A PLOT THAT MISCARRIED.
"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling
cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel'
sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's
gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with
thae orders, like."
Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had
been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the
house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged."
Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook.
"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?"
"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the
line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like."
Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a
fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I
doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her
shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that
stood, larded and ready, at her right.
"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you."
"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver.
Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not
of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was
plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of
the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right,
I will,--bye-bye," as she hung up the phone.
When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter,
this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man
who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the
dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and
very often twice, each week since.
On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy,
as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the
trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford
suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was
going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know
that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did
she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something
like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll have the chance o' your life
to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite--yes, yes,
of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean
it extra good, to-night--and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets
his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy
up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around
with me to-night--the best girl in----"
"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go
on--shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my
ear, Jim, and listen to you rave."
"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm
bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea.
See?--the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I
intend to spring, on the way home----"
"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the
line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?"
"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to
spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks.
I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some
accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments----"
"Better wait till she says 'yes'," Mrs. Farrell had advised, as she
prepared to 'hang up', "before you start counting your chickens. She may
not care to take a chance on you. I know how I'd feel about it, if it
was me. However, I'll do my best for you."
Jimmy, who was quite ready to admit any time that he was "no hand with
girls," shoved his hat to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets,
and spat aside as, waiting outside the Harrison gate, he saw Daisy
approach along the gravel walk.
If he had come for her in the jitney, as usual, to take her for a
companionable hour's ride up and down his round, as a "free" and welcome
passenger, he would have felt at ease; for he had become used to that.
But this waiting, with no friendly engine pounding away in front of him
and no familiar steering-wheel to lean his hands upon, was enough out of
the ordinary to have embarrassed Jimmy anyway, even without the mental
consciousness of his deep-laid matrimonial plot, and the feeling he
could not shake off that somehow Daisy might sense it prematurely and
flee.
"'Lo, stranger," said Daisy, softly, taking the words out of Jimmy's
mouth, as it were. She was a little shy, too; but Jimmy Knight was too
busy with his own perturbation to notice that.
"H'lo yourself," he responded, with something like gruffness, "and see
how you like it." As they dropped into step side by side, he added,
with an inspired flash, "Lookin' kind of skookum to-night, us, Friend
Nixon."
"I might if I had a suit on," Daisy said, in her forthright way, "but
suits cost money."
"Never mind," Jimmy, in spite of the playful breeze abroad, strove to
pull his new straw hat down more firmly on its elastic cushion of
virile, curly hair, "you may have one, soon."
Daisy, who had not meant this at all, cast a quick side-glance at her
companion.
"I wouldn't take a suit from you, if that's what you mean," she said,
abruptly, flushing a little.
"There, now," Jimmy blushed an honest, vivid red, "I've went and made a
break, first crack at the bat. Say, you do the talkin' from here on.
I'll just listen. If I don't say nothin', I can't make nobody mad, can
I?"
Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an
apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel--that structure from
whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As
she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind
reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging
out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre
of the clothesline.
"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of
Suite 30, as Jimmy, smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a
bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy
up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!"
Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy,
with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her
hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short
vestibule to the living-room.
"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of
under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I
told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him
for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get
married, Miss----"
"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its
"surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a
wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener,
who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell
you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one."
Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took
Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her
remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to
sleep this minute, you! The idea!"
But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka
wa'r."
"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're
going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim--he'll have the city
waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of,
for keepin' awake."
Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn.
Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out.
"Might as well talk to the wind," said Mrs. Tom Farrell, "as them two.
Well, of all----"
This last as Jimmy reappeared, carrying a sleepy three-year-old who,
supporting the tumbler with two hands that had hollows where knuckles
should be, was quaffing with all his might. Jimmy Knight had had an
inspiration, which he was not yet sure was not a blunder, to show Daisy
how a baby "became" him.
