Chambers Robert William
The Fighting Chance
CHAPTER V A WINNING LOSER
The week passed swiftly, day after day echoing with the steady fusillade from marsh to covert, from valley to ridge. Guns flashed at dawn and dusk along the flat tidal reaches haunted of black mallard and teal; the smokeless powder cracked through alder swamp and tangled windfall where the brown grouse burst away into noisy blundering flight; where the woodcock, wilder now, shrilled skyward like feathered rockets, and the big northern hares, not yet flecked with snowy patches of fur, loped off into swamps to the sad undoing of several of the younger setters.
There was a pheasant drive at Black Fells to which the Ferralls’ guests were bidden by Beverly Plank—a curious scene, where ladies and gentlemen stood on a lawn, backed by an army of loaders and gun-bearers, while another improvised army of beaters drove some thousands of frightened, bewildered, homeless foreign pheasants at the guns. And the miserable aliens that escaped the guns were left to perish in the desolation of a coming winter which they were unfitted to withstand.
So the first week of the season sped gaily, ending on Saturday with a heavy flight of northern woodcock and an uproarious fusillade among the silver birches.
Once Ferrall loaded two motor cars with pioneers for a day beyond his own boundaries; and one day was spent ingloriously with the beagles; but otherwise the Shotover estate proved more than sufficient for good bags or target practice, as the skill of the sportsmen developed.
Lord Alderdene, good enough on snipe and cock, was driven almost frantic by the ruffed grouse; Voucher did better for a day or two, and then lost the knack; Marion Page attended to business in her cool and thorough style, and her average on the gun-room books was excellent, and was also adorned with clever pen-and-ink sketches by Siward.
Leroy Mortimer had given up shooting and established himself as a haunter of cushions in sunny corners. Tom O’Hara had gone back to Lenox; Mrs. Vendenning to Hot Springs. Beverly Plank, master of Black Fells, began to pervade the house after a tentative appearance; and he and Major Belwether pottered about the coverts, usually after luncheon—the latter doing little damage with his fowling-piece, and nobody knew how much with his gossiping tongue. Quarrier appeared in the field methodically, shot with judgment, taking no chances for a brilliant performance which might endanger his respectable average. As for the Page boys, they kept the river ducks stirring whenever Eileen Shannon and Rena Bonnesdel could be persuaded to share the canoes with them. Otherwise they haunted the vicinity of those bored maidens, suffering snubs sorrowfully, but persistently faithful. They were a great nuisance in the evening, especially as their sister did not permit them to lose more than ten dollars a day at cards.
Cards—that is Bridge and Preference—ruled as usual; and the latter game being faster suited Mortimer and Ferrall, but did not aid Siward toward recouping his Bridge losses.
Noticing this, late in the week, Major Belwether kindly suggested Klondyke for Siward’s benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring rather to “carry” Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into bankruptcy under the sheer deadly hazard of Klondyke.
Two matters occupied him; since “cup day” he had never had another opportunity to see Sylvia Landis alone; that was the first matter. He had touched neither wine nor spirits nor malt since the night Ferrall had found him prone, sprawling in a stupor on his disordered bed. That was the second matter, and it occupied him, at times required all his attention, particularly when the physical desire for it set in, steadily, mercilessly, mounting inexorably like a tide.... But, like the tide, it ebbed at last, particularly when a sleepless night had exhausted him.
He had gone back to his shooting again after a cool review of the ethics involved. It even amused him to think that the whimsical sermon delivered him by a girl who had cleverness enough to marry many millions, with Quarrier thrown in, could have so moved him to sentimentality. He had ceded the big cup of antique silver to Quarrier, too—a matter which troubled him little, however, as in the irritation of the reaction he had been shooting with the brilliancy of a demon; and the gun-room books were open to any doubting guests’ inspection.
Time, therefore, was never heavy on his hands, save when the tide threatened—when at night he stirred and awoke, conscious of its crawling advance, aware of its steady mounting menace. Moments at table, when the aroma of wine made him catch his breath, moments in the gun-room redolent of spicy spirits; a maddening volatile fragrance clinging to the card-room, too! Yes, the long days were filled with such moments for him.
