Читать книгу Daisy Herself - Will E. Ingersoll - Страница 4

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Daisy had run away from her home on the farm outside Toddburn village with this young store clerk, Beatty, who now sat holding her hand in the moonlight "flyer" of the M. & N. Beatty, who came originally from the city, was a bad young rascal; and Daisy—who, neglected and exposed to temptation since her earliest girlhood, had developed an innate awareness of "fellows"—knew it. None of her several reasons for this escapade had been the usual one—love. It suited her, however, to let Beatty think that she had come prepared to follow him to the world's end—a lengthy journey, upon which the railway ticket Beatty had bought for her was only good for the first two hundred miles.

Daisy was proceeding daringly, easily, without pause or regret, toward whatever lay in store for her along the path she had taken. Her locomotion was that of a thing which is both propelled and drawn. The propulsive force was her hatred of the farm where she had drudged for all the workable years of her seventeen under that plebeian taskmaster, stolid, selfish John Nixon, her stepfather, and that unmaternal mother whose forename, by some perpetuated sarcasm, was Lovina. The drawing force was Daisy's own eager, vigorous, intrepid spirit of adventure—green maidenhood's hunger for the sensational new.

The car in which the two sat was not a "sleeper," but an ordinary red-upholstered day coach. The two had boarded the train at Oak Lake, the first station east of Toddburn (where neither of them were known by the new station agent) at a little after midnight. They were due to reach the city between six and seven o'clock in the morning.

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.

Young Beatty, holding her hand and thrilling in a delightful though less spiritual than fleshly way, at the occasional glances with which Daisy baited him, looked out of the corner of his eye at her and felt very much pleased, indeed, with himself. First, she had a glorious color, the like of which one could not buy for money, nor yet for love—a color that resided comely and rich in her cheeks, even at feeling's lowest tide, but which now, in the high tide of her adventure, overflowed down in a bonny estuary toward the milk-warm curve of her chin. Then, there were the features, each with its peculiar likability or lure—lips made and eager for enjoyment, yet with something in their set and pose that was constant and fine—a nose humorous and short, tiltable to every gradation of coquetry—eyes with dancing irises, soft baffling shadows, and brows that trended downward at the outer ends. Lastly, the hair—brown, with a wave that made it comely in any coiffure; coiled carelessly under a hasty pin or two at temple, crown, and white nape of neck where a curl caressed—had a piquancy even in its disarray. Beatty cuddled his head back against the red upholstery of the seat in luxurious contemplation, and again expressively squeezed the fingers he held.

Beatty himself was a slim, white-handed youth whose abundant blond hair and smooth "way" had made the world, for him, a kind of garden of the Hesperides—the fault with this simile being that he was no Hercules, except in his vanity. In this, his strength was as the strength of ten, though not because his heart was pure. If you had taxed him with that characteristic in which Beatty was eminently taxable—his attitude toward girls—he would have regarded you indulgently a moment, and would then have explained that it was not his fault if "Janes fell for him" and "fooled with the band-wagon" to their own undoing. Surely it was a "free country."

In spite, however, of the fact that the country was a free one, the special thing which had sent Beatty out of the city "for his health" was the quest after him by a two-hundred-pound brother of a sister some ninety pounds lighter. The brother, who carried a professional "haymaker in either mitt" for even those of his own gender who could use their fists with fair ability, was as sincere in his desire to interview Beatty as Beatty was considerate in his desire to save the brother the embarrassment of such an interview. A recently-received picture postcard from a friend of Beatty's had, however, intimated that the family of which the brother and sister in question were members had since "gone to the coast," and that Beatty's home city had therefore become again for Beatty a consistent metropolis of a free country, if he wished to return to it.

Beatty did wish to return to it; and, returning with round and pretty Daisy Nixon as a travelling companion—made, Beatty felt assured, wholly and dependently his by the manner of her home-leaving—he felt that the several months of his exile had not been wasted.

"The boys", so Beatty reflected complacently, as he leaned back on the car-cushion, "will cert'n'ee set up an 'take notice w'en they see this w'at I got here. They cert'n'ee will."