To Daisy, in spite of its neatness, the suite looked rather small and
dingy. This impression formed itself quite unconsciously, not as the
result of deliberate glances about. Probably it was a wholly involuntary
comparison of these small rooms to the big garish apartments of the
Harrison house, to which her eyes had grown accustomed during the past
couple of months. At any rate, the impression came and stayed. Jimmy,
however, had no means of knowing this; and, as he glanced around at his
sister's handiwork, he winked his appreciation at Mrs. Betty behind
young Tommy's head; and shaped with his lips this soundless but
energetic sentence, "You're a winner, hon'."
Tom Farrell, Senior, came from the bathroom presently, stroking a long,
new-shaven chin. His eyes were narrowed sociably, and his mouth, as he
approached Daisy, was kinked up at the corners in what seemed to Betty
Farrell's critical regard, almost an ecstasy of friendliness. He paused,
with the hand of greeting half-outstretched; then, tetering his
shoulders a little, glanced first at his wife, and from her to Jimmy,
interrogatively.
"Somebody introduce me," interpreted his wife, with considerable warmth
and sarcasm, "or I'll go crazy."
"Daisy, meet Brother Tom," interposed Jimmy, diplomatically, as he saw a
flash of temper in the glance Tom Farrell darted at his wife. A husband
of four years' standing will not endure being put out of countenance
before a pretty girl.
"Howdy," said Farrell, promptly; grabbing Daisy's hand and half for his
wife's benefit and half because of Daisy's dimples, squeezing it hard
and long; "howdy, howdy?... Say, Bet, what's that kid doing out of bed,
this time o' night? Don't you know nothing at all? Get him back between
them sheets, right away!"
"Put him to bed yourself, if you're so keen about it," Betty Farrell
retorted, hotly; "it was Jimmy brought him out here, not me. Why don't
you take a round out of Jim?"
"I said, put him to bed," Tom Farrell was losing his self-control as his
temper rose, "and do it quick!"
"Come along, Boy," said Jimmy Knight, genially, speaking into the ear of
Tommy, Junior; then winking at Daisy as he jerked his head in humorous
apology toward the point where Tom and Betty Farrell glared at each
other across the centre-table, "we'll go and pound our ear, son. We
don't need a house to fall on us, to show us we ain't wanted, do we?" He
got up, young Tom in his arms, and moved toward the bedroom.
"No, sir-ree!" Tom Farrell's long arm came out and scooped out of
Jimmy's grasp the youngster, who started to cry; "it's got to be settled
right here an' now who's boss of this establishment. I ain't goin' to
let no woman run on me. Here, Bet--take this kid, and put him to bed
like I told you!" The husband was now so far beside himself that he, for
the moment, neither knew nor cared what impression he made. As he spoke,
he held out the baby boy, who yelled and kicked vigorously.
But Betty Farrell backed away, letting young Tommy dangle from his
father's outstretched arms.
"I don't have to take no orders from you," she said, putting her hands
obstinately behind her back, "and I won't, not if you rave till you're
blue in the face. I'll show everybody how much authority you have over
me."
At this, young Tom felt himself set down hard on a chair. Tom Farrell,
having thus freed his hands, hopped ragingly across the room and slapped
his wife on the side of the face. Betty, true to the color of her hair,
flared up, looked about for something to throw, and swept her hand with
temper's wastefulness toward the cut-glass vase in the centre of the
table.
"Hey!" Jimmy Knight reached across and rescued the vase; "you ain't mad
five dollars' worth, surely, Bet." Then the brother got up and came
around the table.
"Break away, break away," he said, casting a deprecating grin toward
Daisy as he put one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other on Tom
Farrell's chest, and pushed the two apart; "hittin' in the clinches is
barred, boys. How about a little card-game, everybody? Bet and me will
take on Daisy and you, Tom, and beat yous flat."
"Nothing doing," Farrell nasalled, closing his eyes and rocking his head
from side to side in an obdurate negative; "this here thing's got to be
settled first. Let a woman get the upper hand of you once, an' you'll
never get her back in her place."
"Aw, go on, Bet," Jimmy gave his sister a little coaxing nudge, "put the
kid to bed."
Betty Farrell raised eyelids, nose, chin and right foot, and brought
them all down simultaneously.
"I--wun't!" she said; "so there."
