Robert Chambers - The Fighting Chance

“Miles,” he said, “my nerve is gone. Such things happen. I’m all in. Come over here, my friend, and look at the sun with me.”

The discomfited keeper obeyed.

“Where ought that refulgent luminary to scintilate when I face Osprey Ledge?”

“Sir?”

“The sun. How do I hold it?”

“On the p’int of your right shoulder, sir.—You ain’t quittin’, Mr. Siward, sir!” anxiously; “that Shotover Cup is easy yours, sir!” eagerly; “Wot’s a miss on a old drummer, Mr. Siward? Wot’s twice over-shootin’ cock, sir, when a blind dropper can see you are the cleanest, fastest, hard-shootin’ shot in the null county!”

But Siward shook his head with an absent glance at the dog, and motioned the astonished keeper forward.

“Line the easiest trail for us,” he said; “I think we are already a trifle tired. Twigs will do in short cover; use a hatchet in the big timber.... And go slow till we join you.”

And when the unwilling and perplexed keeper had started, Siward, unlocking his gun, drew out the smooth yellow cartridges and pocketed them.

Sylvia looked up as the sharp metallic click of the locked breech rang out in the silence.

“Why do you do this, Mr. Siward?”

“I don’t know; really I am honest; I don’t know.”

“It could not be because I—”

“No, of course not,” he said, too seriously to reassure her.

“Mr. Siward,” in quick displeasure.

“Yes?”

“What you do for your amusements cannot concern me.”

“Right as usual,” he said so gaily that a reluctant smile trembled on her lips.

“Then why have you done this? It is unreasonable—if you don’t feel as I do about killing things that are having a good time in the world.”

He stood silent, absently looking at the fowling-piece cradled in his left arm. “Shall we sit here a moment and talk it over?” he suggested listlessly.

Her blue gaze swept him; his vague smile was indifferently bland.

“If you are determined not to shoot, we might as well start for Osprey Ledge,” she suggested; “otherwise, what reason is there for our being here together, Mr. Siward?”

Awaiting his comment—perhaps expecting a counter-proposition—she leaned against the tree beside which he stood. And after a while, as his absent-minded preoccupation continued:

“Do you think the leaves are dry enough to sit on?”

He slipped off his shooting-coat and placed it at the base of the tree. She waited for a second, uncertain how to meet an attitude which seemed to take for granted matters which might, if discussed, give her at least the privilege of yielding. However, to discuss a triviality meant forcing emphasis where none was necessary. She seated herself; and, as he continued to remain standing, she stripped off her shooting-gloves and glanced up at him inquiringly: “Well, Mr. Siward, I am literally at your feet.”

“Which redresses the balance a little,” he said, finding a place near her.

“That is very nice of you. Can I always count on you for civil platitudes when I stir you out of your day-dreams?”

“You can always count on stirring me without effort.”

“No, I can’t. Nobody can. You are never to be counted on; you are too absent-minded. Like a veil you wrap yourself in a brown study, leaving everybody outside to consider the pointed flattery of your withdrawal. What happens to you when you are inside that magic veil? Do you change into anything interesting?”

He sat there, chin propped on his linked fingers, elbows on knees; and, though there was always the hint of a smile in his pleasant eyes, always the indefinable charm of breeding in voice and attitude, something now was lacking. And after a moment she concluded that it was his attention. Certainly his wits were wool-gathering again; his eyes, edged with the shadow of a smile, saw far beyond her, far beyond the sunlit shadows where they sat.

In his preoccupation she had found him negatively attractive. She glanced at him now from time to time, her eyes returning always to the beauty of the subdued light where all about them silver-stemmed birches clustered like slim shining pillars, crowned with their autumn canopy of crumpled gold.

“Enchantment!” she said under her breath. “Surely an enchanted sleeper lies here somewhere.”

“You,” he observed, “unawakened.”

“Asleep? I?” She looked around at him. “You are the dreamer here. Your eyes are full of dreaming even now. What is your desire?”

He leaned on one arm, watching her; she had dropped her ungloved hand, searching among the newly fallen gold of the birch leaves drifted into heaps. On the third finger a jewel glittered; he saw it, conscious of its meaning—but his eyes followed the hand idly heaping up autumn gold, a white slim hand, smoothly fascinating. Then the little, restless hand swept near to his, almost touching it; and then instinctively he took it in his own, curiously, lifting it a little to consider its nearer loveliness. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of it, perhaps it was sheer amazement that left her hand lying idly relaxed like a white petalled blossom in his. His bearing, too, was so blankly impersonal that for a moment the whole thing appeared inconsequent. Then, as her hand lay there, scarcely imprisoned, their eyes encountered,—and hers, intensely blue now, considered him without emotion, studied him impersonally without purpose, incuriously acquiescent, indifferently expectant.

After a little while the consciousness of the contact disconcerted her; she withdrew her fingers with an involuntary shiver.

“Is there no chance?” he asked.

Perplexed with her own emotion, the meaning of his low-voiced question at first escaped her; then, like its own echo, came ringing back in her ears, re-echoed again as he repeated it:

“Is there no chance for me, Miss Landis?”

The very revulsion of self-possession returning chilled her; then anger came, quick and hot; then pride. She deliberated, choosing her words coolly enough: “What chance do you mean, Mr. Siward?”

“A fighting chance. Can you give it to me?”

“A fighting chance? For what?”—very low, very dangerous.

“For you.”

Then, in spite of her, her senses became unsteady; a sudden ringing confusion seemed to deafen her, through which his voice, as if very far away, sounded again:

“Men who are worth a fighting chance ask for it sometimes—but take it always. I take it.”

Her pallor faded under the flood of bright colour; the blue of her eyes darkened ominously to velvet.

“Mr. Siward,” she said, very distinctly and slowly, “I am not—even—sorry—for you.”

“Then my chance is desperate indeed,” he retorted coolly.

“Chance! Do you imagine—” Her anger choked her.

“Are you not a little hard?” he said, paling under his tan. “I supposed women dismissed men more gently—even such a man as I am.”

For a full minute she strove to comprehend.

“Such a man as you!” she repeated vaguely; “you mean—” a crimson wave dyed her skin to the temples and she leaned toward him in horror-stricken contrition; “I didn’t mean that, Mr. Siward! I—I never thought of that! It had no weight, it was not in my thoughts. I meant only that you had assumed what is unwarranted—that you—your question humiliated me, knowing that I am engaged—knowing me so little—so—”

“Yes, I knew everything. Ask yourself why I risk everything to say this to you? There can be only one answer.”

Then after a long silence: “Have I ever—” she began tremblingly—“ever by word or look—”

“No.”

“Have I even—”

“No. I’ve simply discovered how I feel. That’s what I was dreaming about when you asked me. I was afraid I might do this too soon; but I meant to do it anyway before it became too late.”