“A telegram!” gasped Harvey, turning pale. “Who from?”
“How should I know?” shouted Bobby.“But she’s got blood in her eye, you can bet on that.”
Harvey did not wait for the tailor to strip the skeleton of the Prince Albert from his back, but dashed out of the shop in wild haste.
Mrs. Davis was behind the prescription counter. She had been weeping. At the sight of him she burst into fresh lamentations.
“Oh, Harvey, I’ve got terrible news for you—just terrible! But I won’t put up with it! I won’t have it! It’s abominable! She ought to be tarred and feathered and—”
Harvey began to tremble.
“Somebody’s doing it for a joke, Mrs. Davis,” he gulped. “I swear to goodness I never had a thing to do with a woman in all my life. Nobody’s got a claim on me, honest to—”
“What are you talking about, Harvey?” demanded Mrs. Davis, wide-eyed.
“What does it say?” cried he, pulling himself up with a jerk. “I’m innocent, whatever it is.”
“It’s from your wife,” said Mrs. Davis, shaking the envelope in his face. “Read it! Read the awful thing!”
“From—from Nellie?” he gasped.
“Yes, Eller! Read it!”
“Hold it still! I can’t read it if you jiggle it around—”
She held the envelope under his nose.
“Do you see who it’s addressed to?” she grated out. “To me, as your wife. She thinks I’m already married to you. Read that name there, Harvey.”
He read the name on the envelope in a sort of stupefaction. Then she whisked the message out and handed it to him, plumping herself down in a chair to fan herself vigorously while the prescription clerk hastened to renew his ministrations with the ammonia bottle, a task that had been set to him some time prior to the advent of Harvey.
Suddenly Harvey gave a squeal of joy and instituted a series of hops and bounds that threatened to create havoc in the narrow, bottle-encircled space behind the prescription wall. He danced up and down, waving the telegram on high, the tails of his half-finished wedding garment doing a mad obbligato to the tune of his nimble legs.
“Harvey!” shrieked Mrs. Davis, aghast.
“Yi-i-i!” rang out his ear-splitting yell. Pedestrians half a block away heard it and felt sorry for Mrs. Wiggs, the unhappy wife of the town sot, who, it went without saying, must be on another “toot.”
“Harvey!” cried the poor lady once more.
“She’s going to faint!” shouted the prescription clerk in consternation.
“Let her! Let her!” whooped Harvey.“It’s all right, Joe! Let her faint if she wants to.”
“I’m not going to faint!” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, struggling to her feet and pushing Joe away. “Keep quiet, Harvey! Do you want customers to think you’re crazy? Give me that telegram. I’ll attend to that. I’ll answer it mighty quick, let me tell you. Give it to me.”
Harvey sobered almost instantly. His jaw fell. The look in her face took all the joy out of his.
“Isn’t—isn’t it great, Minerva?” he murmured, as he allowed her to snatch the message from his unresisting fingers.
She glared at him. “Great? Why, you don’t think for a moment that I’ll have the brat in my house, do you? Great? I don’t see what you can be thinking of, Harvey. You must be clean out of your head. I should say it ain’t great. It’s perfectly outrageous. Where’s the telegraph office, Joe? I’ll show the dreadful little wretch that she can’t shunt her child off on me for support. Not much. Where is it, Joe? Didn’t you hear what I asked?”
“Yes, ma’am,” acknowledged Joe, blankly.
“You can’t be mean enough—I should say you don’t mean to tell her we won’t take Phoebe?” gasped Harvey, blinking rapidly.“Surely you can’t be so hard-hearted as all—”
“That will do, Harvey,” said she, sternly.“Don’t let me hear another word out of you. The idea! Just as soon as she thinks you’re safely married to some one who can give that child a home she up and tries to get rid of her. The shameless thing! No, sir-ree! She can’t shuffle her brat off on me. Not if I know what I’m—”
She fell back in alarm. The telegram fluttered to the floor. Harvey was standing in front of her, shaking his fist under her nose, his face contorted by a spasm of fury.
“Don’t you call my little girl a brat,” he sputtered. “And don’t you dare to call my wife a shameless thing!”
“Your wife!” she gasped.