But afield the desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded—the long hours, lying there tense, stark-eyed, sickened with desire.
As for Sylvia, she and Grace Ferrall had taken to motoring, driving away into the interior or taking long flights north and south along the coast. Sometimes they took Quarrier, sometimes, when Mrs. Ferrall drove, they took in ballast in the shape of a superfluous Page boy and a girl for him. Once Grace Ferrall asked Siward to join them; but no definite time being set, he was scarcely surprised to find them gone when he returned from a morning on the snipe meadows. And Sylvia, leagues away by that time, curled up in the tonneau beside Grace Ferrall, watched the dark pines flying past, cheeks pink, eyes like stars, while the rushing wind drove health into her and care out of her—cleansing, purifying, overwhelming winds flowing through and through her, till her very soul within her seemed shining through the beauty of her eyes. Besides, she had just confessed.
“He kissed you!” repeated Grace Ferrall incredulously.
“Yes—a number of times. He was silly enough to do it, and I let him.”
“Did—did he say—”
“I don’t know what he said; I was all nerves—confused—scared—a perfect stick in fact!… I don’t believe he’d care to try again.”
Then Mrs. Ferrall deliberately settled down in her furs to extract from the girl beside her every essential detail; and the girl, frank at first, grew shy and silent—reticent enough to worry her friend into a silence which lasted a long while for a cheerful little matron of her sort.
Presently they spoke of other matters—matters interesting to pretty women with much to do in the coming winter between New York, Hot Springs, and Florida; surmises as to dinners, dances, and the newcomers in the younger sets, and the marriages to be arranged or disarranged, and the scandals humanity is heir to, and the attitude of the bishop toward divorce.
And the new pavillion to be built for Saint Berold’s Hospital, and the various states of the various charities each was interested in, and the chances of something new at the opera, and the impossibility of saving Fifth Avenue from truck traffic, and the increasing importance of Washington as a social centre, and the bad manners of a foreign ambassador, and the better manners of another diplomat, and the lack of discrimination betrayed by our ambassador to a certain great Power in choosing people for presentation at court, and the latest unhappy British-American marriage, and the hopelessness of the French as decent husbands, and the recent accident to the Claymores’ big yacht, and the tendency of well-born young men toward politics, and the anything but distinguished person of Lord Alderdene, which was, however, vastly superior to the demeanour and person of others of his rank recently imported, and the beauty of Miss Caithness, and the chance that Captain Voucher had if Leila Mortimer would let him alone, and the absurdity of the Page twins, and the furtive coarseness of Leroy Mortimer and his general badness, and the sadness of Leila Mortimer’s lot when she had always been in love with other people,—and a little scandalous surmise concerning Tom O’Hara, and the new house on Seventy-ninth Street building for Mrs. Vendenning, and that charming widow’s success at last year’s horse show—and whether the fashion of the function was reviving, and whether Beverly Plank had completely broken into the social sets he had besieged so long, or whether a few of the hunting and shooting people merely permitted him to drive pheasants for them, and why Katharyn Tassel made eyes at him, having sufficient money of her own to die unwed, and—and—and then, at last, as the big motor car swung in a circle at Wenniston Cross-Roads, and poked its brass and lacquer muzzle toward Shotover, the talk swung back to Siward once more—having travelled half the world over to find him.
“He is the sweetest fellow with his mother,” sighed Grace; “and that counts heavily with me. But there’s trouble ahead for her—sorrow and trouble enough for them both, if he is a true Siward.”
“Heredity again!” said Sylvia impatiently. “Isn’t he man enough to win out? I’ll bet you he settles down, marries, and—”
“Marries? Not he! How many girls do you suppose have believed that—were justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and nice ways of telling you how much he liked you? He had a desperate affair with Mrs. Mortimer—innocent enough I fancy. He’s had a dozen within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn’t see. As for Marion Page, the girl had been on the edge of loving him for years! You laugh? But you are wrong; she is in love with him now as much as she ever can be with anybody.”
“You mean—”
“Yes I do. Hadn’t you suspected it?”
And as Sylvia had suspected it she remained silent.
