The Fighting Chance

"What did you come for, if it's rotten sport?" asked Plank so simply that it took O'Hara a moment to realise he had been snubbed.

"I didn't mean to be offensive," he drawled.

"I suppose you can't help it," said Plank very gently; "some people can't, you know." And there was another silence, broken by Mortimer, whose entire hulk was tingling with a mixture of surprise and amusement over his protégé's developing ability to take care of himself. "Did you say that Stephen Siward is in Westbury, Billy?"

"No; he's in town," replied Fleetwood. "I took his horses up to hunt with. He isn't hunting, you know."

"I didn't know. Nobody ever sees him anywhere," said Mortimer. "I guess his mother's death cut him up."

Fleetwood lifted his empty glass and gently shook the ice in it. "That, and--the other business--is enough to cut any man up, isn't it?"

"You mean the action of the Lenox Club?" asked Plank seriously.

"Yes. He's resigned from this club, too, I hear. Somebody told me that he has made a clean sweep of all his clubs. That's foolish. A man may be an ass to join too many clubs but he's always a fool to resign from any of 'em. You ask the weatherwise what resigning from a club forecasts. It's the first ominous sign in a young man's career."

"What's the second sign?" asked O'Hara, with a yawn.

"Squadron talk; and you're full of it," retorted Fleetwood--"'I said to the major,' and 'The captain told the chief trumpeter'--all that sort of thing--and those Porto Rico spurs of yours, and the ewe-necked glyptosaurus you block the bridle-path with every morning. You're an awful nuisance, Tom, if anybody should ask me."

Under cover of a rapid-fire exchange of pleasantries between Fleetwood and O'Hara, Plank turned to Mortimer, hesitating: "I rather liked Siward when I met him at Shotover," he ventured. "I'm very sorry he's down and out."

"He drinks," shrugged Mortimer, diluting his mineral water with Irish whisky. "He can't let it alone; he's like all the Siwards. I could have told you that the first time I ever saw him. We all told him to cut it out, because he was sure to do some damfool thing if he didn't. He's done it, and his clubs have cut him out. It's his own funeral. … Well, here's to you!"

"Cut who out?" asked Fleetwood, ignoring O'Hara's parting shot concerning the decadence of the Fleetwood stables and their owner.

"Stephen Siward. I always said that he was sure, sooner or later, to land in the family ditch. He has a right to, of course; the gutter is public property."