Will E. Ingersoll

“ Cluett got up, and came over, and stood beside her.
"Not to-night," he said, looking down. The champagne had brought a kind of dull color to his cheeks and forehead. "What do we want with music, kid? Come on—let's be a little friendly, huh?" His strong lean arm slid around her waist.
It was then that Daisy lifted up her face, let all the coquetry pass from it, and regarded him with eyes that were straight and sober.
"Stop it!" she said.
For answer, the arm tightened about her. Nick Cluett leaned to kiss her.
"If you don't stop it," said Daisy, rigid in his arms; "you're no gentleman." ”

“ Even if the car had been a berth coach, and there had been opportunity for retirement, Daisy could not have slept. The hour, the situation, the novelty of the rushing, lamplit train (she had never been on a train before) , kept every faculty ablaze and awake in a pleasant intoxication of excitement. Elbow on window-sill and chin in palm, the girl sat, glancing now out at the flying moonlit telegraph posts, now about the interior of the dingy branch-line passenger coach. All seemed fairylike to her eyes habituated only to prairie fallow and lea. ”

“ Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon the open doorway of the garage. ”

“ The thoughts of the young woman who sat, with that quiescent and settled look in her eyes, on the seat of the tranquilly-travelling buggy, moved to her beginning of life and ratchetted slowly up the years to the now; and it came to Daisy Ware, as it has come to many another who thinks more abstrusely, that consummated marriage is, and properly, the climax of womanhood. ”

“ Masterman jocularly, turning toward Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of the faculty of speech.
"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley—she whom Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes aboot"—"Miss Nixon's a lady—can't you see! A perfect lady—huh?" And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her front hair, winked at Daisy. ”

“ A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,—her serge skirt brushed by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso—came dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled with the zest of life. ”

“ Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?"
"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three of us altogether. How's yourself?" ”

“ Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in horse-blankets and gunny-sacks. ”

“ Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two things most people want most—money, and social prestige and power—and has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his experience of the real thing. ”

“ The big Harrison villa,—with its broad ostentatious drive, its unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a dealers' reduction—soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding of young Harold's punching bag.
"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn anything off?" ”

“ Sir William Ware, in this sleigh that was inching its course—at least, so it seemed—across the long ten miles that separated Toddburn village from the Nixon farm, felt an odd sense of dependence as he watched the gathering of the storm. There was in his whole fine body and brain no fibre of fear, as far as personal danger was concerned—for, besides the heritage of his family and race, he was too much the philosopher to regard the chance of death with anything but curiosity. ”

“ Daisy felt a little anxious as she thought of old Jim Hogle. He had served her turn—secured her purse for her from Markey, toward whom she bore no grudge but felt instead a mischievous desire to "tame down" into a wooer—and she did not want any meddling, old, self-appointed foster-father handicapping her movements here in town. She must let the old man, who reminded her distastefully of the farm, know, once and for all, that her plans were "none of his business". ”

“ But Daisy was alert and strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped, straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was running.
"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and sparkling. "You're some man!" ”

“ Masterman, bustlingly, clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody change!"
"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, he followed the girls to the elevator entrance.
The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the situation into which her daring had projected her. ”

“ Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on." The girl's face softened a little.
"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; "talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to 'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. You're just an honest farm boy—why don't you be one? ”

“ Passing along this, descending a stair with an iron balustrade, and proceeding through a great, busy, and echoing rotunda with a ceiling almost as far away as a sky, Daisy and her companion emerged upon a stretch of granolithic pavement.
Beyond the curb, a bevy of bus-drivers from city hotels crowed like a flock of roosters—the surmounting voice in this bedlam being that of a sandy-mustached old-timer, whose vehicle was labelled "Imperial Hotel." By his hind-wheel he stood, moving nothing but the hinges of his jaws ”

“ Beatty stuck on his hat, tilting it a little.
"It ain't so bad, either," he conceded, grinning to himself, as he picked up his smart leather suitcase and Daisy's battered telescope grip, "not so bad, at that, kiddo."
With a hollow, drumlike roar, the train drew to a halt beneath a dome of glass and iron; and Daisy and her companion, inching along behind the file of passengers, at length emerged upon a cement walk, walled in on either side by the bulk of varnished railway coaches. ”

“ Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch ”

“ Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty thousand, cash down, takes this place—buildin's, stock, implements, what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is to hitch up my team—his team, it will be then—and drive me and my trunk into Toddburn. ”

“ We were married just a little while after you went away."
"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring up a little.
"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy."
"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes you best." ”

“ Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a man. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred."
Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin. ”

“ But—but when a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have to—have to—oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know how—they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help it."
Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. ”

“ Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the paraphernalia.
Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs at the ringside. ”

“ Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance.
"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got married up, Daise?"
Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her questioner teasingly. ”

“ Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for—for street-car fare."
"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly.
"Nowhere," said Daisy.
"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?"
"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to city park." ”

“ Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips.
"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country, alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I love Canadians—especially young ones, whether they're he's or she's—but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to his name. ”

“ Masterman, who never had to be told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his arm. ”

“ Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted. ”

“ Daisy, following quickly, saw the Scotswoman, after glancing closely at the half-open eyes and laying her ear to the gaunt sunken chest, hastily remove the pillows from under Lady Martha Harrison's head, lay the scalp levelly on the mattress, and press down the eyelids with her fingers.
"Ey, puir, puir leddy," Jean, keeping finger and thumb on the dead eyelids, turned toward Daisy with two tear-balls bowling down the rugged field of her face; "she's gone, she's gone. Ey, gone off all her lone—died as she lived, bairnie—while we're crackin' awa careless-like down in yon kitchen. ”

“ She knew that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man need [Pg 92] only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a sneer—such a sneer!—Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look so ugly! ”

“ Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with something very like a smile.
"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother." ”