Chambers Robert William
The Fighting Chance
“See here, old man,” said Plank, extending a huge highly coloured hand, “is all square between us now?”
“I think so,” muttered Mortimer.
But Plank would not relinquish his hand.
“Then tell me how to draw that cheque! Great Heaven, Mortimer, what is friendship, anyhow, if it doesn’t include little matters like this—little misunderstandings like this? I’m the man to be sensitive, not you. You have been very good to me, Mortimer. I could almost wish you in a position where the only thing I possess might square something of my debt to you.”
A few minutes later, while he was filling in the cheque, a dusty youth in riding clothes and spurs came in and found a seat by one of the windows, into which he dropped, and then looked about him for a servant.
“Hello, Fleetwood!” said Mortimer, glancing over his shoulder to see whose spurs were ringing on the polished floor.
Fleetwood saluted amiably with his riding-crop; including Plank, whom he did not know, in a more formal salute.
“Will you join us?” asked Mortimer, taking the cheque which Plank offered and carelessly pocketing it without even a nod of thanks. “You know Beverly Plank, of course? What! I thought everybody knew Beverly Plank.”
Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. Plank shook hands and resumed their seats.
“Ripping weather!” observed Fleetwood, replacing his hat and rebuttoning the glove which he had removed to shake hands with Plank. “Lot of jolly people out this morning. I say, Mortimer, do you want that roan hunter of mine you looked over? I mean King Dermid, because Marion Page wants him, if you don’t. She was out this morning, and she spoke of it again.”
Mortimer, lifting a replenished glass, shook his head, and drank thirstily in silence.
“Saw you at Westbury, I think,” said Fleetwood politely to Plank, as the two lifted their glasses to one another.
“I hunted there for a day or two,” replied Plank, modestly. “If it’s that big Irish thoroughbred you were riding that you want to sell I’d like a look in, if Miss Page doesn’t fancy him.”
Fleetwood laughed, and glanced amusedly at Plank over his glass. “It isn’t that horse, Mr. Plank. That’s Drumceit, Stephen Siward’s famous horse.” He interrupted himself to exchange greetings with several men who came into the room rather noisily, their spurs resounding across the oaken floor. One of them, Tom O’Hara, joined them, slamming his crop on the desk beside Plank and spreading himself over an arm-chair, from the seat of which he forcibly removed Mortimer’s feet without excuse.
“Drink? Of course I want a drink!” he replied irritably to Fleetwood—“one, three, ten, several! Billy, whose weasel-bellied pinto was that you were kicking your heels into in the park? Some of the squadron men asked me—the major. Oh, beg pardon! Didn’t know you were trying to stick Mortimer with him. He might do for the troop ambulance, inside!… What? Oh, yes; met Mr. Blank—I mean Mr. Plank—at Shotover, I think. How d’ye do? Had the pleasure of potting your tame pheasants. Rotten sport, you know. What do you do it for, Mr. Blank?”
“What did you come for, if it’s rotten sport?” asked Plank so simply that it took O’Hara a moment to realise he had been snubbed.
“I didn’t mean to be offensive,” he drawled.
“I suppose you can’t help it,” said Plank very gently; “some people can’t, you know.” And there was another silence, broken by Mortimer, whose entire hulk was tingling with a mixture of surprise and amusement over his protégé’s developing ability to take care of himself. “Did you say that Stephen Siward is in Westbury, Billy?”
“No; he’s in town,” replied Fleetwood. “I took his horses up to hunt with. He isn’t hunting, you know.”
“I didn’t know. Nobody ever sees him anywhere,” said Mortimer. “I guess his mother’s death cut him up.”
Fleetwood lifted his empty glass and gently shook the ice in it. “That, and—the other business—is enough to cut any man up, isn’t it?”
“You mean the action of the Lenox Club?” asked Plank seriously.
“Yes. He’s resigned from this club, too, I hear. Somebody told me that he has made a clean sweep of all his clubs. That’s foolish. A man may be an ass to join too many clubs but he’s always a fool to resign from any of ‘em. You ask the weatherwise what resigning from a club forecasts. It’s the first ominous sign in a young man’s career.”
“What’s the second sign?” asked O’Hara, with a yawn.
“Squadron talk; and you’re full of it,” retorted Fleetwood—“‘I said to the major,’ and ‘The captain told the chief trumpeter’—all that sort of thing—and those Porto Rico spurs of yours, and the ewe-necked glyptosaurus you block the bridle-path with every morning. You’re an awful nuisance, Tom, if anybody should ask me.”
