The Fighting Chance

Let the great syndicates join in battle; they could only slay each other. Let the millions bury their millions; the public, though poorer, could never be the wiser.

Siward, at his desk, the May sunshine pouring over him, sat conning the heaps of typewritten sheets, striving to see between the lines some sign of fortune for his investments, some promise of release from the increasing financial stringency, some chance of justice being done on those high priests who had been performing marvellous tricks upon their altar so that by miracle, mine and thine spelled “ours,” and all the tablets of the law were lettered upside down and hind-side before, like the Black Mass.

Gumble knocked presently. Siward raised his perplexed eyes.

“Miss Page, sir.”

“Oh,” said Siward doubtfully; then, “Ask Miss Page to come up.”

Marion strolled in a moment later, exchanged a vigorous hand shake with Siward, pulled up a chair and dropped into it. She was in riding-habit and boots, faultlessly groomed as usual, her smooth, pale hair sleek in its thick knot, collar and tie immaculate as her gloves.

“Well,” she said, “any news of your ankle, Stephen?”

“I inquired about my ankle,” said Siward, amused, “and they tell me it is better, thank you.”

“Sit a horse pretty soon?” she asked, dropping one leg over the other and balancing the riding-crop across her knee.

“Not for awhile. You have a fine day for a gallop, Marion,” looking askance at the sunshine filtering through the first green leaves of the tree outside his window.

“It’s all right—the day. I’m trying Tom O’Hara’s new mare. They say she’s a little devil. I never saw a devil of a horse—did you? There may be some out West.”

“Don’t break that pretty neck of yours, Marion,” he said.

She lifted her eyes; then, briefly, “No fear.”

“Yes, there is,” he said. “There’s no use looking for trouble in a horse. Women who hunt as you hunt take all that’s legitimately coming to them. Why doesn’t Tom ride his own mare?”

“She rolled on him,” said Marion simply.

“Oh. Is he hurt?”

“Ribs.”

“Well, he’s lucky.”

“Isn’t he! He’ll miss a few drills with his precious squadron, that’s all.”

She was looking about her, preoccupied. “Where are your cigarettes, Stephen? Oh, I see. Don’t try to move—don’t be silly.”

She leaned over the desk, her fresh young face close to his, and reached for the cigarettes. The clean-cut head, the sweetness of her youth and femininity, boyish in its allure, were very attractive to him—more so, perhaps, because of his isolation from the atmosphere of women.

“It’s all very well, Marion, your coming here—and it’s very sweet of you, and I enjoy it immensely,” he said: “but it’s a deuced imprudent thing for you to do, and I feel bound to say so for your sake every time you come.”

She leaned back in her chair and coolly blew a wreath of smoke at him.

“All right,” he said, unconvinced.

“Certainly it’s all right. I’ve done what suited me all my life. This suits me.”

“It suits me, too,” he said, “only I wish you’d tell your mother before somebody around this neighbourhood informs her first.”

“Let ‘em. You’ll be out by that time. Do you think I’m going to tell my mother now and have her stop it?”

“Oh, Marion, you know perfectly well that it won’t do for a girl to ignore first principles. I’m horribly afraid somebody will talk about you.”

“What would you do, then?”

“I?” he asked, disturbed. “What could I do?”

“Why, I suppose,” she said slowly, “you’d have to marry me.”

“Then,” he rejoined with a laugh, “I should think you’d be scared into prudence by the prospect.”

“I am not easily—scared,” she said, looking down.

“Not at that prospect?” he said jestingly.

She looked up at him; and he remembered afterward the poise of her small head, and the slow, clear colour mounting; remembered that it conveyed to him, somehow, a hint of courage and sincerity.

“I am not frightened,” she said gravely.

Gravity fell upon him, too. In this young girl’s eyes there was no evasion. For a long while he had felt vaguely that matters were not perfectly balanced between them. At moments, even, he had felt an indefinable uneasiness in her presence. The situation troubled him, too; and though he had known her from childhood and had long ago learned to discount her vagaries of informality, her manners sans façon, her careless ignoring of convention, and the unembarrassed terms of her speech, his common-sense could not countenance this defiance of social usage, sure to involve even such a privileged girl as she in some unpleasantness.

This troubled him; and now, partly sceptical, yet partly conscious, too, of her very frank liking for himself, he looked at her, perplexed, apprehensive, unwilling to credit her with any deeper meaning than her words expressed.

She had grown pink and restless under his gaze, using her cigarette frequently, and continually flicking the ashes to the floor, until the little finger of her glove was blackened.

But courage characterised her race. It had required more than he knew for her to come into his house; and now that she was there loyalty to her professed principles—that a man and a woman were by right endowed with equal privileges—forced her to face the consequences of her theory in the practise.

She had, with calm face and quivering heart, given him an opening. That was a concession to her essential womanhood and a cowardice on her part; and, lest she turn utterly traitor to herself, she faced him again, cool, quiet, and terror in her heart:

“I’d be very glad to marry you—if you c-cared to,” she said.

“Marion!”

“Yes?”

“Oh—I—it is—of course it’s a joke.”

“No; I’m serious.”

“Serious! Nonsense!”

“Please don’t say that.”

He looked at her, appalled.

“But I—but you don’t love—can’t be in love with me!” he stammered.