BLAKEVILLE
If by any chance you should happen to stop off in the sleepy town of
Blakeville, somewhere west of Chicago, you would be directed at once
to the St. Nicholas Hotel, not only the leading hostelry of the city,
but--to quote the advertisement in the local newspaper--the principal
hotel in that Congressional district. After you had been conducted to
the room with a bath--for I am sure you would insist on having it if
it were not already occupied, which wouldn't be likely--you would
cross over to the window and look out upon Main Street. Directly
across the way you would observe a show window in which huge bottles
filled with red, yellow, and blue fluids predominated. The sign above
the door would tell you that it was a drug store, if you needed
anything more illuminating than the three big bottles.
"Davis' drug store," you would say to your wife, if she happened to be
with you, and if you have been at all interested in the history of
Mr.--Mr.--Now, what is his name?--you would doubtless add, "It seems
to me I have heard of the place before." And then you would stare hard
to see if you could catch a glimpse of the soda-water dispenser, whose
base of operations was just inside the door to the left, a marble
structure that glistened with white and silver, and created within you
at once a longing for sarsaparilla or vanilla and the delicious after
effect of stinging gases coming up through the nostrils, not
infrequently accompanied by tears of exquisite pain--a pungent pain,
if you please.
At the rush periods of the day you could not possibly have seen him
for the crowd of thirsty people who obstructed the view. Everybody in
town flocked to Davis' for their chocolate sundaes and cherry
phosphates. Was not Harvey behind the counter once more? With all the
new-fangled concoctions from gay New York, besides a few novelties
from Paris, and a wonderful assortment of what might well have been
called prestidigitatorial achievements!
He had a new way of juggling an egg phosphate that was worth going
miles to see, and as for the manner in which he sprinkled nutmeg over
the surface--well! no Delsartian movement ever was so full of grace.
Yes, he was back at the old place in Davis'. For a year and a half he
had been there. So prosperous was his first summer behind the "soda
counter" that the owner of the place agreed with him that the fountain
could be kept running all winter, producing hot chocolate, beef tea,
and all that sort of thing. Just to keep the customers from getting
out of the habit, argued Harvey in support of his plan--and his job.
You may be interested to learn how he came back to Blakeville. He was
a fortnight getting there from Tarrytown. His railroad ticket carried
him to Cleveland. From that city he walked to Chicago, his purpose
being to save a few dollars so that he might ride into Blakeville. His
feet were so sore and swollen when he finally hobbled into his Uncle
Peter's art studio, on Main Street, that he couldn't get his shoes on
for forty-eight hours after once taking them off. He confessed to a
bit of high living in his time, lugubriously admitting to his uncle
that he feared he had a touch of the gout. He was subject to it,
confound it. Beastly thing, gout. But you can't live on lobster and
terrapin and champagne without paying the price.
His uncle, a crusty and unimpressionable bachelor, was not long in
getting the truth out of him. To Harvey's unbounded surprise the old
photographer sympathised with him. Instead of kicking him out he took
him to his bosom, so to speak, and commiserated with him.
"I feel just as sorry for a married man, Harvey," said he, "as I do
for a half-starved dog. I'm always going out of my way to feed some of
these cast-off dogs around town, so why shouldn't I do the same for a
poor devil of a husband? I'll make you comfortable until you get into
Davis', but don't you ever let on to these damned women that you're a
failure, or that you're strapped, or that that measly little wife of
yours gave you the sack. No, sir! Remember who you are. You are my
nephew. I won't say as I'm proud of you, but, by thunder! I don't want
anybody in Blakeville to know that I'm ashamed of you. If I feel that
way about you, it's my own secret and it's nobody's business. So you
just put on a bold front and nobody need know. You can be quite sure
I won't tell on you, to have people saying that my poor dead sister's
boy wasn't good enough for Ell Barkley or any other woman that ever
lived.
"But it's a lesson to you. Don't--for God's sake, don't--ever let
another one of 'em get her claws on you! Here's ten dollars. Go out
and buy some ten-cent cigars at Rumley's, and smoke 'em where
everybody can see you. Ten-centers, mind you; not two-fers, the kind I
smoke. And get a new pair of shoes at Higgs'. And invite me to eat
a--an expensive meal at the St. Nicholas. It can't cost more'n a
dollar, no matter how much we order, but you can ask for lobster and
terrapin, and raise thunder because they haven't got 'em, whatever
they are. Then in a couple of days you can say you're going to help me
out during the busy season, soliciting orders for crayon portraits.
I'll board and lodge you here and give you four dollars a week to
splurge on. The only thing I ask in return is that you'll tell people
I'm a smart man for never having married. That's all!"
