One woman said to another, “I wonder if he’s really married to her?”
“If he wasn’t, he’d be living in the city with her,” was the complete rejoinder.
“He seems such a quiet little man, so utterly unlike what a husband of hers ought to be. He’s from the far West—near Chicago, I believe. I never can remember his name. Can you?”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“It’s not an uncommon name.”
“Why doesn’t he call himself Mr. Duluth?”
“My husband says actresses are not supposed to have husbands. If they have them, they keep them in the background.”
“That’s true. I know I am always surprised when I see that they’re trying to get divorces.”
Harvey was never so far in the background as when he appeared in the foreground. One seldom took notice of him unless he was out of sight, or at least out of hearing.
He was not effeminate; he was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be anything but Nellie Duluth’s husband.
Not a bad-looking chap, as men of his stamp go. Not much of a spine, perhaps, and a little saggy about the shoulders; all in all, rather a common type. He kept his thin moustache twisted, but inconsistently neglected to shave for several days—that kind of a man. His trousers, no matter how well made, were always in need of pressing and his coat was wrinkled from too much sitting on the small of his back. His shirts, collars, and neckties were clean and always “dressy.” Nellie saw to that. Besides he always had gone in for gay colours when it came to ties and socks. His watch-fob was a thing of weight and pre-eminence. It was of the bell-clapper type. In the summer time he wore suspenders with his belt, and in the winter time he wore a belt with his suspenders. Of late he affected patent-leather shoes with red or green tops; he walked as if he despised the size of them.
Arriving at the snug little cottage, he was brought face to face with one of the common tragedies of a housekeeper’s life. The cook and the nursemaid, who also acted as waitress and chambermaid, had indulged in one of their controversies during his absence, and the former had departed, vowing she would never return. Here it was luncheon time and no one to get it! He knew that Bridget would be back before dinner time—she always did come back—but in the meantime what were they to do? There wasn’t a thing in the house.
He found himself wishing he had stayed in the city for luncheon.
Annie’s story was a long one, but he gathered from it that Bridget was wholly to blame for the row. Annie was very positive as to that.
“Have we any eggs?” asked the dismayed master.
“Eggs? How should I know, sir?” demanded Annie. “It’s Bridget’s place to know what’s in the pantry, not mine. The Lord knows I have enough to do without looking after her work.”
“Excuse me,” said he, apologetically. He hesitated for a moment and then came to a decision. “I guess I’d better go and see what we’ve got. If we’ve got eggs, I can fry ’em. Bridget will be back this evening.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Annie, belligerently.“I told her this was the last time, the very last.”
“I’ll bet you a quarter she comes back,” said he, brightly.
“Gee! What a sport you are!” scoffed Annie.
He flushed. “Will you please set the table?”
“It’s set.”
“Oh!”
“I’ll help you make the toast, if you’d like,”said she, a sudden feeling of pity for him coming into her niggardly soul.
“Thanks,” he said, briskly. “And the tea, too?”
“I think we’d better have coffee,” said she, asserting a preference for the housemaid’s joy.
“Just as you say,” he acquiesced, hastily.“Where is Phoebe?”
“Next door with the Butler kids—children, I mean. Maybe they’ll ask her to stay to lunch.”
He gave her a surprise. “Go over and tell her to come home. I don’t want her staying to luncheon with those damned Butlers.”
She stared, open-mouthed. “I’m sure, sir, they’re quite as good as—as we are. What have you got against ’em?”
He could not tell her that Butler, who worked in a bank, never took the trouble to notice him except when Nellie was out to spend Sunday.
“Never mind. Go and get Phoebe.”
He made a dash for the kitchen, and when the exasperated Annie returned a few minutes later with Phoebe—rebellious Phoebe, who at that particular moment hated her father—he was in his shirt-sleeves and aproned, breaking eggs over a skillet on the gas stove. His face was very red, as if considerable exertion had been required.
