Harvey was exalted. When any one was so friendly as all this to him he quite lost his head in the clouds.
“We’ll go in and see it together,” said he, “and have a bit of supper afterward.”
“That’s very good of you,” said Butler, who was gaining his point.
“When does Mrs. Butler return?” asked Harvey.
Butler was startled. “Week or ten days.”
“Well, just as soon as she’s back we’ll have a little family party––”
His neighbour shook his head. “My wife’s in mourning,” he said, nervously.
“In mourning?” said Harvey, who remembered her best in rainbow colours.
“Yes. Her father.”
“Dead?”
“Certainly,” said Butler, a trifle bewildered. He coughed and changed the current of conversation. It was not at all necessary to say that his wife’s father had been dead eleven years. “I thought something of going in to the theatre to-night,” he went on. “Just to kill time. It will be very lonely for me, now that my dear wife’s away.”56
Harvey fell into the trap. “By jinks!” he exclaimed, “what’s the matter with me going in, too? I haven’t been in town at night for six weeks or more.”
Butler’s black eyes gleamed.
“Excellent! We’ll see a good play, have a bite to eat, and no one will know what gay dogs we are.” He laughed and slapped Harvey on the back.
“I’ll get seats for Nellie’s show if you’d like to see it,” said Harvey, just as enthusiastically, except that he slapped the arm of the chair and peeled his knuckle on a knob he hadn’t seen.
“Great!”
“And say, I’d like you to know my wife better, Mr. Butler. If you don’t object I’ll ask her to go out with us after the show for something to eat.”
“Permit me to remind you, Mr.—Mr.—er––”
“Call me Harvey,” said the owner of the name.
“––to remind you that this is my party. I will play host and be honoured if your wife will condescend to join me—and you—at any hour and place she chooses.”57
“You are most kind,” said Harvey, who had been mentally calculating the three one-dollar bills in his pocket.
And that is how they came to be in the theatre that night.
The curtain was up when Butler returned. He had had a drink.
“Did you send a note back to your wife?” he asked as he sat down.
“What for?”
“To tell her we are here,” hissed the other.
“No, I didn’t,” said Harvey, calmly. “I want to surprise her.”
Butler said something under his breath and was so mad during the remainder of the act that everybody on the stage seemed to be dressed in red.
Miss Duluth did not have to make a change of costume between the second and third acts. It was then that she received visitors in her dressing-room. She had a sandwich and a glass of milk at that time, but was perfectly willing to send across the alley for bottled beer if her callers cared to take anything so commonplace as that.
She was sitting in her room, quite alone, with58her feet cocked upon a trunk, nibbling a sandwich and thinking of the supper Fairfax was to give later on in the evening, when the manager of the company came tapping at her door. People had got in the habit of walking in upon her so unexpectedly that she issued an order for every one to knock and then made the injunction secure by slipping the bolt. Rebecca went to the door.
“Mr. Fairfax is here, mademoiselle,” she announced a moment later. “Mr. Ripton has brought him back and he wants to come in.” Except for the word “mademoiselle” Rebecca spoke perfect English.
Nellie took one foot down and then, thinking quickly, put it up again. It wouldn’t hurt Fairfax, she argued, to encounter a little opposition.
“Tell Ripton I’m expecting some one else,” she said, at random. “If Mr. Fairfax wants to wait in the wings, I’ll see him there.”
But she had not the slightest inkling of what was in store for her in the shape of visitors.
At that very moment Harvey and his friend were at the stage door, the former engaged in an attempt at familiarity with the smileless attendant.59
“Hello, Bob; how goes it?” said he, strutting up to the door.
Bob’s bulk blocked the passage.
“Who d’you want to see?” he demanded, gruffly.
“Who d’you suppose?” asked Harvey, gaily.
“Don’t get fresh,” snapped the door man, making as if to slam the iron door in his face. Suddenly he recognised the applicant. “Oh, it’s you, is it?”
“You must be going blind, Bobby,” said Harvey, in a fine effort at geniality. “I’m taking a friend in to show him how it’s done. My friend, Mr. Butler, Bob.”
Mr. Butler stepped on Harvey’s toes and said something under his breath.
“Is Miss Duluth expecting you, Mr.—er—Mr.—Is she?” asked old Bob.
“No. I’m going to surprise her.”
Bob looked over his shoulder hastily.
“If I was you,” he said, “I’d send my card in. She’s—she’s nervous and a shock might upset her.”
