The Fighting Chance

"I don't even know where he lives," observed O'Hara, resuming his coat. "He's given up his rooms, I understand."

"What? Don't know the old Siward house?"

"Oh! does he live there now? Of course; I forgot about his mother. He had apartments last year, you remember. He gave dinners--corkers they were. I went to one--like that last one you gave."

"I wish I'd never given it," said Fleetwood gloomily. "If I hadn't, he'd be a member here still. … What do you suppose induced him to take that little gin-drinking cat to the Patroons? Why, man, it wasn't even an undergraduate's trick! it was the act of a lunatic."

For a while they talked of Siward, and of his unfortunate story and the pity of it; and when the two men ceased, "Do you know," said Plank mildly, "I don't believe he ever did it."

O'Hara looked up surprised, then shrugged. "Unfortunately he doesn't deny it, you see."

"I heard," said Fleetwood, lighting a cigarette, "that he did deny it; that he said, no matter what his condition was, he couldn't have done it. If he had been sober, the governors would have been bound to take his word of honour. But he couldn't give that, you see. And after they pointed out to him that he had been in no condition to know exactly what he did do, he shut up. … And they dropped him; and he's falling yet."

"I don't believe that sort of a man ever would do that sort of thing," repeated Plank obstinately, his Delft-blue eyes partly closing, so that all the Dutch shrewdness and stubbornness in his face disturbed its highly coloured placidity. And he walked away toward the wash-room to cleanse his ponderous pink hands of chalk-dust.

"That's what's the matter with Plank," observed O'Hara to Fleetwood as Plank disappeared. "It isn't that he's a bounder; but he doesn't know things; he doesn't know enough, for instance, to wait until he's a member of a club before he criticises the judgment of its governors. Yet you can't help tolerating the fellow. I think I'll write a letter for him, or put down my name. What do you think?"

"It would be all right," said Fleetwood. "He'll need all the support he can get, with Leroy Mortimer as his sponsor. … Wasn't Mortimer rather nasty about Siward though, in his rôle of the alcoholic prophet? Whew!"

"Siward never had any use for Mortimer," observed O'Hara.

"I'll bet you never heard him say so," returned Fleetwood. "You know Stephen Siward's way; he never said anything unpleasant about any man. I wish I didn't either, but I do. So do you. So do most men. … Lord! I wish Siward were back here. He was a good deal of a man, after all, Tom."