The Fighting Chance Part 7

She recalled a few of the details now--the scandal--something of the story. Which particular actress it was she could not remember; but some men who had dined too freely had made the wager, and this boy sitting beside her had accepted it--and won it, by bringing into the sacred precincts of the Patroons Club a foolish, shameless girl disguised in a man's evening dress.

That was bad enough; that somebody promptly discovered it was worse; but worst of all was the publicity, the club's name smirched, the young man expelled from one of the two best clubs in the metropolis.

To read of such things in the columns of a daily paper had meant little to her except to repell her; to hear it mentioned among people of her own sort had left her incurious and indifferent. But now she saw it in a new light, with the man who had figured in it seated beside her. Did such men as he--such attractive, well-bred, amusing men as he--do that sort of thing?

There he sat, hat off, the sun touching his short, thick hair which waved a little at the temples--a boyish mould to head and shoulders, a cleanly outlined check and chin, a thoroughbred ear set close--a good face. What sort of a man, then, was a woman to feel at ease with? What eye, what mouth, what manner, what bearing was a woman to trust?

"Is that the kind of man you are, Mr. Siward?" she said impulsively.

"It appears that I was; I don't know what I am--or may be."

"The pity of it!" she said, still swayed by impulse. "Why did you do--didn't you know--realize what you were doing--bringing discredit on your own club?"

"I was in no condition to know, Miss Landis."

The crude brutality of the expression might merely have hurt or disgusted her had she been less intelligent. Nor, as it was, did she fully understand why he chose to use it--unless that he meant it in self-punishment.

"It's rather shameful!" she said hotly.

"Yes," he a.s.sented; "it's a bad beginning."

"A--beginning! Do you mean to go on?"

He did not reply; his head was partly turned from her. She sat silent for a while. The dog had returned to lie at Siward's feet, its brown eyes tirelessly watching the man it had chosen for its friend; and the man, without turning his eyes, dropped one hand on the dog's head, caressing the silky ears.

Some sentimentalist had once said that no man who cared for animals could be wholly bad. Inexperience inclined her to believe it. Then too, she had that inclination for overlooking offences committed against precept, which appears to be one of those edifying human traits peculiar to neither s.e.x and common to both. Besides, her knowledge of such matters was as vague as her mind was healthy and body wholesome. Men who dined incautiously were not remarkable for their rarity; the actress habit, being incomprehensible to her, meant nothing; and she said, innocently: "What men like you can find attractive in a common woman I do not understand; there are plenty of pretty women of your own sort.

The actress cult is beyond my comprehension; I only know it is generally condoned. But it is not for such things that we drop men, Mr. Siward.

You know that, of course."

"For what do you drop men?"

"For falsehood, deception, any dishonesty."

"And you don't drop a man when you read in the papers that one of the two best clubs in town has expelled him?"

She gave him a troubled glance; and, naively: "But you are still a member of the other, are you not?" Then hardening: "It was common!

common!--thoroughly disgraceful and incomprehensible!"--and with every word uttered insensibly warming in her heart toward him whom she was chastening; "it was not even bad--it was worse than being simply bad; it was stupid!"

He nodded, one hand slowly caressing the dog's head where it lay across his knees.

She watched him a moment, hesitated, then smiling a little: "So now I know the worst about you; do I not?" she concluded.

He did not answer; she waited, the smile still curving her red mouth.

Had she been too severe? She wondered. "You may help me to my feet," she said sweetly. She was very young.

He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the purple dusk of the uplands--two people young enough to take one another seriously.

"Let me tell you something," she said, facing him, white hands loosely linked behind her. "I don't exactly understand how it has happened, but you know as well as I do that we have formed a--an acquaintance--the sort that under normal conditions requires a long time and several conventional and preliminary chapters.

I should like to know what you think of our performance."

"I think," he said laughing, "that it is charming."

"Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to know is why I find it so, too?"

"Do you?" A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.

"Certainly I do. Is it because I've had a delightful chance to admonish a sinner--and be--just a little sorry--that he had made such a silly spectacle of himself?"

He laughed, wincing a trifle.

"Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me," she concluded. "So now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go.

Don't you?"

They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy, partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a temporary interest in Siward--the interest that women always cherish, quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented to overlook.

As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cl.u.s.ter of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.

"Our shooting-party has returned," she said.

They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps; people were pa.s.sing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds or khaki.

As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.

CHAPTER III SHOTOVER

The first person he encountered in the gun-room was Quarrier, who favoured him with an expressionless stare, then with a bow, quite perfunctory and non-committal. It was plain enough that he had not expected to meet Siward at Shotover House.

Kemp Ferrall, a dark, stocky, active man of forty, was in the act of draining a gla.s.s, when, though the bottom he caught sight of Siward.

He finished in a gulp, and advanced, one muscular hand outstretched: "h.e.l.lo, Stephen! Heard you'd arrived, tried the Scotch, and bolted with Sylvia Landis! That's all right, too, but you should have come for the opening day. Lots of native woodc.o.c.k--eh, Blinky?" turning to Lord Alderdene; and again to Siward: "You know all these fellows--Mortimer yonder--" There was the slightest ring in his voice; and Leroy Mortimer, red-necked, bulky, and heavy eyed, emptied his gla.s.s and came over, followed by Lord Alderdene blinking madly though his shooting-goggles and showing all his teeth like a pointer with a "tic." Captain Voucher, a gentleman with the vivid colouring of a healthy groom on a cold day, came up, followed by the Page boys, Willis and Gordon, who shook hands shyly, enchanted to be on easy terms with the notorious Mr. Siward. And last of all Tom O'Hara arrived, reeking of the saddle and clinking a pair of trooper's spurs over the floor--relics of his bloodless Porto Rico campaign with Squadron A.

It was patent to every man present that the Kemp Ferralls had determined to ignore Siward's recent foolishness, which indicated that he might reasonably expect the continued good-will of several sets, the orbits of which intersected in the social system of his native city. Indeed, the few qualified to snub him cared nothing about the matter, and it was not likely that anybody else would take the initiative in being disagreeable to a young man, the fortunes and misfortunes of whose race were part of the history of Manhattan Island. Siwards, good or bad, were a matter of course in New York.

So everybody in the gun-room was civil enough, and he chose Scotch and found a seat beside Alderdene, who sat biting at a smoky pipe and fingering a tumbler of smokier Scotch, blinking away like mad through his shooting-goggles at everybody.

"These little brown snipe you call woodc.o.c.k," he began; "we bagged nine brace, d'you see? But of all the d.a.m.nable bogs and covers--"

"Rotten," said Mortimer thickly; "Ferrall, you're all calf and biceps, and it's well enough for you to go floundering into bogs--"

"Where do you expect to find native woodc.o.c.k?" demanded Ferrall, laughing.

"On the table hereafter," growled Mortimer.

"Oh, go and pot Beverly Plank's tame pheasants," retorted Ferrall amiably; "Captain Voucher had a blank day, but he isn't kicking."

"Not I," said Voucher; "the sport is capital--if one can manage to hit the beggars--"