The Fighting Chance

They were unconsciously using the past tense in discussing Siward, as though he were dead, either physically or socially.

"In one way he was always a singularly decent man," mused O'Hara, walking toward the great marble vestibule and buttoning his overcoat.

"How exactly do you mean?"

"Oh, about women."

"I believe it, too. If he did take that Vyse girl into the Patroons, it was his limit with her--and, I believe his limit with any woman. He was absurdly decent that way; he was indeed. And now look at the reputation he has! Isn't it funny? isn't it, now?"

"What sort of an effect do you suppose all this business is going to have on Siward?"

"It's had one effect already," replied Fleetwood, as Plank came up, ready for the street. "Ferrall says he looks sick, and Belwether says he's going to the devil; but that's the sort of thing the major is likely to say. By the way, wasn't there something between that pretty Landis girl and Siward? Somebody--some damned gossiping somebody--talked about it somewhere, recently."

"I don't believe that, either," said Plank, in his heavy, measured, passionless voice, as they descended the steps of the white portico and looked around for a cab.

"As for me, I've got to hustle," observed O'Hara, glancing at his watch. "I'm due to shine at a function about five. Are you coming up-town either of you fellows? I'll give you a lift as far as Seventy-second Street, Plank."

"Tell you what we'll do," said Fleetwood, impulsively, turning to Plank: "We'll drive down town, you and I, and we'll look up poor old Siward! Shall we? He's probably all alone in that God-forsaken red brick family tomb! Shall we? How about it, Plank?"

O'Hara turned impatiently on his heel with a gesture of adieu, climbed into his electric hansom, and went buzzing away up the avenue.

"I'd like to, but I don't think I know Mr. Siward well enough to do that," said Plank diffidently. He hesitated, colouring up. "He might misunderstand my going with you--as a liberty--which perhaps I might not have ventured on had he been less--less unfortunate."

Again Fleetwood warmed toward the ruddy, ponderous young man beside him. "See here," he said, "you are going as a friend of mine--if you care to look at it that way."

"Thank you," said Plank; "I should be very glad to go in that way."

The Siward house was old only in the comparative Manhattan meaning of the word; for in New York nothing is really very old, except the faces of the young men.

Decades ago it had been considered a big house, and it was still so spoken of--a solid, dingy, red brick structure, cubical in proportions, surmounted by heavy chimneys, the depth of its sunken windows hinting of the thickness of wall and foundation. Window-curtains of obsolete pattern, all alike, and all drawn, masked the blank panes. Three massive wistaria-vines, the gnarled stems as thick as tree-trunks, crawled upward to the roof, dividing the façade equally, and furnishing some relief to its flatness, otherwise unbroken except by the deep reveals of window and door. Two huge and unsymmetrical catalpa trees stood sentinels before it, dividing curb from asphalt; and from the centres of the shrivelled, brown grass-plots flanking the stoop under the basement windows two aged Rose-of-Sharon trees bristled naked to the height of the white marble capitals of the flaking pillars supporting the stained portico.