The Fighting Chance

Meanwhile, the wealthy master of Black Fells, Beverly Plank, had found encouragement enough at Shotover to venture on tentative informality. There was no doubt that ultimately he must be counted on in New York; but nobody except him was impatiently cordial for the event; and so, at the little house party, he slipped and slid from every attempt at closer quarters, until, rolling smoothly enough, he landed without much discomfort somewhere between Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Mortimer. And it was not a question as to “which would be good to him,” observed Major Belwether, with his misleading and benevolent mirth; “it was, which would be goodest quickest!”

And Mrs. Mortimer, abandoning Captain Voucher by the same token, displayed certain warning notices perfectly comprehensive to her husband. And at first he was inclined to recognise defeat.

But the general insuccess which had so faithfully attended him recently had aroused the long-dormant desire for a general review of the situation with his wife—perhaps even the furtive hope of some conjugal arrangement tending toward an exchange of views concerning possible alliance.

The evening previous, to his intense disgust, host, hostess, and guests had retired early, in view of the point-shooting at dawn. For not only was there to be no point-shooting for him, but he had risen from the card-table heavily hit; and besides, for the first time his apples and port had disagreed with him.

As he had not risen until mid-day he was not sleepy. Books were an aversion equalled only by distaste for his own company. Irritated, bored, he had perforce sulkily entered the elevator and passed to his room, where there was nothing on earth for him to do except to thumb over last week’s sporting periodicals and smoke himself stupid.

But it required more than that to ensnare the goddess of slumber. He walked about the room, haunted of slow thoughts; he stood at the rain-smeared pane, fat fingers resting on the glass. The richly flavoured cigar grew distasteful; and if he could not smoke, what, in pity’s name, was he to do?

Involuntarily his distended eyes wandered to his wife’s locked and bolted door; then he thought of Beverly Plank, and his own failure to fasten himself upon that anxiously over-cordial individual with his houses and his villas and his yachts and his investments!

He stepped to the switch and extinguished the lights in his room. Under the door, along the sill, a glimmer came from his wife’s bed-chamber. He listened; the maid was still there; so he sat down in the darkness to wait; and by-and-by he heard the outer bedroom door close, and the subdued rustle of the departing maid.

Then, turning on his lights, he moved ponderously and jauntily to his wife’s door and knocked discreetly.

Leila Mortimer came to the door and opened it; her hair was coiled for the night, her pretty figure outlined under a cascade of clinging lace.

“What is the matter?” she asked quietly.

“Are you point-shooting to-morrow?”

“I wanted to chat with you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m driving to Wenniston, after breakfast, with Beverly Plank, and I need sleep.”

“I want to talk to you,” he repeated doggedly.

She regarded him for a moment in silence, then, with an assenting gesture, turned away into her room; and he followed, heavily apprehensive but resolved.

She had seated herself among a pile of cushions, one knee crossed over the other, her slim white foot half concealed by the silken toe of her slipper. And as he pulled a chair forward for himself, her pretty black eyes, which slanted a little, took his measure and divined trouble.

“Leila,” he said, “why can’t we have—”

“A cigarette?” she interrupted, indicating her dainty case on the table.

He took one, savagely aware of defiance somewhere. She lighted her own from a candle and settled back, studying the sequence of blue smoke-rings jetting upward to the ceiling.

“About this man Plank,” he began, louder than he had intended through sheer self-mistrust; and his wife made a quick, disdainful sign of caution, which subdued his voice instantly. “Why can’t we take him up—together, Leila?” he ended lamely, furious at his own uneasiness in a matter which might concern him vitally.

“I see no necessity of your taking him up,” observed his wife serenely. “I can do what may be useful to him in town.”

“So can I. There are clubs where he ought to be seen—”

“I can manage such matters much better.”

“You can’t manage everything,” he insisted sullenly. “There are chances of various sorts—”

“Investments?” asked Mrs. Mortimer, with bright malice.

“See here, Leila, you have your own way too much. I say little; I make damned few observations; but I could, if I cared to.... It becomes you to be civil at least. I want to talk over this Plank matter with you; I want you to listen, too.”

A shade of faint disgust passed over her face. “I am listening,” she said.

“Well, then, I can see several ways in which the man can be of use to me.... I discovered him before you did, anyway. And what I want to do is to have a frank, honourable—”

“A—what?”

“—An honourable understanding with you, I said,” he repeated, reddening.

“Oh!” She snapped her cigarette into the grate. “Oh! I see. And what then?”

“What then?”

“Yes; what then?”

“Why, you and I can arrange to stand behind him this winter in town, can’t we?”

“And then?”

“Then—damn it!—the beggar can show his gratitude, can’t he?”

“How?” she asked listlessly.

“By making good. How else?” he retorted savagely. “He can’t welch because there’s little to climb for beyond us; and even if he climbs, he can’t ignore us. I can do as many things for him in my way as you can in yours. What is the use of being a pig, Leila? Anything he does for me isn’t going to cancel his obligations to you.”

“I know him better than you do,” she observed, bending her head and pleating the lace on her knee. “There is Dutch blood in him.”

“Not good Hollander, but common Dutch,” sneered Mortimer. “And you mean he’ll squeeze a dollar till the eagle screams-don’t you?”

She sat silent, pleating her lace with steady fingers.

“Well, that’s all right, too,” laughed Mortimer easily; “let the Audubon Society worry over the eagle. It’s a perfectly plain business proposition; we can do for him in a couple of winters what he can’t do for himself in ten. Figure it out for yourself, Leila,” he said, waving a mottled fat hand at her.

“I—have,” she said under her breath.

“Then, is it settled?

“Settled—how?”

“That we form ourselves into a benevolent society of two in behalf of Plank?”

“I—I don’t want to, Roy,” she said slowly.

“Why not?”

She did not say why not, seated there nervously pleating the fragile stuff clinging to her knee.