Phoebe was pouting when she came in, but the sight of her father caused her to set up a shriek of glee.
“What fun, daddy!” she cried. “Now we’ll never need Bridget again. I don’t like her. You will be our cook, won’t you?”
Annie’s sarcastic laugh annoyed him.
“I used to do all the cooking when the Owl Club went camping,” he announced, entirely for Annie’s benefit.
“In Blakeville?” asked Annie, with a grin.
“Yes, in Blakeville,” he exploded, almost dropping the cigarette from his lips into the skillet. His blue eyes flashed ominously. Annie, unused to the turning of the worm, caught her breath.
Suddenly obsessed by the idea that he was master in his own house, he began strutting about the kitchen, taking mental note of the things that needed attention, with a view to reproving Bridget when she came back to the fold. He burnt his fingers trying to straighten the stovepipe, smelt of the dish-cloths to see if they were greasy, rattled the pans and bethought himself of the eggs just in the nick of time. In some haste and embarrassment he removed the skillet from the fire just as Annie came out of the pantry with the bread and the coffee can.
“Where’s the platter?” he demanded, holding the skillet at arm’s length. “They’re fried.”
“They’ll be stone cold,” said she, “waiting for the coffee to boil. You ain’t got any water boiling.”
“I thought, perhaps, we’d better have milk,”he said, gathering his wits.
To his surprise—and to her own, for that matter—she said, “Very good, sir,” and repaired to the icebox for the dairy bottles. He was still holding the skillet when she returned. She was painfully red in the face.
Phoebe eyed the subsequent preparations for the meal with an increasing look of sullenness in her quaint little face. She was rather a pretty child. You would say of her, if you saw her in the street, “What a sweet child!” just as you would say it about the next one you met.
Her father, taking note of her manner, paused in the act of removing his apron.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“Can’t I go over to Mrs. Butler’s for luncheon?”she complained. “They’re going to have chicken.”
“So are we,” said he, pointing to the eggs.
“I want to go,” said Phoebe, stubbornly.
He coloured. “Don’t you want to stay home and eat what daddy has cooked?” he asked, rather plaintively.
“I want to go.”
He could only resort to bribery. “And daddy’ll take you down to see the nickel show as soon as we’ve finished,” he offered. The child’s face brightened.
Here Annie interposed.
“She can’t go to see them nickel shows; Miss Duluth won’t stand for it. She’s give me strict orders.”
“I’ll take good care of her—” began Phoebe’s father.
“Miss Duluth’s afraid of diphtheria and scarlet fever,” said Annie, resolutely, as she poured out a glass of milk for him.
“Not likely to be any diphtheria this time of year,” he began again, spurred by the kick Phoebe planted on his kneecap.
“Well, orders is orders. What Miss Duluth says goes.”
“Ah, come n
ow, Annie—”
“Say, do you want her to ketch scarlet fever and die?” demanded the nurse, putting the bottle down and glaring at him with a look of mixed commiseration and scorn.
“Good Heavens, no!” he ejaculated. The very thought of it brought a gush of cold water to his mouth.
“Well, take her to see it if you must, but don’t blame me. She’s your kid,” said Annie, meanly, with victory assured.
“Make her say ‘Yes,’” urged Phoebe, in a loud whisper.
He hedged. “Do you want to have the scarlet fever?” he asked, dismally.
“Yes,” said Phoebe. “And measles, too.”
The sound of heavy footsteps on the back porch put an end to the matter for the time being. Even Phoebe was diverted.
Bridget had come back. A little ahead of her usual schedule, too, which was food for apprehension. Usually she took the whole day off when she left “for good and all.” Never before in the history of her connection with Miss Duluth’s menage had she returned so promptly. Involuntarily the master of the house glanced out of the window to see if a rain had blown up. The sun was shining brightly. It wasn’t the weather.