“She hasn’t got a nerve in her body,” said Harvey. “Come on, Butler. Mind you60don’t fall over the braces or get hit by the scenery.”
They climbed a couple of steps and were in the midst of a small, bustling army of scene shifters and property men. Old Bob scratched his head and muttered something about “surprises.”
Three times Harvey tried to lead the way across the stage. Each time they were turned back by perspiring, evil-minded stage hands who rushed at them with towering, toppling canvases. Once Harvey nearly sat down when an unobserving hand jerked a strip of carpet from under his feet. A grand staircase almost crushed Mr. Butler on its way into place, and some one who seemed to be in authority shouted to him as he dodged:—
“Don’t knock that pe-des-tal over, you pie face!”
At last they got safely over, and Harvey boldly walked up to the star’s dressing-room.
“We’re all right now,” he said to Butler, with a perceptible quaver in his voice. “Just you wait while I go in and tell her I am here.”
Butler squeezed himself into a narrow place,61where he seemed safe from death, mopped his brow, and looked like a lost soul.
Two men, sitting off to the left, saw Harvey try the locked door and then pound rather imperatively.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed one of them, staring. “It’s—it’s—er—What’s-His-Name, Nellie’s husband! Well, of all the infernal––”
“That?” gasped Fairfax.
“What in thunder is he doing here this time o’ night! Great Scott, he’ll spoil everything,” groaned Ripton, the manager.
Harvey pounded again with no response. Nellie was sitting inside, mentally picturing the eagerness that caused Fairfax to come a-pounding like that. She had decided not to answer.
Ripton called a stage hand.
“Tell him that Nellie isn’t seeing anybody to-night,” he whispered. “Do it quick. Get him out of here.”
“Shall I throw him out, sir?” demanded the man, with a wry face. “Poor little chap!”
“Just tell him that Nellie will see him for a few minutes after the play.” Then, as the man62moved away:—“They’ve got no business having husbands, Mr. Fairfax. Damned nuisances.”
Fairfax had his hand to his lips. He was thinking of Nellie’s “perfect devil.”
“I fancy he doesn’t cut much of a figure in her life,” said he, in a tone of relief.
In the meantime the stage hand had accosted Harvey, who had been joined by the anxious Mr. Butler.
“Miss Duluth ain’t seeing any one to-night, sir,” he said. “She gave strict orders. No one, sir.”
Harvey’s blue eyes were like delft saucers. “She’ll see me,” he said. “I’m her husband, you know.”
“I know that, sir. But the order goes, just the same.”
“Is she ill?”
“Yes, sir. Very ill,” said the man, quickly.
Butler was gnawing his moustache.
“Rubbish!” he said, sharply. “Come away, you. She’s got a visitor in there. Can’t you see the lay of the land?”
The little husband turned cold, then hot.
“A—a man visitor?”63
“Certainly,” snapped the aggrieved Mr. Butler. “What else?”
Without another word, Harvey brushed past the stage hand and began rattling the door violently.
“Nellie!” he shouted, his lips close to the paint.
In a second the door flew open and the astonished actress stood there staring at him as if he were a ghost. He pushed the door wide open and strode into the dressing-room, Nellie falling back before him. The room was empty save for the dismayed Rebecca.
“There!” he exclaimed, turning to address Butler in the doorway, but Butler was not there. The stage hand had got in his way.
“Wha—what, in the name of Heaven, are you doing here, Harvey?” gasped Nellie.
“How are you, Nell? Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Serious?” she murmured, swallowing hard, her wits in the wind.
“Ain’t you ill?”
“Never was better in my life,” she cried, seeing what she thought was light. “Who brought you to town with such a tale as that?64I’m fine. You’ve been fooled. If I were you, I’d take the first train out and try to find out who––”
“It’s all right, Butler,” he called out. “Come right in. Hello! Where are you?” He stepped to the door and looked out. Mr. Butler was being conducted toward the stage door by the burly stage hand. He was trying to expostulate. “Hi! What you doing?” shouted Harvey, darting after them. “Let my friend alone!”
Up came Ripton in haste.
“O’Brien, what do you mean? Take your hand off that gentleman’s shoulder at once. He is a friend of Mr.—Mr.—ahem! A terrible mistake, sir.”
Then followed a moment of explanation, apology, and introduction, after which Harvey fairly dragged his exasperated friend back to Nellie’s room.
She was still standing in the middle of the room trying to collect her wits.
“You remember Mr. Butler, deary,” panted Harvey, waving his hand. Nellie gasped in the affirmative.
