Nellie was not only pretty and sprightly, but as clever as they make them. She never drew the short straw. She had a brain that was quite as active as her feet. It was not a very big brain; for that matter, her feet were tiny. She had the good sense to realise that her brain would last longer than her feet, so she got as much for them as she could while the applause lasted. She drove shrewd bargains with the managers and shrewder ones with Wall Street admirers, who experienced a slim sense of gratification in being able to give her tips on the market, with the assurance that they would see to it that she didn’t lose.
She put her money into diamonds as fast as she got it. Some one in the profession had told her that diamonds were safer than banks or railroad bonds. She could get her interest by looking at them and she could always sell them for what she paid for them.
The card on the door of her cosey apartment bore the name, “Miss Nellie Duluth.”
There was absolutely nothing inside or outside the flat to lead one to suspect that there was a Mr. Duluth. A husband was the remotest figure in her household. When the management concluded to put her name in the play-bill, after the memorable Jack-in-the-Box leap, she was requested to drop her married name, because it would not look well in print.
“Where were you born?” the manager had asked.
“Duluth.”
“Take Duluth for luck,” said he, and Duluth it was. She changed the baptismal name Ella to Nellie. At home in Blakeville she had been called Eller or Ell.
Her apartment was an attractive one. Her housemaid was a treasure. She was English and her name was Rachel. Nellie’s personal maid and dresser was French. Her name was Rebecca. When Miss Duluth and Rebecca left the apartment to go to the theatre in the former’s electric brougham, Rachel put the place in order. So enormous was the task that she barely had it finished when her mistress returned, tired and sleepy, to litter it all up again with petticoats, stockings, roses, orchids, lobster shells, and cigarette stubs. More often than otherwise Nellie brought home girls from the theatre to spend the night with her. Poor things, they were chorus girls, just as she had been, and they had so far to go. Besides, they served as excuses for declining unwelcome invitations to supper. Be that as it may, Rachel had to clean up after them, finding their puffs, rats, and switches in the morning and the telephone number at their lodgings in the middle of the night. She had her instructions to say that such young ladies were spending the night with Miss Duluth.
“If you don’t believe it, call up Miss Duluth’s number in the telephone book,” she always concluded, as if the statement needed verification.
Nellie had not been in Tarrytown for a matter of three weeks; what with rehearsals, revisions, consultations, and suppers, she just couldn’t get around to it. The next day after Harvey’s inglorious stand before Bridget she received a letter from him setting forth the whole affair in a peculiarly vivid light. He said that something would have to be done about Bridget and advised her to come out on the earliest day possible to talk it over with him. He confessed to a hesitancy about discharging the cook, recalling the trouble she had experienced in getting her away from a neighbour in the first place. But Bridget was drinking and quarrelling with Annie and using strong language in the presence of Phoebe. He would have discharged her long ago if it hadn’t been for the fear of worrying her during rehearsals and all that. She wasn’t to be bothered with trifling household squabbles at such an important time as this. No, sir! Not if he could help it. But, just the same, he thought she’d better come out and talk it over before Bridget took it into her head to poison some one.
“I really, truly must go up to Tarrytown next Sunday,” said Nellie to the select company supping in her apartment after the performance that night. “Harvey’s going to discharge the cook.”
“Who is Harvey?” inquired the big blond man who sat beside her.
“My teenty-weenty hubby,” said she, airily.
There were two other men besides the big blond in the party, and the wife of one of them—a balance wheel.
The big blond man stared at his hostess. He expected her to laugh at her own joke, but she did not. The others were discussing the relative merits of the Packard and Peerless cars. He waited a moment and then leaned closer to Nellie’s ear.
“Are you in earnest?” he asked, in low tones.
“About what, Mr. Fairfax?”
“Hubby. Have you got one?”
“Of course I have. Had him for six years. Why?”
He swallowed hard. A wave of red crept up over his jowl and to the very roots of his hair.
