A KNIGHT IN THE KITCHEN.
Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to
the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to
certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge--the cafe,
with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on
its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight
before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the
presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply
and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had
unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole
city yet new to her--new and unexplored and fascinating--the experience
through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or
a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy
was most amazed at her own part in it--at the strong and sane impulse
which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt,
if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift
unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story.
"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned
softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance.
He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old
enough to know his own mind."
A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door
showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad
Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the
bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house,
on this her first unfamiliar night in it.
She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on
linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of
the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in
his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir
Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight
sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his
shirt-sleeves.
"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of
water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from
keepin' the little date, hey?--he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us
none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have
one, on me. _Suddown!_"
This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger--his
thick, blunt forefinger--toward one of the two chairs that stood by the
table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a
celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat
down obediently and demurely in the chair.
Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of
water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other
glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet
in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking
vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and
the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty
chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it.
"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are--just the two of us, hey?
Everybody else in bed, but--we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a
little drink. C'm on!"
Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her
glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of
light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass
joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and
coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor.
Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood
untouched.
"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah.
Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I
know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you _sassy_ babee--come on
to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his
new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee.
"There," he said,--in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the
incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion,
"how's that--better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist.
Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as
she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away
from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling.
"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't
you? Is this why the last girl left?"
"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a
momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that
sour-mugged English rake-handle! I--I couldn't love a girl with a face
like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about
Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on--give us a little baby kiss."
"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful
points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's
answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the
table and place it about her.
Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the
red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places
like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond
speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids,
making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be
a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness
had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and
succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face,
watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a
doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis.
At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning
flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest.
"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for
nothing."
Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his
pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off.
"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest,
where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering.
"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in
oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that
bunch!"
"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go."
Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the
saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand.
"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all
his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment,
half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning
movement off his knee and away.
"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to
try to get this money back, and I'll _yell_. Jean the cook is sleeping
just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack
Robi'son'."
At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh
that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the
encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew
that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man
need 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!
"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words
came easily enough now. "But don't think you win--oh, no-o! D'ye know
what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?"
"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money
is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going
to say you were sorry."
"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in
your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're
going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye
hear!"
"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show _you_ something now.
Here's all I care for your dirty money."
With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment,
realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big
kitchen gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals,
and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame
leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's
coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as
he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless
ashes.
"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I _am_ goin' to
fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin'
over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to
lay information against you for stealin' that money--see? I'm a-goin to
have you arrested--see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town
for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his
vest, "and you--who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with
you yet, if--"
"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from
Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the
bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas
Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an'
I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist
tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed--that's what you'll do!"
"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, had recovered himself and
had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish
speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll
clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we
have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help.
Neither of you's worth a hurra----"
"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not
inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide
here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an'
keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to
y'r bed, lassie."
Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust
forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She
returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch
eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a
cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel.
"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he
passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning."
"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the
door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a
man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled her through the stair-door
and up the steps to the bedroom.
"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom
door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's
folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o'
bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge
you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back--he's that kind,
ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word,
after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht',
as oor Bawby Burrns has it--is he no?"
"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so
bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before
I'm through."
"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers,
thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest
broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her
head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd
mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers--any mischief, I
mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye--I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn.
Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's
house-cleanin' day."