The banging of the outer door to the kitchen caused him to jump ever so slightly and to cast a glance of inquiry at Annie, who altered her original course and moved toward the sitting-room door. In the kitchen a perfectly innocent skillet crashed into the sink with a vigour that was more than ominous.
A moment later Bridget appeared in the door. She wore her best hat and gloves and the dress she always went to mass in. The light of battle was in her eye.
“We—we thought we wouldn’t wait, Bridget,”said Mr.—er—What’s-His-Name, quickly.“You never come back till six or seven, you know, so—”
“Who’s been monkeyin’ wid my kitchen?” demanded Bridget. She started to unbutton one of her gloves and the movement was so abrupt and so suggestive that he got up from his chair in such a hurry that he overturned it.
“Somebody had to get lunch,” he began.
“I wasn’t sp’akin’ to you,” said Bridget, glaring past him at Annie.
He gulped suddenly. For the second time that day his eyes blazed. Things seemed to be dancing before them.
“Well, I’m speaking to you!” he shouted, banging the table with his clenched fist.
“What!” squealed Bridget, staggering back in astonishment.
He remembered Phoebe.
“You’d better run over to the Butlers’,Phoebe, and have lunch,” he said, his voice trembling in spite of himself. “Run along lively now.”
Bridget was still staring at him like one bereft of her senses when Phoebe scrambled down from her chair and raced out of the room. He turned upon the cook.
“What do you mean by coming in here and speaking to me in that manner?” he demanded, shrilly.
“Great God above!” gasped Bridget weakly. She dropped her glove. Her eyes were blinking.
“And why weren’t you here to get lunch?”he continued, ruthlessly. “What do we pay you for?”
Bridget forgot her animosity toward Annie.“What do yez think o’ that?” she muttered, addressing the nursemaid.
“Get back to the kitchen,” ordered he.
Cook had recovered herself by this time. Her broad face lost its stare and a deep scowl, with fiery red background, spread over her features. She imposed her huge figure a step or two farther into the room.
“Phat’s that?” she demanded.
She weighed one hundred and ninety and was nearly six feet tall. He was barely five feet five and could not have tipped the beam at one hundred and twenty-five without his winter suit and overcoat. He moved back a corresponding step or two.
“Don’t argue,” he said, hurriedly.
“Argue?” she snorted. “Phy, ye little shrimp, who are you to be talkin’ back to me? For two cents I’d—”
“You are discharged!” he cried, hastily putting a chair in her path—but wisely retaining a grip on it.
She threw back her head and laughed, loudly, insultingly. Her broad hands, now gloveless and as red as broiled lobsters, found resting-places on her hips. He allowed his gaze to take them in with one hurried, sweeping glance. They were as big and as menacing as a prizefighter’s.
“We’ll discuss it when you’re sober,” he made haste to say, trying to wink amiably.
“So help me Mike, I haven’t touched a—” she began, but caught herself in time.“So yez discharge me, do yez?” she shouted.
“I understood you had quit, anyway.”
“Well, me fine little man, I’ll see yez further before I’ll quit now. I came back this minute to give notice, but I wouldn’t do it now for twenty-five dollars.”
“You don’t have to give notice. You’re discharged. Good-bye.” He started for the sitting-room.
She slapped the dining-table with one of her big hands. The dishes bounced into the air, and so did he.
“I’ll give this much notice to yez,” she roared, “and ye’ll bear it in mind as long as yez stay in the same house wid me. I don’t take no orders from the likes of you. I was employed by Miss Duluth. I cook for her, I get me pay from her, and I’ll not be fired by anybody but her. Do yez get that? I’d as soon take orders from the kid as from you, ye little pinhead. Who are yez anyhow? Ye’re nobody. Begorry, I don’t even know yer name. Discharge me! Phy, phy, ye couldn’t discharge a firecracker. What’s that?”
“I—I didn’t say anything,” he gasped.
“Ye’d better not.”
