THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK.
"Who's the boy?" said Daisy, over her shoulder, to Jean; as, glancing
out of the window of the big Harrison kitchen, she saw, at the front
corner of the house, a younger man get out of the car after the bulky
Sir Thomas. "I thought all the visitors here were elderly men. There's
been no young ones at all since I've been here."
"Ey?" Jean came to "keek," resting a hand on the shoulder of the younger
girl, "why, if it's no young Harrison! Did I never tell ye Sir Thomas
had a lad? Well, well." Jean sat down again to her pea-shelling.
"Ay," she pursued, as her rapid fingers stripped the split pods of their
green kernels, "yon's Harold Harrison. He looks like his father, an' he
talks like his father, and as to his disposeetion--well, I'm bound in
fairness-like to say he's a bittie of his good mither--just a wee wee
streak, like the lean in bacon--pinched in between thick layers of Sir
Thomas himsel'. The young-lad's no so rough-edged in manner--the college
has polished him on the ootside.... But I'll say no more: ye'll see him
juist now, when ye serve the supper."
And when Daisy did see the young man--sitting with his knees crossed and
his elbow on the edge of the table, talking to his father but not
noticing the quiet, awkward mother at all--she almost dropped the tray
she was carrying. For Harold Harrison and the masked fighter who had
boxed four rounds with Champion Nick Cluett, were one and the same young
man.
"I'd know that chin anywhere," said Daisy, as she confided to Jean the
discovery she had made, "it's just like his father's. And his lower lip
is burst, too, just where I saw Nick hit the masked fighter. He has a
piece of red sticking-plaster on it."
"Mon, mon!" Jean was interested; "is that so, then? I kenned he was a
boxer; and I suppose, as the Harrisons has the name of getting what they
'go after,' its no surprisin' he's won to the top. It's aye the way. He
has everything--his money, his schooling, his place in society, his
business chances--an' yet he'll no be satisfied till he steals the
boxin' honors from a puir lad that has nothing but his gloves. Nick's a
machinist; and, up till lately, when money from his matches commenced to
come in a little, he's had to do all his training in the nicht-time;
while the Harrison lad's had all day and all night, if he needed, to
make himsel' pairfect.... Ey, ey--it's the way o' the warld, lassie."
"He'll never beat Nick," some flash of vague enthusiasm warmed Daisy for
an instant; then she added--boxing terms and predictions coming handily
to her tongue after that chatty hour across the supper-table from the
"sporty" Miss Yockley--"he'd never last twenty rounds, or even ten, in a
finish bout. Nicky Cluett," Daisy concluded with feminine irrelevance,
"is a gentleman. The other fellow would be afraid to fight him without a
mask on."
Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists,
lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's
seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no
that sure that they dare play tricks with it--as they wad be doing, they
think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public
theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society,
an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family
operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle
o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds
empty, as if they was through their meat."
As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his
father, paused in his account of the boxing-match till the girl had
collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot.
But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and
caught every word with her keen young ears:
"----And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I
went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this
fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good--and is, too, as
witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was
a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking
sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter,
glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd
have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to
me."
"You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and
whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em!
Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en
where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe
on the jaw, when I had him goin'."