The Fighting Chance Part 69

"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 facon, her careless ignoring of convention, and the unembarra.s.sed 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.

"I am."

Gloved hands tightening on either end of her riding-crop, she bent her knee against it, balancing there, looking straight at him.

"I meant to tell you so," she said, "if you didn't tell me first. So--I was rather--tired waiting. So I've told you."

"It is only a fancy," he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.

"I don't think so, Stephen."

But he could not meet her candour, and he sat, silent, miserable, staring at the papers on his desk.

After a while she drew a deep, even breath, and rose to her feet.

"I'm sorry," she said simply.

"Marion--I never dreamed that--"

"You should dream truer," she said. There was a suspicion of mist in her clear eyes; she turned abruptly to the window and stood there for a few moments, looking down at her brougham waiting in front of the house. "It can't be helped, can it!" she said, turning suddenly.

He found no answer to her question.

"Good-bye," she said, walking to him with outstretched hand; "it's all in a lifetime, Steve, and that's too short for a good, clean friends.h.i.+p like ours to die in. I don't think I'd better come again. Look me up for a gallop when you're fit. And you might drop me a line to say how you're getting on. Is it all right, Stephen?"

"All right," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Their hands tightened in a crus.h.i.+ng clasp; then she swung on her spurred heel and walked out, leaving him haggard, motionless. He heard the front door close, and he swayed forward, dropping his face in his hands, arms half buried among the papers on his desk.

Plank found him there, an hour later, fumbling among the papers, and at first feared that he read in Siward's drawn and sullen face a premonition of the ever-dreaded symptoms.

"Quarrier has telephoned asking for a conference at last," he said abruptly, sitting down beside Siward.

"Well," inquired Siward, "how do you interpret that--favourably?"

"I am inclined to think he is a bit uneasy," said Plank cautiously.

"Harrington made a secret trip to Albany last week. You didn't know that."

"No."

"Well, he did. It looks to me as though there were going to be a ghost of a chance for an investigation. That is how I am inclined to consider Harrington's trip and Quarrier's flag of truce. But--I don't know.

There's nothing definite, of course. You are as conversant with the situation as I am."