The Fighting Chance

"As you please. It is quite true I can make nothing of what the newspapers are saying about it, except that Mr. Plank seems to be doing a number of things."

"Injunctions, and other matters," observed Quarrier.

"Is anybody going to lose any money in it?"

"Who, for example?"

"Why--you, for example," she said, laughing.

"I don't expect to."

"Then it is going to turn out all right? And Mr. Plank and Kemp Ferrall and the major and--the other people interested, are not going to be almost ruined by the Inter-County people?"

"Do you think a man like Plank is likely to be ruined, as you say, by Amalgamated Electric?"

"No. But Kemp and the major--"

"I think the major is out of danger," replied Quarrier, looking at her with the new, sullen narrowing of his eyes.

"I am glad of that. Is Kemp--and the others?"

"Ferrall could stand it if matters go wrong. What others?"

"Why--the other owners and stockholders--"

"What others? Who do you mean?"

"Mr. Siward, for example," she said in an even voice, leaning over to pat her horse's neck with her gloved hand.

"Mr. Siward must take the chances we all take," observed Quarrier.

"But, Howard, it would really mean ruin for him if matters went badly. Wouldn't it?"

"I am not familiar with the details of Mr. Siward's investments."

"Nor am I," she said slowly.

He made no reply.

Lack of emotion in the man beside her she always expected, and therefore this new, sullen note in his voice perplexed her. Too, at times, in his increasing reticence there seemed to be almost a hint of cold effrontery. She felt it now--an indefinite suggestion of displeasure and the power to retaliate; something evasive, watchful, patiently hostile; and, try as she might, she could not rid herself of the discomfort of it, and the perplexity.

She spoke about other things; he responded in his impassive manner. Presently she turned her horse and Quarrier wheeled his, facing a warm, fine rain, slanting thickly from the south.

His silky, Vandyke beard was all wet with the moisture. She noticed it, and unbidden arose the vision of the gun-room at Shotover: Quarrier's soft beard wet with rain; the phantoms of people passing and repassing; Siward's straight figure swinging past, silhouetted against the glare of light from the billiard-room. And here she made an effort to efface the vision, shutting her eyes as she rode there in the rain. But clearly against the closed lids she saw the phantoms passing--spectres of dead hours, the wraith of an old happiness masked with youth and wearing Siward's features!

She must stop it! What was all this crowding in upon her as she rode forward through the driving rain--all this resurgence of ghosts long laid, long exorcised? Had the odour of the rain stolen her senses, awakening memory of childish solitude? Was it that which was drugging her with remembrance of Siward and the rattle of rain in the bay-window above the glass-roofed swimming-pool?