Under cover of a rapid-fire exchange of pleasantries between Fleetwood and O’Hara, Plank turned to Mortimer, hesitating:
“I rather liked Siward when I met him at Shotover,” he ventured. “I’m very sorry he’s down and out.”
“He drinks,” shrugged Mortimer, diluting his mineral water with Irish whisky. “He can’t let it alone; he’s like all the Siwards. I could have told you that the first time I ever saw him. We all told him to cut it out, because he was sure to do some damfool thing if he didn’t. He’s done it, and his clubs have cut him out. It’s his own funeral.... Well, here’s to you!”
“Cut who out?” asked Fleetwood, ignoring O’Hara’s parting shot concerning the decadence of the Fleetwood stables and their owner.
“Stephen Siward. I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the gutter is public property.”
“It’s a damned sad thing,” said Fleetwood slowly.
After a pause Plank said: “I think so, too.... I don’t know him very well.”
“You may know him better now,” said O’Hara insolently.
Plank reddened, and, after a moment: “I should be glad to, if he cares to know me.”
“Mortimer doesn’t care for him, but he’s an awfully good fellow, all the same,” said Fleetwood, turning to Plank; “he’s been an ass, but who hasn’t? I like him tremendously, and I feel very bad over the mess he made of it after that crazy dinner I gave in my rooms. What? You hadn’t heard of it? Why man, it’s the talk of the clubs.”
“I suppose that is why I haven’t heard,” said Plank simply; “my club-life is still in the future.”
“Oh!” said Fleetwood with an involuntary stare, surprised, a trifle uncomfortable, yet somehow liking Plank, and not understanding why.
“I’m not in anything, you see; I’m only up for the Patroons and the Lenox,” added Plank gravely.
“I see. Certainly. Er—hope you’ll make ‘em; hope to see you there soon. Er—I see by the papers you’ve been jollying the clergy, Mr. Plank. Awfully handsome of you, all that chapel business. I say: I’ve a cousin—er—young architect; Beaux Arts, and all that—just over. I’d awfully like to have him given a chance at that competition; invited to try, you see. I don’t suppose it could be managed, now—”
“Would you like to have me ask the bishops?” inquired Plank, naively shrewd. And the conversation became very cordial between the two, which Mortimer observed, keeping one ironical eye on Plank, while he continued a desultory discussion with O’Hara concerning a very private dinner which somebody told somebody that somebody had given to Quarrier and the Inter-County Electric people; which, if true, plainly indicated who was financing the Inter-County scheme, and why Amalgamated stock had tumbled again yesterday, and what might be looked for from the Algonquin Trust Company’s president.
“Amalgamated Electric doesn’t seem to like it a little bit,” said O’Hara. “Ferrall, Belwether, and Siward are in it up to their necks; and if Quarrier is really the god in the machine, and if he really is doing stunts with Amalgamated Electric, and is also mixing feet with the Inter-County crowd, why, he is virtually paralleling his own road; and why, in the name of common sense, is he doing that? He’ll kill it; that’s what he’ll do.”
“He can afford to kill it,” observed Mortimer, punching the electric button and making a significant gesture toward his empty glass as the servant entered; “a man like Quarrier can afford to kill anything.”
“Yes; but why kill Amalgamated Electric? Why not merge? Why, it’s a crazy thing to do, it’s a devil of a thing to do, to parallel your own line!” insisted O’Hara. “That is dirty work. People don’t do such things these days. Nobody tears up dollar bills for the pleasure of tearing.”
“Nobody knows what Quarrier will do,” muttered Mortimer, who had tried hard enough to find out when the first ominous rumours arose concerning Amalgamated, and the first fractional declines left the street speechless and stupefied.
O’Hara sat frowning, and fingering his glass. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “a little cold logic shows us that Quarrier isn’t in it at all. No sane man would ruin his own enterprise, when there is no need to. His people are openly supporting Amalgamated and hammering Inter-County; and, besides, there’s Ferrall in it, and Mrs. Ferrall is Quarrier’s cousin; and there’s Belwether in it, and Quarrier is engaged to marry Sylvia Landis, who is Belwether’s niece. It’s a scrap with Harrington’s crowd, and the wheels inside of wheels are like Chinese boxes. Who knows what it means? Only it’s plain that Amalgamated is safe, if Quarrier wants it to be. And unless he does he’s crazy.”
