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diff --git a/old/30483.txt b/old/30483.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b8eaaf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30483.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7682 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Outside Inn, by Ethel M. Kelley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Outside Inn + +Author: Ethel M. Kelley + +Illustrator: W. B. King + +Release Date: November 16, 2009 [EBook #30483] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTSIDE INN *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +OUTSIDE INN + + + + +[Illustration: "If--if you've made a woman really care"] + + + + +OUTSIDE INN + +By + +ETHEL M. KELLEY + +Author of + +Over Here, Turn About Eleanor, Etc. + +With Frontispiece by + +W. B. KING + +INDIANAPOLIS + +THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY + +PUBLISHERS + + + + +Copyright 1920 + +The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +Printed in the United States of America + +PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. + +BOOK MANUFACTURERS + +BROOKLYN, N. Y. + + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER PAGE + I A GOOD LITTLE DREAM 1 + II APPLICANTS FOR BLUE CHAMBRAY 19 + III INAUGURATION 33 + IV CINDERELLA 49 + V SCIENCE 69 + VI AN ELEEMOSYNARY INSTITUTION 84 + VII CAVE-MAN STUFF 93 + VIII SCIENCE APPLIED 113 + IX SHEILA 134 + X THE PORTRAIT 151 + XI BILLY AND CAROLINE 166 + XII MORE CAVE-MAN STUFF 180 + XIII THE HAPPIEST DAY 198 + XIV BETTY 209 + XV CLOUDS OF GLORY 220 + XVI CHRISTMAS SHOPPING 236 + XVII GOOD-BY 248 + XVIII TAME SKELETONS 259 + XIX OTHER PEOPLE'S TROUBLES 271 + XX HITTY 288 + XXI LOHENGRIN AND WHITE SATIN 299 + + + + +OUTSIDE INN + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A GOOD LITTLE DREAM + + +"I Elijah Peebles Martin, of the city and county of Harrison, in the +state of Rhode Island, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, +do make and declare the following, as and for, my last will and +testament.' ... I wish you'd take your head out of that barrel, Nancy, +and listen to the document that is going to make you rich beyond the +dreams of avarice." + +"I was beyond them anyway." The young woman in blue serge made one +last effectual dive into the depths of excelsior, the topmost billows +of which were surging untidily over the edge of a big crate in the +middle of the basement floor, and secured a nest of blue and rose +colored teacups, which she proceeded to unwrap lovingly and display on +a convenient packing box. "Not one single thing broken in this whole +lot, Billy.... What is a disposing mind and memory, anyhow?" + +"You don't deserve to know," the blond young man in the Norfolk jacket +assured her, adjusting himself more firmly to the idiosyncrasies of +the rackety step-ladder he was striding. "You're not human about this. +Here you are suddenly in possession of a fortune. Money enough to make +you independently wealthy for the rest of your life--money you didn't +know the existence of, two weeks ago--fed to you by a gratuitous +providence. A legacy is a legacy, and deserves to be treated as such, +and I propose to see that it gets what it deserves, without any more +shilly-shallying." + +"I'm a busy woman," Nancy groaned, "and I've hammered my finger to a +pulp, trying to open this crate, while you perch on a broken +step-ladder and prate to me of legacies. The saucers to these cups may +be in here, and I can't wait to find out. I'm perfectly crazy about +this ware. It's English--Wedgewood, you know." + +"I didn't know." Billy resignedly let himself to the floor, and +appropriated the screwdriver. "I thought Wedgewood was dove color, and +consisted chiefly of ladies in deshabille, doing the tango on a parlor +ornament. I smashed one in my youth, so I know. There, it's open now. +I may as well unpack what's here. These seem to be demi-tasses. + + 'You may tempt your upper classes, + With your villainous demi-tasses. + But Heaven will protect the working girl,'" + +he finished lugubriously, in a wailing baritone, taking an imaginary +encore by bowing a head picturesquely adorned with a crop of excelsior +curls, accumulated during his activities in and about the barrel. + +"The trouble with the average tea-room, or Arts and Crafts table +d'hote," Nancy said, sinking into the depths of a broken armchair in +the corner of the dim, overcrowded interior, "is that when the pinch +comes, quantity is sacrificed to quality. Smaller portions of food, +and chipped chinaware. People who can't keep a place up, let it run +down genteelly. They won't compromise on quality. I should never be +like that. I should go to the ten-cent stores and replenish my whole +establishment, if I couldn't make it pay with imported ware and +Colonial silver. I'd never go to the other extreme. I'd never be so +perceptibly second-rate, but in the matter of furnishings as well as +food values, I'd find my perfect balance between quality and quantity, +and keep it." + +"I believe you would. You are a thorough child, when you set about a +thing. I'll bet you know the restaurant business from A to Z." + +"I do. You know, I studied the organization of every well-run +restaurant in New York, when I was doing field work from Teachers' +College. I've read every book on the subject of Diet and Nutrition and +Domestic Economy that I could get my hands on. I'm just ready now for +the practical application of all my theories." + +"Nancy Calory Martin is your real name. I don't blame you for +hating to give up this tea-room idea. You've dug so deep into the +possibilities of it, that you want to go through. I get that." + +Nancy's eyes widened in satiric admiration. + +"You could understand almost anything, couldn't you, Billy?" she +mocked. + +"All I want now," Billy continued imperturbably, "is a chance to make +_you_ understand something." He smote the document in his left hand. +"Of course, your uncle's lawyer has explained all the details in his +letters to you, but if you won't read the letters or familiarize +yourself with the contents of this will, somebody has got to explain +it to you in words of one syllable. My legal training, slight as it +is--" + +"Sketchy is the better word, don't you think so, Billy?" + +"Slight as it is"--except for a prodigious frown, Billy ignored the +interruption, though he took advantage of her suddenly upright +position to encircle her neatly with a barrel hoop, as if she were the +iron peg in a game of quoits--"enables me to put the fact before you +in a few short, sharp, well-chosen sentences. I won't again attempt to +read the document--" + +"You'd better not," Nancy interrupted witheringly, "your delivery is +poor. Besides, I don't want to know what is in that will. If I had, it +stands to reason that I would have found out long before this. I've +had it three days." + +"You've had it three days and never once looked into it?" Billy +groaned. "Who started all this scandal about the curiosity of women, +anyway?" + +"I don't want to know what's in it," Nancy insisted. "As long as I'm +not in possession of any definite facts, I can ignore it. I've got the +kind of mind that must deal with concrete facts concretely." + +Billy grinned. "I'd hate the job of trying to subpoena you," he said, +"but you'd make a corking good witness, on the stand. Of course, you +can proceed for a certain length of time on the theory that what you +don't know can't hurt you, but take it from me, little girl, what you +ought to know and don't know is the thing that's bound to hurt you +most tremendously in the long run. What are you afraid of, anyway, +Nancy?" + +"I'm not _afraid_ of anything," Nancy corrected him, with some heat. +"I just plain don't want to be interrupted at this stage of my career. +I consider it an impertinence of Uncle Elijah, to make me his heir. I +never saw him but once, and I had no desire to see him that time. It +was about ten years ago, and I caught a grippe germ from him. He told +me between sneezes that I was too big a girl to wear a mess of hair +streaming down my back like a baby. I stuck out my tongue at him, but +he was too near-sighted to see it. Why couldn't he have left his money +to an eye and ear infirmary? Or the Sailors' Snug Retreat? Or--or--" + +"If you really don't want the money," Billy said, "it's your privilege +to endow some institution--" + +"You know very well that I can't get rid of money that way," Nancy +cried hotly. "I am at least a responsible person. I don't believe in +these promiscuous, eleemosynary institutions. It would be against +all my principles to contribute money to any such philanthropy. I know +too much about them--but he didn't. He could have disposed of his +money to any one of a dozen of these mid-Victorian charities, but +no--he was just one of those old parties that want to shift their +responsibilities on to young shoulders, and so he chose mine." + +"You don't speak very kindly of your dear dead relative." + +"I don't feel very kindly toward him. He was a meddling old creature. +He never gave any member of the family a cent when they wanted it and +needed it. Now that I've just got my life in shape, and know what I +want to do with it without being beholden to anybody on earth, he +leaves me a whole lot of superfluous money." + +"If I weren't