The Fighting Chance

by Robert W. Chambers

The cigarette he had lighted went out. He had bitten into it and twisted it so roughly that it presently crumbled; and he threw the rags of it into a metal bowl, locking his jaws in silence. For the night threatened to be a bad one for him. A heavy fragrance from his neighbour's wine-glass at dinner had stirred up what had for a time lain dormant; and, by accident, something—some sweetmeat he had tasted—was saturated in brandy.

Now, his restlessness at the prospect of a blank night had quickened to uneasiness, with a hint of fever tinting his skin, but, as yet, the dull ache in his body was scarcely more than a premonition.

He had his own devices for tiding him over such periods—reading, tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here, to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs; and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, physically, to make smoking endurable.

Were it not for a half-defiant, half-sullen dread of the coming night, he might have put it from his mind in spite of the slowly increasing nervous tension and the steady dull consciousness of desire. He drew another Sirdar from his case and sat staring at the rain-smeared night, twisting the frail fragrant cigarette to bits between his fingers.

After a while he began to walk monotonously to and fro the length of the corridor, like a man timing his steps to the heavy ache of body or mind. Once he went as far as his own door, entered, and stepping to the wash-basin, let the icy water run over hands and wrists. This sometimes helped to stimulate and soothe him; it did now, for a while—long enough to change the current of his thoughts to the girl he had hoped might have the imprudence to return for a tryst, innocent enough in itself, yet unconventional and unreasonable enough to prove attractive to them both.

Probably she wouldn't come; she had kept her fluffy skirts clear of him since Cup Day—which simply corroborated his vague estimate of her. Had she done the contrary, his estimate would have been the same; for, unconsciously but naturally, he had prejudged her. A girl who could capture Quarrier at full noontide, and in the face of all Manhattan, was a girl equipped for anything she dared—though she was probably too clever to dare too much; a girl to be interested in, to amuse and be amused by; a girl to be reckoned with. His restlessness and his fever subdued by the icy water, he stood drying his hands, thinking, coolly, how close he had come to being seriously in love with this young girl, whose attitude was always a curious temptation, whose smile was a charming provocation, whose youth and beauty were to him a perpetual challenge. He admitted to himself, calmly, that he had never seen a woman he cared as much for; that for the brief moment of his declaration he had known an utterly new emotion, which inevitably must have become the love he had so quietly declared it to be. He had never before felt as he felt then, cared as he cared then. Anything had been possible for him at that time—any degree of love, any devotion, any generous renunciation. Clear-sighted, master of himself, he saw love before him, and knew it when he saw it; recognised it, was ready for it, offered it, emboldened by her soft hands so eloquent in his.

And in his arms he held it for an instant, he thought, spite of the sudden inertia, spite of the according of cold lips and hands still colder, relaxed, inert; held it until he doubted. That was all; he had been wise to doubt such sudden miracles as that. She, consummate and charming, had soon set him right. And, after all, she liked him; and she had been sure enough of herself to permit the impulse of a moment to carry her with him—a little way, a very little way—merely to the formal symbol of a passion the germ of which she recognised in him.

Then she had become intelligent again, with a little laughter, a little malice, a becoming tint of hesitation and confusion; all the sense, all the arts, all the friendly sweetness of a woman thorough in training, schooled in self-possession, clear enough to be audacious and perverse without danger to herself, to the man, or to the main chance.

Standing there alone in his lighted room, he wondered whether, had her trained and inbred policy been less precise, less worldly, she might have responded to such a man as he. Perfectly conscious that he had been capable of loving her; aware, too, that his experience had left him on that borderland only through his cool refusal to cross it and face a hopeless battle already lost, he leisurely and mentally took the measure of his own state of mind, and found all well, all intact; found himself still master of his affections, and probably clear-minded enough to remain so under the circumstances.

To such a man as he, impulse to love, capacity to love, did not mean instant capsizing with a flop into sentimental tempests, where swamped, ardent and callow youth raises a hysterically selfish clamour for reciprocity or death. His nature partly, partly his character, accounted for this balance; and, in part, a rather wide experience with women of various degrees counted more.