The Fighting Chance

“Art?” yawned Fleetwood. “Oh, pictures? Don’t like ‘em. Nobody ever looks at ‘em except débutantes, who do it out of deviltry, to floor a man at a dinner or a dance.”

“How about literature?” inquired Siward gravely. “Anything doing?”

“Nothing in it,” replied Fleetwood more gravely still. “It’s another feminine bluff—like all that music talk they hand you after the opera.”

“I see. And science?”

“Spider Flynn is matched to meet Kid Holloway; is that what you mean, Stephen? Somebody tumbled out of an air-ship the other day; is that what you mean? And they’re selling scientific jewelry on Broadway at a dollar a quart; is that what you want to know?”

Siward rested his head on his hand with a smile. “Yes, that’s about what I wanted to know, Billy—all about the arts and sciences.... Much obliged. You needn’t stay any longer, if you don’t want to.”

“How soon will you be out?” inquired Fleetwood.

“Out? I don’t know. I shall try to drive to the office to-morrow.”

“Why the devil did you resign from all your clubs? How can I see you if I don’t come here?” began Fleetwood impatiently. “I know, of course, that you’re not going anywhere, but a man always goes to his club. You don’t look well, Stephen. You are too much alone.”

Siward did not answer. His face and body had certainly grown thinner since Fleetwood had last seen him. Plank, too, had been shocked at the change in him—the dark, hard lines under the eyes; the pallor, the curious immobility of the man, save for his fingers, which were always restless, now moving in search of some small object to worry and turn over and over, now nervously settling into a grasp on the arm of his chair.

“How is Amalgamated Electric?” asked Fleetwood, abruptly.

“I think it’s all right. Want to buy some?” replied Siward, smiling.

Plank stirred in his chair ponderously. “Somebody is kicking it to pieces,” he said.

“Somebody is trying to,” smiled Siward.

“Harrington,” nodded Fleetwood. Siward nodded back. Plank was silent.

“Of course,” continued Fleetwood, tentatively, “you people need not worry, with Howard Quarrier back of you.”

Nobody said anything for a while. Presently Siward’s restless hands, moving in search of something, encountered a pencil lying on the table beside him, and he picked it up and began drawing initials and scrolls on the margin of a newspaper; and all the scrolls framed initials, and all the initials were the same, twining and twisting into endless variations of the letters S. L.

“Yes, I must go to the office to-morrow,” he repeated absently. “I am better—in fact I am quite well, except for this sprain.” He looked down at his bandaged foot, then his pencil moved listlessly again, continuing the endless variations on the two letters. It was plain that he was tired.

Fleetwood rose and made his adieux almost affectionately. Plank moved forward on tiptoe, bulky and noiseless; and Siward held out his hand, saying something amiably formal.

“Would you like to have me come again?” asked Plank, red with embarrassment, yet so naively that at first Siward found no words to answer him; then—

“Would you care to come, Mr. Plank?”

“Yes.”

Siward looked at him curiously, almost cautiously. His first impressions of the man had been summed up in one contemptuous word. Besides, barring that, what was there in common between himself and such a type as Plank? He had not even troubled himself to avoid him at Shotover; he had merely been aware of him when Plank spoke to him; never otherwise, except that afternoon beside the swimming pool, when he had made one of his rare criticisms on Plank.

Perhaps Plank had changed, perhaps Siward had; for he found nothing offensive in the bulky young man now—nothing particularly attractive, either, except for a certain simplicity, a certain direct candour in the heavy blue eyes which met his squarely.

“Come in for a cigar when you have a few moments idle,” said Siward slowly.

“It will give me great pleasure,” said Plank, bowing.

And that was all. He followed Fleetwood down the stairs; Wands held their coats, and bowed them out into the falling shadows of the winter twilight.

Siward, sitting beside his window, watched them enter their hansom and drive away up the avenue. A dull flush had settled over his cheeks; the aroma of spirits hung in the air, and he looked across the room at the decanter. Presently he drank some of his tea, but it was lukewarm, and he pushed the cup from him.

The clatter of the cup brought the old butler, who toddled hither and thither, removing trays, pulling chairs into place, fussing and pattering about, until a maid came in noiselessly, bearing a lamp. She pulled down the shades, drew the sad-coloured curtains, went to the mantelpiece and peered at the clock, then brought a wineglass and a spoon to Siward, and measured the dose in silence. He swallowed it, shrugged, permitted her to change the position of his chair and footstool, and nodded thanks and dismissal.

“Gumble, are you there?” he asked carelessly.

The butler entered from the hallway. “Yes, sir.”

“You may leave that decanter.”

But the old servant may have misunderstood, for he only bowed and ambled off downstairs with the decanter, either heedless or deaf to his master’s sharp order to return.

For a while Siward sat there, eyes fixed, scowling into vacancy; then the old, listless, careworn expression returned; he rested one elbow on the window-sill, his worn cheek on his hand, and with the other hand fell to weaving initials with his pencil on the margin of the newspaper lying on the table beside him.

Lamplight brought out sharply the physical change in him—the angular shadows flat under the cheek-bones, the hard, slightly swollen flesh in the bluish shadows around the eyes. The mark of the master-vice was there; its stamp in the swollen, worn-out hollows; its imprint in the fine lines at the corners of his mouth; its sign manual in the faintest relaxation of the under lip, which had not yet become a looseness.

For the last of the Siwards had at last stepped into the highway which his doomed forebears had travelled before him.

“Gumble!” he called irritably.

A quavering voice, an unsteady step, and the old man entered again. “Mr. Stephen, sir?”

“Bring that decanter back. Didn’t you hear me tell you just now?”

“Sir?”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. Stephen, sir.”

There was a silence.

“Gumble!”

“Sir?”

“Are you going to bring that decanter?”

The old butler bowed, and ambled from the room, and for a long while Siward sat sullenly listening and scoring the edges of the paper with his trembling pencil. Then the lead broke short, and he flung it from him and pulled the bell. Wands came this time, a lank, sandy, silent man, grown gray as a rat in the service of the Siwards. He received his master’s orders, and withdrew; and again Siward waited, biting his under lip and tearing bits from the edges of the newspaper with fingers never still; but nobody came with the decanter, and after a while his tense muscles relaxed; something in his very soul seemed to snap, and he sank back in his chair, the hot tears blinding him.

He had got as far as that; moments of self-pity were becoming almost as frequent as scorching intervals of self-contempt.

So they all knew what was the matter with him—they all knew—the doctor, the servants, his friends. Had he not surprised the quick suspicion in Fleetwood’s glance, when he told him he had slipped, and sprained his ankle? What if he had been drunk when he fell—fell on his own doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants, drunk as his forefathers? It was none of Fleetwood’s business. It was none of the servants’ business. It was nobody’s business except his own. Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him? Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him? Of what concern to them were his vices or his virtues?

The tears dried in his hot eyes; he jerked the old-fashioned bell savagely; and after a long while he heard servants whispering together in the passageway outside his door.