Mortimer puffed stolidly at his cigar until the smoke got into his eyes and inflamed them. He sat for a while, wiping his puffy eyelids with his handkerchief; then, squinting sideways at Plank, and seeing him still occupied with Fleetwood, turned bluntly on O’Hara:
“See here: what do you mean by being nasty to Plank?” he growled. “I’m backing him. Do you understand?”
“It is curious,” mused O’Hara coolly, “how much of a cad a fairly decent man can be when he’s out of temper!”
“You mean Plank, or me?” demanded Mortimer, darkening angrily.
“No; I mean myself. I’m not that way usually. I took him for a bounder, and he’s caught me with the goods on. I’ve been thinking that the men who bother with such questions are usually open to suspicion themselves. Watch me do the civil, now. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Wait a moment. Will you be civil enough to do something for him at the Patroons? That will mean something.”
“Is he up? Yes, I will;” and, turning in his chair, he said to Plank: “Awfully sorry I acted like a bounder just now, after having accepted your hospitality at the Fells. I did mean to be offensive, and I’m sorry for that, too. Hope you’ll overlook it, and be friendly.”
Plank’s face took on the dark-red hue of embarrassment; he looked questioningly at Mortimer, whose visage remained non-committal, then directly at O’Hara.
“I should be very glad to be friends with you,” he said with an ingenuous dignity that surprised Mortimer. It was only the native simplicity of the man, veneered and polished by constant contact with Mrs. Mortimer, and now showing to advantage in the grain. And it gratified Mortimer, because he saw that it was going to make many matters much easier for himself and his protégé.
The tall glasses were filled and drained again before they departed to the cold plunge and dressing-rooms above, whence presently they emerged in street garb to drive down town and lunch together at the Lenox Club, Plank as Fleetwood’s guest.
Mortimer, very heavy and inert after luncheon, wedged himself into a great stuffed arm-chair by the window, where he alternately nodded over his coffee and wheezed in his breathing, and leered out at Fifth Avenue from half-closed, puffy eyes. And there he was due to sit, sodden and replete, until the fashionable equipages began to flash past. He’d probably see his wife driving with Mrs. Ferrall or with Miss Caithness, or perhaps with some doddering caryatid of the social structure; and he’d sit there, leering with gummy eyes out of the club windows, while servants in silent processional replenished his glass from time to time, until in the early night the trim little shopgirls flocked out into the highways in gossiping, fluttering coveys, trotting away across the illuminated asphalt, north and south to their thousand dingy destinations. And after they had gone he would probably arouse himself to read the evening paper, or perhaps gossip with Major Belwether and other white-haired familiars, or perhaps doze until it was time to summon a cab and go home to dress.
That afternoon, however, having O’Hara and Fleetwood to give him countenance, he managed to arouse himself long enough to make Plank known personally to several of the governors of the club and to a dozen members, then left him to his fate. Whence, presently, Fleetwood and O’Hara extracted him—fate at that moment being personified by a garrulous old gentleman, one Peter Caithness, who divided with Major Belwether the distinction of being the club bore—and together they piloted him to the billiard room, where he beat them handily for a dollar a point at everything they suggested.
“You play almost as pretty a game as Stephen Siward used to play,” said O’Hara cordially. “You’ve something of his cue movement—something of his infernal facility and touch. Hasn’t he, Fleetwood?”
“I wish Siward were back here,” said Fleetwood thoughtfully, returning his cue to his own rack. “I wonder what he does with himself—where he keeps himself all the while? What the devil is there for a man to do, if he doesn’t do anything? He’s not going out anywhere since his mother’s death; he has no clubs to go to, I understand. What does he do—go to his office and come back, and sit in that shabby old brick house all day and blink at the bum portraits of his bum and distinguished ancestors? Do you know what he does with himself?” to O’Hara.
“I don’t even know where he lives,” observed O’Hara, resuming his coat. “He’s given up his rooms, I understand.”
“What? Don’t know the old Siward house?”
“Oh! does he live there now? Of course; I forgot about his mother. He had apartments last year, you remember. He gave dinners—corkers they were. I went to one—like that last one you gave.”
“I wish I’d never given it,” said Fleetwood gloomily. “If I hadn’t, he’d be a member here still.... What do you suppose induced him to take that little gin-drinking cat to the Patroons? Why, man, it wasn’t even an undergraduate’s trick! it was the act of a lunatic.”
For a while they talked of Siward, and of his unfortunate story and the pity of it; and when the two men ceased,
“Do you know,” said Plank mildly, “I don’t believe he ever did it.”