You may be quite sure that Harvey took to the place as a duck takes
to water. Inside of a week after his arrival--or, properly speaking,
his appearance in Blakeville, for you couldn't connect the two on
account of the gout--he was the most talked-of, most envied man in the
place. In the cigar stores, poolrooms, and at the St. Nicholas he was
wont to regale masculine Blakeville with tales of high life in the
Tenderloin that caused them to fairly shiver from attacks of the
imagination, and subsequently to go home and tell their women folk
what a gay Lothario he was, with the result that the interest in the
erstwhile drug clerk spread to the other sex with such remarkable
unanimity that no bit of gossip was complete without him. Every one
affected his society, because every one wanted to hear what he had to
say of the gay world on Manhattan Island; the life behind the scenes
of the great theatres, the life in the million dollar cafés and
hotels, the life in the homes of fashionable New Yorkers,--with whom
he was on perfectly amiable terms,--the life in Wall Street. Some of
them wanted to know all about Old Trinity, others were interested in
the literary atmosphere of Gotham, while others preferred to hear
about the fashions. But the great majority hungered for the details of
convivial escapades--and he saw to it that they were amply satisfied.
Especially were they interested in stories concerning the genus
"broiler." Oh, he was really a devil of a fellow.
When the time came for him to begin his work as a solicitor for crayon
portraits his reputation was such that not only was he able to gain
admittance to every home visited, but he was allowed to remain and
chat as long as he pleased, sometimes obtaining an order, but always
being invited to call again after the lady of the house had had time
to talk it over with her husband.
Sometimes he would lie awake in his bed trying in vain to remember the
tales he had told and wondering if the people really believed him.
Then he was prone to contrast his fiction with the truth as he knew
it, and to blame himself for not having lived the brightly painted
life when he had the opportunity. He almost wept when he thought of
what he had missed. His imagination carried him so far that he cursed
his mistaken rectitude and longed for one lone and indelible
reminiscence which he could cherish as a real tribute to that
beautiful thing called vice!
In answer to all questions he announced that poor Nellie had been
advised to go West for her health. Of the real situation he said
nothing.
No day passed that did not bring with it the longing for a letter from
Nellie or a word from Phoebe. Down in his heart he was grieving. He
wanted them, both of them. The hope that Nellie would appeal to him
for forgiveness grew smaller as the days went by, and yet he did not
let it die. His loyal imagination kept it alive, fed it with daily
prayers and endless vistas of a reconstructed happiness for all of
them.
Toward the end of his first summer at Davis' he was served with the
notice that Nellie had instituted proceedings against him in Reno. It
was in the days of Reno's early popularity as a rest cure for those
suffering from marital maladies; impediments and complications were
not so annoying as they appear to be in these latter times of ours.
There was also a legal notice printed in the Blakeville _Patriot_.
The shock laid him up for a couple of days. If his uncle meant to
encourage him by maintaining an almost incessant flow of invectives,
he made a dismal failure of it. He couldn't convince the heartsick
Harvey that Nellie was "bad rubbish" and that he was lucky to be rid
of her. No amount of cajolery could make him believe that he was a
good deal happier than he had ever been before in all his life; he
wasn't happy and he couldn't be fooled into believing he was. He was
miserable--desperately miserable. Looking back on his futile attempts
to take his own life, he realised now that he had missed two golden
chances to be supremely happy. How happy he could be if he were only
dead! He was rather glad, of course, that he failed with the pistol,
because it would have been such a gory way out of it, but it was very
stupid of him not to have gone out pleasantly--even immaculately--by
the other route.
But it was too late to think of doing it now. He was under contract
with Mrs. Davis, Mr. Davis having passed on late in the spring, and he
could not desert the widow in the midst of the busy season. His last
commission as a crayon solicitor had come through Mrs. Davis, two
months after the demise of Blakeville's leading apothecary. She
ordered a life-size portrait of her husband, to be hung in the store,
and they wept together over the prescription--that is to say, over the
colour of the cravat and the shade of the sparse thatch that covered
the head of the departed. Mrs. Davis never was to forget his
sympathetic attitude. She never quite got over explaining the
oversight that had deprived him of the distinction of being one of the
pall-bearers, but she made up for it in a measure by insisting on
opening the soda fountain at least a month earlier than was customary
the next spring, and in other ways, as you will see later on.
Just as he was beginning to rise, phoenixlike, from the ashes of his
despond, the _Patriot_ reprinted the full details of Nellie's
complaint as they appeared in a New York daily. For a brief spell he
shrivelled up with shame and horror; he could not look any one in the
face. Nellie's lawyers had made the astounding, outrageous charge of
infidelity against him!
Infidelity!
He was stunned.
But just as he was on the point of resigning his position in the
store, after six months of glorious triumph, the business began to
pick up so tremendously that he wondered what had got into people.
His uncle chucked him in the ribs and called him a gay dog! Men came
in and ordered sundaes who had never tasted one before, and they all
looked at him in a strangely respectful way. Women smirked and giggled
and called him a naughty fellow, and said they really ought not to let
him wait on them.
All of a sudden it dawned on him that he was "somebody." He was a
rake!