“If any woman in this world could keep him to the mark, she could,” continued Mrs. Ferrall. “He’s a perfect fool not to see how she cares for him.”
Sylvia said: “He is indeed.”
“It would be a sensible match, if she cared to risk it, and if he would only ask her. But he won’t.”
“Perhaps,” ventured Sylvia, “she’ll ask him. She strikes me as that sort. I do not mean it unkindly—only Marion is so tailor-made and cigaretteful—”
Mrs. Ferrall looked up at her.
“Did he propose to you?”
“Yes—I think so.”
“Then it’s the first time for him. He finds women only too willing to play with him as a rule, and he doesn’t have to be definite. I wonder what he meant by being so definite with you?”
“I suppose he meant marriage,” said Sylvia serenely; yet there was the slightest ring in her voice; and it amused Mrs. Ferrall to try her a little further.
“Oh, you think he really intended to commit himself?”
“Why not?” retorted Sylvia, turning red. “Do you think he found me over-willing, as you say he finds others?”
“You were probably a new sensation for him,” inferred Mrs. Ferrall musingly. “You mustn’t take him seriously, child—a man with his record. Besides, he has the same facility with a girl that he has with everything else he tries; his pen—you know how infernally clever he is; and he can make good verse, and write witty jingles, and he can carry home with him any opera and play it decently, too, with the proper harmonies. Anything he finds amusing he is clever with—dogs, horses, pen, brush, music, women”—that was too malicious, for Sylvia had flushed up painfully, and Grace Ferrall dropped her gloved hand on the hand of the girl beside her: “Child, child,” she said, “he is not that sort; no decent man ever is unless the girl is too.”
Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: “He found me anything but difficult—if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t. Please don’t be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an opening. There’s really only one thing that worries me about it all.”
“What is that?” asked Sylvia without interest.
“It’s that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being useless, might be unwise.”
“I am… tempted.”
“Not seriously!”
“I don’t know.” She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. “Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I’m glad I’ve said it. The things he knows about and doesn’t know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I’ve said it; I’m glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice at Lenox. The truth is, he’s a horrid disappointment—and I’m bored to death at my brilliant prospects.”
The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits, she said in a subdued voice:
“Of course it’s my meddling.”
“Of course it isn’t. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible—which made the expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate.”
She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the revolt the more ominous.
“You don’t think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?”
“It is not that,” said the girl almost sullenly.
“But—”
“I’m afraid of myself—call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let a man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard, what might I do—”
“You are not that sort!” said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. “Don’t be exotic, Sylvia.”
“How do you know—if I don’t know? Most girls are kissed; I—well I didn’t expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don’t know what I am or shall be. I’m unsafe; I know that much.”
“It’s moral and honest to realize it,” said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; “and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn’t meddled; I’m meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don’t give Howard his congé for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the impulse of the moment.”
“I know it.”
“You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately, intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can’t stand it—talk the thing over with me again,” she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for it had been her heart’s desire to wed Sylvia’s beauty and Quarrier’s fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier, as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!—oh, vexation!—the neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour about her ears.
“Things never happen in real life,” she observed plaintively; “only romances have plots where things work out. But we people in real life, we just go on and on in a badly constructed, plotless sort of way with no villains, no interesting situations, no climaxes, no ensemble. No, we grow old and irritable and meaner and meaner; we lose our good looks and digestions, and we die in hopeless discord with the unity required in a dollar and a half novel by a master of modern fiction.”
“But some among us amass fortunes,” suggested Sylvia, laughing.
“But we don’t live happy ever after. Nobody ever had enough money in real life.”
“Some fall in love,” observed Sylvia, musing.
“And they are not content, silly!”
“Why? Because nobody ever had enough love in real life,” mocked Sylvia.
“You have said it, child. That is the malady of the world, and nobody knows it until some pretty ninny like you babbles the truth. And that is why we care for those immortals in romance, those fortunate lovers who, in fable, are given and give enough of love; those magic shapes in verse and tale whose hearts are satisfied when the mad author of their being inks his last period and goes to dinner.”
Sylvia laughed awhile, then, chin on wrist, sat musing there, muffled in her furs.
