The Fighting Edge (Smith's Magazine 1907)/Chapter 2

If the great Jefferson B. were on the verge of a “shake-up” he gave no evidence of being aware of it. He mentally catalogued his partner as being of the chorus-girl type, and pursued his game with the least possible attention to her compatible with the grave courtesy he affected toward women. Not being accustomed to so scant an interest on the part of those whom she honored with her company, Miss Marriott might have chosen to resent his complacent satisfaction with himself. She might, but did not; for-there was bubbling up in her an undercurrent of mirthful mischief. Since he had pigeon-holed her in his mind as of the chorus-girl order, it was only fair she should live up to his impression. Wherefore she proceeded to be for the time the pretty, petulant, and pert young irresponsible he imagined.

His game was a model of deliberate accuracy. A long drive, a steady approach, and a put as nerveless as clockwork had to be conceded him, but the extreme cautiousness of his play left an opening for attack. Miss Marriott decided to let this irritate her.

“Dear me, this isn’t a life-and-death matter, is it, Mr. Stoneman? That’s the third time you have teed your ball.”

He gave her a full and lengthy stare of disapproval. “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well, Miss—er—Merriam.”

“In that case,” she came back saucily, “you had better learn my name correctly. Not that it is important on its own account, and Merriam is a good enough name, I dare say, even if it doesn’t happen to be mine.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss” he waited for her correction.

“I don’t suppose you ever go to the theater?”

“Only to the very best. I haven’t the time.”

“Too busy saving the country, I suppose.” She flung it jauntily across her shoulder.

His statuesque, immobile face slewed sharply round. “Really, Miss—Miss” “He broke off, with a sudden stiffening of his spine. “I think we'll not discuss that.”

“Because if you weren’t you must have heard of Maisie Marriott,” she went on, in an assumed gush. “In my line, I’m about as famous as you are in yours, though my stunt is a different one, and of course I can’t advertise myself half as well.”

“Stunt? Advertise?” he repeated, flushing with anger.

She smiled up at him with arch confidence. “Of course I only put it that way between ourselves, since we are in the same profession.”

“If you mean to reflect upon”

“But I don’t—I don’t,” she misunderstood promptly. “It gives me a headache to think. Besides, it brings wrinkles. I absolutely refuse to reflect.”

Mr. Stoneman set his teeth to endure this pert young person’s brainless impertinence, and addressed himself to his ball. A dignified silence was evidently the best reproof. To that end he gave himself to golf. Unfortunately a ruffled temper does not conduce to success, and he foozled badly.

Miss Marriott chuckled, and then permitted herself a diplomatic prevarication. “So sorry. I’m afraid it was my fault.”

“It was,” he told her grimly.

“It must be very annoying.”

He had nothing to say, but he said it so eloquently that she laughed. “Say it if you want to. I know just how you feel. Sometimes I’m that way myself, and I always like to put my feelings into vocabulary. Of course, I’m a perfect lady”—she giggled behind her hand, as a chorus girl night be supposed to do—“but sometimes one just can’t help exploding. I do a little dance in the third act that always fetches the audience, and if the lights don’t go right I’m screaming mad. It’s a perfectly proper dance, but it’s so cute. You must come to see it, Mr. Stoneman.” She stopped, as with a pleasant and gracious afterthought, but there was a gleam of mischievous malice in her smile. “Shall I show you the step now? It goes like this.” And Miss Maisie, very much in the fashion of the young woman who for the moment she chose to be, began to hum the tune, and to gather her skirts for the step.

“Good heavens! you are not going to dance here?” He glanced round at the other golfers in a horror of apprehension. Already his imagination could see the gloat in the head-lines of hostile newspapers, distorting the folly of a chorus girl into a disgusting debauch that implicated him, and that, too, after he had walked the correct and blameless life before all men for lo! these many years.

“Not if you don’t want me to. Most people are tickled to have me.” And he was certain he read acute disappointment in her face.

“I certainly don’t want you to.”

She sighed. “I don’t think you are very polite. Of course I shouldn’t think of doing it if you don’t care to see me. I was only trying to please you, but you’re so cranky.” Her sentences were full of emotional italics, and her manner of a happy-go-lucky little swagger that was a trial to him of the correct and blameless life.

His violently outraged sense of dignity reasserted itself. He was not the man to shirk the task of setting this young person in her place, and he immediately set about it.

“I may as well tell you at once, Miss Marriott, if that is your name, that I have no interest whatever in the stage or its habitués. You will, therefore, I fear, find me very dull, but I can promise you that I shall hasten to relieve you of my presence as soon as we have covered the course.” He spoke down to her from a lofty height of superiority that ought to have crushed instead of amusing her.

“You poor man! I’m going to get you interested in the stage.”

“I think not, Miss Marriott.”

“And some of its lights,” she persisted.

“Impossible!” He snapped it out with energy.

The mirth in her struggled for expression. “Don’t be afraid. I'll find you a pretty actress that will take those notions out of your head. A statesman has to have some fun, doesn’t he?”

“I think we’ll not discuss that, Miss Marriott,” he said stiffly.

“All right. Anything goes that you say. We'll talk about what interests you. Tell me about how you mean to be President. It is President you are going to be, isn’t it?”

He heard his sweet secret ambition—the hope he had not yet dared whisper to his closest ally—flung out carelessly, as if it were a matter of no moment, and he resented it none the less because her eyes were innocent, and her face empty of guile.

“I’ll finish the course on one condition,” he told her, striving to speak with perfect composure and without anger. “And that is that we confine our conversation to the necessary remarks called for by the game. I hope I’m not asking too much of you, Miss Marriott. We'll be through now in half an hour, and after that our ways will diverge entirely.”

“Mayn’t I talk at all?” she wanted to know.

“I’m sorry, but the fact is that I cannot talk and play, too.”

“Oh, very well. Let’s hurry, so that you can diverge quicker,” she said aloud; but to herself she was saying: “I wouldn’t be too sure about that diverging, if I were you, Mr. Stoneman.”

Thenceforth they golfed in silence, or as near a silence as he could compass.