engaged to Caroline, who is a jealous woman, though I +say it as shouldn't, I'd be tempted to undertake the management of +your fortune myself," Billy said reflectively; "as it is--honor--" + +"I know what I want to do with my life," Nancy continued, as if he had +not spoken. "I want to run an efficiency tea-room and serve dinner and +breakfast and tea to my fellow men and women. I want the perfectly +balanced ration, perfectly served, to be my contribution to the cause +of humanity." + +She looked about her ruefully. The sun, through the barred dusty +windows, struck in long slant rays, athwart the confusion of the +cellar, illuminating piles upon piles of gay, blue latticed +chinaware,--cups set out methodically in rows on the lids and bottoms +of packing boxes; assorted sizes of plates and saucers, graded +pyramidically, rising from the floor. There were also individual +copper casseroles and serving dishes, and a heterogeneous assortment +of Japanese basketry tangled in excelsior and tissue. A wandering +sunbeam took her hair, displaying its amber, translucent quality. + +"I've just got capital enough to get it going right; to swing it for +the first year, even if I don't make a cent on it. It's my one big +chance to do my share in the world, and to work out my own salvation. +This legacy is a menace to all my dreams and plans." + +"I see that," Billy said. "What I don't see is what you gain by +refusing to let it catch up with you." + +"You're not it till you're tagged. That's all. If I don't know whether +my income is going to be five thousand dollars or twenty-five thousand +a year, I can go on unpacking teacups with--" + +Billy whistled. + +"Five thousand or twenty-five--my darling Nancy! You'll have fifty +thousand a year at the very lowest estimate. The actual money is more +than five hundred thousand dollars. The stock in the Union Rubber +Company will amount to as much again, maybe twice as much. You're a +real heiress, my dear, with wads of real money to show for it. That's +what I'm trying to tell you." + +"Fifty thousand a year!" Nancy turned a shocked face, from which the +color slowly drained, leaving it blue-white. "Fifty thousand a year! +You're mad. It can't be!" + +"Yes'um. Fifty thousand at least." + +Nancy's pallor increased. She closed her eyes. + +"Don't do that," Billy said sharply. "No woman can faint on me just +because she's had money left her. You make me feel like the ghost of +Hamlet's father." + +Nancy clutched at his sleeve. + +"Don't, Billy!" she besought. "I'm past joking now. Fifty thousand a +year! Why, Uncle Elijah bought fifteen-dollar suits and fifteen-cent +lunches. How could a retired sea captain get all that money by +investing in a little rubber, and getting to be president of a little +rubber company?" + +"That's how. Be a good sensible girl, and face the music." + +"I'll have to give up the tea-room." + +Billy laid a consolatory arm over her shoulder, and patted her +awkwardly. + +"Cheer up," he said, "there's worse things in this world than money. +The time may come when you'll be grateful to your poor little old +uncle, for his nifty little fifty thousand per annum." + +Nancy turned a tragic face to him. + +"I tell you I'm not grateful to him," she said, "and I doubt if I ever +will be. I don't want the stupid money. I want to work life out in my +own way. I know I've got it in me, and I want my chance to prove it. I +want to give myself, my own brain and strength, to the job I've +selected as mine. Now, it's all spoiled for me. I'm subsidized. I'm +done for, and I can't see any way out of it." + +"You can give the money away." + +"I can't. Giving money away is a special science of itself. If I +devote my life to doing that as it should be done, I won't have time +or energy for anything else. I'm not a philanthropist in that sense. I +wanted my restaurant to be philanthropic only incidentally. I wanted +to cram my patrons with the full value of their money's worth of good +nourishing food; to increase the efficiency of hundreds of people who +never suspected I was doing it, by scientific methods of feeding. +That's my dream." + +"A good little dream, all right." + +"To make people eat the right food; to help them to a fuller and more +effective use of themselves by supplying them with the proper fuel for +their functions." + +"You could buy a chain of restaurants with the money you've got." + +"I don't want a chain of restaurants." + +"You can endow a perpetual diet squad. You can buy out the whole Life +Extension Institute. If you would only stop to think of the advantages +of having all the money you wanted to spend on anything you wanted, +you'd--" + +"Billy," Nancy said solemnly, "I've been through all that. If I had +thought I would have been a better person with a great deal of money +at my disposal, I--I might have--" + +"Married Dick," Billy finished for her. "I forgot that interesting +possibility. I suppose to a girl who has just turned down a cold five +millions, this meager little proposition"--he flourished the crumpled +document in his hand--"has no real allure. Lord! What a world this is. +You'll marry Dick yet. Them as has--_gits_. It never rains but it +pours. To the victor belong the spoils, _et cetera, et cetera_--" + +"Money simply does not interest me." + +"Dick interests you. I don't know to what extent, but he interests +you." + +"Don't be sentimental, Billy. Just because you're in love with +Caroline, you can't make all your other friends marry each other. Tell +me what to do about this legacy. What is customary when you get a lump +of money like that? I suppose I'll have to begin to get rid of all +_this_ immediately." There was more than a hint of tears in her voice, +but she smiled at Billy bravely. "I'm so perfectly crazy about +these--these cups and saucers, Billy. See the lovely way that rose is +split to fit into the design. Oh, when do I come into possession, +anyway?" + +"You don't come into possession right away, you know. You don't +inherit for a couple of years, under the Rhode Island law. The +formalities will take--" + +"Billy Boynton, do you mean to say that I won't have to do a blessed +thing about this money for two years?" Nancy shrieked. + +"Why, no. It takes a certain amount of red tape to settle an estate, +to probate a will, etc., and the law allows a period of time, varying +in different states--" + +"Oho! Is there anything in all this universe so stupid as a man?" +Nancy interrupted fervently. "Why didn't you tell me that before? Do +you suppose I care how much money I have two years from now? Two years +of freedom, why, that's all I want, Billy. There you've been sitting +up winking and blinking at me like a sympathetic old owl, when all I +needed to know was that I had two years of grace. Of course, I'll go +on with my tea-room, and not a soul shall know the difference." + +"While the feminine temperament has my hearty admiration and my most +cordial endorsement," Billy murmured, "there are things about it--" + +"I won't have to tell anybody, will I?" + +"There's no law to that effect. If your friends don't know it from +you, they're not likely to hear it." + +"I haven't mentioned it," Nancy said. "I only told you, because it +seemed rather in your line of work, and I was getting so much mail +about it, I thought it would be wise to have some one look it over." + +"I've given up my law practice and Caroline for three days in your +service." + +"You've done more than well, Billy, and I'm grateful to you. Of +course, you would have saved me days of nervous wear and tear if it +had only occurred to you to tell me the one simple little thing that +was the essential point of the whole matter. If I had known that I +didn't inherit for two years, I wouldn't have cared _what_ was in that +will." + +Billy stared at her feelingly. + +"A peculiar sensation always comes over me," he said musingly, "after +I spend several hours uninterruptedly in the society of a woman who is +using her mind in any way. I couldn't explain it to you exactly. It's +a kind of impression that my own brain has begun to disintegrate, and +to--" + +"Don't be too hard on yourself, Billy." Nancy soothed him sweetly,--Billy +was not one of the people to whom she habitually allowed full +conversational leeway: "Swear you won't tell Caroline or Betty--or Dick." + +"I swear." + +Nancy held out her hand to him. + +"You're a good boy," she said, "and I appreciate you, which is more +than Caroline does, I'm afraid. Run along and see her now--I don't +need you any more, and you're probably dying to." + +Billy bowed over her hand, lingeringly and politely, but once +releasing it, he shook his big frame, and straightening up, drew a +long deep breath of something very like relief. + +"With all deference to your delightful sex," he said, "the only +society that I'm dying for at the present moment is that of the old +family bar-keep." + +As Billy left her, Nancy turned to her basement window, and stood +looking out at the quaint stone court he had to cross in order to +reach the high gate that guarded the entrance to the marble worker's +establishment, under the shadow of which it was her intention to open +her out-of-door tea-room. She watched him dreamily is he made his way +among the cinerary urns, the busts and statues and bas-reliefs that +were a part of the stock in trade of her incongruous