The Fighting Chance Part 28

"There is no chance for you--if you mean love. I--I tell you in time, you see.

I am utterly frivolous--quite selfish and mercenary."

"I take my chance!"

"No, I give you none! Why do you interfere! A--a girl's policy costs her something if it be worth anything; whatever it costs it is worth it to me.

And I do not love you. In so short a time how could I?"

Then in his arms she fell a-trembling. Something blinded her eyes, and she turned her head sharply, only to encounter his lips on hers in a deep, clinging embrace that left her dazed, still resisting with the fragments of breath and voice.

"Not again--I beg--you. Let me go now. It is not best. Oh! truly, truly it is all wrong with us now." She bent her head, blinded with tears, swaying, stunned; then, with a breathless sound, turned in his arms to meet his lips, her hands contracting in his; and, confronting, they paused, suspending the crisis, young faces close, and hearts afire.

"Sylvia, I love you."

For an instant their lips clung; she had rendered him his kiss. Then, tremblingly, "It is useless even though I loved you."

"Say it!"

"I do."

"Say it!"

"I--I cannot!

And it is no use--no use! I do not know myself--this way. My eyes--are wet. It is not like me; there is nothing of me in this girl you hold so closely, so confidently.

I do care for you--how can I help it? How could any woman help it? Is not that enough?"

"Until you are a bride, yes."

"A bride? Stephen!--I cannot--"

"You cannot help it, Sylvia."

"I must! I have my way to go."

"My way lies that way."

"No! no! I cannot do it; it is not best for me--not best for you.

I do care for you; you have taught me how to say it. But--you know what I have done--and mean to do, and must carry through. Then, how can you love a girl like that?"

"Dear, I know the woman I love."

"Silly, she is what her life has made her--material, pa.s.sionately selfish, unable to renounce the root of all evil.

Even if this--this happiness were ours always--I mean, if this madness could last our wedded life--I am not good enough, not n.o.ble enough, to forget what I might have had, and put away.

Is it not dreadful to admit it? Do you not know that self-contempt is part of the price?

I have no money. I know what you have.

I asked. And it is enough for a man who remains unmarried.

For I cannot 'make things do'; I cannot 'contrive'; I will not cling to the fringe of things, or play that heartbreaking role of the shabby expatriated on the Continent.

No person in this world ever had enough. I tell you I could find use for every flake of metal ever mined!

You see you do not know me. From my pretty face and figure you misjudge me. I am intelligent--not intellectual, though I might have been, might even be yet. I am cultivated, not learned; though I care for learning--or might, if I had time.

My role in life is to mount to a security too high for any question as to my dominance.

Can you take me there?"

"There are other heights, Sylvia."

"Higher?"

"Yes, dear."

"The spiritual; I know. I could not breathe there, if I cared to climb.

And I have told you what I am--all silk and lace and smooth-skinned selfishness." She looked at him wistfully. "If you can change me, take me." And she rose, facing him.

"I do not give you up," he said, with a savage note hardening his voice; and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling, confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last, responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the white lids--these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

"Good night. Love me while you can--and forgive me!

Good night.

Where are we? All--all this must have stunned me, blinded me.

Is this my door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear--to be here under the light again.

If you take me again, my knees will give way.

And I must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it!

Good night good night. I--I love you!"

CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion; his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.

Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss, and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And, following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room, with ill.u.s.trated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether, always as careful of his digestion as of his financial secrets, blandly dodged the pressing invitations to rum and confidence, until Mortimer sulkily took up his headquarters in the reading-room, on the chance of his wife's moving elsewhere. Which she did, un.o.btrusively carrying Captain Voucher with her in a sudden zeal for billiard practice on rainy mornings now too frequent along the coast.

Mortimer possessed that mysterious talent, so common among the financially insolvent, for living lavishly on an invisible income. But, plan as he would, he had never been able to increase that income through confidential gossip with men like Quarrier or Belwether, or even Ferrall. What information his pretty wife might have extracted he did not know; her income had never visibly increased above the vanishing point, although, like himself, she denied herself nothing. One short, lively interview with her had been enough to drive all partnership ideas out of his head. If he wanted to learn anything financially advantageous to himself he must do it without her aid; and as he was perpetually in hopes of the friendly hint that never came, he still moused about when opportunity offered; and this also helped to kill time.

Besides, he was always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who, knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and sensitive deference due a somewhat battered and infirm gentleman of forty-eight--until a sleek aside from Major Belwether spoiled everything, as usual, for her, leaving her painfully conscious and perplexed between doubt and disgust.

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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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.