The Fighting Chance Part 51

But he couldn't find the rococo room--or perhaps he didn't recognise it.

So many people--so many, many people whom he did not know, whom he had never before laid eyes on--high-bred faces hard as diamonds; young, gay, laughing faces; brilliant eyes encountering his without a softening of recognition; clean-cut, attractive men in swarms, all animated, all amused, all at home among themselves and among the silken visions of loveliness pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing, with here an extended gloved arm and the cordial greeting of camaraderie, there a quick smile, a swift turn in pa.s.sing, a capricious bending forward for a whisper, a compliment, a jest--all this swept by him, around him, enveloping him with its brightness, its gaiety, its fragrance, and left him more absolutely alone than he had ever been in all his life.

He tried to find Leila, and gave it up. He saw Quarrier talking to Agatha, but the former saluted him so coldly that he turned away.

After a while he found Marion, but she hadn't a dance left for him; neither had Rena Bonnesdel, whom he encountered while she was adroitly avoiding one of the ever-faithful twins. The twin caught up with her in consequence, and she snubbed Plank for his share in the disaster, which depressed him, and he started for the smoking-room, wherever that haven might be found. He got into the ball-room, however, by mistake, and adorned the wall, during the cotillon, as closely as his girth permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on frenzy, the old lady being deaf and peevish.

Later, Alderdene used him to get rid of an angular, old harridan who seemed to be one solid diamond-mine, and who drove him into a corner and talked indelicacies until Plank's broad face flamed like the setting sun. Then Captain Voucher unloaded a frightened debutante on him who tried to talk about horses and couldn't; and they hated each other for a while, until, looking around her in desperation, she found he had vanished--which was quick work for a man of his size.

Kathryn Ta.s.sel employed him for supper, and kept him busy while she herself was immersed in a dawning affair with Fleetwood. She did everything to him except to tip him; and her insolence was the last straw.

Then, unexpectedly in the throng, two wonderful sea-blue eyes encountered his, deepening to violet with pleasure, and the trailing sweetness of a voice he knew was repeating his name, and a slim, white-gloved hand lay in his own.

Her escort, Ferrall, nodded to him pleasantly. She leaned forward from Ferrall's arm, saying, under her breath, "I have saved a dance for you.

Please ask me at once. Quick! do you want me?"

"I--I do," stammered Plank.

Ferrall, suspicious, stepped forward to exchange civilities, then turning to the girl beside him: "See here, Sylvia, you've dragged me all over this house on one pretext or another. Do you want any supper, or don't you? If you don't, it's our dance."

"No, I don't. No, it isn't. Kemp, you annoy me!"

"That's a nice thing to say! Is it your delicately inimitable way of giving me my conge?"

"Yes, thank you," nodded Miss Landis coolly; "you may go now."

"You're spoiled, that's what's the matter," retorted Ferrall wrathfully.

"I thought I was to have this dance. You said--"

"I said 'perhaps,' because I didn't see Mr. Plank coming to claim it.

Thank you, Kemp, for finding him."

Her nod and smile took the edge from her malice. Ferrall, who really adored dancing, glared about for anybody, and presently cornered the frightened and neglected debutante who had hated Plank.

Sylvia, standing beside Plank, looked up at him with her confident and friendly smile.

"You don't care to dance, do you? Would you mind if we sat out this dance?"

"If you'd rather," he said, so wistfully that she hesitated; then with a little shrug laid one hand on his arm, and they swung out across the floor together, into the scented whirl.

Plank, like many heavy men, danced beautifully; and Sylvia, who still loved dancing with all the ardour of a schoolgirl, permitted a moment or two of keen delight to sweep her dreamily from her purpose. But that purpose must have been a strong one, for she returned to it in a few minutes, and, looking up at Plank, said very gently that she cared to dance no more.

Her hand resting lightly on his arm, it did not seem possible that any pressure of hers was directing them to the conservatory; yet he did not know where he was going, and she was familiar with the house, and they soon entered the conservatory, where, in the shadow of various palms various youths looked up impatiently as they pa.s.sed, and various maidens sat up very straight in their chairs.