business +associate. + +In her investigation of the various sorts and conditions of +restaurants in New York, she characteristically hit upon the garden +restaurant, a commonplace in the down-town table d'hote district, as +the ideal setting for her adventure in practical philanthropy, while +the ubiquitous tea-room and antique-shop combination gave her the +inspiration to stage her own undertaking even more spectacularly. Her +enterprise was destined to flourish picturesquely in the open court +during the fair months of the year, and in the winter months, or in +the event of a bad storm, to be housed under the eaves in the rambling +garret of the old brick building, the lower floor of which was given +over to traffic in marbles. + +She sighed happily. Billy, extricating himself from the grasp of an +outstretched marble hand, which bad seemed to clutch desperately at +his elbow, and narrowly escaping a plunge into a too convenient bird's +bath, turned to see her eyes following him, and waved gaily, but she +scarcely realized that he had done so. It was rather with the eye of +her mind that she was contemplating the dark, quadrangular area +outstretched before her. In spirit she was moving to and fro among the +statuary, bringing a housewifely order out of the chaos that +prevailed,--placing stone ladies draped in stone or otherwise; +cherubic babies, destined to perpetual cold water bathing; strange +mortuary furniture, in the juxtaposition that would make the most +effective background for her enterprise. + +She saw the gritty, gray paving stones of the court cleared of their +litter, and scoured free from discoloration and grime, set with dozens +of little tables immaculate in snowy napery and shiny silver, and +arranged with careful irregularity at the most alluring angle. She saw +a staff of Hebe-like waitresses in blue chambray and pink ribbons, to +match the chinaware, and all bearing a marked resemblance to herself +in her last flattering photograph, moving among a crowd of well +brought up but palpably impoverished young people,--mostly social +workers and artists. They were _all_ young, and most of them very +beautiful. In all her twenty-five years, she had never before been so +close to a vision realized, as she was at that moment. + +"Outside Inn," she said to herself, still smiling. "It's a perfect +name for it, really. Outside Inn!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +APPLICANTS FOR BLUE CHAMBRAY + + +Ann Martin was an orphan of New England extraction. Her father, the +eldest child of a simple unpretentious country family in Western +Massachusetts, had been a brilliant but erratic throw-back to +Mayflower traditions and Puritan intellectualism. He had married a +girl with much the same ancestry as his own, but herself born and +brought up in New York, and of a generation to which the assumption of +prerogative was a natural rather than an acquired characteristic. The +possession of a comfortable degree of fortune and culture was a matter +of course with Ann Winslow, while to poor David Martin education in +the finer things of life, and the opportunity to indulge his taste in +the choice of surroundings and associates, were hard-won privileges. + +Both parents had been killed in a railroad accident when Ann, or Nancy +as her mother had insisted on calling her from the day of her +christening, was about seven years old. She had been placed in the +care of a maternal aunt, and had flourished in the heart of a well +ordered establishment of the mid-Victorian type, run by a vigorous, +rather worldly old lady. + +From her lovely mother--Ann Winslow had been more than a merely +attractive or pretty woman; she had the real grace and distinction, +and purity of profile that placed her in the actual category of +beauty,--Nancy had inherited a healthy and equitable outlook on life, +while her father, irresistible and impracticable being that he was, +had endowed her with a certain eccentric and adventurous spirit in the +investigation of it. + +She had been educated in a boarding-school, forty minutes' run from +New York, and had specialized in the domestic sciences and basket +ball; and on attaining her majority had taken up a course or two at +Columbia, rather more to put off the evil day of assuming the +responsibility of the stuffy, stately old house in Washington Square +than because she ever expected to make any use of her superfluous +education. She was conceded by every one to be her aunt's heir, but +old Miss Winslow died intestate, very suddenly in Nancy's twenty-third +year; and the beneficiaries of this accident, most of them extremely +well-to-do themselves, combined to make Nancy a regular allowance +until she was twenty-five. On her twenty-fifth birthday fifteen +thousand dollars was deposited to her account in the Trust Company +which conserved the family fortunes of the Winslows, and Nancy +understood that they considered their duty by her to be done. It was +with this fifteen thousand dollars that she was to inaugurate her +darling enterprise,--Outside Inn. + +Money, as she had truthfully told Billy, meant nothing to her. Her +aunt, living and giving generously, had furnished her with a +background of comfortable, unostentatious well being, against which +the rather vivid elements that went to make up her intimate social +circle--she was a creature of intimates--stood out in alluring relief. +She had literally never wanted for anything. Her tastes, to be sure, +were modest, but the wherewithal to gratify them had always been +almost stultifyingly near at hand. The excitement and adventure of an +income to which there was attached some uncertainty had never been +hers, and she was too much her father's daughter to be interested in +the playing of any game in which she could not lose. With all she +possessed staked against her untried business acumen she was for the +first time in her life concerned with her financial situation, and +quite honestly resentful of any interruption of her experiment. Her +life was closely associated with her mother's family. Her father's +people had at no time entered into her scheme of living,--her uncle +Elijah less than any member of it, and she found his post-obit +intervention in her affairs embarrassing in a dozen different +connections. + +The best friend she had in the world, before he had made the tactical +error of asking her to marry him, was Richard Thorndyke. He was still, +thanks to his immediate skill in trying to retrieve that error, a very +good friend indeed. Nancy would normally have told him everything that +happened to her in the exact order of its occurrence; but partly +because she did not wish to exaggerate her eccentricity in eyes that +looked upon her so kindly, and partly because she had the instinct to +spare him the realization that there was no way in which he might come +to her rescue in the event of disaster,--she did not inform him of her +legacy. She knew that he was shrewdly calculating to stand behind her +venture, morally and practically, and that the chief incentive of his +encouragement and helpfulness was the hidden hope that through her +experiment and its probable unfortunate termination she would learn to +depend on _him_. Nancy was so sure of herself that this attitude of +Dick's roused her tenderness instead of her ire. + +The two girls who were closest to her, Caroline Eustace and Betty +Pope, had been actively enlisted in the service of Outside Inn and the +ideals that it represented. Betty, a dimpling, dynamic little being, +who took a sporting interest in any project that interested her, +irrespective of its merits, was to be associated with Nancy in the +actual management of the restaurant. Caroline, who took herself more +seriously, and was busy with a dozen enterprises that had to do with +the welfare of the race, was concerned chiefly with the humanitarian +side of the undertaking and willing to deflect to it only such energy +as she felt to be essential to its scientific betterment. She was +tentatively engaged to Billy Boynton,--for what reason no one--not +even Billy--had been able to determine; since she systematically +disregarded him in relation to all the interests and activities that +went to make up her life. + +The affairs of the Inn progressed rapidly. It was in the first week of +May that Nancy and Billy had their memorable discussion of her +situation. By the latter part of June, when she could be reasonably +sure of a succession of propitious days and nights, for she had set +her heart on balmy weather conditions, Nancy expected to have her +formal opening,--a dinner which not only initiated her establishment, +but submitted it to the approval of her own group of intimate friends, +who were to be her guests on that occasion. + +Meantime, the most extensive and discriminating preparations were +going forward. Billy and Dick were present one afternoon by special +request when Betty and Nancy were interviewing a contingent of +waitresses. + +"We've got three perfectly charming girls already," Nancy said, "that +is, girls that look perfectly charming to me, but a man's point of +view on a woman's looks is so different that I thought it would be a +good plan to have you boys look over this lot. They are all very +high-class and competent girls. The Manning Agency doesn't send any +other kind." + +"Trot 'em along," Billy