“I’m Miss Duluth’s husband,” said the smallish man, shrinking. The tall, flashily good-looking man at his elbow straightened up and looked at him with a doubtful expression in his eyes. He was Mr. Butler, Harvey’s next-door neighbour in Tarrytown. “You must be new here.”
“Been here two years,” said the ticket-seller, glaring at him. “See the manager.”
“Where is he?”
“At his hotel, I suppose. Please move up. You’re holding the line back.”
At that moment the company’s press representative sauntered by. Nellie’s husband, very red in the face and humiliated, hailed him, and in three minutes was being conducted to a seat in the nineteenth row, three removed from the aisle, followed by his Tarrytown neighbour, on whose face there was a frozen look of disgust.
“We’ll go back after the second act,” said Harvey, struggling with his hat, which wouldn’t go in the rack sideways. “I’ll arrange everything then.”
“Rotten seats,” said Mr. Butler, who had expected the front row or a box.
“The scenery is always better from the back of the house,” explained his host, uncomfortably.
“Damn the scenery!” said Mr. Butler. “I never look at it.”
“Wait till you see the setting in the second—”began Harvey, with forced enthusiasm, when the lights went down and the curtain was whisked upward, revealing a score of pretty girls representing merry peasants, in costumes that cost a hundred dollars apiece, and glittering with diamond rings.
Mr. Butler glowered through the act. He couldn’t see a thing, he swore.
“I should think the husband of the star could get the best seats in the house,” he said when the act was half-over, showing where his thoughts were.
“That press agent hates me,” said Harvey, showing where his had been.
“Hates you? In God’s name, why?”
“I’ve had to call him down a couple of times,” said Harvey, confidentially. “Good and hard, too.”
“I suppose that’s why he makes you take a back seat,” said Butler, sarcastically.
“Well, what can a fellow do?” complained the other. “If I could have seen Mr.—”
A man sitting behind tapped him on the shoulder.
“Will you be good enough to stop talking while the curtain’s up?” he requested, in a state of subdued belligerency.
Harvey subsided without even so much as a glance to see what the fellow was like.
After the act Butler suggested a drink, which was declined.
“I don’t drink,” explained Harvey.
His companion snorted. “I’d like to know what kind of a supper we’re going to have if you don’t drink. Be a sport!”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” said Harvey.“Ginger ale livens me up as much as anything. I used to simply pour the liquor down me. I had to give it up. It was getting the best of me. You should have seen the way I was carrying on out there in Blakeville before—”
“Well, come out and watch me take a drink,” interrupted Butler, wearily. “It may brace you up.”
Harvey looked helplessly at the three ladies over whom they would have to climb in order to reach the aisle and shook his head.
“We’re going out after the next act. Let’s wait till then.”
“Give me my seat check,” said Butler, shortly. “I’m going out.” Receiving the check, he trampled his way out, leaving Harvey to ruminate alone.
The joint presence of these two gentlemen of Tarrytown in the city requires an explanation. You may remember that Nellie’s husband resented Butler’s habit of ignoring him. Well, there had come a time when Butler had thought it advisable to get down from his high horse. His wife had gone to Cleveland to visit her mother for a week or two. It was a capital time for him to get better acquainted with Miss Duluth, to whom he had been in the habit of merely doffing his hat in passing.
The morning of his wife’s departure, which was no more than eight hours prior to their appearance at the box office, he made it a point to hail Harvey in a most jovial manner as he stood on his side porch, suggesting that he come over and see the playroom he had fixed up for his children and Phoebe.
“We ought to be more neighbourly,” he said, as he shook hands with Harvey at the steps. Later on, as they smoked in the library, he mentioned the fact that he had not had the pleasure of seeing Miss Duluth in the new piece.
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 tonight,” he went on. “Just to kill time. It will be very lonely for me, now that my dear wife’s away.”
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.”
“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, with her 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.
“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 you don’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, where 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 tonight,” 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 man moved 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 tonight, 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?”
“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? I’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 appeared in 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,” went on 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 pr
etty 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 tonight. I wish you had telephoned or something. I could have told you.”
Harvey looked distressed. “What does the doctor say it is?”
“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 to speak 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.”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 219