The New York paper devoted two full columns to his perfidious
behaviour in the Tenderloin. For the first time in his life he stood
in the limelight. Nellie charged him with other trifling things, such
as failure to provide, desertion, cruelty; but none of these was
sufficiently blighting to take the edge off the delicious clause which
lifted him into the seventh heaven of a new found self-esteem! His
first impulse had been to cry out against the diabolical falsehood, to
deny the allegation, to fight the case to the bitter end. But on
second thought he concluded to maintain a dignified silence,
especially as he came to realise that he now possessed a definite
entity not only in Blakeville, but in the world at large. He was a
recognised human being! People who had never heard of him before were
now saying, "What a jolly scamp he is! What a scalawag!" Oh, it was
good to come into his own, even though he reached it by a crooked and
heretofore undesirable thoroughfare. Path was not the word--it was a
thoroughfare, lined by countless staring, admiring fellow creatures,
all of whom pointed him out and called him by his own name.
Mothers cautioned their daughters, commanding them to have nothing to
do with him, and then went with them to Davis' to see that the
commands were obeyed. Fathers held him up to their sons as a dreadful
warning, and then made it a point to drop in and tell him what they
thought of him with a sly wink that pleased and never offended him.
He mildly protested against the sensational charge when questioned
about it, saying that Nellie was mistaken, that her jealousy led her
to believe a lot of things that were not true, and that he felt
dreadfully cut up about the whole business, as it was likely to create
a wrong impression in New York. Of course, he went on, no one in
Blakeville believed the foolish thing! But in New York--well, they
were likely to believe anything of a fellow there!
He moved in the very centre of a great white light. Reporters came in
every day and asked him if there was anything new, hoping, of course,
for fresh developments in the great divorce case. Lawyers dropped in
to hint that they would like to take care of his interests. But there
never was anything new, and his New York lawyers were perfectly
capable of handling his affairs, particularly as he had decided to
enter no general denial to the charges. He would let her get her
divorce if she wanted it so badly as all that!
"I'd fight it," said the editor of the _Patriot_, counselling him one
afternoon.
"You wouldn't if you had a child to consider," said Harvey,
resignedly, quite overlooking the fact that there were nine growing
children in the editor's household.
"She's too young to know anything about it," argued the other,
earnestly.
Harvey shook his head. "You don't know what it is to be a father, Mr.
Brinkley. It's a terrible responsibility."
Mr. Brinkley snorted. "I should say it is!"
"You'd think of your children if your wife sued you for divorce and
charged you with----"
"I'd want my children to know I was innocent," broke in the editor,
warmly.
"They wouldn't believe it if the lawyers got to cross-examining you,"
said Harvey, meaning well, but making a secret enemy of Mr. Brinkley,
who thought he knew more of a regrettable visit to Chicago than he
pretended.
Late in the fall several important epoch-making things happened to
Harvey. Nellie was granted a divorce and the custody of the child. His
uncle fell ill and died of pneumonia, and he found himself the sole
heir to a thriving business and nearly three thousand dollars in bank.
Mrs. Davis blandly proposed matrimony to him, now that he was free and
she nearing the halfway stage of mourning.
He was somewhat dazed by these swift turns of the wheel of fate.
His first thought on coming into the fortune was of Phoebe, and the
opportunities it laid open to him where she was concerned. His uncle
had been dilatory in the matter of dying, but his nephew did not have
it in his kindly heart to hold it up against the old gentleman.
Still, if he had passed on a fortnight earlier, the decree might have
been anticipated by a few days and Phoebe at least saved for him.
Seeing that the poor old gentleman had to die anyway, it seemed rather
inconsiderate of fate to put it off so long as it did. As it was, he
would have to make the best of it and institute some sort of
proceedings to get possession of the child for half of the year at the
shortest.
He went so far as to slyly consult an impecunious lawyer about the
matter, with the result that a long letter was sent to Nellie setting
out the facts and proposing an amicable arrangement in lieu of more
sinister proceedings. Harvey added a postscript to the lawyer's
diplomatic rigmarole, conveying a plain hint to Nellie that, inasmuch
as he was now quite well-to-do, she might fare worse than to come back
to him and begin all over again.
The letter was hardly on its way to Reno, with instructions to
forward, when he began to experience a deep and growing sense of
shame; it was a pusillanimous trick he was playing on his poor old
woman-hating uncle. Contemplating a resumption of the conjugal state
almost before the old gentleman was cold in his grave! It was
contemptible. In no little dread he wondered if his uncle would come
back to haunt him. There was, at any rate, no getting away from the
gruesome conviction, ludicrous as it may seem, that he would be
responsible for the brisk turning over of Uncle Peter, if nothing
more.
On top of this spell of uneasiness came the surprising proposition of
Mrs. Davis. Between the suspense of not hearing from Nellie and the
dread of offending the dead he was already in a sharp state of nerves.
But when Mrs. Davis gently confided to him that she needed a live man
to conduct her affairs without being actuated by a desire to earn a
weekly salary he was completely stupefied.
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Mrs. Davis," he said, beginning to
perspire very freely.
They were seated in the parlour of her house in Brown Street. She had
sent for him.
"Of course, Harvey, it is most unseemly of me to suggest it at the
present time, seeing as I have only been in mourning for three months,
but I thought perhaps you'd feel more settled like if you knew just
what to expect of me."
"Just what to expect?"
