The Fighting Edge (Smith's Magazine 1907)/Chapter 3

“Well, Mr. Stoneman kept his five o’clock appointment, after all.” Maisie Marriott had stopped her smart little trap and was smiling down whimsically at Devereux Blake, her eyes little sparkling pools of merriment.

Blake put a foot on a spoke of the nearest wheel, and prepared to be entertained. “How did it come off? Did he amuse you?”

“IT didn’t amuse him, I’m afraid.”

“But you entertained him.”

“I tried, but he wouldn’t let me.” Her face wrinkled softly to a reminiscent laugh. “No, he frowned on my poor attempts severely.”

“Then you did find him a sermon? Is it fair to ask what form your attempts at entertainment took?”

“Oh, I criticized his golf and his politics. I’m afraid I rather impugned his motives, but then to make amends I offered to dance for him on the green at the eighth hole.”

“That was good of you,” he answered, much amused. “And what did you dance?”

“He told me he didn’t care to see it—after I had taken so much trouble to be nice to him.” Her eyes lit again with warm sparkles of fun. “I think he was afraid of a scandal. At any rate, he put me in the corner and told me not to talk.”

“Until you could behave. Well?”

“It was all his fault, in the first place, you know.”

He remembered her winsome little vagaries, and smiled.

“But it was. He insisted on putting a tag on me.”

“And what did the tag say?”

“It said: ‘Chorus Girl—Beware!’”

“You are not telling me, and in sober earnest, that he took you for Oh, he can’t be such a saphead as that.”

“And I took such an interest in him, too—asked him when he expected to be President, and all that.”

“My word! You did cut deep. He ought to have been thankful, but I suppose he wasn’t.”

“Not a bit of it, though I conscientiously tried, as you see, to do my best for him.”

Their smiling eyes met, and each enjoyed a rare instant of happy intimacy over nothing.

“I hope you will never conscientiously try to do your best for me,” he laughed.

“You’re not that kind. Won’t you jump in? I’m going to the dahlia-farm.”

He took counsel of prudence, and remembered an engagement.

“Yes, with me.” She swept up her skirts to make room for him beside her.

He looked at her again, fragrant and radiant as flower-scented spring itself, and he was lost, and wonderfully glad of it. Such sparkling eyes, such perfect, rosy lips, such warm brown, sunlit hair, and such intoxicating suggestions of sweet, impulsive graces! Let Stoneman be dolt enough to miss the charm of this creature of fire and dew. For him—he followed when that swift, frank, boyish smile invited. So he decided, and on the thought dropped into the vacant seat beside her.

“I knew you would come, but I was afraid you wouldn't,” she told him whimsically.

“And I was afraid I would, but knew I shouldn’t.”

Under her long lashes she shot a swift side glance at him, but the dawn of a smile that accompanied it was neither boyish nor frank. “It is a very pressing engagement, then, you are giving up?”

“I am quite sure I ought to keep it,” he said firmly. “You know Stoneman kept his.”

“So he did, but I still hope to teach him to miss them as gracefully as you do.”

“Thank you.” He gave a moment’s meditation to her hope, taking it from a lightly humorous point of view. “So Jefferson B. is yet to fall a victim to your bow and spear. I congratulate him. No man’s education is complete until he has made a fool of himself hopelessly at least once. As for the great J. B., I may say I anticipate the spectacle with pleasure.”

“But I haven’t invited you to see it.”

“I invite myself,” he told her cordially. “One ought to find divertisement in watching him play the game. The odds are that he will break all the rules into smithereens, and never know it. Of course he’ll take it very seriously. You ought in fairness to wear a placard defining the situation. Something like this, say: Flirtation is love, which endureth for never.”

She compassed a very. tolerable sigh. “I suppose you'll never do me justice, no matter how much time I spend in the education of Mr. Stoneman.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you'll educate him liberally.”

“If he’ll let me,” she laughed. “Who is that man that bowed to you?”

“Name of Bulger, political henchman and fidus Achates to the great Jefferson B. He handles the barrel, I am told.”

“Does Mr. Stoneman keep it filled?”

“More or less. I don’t say he uses it illegitimately, but it takes money to be a power in politics.”

“Mr. Bulger looks like a good advertisement of the barrel. I should judge he lived in a fat plethora of open barrels. Is it necessary to have quite so bull-necked a ruffian for one’s political agent?” She forgot her question while it was still on her lips, to exclaim at the beauty of the morning. “This Indian summer of yours! Were there ever days so lovely? Were there ever hills so perfect? Was ever a warm sunshine so grateful?”

He agreed with her in entirety, but his eyes were not on the blue mountains, nor were they on the sunlit plain. In truth, she was worthy of the unreluctant admiration her presence caused. An impatient spirit of light, agog with life, boyishly bold and boyishly shy, her keen, ardent impulses were born often of a cardinal sympathy and a buoyant ardor of the soul. “More heart than head,” a great critic had once said of her acting, and Blake judged it a shrewd appraisal. He knew her for a gallant comrade; the swift outrush of her friendship an asset unspeakably dear to him. How softly her eyes could glow; with what musical cadence the laugh ripple deep in her throat!

To be sure, it might be a folly to expose himself. He would pay in the end, no doubt, and pay handsomely. Well, why not? For a generous spirit, in folly might lie the highest wisdom. He were a coward who missed the rare moments of life because he feared their reaction; and whatever else he might be, Devereux Blake knew none of this frugality in his make-up. He never hesitated to pay the price for his great moments. And in the meantime he sat beside her. Surely that was enough for the present.

He laughed aloud, softly, with a touch of the sardonic humor of which in his moods he was capable. She was going East to-night to make final preparation for the new play she was to star in soon. Really, he could easily conceive their drive a parallel to Browning’s “Last Ride.”

Maisie Marriott turned, a question in her lifted brows.

he quoted, with a little laugh.

Since he studiously avoided looking at her, he was defrauded of a knowledge of the faint glow of color that flushed for an observable instant her cheeks.

“You talk a good deal of nonsense,” she told him lightly.

He met her in the same spirit. “And a good deal that isn’t nonsense, my dear.”