The Fighting Chance. Chambers Robert William
antlers of shaggy moose heads.
Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation; he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, “Scotch or Irish, sir,” then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.
He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed meditatively at space.
The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said: “Here endeth our first rendezvous.”
“Then let us arrange another immediately,” he said, stirring the ice in his glass.
The girl considered him with speculative eyes: “I shouldn’t exactly know what to do with you for the next hour if I didn’t abandon you.”
“Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble of deserting me? That solves the problem.”
“I really don’t mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward,” she said, amused; “I mean that I am going to drive again.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t see at all. There’s a telegram; I’m not driving for pleasure—”
She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was of course a drive for pleasure.
“I see,” repeated Siward amiably.
“Perhaps you do,” she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was on his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that without any reason at all she hesitated.
“I had meant to show you about—the cliffs—the kennels and stables; I’m sorry,” she concluded, lingering.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he rejoined without meaning anything in particular. That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.
With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling beside her.
The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier’s mania was Tandem. She thought it rather nice of her to remember this.
She inspected the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments; the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south, left a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel to the horizon’s plane; the westering sun struck sparks from her bright-work.
The magic light on land and water seemed to fascinate the girl; she had walked a little way toward the cliffs, Siward following silently, offering no comment on the beauty of sky and cliff. As they halted once more the enchantment seemed to spread; a delicate haze enveloped the sea; hints of rose colour tinted the waves; over the uplands a pale mauve bloom grew; the sunlight turned redder, slanting on the rocks, and every kelp-covered reef became a spongy golden mound, sprayed with liquid flame.
They had turned their backs to the Tandem; the grooms looked after them, standing motionless at the horses’ heads.
“Mr. Siward, this is too fine to miss,” she said. “I will walk as far as the headland with you.... Please smoke if you care to.”
He did care to; several matches were extinguished by the wind until she spread her skids as a barrier; and kneeling in their shelter he got his light.
“Tobacco smoke diluted with sea breeze is delicious,” she said, as the wind whirled the aromatic smoke of his cigarette up into her face. “Don’t move, Mr. Siward; I like it; there is to me always a faint odour of sweet-brier in the mélange. Did you ever notice it?”
The breeze-blown conversation became fragmentary, veering as capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle perversity which stimulates without demanding.
Once, glancing back at the house where the T-cart and horses stood, she said that she had better return; or perhaps she only thought she said it, for he made no response that time. And a few moments later they reached the headland, and the Atlantic lay below, flowing azure from horizon to horizon—under a universe of depthless blue. And for a long while neither spoke.
With her the spell endured until conscience began to stir. Then she awoke, uneasy as always, under the shadow of restraint or pressure, until her eyes fell on him and lingered.
A subtle change had come into his face; its leanness struck her for the first time; that, and an utter detachment from his surroundings, a sombre oblivion to everything—and to her.
How curiously had his face altered, how shadowy it had grown, effacing the charm of youth, in it.
The slight amusement with which she had become conscious of her own personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.
The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her she said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers, unsmiling.
“I hate the sea,” he said.
“You—hate it!” she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.
“There’s no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous—a whole life of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance—one endless uninterrupted fight—a ceaseless human manoeuvre against senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster, the bellowing advance, the shock—and no battle won—nothing final, nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of surveillance, the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery.”
“But—you don’t have to fight it!” she said, astonished.
“No; but it is no secret—what it does to those who do.... Some escape; but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us.”
He was laughing when she said: “It is not a fight with the sea; it is the battle of Life itself you mean.”
“Yes, in a way, the battle of Life.”
“Oh, you are morbid then. Is there anybody ever born who has not a fight on his hands?”
“No; only I have known men tired out, unfairly, before life had declared war on them.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“Oh, something about fair play—what our popular idol summarises as a ‘square deal’.” He laughed again, easily, his face clearing.
“Nobody worth a square deal ever laments because he hasn’t had it,” she said.
“I dare say that’s true, too,” he admitted listlessly.
“Mr. Siward, exactly what did you mean?”
“I was thinking of men I knew; for example a man who through generations has inherited every impulse and desire that he should not harbour—a man with intellect enough to be aware of it, with decency enough to desire decency.... What chance has he with the storms which have been brewing for him even before he opened his eyes on earth? Is that a square deal?”
The troubled concentration of her face was reflected now in his own; the wind came whipping and flicking at them from league-wide tossing wastes; the steady thunder of the sea accented the silence.
She said: “I suppose everybody has infinite capacity for decency or mischief. I know that I have. And I fancy that this capacity always remains, no matter how moral