Threading their dim way into the farther recesses they found seats among thickets of forced lilacs over-hung by early wistaria. A spring-like odour hung in the air; somewhere a tiny fountain grew musical in the semi-darkness.

"Marion told me you had been asked," she said. "We have been so friendly; you've always asked me to dance whenever we have met; so I thought I'd save you one. Are you flattered, Mr. Plank?"

He said he was, very pleasantly, perfectly undeceived, and convinced of her purpose--a purpose never even tacitly admitted between them; and the old loneliness came over him again--not resentment, for he was willing that she should use him. Why not? Others used him; everybody used him; and if they found no use for him they let him alone. Mortimer, Fleetwood, Belwether--all, all had something to exact from him. It was for that he was tolerated--he knew it; he had slowly and unwillingly learned it. His intrusion among these people, of whom he was not one, would be endured only while he might be turned to some account. The hospital used him, the clergy found plenty for him to do for them, the museum had room for other pictures of his. Who among them all had ever sought him without a motive? Who among them all had ever found unselfish pleasure in him? Not one.

Something in the dull sadness of his face, as he sat there, checked the first elaborately careless question her lips were already framing.

Leaning a little nearer in the dim light she looked at him inquiringly and he returned her gaze in silence.

"What is it, Mr. Plank," she said; "is anything wrong?"

He knew that she did not mean to ask if anything was amiss with him. She did not care. n.o.body cared. So, recognising his cue, he answered: "No, nothing is wrong that I have heard of."

"You wear a very solemn countenance."

"Gaiety affects me solemnly, sometimes. It is a reaction from frivolity.

I suppose that I am over-enjoying life; that is all."

She laughed, using her fan, although the place was cool enough and they had not danced long. To and fro flitted the silken vanes of her fan, now closing impatiently, now opening again like the wings of a nervous moth in the moonlight.

He wished she would come to her point, but he dared not lead her to it too brusquely, because her purpose and her point were supposed to be absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; pa.s.sing from suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but how bitterly from his, he alone could know.

The quickened flutter of her fan meant impatience to learn from him what she had come to him to learn, and then, satisfied, to leave him alone again amid the peopled solitude of cl.u.s.tered lights.

He wished she would speak; he was tired of the sadness of it all.

Whenever in his isolation, in his utter dest.i.tution of friendship, he turned guilelessly to meet a new advance, always, sooner or later, the friendly mask was lifted enough for him to divine the cool, fixed gaze of self-interest inspecting him through the damask slits.

Sylvia was speaking now, and the plumy fan was under savant control, waving graceful accompaniment to her soft voice, punctuating her sentences at times, at times making an emphasis or outlining a gesture.

It was the familiar sequence; topics that led to themes which adroitly skirted the salient point; returned capriciously, just avoiding it--a subtly charming pattern of words which required so little in reply that his smile and nod were almost enough to keep her aria and his accompaniment afloat.

It began to fascinate him to watch the delicacy of her strategy, the coquetting with her purpose; her naive advance to the very edges of it, the airy retreat, the innocent detour, the elaborate and circuitous return. And at last she drifted into it so naturally that it seemed impossible that fatuous man could have the most primitive suspicion of her premeditation.

And Plank, now recognising his cue, answered her: "No, I have not heard that he is in town. I stopped to see him the other day, but n.o.body there knew how soon he intended to return from the country."

"I didn't know he had gone to the country," she said without apparent interest.

And Plank was either too kind to terminate the subject, or too anxious to serve his turn and release her; for he went on: "I thought I told you at Mrs. Ferrall's that Mr. Siward had gone to the country."

"Perhaps you did. No doubt I've forgotten."

"I'm quite sure I did, because I remember saying that he looked very ill, and you said, rather sharply, that he had no business to be ill. Do you remember?"

"Yes," she said slowly. "Is he better?"

"I hope so."

"You hope so?"--with the controlled emphasis of impatience.

"Yes. Don't you, Miss Landis? When I saw him at his home, he was lame--on crutches--and he looked rather ghastly; and all he said was that he expected to leave for the country. I asked him to shoot next year at Black Fells, and he seemed bothered about business, and said it might keep him from taking any vacation."

"He spoke about his business?"

"Yes, he--"

"What is the trouble with his business? Is it anything about Amalgamated and Inter-County?"