"Yes; so's you could rest easy in your mind. It would have to be quite
a ways off yet, naturally, so's people wouldn't say mean things about
us. They might, you know, considering the way you carried on with
women in New York. Not for the world would I have 'em say or even
think that anything had been going on between you and me prior to the
time of Mr. Davis' death, but--but you know how people will talk if
they get a chance. For that reason I think we'd better wait until the
full period of mourning is over. That's only about a year longer, and
it would stop----"
"Are--are you asking me to--to marry you, Mrs. Davis?" gasped Harvey,
clutching the arms of the chair.
"Well, Harvey," said she, kindly, "I am making it easy for you to do
it yourself."
"Holy----" began he, but strangled back the word "Mike," remembering
that Mrs. Davis, a devout church member, abhorred anything that
bordered on the profane.
"Holy what?" asked she, rather coyly for a lady who was not likely to
see sixty again unless reincarnated.
"Matrimony," he completed, as if inspired.
"I know I am a few years older than you, Harvey, but you are so very
much older than I in point of experience that I must seem a mere girl
to you. We could----"
"Mrs. Davis, I--I can't do it," he blurted out, mopping his brow. "I
suppose it means I'll lose my job in the store, but, honestly, I can't
do it. I'm much obliged. It's awfully nice of you to----"
"Don't be too hasty," said she, composedly. "As I said in the
beginning, I want some one to conduct the store in Mr. Davis' place.
But I want that person to be part owner of it. No hired man, you
understand? Now, how would a new sign over the door look, with your
name right after Davis? Davis &--er--er----Oh, dear me!"
"I'll--I'll buy half of the store," floundered he. "I want to buy a
half interest."
"I won't sell," said she, flatly. "I'm determined that the store shall
never go out of the family while I am alive. There's only one way for
you to get around that, and that's by becoming a part of the family."
"Why--why, Mrs. Davis, I'm only thirty years old. You surely don't
mean to say you'd--you'd marry a kid like me? Let's see. My mother,
if she was alive, wouldn't be as old as----"
"Never mind!" interrupted she, with considerable asperity. "We won't
discuss your mother, if you please. Now, Harvey, don't be cruel. I am
very fond of you. I will overlook all those scandalous things you did
in New York. I can and will close my eyes to the wicked life you led
there. I won't even ask their names--and that's more than most women
would promise! I won't----"
"I can't do it," he repeated two or three times in rapid succession.
"Think it over, Harvey dear," said she, impressively.
"I'll buy a half interest if you'll let me, but I'll be doggoned if
I'll marry a stepmother for Phoebe, not for the whole shebang!"
"Stepmother!" she repeated, shrilly. "I don't intend to be a
stepmother!"
"Maybe I meant grandmother," he stammered in confusion. "I'm so
rattled."
"Nellie has got Phoebe. She's not yours any longer. How can I be her
stepmother? Answer that."
"You can't," said he, much too promptly.
"Well, promise me one thing, Harvey dear," she pleaded; "promise me
you'll take a month or two to think it over. We couldn't be married
for a year, in any event, so what's the sense of being in such a hurry
to settle the matter definitely?"
Harvey reflected. He found himself in a very peculiar predicament. He
had gone to her house with the avowed intention of offering her three
thousand dollars and the studio in exchange for a half interest in the
drug store. Now his long cherished dream seemed to be turning into a
nightmare.
"I will think it over," he said, at last, in secret desperation. "But
can't you give me a year's option?"
"On me?"
"On the store."
"Well, am I not the store?"
"No ma'am," said he, hastily. "I can't look at you in that light. I
can't think of you as a drug store."
"I am sure I would make you a good and loving wife, Harvey. If Davis
were alive he could tell you how devoted I was to him in all
the----"
"But that's just the trouble, he isn't alive!" cried poor Harvey, at
his wits' end. "Give me eight months."
"In the meantime you will up and marry some one else. Half the girls
in town are crazy--no, I won't say that," she made haste to interrupt
herself, suddenly realising the tactlessness of the remark. "Come up
to dinner next Sunday and we will talk it over again. It is the best
drug store in Blakeville, Harvey; remember that."
"I will remember it," he said, blankly, and took his departure.
As he passed Simpson's book store he dashed in and bought a New York
dramatic paper. Hurriedly looking through the route list of companies,
he found that the "Up in the Air" company was playing that week in
Philadelphia. Without consulting his attorney he telegraphed to
Nellie:--"Am in trouble. Uncle Peter is dead. Left me everything. Will
you come back? Harvey."
The next day he had a wire from Nellie, charges collect:--"If he left
you everything, why don't you pay for telegrams when you send them?
Nellie."
He replied:--"I was not sure you were with the company, that's why.
Shall I come to Philadelphia? Harvey."
Her answer:--"Not unless you are looking for more trouble. Nellie."
His next:--"There's a woman here who wants me to marry her. Won't you
help me? Harvey."
Her last:--"There's a man here who is going to marry me. Why don't you
marry her? Naughty! Naughty! Nellie."