O’Hara looked up surprised, then shrugged. “Unfortunately he doesn’t deny it, you see.”
“I heard,” said Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette, “that he did deny it; that he said, no matter what his condition was, he couldn’t have done it. If he had been sober, the governors would have been bound to take his word of honour. But he couldn’t give that, you see. And after they pointed out to him that he had been in no condition to know exactly what he did do, he shut up.... And they dropped him; and he’s falling yet.”
“I don’t believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing,” repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to cleanse his ponderous pink hands of chalk-dust.
“That’s what’s the matter with Plank,” observed O’Hara to Fleetwood as Plank disappeared. “It isn’t that he’s a bounder; but he doesn’t know things; he doesn’t know enough, for instance, to wait until he’s a member of a club before he criticises the judgment of its governors. Yet you can’t help tolerating the fellow. I think I’ll write a letter for him, or put down my name. What do you think?”
“It would be all right,” said Fleetwood. “He’ll need all the support he can get, with Leroy Mortimer as his sponsor.... Wasn’t Mortimer rather nasty about Siward though, in his rôle of the alcoholic prophet? Whew!”
“Siward never had any use for Mortimer,” observed O’Hara.
“I’ll bet you never heard him say so,” returned Fleetwood. “You know Stephen Siward’s way; he never said anything unpleasant about any man. I wish I didn’t either, but I do. So do you. So do most men.... Lord! I wish Siward were back here. He was a good deal of a man, after all, Tom.”
They were unconsciously using the past tense in discussing Siward, as though he were dead, either physically or socially.
“In one way he was always a singularly decent man,” mused O’Hara, walking toward the great marble vestibule and buttoning his overcoat.
“How exactly do you mean?”
“Oh, about women.”
“I believe it, too. If he did take that Vyse girl into the Patroons, it was his limit with her—and, I believe his limit with any woman. He was absurdly decent that way; he was indeed. And now look at the reputation he has! Isn’t it funny? isn’t it, now?”
“What sort of an effect do you suppose all this business is going to have on Siward?”
“It’s had one effect already,” replied Fleetwood, as Plank came up, ready for the street. “Ferrall says he looks sick, and Belwether says he’s going to the devil; but that’s the sort of thing the major is likely to say. By the way, wasn’t there something between that pretty Landis girl and Siward? Somebody—some damned gossiping somebody—talked about it somewhere, recently.”
“I don’t believe that, either,” said Plank, in his heavy, measured, passionless voice, as they descended the steps of the white portico and looked around for a cab.
“As for me, I’ve got to hustle,” observed O’Hara, glancing at his watch. “I’m due to shine at a function about five. Are you coming up-town either of you fellows? I’ll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second Street, Plank.”
“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank: “We’ll drive down town, you and I, and we’ll look up poor old Siward! Shall we? He’s probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?”
O’Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.
“I’d like to, but I don’t think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do that,” said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. “He might misunderstand my going with you—as a liberty—which perhaps I might not have ventured on had he been less—less unfortunate.”
Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him. “See here,” he said, “you are going as a friend of mine—if you care to look at it that way.”
“Thank you,” said Plank; “I should be very glad to go in that way.”
The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces of the young men.
Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so spoken of—a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions, surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting of the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled upward to the roof, dividing the façade equally, and furnishing some relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals of window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained portico.
An old New York house, in the New York sense. Old in another sense, too, where in a rapid land Time outstrips itself, painting, with the antiquity of centuries, the stone and mortar which were new scarce ten years since.
“Nice old family mausoleum,” commented Fleetwood, descending from the hansom, followed by Plank. The latter instinctively mounted the stoop on tiptoe, treading gingerly as one who ventures into precincts unknown but long respected; and as Fleetwood pulled the old-fashioned bell, Plank stole a glance over the façade, where wisps of straw trailed from sparrows’ nests, undisturbed, wedged between plinth and pillar; where, behind the lace pane-screens, shadowy edges of heavy curtains framed the obscurity; where the paint had blistered and peeled from the iron railings, and the marble pillars of the portico glimmered, scarred by frosts of winters long forgotten.
“Cheerful monument,” repeated Fleetwood with a sarcastic nod. Then the door was opened by a very old man wearing the black “swallow-tail” clothes and choker of an old-time butler, spotless, quite immaculate, but cut after a fashion no young man remembers.
