If by any chance you should happen to stop off in the sleepy town of Blakeville, somewhere west of Chicago, you would be directed at once to the St. Nicholas Hotel, not only the leading hostelry of the city, but—to quote the advertisement in the local newspaper—the principal hotel in that Congressional district. After you had been conducted to the room with a bath—for I am sure you would insist on having it if it were not already occupied, which wouldn’t be likely—you would cross over to the window and look out upon Main Street. Directly across the way you would observe a show window in which huge bottles filled with red, yellow, and blue fluids predominated. The sign above the door would tell you that it was a drug store, if you needed anything more illuminating than the three big bottles.
“Davis’ drug store,” you would say to your wife, if she happened to be with you, and if you have been at all interested in the history 202 of Mr.—Mr.—Now, what is his name?—you would doubtless add, “It seems to me I have heard of the place before.” And then you would stare hard to see if you could catch a glimpse of the soda-water dispenser, whose base of operations was just inside the door to the left, a marble structure that glistened with white and silver, and created within you at once a longing for sarsaparilla or vanilla and the delicious after effect of stinging gases coming up through the nostrils, not infrequently accompanied by tears of exquisite pain—a pungent pain, if you please.
At the rush periods of the day you could not possibly have seen him for the crowd of thirsty people who obstructed the view. Everybody in town flocked to Davis’ for their chocolate sundaes and cherry phosphates. Was not Harvey behind the counter once more? With all the new-fangled concoctions from gay New York, besides a few novelties from Paris, and a wonderful assortment of what might well have been called prestidigitatorial achievements!
He had a new way of juggling an egg phosphate that was worth going miles to see, and 203 as for the manner in which he sprinkled nutmeg over the surface—well! no Delsartian movement ever was so full of grace.
Yes, he was back at the old place in Davis’. For a year and a half he had been there. So prosperous was his first summer behind the “soda counter” that the owner of the place agreed with him that the fountain could be kept running all winter, producing hot chocolate, beef tea, and all that sort of thing. Just to keep the customers from getting out of the habit, argued Harvey in support of his plan—and his job.
You may be interested to learn how he came back to Blakeville. He was a fortnight getting there from Tarrytown. His railroad ticket carried him to Cleveland. From that city he walked to Chicago, his purpose being to save a few dollars so that he might ride into Blakeville. His feet were so sore and swollen when he finally hobbled into his Uncle Peter’s art studio, on Main Street, that he couldn’t get his shoes on for forty-eight hours after once taking them off. He confessed to a bit of high living in his time, lugubriously admitting to his uncle that he feared he had a touch of the gout. He 204 was subject to it, confound it. Beastly thing, gout. But you can’t live on lobster and terrapin and champagne without paying the price.
His uncle, a crusty and unimpressionable bachelor, was not long in getting the truth out of him. To Harvey’s unbounded surprise the old photographer sympathised with him. Instead of kicking him out he took him to his bosom, so to speak, and commiserated with him.
“I feel just as sorry for a married man, Harvey,” said he, “as I do for a half-starved dog. I’m always going out of my way to feed some of these cast-off dogs around town, so why shouldn’t I do the same for a poor devil of a husband? I’ll make you comfortable until you get into Davis’, but don’t you ever let on to these damned women that you’re a failure, or that you’re strapped, or that that measly little wife of yours gave you the sack. No, sir! Remember who you are. You are my nephew. I won’t say as I’m proud of you, but, by thunder! I don’t want anybody in Blakeville to know that I’m ashamed of you. If I feel that way about you, it’s my own secret and it’s nobody’s business. So you just put on a bold front and 205 nobody need know. You can be quite sure I won’t tell on you, to have people saying that my poor dead sister’s boy wasn’t good enough for Ell Barkley or any other woman that ever lived.
“But it’s a lesson to you. Don’t—for God’s sake, don’t—ever let another one of ’em get her claws on you! Here’s ten dollars. Go out and buy some ten-cent cigars at Rumley’s, and smoke ’em where everybody can see you. Ten-centers, mind you; not two-fers, the kind I smoke. And get a new pair of shoes at Higgs’. And invite me to eat a—an expensive meal at the St. Nicholas. It can’t cost more’n a dollar, no matter how much we order, but you can ask for lobster and terrapin, and raise thunder because they haven’t got ’em, whatever they are. Then in a couple of days you can say you’re going to help me out during the busy season, soliciting orders for crayon portraits. I’ll board and lodge you here and give you four dollars a week to splurge on. The only thing I ask in return is that you’ll tell people I’m a smart man for never having married. That’s all!”
You may be quite sure that Harvey took to 206 the place as a duck takes to water. Inside of a week after his arrival—or, properly speaking, his appearance in Blakeville, for you couldn’t connect the two on account of the gout—he was the most talked-of, most envied man in the place. In the cigar stores, poolrooms, and at the St. Nicholas he was wont to regale masculine Blakeville with tales of high life in the Tenderloin that caused them to fairly shiver from attacks of the imagination, and subsequently to go home and tell their women folk what a gay Lothario he was, with the result that the interest in the erstwhile drug clerk spread to the other sex with such remarkable unanimity that no bit of gossip was complete without him. Every one affected his society, because every one wanted to hear what he had to say of the gay world on Manhattan Island; the life behind the scenes of the great theatres, the life in the million dollar cafés and hotels, the life in the homes of fashionable New Yorkers,—with whom he was on perfectly amiable terms,—the life in Wall Street. Some of them wanted to know all about Old Trinity, others were interested in the literary atmosphere of Gotham, while others preferred to 207 hear about the fashions. But the great majority hungered for the details of convivial escapades—and he saw to it that they were amply satisfied. Especially were they interested in stories concerning the genus “broiler.” Oh, he was really a devil of a fellow.