He gave up in despair at this. On Sunday he allowed Mrs. Davis to
bullyrag him into a tentative engagement. Then he began to droop. He
had done a bit of investigating on his own account before going up to
dine with her. She had been married to Davis forty-two years and then
he died. If their only daughter had lived she would be forty-one years
of age, and, if married, would doubtless be the mother of a daughter
who might also in turn be the mother of a child. Figuring back, he
made out that under these circumstances Mrs. Davis might very easily
have been a great-grandmother. With this appalling thought in mind,
he was quite firm in his determination to reject the old lady's
proposal. Mrs. Davis taking Nellie's place! Pretty, gay, vivacious
Nellie! It was too absurd for words.
But he went home an engaged man, just the same.
They were to be married in September of the following year, many
months off.
That afternoon he saw a few gray hairs just above his ears and pulled
them out. After that he looked for them every day. It was amazing how
rapidly they increased despite his efforts to exterminate them. He
began to grow careless in the matter of dress. His much talked of
checked suits and lavender waistcoats took on spots and creases; his
gaudy neckties became soiled and frayed; his fancy Newmarket overcoat,
the like of which was only to be seen in Blakeville when some
travelling theatrical troupe came to town, looked seedy, unbrushed,
and sadly wrinkled. He forgot to shave for days at a time.
His only excuse to himself was, What's the use?
During the holidays, in the midst of a cheerful season of buying
presents for Phoebe--and a bracelet for Nellie--he saw in the
_Patriot_, under big headlines, the thing that served as the last
straw for his already sagging back. The announcement was being made in
all the metropolitan newspapers that "Nellie Duluth, the most popular
and the most beautiful of all the comic opera stars," was to quit the
stage forever on the first of the year to become the wife of "the
great financier, L. Z. Fairfax, long a devoted admirer."
The happy couple were to spend the honeymoon on the groom's yacht,
sailing in February for an extended cruise of the Mediterranean and
other "sunny waters of the globe," primarily for pleasure but actually
in the hope of restoring Miss Duluth to her normal state of health. A
breakdown, brought on no doubt by the publicity attending her divorce
a few months earlier, made it absolutely imperative, said the
newspapers, for her to give up the arduous work of her chosen
profession.
Harvey did not send the bracelet to her.
* * * * *
The long winter passed. Spring came and in its turn gave way to
summer. September drew on apace. He went about with an ever
increasing tendency to look at the wall calendar with a fixed stare
when he should have been paying attention to the congratulations that
came to him from the opposite side of the counter or showcase. His
baby-blue eyes wore the mournful, distressed look of an offending dog;
his once trim little moustache drooped over the corners of his mouth;
his shoulders sagged and his feet shuffled as he walked.
"Harvey," said Mrs. Davis, not more than a fortnight before the
wedding day, "You look terribly peaked. You must perk up for the
wedding."
"I'm going into a decline," he said, affecting a slight cough.
"You are going to decline!" she shrilled, in her high, querulous
voice.
"I said 'into,' Minerva," he explained, dully.
"I do believe I'm getting a bit deaf," she said, pronouncing it
"deef."
"It will be mighty tough on you if I should suddenly go into quick
consumption," said he, somewhat hopefully.
"You mustn't think of such a thing, dearie," she protested.
"No," said he, letting his shoulders sag again. "I suppose it's no
use."
Just a week to the day before the 6th of September--the one numeral on
the calendar he could see with his eyes closed--he shuffled over to
the tailor's to try on the new Prince Albert coat and striped trousers
that Mrs. Davis was giving him for a wedding present. He puffed weakly
at the cigarette that hung from his lips and stared at the window
without the slightest interest in what was going on outside.
A new train of thought was taking shape in his brain, as yet rather
indefinite and undeveloped, but quite engaging as a matter for
contemplation.
"Do you know how far it is to Reno?" he asked of the tailor, who
paused in the process of ripping off the collar of the new coat.
"Couple of thousand miles, I guess. Why?"
"Oh, nothing," said Harvey, blinking his eyes curiously. "I just
asked."
"You're not thinking of going out there, are you?"
"My health isn't what it ought to be," said Harvey, staring westward
over the roof of the church down the street. "If I don't get better I
may have to go West."
"Gee, is it as bad as all that?"
Harvey's lips parted to give utterance to a vigorous response, but he
caught himself up in time.
"Maybe it won't amount to anything," he said, noncommittally. "I've
got a little cough, that's all." He coughed obligingly, in the way of
illustration.
"Don't wait too long," advised the kindly tailor. "If you get after it
in time it can be checked, they say, although I don't believe it. In
the family?"
"Not yet," said his customer, absently. "A week from to-day." A
reflection which puzzled the tailor vastly.
Whatever may have been in Harvey's mind at the moment was swept away
forever by the sudden appearance in the shop door of Bobby Nixon, the
"boy" at Davis'.
"Say, Harvey," bawled the lad, "come on, quick! Mrs. Davis is over at
the store and she's red-headed because you've been away for more'n an
hour. She's got a telegram from some'eres and----"
"A telegram!" gasped Harvey, turning pale. "Who from?"