At that instant Fairfax’s big frame appeared65in the door. He was grinning amiably. She glared at him helplessly for a moment.
“Won’t you introduce me to your husband?” he said, suavely.
Nellie found her tongue and the little man shook hands with the big one.
“Glad to meet you,” said Harvey.
“I am glad to see you,” said Fairfax, warmly.
“My friend Butler,” introduced Harvey.
Mr. Butler was standing very stiff and pallid, with one knee propped against a chair. There was a glaze over his eyes. Fairfax grinned broadly.
“Oh, Butler and I are old acquaintances,” said he. “Wife out of town, Butler?”
“Sure,” said Harvey, before Butler could reply. “And we’re in town to see the sights. Eh, Butler?”
Butler muttered something that sounded uncommonly like “confounded ass,” and began fanning himself with his derby hat and gloves and walking-stick, all of which happened to be in the same hand.
“We’re going to take Nellie—I mean Miss Duluth—out for supper after the play,” went66on Harvey, glibly. “We’ll be waiting for you, dearie. Mr. Butler is doing the honours. By the way, Butler, I think it would be nicer if Nellie could suggest an odd lady for us. We ought to have four. Do you know of any one, Nell? By George, we’ve got to have a pretty one, though. We insist on that, eh, Butler?” He jabbed Butler in the ribs and winked.
“Don’t do that!” said the unhappy Mr. Butler, dropping his stick. It rolled under a table and he seized the opportunity thus providentially presented. He went down after it and was lost to view for a considerable length, of time, hiding himself as the ostrich does when it buries its head in the sand and imagines it is completely out of sight.
Nellie’s wits were returning. She was obliged to do some rapid and clever thinking. Fairfax was watching her with a sardonic smile on his lips. Ripton, the manager, peered over his shoulder and winked violently.
“Oh, Harvey dear,” she cried, plaintively, “how disappointed I am. I have had strict orders from the doctor to go straight home to bed after every performance. I really can’t go with you and Mr. Butler to-night. I wish you had .gn +1 telephoned or something. I could have told you.”67
Harvey looked distressed. “What does the doctor say it is?”
Fairfax was sitting on a trunk, a satisfied smile on his lips
Fairfax was sitting on a trunk, a satisfied smile on his lips
“My heart,” she said, solemnly.
“Don’t you think you could go out for a—just a sandwich and a bottle of beer?” he pleaded, feeling that he had wantonly betrayed his friendly neighbour.
“Couldn’t think of it,” she said. “The nurse will be here at eleven. I’ll just have to go home. He insists on absolute quiet for me and I’m on a dreadful diet.” A bright thought struck her. “Do you know, I have to keep my door locked so as not to be startled by––”
The sharp, insistent voice of the callboy broke in on her flow of excuses.
“There! I’ll have to go on in a second. The curtain’s going up. Good-night, gentlemen. Good-night, Harvey dear. Give me a kiss.”
She pecked at his cheek with her carmine lips.
“Just half an hour at some quiet little restaurant,” he was saying when she fled past him toward the stage.
“Sorry, dear,” she called, then stopped to68speak to Mr. Butler. “Thank you so much, Mr. Butler. Won’t you repeat the invitation some time later on? So good of you to bring Harvey in. Bring Mrs. Butler in some night, and if I’m better we will have a jolly little spree, just the four of us. Will you do it?”
She beamed on him. Butler bowed very low and said:—
“It will give me great pleasure, Miss Duluth.”
“Good-night, then.”
“Good-night.”
When she returned to her dressing-room later on, she found Fairfax there, sitting on a trunk, a satisfied smile on his lips. She left the door open.
Mr. Ripton conducted the two men across to the stage door, leading them through the narrow space back of the big drop. Chorus girls threw kisses at Harvey; they all knew him. He winked blandly at Butler, who was staring straight before him.
“A great life, eh?” said Harvey, meaning that which surrounded them. They were in the alley outside the stage door.69
“I’m going to catch the ten-twenty,” said Butler, jamming his hat down firmly.
“Ain’t you going to see the last act?” demanded the other, dismayed.
Butler lifted his right hand to heaven, and, shaking it the better to express the intensity of his declaration, remarked:—
“I hope somebody will kick me all over town if I’m ever caught being such a damned fool as this again. I honestly hope it! I’ve been made ridiculous—a blithering fool! Why, you—you––” He paused in his rage, a sudden wave of pity assailing him. “By George, I can’t help feeling sorry for you! Good-night.”
