The Fighting Chance

“I am.”

Gloved hands tightening on either end of her riding-crop, she bent her knee against it, balancing there, looking straight at him.

“I meant to tell you so,” she said, “if you didn’t tell me first. So—I was rather—tired waiting. So I’ve told you.”

“It is only a fancy,” he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.

“I don’t think so, Stephen.”

But he could not meet her candour, and he sat, silent, miserable, staring at the papers on his desk.

After a while she drew a deep, even breath, and rose to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply.

“Marion—I never dreamed that—”

“You should dream truer,” she said. There was a suspicion of mist in her clear eyes; she turned abruptly to the window and stood there for a few moments, looking down at her brougham waiting in front of the house. “It can’t be helped, can it!” she said, turning suddenly.

He found no answer to her question.

“Good-bye,” she said, walking to him with outstretched hand; “it’s all in a lifetime, Steve, and that’s too short for a good, clean friendship like ours to die in. I don’t think I’d better come again. Look me up for a gallop when you’re fit. And you might drop me a line to say how you’re getting on. Is it all right, Stephen?”

“All right,” he said hoarsely.

Their hands tightened in a crushing clasp; then she swung on her spurred heel and walked out, leaving him haggard, motionless. He heard the front door close, and he swayed forward, dropping his face in his hands, arms half buried among the papers on his desk.

Plank found him there, an hour later, fumbling among the papers, and at first feared that he read in Siward’s drawn and sullen face a premonition of the ever-dreaded symptoms.

“Quarrier has telephoned asking for a conference at last,” he said abruptly, sitting down beside Siward.

“Well,” inquired Siward, “how do you interpret that—favourably?”

“I am inclined to think he is a bit uneasy,” said Plank cautiously. “Harrington made a secret trip to Albany last week. You didn’t know that.”

“No.”

“Well, he did. It looks to me as though there were going to be a ghost of a chance for an investigation. That is how I am inclined to consider Harrington’s trip and Quarrier’s flag of truce. But—I don’t know. There’s nothing definite, of course. You are as conversant with the situation as I am.”

“No, I am not. That is like you, Plank, to ascribe to me the same business sense that you possess, but I haven’t got it. It’s very nice and considerate of you, but I haven’t it, and you know it.”

“I think you have.”

“You think so because you think generously. That doesn’t alter the facts. Now tell me what you have concluded that we ought to do and I’ll say ‘Amen,’ as usual.”

Plank laughed, and looked over several sheets of the typewritten matter on the desk beside him.

“Suppose I meet Quarrier?” he said.

“All right. Did he suggest a date?”

“At four, this afternoon.”

“Do you think you had better go?”

“I think it might do no harm,” said Plank.

“Amen!” observed Siward, laughing, and touched the electric button for the early tea, which Plank adored at any hour.

For a while they dropped business and discussed their tea, chatting very comfortably together. Long ago Siward had found out something of the mental breadth of the man beside him, and that he was worth listening to as well as talking to. For Plank had formed opinions upon a great many subjects; and whatever culture he possessed was from sheer desire for self-cultivation.

“You know, Siward,” he was accustomed to say with a smile, “you inherit what I am qualifying myself to transmit.”

“It will be all one in a thousand years,” was Siward’s usual rejoinder.

“That is not going to prevent my efforts to become a good ancestor to my descendants,” Plank would say laughingly. “They shall have a chance, every one of them. And it will be up to them if they don’t make good.”

Sipping their tea in the pleasant, sunny room, they discussed matters of common interest—Plank’s recent fishing trip on Long Island and the degeneracy of liver-fed trout; the North Side Club’s Experiments with European partridges; Billy Fleetwood’s new stables; forestry, and the chance of national legislation concerning it—a subject of which Plank was very fond, and on which he had exceedingly sound ideas.

Drifting from one topic to another through the haze of their cigars, silent when it pleased them to be so, there could be no doubt of their liking for each other upon a basis at least superficially informal; and if Plank’s manner retained at times a shade of quaint reserve, Siward’s was perhaps the more frankly direct for that reason.

“I think,” observed Plank, laying his half-consumed cigar on the silver tray, “that I’d better go down town and see what our pre-glacial friend Quarrier wants. I may be able to furnish him with a new sensation.”

“I wonder if Quarrier ever experienced a genuine sensation,” mused Siward, arranging the papers before him into divisional piles.

“Plenty,” said Plank drily.

“I don’t think so.”

“Plenty,” repeated Plank. “It’s your thin-lipped, thin-nosed, pasty-pale, symmetrical brother who is closer to the animal under his mask than any of us imagine. I—” He hesitated. “Do you want to know my opinion of Quarrier? I’ve never told you. I don’t usually talk about my—dislikes. Do you want to know?”

“Certainly,” said Siward curiously.

“Then, first of all, he is a sentimentalist.”

“Oh! oh!” jeered Siward.

“A sentimentalist of the weakest type,” continued Plank obstinately; “because he sentimentalises over himself. Siward, look out for the man with elaborate whiskers! Look out for a pallid man with eccentric hair and a silky beard! He’s a sentimentalist of the sort I told you, and is usually utterly remorseless in his dealings with women. I suppose you think me a fool.”

“I think Quarrier is indifferent concerning women,” said Siward.

“You are wrong. He is a sensualist,” insisted Plank.

“Oh, no, Plank—not that!”

“A sensualist. His sentimental vanity he lavishes upon himself—the animal in him on women. His caution, born of self-consideration, is the caution of a beast. Such men as he believe they live in the focus of a million eyes. Part of his vanity is to deceive those eyes and be what he is under the mask he wears; and to do that one must be the very master of caution. That is Quarrier’s vanity. To conceal, is his monomania.”

“I cannot see how you draw that conclusion.”