“As for love, I think I should be moderate in the asking, in the giving. A little—to flavour routine—would be sufficient for me I fancy.”
“You know so much about it,” observed Mrs. Ferrall ironically.
“I am permitted to speculate, am I not?”
“Certainly. Only speculate in sound investments, dear.”
“How can you make a sound investment in love? Isn’t it always sheerest speculation?”
“Yes, that is why simple matrimony is usually a safer speculation than love.”
“Yes, but—love isn’t matrimony.”
“Match that with its complementary platitude and you have the essence of modern fiction,” observed Mrs. Ferrall. “Love is a subject talked to death, which explains the present shortage in the market I suppose. You’re not in love and you don’t miss it. Why cultivate an artificial taste for it? If it ever comes naturally, you’ll be astonished at your capacity for it, and the constant deterioration in quantity and quality of the visible supply. Goodness! my epigrams make me yawn—or is it age and the ill humour of the aged when the porridge spills over on the family cat?”
“I am the cat, I suppose,” asked Sylvia, laughing.
“Yes you are—and you go tearing away, back up, fur on end, leaving me by the fire with no porridge and only the aroma of the singeing fur to comfort me.... Still there’s one thing to comfort me.”
“What?”
“Kitty-cats come back, dear.”
“Oh, I suppose so.... Do you believe I could induce him to wear his hair any way except pompadour?… and, dear, his beard is so dreadfully silky. Isn’t there anything he could take for it?”
“Only a razor I’m afraid. Those long, thick, soft, eyelashes of his are ominous. Eyes of that sort ruin a man for my taste. He might just as reasonably wear my hat.”
“But he can’t follow the fashions in eyes,” laughed Sylvia. “Oh, this is atrocious of us—it is simply horrible to sit here and say such things. I am cold-blooded enough as it is—material enough, mean, covetous, contemptible—”
“Dear!” said Grace Ferrall mildly, “you are not choosing a husband; you are choosing a career. To criticise his investments might be bad taste; to be able to extract what amusement you can out of Howard is a direct mercy from Heaven. Otherwise you’d go mad, you know.”
“Grace! Do you wish me to marry him?”
“What is the alternative, dear?”
“Why, nothing—self-respect, dowdiness, and peace.”
“Is that all?”
“All I can see.”
“Not Stephen Siward?”
“To marry? No. To enjoy, yes.... Grace, I have had such a good time with him; you don’t know! He is such a boy—sometimes; and I—I believe that I am rather good for him.... Not that I’d ever again let him do that sort of thing.... Besides, his curiosity is quenched; I am the sort he supposed. Now he’s found out he will be nice.... It’s been days since I’ve had a talk with him. He tried to, but I wouldn’t. Besides, the major has said nasty things about him when Howard was present; nothing definite, only hints, smiling silences, innuendoes on the verge of matters rather unfit; and I had nothing definite to refute. I could not even appear to understand or notice—it was all done in such a horridly vague way. But it only made me like him; and no doubt that actress he took to the Patroons is better company than he finds in nine places out of ten among his own sort.”
“Oh,” said Grace Ferrall slowly, “if that is the way you feel, I don’t see why you shouldn’t play with Mr. Siward whenever you like.”
“Nor I. I’ve been a perfect fool not to.... Howard hates him.”
“How do you know?”
“What a question! A woman knows such things. Then, you remember that caricature—so dreadfully like Howard? Howard has no sense of humour; he detests such things. It was the most dreadful thing that Mr. Siward could have done to him.”
“Meddled again!” groaned Grace. “Doesn’t Howard know that I did that?”
“Yes, but nothing I can say alters his conviction that the likeness was intended. You know it was a likeness! And if Mr. Siward had not told me that it was not intended, I should never have believed it to be an accident.”
After a prolonged silence Sylvia said, overcarelessly: “I don’t quite understand Howard. With me anger lasts but a moment, and then I’m open to overtures for peace… I think Howard’s anger lasts.”
“It does,” said Grace. “He was a muff as a boy—a prig with a prig’s memory under all his shallow, showy surface. I’m frank with you; I never could take my cousin either respectfully or seriously, but I’ve known him to take his own anger so seriously that years after he has visited it upon those who had really wronged him. And he is equipped for retaliation if he chooses. That fortune of his reaches far.... Not that I think him capable of using such a power to satisfy a mere personal dislike. Howard has principles, loads of them. But—the weapon is there.”
