The Fighting Chance

Grace Ferrall stood thinking a moment: “That sketch you made proved a great success, didn’t it?” And she laughed under her breath.

“Did it? I thought Mr. Quarrier seemed annoyed—”

“Really? What a muff that cousin of mine is. He’s such a muff, you know, that the very sight of his pointed beard and pompadour hair and his complacency sets me in fidgets to stir him up.”

“I don’t think you’d best use me for the stick next time,” said Siward. “He’s not my cousin you know.”

Mrs. Ferrall shrugged her boyish shoulders: “By the way”—she said curiously—“who was that girl?”

“What girl,” he asked coolly, looking at his hostess, now the very incarnation of delicate mockery with her pretty laughing mouth, her boyish sunburn and freckles.

“You won’t tell me I suppose?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Was she pretty, Stephen?”

“Yes,” he said sulkily; “I wish you wouldn’t—”

“Nonsense! Do you think I’m going to let you off without some sort of confession? If I had time now—but I haven’t. Kemp has business letters: he’ll be furious; so I’ve got to take his cards or we won’t have any pennies to buy gasoline for our adored and shrieking Mercedes.”

She retreated backward with a gay nod of malice, turned to enter the house, and met Sylvia Landis face to face in the hallway.

“You minx!” she whispered; “aren’t you ashamed?”

“Very much, dear. What for?” And catching sight of Siward outside in the starlight, divined perhaps something of her hostess’ meaning, for she laughed uneasily, like a child who winces under a stern eye.

“You don’t suppose for a moment,” she began, “that I have—”

“Yes I do. You always do.”

“Not with that sort of man,” she returned naïvely; “he won’t.”

Mrs. Ferrall regarded her suspiciously: “You always pick out exactly the wrong man to play with—”

They had moved back side by side into the hall, the hostess’ arm linked in the arm of the younger girl.

“The wrong man?” repeated Sylvia, instinctively freeing her arm, her straight brows beginning to bend inward.

“I didn’t mean that—exactly. You know how much I care for his mother—and for him.” The obstinate downward trend of the brows, the narrowing blue gaze signalled mutiny to the woman who knew her so well.

“What is so wrong with Mr. Siward?” she asked.

“Nothing. There was an affair—”

“This spring in town. I know it. Is that all?”

“Yes—for the present,” replied Grace Ferrall uncomfortably; then: “For goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t cross examine me that way! I care a great deal for that boy—”

“So do I. I’ve made him take my dog.”

There was an abrupt pause, and presently Mrs. Ferrall began to laugh.

“I mean it—really,” said Sylvia quietly; “I like him immensely.”

“Dearest, you mean it generously—with your usual exaggeration. You have heard that he has been foolish, and because he’s so young, so likable, every instinct, every impulse in you is aroused to—to be nice to him—”

“And if that were—”

“There is no harm, dear—” Mrs. Ferrall hesitated, her grey eyes softening to a graver revery. Then looking up: “It’s rather pathetic,” she said in a low voice. “Kemp thinks he’s foredoomed—like all the Siwards. It’s an hereditary failing with him,—no, it’s hereditary damnation. Siward after Siward, generation after generation you know—” She bit her lip, thinking a moment. “His grandfather was a friend of my grand-parents, brilliant, handsome, generous, and—doomed! His own father was found dying in a dreadful resort in London where he had wandered when stupefied—a Siward! Think of it! So you see what that outbreak of Stephen’s means to those whose families have been New Yorkers since New York was. It is ominous, it is more than ominous—it means that the master-vice has seized on one more Siward. But I shall never, never admit it to his mother.”

The younger girl sat wide-eyed, silent; the elder’s gaze was upon her, but her thoughts, remote, centred on the hapless mother of such a son.

“Such indulgence was once fashionable; moderation is the present fashion. Perhaps he will fall into line,” said Mrs. Ferrall thoughtfully. “The main thing is to keep him among people, not to drop him. The gregarious may be shamed, but if anything, any incident, happens to drive him outside by himself, if he should become solitary, there’s not a chance in the world for him.... It’s a pity. I know he meant to make himself the exception to the rule—and look! Already one carouse of his has landed him in the daily papers!”

Sylvia flushed and looked up: “Grace, may I ask you a plain question?”

“Yes, child,” she answered absently.

“Has it occurred to you that what you have said about this boy touches me very closely?”

Mrs. Ferrall’s wits returned nimbly from woolgathering, and she shot a startled, inquiring glance at the girl beside her.

“You—you mean the matter of heredity, Sylvia?”

“Yes. I think my uncle Major Belwether chose you as his august mouthpiece for that little sermon on the dangers of heredity—the danger of being ignorant concerning what women of my race had done—before I came into the world they found so amusing.”

“I told you several things,” returned Mrs. Ferrall composedly. “Your uncle thought it best for you to know.”

“Yes. The marriage vows sat lightly upon some of my ancestors, I gather. In fact,” she added coolly, “where the women of my race loved they usually found the way—rather unconventionally. There was, if I understood you, enough of divorce, of general indiscretion and irregularity to seriously complicate any family tree and coat of arms I might care to claim—”

“Sylvia!”

The girl lifted her pretty bare shoulders. “I’m sorry, but could I help it? Very well; all I can do is to prove a decent exception. Very well; I’m doing it, am I not?—practically scared into the first solidly suitable marriage offered—seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands for fear he’d get away and leave me alone with only a queer family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why everybody, in my case, didn’t go about with sanctimonious faces and dolorous mien repeating: ‘Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away. Poor child, she’s doomed! doomed!’”

“Sylvia, I—”

“Yes—why didn’t they? That’s the way they talk about that boy out there!” She swept a rounded arm toward the veranda.

“Yes, but he has already broken loose, while you—”

“So did I—nearly! Had it not been for you, you know well enough I might have run away with that dreadful Englishman at Newport! For I adored him—I did! I did! and you know it. And look at my endless escapes from compromising myself! Can you count them?—all those indiscretions when mere living seemed to intoxicate me that first winter—and only my uncle and you to break me in!”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Ferrall slowly, “you don’t think Mr. Siward is getting what is known as a square deal?”

“No, I don’t. Major Belwether has already hinted—no, not even that—but has somehow managed to dampen my pleasure in Mr. Siward.”

Mrs. Ferrall considered the girl beside her—now very lovely and flushed in her suppressed excitement.