A JOB.
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'."
"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's--that's very
nice--quite."
Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet
collected her wages, or she would have banged the door--as a parting
sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully
saucy and flopping.
Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant
note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely
natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once
mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or
whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness
as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made
communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as
soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so
easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled
down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose.
As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more
homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased
proportionately.
"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and
rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a
pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the
kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of
her large wandering hands.
"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response.
"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs
stood sociably together.
"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down,
cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward,
beneath her chin.
"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around.
"Have you--have you references?"
"What?" said Daisy.
"A--references--letters from somebody for whom you have worked for,"
Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction,
occasionally used a preposition too many.
"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I--but I--," it was an effort
for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as
well as I can--for _you_."
"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time,
in its proper place. "But my hus-- but Sir Thomas Harrison may require
references. He generally does."
Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little.
She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house.
"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she
noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to
get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy--as
I'm sure you will--that he--ur, that Sir Thomas--will give you a trial."