Harvey hurried after him.
“I guess I’ll take it, too. That gets us out at eleven-thirty. We can get a bite to eat in the station, I guess.”
He had to almost trot to keep pace with Butler crossing to the Grand Central. Seated side by side in the train, and after he had recovered his breath a bit, he said:—
“Confound it, I forgot to ask Nellie if it will be wise for her to come out on Sunday. The heart’s a mighty bad thing, Butler.”
“It certainly is,” said Butler, with unction.70
At the station in Tarrytown he said “Good-night” very gruffly and hurried off to jump into the only cab at the platform. He had heard all about Blakeville and the wild life Harvey had led there, and he was mad enough to fight.
“Good-night, Mr. Butler,” said Harvey, as the hack drove off.
He walked up the hill.
71CHAPTER IIIMR. FAIRFAX
He found the nursemaid up and waiting for him. Phoebe had a “dreadful throat” and a high temperature. It had come on very suddenly, it seems, and if Annie’s memory served her right it was just the way diphtheria began. The little girl had been thrashing about in the bed and whimpering for “daddy” since eight o’clock. His heart sank like lead, to a far deeper level than it had dropped with the base desertion of Butler. Filled with remorse, he ran upstairs without taking off his hat or overcoat. The feeling of resentment toward Butler was lost in this new, overpowering sense of dread; the discovery of his own lamentable unfitness for “high life” expeditions faded into nothingness in the face of this possible catastrophe. What if Phoebe were to die? He would be to blame. He remembered feeling that he should not have left her that evening. It had been a premonition, and this was to be the price of his folly.72
At three in the morning he went over to rouse the doctor, all the time thinking that, even if he were capable of forgiving himself for Phoebe’s death, Nellie would always hold him responsible. The doctor refused to come before eight o’clock, and slammed the door in the disturber’s face.
“If she dies,” he said to himself over and over again as he trudged homeward, “I’ll kill that beast of a doctor. I’ll tear his heart out.”
The doctor did not come till nine-thirty. They never do. He at once said it was a bad attack of tonsilitis, and began treatment on the stomach. He took a culture and said he would let Mr.—Mr. What’s-His-Name know whether there was anything diphtheritic. In the meantime, “Take good care of her.”
Saturday morning a loving note came from Nellie, deploring the fact that she couldn’t come out on Sunday after all. The doctor said she must save her strength. She instructed Harvey to dismiss Bridget and get another cook at once. But Harvey’s heart had melted toward Bridget. The big Irishwoman was the soul of kindness now that her employer was in distress.73
About nine o’clock that morning a man came up and tacked a placard on the door and informed the household that it was in quarantine. Harvey went out and looked at the card. Then he slunk back into Phoebe’s room and sat down, very white and scared.
“Do you think she’ll die?” he asked of the doctor when that gentleman called soon afterward. He was shivering like a leaf.
“Not necessarily,” said the man of medicine, calmly. “Diphtheria isn’t what it used to be.”
“If she dies I’ll jump in the river,” said the little father, bleakly.
“Nonsense!” said the doctor. “Can you swim?” he added, whimsically.
“No,” said Harvey, his face lighting up.
The doctor patted him on the back. “Brace up, sir. Has the child a mother?”
Harvey stared at him. “Of course,” he said. “Don’t you know whose child you are ’tending?”
“I confess I—er—I––”
“She is the daughter of Nellie Duluth.”
“Oh!” fell from the doctor’s lips. “And74you—you are Miss Duluth’s husband? I didn’t quite connect the names.”
“Well, I’m her husband, name or no name,” explained the other. “I suppose I ought to send for her. She ought to know.”
“Are you—er—separated?”
“Not at all,” said Harvey. “I maintain two establishments, that’s all. One here, one in the city.”
“Oh, I see,” said the doctor, who didn’t in the least see. “Of course, she would be subject to quarantine rules if she came here, Mr.—Mr.—ahem!”
“They couldn’t get along without her at the theatre,” groaned the husband.
“I’d suggest waiting a day or two. Believe me, my dear sir, the child will pull through. I will do all that can be done, sir. Rest easy.” His manner was quite different, now that he knew the importance of his patient. He readjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “I hope to have the pleasure of seeing Mrs.—er—your wife, sir.”