“Good evening,” said Fleetwood, entering, followed on tiptoe by Plank.
“Good evening, sir.”… A pause; and in the unsteady voice of age: “Mr. Fleetwood, sir.... Mr.—.” A bow, and the dim eyes peering up at Plank, who stood fumbling for his card-case.
Fleetwood dropped both cards on the salver unsteadily extended. The butler ushered them into a dim room on the right.
“How is Mr. Siward?” asked Fleetwood, pausing on the threshold and dropping his voice.
The old man hesitated, looking down, then still looking away from Fleetwood: “Bravely, sir, bravely, Mr. Fleetwood.”
“The Siwards were always that,” said the young man gently.
“Yes, sir.... Thank you. Mr. Stephen—Mr. Siward,” he corrected, quaintly, “is indisposed, sir. It was a—a great shock to us all, sir!” He bowed and turned away, holding his salver stiffly; and they heard him muttering under his breath, “Bravely, sir, bravely. A—a great shock, sir!… Thank you.”
Fleetwood turned to Plank, who stood silent, staring through the fading light at the faded household gods of the house of Siward. The dim light touched the prisms of a crystal chandelier dulled by age, and edged the carved foliations of the marble mantel, above which loomed a tarnished mirror reflecting darkness. Fleetwood rose, drew a window-shade higher, and nodded toward several pictures; and Plank moved slowly from one to another, peering up at the dead Siwards in their crackled varnish.
“This is the real thing,” observed Fleetwood cynically, “all this Fourth Avenue antique business; dingy, cumbersome, depressing. Good God! I see myself standing it.... Look at that old grinny-bags in a pig-tail over there! To the cellar for his, if this were my house.... We’ve got some, too, in several rooms, and I never go into ‘em. They’re like a scene in a bum play, or like one of those Washington Square rat-holes, where artists eat Welsh-rabbits with dirty fingers. Ugh!”
“I like it,” said Plank, under his breath.
Fleetwood stared, then shrugged, and returned to the window to watch a brand-new French motor-car drawn up before a modern mansion across the avenue.
The butler returned presently, saying that Mr. Siward was at home and would receive them in the library above, as he was not yet able to pass up and down stairs.
“I didn’t know he was as ill as that,” muttered Fleetwood, as he and Plank followed the old man up the creaking stairway. But Gumble, the butler, said nothing in reply.
Siward was sitting in an arm-chair by the window, one leg extended, his left foot, stiffly cased in bandages, resting on a footstool.
“Why, Stephen!” exclaimed Fleetwood, hastening forward, “I didn’t know you were laid up like this!”
Siward offered his hand inquiringly; then his eyes turned toward Plank, who stood behind Fleetwood; and, slowly disengaging his hand from Fleetwood’s sympathetic grip, he offered it to Plank.
“It is very kind of you,” he said. “Gumble, Mr. Fleetwood prefers rye, for some inscrutable reason. Mr. Plank?” His smile was a question.
“If you don’t mind,” said Plank, “I should like to have some tea—that is, if—”
“Tea, Gumble, for two. We’ll tipple in company, Mr. Plank,” he added. “And the cigars are at your elbow, Billy,” with another smile at Fleetwood.
“Now,” said the latter, after he had lighted his cigar, “what is the matter, Stephen?”
Siward glanced at his stiffly extended foot. “Nothing much.” He reddened faintly, “I slipped. It’s only a twisted ankle.”
For a moment or two the answer satisfied Fleetwood, then a sudden, curious flash of suspicion came into his eyes; he glanced sharply at Siward, who lowered his eyes, while the red tint in his hollow cheeks deepened.
Neither spoke for a while. Plank sipped the tea which Wands, the second man, brought. Siward brooded over his cup, head bent. Fleetwood made more noise than necessary with his ice.
“I miss you like hell!” said Fleetwood musingly, measuring out the old rye from the quaint decanter. “Why did you drop the Saddle Club, Stephen?”
“I’m not riding; I have no use for it,” replied Siward.
“You’ve cut out the Proscenium Club, too, and the Owl’s Head, and the Trophy. It’s a shame, Stephen.”
“I’m tired of clubs.”
“Don’t talk that way.”
“Very well, I won’t,” said Siward, smiling. “Tell me what is happening—out there,” he made a gesture toward the window; “all the gossip the newspapers miss. I’ve talked Dr. Grisby to death; I’ve talked Gumble to death; I’ve read myself stupid. What’s going on, Billy?”
