The Fighting Chance

He made no sign; his lower lip hung loose; his eyes blinked at her.

“What is it?” she repeated. “What have you been doing? How much have you lost? You can’t have lost very much; we hadn’t much to lose. If you have given your note to any of those gamblers, it is a shame—a shame! Leroy, look at me! You promised me, on your honour, never to do that again. Have you lied, after all the times I have helped you out, stripped myself, denied myself, put off tradesmen, faced down creditors? After all I have done, do you dare come here and ask for more—ask for what I have not got—with not one bill settled, not one servant paid since December—”

“Leila, I—I’ve got—to tell you—”

“What?” she demanded, appalled by the change in his face. If he was overdoing it, he was overdoing it realistically enough.

“I—I’ve used Plank’s cheque!” he mumbled, and moistened his lips with his tongue.

She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. “Plank’s!” she repeated slowly, “Plank’s cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?”

“The one he gave you last night. I’ve used that. Now you know!”

“The one he—But you couldn’t! How could you? It was not filled in.”

“I filled it.”

Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.

“You… You are trying to frighten me, Leroy,” she stammered. “You are trying to make me do something—give you what you want—force me to give you what you want! You can’t frighten me. The cheque was made out to me—to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?”

“I indorsed it. Do you understand that!” he said savagely.

“No, I don’t; because, if you did, it’s forgery.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think it is!” he broke in fiercely. “All I’m worried over is what Plank will think. I didn’t mean to do it; I didn’t dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about, and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!”

In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with increasing vigour and anger:

“When I saw that cheque in my hands I thought I’d use it temporarily—merely as moral collateral to flash at Burbank—something to back my I. O. U.‘s. So I filled it in.”

“For how much?” she asked, not daring to believe him; but he ignored the question and went on: “I filled it and indorsed it, and—”

“How could you indorse it?” she interrupted coolly, now unconvinced again and suspicious.

“I’ll tell you if you’ll stop that fool tongue a moment. The cheque was made to ‘L. Mortimer,’ wasn’t it? So I wrote ‘L. Mortimer’ on the back. Now do you know? If you are L. Mortimer, so am I. Leila begins with L; so does Leroy, doesn’t it? I didn’t imitate your two-words-to-a-page autograph. I put my own fist to a cheque made out to one L. Mortimer; and I don’t care what you think about it as long as Plank can stand it. Now put up your nose and howl, if you like.”

But under her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, as usual:

“Howl all you like!” he jeered. “It won’t alter matters or square accounts with Plank. What are you staring at? Do you suppose I’m not sorry? Do you fancy I don’t know what a fool I’ve been? What are you turning white for? What in hell—”

“How much have you—” She choked, then, resolutely: “How much have you—taken?”

“Taken!” he broke out, with an oath. “What do you mean? I’ve borrowed about twenty thousand dollars. Now yelp! Eh? What?—no yelps? Probably some weeps, then. Turn ‘em on and run dry; I’ll wait.” And he managed to cross one bulky leg over the other and lean back, affecting resignation, while Leila, bolt upright in her low chair, every curved outline rigid under the flowing, silken wrap, stared at him as though stunned.

“Well, we’re good for it, aren’t we?” he said threateningly. “If he’s going to turn ugly about it, here’s the house.”

“My—house?”

“Yes, your house! I suppose you’d rather raise something on the house than have the thing come out in the papers.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, staring into his bloodshot eyes.

“Yes, I do. I’m damn sure of it!”

“You are wrong.”

“You mean that you are not inclined to stand by me?” he demanded.

“Yes, I mean that.”

“You don’t intend to help me out?”

“I do not intend to—not this time.”

He began to show his big teeth, and that nervous snickering “tick” twitched his upper lip.

“How about the courts?” he sneered. “Do you want to figure in them with Plank?”

“I don’t want to,” she said steadily, “but you can not frighten me any more by that threat.”

“Oh! Can’t frighten you! Perhaps you think you’ll marry Plank when I get a decree? Do you? Well, you won’t for several reasons; first, because I’ll name other corespondents and that will make Plank sick; second, because Plank wants to marry somebody else and I’m able to assist him. So where do you come out in the shuffle?”

“I don’t know,” she said, under her breath, and rested her head against the back of the chair, as though suddenly tired.

“Well, I know. You’ll come out smirched, and you know it,” said Mortimer, gazing intently at her. “Look here, Leila: I didn’t come here to threaten you. I’m no black-mailer; I’m no criminal. I’m simply a decent sort of a man, who is pretty badly scared over what he’s done in a moment of temptation. You know I had no thought of anything except to borrow enough on my I. O. U.‘s to make a killing at Burbank’s. I had to show them something big, so I filled in that cheque, not meaning to use it; and before I knew it I’d indorsed it, and was plunging against it. Then they stacked everything on me—by God, they did! and if I had not been in the condition I was in I’d have stopped payment. But it was too late when I realised what I was against. Leila, you know I’m not a bad man at heart. Can’t you help a fellow?”

His manner, completely changed, had become the resentful and fretful appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened, overfed pensioner on his wife’s bounty; not the human beast maddened by fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer terror into a rôle which even he shrank from—had shrunk from all these years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet brought himself to the point of attempting the practice, even when in sorest straits and bitterest need. He didn’t want to do it; he wished to get along without it, partly because of native inertia and an aversion to the mental nimbleness that he would be required to show as a law-breaker, partly because the word “black-mail” stood for what he did not dare suggest that he had come to, even to himself. His distaste was genuine; there were certain things which he didn’t want to commit, and extortion was one of them. He could, at a pinch, lie to his wife, or try to scare her into giving him money; he could, when necessary, “borrow” from such men as Plank; but he had never cheated at cards, and he had never attempted to black-mail anybody except his wife—which, of course, was purely a family matter, and concerned nobody else.

Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening, dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though it was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he was pulled out safely.

“What this household requires,” he said, “is economy.” He spread his legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced askance at his wife. “Economy,” he repeated, furtively wetting his lips with a heavily coated tongue; “that’s the true solution; economical administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment! Fewer folderols. I’ve a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars from Fleetwood—the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand plunks!”

Leila’s head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among some women.

“We’ll fix it somehow,” he said reassuringly; “don’t you worry, Leila. I’ve confidence in you, little girl! You’ve got me out of sticky messes before, eh? Well, we’ve weathered a few, haven’t we?”

Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved, dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or aversion from his wife.

“You needn’t be scared, if I’m not,” he said reproachfully. “The house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there’s only fifty on it now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap on another fifty.” And as she made no sound or movement in reply: “As far as Plank goes, haven’t I done enough for him to square it? What have we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes me. And if he thinks it’s too much—look here, Leila! I’ve a trick up my sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I’m in a position to marry that man to the girl he’s mad about—stark, raving mad.”

Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.

“Leroy, are you mad?”

“I! Not much!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I can make him the husband of the most-run-after girl in New York—if I want to. And at the same time I can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director’s table. O-ho! Now you’re staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good. What are you worrying about? Why, I’ve got a hundred ways to square that cheque, and each separate way is a winner.”

He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat, gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.