“She has a regular physician in town,” said Harvey, politely.75
For two weeks he nursed Phoebe, day and night, announcing to the doctor in the beginning that his early training made him quite capable. There were moments when he thought she was dying, but they passed so quickly that his faith in the physician’s assurances rose above his fears. Acting on the purely unselfish motive that Nellie would be upset by the news, he kept the truth from her, and she went on singing and dancing without so much as a word to distress her. Two Sundays passed; her own lamentable illness kept her away from the little house in Tarrytown.
“If we tell her about Phoebe,” said Harvey to Bridget and Annie, “she’ll go all to pieces. Her heart may stop, like as not. Besides, she’d insist on coming out and taking care of her, and that would be fatal to the show. She’s never had diphtheria. She’d be sure to catch it. It goes very hard with grown people.”
“Have you ever had it, sir?” asked Annie, anxiously.
“Three times,” said Harvey, who hadn’t thought of it up to that moment.
When the child was able to sit up he put in his time reading “David Copperfield” to her.76
Later on he played “jacks” with her and cut pictures out of the comic supplements. By the end of the month he was thinner and more “peaked,” if anything, than she. Unshaven, unshorn, unpressed was he, but he was too full of joy to give heed to his own personal comforts or requirements.
His mind was beginning to be sorely troubled over one thing. Now that Phoebe was well and getting strong he realised that Nellie would be furious when she found out how ill the child had been and how she had been deceived. He considered the advisability of keeping it from her altogether, swearing every one to secrecy, but there was the doctor’s bill to be paid. When it came to paying that Nellie would demand an explanation. It was utterly impossible for him to pay it himself. Thinking over his unhappy position, he declared, with a great amount of zeal, but no vigour, that he was going to get a job and be independent once more. More than that, when he got fairly well established in his position (he rather leaned toward the drug or the restaurant business) he would insist on Nellie giving up her arduous stage work and settling down to enjoy a life of comfort77and ease—even luxury, if things went as he meant them to go.
One afternoon late in October, when the scarlet leaves were blowing across his little front yard and the screens had been taken from the windows, a big green automobile stopped at his gate and a tall man got out and came briskly up the walk. Harvey was sitting in the library helping Phoebe with her ABC’s when he caught sight of the visitor crossing the porch.
“Gentleman to see you,” said Annie, a moment later.
“Is it the butcher’s man? I declare, I must get in and attend to that little account. Tell him I’ll be in, Annie.”
“It ain’t the butcher. It’s a swell.”
Harvey got up, felt of the four days’ growth of beard on his chin, and pondered.
“Did he give his name?”
“Mr. Fairfax, he said.”
He remembered Fairfax. His hand ran over his chin once more.
“Tell him to come in. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”
He went upstairs on the jump and got his78razor out. He was nervous. Only that morning he had written to Nellie telling her of Phoebe’s expensive illness and of her joyous recovery. The doctor’s bill was ninety dollars. He cut himself in three places.
Fairfax was sitting near the window talking with Phoebe when he clattered downstairs ten minutes later, deploring the cuts but pleased with himself for having broken all records at shaving. The big New Yorker had a way with him; he could interest children as well as their mothers and grown sisters. Phoebe was telling him about “Jack the Giant Killer” when her father popped into the room.
“Phoebe!” he cried, stopping short in horror.
Fairfax arose languidly.
“How do you do, Mr.—ah—ahem! The little girl has been playing hostess. The fifteen minutes have flown.”
“Ten minutes by my watch,” said Harvey, promptly. “Phoebe, dear, where did you get that awful dress—and, oh, my! those dirty hands? Where’s Annie? Annie’s the nurse, Mr. Fairfax. Run right away and tell her to change that dress and wash your hands. How79do you do, Mr. Fairfax? Glad to see you. How are you?”
He advanced to shake the big man’s hand. Fairfax towered over him.
“I was afraid you would not remember me,” said Fairfax.
“Run along, Phoebe. She’s been very ill, you see. We don’t make life any harder for her than we have to. Washing gets on a child’s nerves, don’t you think? It used to on mine, I know. Of course I remember you. Won’t you sit down? Annie! Oh, Annie!”
He called into the stair hallway and Annie appeared from the dining-room.
“Ann—Oh, here you are! How many times must I tell you to put a clean dress on Phoebe every day? What are her dresses for, I’d like to know?” He winked violently at Annie from the security of the portière, which he held at arm’s length as a shield. Annie arose to the occasion and winked back.
“May I put on my Sunday dress?” cried Phoebe, gleefully.
“Only one of ’em,” said he, in haste. “Annie will pick out one for you.”80
Considerably bewildered, Phoebe was led away by the nurse.