said; "where are they anyway?" + +"In the room in front." They were in the smallest of the nest of attic +rooms that Nancy planned to make her winter quarters. "Michael +receives them, and shows them in here one by one." + +"You like Michael then?" Dick asked. "I always said his talents were +hidden at our place. He has a soul above the job of handy man on a +Long Island farm." + +"He's certainly a handy man here," Nancy said; "I couldn't live +without him." + +"The lucky dog," Billy said, with a side glance at Dick. + +"You see," Betty explained, "the girl comes in, and we ask her +questions. Then if I don't like her I take my pencil from behind my +ear, and rap against my palm with it. If Nancy doesn't like her she +says, 'You're losing a hairpin, Betty.' If we like her we rub our +hands together." + +"It's a good system," Billy said, "but I don't see why Nancy doesn't +take her pencil from behind her ear, or why you don't say to her--" + +"I wouldn't put a pencil behind my ear," Nancy said scathingly. + +"And she never loses a hairpin," Betty cut in. "If I approve this +system of signals I don't see what you have to complain of. Nancy +couldn't get a pencil behind her ear even if she wanted to. It's only +a criminal ear like mine that accommodates a pencil." + +"Speaking of ears," Dick said, looking at his watch, "let's get on +with the beauty show. I have to take my mother to see _Boris_ +to-night, and she has an odd notion of being on time." + +"Aw right," Betty said. "Here's Michael. Bring in the first one +immediately, Michael." + +"Sure an' I will that, Miss Pope." The old family servitor of the +Thorndykes pulled a deliberate lid over a twinkling left eye by way of +acknowledging the presence of his young master. "There's quite a +display of thim this time." + +The first applicant, guided thus by Michael, appeared on the +threshold and stood for a moment framed in the low doorway. Seeing +two gentlemen present she carefully arranged her expression to meet +that contingency. She was a blonde girl with masses of doubtfully +tinted hair and no chin, but her eyes were very blue and matched a +chain of turquoise beads about her throat, and she radiated a peculiar +vitality. + +Betty took her pencil from behind her ear. + +"You're losing a hair--" Nancy began, but Dick and Billy exchanged +glances and began rubbing their hands together energetically and +enthusiastically. + +"I'm sorry," Nancy said crisply, "but you're a little too tall for our +purpose." + +"And too blonde," Betty added with a bland dismissing smile. "We're +looking for a special type of girl." + +"I understood you were looking for a waitress," the girl said pertly, +with her eyes on Billy. + +"I was," Billy answered, "but I'm not now. My--my wife won't let me." +He waved an inclusive hand in the direction of Nancy and Betty. + +"If you don't behave," Nancy said, while they waited for Michael to +bring in the next girl, "you can't stay. If that is the kind of girl +you men find attractive then my restaurant is doomed from the +beginning. I wouldn't have that girl in my employ for--" + +Before she could begin again, applicant number two stood before +them,--a comfortable, kind-eyed girl, no longer very young but with +efficiency written all over her, despite the shyness that beset her. + +Nancy rubbed her hands with satisfaction and looked at Betty, who +beamed back at her. The girl, encouraged by Nancy's kindly smile took +a step forward, and began to recite her qualifications for the +position. Dick fumbled with a fountain-pen which he placed elaborately +behind his ear for an instant, and then as ostentatiously removed. + +"I think you're losing a hairpin, Dick," Billy suggested solicitously, +as Nancy, ignoring their existence entirely, proceeded to make terms +with the newcomer. + +The next girl created a diversion--being palpably an adventuress out +of a job and impressing none of the quartette as being interesting +enough to deserve one,--but the two girls who followed her were bright +and sprightly creatures, disarmingly graceful and ingenuous, of whom +the entire quartette approved. They were twin sisters, they said, +Dolly and Molly, and they had always had places together ever since +they had begun working out. + +"Tell me, pretty maiden, _are_ there any more at home _like_--" Billy +was addressing Molly gravely when Dick slipped a friendly but firm +hand over his jugular region, and cut off his utterance. + +"He's not feeling quite himself," he explained suavely to Dolly, +"but we'll bring him around soon.--I think you'll find Miss Martin +an ideal person to work for, and the salary and the hours unusually +satisfactory." + +"Thank you, sir," said Molly and Dolly together, in the English manner +which showed the excellence of their training. + +There were several other dubby creatures so much out of the picture +that they were not even considered, and then Michael brought in what +he called "a grand girl," and left her standing statuesquely in their +midst. + +"With large lovely arms and a neck like a tower," Dick quoted in his +throat. + +Nancy engaged her without enthusiasm. + +"She'll draw," she said briefly. "Personally, I dislike these Alma +Tadema girls." + +"What the men see," Betty said, curling around the better part of two +straight dining chairs, in the moment of relaxation that followed the +final disposition of the business of the day, "in a girl like that +first one is one of the mysteries of existence." + +"I know it," Nancy agreed, with New England colloquialism. "You feel +reasonably allied to them as a sex, and then suddenly they show some +vulgar preference for a woman like that, and it's all off." + +"This from the woman who thinks my chauffeur is an ideal of manly +beauty," Dick scoffed, "a dimpled man with a little finger ring." + +"He can run a car, though," Nancy retorted. + +"I'll bet little blue eyes could run a restaurant." + +"That was just the trouble,--she would have been running mine in +twenty-four hours. Oh! I think what you men really like is a bossy +woman." + +"Now, what a woman really likes in a man--" Betty began, "is--is--" + +"Quality," Nancy finished for her succinctly. + +"I wonder--" Dick mused. "I should have said finish." + +"Almost any kind of finish so long as it is smooth enough," Billy +supplemented. "Look at the way they eat up this artistic and poetic +veneer." + +"Look at the way they mangle their metaphors," Nancy complained to +Betty. + + * * * * * + +"I know what I really like in a woman," Dick whispered to Nancy, as he +helped her into her coat just before they started out together, "and +you know what I like, too. That's one of the subjects that needs no +discussion between us." + +Betty and Billy walking up the avenue ahead of them,--Outside Inn was +located in one of the cross-streets in the thirties,--were discussing +their relation to one another. + +"I wonder sometimes if Nancy's got it in her really to care for a +man," Betty argued; "she's as fond as she can be of Dick, but she'd +sacrifice him heart, soul and body for that restaurant of hers. She's +a perfect darling, I don't mean that; she's the very essence of +sweetness and kindness, but she doesn't seem to understand or +appreciate the possibilities of a devotion like Dick's. Do you think +she's really capable of loving anybody--of putting any man in the +world before all her ideas and notions and experiments?" + +"Lord, yes," said Billy, accelerating his pace, suggestively in the +hope of getting Betty home in good time for him to dress to keep his +engagement with Caroline. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +INAUGURATION + + +Nancy's heart was beating heavily when she woke on the memorable +morning of the day that was to inaugurate the activities of Outside +Inn. A confused dream of her Uncle Elijah in tatters on a park bench, +which was instantly metamorphosed into one of the rustic seats she had +arranged against the wall along the side of some of the bigger tables +in the marble worker's court, was ostensibly the cause of the +disturbance in her cardiac region. She had, it seemed, in the +interminable tangle of nightmare, given Molly and Dolly and the Alma +Tadema girl instructions to throw out the unwelcome guest, and she was +standing by with Michael, who was assuring her that the big blonde was +"certain a grand bouncer," when she was smitten with a sickening +dream-panic at her own ingratitude. "He has given me everything he had +in the world, poor old man," she said to herself, and approached him +remorsefully; but when she looked at him again she saw that he had the +face and figure of a young stranger, and that the garments that had +seemed to her to be streaming and unsightly rags, were merely the +picturesque habiliments of a young artist, apparently newly translated +from the Boulevard Montparnasse. At the sight of the stranger a +heart-sinking terror seemed to take possession of her, and so, quaking +and quavering in mortal intimidation,--she woke up. + +She laughed at herself as she brushed the sleep out of her eyes, and +drew the gradual long breaths that soothed the physical agitation that +still beset her. + +"I'm scared," she said, "I'm as excited and nervous as a youngster on +circus day.