What's-His-Name Part 25

"If it isn't too much bother," said Harvey, blinking his eyes very rapidly.

"You're going to the city, I suppose."

"The city?"

"New York."

"Oh," said Harvey, wide-eyed and thoughtful, "I--I thought you meant Blakeville. I'm going out there for a visit with my Uncle Peter. He's the leading photographer in Blakeville. My mother's brother. No, I'm not going to New York. Not on your life!"

All the way to the station he was figuring on how far the twenty dollars would go toward paying his fare to Blakeville. How far could he ride on the cars, and how far would he have to walk? And what would his crabbed old uncle say to an extended visit in case he got to Blakeville without accident?

He bought some cigarettes at the newsstand and sat down to wait for the first train to turn up, westward bound.

CHAPTER VIII

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 advertis.e.m.e.nt in the local newspaper--the princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sortment 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 d.a.m.ned 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 n.o.body's business. So you just put on a bold front and n.o.body 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 G.o.d'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 s.e.x 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 cafes 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 p.r.o.ne 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 rect.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sed 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 spa.r.s.e thatch that covered the head of the departed. Mrs. Davis never was to forget his sympathetic att.i.tude. 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 ent.i.ty 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.