“She’s a pretty child,” said Fairfax. If his manner was a trifle strained Harvey failed to make note of it. “Looks like her mother.”
“I’m glad you think so,” said the father, radiantly. “I’d hate to have her look like me.”
Fairfax looked him over and suppressed a smile.
“She is quite happy here with you, I suppose,” he said, taking a chair.
“Yes, sir-ree.”
“Does she never long to be with her mother?”
“Well, you see,” said Harvey, apologising for Nellie, “she doesn’t see much of Miss—of her mother these days. I guess she’s got kind of used to being with me. Kids are funny things, you know.”
“She seems to have all the comforts and necessities of life,” said the big man, looking about him with an affectation of approval.
“Everything that I can afford, sir,” said Harvey, blandly.
“Have you ever thought of putting her in a nice school for––”81
“She enters kindergarten before the holidays,” interrupted the father.
“I mean a—er—sort of boarding school,” put in the big man, uneasily. “Where she could be brought up under proper influences, polished up, so to speak. You know what I mean. Miss Duluth has often spoken of such an arrangement. In fact, her heart seems to be set on it.”
“You mean she—she wants to send her away to school?” asked Harvey, blankly.
“It is a very common and excellent practice nowadays,” said the other, lamely.
The little man was staring at him, his blue eyes full of dismay.
“Why—why, I don’t believe I’d like that,” he said, grasping the arms of his chair with tense fingers. “She’s doing all right here. It’s healthy here, and I am sure the schools are good enough. Nellie has never said anything to me about boarding school. Why—why, Mr. Fairfax, Phoebe’s only five—not quite that, and I—I think it would be cruel to put her off among strangers. When she’s fifteen or sixteen, maybe, but not now. Nellie don’t mean that, I’m sure.”82
“There is a splendid school for little girls up in Montreal—a sort of convent, you know. They get the best of training, moral, spiritual, and physical. It is an ideal life for a child. Nellie has been thinking a great deal of sending her there. In fact, she has practically decided to––”
Harvey came to his feet slowly, dizzily.
“I can’t believe it. She wouldn’t send the poor little thing up there all alone; no, sir! I—I wouldn’t let her do it.” He was pacing the floor. His forehead was moist.
“Miss Duluth appreciates one condition that you don’t seem able to grasp,” said Fairfax, bluntly. “She wants to keep the child as far removed from stage life and its environments as possible. She wants her to have every advantage, every opportunity to grow up entirely out of reach of the—er—influences which now threaten to surround her.”
Harvey stopped in front of him. “Is this what you came out here for, Mr. Fairfax? Did Nellie tell you to do this?”
“I will be perfectly frank with you. She asked me to come out and talk it over with you.”83
“Why didn’t she come herself?”
“She evidently was afraid that you would overrule her in the matter.”
“I never overruled her in my life,” cried Harvey. “She isn’t afraid of me. There’s something else.”
“I can only say, sir, that she intends to put the child in the convent before Christmas. She goes on the road after the holidays,” said Fairfax, setting his huge jaw.
Harvey sat down suddenly, limp as a rag. His mouth filled with water—a cold, sickening moisture that rendered him speechless for a moment. He swallowed painfully. His eyes swept the little room as if in search of something to prove that this was the place for Phoebe—this quiet, happy little cottage of theirs.
“Before Christmas?” he murmured.
“See here, Mr.—ah—Mr., here is the situation in a nutshell:—Nellie doesn’t see why she should be keeping up two establishments. It’s expensive. The child will be comfortable and happy in the convent and this house will be off her hands. She––”
“Why don’t she give up her flat in town?”84demanded Harvey, miserably. “That’s where the money goes.”
“She expects to give it up the first of the year,” said Fairfax. “The road tour lasts till May. She is going to Europe for the summer.”
“To Europe?” gasped Harvey, feeling the floor sink under his feet.
He did not think to inquire what was to become of him in the new arrangement.
“She needs a sea voyage, travel—a long vacation, in fact. It is fully decided. So, you see, the convent is the place for Phoebe.”
“But where do I come in?” cried the unhappy father. “Does she think for a minute that I will put my child in a convent so that we may be free to go to Europe and do things like that? No, sir! Dammit, I won’t go to Europe and leave Phoebe in a––”
Fairfax was getting tired of the argument. Moreover, he was uncomfortable and decidedly impatient to have it over with. He cut in rather harshly on the other’s lamentations.
“If you think she’s going to take you to Europe, you’re very much mistaken. Why, man, have you no pride? Can’t you understand85what a damned useless bit of dead weight you are, hanging to her neck?”