He waved his arms like a windmill.
“My widow, if you are going to be so darned particular about it,” he shouted, inanely.“Don’t you dare send a telegram saying Phoebe can’t come and live with her father. I won’t have it. She’s coming just as fast as I can get her here. Hurray!”
Mrs. Davis lost all of her sternness. She dissolved into tears.
“Oh, Harvey dear, do you really and truly want that child back again?” she sniffled.
“Do I?” he barked. “My God, I should say I do! And say, I’d give my soul if I could get Nellie back, too. How do you like that?”
The poor woman was ready to fall on her knees to him.
“For Heaven’s sake—for my sake—don’t speak of such a thing. Don’t try to get her back. Promise me! I’ll let the child come, but—oh! don’t take Nellie back. It would break my heart. I just couldn’t have her around, not if I tried my—”
Harvey stared, open-mouthed. “I didn’t mean that I’d like to have you take her back, Minerva. You haven’t anything to do with it.”
She stiffened. “Well, if I haven’t, I’d like to know who has. It’s my house, isn’t it?”
“Don’t make a scene, Minerva,” he begged, suddenly aware of the presence of a curious crowd in the front part of the store. “Go home and I’ll send the telegram. And say, if I were you, I’d go out the back way.”
“And just to think, it’s only a week till the wedding day,” she choked out.
“We can put it off,” he made haste to say.
“I know I shall positively hate that child,”said she, overlooking his generous offer. “I will be a real stepmother to her, you mark my words. You can let her come if you want to, Harvey, but you mustn’t expect me to treat her as anything but a—a—an orphan.” She was a bit mixed in her nouns.
A brilliant idea struck him.
“You’d better be nice to her, Mrs. Davis, if you know what’s good for you. Now, don’t flare up! You mustn’t forget you’ve broken the law by opening a telegram not intended for you.”
“What?”
“It isn’t addressed to you,” he said, examining the envelope. “Your name is still Mrs. Davis, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is.”
“Well, then, what in thunder did you open a telegram addressed to my wife for? That’s my wife’s name, not yours.”
“But,” she began, vastly perplexed, “but it was meant for me.”
“How do you know?” he demanded.
Her eyes bulged. “You—you don’t mean that there is another one, Harvey?”
He winked with grave deliberateness.“That’s for you to find out.”
He darted through the back door into the alley, just as she collapsed in the prescriptionist’s arms. In the telegraph office he read and re-read the message, his eyes aglow. It was from Nellie and came from New York, dated Friday, the first.
“Am sending Phoebe to Blakeville next Monday to make her home with you and Harvey. Letter today explains all. Have Harvey meet her in Chicago Tuesday, four p.m., Lake Shore.”
He scratched his chin reflectively.
“I guess it don’t call for an answer, after all,” he said as much to himself as to the operator.
Nellie’s letter came the next afternoon, addressed to Harvey. In a state of great excitement he broke the seal and read the poignant missive with eyes that were glazed with wonder and—something even more potent.
She began by saying that she supposed he was happily married, a
nd wished him all the luck in the world. Then she came abruptly to the point, as she always did:—“I am in such poor health that the doctors say I shall have to go to Arizona at once. I am good for about six months longer at the outside, they say. Not half that long if I stay in this climate. Maybe I’ll get well if I go out there. I’m not very keen about dying. I hate dead things; don’t you? Now about Phoebe. She’s been pining for you all these months. She doesn’t like Mr. Fairfax, and he’s not very strong for her. To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t want her about. She’s not his, and he hasn’t much use for anything or anybody that doesn’t belong to him. I’ve got so that I can’t stand it, Harvey. The poor little kiddie is so miserably unhappy, and I’m not strong enough to get out and work for her as I used to. I would if I could. I think Fairfax is sick of the whole thing. He didn’t count on me going under as I have. He hasn’t been near me for a month, but he says it’s because he hates the sight of Phoebe. I wonder. It wasn’t that way a couple of years ago. But I’m different now. You wouldn’t know me, I’m that thin and skinny. I hate the word, but that’s what I am. The doctors have ordered me to a little place out in Arizona. I’ve got to do what they say, and what Fairfax says. It’s the jumping-off place. So I’m leaving in a day or two with Rachel. My husband says he can’t leave his business, but I’m not such a fool as he thinks. I won’t say anything more about him, except that he hasn’t the courage to watch me go down by inches.