"How should I know?" shouted Bobby. "But she's got blood in her eye,
you can bet on that."
Harvey did not wait for the tailor to strip the skeleton of the Prince
Albert from his back, but dashed out of the shop in wild haste.
Mrs. Davis was behind the prescription counter. She had been weeping.
At the sight of him she burst into fresh lamentations.
"Oh, Harvey, I've got terrible news for you--just terrible! But I
won't put up with it! I won't have it! It's abominable! She ought to
be tarred and feathered and----"
Harvey began to tremble.
"Somebody's doing it for a joke, Mrs. Davis," he gulped. "I swear to
goodness I never had a thing to do with a woman in all my life.
Nobody's got a claim on me, honest to----"
"What are you talking about, Harvey?" demanded Mrs. Davis, wide-eyed.
"What does it say?" cried he, pulling himself up with a jerk. "I'm
innocent, whatever it is."
"It's from your wife," said Mrs. Davis, shaking the envelope in his
face. "Read it! Read the awful thing!"
"From--from Nellie?" he gasped.
"Yes, Eller! Read it!"
"Hold it still! I can't read it if you jiggle it around----"
She held the envelope under his nose.
"Do you see who it's addressed to?" she grated out. "To me, as your
wife. She thinks I'm already married to you. Read that name there,
Harvey."
He read the name on the envelope in a sort of stupefaction. Then she
whisked the message out and handed it to him, plumping herself down in
a chair to fan herself vigorously while the prescription clerk
hastened to renew his ministrations with the ammonia bottle, a task
that had been set to him some time prior to the advent of Harvey.
Suddenly Harvey gave a squeal of joy and instituted a series of hops
and bounds that threatened to create havoc in the narrow,
bottle-encircled space behind the prescription wall. He danced up and
down, waving the telegram on high, the tails of his half-finished
wedding garment doing a mad obbligato to the tune of his nimble legs.
"Harvey!" shrieked Mrs. Davis, aghast.
"Yi-i-i!" rang out his ear-splitting yell. Pedestrians half a block
away heard it and felt sorry for Mrs. Wiggs, the unhappy wife of the
town sot, who, it went without saying, must be on another "toot."
"Harvey!" cried the poor lady once more.
"She's going to faint!" shouted the prescription clerk in
consternation.
"Let her! Let her!" whooped Harvey. "It's all right, Joe! Let her
faint if she wants to."
"I'm not going to faint!" exclaimed Mrs. Davis, struggling to her feet
and pushing Joe away. "Keep quiet, Harvey! Do you want customers to
think you're crazy? Give me that telegram. I'll attend to that. I'll
answer it mighty quick, let me tell you. Give it to me."
Harvey sobered almost instantly. His jaw fell. The look in her face
took all the joy out of his.
"Isn't--isn't it great, Minerva?" he murmured, as he allowed her to
snatch the message from his unresisting fingers.
She glared at him. "Great? Why, you don't think for a moment that I'll
have the brat in my house, do you? Great? I don't see what you can be
thinking of, Harvey. You must be clean out of your head. I should say
it ain't great. It's perfectly outrageous. Where's the telegraph
office, Joe? I'll show the dreadful little wretch that she can't shunt
her child off on me for support. Not much. Where is it, Joe? Didn't
you hear what I asked?"
"Yes, ma'am," acknowledged Joe, blankly.
"You can't be mean enough--I should say you don't mean to tell her we
won't take Phoebe?" gasped Harvey, blinking rapidly. "Surely you can't
be so hard-hearted as all----"
"That will do, Harvey," said she, sternly. "Don't let me hear another
word out of you. The idea! Just as soon as she thinks you're safely
married to some one who can give that child a home she up and tries to
get rid of her. The shameless thing! No, sir-ree! She can't shuffle
her brat off on me. Not if I know what I'm----"
She fell back in alarm. The telegram fluttered to the floor. Harvey
was standing in front of her, shaking his fist under her nose, his
face contorted by a spasm of fury.
"Don't you call my little girl a brat," he sputtered. "And don't you
dare to call my wife a shameless thing!"
"Your wife!" she gasped.
He waved his arms like a windmill.
"My widow, if you are going to be so darned particular about it," he
shouted, inanely. "Don't you dare send a telegram saying Phoebe can't
come and live with her father. I won't have it. She's coming just as
fast as I can get her here. Hurray!"
Mrs. Davis lost all of her sternness. She dissolved into tears.
"Oh, Harvey dear, do you really and truly want that child back again?"
she sniffled.
"Do I?" he barked. "My God, I should say I do! And say, I'd give my
soul if I could get Nellie back, too. How do you like that?"
The poor woman was ready to fall on her knees to him.
"For Heaven's sake--for my sake--don't speak of such a thing. Don't
try to get her back. Promise me! I'll let the child come, but--oh!
don't take Nellie back. It would break my heart. I just couldn't have
her around, not if I tried my----"
Harvey stared, open-mouthed. "I didn't mean that I'd like to have you
take her back, Minerva. You haven't anything to do with it."