“I’ve known you for over a month, Nellie,”he said, a hard light in his fishy grey eyes, “and you’ve never mentioned this husband of yours. What’s the game?”
“It’s a guessing game,” she said, coolly.“You might guess what I’m wearing this little plain gold ring on my left hand for. It’s there where everybody can see it, isn’t it? You just didn’t take the trouble to look, Mr. Fairfax. Women don’t wear wedding rings for a joke, let me tell you that.”
“I never noticed it,” he said, huskily. “The truth is, it never entered my head to think you could be a married woman.”
“Thought I was divorced, eh?”
“Well, divorces are not uncommon, you know. You girls seem to get rid of husbands quite as easily as you pick them up.”
“Lord bless you,” said Nellie, in no way offended,“I have never done anything to give Harvey cause for divorce, and I’m sure he’s never done the tiniest thing out of the way. He never treats me cruelly, he never beats me, he doesn’t get tight and break things up, and he never looks at other women. He’s the nicest little husband ever.”
She instructed Rachel to fill up Mr. Fairfax’s glass and pass the ripe olives. He was watching her, an odd expression in his eyes. A big, smooth-faced man of fifty was he, fat from high living, self-indulgence, and indolence, immaculately dressed to the tips of his toes.
“Speaking of divorce,” she went on, without looking at him, “your wife didn’t have much trouble getting hers, I’ve heard.”
It was a daring thing to say, but Nellie was from the West, where courage and freshness of vision are regarded as the antithesis of tact and diplomacy. Tact calls for tact. The diplomatist is powerless if you begin shooting at him. Nellie did not work this out for herself; she merely wanted to put him in a corner where he would have to stand and get it over with.
Fairfax was disconcerted. He showed it. No one ever presumed to discuss the matter with him. It was a very tender subject. His eyes wavered.
“I like your cheek,” he growled.
“Don’t you like to talk about it?” she inquired, innocently.
“No,” he replied, curtly. “It’s nobody’s business, Miss Duluth.”
“My, how touchy!” She shivered prettily.“I feel as if some one had thrown a pail of ice water over me.”
“We were speaking of your—this husband of yours,” he said, quietly. “Why have you never mentioned him to me? Is it quite fair?”
“It just slipped my mind,” she said, in the most casual way. “Besides, I thought you knew. My little girl is four—or is it five?”
“Where do you keep them?”
“I’ve got ’em in storage up at Tarrytown. That’s the Sleepy Hollow neighbourhood, isn’t it? I guess that’s why Harvey likes it so well.”
“What is his business?”
She looked up quickly. “What is that to you, Mr. Fairfax?”
“Nothing. I am in no way interested in Mr. Duluth.”
“His name isn’t Duluth,” she flashed, hotly.“If you are not interested in him, let’s drop the subject.”
“I retract what I said. I am always interested in curiosities. What’s he like?”
“Well, he’s like a gentleman, if you are really interested in curiosities,” she said.
He laughed. “By Jove, you’ve got a ready wit, my dear.” He looked at her reflectively, speculatively. “It’s rather a facer to have
you turn out to be a married woman.”
“Don’t you like married women?”
“Some of ’em,” he answered, coolly. “But I don’t like to think of you as married.”
“Pooh!” she said, and there was a world of meaning in the way she said it.
“Don’t you know that it means a great deal to me?” he demanded, leaning closer and speaking in a lowered voice, tense and eager.
“Pooh!” she repeated.
He flushed again. “I cannot bear the thought of you belonging—”
She interrupted him quickly. “I wouldn’t say it, if I were you.”
“But I must say it. I’m in love with you, Nellie, and you know it. Every drop of blood in my veins is crying out for you, and has been—”
Her face had clouded. “I’ve asked you not to say such things to me.”