--Oh! I'm glad the sun shines." + +Nancy lived in a little apartment of her own in that hinterland of +what is now down-town New York, between the Rialto and its more +conventional prototype, Society,--that is, she lived east of Broadway +on a cross-street in the forties. The maid who took care of her had +been in her aunt's employ for years, and had seen Nancy grow from her +rather spoiled babyhood to a hoydenish childhood, and so on to +soft-eyed, vibrant maturity. She was the only person who tyrannized +over Nancy. She brought her a cup of steaming hot water with a pinch +of soda in it, now. + +"You were moaning and groaning in your sleep," she said, in the +strident accents of her New England birthplace, "so you'll have to +drink this before I give you a living thing for your breakfast." + +"I will, Hitty," Nancy said, "and thank you kindly. Now I know you've +been making pop-overs, and are afraid they will disagree with me. I'm +glad--for I need the moral effect of them." + +"I dunno whether pop-overs is so moral, or so immoral if it comes to +that. I notice it's always the folks that ain't had much to do with +morals one way or the other that's so almighty glib about them." + +"There's a good deal in what you say, Hitty. If I had time I would go +into the matter with you, but this is my busy day." Nancy sat up in +bed, and began sipping her hot water obediently. She looked very +childlike in her straight cut, embroidered night-gown, with a long +chestnut pig-tail over either shoulder. "I feel as if I were going to +be married, or--or something. I'm so excited." + +"I guess you'd be a good sight more excited if you was going to be +married"--Hitty was a widow of twenty-five years' standing--"and +according to my way of thinking 'twould be a good deal more suitable," +she added darkly. "I don't take much stock in this hotel business. In +my day there warn't no such newfangled foolishness for a girl to take +up with instead o' getting married and settled down. When I was your +age I was working on my second set o' baby clothes." + +"Don't scold, Hitty," Nancy coaxed. "I could make perfectly good baby +clothes if I needed to. Don't you think I'll be of more use in the +world serving nourishing food to hordes of hungry men and women than +making baby clothes for one hypothetical baby?" + +"I dunno about the hypothetical part," Hitty said, folding back the +counterpane, inexorably. "What I do know is that a girl that's getting +to be an old girl--like you--past twenty-five--ought to be bestirring +herself to look for a life pardner if she don't see any hanging around +that suits her, instead of opening up a hotel for a passel of perfect +strangers. If ever I saw a woman spoiling for something of her own to +fuss over--" + +"If ever there was a woman who _had_ something of her own to fuss +over," Nancy cried ecstatically, "I'm that woman to-day, Hitty. You're +a professional Puritan, and you don't understand the broader aspects +of the maternal instinct." She sprang out of bed, and tucked her bare +pink toes into the fur bordered blue mules that peeped from under the +bed, and slipped into the wadded blue silk bathrobe that lay on the +chair beside her. "Is my bath drawn, Hitty?" + +"Your bath is drawed," Hitty acknowledged sourly, "and your breakfast +will be on the table in half an hour by the clock." + +"I suppose I must require that corrective New England influence," +Nancy said to herself, as she tried the temperature of her bath and +found it frigid, "just as some people need acid in their diet. If my +mother were alive, I wonder what she would have said to me this +morning." + +Nancy spent a long day directing, planning, and arranging for the +great event of the evening, the first dinner served to the public at +Outside Inn. + +From the basement kitchen to the ground-floor serving-room in the +rear, space cunningly coaxed from the reluctant marble worker, the +mechanism of Nancy's equipment was as perfect as lavish expenditure +and scientific management could make it. The kitchen gleamed with +copper and granite ware; huge pots for soup and vegetables, mammoth +double boilers of white enamel,--Nancy was firm in her conviction that +rice and cereal could be cooked in nothing but white enamel,--rows +upon rows of shelves methodically set with containers and casseroles +and odd-shaped metal serving-dishes, as well as the ubiquitous blue +and rose-color chinaware presenting its gay surface from every +available bit of space. + +Presiding over the hooded ranges, two of gas and one coal for toasting +and broiling, there was to be a huge Franco-American man-cook, +discovered in one of the Fifth Avenue pastry shops in the course of +Nancy's indefatigable tours of exploration, who was the son of a +French _chef_ and a Virginian mother, and could express himself in the +culinary art of either his father's or his mother's nativity. His +staff of helpers and dishwashers had been chosen by himself, with what +Nancy considered most felicitous results, while her own galaxy of +waitresses, who operated the service kitchen up-stairs, proved +themselves to a woman almost unbelievably superior and efficient. + +The courtyard itself was a brave spectacle in its final aspect of +background for the detail and paraphernalia of polite dining. The more +unself-conscious of the statues, the nymphs and nereids and Venuses, +she managed either to relegate to the storehouse within, or to add a +few cunningly draped vines to the nonchalance of their effect, while +the gargoyles and Roman columns and some of the least ambitious of the +fountain-models she was able to adapt delightfully to her outrageous +ideal of arrangement. Dick had denuded several smart florist shops to +furnish her with field flowers enough to develop her decorative +scheme, which included strangely the stringing of half a dozen huge +Chinese lanterns that even in the daylight took on a meteoric light +and glow. + +The night was clear and soft, and Fifth Avenue, ingratiatingly swept +and garnished, stretched its wake of summer allure before the never +unappreciative eyes of Billy and Caroline, and Betty and Dick +respectively, who had met at the Waldorf by appointment, and were now +making their way, thus ceremoniously and in company, to the formal +opening dinner of Nancy's Inn. + +Two nondescript Pagan gentlemen of Titanesque proportions had joined +the watch of the conventional leonine twins, and the big gate now +stood hospitably open, over it swinging the new sign in gallant +crimson and white, that announced to all the world that Outside Inn +was even at that moment, at its most punctilious service. + +Molly and Dolly, in the prescribed blue chambray, their cheeks several +shades pinker than their embellishment of pink ribbon, and panting +with ill-suppressed excitement, rushed forward to greet the four and +ushered them solemnly to their places,--the gala table in the center +of the court, set with a profusion of fleur de lis, with pink ribbon +trainers. Thanks to Dick's carefully manipulated advertising campaign +and personal efforts among his friends and business associates, they +were not by any means the first arrivals. Half a dozen laughing groups +were distributed about the round tables in the center space, while +several tete-a-tete couples were confidentially ensconced in corners +and at cozy tables for two, craftily sheltered by some of the most +imposing of the marble figures and columns. + +"It seems like a real restaurant," Caroline said wonderingly. + +"What did you think it would seem like?" Betty asked argumentatively. +"Just because Nancy is the best friend you have in the world, and +you're familiar with her in pig-tails and a dressing-gown doesn't +argue that she is incapable of managing an undertaking like this as +well as if she were a perfect stranger." + +"I don't suppose it does," Caroline mused, "but someway I'd feel +easier about a perfect stranger investing her last cent in such a +venture. I don't see how she can possibly make it pay, and I don't +feel as if I could ever have a comfortable moment again until I knew +whether she could or not.--What are you looking so guilty about, +Billy?" + +"I was regretting your uncomfortable moments, Caroline," Billy said, +"and wishing it were in my power to do away with them, but it isn't. I +was also musing sadly, but quite irrelevantly, on the tangled web we +weave when first we practise to deceive." + +"Are you deceiving Caroline in some way?" Dick inquired. + +"No, he isn't," Caroline answered for him, "though he has full +permission to if he wants." + +"The time may come when he will avail himself of that permission," +Betty said; "you ought to be careful how you tempt Fate, Caroline." + +"She ought to be," Billy groaned, "but the fact is that I am not one +of the things she is superstitious about. Pipe the dame at the corner +table with the lorgnette. Classy, isn't she?" + +"Friend of my aunt's," Dick said, acknowledging the lady's salute. + +"And the Belasco adventuress in the corner." + +"My stenographer," Dick explained, bowing again. + +"I've got a bunch of men coming," Billy said; "if they put the place +on the bum you've got to help me bounce them, Dick." + +"Up-stairs in the service kitchen," Betty was explaining to Caroline, +"they keep all the dishes that don't have to be heated for serving, +also the silver and daily linen supply. When we seat ourselves at a +table like this, the waitress to whom it is assigned goes in and gets +a basket of bread--I think it's a pretty idea to serve the bread in +baskets, don't you?