HEINEY TAKES THE GLOOM CURE
Two in one day, mind you. It just goes to show what effect the first dose
of hot weather is liable to have on the custard heads. Well, maybe I
oughtn't to call 'em that, either. They can't seem to help gettin' that
way, any more'n other folks can dodge havin' bad dreams, or boils on the
neck. And I ain't any mind specialist; so when it comes to sayin' what'll
soften up a man's brain, or whether he couldn't sidestep it if he tried,
I passes the make.
Now look at this dippy move of Mr. Jarvis's. Guess you don't remember
him. I'd 'most forgot him myself, it's so long since he was around; but
he's the young chap that owns that big Blenmont place, the gent that
Swifty and I helped out with the fake match when he----Well, never mind
that yarn. He got the girl, all right; and as he had everything else
anybody could think of, it should have been a case of lockin' trouble on
the outside and takin' joy for a permanent boarder.
But there the other mornin', just as I was havin' a breathin' spell after
hammerin' some surplus ego out of a young society sport that had the idea
he could box, the studio door opens, and in pokes this Mr. Jarvis, actin'
like he'd been doped.
Now he's a big, husky, full blooded young gent, that's always used
himself well, never collected any bad habits, and knows no more about
being sick than a cat knows about swimmin'. Add to that the fact that
he's one of the unemployed rich, with more money than he knows how to
spend, and you can figure out how surprised I am to see that down and out
look on his face. Course, I thinks something serious has been happenin'
to him, and I treats him real gentle.
"Hello, Mr. Jarvis!" says I. "Somebody been throwin' the hooks into you,
have they?"
"Oh, no," says he. "No, I--I'm all right."
"That's good," says I. "Dropped in to let me hand you a few vibrations
with the mitts?"
"No, thank you, Shorty," says he, fingerin' a chair-back sort of
hesitatin', as if he didn't know whether to sit down or stand up. "That
is--er--I think I don't care for a bout to-day. I--I'm hardly in the
mood, you see."
"Just as you say," says I. "Have a seat, anyway. Sure! That one; it's
reserved for you. Maybe you come in to enjoy some of my polite and
refined conversation?"
"Why--er--the fact is, Shorty," says he, fixin' his tie kind of nervous,
"I--I don't know just why I did come in. I think I started for the club,
and as I was passing by in a cab I looked up here at your
windows--and--and----"
"Of course," says I, soothin'. "What's the use goin' to the club when the
Physical Culture Studio is handier? You're feelin' fine as silk; how're
you lookin'?"
"Eh? Beg pardon?" says he, gettin' twisted up on that mothy gag. "Oh, I
see! I'm looking rotten, thank you, and feeling the same."
"G'wan!" says I. "You ain't got any license to have feelin's like that.
Guess you got the symptoms mixed. But where do you think it hurts most?"
Well, it takes five or ten minutes of jollyin' like that to pull any
details at all out of Jarvis, and when I does get the whole heartrendin'
story, I hardly knows whether to give him the laugh, or to send out for a
nursin' bottle.
Ever seen a great, grown man play the baby act? Talk about a woman in a
cryin' spell! That ain't a marker to watchin' a six-foot, one hundred and
eighty-pound free citizen droop his mouth corners and slump his shoulders
over nothin' at all. Course, I don't always feel like a hickey boy
myself, and I'll admit there are times when the rosy tints get a little
clouded up; but I has my own way of workin' out of such spells before the
mullygrubs turns my gray matter into curdled milk. But Jarvis, he's as
blue as a rainy Monday with the wash all in soak.
In the first place, he's been alone for nearly three whole weeks, the
women folks all bein' abroad, and it's a new experience for him. Think of
that awful calamity happenin' to a man of his size! Seems that before he
was married he'd always carted mother and sister around, under the idea
that he was lookin' out for them, when as a matter of fact they was the
ones that was lookin' after him. Then Mrs. Jarvis, Lady Evelyn that was,
takes him in hand and makes him more helpless than ever. He never
mistrusts how much he's been mollycoddled, until he finds himself with
nobody but a valet, a housekeeper, and seventeen assorted servants to
help him along in the struggle for existence.
His first move after the ladies have sailed is to smoke until his tongue
feels like a pussycat's back, eat his lonesome meals at lunch-counter
clip, and work himself into a mild bilious state. That makes him a little
cranky with the help, and, as there's no one around to smooth 'em out,
the cook and half a dozen maids leaves in a bunch. His head coachman goes
off on a bat, the housekeeper skips out to Ohio to bury an aunt, and the
domestic gear at Blenmont gets to runnin' about as smooth as a flat wheel
trolley car on a new roadbed.