He stared in amazement. “You are dreaming! I’ve never uttered a word of this sort to you. What are you thinking of? This is the first time I’ve said—”
Nellie was dismayed. It was the first time he had spoken to her in that way. She stammered something about “general principles,”but he was regarding her so fixedly that her attempt at dissembling was most unconvincing.
“Or perhaps,” said he, almost savagely, but guardedly, “you are confusing me with some one else.”
This was broad enough to demand instant resentment. She took refuge in the opportunity.
“Do you mean to insult me, Mr. Fairfax?”she demanded, coldly, drawing back in her chair.
He laughed harshly.
“Is there any one else?” he asked, gripping one of her small hands in his great fist.
She jerked the hand away. “I don’t like that, Mr. Fairfax. Please remember it. Don’t ever do it again. You have no right to ask such questions of me, either.”
“I’m a fool to have asked,” he said, gruffly.“You’d be a fool to answer. We’ll let it go at that. So that’s your wedding ring, eh? Odd that I shouldn’t have noticed it before.”
She was angry with herself, so she vented the displeasure on him.
“You never took much notice of your wife’s wedding ring, if tales are true.”
“Please, Miss Duluth, I—”
“Oh, I read all about the case,” she ran on.“You must have hated the notoriety. I suppose most of the things she charged you with were lies.”
He pulled his collar away from his throat.
“Is it too hot in the room?” she inquired, innocently.
His grin was a sickly one. “Do you always make it so hot?” he asked. “This is my first visit to your little paradise, you must remember. Don’t make it too hot for me.”
“It isn’t paradise when it gets too hot,” was her safe comment.
Fairfax’s wife had divorced him a year or two before. The referee was not long in deciding the case in her favour. As they were leaving Chambers, Fairfax’s lawyer had said to his client:—“Well, we’ve saved everything but honour.” And Fairfax had replied:—“You would have saved that, too, if I had given you a free rein.” From which it may be inferred that Fairfax was something of a man despite his lawyer.
He was one of those typical New Yorkers who were Pittsburgers or Kansas Citians in the last incarnation—which dated back eight or ten years, at the most, and which doesn’t make any difference on Broadway—with more money than he was used to and a measureless capacity for spending. His wife had married him when money was an object to him. When he got all the money he wanted he went to New York and began a process of elevating the theatre by lending his presence to the stage door. The stage declined to be elevated without the aid of an automobile, so he also lent that, and went soaring. His wife further elevated the stage by getting a divorce from him.
“This is my first time here,” he went on,“but it isn’t to be the last, I hope. What good taste you have, Nellie! It’s a corking little nest.”
“I just can’t go out to Tarrytown every night,” she explained. “I must have a place in town.”
“By the way,” he said, more at ease than he had been, “you spoke of going to Tarrytown on Sunday. Let me take you out in the motor. I’d like to see this husband chap of yours and the little girl, if—”
“Nay, nay,” she said, shaking her head. “I never mix my public affairs with my private ones. You are a public affair, if there ever was one. No, little Nellie will go out on the choo-choos.” She laughed suddenly, as if struck by a funny thought. Then, very seriously, she said:—“I don’t know what Harvey would do to you if he caught you with me.”
He stiffened. “Jealous, eh?”
“Wildly!”
“A fire-eater?”
“He’s a perfect devil,” said Nellie, with the straightest face imaginable.
Fairfax smiled in a superior sort of way, flecked the ashes from his cigarette, and leaned back in his chair the better to contemplate the charming creature at his side. He thoroughly approved of jealous husbands. The fellow who isn’t jealous, he argued, is the hardest to trifle with.
“I suppose you adore him,” he said, with a thinly veiled sneer.
“‘He’s the idol of me ’art,’” she sang, in gentle mimicry.
“Lucky dog,” he whispered, leering upon her. “And how trustful he is, leaving you here in town to face temptation alone while he hibernates in Tarrytown.”
“He trusts me,” she flashed.
“I am the original ‘trust buster,’” he laughed.
