The Fighting Chance

And now the river swept into view, a darkly luminous sheet set with reflected stars. Mirrored lights gleamed in it; sudden bright, yellow flashes zigzagged into its sombre depths; the foliage edged it with a deeper gloom over which, on the heights, twinkled the multicoloured lights of Riverside Inn.

Up the broad, gentle grade they sped, curving in and out among the clumps of trees and shrubbery, then on a level, sweeping in a great circle up to the steps of the inn.

Now all about them from the brilliantly lighted verandas the gay tumult broke out like an uproarious welcome after the swift silence of their journey; the stir of jolly people keen for pleasure; the clatter of crockery; the coming and going of waiters, of guests, of hansoms, coupés, victorias, and scores of motor-cars wheeling and turning through the blinding glare of their own headlights.

Somewhere a gipsy orchestra, full of fitful crescendoes and throbbing suspensions of caprice, furnished resonant accompaniment to the joyous clamour; the scent of fountain spray and flowers was in the air.

“I didn’t know you had telephoned for a table,” said Siward, as a head-waiter came up smiling and bowing to Plank. “I confess, in the new excitement of things, I clean forgot it! What a man you are to think of other people!”

Plank reddened again, muttering something evasive, and went forward with Leila.

Sylvia, moving leisurely beside Siward who was walking slowly but confidently without crutches, whispered to him: “I never really liked Mr. Plank before I understood his attitude toward you.”

“He is a man, every inch,” said Siward simply.

“I think that generally includes what men of your sort demand, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“Men of my sort sometimes demand in others what they themselves are lacking in,” said Siward, laughing. “Sylvia, look at this jolly crowd! Look at all those tables! It seems an age since I have done anything of this sort. I feel like a boy of eighteen—the same funny, quickening fascination in me toward everything gay and bright and alive!” He looked around at her, laughingly. “As for you,” he said, “you look about sixteen. You certainly are the most beautiful thing this beautiful world ever saw!”

“Schoolboy courtship!” she mocked him, lingering as he made his slow way through the crowded place. The tint of excitement was in her eyes and cheeks; the echo of it in her low, happy voice. “Where on earth is Mr. Plank? Oh, I see them! They have a table by the balcony rail, in the corner; and it seems to be rather secluded, Stephen, so I shall, of course, expect you to say nothing further about beauty of any species. …Are you a trifle tired? No?… Well, you need not be indignant. I don’t care whether you tumble. Indeed, I don’t believe there is really anything the matter with you—you are walking with the same old careless saunter. Mr. Plank,” as they arrived and seated themselves, “Mr. Siward has just admitted that he uses crutches only because they are ornamental. Leila, isn’t this air delicious? All sorts of people, too, aren’t there, Mr. Plank? Such curious-looking women, some of them—quite pretty, too, in a certain way. Are you hungry, St—Mr. Siward?”

“Are you, St—Mr. Siward?” mimicked Leila promptly.

“I am,” said Siward, laughing at Sylvia’s significant colour and noting Plank’s direct gaze as the waiter filled Leila’s slender-stemmed glass. And “nothing but Apollinaris,” he said coolly, as the waiter approached him; but though his voice was easy enough, a dull patch of colour came out under the cheek-bones.

“That is all I care for, either,” said Sylvia with elaborate carelessness.

Plank and Leila immediately began to make conversation. Siward, his eyes bent on the glass of mineral water at his elbow, looked up in silence at Sylvia questioningly.

There was something in her face he did not quite comprehend. She made as though to speak, looked at him, hesitated, her lovely face eloquent under the impulse. Then, leaning toward him, she said:

“‘And thy ways shall be my ways.’”

“Sylvia, you must not deny yourself, just because I—”

“Let me. It is the happiest thing I have ever done for myself.”

“But I don’t wish it.”

“Ah, but I do,” she said, the low excited laughter scarcely fluttering her lips. “Listen: I never before, in all my life, gave up anything for your sake, only this one little pitiful thing.”

“I won’t let you!” he breathed; “it is nonsense to—”

“You must let me! Am I to be on friendly terms with—with your mortal enemy?” She was still smiling, but now her sensitive mouth quivered suddenly.

He sat silent, considering her, his restless fingers playing with his glass in which the harmless bubbles were breaking.

“I drink to your health, Stephen,” she said under her breath. “I drink to your happiness, too; and—and to your fortune, and to all that you desire from fortune.” And she raised her glass in the star-light, looking over it into his eyes.

“All I desire from fortune?” he repeated significantly.

“All—almost all—”

“No, all,” he demanded.

But she only raised the glass to her lips, still looking at him as she drank.

