What's-His-Name Part 6

"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.

"d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sing.

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 to-night," 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 k.n.o.b 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."