This repetition of her refusal, though not this time addressed to him,
brought Tom Farrell's wrath again to boiling-point, and he reached
across and cuffed her twice more. Jimmy Knight's hand, which was still
resting against his brother-in-law's chest, pushed Farrell firmly back.
"Don't do that no more, Tom," he said, his face and voice sobering a
little.
"Why not?" flamed Farrell, turning on him.
"Well," said Jimmy, "I can't stand by and see you do it--that's all."
Farrell grew hoarse and purple. "Well, come on, then," he frogged, "I'll
take on the whole blamed family, and lick 'em with one hand tied behind
me." With this, his arm shot out; and Jimmy, taken unawares, received
the blow full in the eye. Farrell followed quickly with a second thrust;
but Jimmy was ready, and the fist glanced harmlessly.
"I don't want to fight you, Tom," he said, guarding himself with fair
skill, as the brother-in-law, shoving the table aside with a jerk of his
hip, pursued the attack furiously; "All I say is, be reasonable."
"Reasonable, nothin'!" croaked Farrell, as he landed again, cutting
Jimmy's cheek with his thumb-nail; "I'll learn you to keep out, next
time."
Jimmy did not answer. His lips tightened a little. Farrell, breaking
through his guard again, struck the fast-blackening eye which had
received his opening blow. Thereat Jimmy, with a vigorous shake of his
shoulders, dived in manfully. There was a brief scuffle; then Jimmy's
sinewy fist twinkled up hard, at short range, and Tom Farrell went down
flat on the floor and lay there.
"Now, then!" the voice was Betty Farrell's; but it was addressed to
Jimmy, not to her husband, this time; "see what you've done, with your
dirty fists and your meddling. You've knocked him out--maybe hurt him--"
"He's all right," said Jimmy, a little sheepishly, "I--I never
meant--there, he's stirring, now. I----"
"Well, get out, then," Betty Farrell dashed over and nervously opened
the door leading out of the suite into the corridor; "go on--get out! I
don't want no more fighting in here. Go on--you, too," this last to
Daisy who, however, was already at the door.
Jimmy glanced at Daisy as humorously as a man might who had one
supremely black eye and a cheek all over blood.
"I guess p'raps we might as well," he said.
There was silence on the way down the three flights of stairs, and
comparative uncommunicativeness on Jimmy's part until the end of the
walk home was reached and the two stood under the trees just within the
Harrison drive-gate.
Then Jimmy, clearing his throat with the air of a man who has made up
his mind to say something or die, observed, "I--I got to tell you one
blamed good joke, Friend Nixon, before you go in."
"What?" said Daisy.
"Well," said Jimmy, "I--gr-r-h'm--I took you over there to-night to show
you a happy little home in a three-room suite. As she turns out,
however, that'n ain't so very happy to-night, huh? All my fault, for
hikin' young Tom out of his crib."
"Oh, well," said Daisy, "everybody fights, sometimes."
"Yes, that's so," said Jimmy; "Yes, that's--that's so. But I--I--"
"'M?" said Daisy, feeling something in her companion's cadence that
caused a soft little titillation of her nerves. She drew back further
into the shadow as she felt her cheeks grow involuntarily warm.
"I know two of a kind--both of 'em easy-goin', I mean--that mightn't
fight any more than oncet a week, at the outside. Do you think you could
stand for that, Friend Nix--Friend Daisy?"
Daisy drew a long breath, raised her face, and looked clear-eyed at her
companion.
"I know what you mean," she said, glad that the darkness prevented
cheerful, curly-headed Jimmy Knight from seeing the shine of her glance
and the color of her cheeks, "but I can't. Not the way I feel these
days. What happened over in the suite to-night didn't make any
difference. But--well, I just can't. I'm a funny girl."
"You sure are," agreed Jimmy Knight; "how long did you say you'd need to
think it over?"
"Forever," said Daisy, firmly, in spite of the beating of her heart.
"All right," responded Jimmy Knight, bravely choking down a certain
obstruction that had risen in his throat, "I'll give you a day longer
than that, so's it won't look as if I was rushin' you. Well--so-long,
kid," he held out his hand.
"Good-bye, Jimmy Knight," Daisy gave him her hand, then drew it away
gently, and ran in-doors with tears in her eyes.