“I shall speak to—to Miss Duluth about this,” he muttered, very red in the face.
“Do!” she advised, sarcastically. “She’ll tell yez to mind yer own business, the same as I do. The idee! Talkin’ about firing me! Fer the love av Mike, Annie, what do yez think av the nerve? Phy Miss Duluth kapes him on the place I can’t fer the life av me see. She’s that tinder-hearted she—”
But he had bolted through the door, slamming it after him. As he reached the bottom of the stairs leading to his bedroom the door opened again and Annie called out to him:—
“Are you through lunch, sir?”
He was halfway up the steps before he could frame an answer. Tears of rage and humiliation were in his baby-blue eyes.
“Tell her to go to the devil,” he sputtered.
As he disappeared at the bend in the stairs he distinctly heard Annie say:—
“I can see myself doing it—not.”
For an hour he paced the floor of his little bed-chamber, fuming and swearing to himself in a mild, impotent fashion—and in some dread of the door. Such words and sentences as these fell from his lips:—“Nobody!” “Keeps me on the place!” “Because she’s tender-hearted!” “I will fire her!” “Can’t talk back to me!” “Damned Irisher!” And so on and so forth until he quite wore himself out. Then he sat down at the window and let the far-away look slip back into his troubled blue eyes. They began to smart, but he did not blink them.
Phoebe found him there at four when she came in for her nap. He promised to play croquet with her.
Dinner was served promptly that evening, and it was the best dinner Bridget had cooked in a month.
“That little talk of mine did some good,”said he to himself, as he selected a toothpick and went in to read “Nicholas Nickleby” till bedtime. “They can’t fool with me.”
He was reading Dickens. His wife had given him a complete set for Christmas. To keep him occupied, she said.
CHAPTER II
MISS NELLIE DULUTH
Nellie Duluth had an apartment up near the Park, the upper end of the Park, in fact, and to the east of it. She went up there, she said, so that she could be as near as possible to her husband and daughter. Besides, she hated taking the train at the Grand Central on Sundays. She always went to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street in her electric brougham. It didn’t seem so far to Tarrytown from One Hundred and Twenty-fifth. In making her calculations Nellie always went through the process of subtracti
ng forty-two from one-twenty-five, seldom correctly. She had no difficulty in taking the two from the five, but it wasn’t so simple when it came to taking four from two with one to carry over. It was the one that confused her. For the life of her she couldn’t see what became of it. Figures of that sort were not in her line.
Nellie’s career had been meteoric. She literally had leaped from the chorus into the rôle of principal comédienne—one of those pranks of fortune that cannot be explained or denied. She was one of the “Jack-in-the-Box” girls in a big New York production. On the opening night, when the lid of her box flew open and she was projected into plain view, she lost her bearings and missed the tiny platform in coming down. To save herself from an ignominious tumble almost to the footlights she hopped off the edge of her box, where she had been “teetering”helplessly, and did a brief but exceedingly graceful little “toe spin,” hopping back into the box an instant later with all the agility of a scared rabbit. She expected “notice”from the stage manager for her inexcusable slip.
But the spectators liked it. They thought it was in the play. She was so pretty, so sprightly, so graceful, and so astoundingly modest that they wanted more of her. After the performance no fewer than a dozen men asked the producer why he didn’t give that little girl with the black hair more of a chance.
The next night she was commanded to repeat the trick. Then they permitted her to do it over in the “encore.” Before the end of a fortnight she was doing a dance with the comedian, exchanging lines with him. Then a little individual song-and-dance specialty was introduced. At the close of the engagement on Broadway she announced that she would not sign for the next season unless given a “ripping”part and the promise to be featured.
That was three years ago. Now she was the feature in the big, musical comedy success, “Up in the Air” and had New York at her feet. The critics admitted that she saved the“piece” in spite of composer and librettist. Some one is always doing that very thing for the poor wretches, Heaven pity them.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 217