The Daredevil

by Maria Thompson Daviess

“Bless my soul, are you here and at work, young man? I thought you were asleep after all that gallivanting, and was just preparing to blow you up out of bed over the telephone,” exclaimed my Uncle, the General Robert, with great fierceness of manner but also a great pleasure of eyes at the sight of me in the character of such a nice Secretary to the Gouverneur of Harpeth.

“Robert arrived five minutes after I did and ten minutes before you came into the building, General,” said that Gouverneur Faulkner, with a twinkle of great enjoyment in his eyes. “He’s done a day’s work before we have begun. Will you have your luncheon sent up from the restaurant with ours, Robert? Just order the usual things for us and any kind of frills you care for. Shall I say snails?”

“I thank Your Excellency deeply but I am engaged that I luncheon and dance with Mr. Buzz Clendenning in his club in the country if I may be given permission to go,” I answered as I laid my fingers with affection on the arm of my Uncle, the General Robert, as I stood beside him.

“Nonsense, sir! You’ll not join those jackanapes in their gambols during business hours. Order yourself up a slice of pie and a glass of buttermilk along with mine and sit down here to listen to matters of business by which you can profit. Luncheon and dancing! No, pie and business, I say, pie and business!” And the fierceness of my Uncle, the General Robert, made me retire several feet away from him in astonishment and in the direction of the Gouverneur Faulkner.

“Now, General, don’t tie the boy down to pie and the company of two musty old gentlemen like ourselves. He’s earned a dance. You may go, Robert, and I wish—I wish my heels were light enough to go with yours,” that kind Gouverneur said in my behalf.

“Light heels, light head! And I say he shall—” And another explosion of fierceness was about to arrive from my Uncle, the General Robert, when I said with great and real humility:

“It will be my great pleasure to sit at the feet of you and His Excellency, which are not light for dancing, my Uncle Robert, and eat a large piece of pie and also milk.” I spoke with a sincerity, for suddenly I knew that there would be nothing at that dance of girls in the club of my Buzz that I would so desire as to sit near to that Gouverneur Faulkner, in whose eyes came that sadness when he spoke of the dance for which he had not the light feet, and eat with him and my Uncle, the General Robert, a piece of that American pie of which I had heard my father speak many times.

“Why, he means it, General,” said the Gouverneur Faulkner with a great softness in his eyes that answered the affection that was in mine that pleaded for the pie and a place at his side. “Run, youngster, run, before the General says another word. You are dismissed. Go!” And with a great laugh the Gouverneur Faulkner rose, put his arm around my shoulder and put me out of that room before my Uncle, the General Robert, could begin any more words of remonstrance. And I ran away from that door to my Buzz in the waiting car with both light and reluctant feet.

The two hours that I spent with my Buzz at his club in the country with what he called in front of their very faces, bunches of calico, passed with such a rapidity that I felt I must grasp each minute and remonstrate with them for their fleetness. That Mademoiselle Sue was even much more lovely in her gray costume of golf with a tie the color of the one worn by my Buzz, than she had been in her chiffon of the dinner dance, and the beautiful Belle was much the same, with an added gayety and charm, while I discovered a very sweet Kate Keith and a Mildred Summers who was not of a great beauty but of many interesting remarks which induced much laughing. With them were that Miles Menefee whom my Buzz had recommended to me, and also several young gentlemen of America whom I liked exceedingly. One Mr. Phillips Taylor took me by my heart with a great force when, as we were all seated on the steps of the wide porch eating the promised sandwich and consuming breath for another dance in a very few minutes, he said to me:

“Say, Mr. Robert Carruthers, my mater wants to see you over in the east card room directly. She says she had it on with your father in their dancing school days and it was only by the intervention of some sort of love ruckus that you and I are not brothers or maybe what would be worse, brother and sister. If that had happened you would have had to be it. I wouldn’t. But that’s not our quarrel.”