So Fleetwood sketched for him a gay cartoon of events, caricaturing various episodes in the social kaleidoscope which might interest him. He gossiped cynically, but without malice, about people they both knew, about engagements, marriages, and divorces, plans and ambitions; about those absent from the metropolis and the newcomers to be welcomed. He commented briefly on the opera, reviewed the newer plays at the theatres, touched on the now dormant gaiety which had made the season at nearby country clubs conspicuous; then drifted into the hunting field, gossiping pleasantly in the vernacular about horses and packs and drag-hunts and stables, and what people thought of the new English hounds of the trial pack, and how the new M. F. H., Maitland Gray, had managed to break so many bones at Southbury.
Politics were touched upon, and they spoke of the possibility of Ferrall going to the Assembly, the sport of boss-baiting having become fashionable among amateurs, and providing a new amusement for the idle rich.
So city, State, and national issues were run through lightly, business conditions noticed, the stock market speculated upon; and presently conversation died out, with a yawn from Fleetwood as he looked into his empty glass at the last bit of ice.
“Don’t do that, Billy,” smiled Siward. “You haven’t discoursed upon art, literature, and science yet, and you can’t go until you’ve adjusted the affairs of the nation for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Art?” yawned Fleetwood. “Oh, pictures? Don’t like ‘em. Nobody ever looks at ‘em except débutantes, who do it out of deviltry, to floor a man at a dinner or a dance.”
“How about literature?” inquired Siward gravely. “Anything doing?”
“Nothing in it,” replied Fleetwood more gravely still. “It’s another feminine bluff—like all that music talk they hand you after the opera.”
“I see. And science?”
“Spider Flynn is matched to meet Kid Holloway; is that what you mean, Stephen? Somebody tumbled out of an air-ship the other day; is that what you mean? And they’re selling scientific jewelry on Broadway at a dollar a quart; is that what you want to know?”
Siward rested his head on his hand with a smile. “Yes, that’s about what I wanted to know, Billy—all about the arts and sciences.... Much obliged. You needn’t stay any longer, if you don’t want to.”
“How soon will you be out?” inquired Fleetwood.
“Out? I don’t know. I shall try to drive to the office to-morrow.”
“Why the devil did you resign from all your clubs? How can I see you if I don’t come here?” began Fleetwood impatiently. “I know, of course, that you’re not going anywhere, but a man always goes to his club. You don’t look well, Stephen. You are too much alone.”
Siward did not answer. His face and body had certainly grown thinner since Fleetwood had last seen him. Plank, too, had been shocked at the change in him—the dark, hard lines under the eyes; the pallor, the curious immobility of the man, save for his fingers, which were always restless, now moving in search of some small object to worry and turn over and over, now nervously settling into a grasp on the arm of his chair.
“How is Amalgamated Electric?” asked Fleetwood, abruptly.
“I think it’s all right. Want to buy some?” replied Siward, smiling.
Plank stirred in his chair ponderously. “Somebody is kicking it to pieces,” he said.
“Somebody is trying to,” smiled Siward.
“Harrington,” nodded Fleetwood. Siward nodded back. Plank was silent.
“Of course,” continued Fleetwood, tentatively, “you people need not worry, with Howard Quarrier back of you.”
Nobody said anything for a while. Presently Siward’s restless hands, moving in search of something, encountered a pencil lying on the table beside him, and he picked it up and began drawing initials and scrolls on the margin of a newspaper; and all the scrolls framed initials, and all the initials were the same, twining and twisting into endless variations of the letters S. L.
“Yes, I must go to the office to-morrow,” he repeated absently. “I am better—in fact I am quite well, except for this sprain.” He looked down at his bandaged foot, then his pencil moved listlessly again, continuing the endless variations on the two letters. It was plain that he was tired.
Fleetwood rose and made his adieux almost affectionately. Plank moved forward on tiptoe, bulky and noiseless; and Siward held out his hand, saying something amiably formal.
“Would you like to have me come again?” asked Plank, red with embarrassment, yet so naively that at first Siward found no words to answer him; then—
“Would you care to come, Mr. Plank?”
“Yes.”
Siward looked at him curiously, almost cautiously. His first impressions of the man had been summed up in one contemptuous word. Besides, barring that, what was there in common between himself and such a type as Plank? He had not even troubled himself to avoid him at Shotover; he had merely been aware of him when Plank spoke to him; never otherwise, except that afternoon beside the swimming pool, when he had made one of his rare criticisms on Plank.
