The Fighting Chance | Page 7

of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of azure stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry.
“There is nobody here, of course,” observed Miss Landis to Siward as they halted in front of the fire-place; “the season opens to-day in this county, you see.” She shrugged her pretty shoulders: “And the women who don’t shoot make the first field-luncheon a function.”
She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: “If you haven’t an appointment with the Sand-Man before dinner you may find me in the gun-room.”
“I’ll be there in about three minutes,” he said; “and what about this dog?”--looking down at the Sagamore pup who stood before him, wagging, attentive, always the gentleman to the tips of his toes.
Miss Landis laughed. “Take him to your room if you like. Dogs have the run of the house.”
So he followed a servant to the floor above where a smiling and very ornamental maid preceded him through a corridor and into that heavy wing of the house which fronted the sea.
“Tea is served in the gun-room, sir,” said the pretty maid, and disappeared to give place to a melancholy and silent young man who turned on the bath, laid out fresh raiment, and whispering, “Scotch or Irish, sir?” presently effaced himself.
Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the floor, and it seemed as though the dog would never finish gulping and slobbering in the limpid icy water.
“It’s the salt air, my boy,” commented the young man, gravely refilling his own glass as though accepting the excuse on his own account.
Then man and beast completed ablutions and grooming and filed out through the wide corridor, around the gallery, and down the broad stairway to the gun-room--an oaken vaulted place illuminated by the sun, where mellow lights sparkled on glass-cased rows of fowling pieces and rifles, on the polished antlers of shaggy moose heads.
Miss Landis sat curled up in a cushioned corner under the open casement panes, offering herself a cup of tea. She looked up, nodding invitation; he found a place beside her. A servant whispered, “Scotch or Irish, sir,” then set the crystal paraphernalia at his elbow.
He said something about the salt air, casually; the girl gazed meditatively at space.
The sound of wheels on the gravel outside aroused her from a silence which had become a brown study; and, to Siward, presently, she said: “Here endeth our first rendezvous.”
“Then let us arrange another immediately,” he said, stirring the ice in his glass.
The girl considered him with speculative eyes: “I shouldn’t exactly know what to do with you for the next hour if I didn’t abandon you.”
“Why bother to do anything with me? Why even give yourself the trouble of deserting me? That solves the problem.”
“I really don’t mean that you are a problem to me, Mr. Siward,” she said, amused; “I mean that I am going to drive again.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t see at all. There’s a telegram; I’m not driving for pleasure--”
She had not meant that either, and it annoyed her that she had expressed herself in such terms. As a matter of fact, at the telegraphed request of Mr. Quarrier, she was going to Black Fells Crossing to meet his train from the Lakes and drive him back to Shotover. The drive, therefore, was of course a drive for pleasure.
“I see,” repeated Siward amiably.
“Perhaps you do,” she observed, rising to her graceful height. He was on his feet at once, so carelessly, so good-humouredly acquiescent that without any reason at all she hesitated.
“I had meant to show you about--the cliffs--the kennels and stables; I’m sorry,” she concluded, lingering.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he rejoined without meaning anything in particular. That was the trouble, whatever he said, apparently meant so much.
With the agreeable sensation of being regretted, she leisurely gloved herself, then walked through the gun-room and hall, Siward strolling beside her.
The dog followed them as they turned toward the door and passed out across the terraced veranda to the driveway where a Tandem cart was drawn up, faultlessly appointed. Quarrier’s mania was Tandem. She thought it rather nice of her to remember this.
She inspected the ensemble without visible interest for a few moments; the wind freshened from the sea, fluttering her veil, and she turned toward the east to face it. In the golden splendour of declining day the white sails of yachts crowded landward on the last leg before beating westward into Blue Harbour; a small white cruiser, steaming south, left a mile long stratum of rose-tinted smoke hanging parallel to the horizon’s plane; the westering sun struck sparks from her