--and whatever silver is necessary, and a bottle of +water. When she places those things she asks us what our choice of a +meat course is,--there is a choice except on chicken night--and gives +that order in the kitchen when she goes to get our soup." + +"Who serves the things,--puts the meat on the plates, and dishes up +the vegetables?" + +"The cook--Nancy won't let me call him the _chef_--because she is +going to make a specialty of the southern element of his education. He +has a serving-table by his range and he cuts up the meat and fowl, and +dishes up the vegetables. In a bigger establishment he would have a +helper to do that." + +"Why can't Michael help him?" Dick asked. + +"Michael calls him the Haythan Shinee. He is rather a _glossy_ man, +you know, and he says when the time comes for him, Michael, to dress +like a street cleaner and pilot a gravy boat, he'll let us know." + +"Respect for his superiors is not one of Michael's most salient +characteristics," Dick twinkled. "Nancy and I have a scheme for making +a match between him and Hitty." + +"Here's the soup," Betty announced. "Nancy's idea is to have +everything perfectly simple, and--and--" + +"Simply perfect," Billy assisted her. + +"Isn't she going to eat with us?" Dick asked. + +"She can't. She's busy getting it going just at present. She may +appear later." + +"Somebody's got to direct this pageant, old top," Billy reminded him. + +"The soup is perfect," Caroline said seriously. "It is simple--with +that deceptive simplicity of a Paris morning frock." + +"French home cooking is all like that," Dick said. "I like puree of +forget-me-nots!" + +"Molly or Dolly, I can't tell the difference between you," Billy said, +"extend our compliments to Miss Martin, and tell her that this course +is a triumph." + +"Wait till you see the roast, sir." + +"It's the very _best_ sirloin," Dick announced at the first mouthful, +"and these assorted vegetables all cut down to the same size are as +pretty as they are good, as one says of virtuous innocence." + +"This variety of asparagus is expensive," Caroline said; "she can't do +things like this at seventy-five cents a head. She'll ruin herself." + +"I don't see how she can," Dick said thoughtfully, "with the price of +foodstuffs soaring sky-high." + +"I never for a moment expected it to pay," Betty said, "but think of +the run she will have for her money, and the experience we'll get out +of it." + +"You're in it for the romance there is in it, Betty. I must confess it +isn't altogether my idea of a good time," Caroline said. + +"I know, you would go in for military training for women, and that +sort of thing. There's a woman over there asking for more olives, and +she's eaten a plate full of them already." + +"They're as big as hen's eggs anyhow," Caroline groaned, "and almost +as extravagant. I don't see how Nancy'll go through the first month at +this rate. There she comes now. Doesn't she look nice in that color of +green?" + +"How do you like my party?" Nancy asked, slipping into the empty chair +between Dick and Billy; "isn't the food good and nourishing, and +aren't there a lot of nice-looking people here?" + +"Very much, and it is, and there are," Dick answered with affectionate +eyes on her. + +"The salad is alligator pear served in half sections, with French +dressing," she said dreamily. "I'm too happy to eat, but I'll have +some with you. Look at them all, don't they look relaxed and soothed +and refreshed? Every individual has a perfectly balanced ration of the +most superlatively good quality, slowly beginning to assimilate within +him." + +"I don't see many respectable working girls," Billy said. + +"There are though,--from the different shops and offices on the +avenue. There is a contingent from the Columbia summer school coming +to-morrow evening. This group coming in now is newspaper people." + +"Who's the fellow sitting over in the corner with that Vie de Boheme +hat? He looks familiar, but I can't seem to place him." + +"The man in black with the mustache?" Dick asked. "He's an artist, +pretty well known. That impressionistic chap--I can't think of his +name--that had that exhibition at the Palsifer galleries." + +"Does he sell?" Caroline asked. + +"No, they say he's awfully poor, refuses to paint down to the public +taste. What the deuce is his name--oh! I know, Collier Pratt--do you +know him, Nancy? Lived in Paris always till the war. He'll appreciate +Ritz cooking at Riggs' prices if anybody will." + +Nancy looked fixedly at the small side-table where the stranger had +just placed himself as if he were etched upon the whiteness of the +wall behind him. He sat erect and brooding,--his dark, rather +melancholy eyes staring straight ahead, and a slight frown wrinkling +his really fine forehead. He wore an Inverness cape slung over one +shoulder. + +"Looks like one of Rembrandt's portraits of himself," Caroline +suggested. + +"He looks like a brigand," Betty said. "Nancy's struck dumb with the +privilege of adding fuel to a flame of genius like that. Wake up and +eat your peach Melba, Nancy." + +Nancy started, and took perfunctorily the spoon that Molly was holding +out to her, which she forgot to lift to her lips even after it was +freighted with its first delicious mouthful. + +"I dreamed about that man," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +CINDERELLA + + +Nancy shut the door of her apartment behind her, and slipped out into +the dimly lit corridor. From her sitting-room came a burst of +concerted laughter, the sound of Betty's sweet, high pitched voice +raised in sudden protest, and then the echo of some sort of a physical +struggle; and Caroline took the piano and began to improvise. + +"They won't miss me," Nancy said to herself, "I must have air." She +drew a long breath with a hand against her breast, apparently to +relieve the pressure there. "I can't stay shut up in a _room_," she +kept repeating as if she were stating the most reasonable of premises, +and turning, fled down the two flights of stairs that led to the +outside door of the building. + +The breath of the night was refreshingly cool upon her hot cheeks, and +she smiled into the darkness gratefully. Across the way a row of +brownstone houses, implacably boarded up for the summer, presented +dull and dimly defined surfaces that reflected nothing, not even the +lights of the street, or the shadow of a passing straggler. Nancy +turned her face toward the avenue. The nostalgia that was her +inheritance from her father, and through him from a long line of +ancestors that followed the sea whither it might lead them, was upon +her this night, although she did not understand it as such. She only +thought vaguely of a strip of white beach with a whiter moon hung high +above it, and the long silver line of the tide,--drawing out. + +"I wish I had a hat on," she said. There was a night light in the +chemist's shop at the corner, and the panel of mirror obligingly +placed for the convenience of the passing crowd, at the left of the +big window, showed her reflection quite plainly. She was suddenly +inspired to take the soft taffeta girdle from the waist of her dark +blue muslin gown, and bind it turban-wise about her head. The effect +was pleasingly modish and conventional, and she quickened her +steps--satisfied. There was a tingle in the air that set her blood +pleasantly in motion, and she established a rhythm of pace that made +her feel almost as if she were walking to music. Insensibly her mind +took up its responsibilities again as the blood, stimulated from its +temporary inactivity, began to course naturally through her veins. + +"There is plenty of beer and ginger ale in the ice-box," she +thought, "and I've done this before, so they won't be unnaturally +disturbed about me. Billy wanted to take Caroline home early, and +Dick can go on up-town with Betty, without making her feel that she +ought to leave him alone with me for a last tete-a-tete. It will hurt +Dick's feelings, but he understands really. He has a most blessed +understandingness, Dick has." + +She had the avenue almost entirely to herself, a silent gleaming +thoroughfare with the gracious emptiness that a much lived in street +sometimes acquires, of a Sunday at the end of an adventurous season. +It was early July, the beginning of the actual summer season in New +York. Nancy had never before been in town so late in the year, nor for +that matter had Caroline or Betty, but Betty's interest in the affairs +of the Inn was keeping her at Nancy's side, while Caroline had just +accepted a secretarial position in one of the big Industrial Leagues +recently organized by women for women, that would keep her in town all +summer. Billy and Dick, by virtue of their respective occupations, +were never away from New York for longer than the customary two weeks' +vacation. + +"My soul smoothed itself out, a long cramped scroll,"--her conscience +placated on the score of her deserted guests, Nancy was quoting +Browning to herself, as she widened the distance between herself and +them. "I wonder why I have this irresistible tendency to shake the +people I love best in the world at intervals. I am such a really +well-balanced and rational individual, I don't understand it in +myself. I thought the