“I can’t leave Phoebe with him and I don’t think it best to have her with me. She ought to be spared all that. She’s so young, Harvey. She’d never forget. You love her, and she adores you. I’m giving her back to you. Don’t—oh, please don’t, ever let her leave Blakeville! I wish I had never left it, much as I hate it. I remember your new wife as being a kind, simple-hearted woman. She will be good to my little girl, I know, because she is yours as well. If I could get my health back, I’d work my heart out trying to support her, but it’s out of the question. I have nothing to give her, Harvey, and I simply will not let Fairfax provide for her. Do you understand? Or are you as stupid and simple as you always were? And as tender-hearted?”
There was more, but Harvey’s eyes were so full of tears he could not read.
He was waiting in the Lake Shore station when the train pulled in on Tuesday. His legs were trembling like two reeds in the wind and his teeth chattered with the chill of a great excitement. Out of the blur that obscured his vision bounded a small figure, almost toppling him over as it clutched his not too stable legs and shrieked something that must have pleased him vastly, for he giggled and chortled like one gone daft with joy.
A soulless guard tapped him on the shoulder and gruffly ordered him to “get off to one side with the kid,” he was blocking the exit—and flooding it, he added after a peep at Harvey’s streaming eyes.
Rachel, tall and sardonic, stood patiently by until the little man recovered from his ecstasies.
“I thought you were staying with my—with Mrs. Fairfax,” he said, gazing at her in amazement. He was holding Phoebe in his arms, and she was so heavy that his face was purple from the exertion.
“You’d better put her down,” said Rachel, mildly. “She’s not a baby any longer.” With that she proceeded to pull the child’s skirts down over the unnecessarily exposed pink legs. Harvey was not loath to set her down, a bit abruptly if the truth must be told. “Mrs. Fairfax is still in the drawing-room, sir. She doesn’t want to get off until the crowd has moved out.”
Harvey stared. “She’s—on—the—train?”
“We change for the Santa Fe, which leaves this evening for the West. I’ll go back to her now. The way is quite clear, I think. Good-bye, Phoebe. Be a good—”
“I’m going with you!” cried Harvey, breathlessly. “Take me to the car.”
Rachel hesitated. “You will be surprised, sir, when you see her. She’s very frail, and—”
“Come on! Take me to my wife at once!”
“You forget, sir. She is not your wife any—”
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy!” fell dismally from his lips.
“And you have a new wife, I hear. So, if I were you, I’d avoid a scene if—”
But he was through the gate, dragging Phoebe after him. Rachel could not keep up with them. The eager little girl led him to the right car and he scurried up the steps, bursting into drawing-room B an instant later.
Nellie, wrapped in a thick garment, was lying back in the corner of the seat, her small, white face with its great dark eyes standing out with ghastly clearness against the collar of the ulster that almost enveloped her head.
He stopped, aghast, petrified.
“Oh, Nellie!” he wailed.
She betrayed no surprise. A wan smile transfigured her thin face. With an effort she extended a small gloved hand. He grasped it and found there was so little of it that it seemed lost in his palm. The sweat broke out on his forehead. He could not speak. This was Nellie!
Her voice was low and husky.
“Good-bye, Harvey. Be good to Phoebe, old fellow.”
He choked up and could only nod his head.
“We can get out now, Mrs. Fairfax,” said Rachel, appearing at the door. “Do you think you can walk, or shall I call for a—”
“Oh, I can walk,” said Nellie, with a touch of her old raillery. “I’m not that far gone. Good-bye, Harvey. Didn’t you hear me? Don’t stand there watching me like that. It’s bad enough without—”
He turned on Rachel furiously.
“Where is that damned Fairfax? Why isn’t he here with her? The dog!”
“Hush, Harvey!”
“He’s mean to mamma,” broke in Phoebe, in her high treble. “I hate him. And so does mamma. Don’t you, mamma?”
“Phoebe! Be quiet!”