It was out at last. Harvey sat there staring at him, very still; such a pathetic figure that it seemed like rank cowardice to strike again. And yet Fairfax, now that he had begun, was eager to go on striking this helpless, inoffensive creature with all the frenzy of the brutal victor who stamps out the life of his vanquished foe.
“She supports you. You haven’t earned a dollar in four years. I have it from her, and from others. It is commonly understood that you won’t work, you won’t do a stroke toward supporting the child. You are a leech, a barnacle, a—a—well, a loafer. If you had a drop of real man’s blood in you, you’d get out and earn enough to buy clothes for yourself, at least, and the money for a hair cut or a shoe shine. She has been too good to you, my little man. You can’t blame her for getting tired of it. The great wonder is that she has stood for it so long.”
Words struggled from Harvey’s pallid lips.
“But she loves me,” he said. “It’s all understood between us. I gave her the start in life. She will tell you so. I––”86
“You never did a thing for her in your life,” broke in the big man, harshly. He was consumed by an ungovernable hatred for this little man who was the husband of the woman he coveted.
“I’ve always wanted to get a job. She wouldn’t let me,” protested Harvey, a red spot coming into each of his cheeks. “I don’t want to take the money she earns. I never have wanted to. But she says my place is here at home, with Phoebe. Somebody’s got to look after the child. We’ve talked it over a––”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” snapped Fairfax, hitting the arm of his chair with his fist. “You’re no good, that’s all there is to it. You are a joke, a laughing stock. Do you suppose that she can possibly love a man like you? A woman wants a man about her, not the caricature of one.”
“I intend to get a job as soon as––” began Harvey, as if he had not heard a word his visitor was saying.
“Now, see here,” exclaimed Fairfax, coming to his feet. “I’m a man of few words. I came out here to make you a proposition. It is between you and me, and no one need be the87wiser. I’m not such a fool as to intrust a thing of this kind to an outsider. Is there any likelihood of any one hearing us?”
Nellie’s husband shrank lower into his chair and shook his head. He seemed to have lost the power of speech. Fairfax drew a chair up closer, however, and lowered his voice.
“You’ve got a price. Men of your type always have. I told Nellie I would see you to-day. I’ll be plain with you. She’s tired of you, of this miserable attachment. You are impossible. That’s settled. We won’t go into that. Now I’m here, man to man, to find out how much you will take and agree to a separation.”
Harvey stiffened. He thought for a moment that his heart had stopped beating.
“I don’t believe I understand,” he muttered.
“Don’t you understand the word ‘separation’?”
“Agree to a separation from what? Great God, you don’t mean a separation from Phoebe?”
“Don’t be a fool! Use your brain, if you’ve got one.”
“Do—you—mean—Nellie?” fell slowly,88painfully from the dry lips of the little man in the Morris chair.
“Certainly.”
“Does she want to—to leave me?” The tears started in his big blue eyes. He blinked violently.
“It has come to that. She can’t go on as she has been going. It’s ridiculous. You are anxious to go back to Blakeville, she says. Well, that’s where you belong. Somebody’s drug store out there you’d like to own, I believe. Now, I am prepared to see that you get that drug store and a matter of ten or twenty thousand dollars besides. Money means nothing to me. All you have to do is to make no answer to the charges she will bring––”
Harvey leaped to his feet with a cry of abject pain.
“Did she send you here to say this to me?” he cried, shrilly, his figure shaking with suppressed fury.
“No,” said Fairfax, involuntarily drawing back. “This is between you and me. She doesn’t know––”
“Then, damn you!” shrieked Harvey, shaking his fist in the big man’s face, “what do you89mean by coming here like this? What do you think I am? Get out of here! I’m a joke, am I? Well, I’ll show you and her and everybody else that I’m a hell of a joke, let me tell you that! I was good enough for her once. I won her away from every fellow in Blakeville. I can do it again. I’ll show you, you big bluffer! Now, get out! Don’t you ever come here again, and—don’t you ever go near my wife again!”
Fairfax had arisen. He was smiling, despite his astonishment.
“I fancy you will find you can’t go so far as that,” he sneered.
“Get out, or I’ll throw you out!”
“Better think it over. Twenty-five thousand and no questions asked. Take a day or two to think––”
With a shriek of rage Harvey threw himself at the big man, striking out with all his might. Taken by surprise, Fairfax fell away before the attack, which, though seemingly impotent, was as fierce as that of a wildcat.
