What's-His-Name. George Barr McCutcheon

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.” 43

      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 44 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 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