury of his desire appalled him, and for a while that occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon pa.s.sed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that he was holding out, unconscious how long he could hold out.

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and moved blindly about the room.

Strange periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he stood as a man who listens, scarcely daring to breathe lest the enemy awake and seize him.

He turned on the light, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was a sick man who stared back at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked him into something resembling self-command.

"d.a.m.n you!" he said fiercely, setting his teeth and staring back at his reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroom window, sat down, resting his arm on the sill. A splendid moon silvered the sea; through the intense stillness he heard the surf, magnificently dissonant among the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed desire.

Once he said to himself, weakly--for he was deadly tired--"What am I making the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you making the fight for?"

echoed his heavy pulses.

He had asked that question and received that answer before. After all, it had been for his mother's sake alone. And now--and now?--his heart beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender. But they were no longer his mother's grave, gray eyes.

After the second pipe he remembered his letter. It gave him something to do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it.

Little by little he began to comprehend its purport that his resignation was regretfully requested by the governors of the Lenox Club for reasons una.s.signed.

The shock of the thing came to him after a while, like a distant, dull report long after the flash of the explosion. Well, the affair, bad enough at first, was turning worse, that was all. How much of that sort of discredit could a man stand and keep his balance?

And what would his mother say?

Confused from his own physical suffering, the blow had fallen with a deadened force on nerves already numbed; but his half-stupefied acquiescence had suddenly become a painful recoil when he remembered where the brunt of the disgrace would fall--where the centre of suffering must always be, and the keenest grief concentrated. Roused, appalled, almost totally unnerved, he stood staring at the letter, beginning to realise what it would mean to his mother. A pa.s.sion of remorse and resentment swept him. She must be spared that! There must be some way--some punishment for his offence that could not strike her through him! It was wicked, it was contemptible, insane, to strike her! What were the governors of the Lenox about--a lot of snivelling hypocrites, pandering to the horrified sn.o.bbery at the Patroons! Who were they, anyway, to discipline him! Scarce one in fifty among the members of the two clubs was qualified to sit in judgment on a Siward!

But that tempest of pa.s.sion and mortification pa.s.sed, too, leaving him standing there, dumb, desperate, staring at the letter crushed in his shaking hand.

He must see somebody, some member of the Lenox, and do something--something! Ferrall! Was that Ferrall's step on the landing?

He sprang to the door and opened it. Quarrier, pa.s.sing the corridor, turned an expressionless visage toward him, and pa.s.sed on with a nod almost imperceptible.

"Quarrier!" he called, swept by a sudden impulse.

Quarrier halted and turned.

"Could you give me a moment--here in my room? I won't detain you."

The faint trace of surprise faded from Quarrier's face; he quietly retraced his steps, and, entering Siward's room, stood silently confronting its pallid tenant.

"Will you sit down a moment?"

Quarrier seated himself in the arm-chair by the window, and Siward found a chair opposite.

"Quarrier," said the younger man, turning a tensely miserable face on his visitor, "I want to ask you something. I'll not mince matters. You know that the Patroons have dropped me, and you know what for."

"Yes, I know."

"When I was called before the Board of Governors to explain the matter, if I could, you were sitting on that Board."

"Yes."

"I denied the charge, but refused to explain.

You remember?"

Quarrier nodded coldly.

"And I was dropped by the club!"

A slight inclination of Quarrier's symmetrical head corroborated him.

"Now," said Siward, slowly and very distinctly, "I shall tell you unofficially what I refused to tell the other governors officially."

And, as he began speaking, Quarrier's face flushed, then the features became immobile, set, and inert, and his eyes grew duller and duller, as though, under a smooth surface the soul inside of him was shrinking back into some dark corner, silent, watchful, suspicious, and perhaps defiant.

"Mr. Quarrier," said Siward quietly, "I did not take that girl to the Patroons Club--and you know it."

Quarrier was all surface now; he had drawn away internally so far that even his eyes seemed to recede until they scarcely glimmered through the slits in his colourless mask. And Siward went on:

"I knew perfectly well what sort of women I was to meet at that fool supper Billy Fleetwood gave; and you must have, too, for the girl you took in was no stranger to you.

Her name is Lydia Vyse, I believe."

The slightest possible glimmer in the elder man's eyes was all the answer he granted.

"What happened," said Siward calmly, "was this: She bet me she could so disguise herself that I could safely take her into any club in New York.

I bet her she couldn't. I never dreamed of trying. Besides, she was your--dinner partner," he added with a shrug.

His concentrated gaze seemed at length to pierce the expressionless surface of the other man, who moved slightly in his chair and moistened his thin lips under the glossy beard.