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 45 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. 46
“ ‘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 to-morrow.”
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 to-morrow night,” he said, softly, at the door. “Just the four of us, you know. I’ll come back for you after the play.” 47
“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 48 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 49 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, 50 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.
“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 51 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