She stiffened. "Well, if I haven't, I'd like to know who has. It's my
house, isn't it?"
"Don't make a scene, Minerva," he begged, suddenly aware of the
presence of a curious crowd in the front part of the store. "Go home
and I'll send the telegram. And say, if I were you, I'd go out the
back way."
"And just to think, it's only a week till the wedding day," she choked
out.
"We can put it off," he made haste to say.
"I know I shall positively hate that child," said she, overlooking his
generous offer. "I will be a real stepmother to her, you mark my
words. You can let her come if you want to, Harvey, but you mustn't
expect me to treat her as anything but a--a--an orphan." She was a bit
mixed in her nouns.
A brilliant idea struck him.
"You'd better be nice to her, Mrs. Davis, if you know what's good for
you. Now, don't flare up! You mustn't forget you've broken the law by
opening a telegram not intended for you."
"What?"
"It isn't addressed to you," he said, examining the envelope. "Your
name is still Mrs. Davis, isn't it?"
"Of course it is."
"Well, then, what in thunder did you open a telegram addressed to my
wife for? That's my wife's name, not yours."
"But," she began, vastly perplexed, "but it was meant for me."
"How do you know?" he demanded.
Her eyes bulged. "You--you don't mean that there is another one,
Harvey?"
He winked with grave deliberateness. "That's for you to find out."
He darted through the back door into the alley, just as she collapsed
in the prescriptionist's arms. In the telegraph office he read and
re-read the message, his eyes aglow. It was from Nellie and came from
New York, dated Friday, the first.
"Am sending Phoebe to Blakeville next Monday to make her home with
you and Harvey. Letter to-day explains all. Have Harvey meet her
in Chicago Tuesday, four P.M., Lake Shore."
He scratched his chin reflectively.
"I guess it don't call for an answer, after all," he said as much to
himself as to the operator.
Nellie's letter came the next afternoon, addressed to Harvey. In a
state of great excitement he broke the seal and read the poignant
missive with eyes that were glazed with wonder and--something even
more potent.
She began by saying that she supposed he was happily married, and
wished him all the luck in the world. Then she came abruptly to the
point, as she always did:--"I am in such poor health that the doctors
say I shall have to go to Arizona at once. I am good for about six
months longer at the outside, they say. Not half that long if I stay
in this climate. Maybe I'll get well if I go out there. I'm not very
keen about dying. I hate dead things; don't you? Now about Phoebe.
She's been pining for you all these months. She doesn't like Mr.
Fairfax, and he's not very strong for her. To be perfectly honest, he
doesn't want her about. She's not his, and he hasn't much use for
anything or anybody that doesn't belong to him. I've got so that I
can't stand it, Harvey. The poor little kiddie is so miserably
unhappy, and I'm not strong enough to get out and work for her as I
used to. I would if I could. I think Fairfax is sick of the whole
thing. He didn't count on me going under as I have. He hasn't been
near me for a month, but he says it's because he hates the sight of
Phoebe. I wonder. It wasn't that way a couple of years ago. But I'm
different now. You wouldn't know me, I'm that thin and skinny. I hate
the word, but that's what I am. The doctors have ordered me to a
little place out in Arizona. I've got to do what they say, and what
Fairfax says. It's the jumping-off place. So I'm leaving in a day or
two with Rachel. My husband says he can't leave his business, but I'm
not such a fool as he thinks. I won't say anything more about him,
except that he hasn't the courage to watch me go down by inches.
"I can't leave Phoebe with him and I don't think it best to have her
with me. She ought to be spared all that. She's so young, Harvey.
She'd never forget. You love her, and she adores you. I'm giving her
back to you. Don't--oh, please don't, ever let her leave Blakeville!
I wish I had never left it, much as I hate it. I remember your new
wife as being a kind, simple-hearted woman. She will be good to my
little girl, I know, because she is yours as well. If I could get my
health back, I'd work my heart out trying to support her, but it's out
of the question. I have nothing to give her, Harvey, and I simply will
not let Fairfax provide for her. Do you understand? Or are you as
stupid and simple as you always were? And as tender-hearted?"
There was more, but Harvey's eyes were so full of tears he could not
read.
* * * * *
He was waiting in the Lake Shore station when the train pulled in on
Tuesday. His legs were trembling like two reeds in the wind and his
teeth chattered with the chill of a great excitement. Out of the blur
that obscured his vision bounded a small figure, almost toppling him
over as it clutched his not too stable legs and shrieked something
that must have pleased him vastly, for he giggled and chortled like
one gone daft with joy.
A soulless guard tapped him on the shoulder and gruffly ordered him
to "get off to one side with the kid," he was blocking the exit--and
flooding it, he added after a peep at Harvey's streaming eyes.
Rachel, tall and sardonic, stood patiently by until the little man
recovered from his ecstasies.
"I thought you were staying with my--with Mrs. Fairfax," he said,
gazing at her in amazement. He was holding Phoebe in his arms, and she
was so heavy that his face was purple from the exertion.