To finish off the horrible situation, Jarvis has had a misunderstandin'
with a landscape architect that he'd engaged to do things to the grounds.
Jarvis had planned to plant a swan lake in the front yard; but the
landscaper points out that it can't be done because there's a hill in the
way.
"To be sure," says Jarvis, "these are little things; but I've been
worrying over them until--until---- Well, I'm in bad shape, Shorty."
"It's a wonder you're still alive," says I.
"Don't!" says he, groanin'. "It is too serious a matter. Perhaps you
don't know it, but I had an uncle that drank himself to death."
"Huh!" says I. "'Most everybody has had an uncle of that kind."
"And one of my cousins," Jarvis goes on, lowerin' his voice and lookin'
around cautious, "shot himself--in the head!"
"Eh?" says I. And then I begun to get a glimmer of what he was drivin'
at. "What! You don't mean that you were thinkin' of--of----"
He groans again and nods his head.
Then I cuts loose. "Why, look here!" says I. "You soft boiled, mush
headed, spineless imitation of a real man! do you mean to tell me that,
just because you've been tied loose from a few skirts for a week or so,
and have had to deal with some grouchy hired hands, you've actually gone
jelly brained over it?"
Perhaps that don't make him squirm some, though! He turns white first,
and then he gets the hectic flush. "Pardon me, McCabe," says he,
stiffenin' up, "but I don't care to have anyone talk to me like----"
"Ah, pickles!" says I. "I'll talk to you a good deal straighter'n that,
before I finish! And you'll take it, too! Why, you great, overgrown kid!
what right have you developin' such a yellow cur streak as that? You!
What you need is to be laid over that chair and paddled, and blamed if I
don't know but I'd better----"
But just here the door creaks, and in drifts the other one. Hanged if I
ever did know what his real name was. I called him Heiney Kirschwasser
for short, though he says he ain't Dutch at all, but Swiss-French; and
that it ain't kirsch that's his failin', but prune brandy. He's the mop
and broom artist for the buildin', some floater the janitor picked up off
the sidewalk a few months back.
He wa'n't exactly a decorative object, this Heiney; but he's kind of a
picturesque ruin. His widest part is around the belt; and from there he
tapers both ways, his shoulders bein' a good eight inches narrower; and
on top of them, with no neck to speak of, is a head shaped like a gum
drop, bald on top, and remindin' you of them mountain peaks you see in
pictures, or a ham set on end.
He has a pair of stary, pop eyes, a high colored beak that might be used
as a danger signal, and a black, shoebrush beard, trimmed close except
for a little spike under the chin, that gives the lower part of his face
a look like the ace of spades. His mornin' costume is a faded blue
jumper, brown checked pants, and an old pair of rubber soled shoes that
Swifty had donated to him.
That's Heiney's description, as near as I can get to it. He comes
shufflin' in, luggin' a scrub pail in one hand, and draggin' a mop in the
other, and he looks about as cheerful as a worn-out hearse that's been
turned into an ash wagon.
"Heiney," says I, "you're just in time. Still lookin' for a nice,
comfortable place to die in, are you?"
Heiney shrugs his shoulders and lifts his eyebrows in a lifeless sort of
style. He does most of his conversin' that way; but he can say more with
a few shrugs than Swifty Joe can by usin' both sides of his mouth. What
Heiney means is that one place is as good as another, and he don't care
how soon he finds it.
"Well, cheer up, Heiney," says I; "for I've just decided to give you the
use of my back room to shuffle off in. I've got comp'ny for you, too.
Here's a friend of mine that feels the same way you do. Mr. Jarvis, Mr.
Heiney Kirschwasser."
And you should have seen the look of disgust on Jarvis's face as he sizes
up the specimen. "Oh, I say now, Shorty," he begins, "there's such a
thing as----"
"G'wan!" says I. "Wa'n't you just tellin' me about how you was plannin' a
job for the coroner? And Heiney's been threatenin' to do the same thing
for weeks. He comes in here every day or so and talks about jumpin' off
the dock, or doin' the air dance. I've been stavin' him off with slugs of
prune brandy and doses of good advice; but if a chap like you has caught
the fever, then I see I've been doin' wrong not to let Heiney have his
way. Now there's the back room, with plenty of rope and gasjets. Get on
in there, both of you, and make a reg'lar bee of it!"
Heiney, he stands blinkin' and starin' at Jarvis, until he gets him so
nervous he almost screams.