“Is it true that Mr. Siward is interested in building electric roads?” asked Sylvia curiously.
“I don’t know, child. Why?”
“Nothing. I wondered.”
“Why?”
“Mr. Mortimer said so.”
“Then I suppose he is. I’ll ask Kemp if you like. Why? Isn’t it all right to build them?”
“I suppose so. Howard is in it somehow. In fact Howard’s company is behind Mr. Siward’s, I believe.”
Grace Ferrall turned and looked at the girl beside her, laughing outright.
“Oh, Howard doesn’t do mysterious financial things to nice young men because they draw impudent pictures of him running after his dog—or for any other reason. That, dear, is one of those skilfully developed portions of an artistic plot; and plots exist only in romance. So do villains; and besides, my cousin isn’t one. Besides that, if Howard is in that thing, no doubt Kemp and I are too. So your nice young man is in very safe company.”
“You draw such silly inferences,” said Sylvia coolly; but there was a good deal of colour in her cheeks; and she knew it and pulled her big motor veil across her face, fastening it under her chin. All of which amused Grace Ferrall infinitely until the subtler significance of the girl’s mental processes struck her, sobering her own thoughts. Sylvia, too, had grown serious in her preoccupation; and the partie-Ã -deux terminated a few minutes later in a duet of silence over the tea-cups in the gun-room.
The weather had turned warm and misty; one of those sudden sea-coast changes had greyed the blue in the sky, spreading a fine haze over land and water, effacing the crisp sparkle of the sea, dulling the westering sun.
A few moments later Sylvia, glancing over her shoulder, noticed that a fine misty drizzle had clouded the casements. That meant that her usual evening stroll on the cliffs with Quarrier, before dressing for dinner, was off. And she drew a little breath of unconscious relief as Marion Page walked in, her light woollen shooting-jacket, her hat, shoes, and the barrels of the fowling-piece tucked under her left arm-pit, all glimmering frostily with powdered rain drops.
She said something to Grace Ferrall about the mist promising good point-shooting in the morning, took the order book from a servant, jotted down her request to be called an hour before sunrise, filled in the gun-room records with her score—the species and number bagged, and the number of shells used—and accepting the tea offered, drew out a tiny cigarette-case of sweet-bay wood heavily crusted with rose-gold.
“With whom were you shooting?” asked Grace, as Marion dropped one well-shaped leg over the other and wreathed her delicately tanned features in smoke.
“Stephen Siward and Blinky. They’re at it yet, but I had some letters to write.” She glanced leisurely at Sylvia and touched the ash-tray with the whitening end of her cigarette. “That dog you let Mr. Siward have is a good one. I’m taking him to Jersey next week for the cock-shooting.”
Sylvia returned her calm gaze blankly.
An unreasonable and disagreeable shock had passed through her.
“My North Carolina pointers are useless for close work,” observed Marion indifferently; and she leaned back, watching the blue smoke curling upward from her cigarette.
Sylvia, distrait, but with downcast eyes on fire under the fringed lids, was thinking of the cheque Siward had given her for Sagamore. The transaction, for her, had been a business one on the surface only. She had never meant to use the cheque. She had laid it away among a few letters, relics, pleasant souvenirs of the summer. To her the affair had been softened by a delicate hint of intimacy,—the delight he was to take in something that had once been hers had given her a faint taste of the pleasure of according pleasure to a man. And this is what he had done!
The drizzle had turned to fog, through which rain was now pelting the cliffs; people were returning from the open; a motor-car came whizzing into the drive, and out of it tumbled Rena and Eileen and the faithful Pages, the girls irritable and ready for tea, and the boys like a pair of eager, wagging, setter puppies, pleased with everything and everybody, utterly oblivious to the sombre repose brooding above the tea-table.
Their sister calmly refused them the use of her cigarettes. Eileen presented her pretty shoulder, Rena nearly yawned at them, but, nothing dampened, they recounted a number of incidents with reciprocal enthusiasm to Sylvia, who was too inattentive to smile, and to Grace Ferrall, who smiled the more sweetly through sheer inattention.