Nellie arose abruptly. She stretched her arms and yawned. The trio opposite gave over disputing about automobiles, and both men looked at their watches.
“Go home,” said Nellie. “I’m tired. We’ve got a rehearsal tomorrow.”
No one took offence. They understood her ways.
Fairfax gave her his light topcoat to hold while he slipped into it. She was vaguely surprised that he did not seek to employ the old trick of slipping an arm about her during the act. Somehow she felt a little bit more of respect for him.
“Don’t forget tomorrow night,” he said, softly, at the door. “Just the four of us, you know. I’ll come back for you after the play.”
“Remember, it has to be in the main restaurant,”she warned him. “I like to see the people.”
He smiled. “Just as you like.”
She laughed to herself while Rebecca was preparing her for bed, tickled by the thought of the “fire-eating” Harvey. In bed, however, with the lights out, she found that sleep would not come as readily as she had expected. Instead her mind was vividly awake and full of reflections. She was thinking of the two in Tarrytown asleep for hours and snugly complacent. Her thoughts suddenly leaped back to the old days in Blakeville when she was the Town Marshal’s daughter and he the all-important dispenser of soft drinks at Davis’. How she had hung on his every word, quip, or jest! How she had looked forward to the nights when he was to call! How she hated the other girls who divided with her the attentions of this popular young beau! And how different everything was now in these days of affluence and adulation! She caught herself counting how many days it had been since she had seen her husband, the one-time hero of her dreams. What a home-body he was! What a change there was in him! In the old Blakeville days he was the liveliest chap in town. He was never passive for more than a minute at a stretch. Going, gadding, frivolling, flirting—that was the old Harvey. And now look at him!
Those old days were far, far away, so far that she was amazed that she was able to recall them. She had sung in the church choir and at all of the local entertainments. The praise of the Blakeville Patriot was as sweet incense to her, the placid applause of the mothers’meetings more riotous than anything she could imagine in these days when audiences stamped and clapped and whistled till people in the streets outside the theatre stopped and envied those who were inside.
And then the days of actual courtship; she tried to recall how and when they began. She married Harvey in the little church on the hill. Everybody in town was there. She could close
her eyes now and see Harvey in the new checked suit he had ordered from Chicago especially for the occasion, a splendid innovation that caused more than one Lotharial eye to gleam with envy.
Then came the awakening. The popular drug clerk, for all his show of prosperity and progress, had not saved a cent in all his years of labour, nor was there any likelihood of his salary ever being large enough to supply the wants of two persons. They went to live with his mother, and it was not long before he was wearing the checked suit for “everyday use”as well as for Sunday.
She was stagestruck. For that matter, so was he. They were members of the town dramatic club and always had important parts in the plays. An instructor came from Chicago to drill the “members of the cast,” as they were designated by the committee in charge. It was this instructor who advised Nellie to go to Chicago for a course in the school he represented. He assured her she would have no difficulty in getting on the stage.
Harvey procured a position in a confectioner’s establishment in State Street and she went to work for a photographer, taking her lessons in dancing, singing, and elocution at odd hours. She was pretty, graceful, possessed of a lovely figure not above the medium height; dark-haired and vivacious after a fashion of her own. As her pleased husband used to say, she “got a job on the stage before you could say Jack Robinson.” He tried to get into the chorus with her, but the management said,“No husbands need apply.”
That was the beginning of her stage career, such a few years ago that she was amazed when she counted back. It seemed like ten years, not five.
She soared; he dropped, and, as there was no occasion for rousing himself, according to the point of view established by both of them, he settled back into his natural groove and never got beyond his soda-fountain days in retrospect.
The next night after the little supper at Nellie’s a most astonishing thing happened. A smallish man with baby-blue eyes appeared at the box-office window, gave his name, and asked for a couple of good seats in Miss Duluth’s name. The ticket-seller had him repeat the name and then gruffly told him to see the company manager.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 218