"For Heaven's sake, Shorty," says Jarvis, "let's not joke about such a
subject!"
"Joke!" says I. "You're the one that's supplyin' the comedy here. Now
Heiney is serious. He'd do the trick in a minute if he had the nerve.
He's got things on his mind, Heiney has. And what's the odds if they
ain't so? Compared to what you've been fussin' about, they're----Here,
Heiney, you tell the gentleman that tale of yours. Begin where you was a
cook in some seashore hotel in Switzerland."
"Not zeashore! _Non_!" says Heiney, droppin' his pail and wavin' one
hand. "Eet ees at Lack Como, in ze montongs. I am ze head chef, _moi!_"
"Yes, you look it!" says I. "A fine figure of a chef you'd make! wouldn't
you? Well, go on: about bein' full of prunes when they called on you to
season the soup. What was it you dumped in instead of salt,--arsenic,
eh?"
"_Non, non!_" says Heiney, gettin' excited. "Ze poison for ze r-r-rat. I
keep heem in one tin can, same as ze salt. I am what you call intoxicate.
I make ze mistak'. Ah, _diable! Deux, trois_--t'ree hundred guests are
zere. Zey eat ze soup. Zen come by me ze _maitre d'hotel._ He say ze soup
ees spoil. Eet has ze foony taste. Ah, mon _Dieu! Mon_----"
"Yes, yes," says I. "Never mind whether it was Monday or Tuesday. What
did you do then?"
"_Moi_? I fly!" says Heiney. "I am distract. I r-r-r-run on ze
r-r-r-road. I tear-r-r off my white apron, my white chapeau. Ah,
_sacr-r-re nom!_ How my heart is thoomp, thoomp, on my inside! All night
I speak to myself: 'You have keel zem all! Ze _belle_ ladies! Ze _pauvre_
shildren! All, you have poi-zon-ed! Zey make to tweest up on ze floor!'
Ah, _diable_! Always I can see zem tweest up!"
"Reg'lar rough on rats carnival, eh?" says I. "Three hundred beautiful
ladies and poor children, not to mention a few men, doin' the agony act
on the dinin' room floor! There, Jarvis! How'd you like to carry round a
movin' picture film like that in your mem'ry? Course, I've tried to
explain to Heiney that nothing of the kind ever took place; that the
papers would have been full of it; and that he'd been in the jug long
before this, if it had. But this is Heiney's own particular pipe dream,
and he can't let go of it. It's got tangled up in the works somehow, and
nothing I can say will jar it loose. Poor cuss! Look at him! No doubt
about its seemin' real to him, is there? And how does your little
collection of fleabites show up alongside it; eh, Jarvis?"
But Jarvis, he's gazin' at Heiney as if this lump of moldy sweitzerkase
was fascinatin' to look at.
"I beg pardon," says he, "but you say this hotel was at Lake Como?"
Heiney nods his head, then covers his face with his hands, as if he was
seein' things again.
"And what was the date of this--this unfortunate occurrence?" says
Jarvis.
"Year before the last, in Augoost," says Heiney, shudderin',--"Augoost
seven."
"The seventh of August!" says Jarvis. "And was your hotel the Occident?"
"_Oui, oui_!" says Heiney. "_L'Hotel Occident_."
"Guess he means Accident," says I. "What do you know about it, Jarvis?"
"Why," says he, "I was there."
"What?" says I. "Here, Heiney, wake up! Here's one of the victims of your
rat poison soup. Does he look as though he'd been through that floor
tweestin' orgy?"
With that Heiney gets mighty interested; but he ain't convinced until
Jarvis gives him all the details, even to namin' the landlord and
describin' the head waiter.
"But ze soup!" says Heiney. "Ze poi-zon-ed soup?"
"It was bad soup," says Jarvis; "but not quite so bad as that. Nobody
could eat it, and I believe the final report that we had on the subject
was to the effect that a half intoxicated chef had seasoned it with the
powdered alum that should have gone into the morning rolls."
"Ze alum! Ze alum! Of zat I nevair think!" squeals Heiney, flopping down
on his knees. "Ah, _le bon Dieu! Le bon Dieu_!"
He clasps his hands in front of him and rolls his eyes to the ceilin'.
Say, it was the liveliest French prayin' I ever saw; for Heiney is
rockin' back and forth, his pop eyes leakin' brine, and the polly-voo
conversation is bubblin' out of him like water out of a bu'sted fire
hydrant.
"Ah, quit it!" says I. "This is no camp meetin'."
There's no shuttin' him off, though, and all the let-up he takes is to
break off now and then to get Jarvis to tell him once more that it's all
true.