Then Alderdene came in, blinking a greeting through his foggy goggles, sloppy, baggy, heavy shoes wheezing, lingered in the vicinity long enough to swallow his “peg” and acquire a disdainful opinion of his shooting from Marion, and then took himself off, leaving the room noisy with his laugh, which resembled the rattle of a startled kingfisher.
In ones and twos the guests reported as the dusk-curtained fog closed in on Shotover. Quarrier came, dry as a chip under his rain-coat, but his silky beard was wet with rain, and moisture powdered his long, soft eyelashes and white skin; and his flexible, pointed fingers, as he drew off his gloves, seemed startling in their whiteness through the gathering gloom.
“I suppose our evening walk is out of the question,” he said, standing by Sylvia, who had nodded a greeting and then turned her head rather hastily to see who had entered the room. It was Siward, only a vague shape in the gloom, but perfectly recognisable to her. At the same moment Marion Page rose leisurely and strolled toward the billiard-room.
“Our walk?” repeated Sylvia absently—“it’s raining, you know.” Yet only a day or two ago she had walked to church with Siward through the rain, the irritated Major feeling obliged to go with them. Her eyes followed Siward’s figure, suddenly dark against the door of the lighted billiard-room, then brilliantly illuminated, as he entered, nodded acceptance to Mortimer’s invitation, and picked up the cue just laid aside by Agatha Caithness, who had turned to speak to Marion. Then Mortimer’s bulk loomed nearer; voices became gay and animated in the billiard-room. Siward’s handsome face was bent toward Agatha Caithness in gay challenge; Mortimer’s heavy laugh broke out; there came the rattle of pool-balls, and the dull sound of cue-butts striking the floor; then, crack! and the game began, with Marion Page and Siward fighting Mortimer and Miss Caithness for something or other.
Quarrier had been speaking for some time before Sylvia became aware of it—something about a brisk walk in the morning somewhere; and she nodded impatiently, watching Marion’s supple waist-line as she bent far over the illuminated table for a complicated shot at the enemy.
His fiancée’s inattention was not agreeable to Quarrier. A dozen things had happened since his arrival which had not been agreeable to him: her failure to meet him at the Fells Crossing, and the reason for her failure; and her informal acquaintance with Siward, whose presence at Shotover he had not looked for, and her sudden intimacy with the man he had never particularly liked, and whom within six months he had come to detest and to avoid.
These things—the outrageous liberty Siward had permitted himself in caricaturing him, the mortifying caprice of Sylvia for Siward on the day of the Shotover cup-drive—had left indelible impressions in a cold and rather heavy mind, slow to waste effort in the indulgence of any vital emotion.
In a few years indifference to Siward had changed to passive disapproval; that, again, to an emotionless dislike; and when the scandal at the Patroons Club occurred, for the first time in his life he understood what it was to fear the man he disliked. For if Siward had committed the insane imprudence which had cost him his title to membership, he had also done something, knowingly or otherwise, which awoke in Quarrier a cold, slow fear; and that fear was dormant, but present, now, and it, for the time being, dictated his attitude and bearing toward the man who might or might not be capable of using viciously a knowledge which Quarrier believed that he must possess.
For that reason, when it was not possible to avoid Siward, his bearing toward him was carefully civil; for that reason he dampened Major Belwether’s eagerness to tell everybody all he knew about the shamelessly imprudent girl who had figured with Siward in the scandal, but whose identity the press had not discovered.
Silence was always desirable to Quarrier; silence concerning all matters was a trait inborn and congenially cultivated to a habit by him in every affair of life—in business, in leisure, in the methodical pursuits of such pleasures as a limited intellect permitted him, in personal and family matters, in public questions and financial problems.
He listened always, but never invited confidences; he had no opinion to express when invited. And he became very, very rich.
And over it all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said “Good morning,” when declining or accepting invitations, when taking his leave, when meeting anybody of any financial importance, and when everybody except himself had begun to laugh in a theatre or a drawing-room. This limit to any personal manifestation he considered a generous one. And perhaps it was.
