Читать книгу Daisy Herself - Will E. Ingersoll - Страница 8

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Daisy Nixon flung out of the door of the Imperial Hotel into an afternoon world of dust and din and ecstasy. It was the hour when stenographers, in offices, whose high open windows command the streets with their emancipated pedestrians, begin to rubber over-shoulder at the clock, and to make excursions into washrooms to veneer the fresh color of cheek and chin and forehead with cadaverous conventional powder. The "boys" have been educated to look for this make-up (it takes an educated taste to appreciate it!) and a girl would as soon think of leaving the office in her stocking-feet, as without a blue-white effect on chin and nose and forehead, and a smudge of strangulation purple blotting the cheek's own inimitable rose.

Six o'clock would blow shortly from a hundred sirens; and the thrill of "quittin'-time" could already be discerned in the air. Down the street from the direction of the big transcontinental depot came a 'bus, three or four blocks away; and Daisy, with a habit of the countryside, identified this vehicle instantly by the team, whose markings she had instinctively remembered. It was the Imperial Hotel rig, returning from the station. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if she was to evade her self-appointed guardian, old Jim Hogle.

A rank of jitneys was parked along the curb. Daisy approached a driver with a mop of black curly hair so abundant that it pushed his cap to one side. This driver half-turned his head in a formal "straight business, and don't waste my time" way; but the corners of mouth and eye twinkled companionably and humorously.

"Could you", Daisy's eyes twinkled back, too, in spite of her trace of country-girl diffidence, "could you—"

"I should say I could," the chauffeur's face was expressionless, but his accent was merry.

"Could you", Daisy dimpled as she went on, "take me to here—see?"

The young man hitched his chin forward in ostentatious scrutiny. Then, in a matter-of-course way, he took the scrap of paper from Daisy's fingers, brought it to his lips, handed it back, clicked open the tonneau door, and motioned inward with hospitable palm.

"Thank a-you," he said, elaborately, as Daisy stepped in; then, without opening the fore-door, he vaulted into his own seat. There was the usual preliminary roar, proceeding by staccato jet and pit-a-pat to smooth pulsing motion, as the jitney glided out handily into the multifarious traffic of the street.

No river-ravine of Wheat-Land on a June Sunday had ever stirred Daisy Nixon to an atom of the ecstasy that champagned her as she sailed down that traffic-current between its Saguenay-banks of masonry, whose uneven summits, high above her, scissored the blue silk of the sky. Forward, upward to right, upward to left, the girl's glance travelled; then came down to the sidewalk, no square yard of which escaped for one clear moment from servitude to the thousand thousand tramping feet, following at a slower pace the drift of the traffic in the hundred-foot driving way.

No electric welcome blazed from the front of the city hall, with its coal-darkened brickwork and broad steps. No welcome, nor any sound but a mighty hammer-stroke from the tall clock, telling Daisy that Time was moving as well as she. No welcome—but Daisy Nixon felt that there could not help be a quickening of the city's pulse at the notability of this day, with its every moment so rare and thrilling to her.

The pulse of the motor throbbed as, coursing in the pack of its kind, it nosed from side to side or held a true-running swift pace astride a tram-rail. The chauffeur, with an air of profound abstraction made comical by his tilted cap and sportive half-presented profile, gave "her" spark or "juice" as the occasion demanded, with a casual motion of his gloved thumb. At a corner where two broad streets met, the taxi-cab turned aside. Proceeding a little way down the second main artery of traffic, it rounded a corner under a brass-grilled jeweler's window and entered a labyrinth of side-streets in which Daisy soon lost her sense of direction so completely that the sun, after what seemed like an excursion into the little-visited due-north sector of the horizon, appeared to move around to the east, and forthwith to commence another day without pausing for the customary night-interval.

It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to look at it.

This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once been plain—very plain—Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved the chief seats in synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the fittest—the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for three reasons—for display, for business reasons, and to parade his dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the band-wagon—not because he always understood these policies and sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em.

The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen—we will say for the sake of present illustration—to go, as the sylph of the Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious politeness Sir Thomas—at state receptions and so forth, where he was well-watched—used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married before he made his money—or rather, before the natural growth of the country made his money for him.

The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his name—if it had not come by the political route, that is to say—had come through connection with the building of some railroad or government building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison.

Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed.

The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, "telescope" grip in hand.

"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not pay for a "lift" on one's way.

"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched.

"What's that?" she said.

"Your fare—one dollar."

"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in—and was presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes.

"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it."

Daisy dimpled and turned off again.

"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps.

"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after."

Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not look back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street.

Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her housemaid friend to be "on the lookout".

"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could—which was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as she was—that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter.

Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as soon's I could. It's a long way."

"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison kitchen.

If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. It was great and clean and shining.

Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk.

"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter with a powerful, brisk movement.

"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her.

"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. "You'll come too, Allie."

Daisy, who scented future advantage in an alliance with the hospitable Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, but well-worn—evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make room for the latest and newest guest-room equipment in the apartments the family occupied. Picture post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed palatial.

"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy.

"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat.

"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, 'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell you."

"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her with considerable interest, "well, well."

"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, cautiously, as the thought crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we go to see the Missis … Ar—'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the Manor to my Jawge."

Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was superbly "full" where Alice was flat.

"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now—we sharn't have any bother. She'll tieke you, straight off—I know she will."

Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an immediate curious warming of the heart—curious, because Daisy usually faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any eventuality. Lady Harrison—without knowing it, however—disarmed Daisy Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, guarded, combative sixteen and a half years.

Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in "getting" him—a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie and slept in a bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention.

"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice.

"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a stranger.

"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to conceal her impatience to be gone.

"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's—very nice—very nice indeed."

"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, "I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'."