"You make _certainement_, eh?" says he. "Nobody was keel?"
"Not a soul," says Jarvis. "I didn't even hear of anyone that was made
ill."
"Ah, _merci, merci_!" howls Heiney, beginnin' the rockin' horse act
again.
"Say, for the love of Pete, Heiney!" says I, "will you saw that off
before you draw a crowd? I'm glad you believe Jarvis, and that Jarvis
believes you; but hanged if I can quite swallow any such dopy yarn as
that without somethin' more convincin'! All I know about you is that
you're the worst floor scrubber I ever saw. And you say you was a cook,
do you?"
"Cook!" says Heiney, swellin' up his chest. "I am tell you zat I was ze
premier chef. I have made for myself fame. Everywhere in _l'Europe_ zey
will tell you of me. For the king of ze Englise I have made a dinner.
_Moi!_ I have invent ze sauce Ravignon. From nozzing at all--some meat
scraps, some leetle greens--I produce ze dish ravishment."
"Yes, I've heard bluffs like that before," says I; "but I never saw one
made good. Tell you what I'll do, though: In the far corner of the gym,
there, is what Swifty Joe calls his kitchenet, where he warms up his
chowder and beans. There's a two-burner gas stove, an old fryin' pan, and
a coffee pot. Now here's a dollar. You take that out on Sixth-ave. and
spend it for meat scraps and leetle greens. Then you come back here, and
while Jarvis and I are takin' a little exercise, if you can hash up
anything that's fit to eat, I'll believe your whole yarn. Do you make the
try?"
Does he? Say, you never saw such a tickled Frenchy in your life. Before
Jarvis and me had got nicely peeled down for our delayed boxin' bout,
Heiney is back with his bundles, has got the fryin' pan scoured, the gas
blazin', and is throwin' things together like a juggler doin' a stage
turn.
He sheds the blue jumper, ties a bath towel around him for an apron,
makes a hat out of a paper bag, and twists some of that stringy lip
decoration of his into a pointed mustache. Honest, he didn't look nor act
any more like the wreck that had dragged the mop in there half an hour
before than I look like Bill Taft. And by the time we've had our three
rounds and a rub down, he's standin' doubled up beside a little table
that he's found, with his arms spread out like he was goin' to take a
dive.
"_Messieurs_," says he, "eet ees serve."
"Good!" says I. "I'm just about up to tacklin' a hot lunch. What kind of
a mess have you got here, anyway, Heiney? Any alum in it? Blamed if I
don't make you put away the whole shootin' match if it ain't good!"
How's that? Well, say, I couldn't name it, or say whether it was a stew,
fry or an omelet, but for an impromptu sample of fancy grub it was a
little the tastiest article I ever stacked up against.
"Why!" says Jarvis, smackin' his lips after the third forkful. "It's _ris
de veau_, isn't it?"
"But yes, monsieur!" says Heiney, his face lightin' up. "Eet ees _ris de
veau grille, a la financier_."
"And what's that in English?" says I.
"In Englise," says Heiney, shruggin' his shoulders, "eet ees not exist.
Eet ees Parisienne."
"Bully for Paris, then!" says I. "Whatever it might be if it could be
naturalized, it touches the spot. I take it all back, Heiney. You're the
shiftiest chef that ever juggled a fryin' pan. A refill on the riddy-voo,
seal-voo-plate."
Well, what do you guess! Jarvis engages Heiney on the spot, and an hour
later they've started for Blenmont, both of 'em actin' like they thought
this was a good world to live in, after all.
Yesterday me and Sadie accepts a special invite out there to dinner; and
it was worth goin' out to get. From start to finish it was the finest
that ever happened. Afterwards Jarvis has Heiney come up from the kitchen
and show himself while we drinks his good health. And say, in his white
togs and starched linen cap, he's got the chef on the canned goods ads.
lookin' like a hash rustler in a beanery.
As for Jarvis, he's got the pink back in his cheeks, and is holdin' his
chin up once more, and when we left in the mornin' he was out bossin' a
couple of hundred lab'rers that was takin' that hill in wheelbarrows and
cartin' it off where it wouldn't interfere with the lake.
"Shorty," says he, "I don't know how you did it, but you've made me a
sane man again, and I owe you more than----"
"Ah, chuck it!" says I. "It was curin' Heiney that cured you."
"Really?" says he. "Then you are a believer in homeopathic
psychotherapeutics?"
"Which?" says I. "Say, write that down on my cuff by syllables, will you?
I want to spring it on Swifty Joe."