“Where is he?” repeated Harvey, shaking his finger in Rachel’s face.
“What are you blaming me for?” demanded the maid, indignantly. “Everybody blames me for everything. He’s in New York, that’s where he is. Now, you get out of here!”
She actually shoved him out into the aisle, where he stood trembling and uncertain, while she assisted her mistress to her feet and led her haltingly toward the exit.
Nellie looked back over her shoulder at him, quite coquettishly. She shook her head at him in mild derision.
“My, what a fire-eater my little Harvey has become,” she said. He barely heard the words.“Your new wife must be scared half out of her wits all the time.”
He sprang to her side, gently taking her arm in his hand. She lurched toward him ever so slightly. He felt the weight of her on his arm and marvelled that she was so much lighter than Phoebe.
“I’m not married, Nellie dear!” he cried.“It’s not to be till Friday. You got the date wrong. And it won’t be Friday, either. No, sir! I’m not going to let you go all the way out there alone. I said I’d look out for you when we were married, and I’m going to. You’ve got a husband, but what good is he to you? He’s a brute. Yes, sir; I’m going with you and I don’t give a cuss who knows it. See here! See this wad of bills? Well, by jingo, there’s more than three thousand dollars there. I drew it out this morning to give to you if you were hard up. I—”
“Oh, Harvey, what a perfect fool you are!”she cried, tears in her eyes. “You always were a fool. Now you are a bigger one than ever. Go away, please! I can get along all right. Fairfax is paying for everything. Put that roll away! Do you want to be held up right here in the station?”
“And I’ve still got the photograph gallery,”he went on. “It’s rented and I get $40 a month out of it. I’ll take care of you, Nellie. I’ll see you safely out there. Then maybe I’ll have to come back and marry old Mrs. Davis, God help me! I hate to think of it, but she’s got her mind set on it. I don’t believe I can get out of it. But she’ll have to postpone it, I can tell you that, whether she likes it or not. Maybe she’ll call it off when she hears I’ve eloped with another man’s wife. She thinks I’m a perfect scamp with women, anywa
y, and this may turn her dead against me. Gee, I hope it does! Say, let me go along with you, Nellie; please do. You and I won’t call it an elopement, but maybe she will and that would save me. And that beast of a Fairfax won’t care, so what’s the harm?”
“No,” said Nellie, looking at him queerly.“Fairfax won’t care. You can be sure of that.”
“Then I’m with you, Nellie!” he shouted.
“You are a perfectly dreadful fool, Harvey,”she said, huskily.
“I know it!” he exclaimed.
A FOOL AND HIS MONEY (1913)
CHAPTER I
I MAKE NO EFFORT TO DEFEND MYSELF
I am quite sure it was my Uncle Rilas who said that I was a fool. If memory serves me well he relieved himself of that conviction in the presence of my mother—whose brother he was—at a time when I was least competent to acknowledge his wisdom and most arrogant in asserting my own. I was a freshman in college: a fact—or condition, perhaps,—which should serve as an excuse for both of us. I possessed another uncle, incidentally, and while I am now convinced that he must have felt as Uncle Rilas did about it, he was one of those who suffer in silence. The nearest he ever got to openly resenting me as a freshman was when he admitted, as if it were a crime, that he too had been in college and knew less when he came out than when he entered. Which was a mild way of putting it, I am sure, considering the fact that he remained there for twenty-three years as a distinguished member of the faculty.
I assume, therefore, that it was Uncle Rilas who orally convicted me, an assumption justified to some extent by putting two and two together after the poor old gentleman was laid away for his long sleep. He had been very emphatic in his belief that a fool and his money are soon parted. Up to the time of his death I had been in no way qualified to dispute this ancient theory. In theory, no doubt, I was the kind of fool he referred to, but in practice I was quite an untried novice. It is very hard for even a fool to part with something he hasn’t got. True, I parted with the little I had at college with noteworthy promptness about the middle of each term, but that could hardly have been called a fair test for the adage. Not until Uncle Rilas died and left me all of his money was I able to demonstrate that only dead men and fools part with it. The distinction lies in the capacity for enjoyment while the sensation lasts. Dead men part with it because they have to, fools because they want to.
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