What's-His-Name Part 19

Now, if I were inclined to be facetious or untruthful I might easily add to his troubles by saying that he got the wrong train, or something of the sort, but it is not my purpose to be harder on him than I have to be.

It was the right train, and, better still, Annie and Phoebe were in the very last seat of the very last coach. With a vast sigh he dropped into a vacant seat ahead of them and began fanning himself with his hat, to the utter amazement of onlookers, who had been disturbed by his turbulent entrance.

The newspaper Annie was reading fell from her hands.

"My goodness, sir! Where did you come from?" she managed to inquire.

"I've been--dining--at--Sherry's," he wheezed. "Annie, will you look and see if my ears are frozen?"

"They are, sir. Good gracious!"

He realised that he had been indiscreet.

"I--I sat in a draught," he hastened to explain. "Did you have a nice time, Phoebe?"

The child was sleepy. "No," she said, almost sullenly. His heart gave a bound. "Mamma wouldn't let me eat anything. She said I'd get fat."

"You had quite enough to eat, Phoebe," said Annie.

"I didn't," said Phoebe.

"Never mind," said her father, "I'll take you to Sherry's some day."

"When, daddy?" she cried, wide awake at once. "I like to go to places with you."

He faltered. "Some day after mamma has gone off on the road. We'll be terribly gay, while she's away, see if we ain't."

Annie picked up the paper and handed it to him.

"Miss Duluth ain't going on the road, sir," she said. "It's in the paper."

He read the amazing news. Annie, suddenly voluble, gave it to him by word of mouth while he read. It was all there, she said, to prove what she was telling him. "Just as if I couldn't read!" said Harvey, as he began the article all over again after perusing the first few lines in a perfectly blank state of mind.

"Yes, sir, the doctor says she can't stand it on the road. She's got nervous prosperity and she's got to have a long rest. That Miss Brown is going to take her place in the play after this week and Miss Duluth is going away out West to live for awhile to get strong again.

She----What is the name of the town, Phoebe?"

"Reno," said Phoebe, promptly.

"But the name of the town isn't in the paper, sir," Annie informed him. "It's a place where people with complications go to get rid of them, Miss Nellie says. The show won't be any good without her, sir. I wouldn't give two cents to see it."

He sagged down in the seat, a cold perspiration starting out all over his body.

"When does she go--out there!" he asked, as in a dream.

"First of next week. She goes to Chicago with the company and then right on out to--to--er--to----"

"Reno," said he, lifelessly.

"Yes, sir."

He did not know how long afterward it was that he heard Phoebe saying to him, her tired voice barely audible above the clacking of the wheels:--

"I want a drink of water, daddy."

His voice seemed to come back to him from some far-away place. He blinked his eyes several times and said, very wanly:--

"You mustn't drink water, dearie. It will make you fat."

CHAPTER VI

THE REVOLVER

He waited until the middle of the week for some sign from her; none coming, he decided to go once more to her apartment before it was too late. The many letters he wrote to her during the first days after learning of her change of plans were never sent. He destroyed them. A sense of shame, a certain element of pride, held them back. Still, he argued with no little degree of justice, there were many things to be decided before she took the long journey--and the short step she was so plainly contemplating.

It was no more than right that he should make one last and determined effort to save her from the fate she was so blindly courting. It was due her. She was his wife. He had promised to cherish and protect her.

If she would not listen to the appeal, at least he would have done his bounden duty.

There was an ever present, ugly fear, too, that she meant, by some hook or crook, to rob him of Phoebe.

"And she's as much mine as hers," he declared to himself a thousand times or more.

Behind everything, yet in plain view, lay his own estimate of himself--the naked truth--he was "no good!" He had come to the point of believing it of himself. He was not a success; he was quite the other thing. But, granting that, he was young and ent.i.tled to another chance. He could work into a partnership with Mr. Davis if given the time.

Letting the midweek matinee slip by, he made the plunge on a Thursday.

She was to leave New York on Sunday morning; that much he knew from the daily newspapers, which teemed with Nellie's breakdown and its lamentable consequences. It would be at least a year, the papers said, before she could resume her career on the stage. He searched the columns daily for his own name, always expecting to see himself in type little less conspicuous than that accorded to her, and stigmatised as a brute, an inebriate, a loafer. It was all the same to him--brute, soak, or loafer. But even under these extraordinary conditions he was as completely blanketed by obscurity as if he never had been in existence.

Sometimes he wondered whether she could get a divorce without according him a name. He had read of fellow creatures meeting death "at the hand of a person (or of persons) unknown." Could a divorce complaint be worded in such non-committal terms? Then there was that time-honoured shroud of private ident.i.ty, the mult.i.tudinous John Doe.

Could she have the heart to bring proceedings against him as John Doe?

He wondered.

If he were to shoot himself, so that she might have her freedom without going to all the trouble of a divorce or the annoyance of a term of residence in Reno, would she put his name on a tombstone? He wondered.

A strange, a most unusual thing happened to him just before he left the house to go to the depot. He was never quite able to account for the impulse which sent him upstairs rather obliquely to search through a trunk for a revolver, purchased a couple of years before, following the report that housebreakers were abroad in Tarrytown, and which he had promptly locked away in his trunk for fear that Phoebe might get hold of it.

He rummaged about in the trunk, finally unearthing the weapon. He slipped it into his overcoat pocket with a furtive glance over his shoulder. He chuckled as he went down the stairs. It was a funny thing for him to do, locking the revolver in the trunk that way. What burglar so obliging as to tarry while he went through all the preliminaries incident to destruction under the circ.u.mstances? Yes, it was stupid of him.

He did not consider the prospect of being arrested for carrying concealed weapons until he was halfway to the city, and then he broke into a mild perspiration. From that moment he eyed every man with suspicion. He had heard of "plain clothes men." They were the very worst kind. "They take you unawares so," said he to himself, with which he moved closer to the wall of the car, the more effectually to conceal the weapon. It wouldn't do to be caught going about with a revolver in one's pocket. That would be the very worst thing that could happen. It would mean "the Island" or some other such place, for he could not have paid a fine.

It occurred to him, therefore, that it would be wiser to get down at One Hundred and Tenth street and walk over to Nellie's. The policemen were not so thick nor so bothersome up there, he figured, and it was a rather expensive article he was carrying; one never got them back from the police, even if the fine were paid.

Footsore, weary, and chilled to the bone, he at length came to the apartment building wherein dwelt Nellie Duluth. In these last few weeks he had developed a habit of thinking of her as Nellie Duluth, a person quite separate and detached from himself. He had come to regard himself as so far removed from Nellie Duluth that it was quite impossible for him to think of her as Mrs.--Mrs.--he had to rack his brain for the name, the connection was so remote.

He had walked miles--many devious and lengthening miles--before finally coming to the end of his journey. Once he came near asking a policeman to direct him to Eighty-ninth Street, but the sudden recollection of the thing he carried stopped him in time. That and the discovery of a sign on a post which frostily informed him that he was then in the very street he sought.

It should go without the saying that he hesitated a long time before entering the building. Perhaps it would be better after all to write to her. Somewhat sensibly he argued that a letter would reach her, while it was more than likely he would fall short of a similar achievement. She couldn't deny Uncle Sam, but she could slam the door in her husband's face. Yes, he concluded, a letter was the thing.