They became unreasonably gay almost immediately, though the beverage scarcely accounted for the delicate intoxication that seemed to creep into their veins. Yet it was sufficient for Siward to say an amusing thing wittily, for Sylvia to return his lead with all the delightful, unconscious brilliancy that he seemed to inspire in her—as though awaking into real life once more. All that had slumbered in her through the winter and spring, and the long, arid summer now crumbling to the edge of autumn, broke out into a delicate riot of exquisite florescence; the very sounds of her voice, every intonation, every accent, every pause, were charming surprises; her laughter was a miracle, her beauty a revelation.

Leila, aware of it, exchanged glance after glance with Plank. Siward, alternately the leader in it all, then the enchanted listener, bewitched, enthralled, felt care slipping from his shoulders like a mantle, and sadness exhaling from a heart that was beating strongly, steadily, fearlessly—as a heart should beat in the breast of him who has taken at last his fighting chance. He took it now, under her eyes, for honour, for manhood, and for the ideal which had made manhood no longer an empty term muttered in desperation by a sick body, and a mind too sick to control it.

Yes, at last the lifelong battle was on. He knew it. He knew, too, whatever his fate with her or without her, he must always go on with the battle for the safe-guarding of that manhood the consciousness of which she had aroused.

All he knew was that, through the medium of his love for her, whatever in him of the spiritual remained, or had been generated, was now awake, alive, strong, vital, indestructible—an impalpable current flowing from a sane intelligence, through medium of her, back to the eternal truth, returning always, always, to the deathless source from whence it came.

Lingering over the fruit, the champagne breaking in the glasses standing on the table between them, rim to rim, Leila and Plank had fallen into a low, desultory, yet guarded exchange of words and silences.

Sylvia sprang up and pushed her chair into the farther corner against the balcony rail, where no light fell except the radiance of the stars. Here Siward joined her, dragging his chair around so that it faced her as she leaned back, tilted against a shadowy column.

“Is this Bohemianism, Stephen? If it is, I rather like it. Don’t you? You are going to smoke now, aren’t you? Ah, that is delightful!” daintily sniffing the aroma from his cigarette. “It always reminds me of you—there on the cliffs, that first day. Do you remember?—the smoke from your cigarette whirling up in my face?… You say you remember. …Oh, of course there’s nothing else to say when a girl asks you… is there? Oh, I won’t argue with you, if you insist that you do remember. You will not be like any other man if you do, that’s all.... The little things that women remember!… And believe that men remember! It is pitiful in a way. There! I am not going to spill over, and I don’t care a copper penny whether you really do remember or not!… Yes, I do care! …Oh, all women care. It is their first disappointment to learn how much a man can forget and still remember to care for them—a little!… Stephen, I said a little; and that is all that you are permitted to care for me; isn’t it?… Please, don’t. You are deliberately beginning to say things!… Stephen, you silly! you are making love to me!”

In the darkness his hand encountered hers on the wooden rail, and the tremor of the contact silenced her. She freed one finger, then let it rest with its slender fellow-prisoners. There was no use in trying to speak just then—utterly useless her voice in the soft, rounded throat imprisoned by the swelling pulses that tightened and hammered and tightened.

Years seemed to fall away from her, slipping back, back into girlhood, into childhood, drawing not her alone on the gliding tide, but carrying him with her. An exquisite languor held her. Through it vague hints of those splendid visions of her lonely childhood rose, shaping themselves in the starry darkness—the old mystery of dreams, the old, innocent desires, the old simplicity of clairvoyance wherein right was right and wrong, wrong—in all the conventional significance of right and wrong, in all the old-fashioned, undisturbed faith of childhood.

Drifting deliciously, her eyes sometimes meeting his, sometimes lost in the magic of her reverie, she lay there in her chair, her unresisting fingers locked in his.

Odd little thoughts came hovering into her reverie—thoughts that seemed distantly familiar, the direct, unconscious impulses of a child. To feel was once more the only motive for expression; to think fearlessly was once more inherent; to desire was to demand—unlock her lips, naively, and ask for what she wished.

Under the spell, she turned her blue gaze on him, and her lips parted without a tremor:

“What do you offer for what you ask? And do you still ask it? Is it me you are asking me for? Because you love me? And what do you give—love?”

“Weigh it with the—other,” he said.

“I have—often—every moment since I have known you. And what a winter!” Her voice was almost inaudible. “What a winter—without you!”

“That hell is ended for me, too. Sylvia, I know what I ask. And I ask. I know what I offer. Will you take it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He rose, blindly. She stood up, pale, wide-eyed, confronting him, stammering out the bargain:

“I take all—all! every virtue, every vice of you. I give all—all! all I have been, all I am, all I shall be! Is that enough? Oh, if there were only more to give! Stephen, if there were only more!”

Her hands had fallen into his, and they looked each other in the eyes.

Suddenly, through the hush of the enchanted moment, a sullen sound broke—the sound of a voice they knew, threateningly raised, louder and louder, growling, profanely menacing.