The New Yorker was in no danger. He warded off the blows with ease, all the time imploring the infuriated Harvey to be sensible, to be calm. But with a heroism born of shame90and despair the little man swung his arms like windmills, clawing, scratching, until the air seemed full of them. Fairfax’s huge head was out of reach. In his blind fury Harvey did not take that into account. He struck at it with all the power in his thin little arms, always falling so far short that the efforts were ludicrous.
Fairfax began to look about in alarm. The noise of the conflict was sure to attract the attention of the servants. He began backing toward the doorway. Suddenly Harvey changed his fruitless tactics. He drove the toe of his shoe squarely against the shinbone of the big man. With a roar of rage Fairfax hurled himself upon the panting foe.
“I’ll smash your head, you little devil,” he roared, and struck out viciously with one of his huge fists.
The blow landed squarely on Harvey’s eye. He fell in a heap several feet away. Half-dazed, he tried to get to his feet. The big man, all the brute in him aroused, sprang forward and drove another savage blow into the bleak, white face of the little one. Again he struck. Then he lifted Harvey bodily from the floor and91held him up against the wall, his big hand on his throat.
“How do you like it?” he snarled, slapping the helpless, half-conscious man in the face with his open hand—loud, stinging blows that almost knocked the head off the shoulders. “Will you agree to my proposition now?”
From Harvey’s broken lips oozed a strangled—
“No!”
Fairfax struck again and then let him slide to the floor.
“You damned little coward!” he grated. “To kick a man like that!”
He rushed from the room, grabbed his hat and coat in the hall, and was out of the house like a whirlwind.
The whir of a motor came vaguely, indistinctly to Harvey’s ears. He was lying close to the window. As if in a dream he lifted himself feebly to his knees and looked out of the window, not knowing exactly what he did nor why he did it.
A big green car was leaving his front gate. He was a long time in recalling who came up in it.92
His breath was coming slowly. He tried to speak, but a strange, unnatural wheeze came from his lips. A fit of coughing followed. At last he got upon his feet, steadying himself against the window casing. For a long time he stood there, working it all out in his dizzy, thumping brain.
He put his hand to his lips and then stared dully at the stains that covered it when he took it away. Then it all came back to him with a rush. Like a guilty, hunted thing he slunk upstairs to his room, carefully avoiding the room in which Phoebe was being bedecked in her Sunday frock. Her high, shrill voice came to his ears. He was weeping bitterly, sobbing like a whipped child.
He almost fainted when he first peered into the mirror on his bureau. His eyes were beginning to puff out like great knobs, his face and shirt front were saturated with his own plucky blood. Plucky! The word occurred to him as he looked. Yes, he had been plucky. He didn’t know it was in him to be so plucky. A sort of pride in himself arose to offset the pain and mortification. Yes, he had defended his honour and Nellie’s. She should hear of it!93He would tell her what he had done and how Fairfax had struck him down with a chair. She would then deny to him that she had said those awful things about him. She would be proud of him!
Carefully he washed his hands and face. With trembling fingers he applied court-plaster to his lips, acting with speed because his eyes were closing. Some one had told him that raw beefsteak was good for black eyes. He wondered if bacon would do as well. There was no beefsteak in the house.
His legs faltered as he made his way to the back stairs. Bridget was coming up. She started back with a howl.
“Come here, Bridget,” he whispered. “Into my room. Be quick!” He retreated. He would employ her aid and swear her to secrecy. The Irish know a great deal about fighting, he reflected.
“In the name av Hivvin, sor, what has happened to yez?” whispered Bridget, aghast in the doorway.
“Come in and I’ll tell you,” said he, with a groan.
Presently a childish voice came clamouring94at the locked door. He heard it as from afar. Bridget paused in her ministrations. He had just said:—
“I will take boxing lessons and physical culture of your brother, Bridget. You think he can build me up? I know I’m a bit run down. No exercise, you know. Still, I believe I would have thrashed him to a frazzle if I hadn’t stumbled. That was when he kicked me here. I got this falling against the table.”
“Yis, sor,” said Bridget, dutifully.
In response to the pounding on the door, he called out, bravely:—
“You can’t come in now, Phoebe. Papa has hurt himself a little bit. I’ll come out soon.”
“I got my Sunday dress on, daddy,” cried the childish voice. “And I’m all spruced up. Has the nice gentleman gone away?”
His head sank into his hands.
“Yes, dearie, he’s gone,” he replied, in muffled tones.