E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier
and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
The Daredevil
By
Maria Thompson Daviess
Author of “The Melting of Molly,” “MissSelina Lue,” “Over Paradise Ridge, etc.”
Frontispiece from Painting by
E. Sophonisba Hergesheimer
1916
Jessie Morson Grahame
Who expects “the best” of me
Contents
- Sparkling Waves Over High Explosives
- Vive la France!
- That Mr. G. Slade of Detroit
- The Impossible Uncle Robert
- “Here’s My Boy,Governor”
- “We Both Need You”
- The Girl Bunch
- In the Dress of Magnificence
- “O’er the Land of theFree—”
- Vitriol and the Hoodoo
- Business and Pie
- The Beautiful Madam Whitworth
- Brothers by Bloodshed
- To Bear Men and to Save Them
- “Behold, I Am a Spy!”
- “Immediately I Come toYou!”
- The Tall Timbers of Old Harpeth
- The Camp Heaven
- All is Lost
- “You Are—Myself!”
The Daredevil
CHAPTER I
SPARKLING WAVES OVER HIGH EXPLOSIVES
Was there ever a woman who did not very greatly desire forherself, at long moments, the doublet and hose of a man, perhapsalso his sword, as well as his attitude in the viewing of life? Ithink not. To a very small number of those ladies of greatcuriosity it has been granted that they climb to those ramparts ofthe life of a man; but it was needful that they be stout of limband sturdy of heart to sustain themselves upon that eminence andnot be dashed below upon the rocks of a strange land. I, Roberta,Marquise de Grez and Bye, have obtained glimpses into a far countryand this is what I bring on returning, not as a spy, but, shall Isay, laden with spices and forbidden fruit?
And for me it has been a very fine dash into the wilds of a landof strangeness, and I do not know that I have yet found myselfcompletely returned unto my estate of a woman.
I first began to realize that I was set out upon a great journeywhen I stood at the rail of the very large ship and watched it plowits way through the waves which they told us with their splendorhid cruel mines. I felt the future might be like unto those greatwaves, and it might be that it would break in sparkling crests overhigh explosives. I found them!
I had seen a fear of those explosives of life come in my dyingfather’s eyes, and here I stood at his command out on theocean in quest of a woman’s fate in a stran