"You'd better put her down," said Rachel, mildly. "She's not a baby
any longer." With that she proceeded to pull the child's skirts down
over the unnecessarily exposed pink legs. Harvey was not loath to set
her down, a bit abruptly if the truth must be told. "Mrs. Fairfax is
still in the drawing-room, sir. She doesn't want to get off until the
crowd has moved out."
Harvey stared. "She's--on--the--train?"
"We change for the Santa Fe, which leaves this evening for the West.
I'll go back to her now. The way is quite clear, I think. Good-bye,
Phoebe. Be a good----"
[Illustration: Copyright, 1911, by Dodd, Mead & Company
He stopped, aghast, petrified]
"I'm going with you!" cried Harvey, breathlessly. "Take me to the
car."
Rachel hesitated. "You will be surprised, sir, when you see her. She's
very frail, and----"
"Come on! Take me to my wife at once!"
"You forget, sir. She is not your wife any----"
"Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" fell dismally from his lips.
"And you have a new wife, I hear. So, if I were you, I'd avoid a scene
if----"
But he was through the gate, dragging Phoebe after him. Rachel could
not keep up with them. The eager little girl led him to the right car
and he scurried up the steps, bursting into drawing-room B an instant
later.
Nellie, wrapped in a thick garment, was lying back in the corner of
the seat, her small, white face with its great dark eyes standing out
with ghastly clearness against the collar of the ulster that almost
enveloped her head.
He stopped, aghast, petrified.
"Oh, Nellie!" he wailed.
She betrayed no surprise. A wan smile transfigured her thin face.
With an effort she extended a small gloved hand. He grasped it and
found there was so little of it that it seemed lost in his palm. The
sweat broke out on his forehead. He could not speak. This was Nellie!
Her voice was low and husky.
"Good-bye, Harvey. Be good to Phoebe, old fellow."
He choked up and could only nod his head.
"We can get out now, Mrs. Fairfax," said Rachel, appearing at the
door. "Do you think you can walk, or shall I call for a----"
"Oh, I can walk," said Nellie, with a touch of her old raillery. "I'm
not that far gone. Good-bye, Harvey. Didn't you hear me? Don't stand
there watching me like that. It's bad enough without----"
He turned on Rachel furiously.
"Where is that damned Fairfax? Why isn't he here with her? The dog!"
"Hush, Harvey!"
"He's mean to mamma," broke in Phoebe, in her high treble. "I hate
him. And so does mamma. Don't you, mamma?"
"Phoebe! Be quiet!"
"Where is he?" repeated Harvey, shaking his finger in Rachel's face.
"What are you blaming me for?" demanded the maid, indignantly.
"Everybody blames me for everything. He's in New York, that's where he
is. Now, you get out of here!"
She actually shoved him out into the aisle, where he stood trembling
and uncertain, while she assisted her mistress to her feet and led her
haltingly toward the exit.
Nellie looked back over her shoulder at him, quite coquettishly. She
shook her head at him in mild derision.
"My, what a fire-eater my little Harvey has become," she said. He
barely heard the words. "Your new wife must be scared half out of her
wits all the time."
He sprang to her side, gently taking her arm in his hand. She lurched
toward him ever so slightly. He felt the weight of her on his arm and
marvelled that she was so much lighter than Phoebe.
"I'm not married, Nellie dear!" he cried. "It's not to be till Friday.
You got the date wrong. And it won't be Friday, either. No, sir! I'm
not going to let you go all the way out there alone. I said I'd look
out for you when we were married, and I'm going to. You've got a
husband, but what good is he to you? He's a brute. Yes, sir; I'm going
with you and I don't give a cuss who knows it. See here! See this wad
of bills? Well, by jingo, there's more than three thousand dollars
there. I drew it out this morning to give to you if you were hard up.
I----"
"Oh, Harvey, what a perfect fool you are!" she cried, tears in her
eyes. "You always were a fool. Now you are a bigger one than ever. Go
away, please! I can get along all right. Fairfax is paying for
everything. Put that roll away! Do you want to be held up right here
in the station?"
"And I've still got the photograph gallery," he went on. "It's rented
and I get $40 a month out of it. I'll take care of you, Nellie. I'll
see you safely out there. Then maybe I'll have to come back and marry
old Mrs. Davis, God help me! I hate to think of it, but she's got her
mind set on it. I don't believe I can get out of it. But she'll have
to postpone it, I can tell you that, whether she likes it or not.
Maybe she'll call it off when she hears I've eloped with another
man's wife. She thinks I'm a perfect scamp with women, anyway, and
this may turn her dead against me. Gee, I hope it does! Say, let me go
along with you, Nellie; please do. You and I won't call it an
elopement, but maybe she will and that would save me. And that beast
of a Fairfax won't care, so what's the harm?"
"No," said Nellie, looking at him queerly. "Fairfax won't care. You
can be sure of that."
"Then I'm with you, Nellie!" he shouted.
"You are a perfectly dreadful fool, Harvey," she said, huskily.
"I know it!" he exclaimed.
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End of Project Gutenberg's What's-His-Name, by George Barr McCutcheon