THE MAID AND THE CLERK.
"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and
shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had
been sitting. "So they har."
The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to
confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a
hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair
of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At
the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a
saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like
exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a
skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly
reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were
pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette.
"Ar, ee--yes--s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a
hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an
ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to attention, with her head on one
side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed
themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet
of gold.
"'Usbands _har_ queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp
sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't
they?"
Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and
was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the
feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously,
and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded:
"Are they?"
"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never
say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance
from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back
to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four
times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though
she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy
noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white.
There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall.
Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of
her hips that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable,
serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said:
"Bob--er--Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway,
'e says."
Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs.
She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the
counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the
register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys
on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled,
and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was
newly-barbered--shaved to the blood.
He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from
sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words
out of the corner of his mouth:
"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?"
Daisy looked a little puzzled.
"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?"
"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips."
"Just the _one_ grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching
up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this--see?"
Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently.
"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for
your board bill. You pay in advance--see?"
Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little
flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her
blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and,
with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had
brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested
it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic.
As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot
round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he
leaned close.
"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie
forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's,
yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and
paddled hers.
Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the
counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his
pocket.
"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the
little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him
when he went out."
Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his
palms--a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very
quintessence of humor--the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face
of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his
fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her,
shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door,
and exclaimed:
"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!"
"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of
deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned--and looked
into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the
bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within
the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his
jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek.
"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his
paternal way.
"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr.
Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?"
Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon
other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy.
His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as a nutmeg-grater, closed
about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made
the girl wince a little.
Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor
daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her
mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse--less because of
its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey
score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr.
Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes,
therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little
affirmative nod.
"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the
side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus _here_? Has this lad
been sassin' ye?"
Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added,
contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my
money in it, so he did."
"Took your _what_?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward
Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!"
"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to
Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You
get to hell out o' here, and get your team out. You got to meet that
south train in fifteen minutes".
Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver
watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on
the counter.
"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in
fifteen _seconds_. If ye don't--I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what
that means, Markey."
Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow
bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and
slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth.
Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He
waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around
its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his
vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on
the numbered rack behind the counter. Then--he sprang into action!
So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm
shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he
had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was
for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was
dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the counter. Then
the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this
Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had
temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles
as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked
furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out
of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide.
"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and
I'll kill yeh."
"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip
holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the
latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and
shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of
Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old
Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide--
"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll
give the jane her purse."
"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin'
here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let
up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the
language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a
crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl standin' here--or
have ye no shame _to_ ye? Dry up, now!"
This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated
Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his
breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down
viciously, fell with a slap.
"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a
little as he glanced down at it.
Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face
which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's
collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black
and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for
a throw.
Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his
back carelessly on Markey and missile.
"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once
before, an' we had a--a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his
palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness,
"about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all
right for a man when he's grew up; but _some_ men never outgrows the
tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense
he's got, this world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your
eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that
midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now."
He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked
around.
"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and
Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r
sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob
Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out
'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty
o' time, too."
With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across
the rotunda--the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the
cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins--and
made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"--this
being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda
of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy--glad enough to do it, too, for
her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness--took the key Markey
sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19.