Inn was going to take all the nonsense out of +me, but it hasn't, it appears," she sighed; "but then, I think it is +going to take the nonsense out of a lot of people that are only +erratic because they have never been properly fed. I guess I'll go and +have a look at the old place in its Sunday evening calm. Already it +seems queer not to be there at nine o'clock in the evening, but I +don't really think there are people enough in New York now on Sundays +to make it an object." + +Nancy's feet turned mechanically toward the arena of her most serious +activities. Like most of us who run away, she was following by +instinct the logical periphery of her responsibilities. + +The big green latticed gate was closed against all intruders. Nancy +had the key to its padlock in her hand-bag, but she had no intention +of using it. The white and crimson sign flapped in the soft breeze +companionably responsive to the modest announcement, "Marble Workshop, +Reproductions and Antiques, Garden Furniture," which so inadequately +invited those whom it might concern to a view of the petrified +vaudeville within. Through the interstices of the gate the courtyard +looked littered and unalluring;--the wicker tables without their fine +white covers; the chairs pushed back in a heterogeneous assemblage; +the segregated columns of a garden peristyle gaunt against the dark, +gleamed a more ghostly white than the weather-stained busts and +figures less recently added to the collection. It seemed to Nancy +incredible that the place would ever bloom again with lights and +bouquets and eager patrons, with her group of pretty flower-like +waitresses moving deftly among them. She stared at the spot with the +cold eye of the creator whose handiwork is out of the range of his +vision, and the inspiration of it for the moment, gone. + +"I feel like Cinderella and her godmother rolled into one," she +thought disconsolately. "I waved my wand, and made so many things +happen, and now that the clock has struck, again here I am outside in +the cold and dark,"--the wind was taking on a keener edge, and she +shivered slightly in her muslins--"with nothing but a pumpkin shell to +show for it. Hitty says that getting what you want is apt to be +unlikely business, and I'm inclined to think she's right." + +It seemed to her suddenly that the thing she had wanted,--a +picturesque, cleverly executed restaurant where people could be fed +according to the academic ideals of an untried young woman like +herself was an unthinkable thing. The power of illusion failed for the +moment. Just what was it that she had hoped to accomplish with this +fling at executive altruism? What was she doing with a French cook in +white uniform, a competent staff of professional dishwashers and +waitresses and kitchen helpers? How had it come about that she owned +so many mounds and heaps and pyramids of silver and metal and linen? +What was this Inn that she had conceived as a project so unimaginably +fine? Who were these shadow people that came and went there? Who was +she? Why with all her vitality and all her hungry yearning for life +and adventure couldn't she even believe in her own substantiality and +focus? Wasn't life even real enough for a creature such as she to +grasp it,--if it wasn't-- + +She saw a figure that was familiar to her turn in from the avenue, a +tall man in an Inverness with a wide black hat pulled down over his +eyes. For the moment she could not remember who he was, but by the +time he had stopped in front of the big gate, giving utterance to a +well delivered expletive, she knew him perfectly, and stood waiting, +motionless, for him to turn and speak to her. She was sure that he +would have no recollection of her. He turned, but it was some seconds +before he addressed her. + +"Doubt thou the stars are fire," he said at last, with a shrug that +admitted her to the companionship of his discomfiture. "Doubt thou the +sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt that your +favorite New York restaurant will be closed on a Sunday night." + +"Oh! _is_ it your favorite New York restaurant?" Nancy cried, her +heart in her throat. "It's mine, you know, my--my favorite." + +"So I judged, or you wouldn't be beating against the gate so +disconsolately." It was too dark to see his face clearly, but Nancy +realized that he was looking down at her quizzically through the +darkness. + +"Do you really like this restaurant?" she persisted. + +"In some ways I like it very much. The food is quite possible as you +know, very American in character, but very good American, and it has +the advantage of being served out-of-doors. I am a Frenchman by +adoption, and I like the outdoor cafe. In fact, I am never happy +eating inside." + +"The surroundings are picturesque?" Nancy hazarded. + +The stranger laughed. "According to the American ideal," he said, +"they are--but I do admit that they show a rather extraordinary +imagination. I've often thought that I should like to make the +acquaintance of the woman,--of course, it's a woman--who conceived the +notion of this mortuary tea-room." + +"Why, of course, is it a woman?" + +"A man wouldn't set up housekeeping in--in _Pere Lachaise_." + +"Why not, if he found a really domestic-looking corner?" + +"He _wouldn't_ in the first place, it wouldn't occur to him, that's +all, and if he did he couldn't get away with it. The only real +drawback to this hostelry is, as you know, that they don't serve +spirits of any kind. I'm accustomed to a glass or two of wine with my +dinner, and my food sticks in my throat when I can't have it, but I've +found a way around that, now." + +"Oh! have you?" said Nancy. + +"Don't give me away, but there's a man about the place here whose name +is Michael, and he possesses that blend of Gallic facility with Celtic +canniness that makes the Irish so wonderful as a race. I told my +trouble to Michael,--with the result that I get a teapot full of +Chianti with my dinner every night, and no questions asked." + +"Oh! you do?" gasped Nancy. + +"You see Michael is serving the best interests of his employer, who +wants to keep her patrons, because if I couldn't have it I wouldn't be +there. He couldn't trouble the lady about it, naturally, because it is +technically an offense against the law. Come, let's go and find a +quiet corner where we can continue our conversation comfortably. +There's a painfully respectable little hotel around the corner here +that looks like the Cafe L'avenue when you first go in, but is a place +where the most bourgeoise of one's aunts might put up." + +"I--I don't know that I can go," said Nancy. + +"There's no reason why you shouldn't, you know. My name is Collier +Pratt. I'm an artist. The more bourgeoise of my aunts would introduce +me if she were here. She's a New Englander like so many of your own +charming relatives." + +"How did you know that?" Nancy asked, as she followed him with a +docility quite new to her, past the big green gate, and the row of +nondescript shops between it and the corner of Broadway. + +"I was _born_ in Boston," Collier Pratt said a trifle absently. "I +know a Massachusetts product when I see one. Ah! here we are." + +He led her triumphantly to a table in the far corner of the +practically empty restaurant, waved away the civilities of a swarthy +and somewhat badly coordinated waiter, and pulled out her chair for +her himself. + +"Now, let me have a look at you," he said; "why, you've nothing on but +muslin, and you're wearing your belt for a turban." + +"A sop to the conventions," Nancy said, blushing burningly. She was +not quite able yet to get her bearings with this extraordinary man, +who had assumed charge of her so cavalierly, but she was eager to find +her poise in the situation. "I ran away, and I thought it would look +better to have something like a hat on." + +"Looks," said Collier Pratt, "looks! That's New England, always the +looks of a thing, never the feel of it. Mind you I don't mean the +_look_ of a thing, that's something different again." + +"Yes, I know, the conventional slant as opposed to the artistic +perspective." + +"Good! It isn't necessary to have my remarks followed intelligently, +but it always adds piquancy to the situation when they are. Speaking +of artistic perspective, you have a very nice coloring. I like a ruddy +chestnut hair with a skin as delicately white and pink as yours." He +spoke impersonally with the narrowing eye of the artist. "I can see +you either in white,--not quite a cream white, but almost,--against a +pearly kind of Quakerish background, or flaming out in the most crude, +barbaric assemblage of colors. That's the advantage of your type and +the environment you connote--you can be the whole show, or the veriest +little mouse that ever sought the protective coloring of the +shadows." + +"You aren't exactly taking the quickest way of putting me at my ease," +Nancy said. "I'm very much embarrassed, you know. I'd stand being +looked over for a few minutes longer if I could,--but I can't. I'm not +having one of my most equable evenings." + +"I beg your pardon," Collier Pratt said. + +For the first time since she had seen his face with the light upon it, +he smiled, and the smile relieved the rather empiric quality of his +habitual expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy +brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the +nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible for a person +with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that +is popularly supposed to be its adjunct,--decided affirmatively. + +"I'm not used to talking to American girls very much. I forget how +daintily they're accustomed to being handled. I'm extremely anxious to +put you at your ease," he added quietly. "I appreciate the privilege +of your company on what promised to be the dullest of dull evenings. I +should appreciate still more," he bowed, as he handed her a bill of +fare of the journalistic proportions of the usual hotel menu, "if you +would make a choice of refreshment, that we may dispense with the +somewhat pathological presence of our young friend here," he indicated +the waiter afflicted with the jerking and titubation of a badly strung +puppet. "I advise Rhine wine and seltzer. I offer you anything from +green chartreuse to Scotch and soda. Personally I'm going to drink +Perrier water." + +"I'd rather have an ice-cream," Nancy said, "than anything else in the +world,--coffee ice-cream, and a glass of water." + +"I wonder if you would, or if you only think it's--safer. At any rate +I'm going to put my coat over your shoulders while you eat it. I never +leave my rooms at this hour of the night without this cape. If I can +find a place to sit out in I always do, and I'm naturally rather +cold-blooded." + +"I'm not," said Nancy, but she meekly allowed him to drape her in the +folds of the light cape, and found it grateful to her. + +"Bring the lady a big cup of coffee, and mind you have it hot," +Collier Pratt ordered peremptorily, as her ice-cream was served by the +shaking waiter. "Coffee may be the worst thing in the world for you, +nervously. I don't know,--it isn't for me, I rather thrive on it, but +at any rate I'm going to save you from the combination of organdie and +ice-cream on a night like this. What is your name?" he inquired +abruptly. + +"Ann Martin." + +"Not at my service?" + +"I don't know, yet." + +"Well, I don't know,--but I hope and trust so. I like you. You've got +something they don't have--these American girls,--softness and +strength, too. I imagine you've never been out of America." + +"I--I have." + +"With two other girls and a chaperon, doing Europe, and staying at all +the hotels doped up for tourist consumption." + +Nancy was constrained to answer with a smile. + +"You don't like America very much," she said presently. + +"I like it for itself, but I loathe it--for myself. My way of living +here is all wrong. I can't get to bed in this confounded city. I can't +get enough to eat." + +"Oh! can't you?" Nancy cried. + +"In Paris, or any town where there is a cafe life one naturally gets +fed. The technique of living is taken care of much better over there. +Your _concierge_ serves you a nourishing breakfast as a matter of +course. When you've done your morning's work you go to your favorite +cafe--not with the one object in life--to cram a _Chateaubriand_ down +your dry and resisting throat because he who labors must live,--but to +see your friends, to read your daily journals, to write your letters, +and do it incidentally in the open air while some diplomat of a waiter +serves you with food that assuages the palate, without insulting your +mood. That's what I like about the little restaurant in the court +there. It's out-of-doors, and you may stay there without feeling your +table is in requisition for the next man. It's a very polite little +place." + +"You didn't expect to get in there to-night." + +"I had hopes of it. I've not dined, you see." + +"Not dined?" Nancy's eyes widened in dismay. + +"There's no use for me to dine unless I can eat my food tranquilly, in +some accustomed corner. Getting nourished with me is a spiritual, as +well as a physical matter. It is with all sensitive people. Don't you +think so?" + +"I suppose so. I--I hadn't thought of it that way. Couldn't you eat +something now--an oyster stew, or something like that?" + +"Nothing in any way remotely connected with that. An oyster stew is to +me the most barbarous of concoctions. I loathe hot milk,--an oyster is +an adjunct to a fish sauce, or a preface to a good dinner." + +"You ought to have something," Nancy urged, "even ice-cream is more +nourishing than mineral water, or coffee with cream in it." + +"I like coffee after dinner, not before." + +"If you only eat when it's convenient, or the mood takes you," Nancy +cried out in real distress, "how can you ever be sure that you have +calories enough? The requirement of an average man at active labor is +estimated at over three thousand calories. You must have something +like a balanced ration in order to do your work." + +"Must I?" Collier Pratt smiled his rare smile. "Well, at any rate, it +is good to hear you say so." + +She finished her ice-cream, and Collier Pratt drank his mineral water +slowly, and smoked innumerable cigarettes of Virginia tobacco. The +conversation which had proceeded so expeditiously to this point seemed +for no apparent reason, suddenly to become gratuitous. Nancy had never +before begun on the subject of the balanced ration without being +respectfully allowed to go through to the end. She had not been +allowed to feel snubbed, but she was a little bewildered that any +conversation in which she was participating, could be so gracefully +stopped before it was ended by her expressed desire. + +Collier Pratt took his watch out of his pocket, and looked at it +hastily. + +"By jove," he said, "I had entirely forgotten. I have a child in my +charge. I must be about looking after her." + +"A child?" Nancy cried, astonished. + +"Yes, a little girl. She's probably sitting up for me, poor baby. Can +you get home alone, if I put you on a bus or a street-car?" + +"If you'll call a taxi for me--" Nancy said. + +She noticed that the check was paid with change instead of a bill. In +fact, her host seemed not to have a bill of any denomination in his +pocket, but to be undisturbed by the fact. He parted from her +casually. + +"Good-by, child," he said with his head in the door after he had given +the chauffeur her street number; "with the permission of _le bon +Dieu_, we shall see each other again. I feel that He is going to give +it to us." + +"Good-by," Nancy said to his retreating shoulder. + +At her own front door was Dick's big Rolls-Royce, and Dick sitting +inside of it, with his feet comfortably up, feigning sleep. + +"You didn't think I'd go home until I saw you safe inside your own +door, did you?" he demanded. + +"Where's Betty?" Nancy asked mechanically. + +"I sent Williams home with her. Then he came back here, and left the +car with me." + +"You needn't have waited," Nancy said, "I'm sorry, Dick, I--I had to +have air. I had to get out. I couldn't stay inside a minute longer." + +"You need never explain anything to me." + +"Don't you want to know where I've been?" + +Dick looked at her carefully before he made his answer. Then he said +firmly. + +"No, dear." + +"I might have told you," she said, "if you had wanted to know." She +felt her knees sagging with fatigue, and drooped against the +door-frame. + +"Come and sit in the car, and talk to me for a minute," he suggested. +"Do you good, before you climb the stairs." + +He opened the car door for her ingratiatingly, but she shook her +head. + +"I've done unconventional things enough for one evening," she said. +"Unlock the door for me. Hitty'll be waiting up to take care of me." + +"What's that queer thing you're wearing?" he asked her, as he held the +door for her to pass through, "I never remember seeing you wear that +before." + +Nancy looked down wonderingly at the folds of the Inverness still +swinging from her shoulders. She had been subconsciously aware of the +grateful warmth in which she was encased ever since she snuggled +comfortably into the depths of the taxi-cab into which Collier Pratt +had tucked her. + +"No, I never _have_ worn it before," she said, answering Dick's +question. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +SCIENCE + + +The activities of the day at Outside Inn began with luncheon and the +preparation for it. Nancy longed to serve breakfast there, but as yet +it had not seemed practicable to do so. Most of the patrons of the +restaurant conducted the business of the day down-town, but had their +actual living quarters in New York's remoter fastnesses,--Brooklyn, +the Bronx or Harlem. Nancy was satisfied that the bulk of her +patronage should be the commuting and cliff dwelling contingent of +Manhattanites,--indeed it was the sort of patronage that from the +beginning she had intended to cater to. + +Nancy did most of the marketing herself at first, but Gaspard--the big +cook--gradually coaxed this privilege away from her. + +"You see," he said, "we sit--us together, and talk of eating"--he +prided himself on his use of English, and never used his native tongue +to help him out, except in moments of great excitement. "It is +immediately after breakfast. Yes! I am full of milk-coffee sopped with +bread, and you of bacon with eggs and marmalade. We say, what shall we +give to our custom for its dinner and its luncheon? We think sadly--we +who have but now brushed away the crumbs of breakfast--of those who +must sit down so soon to the table groaning with viands. Therefore we +say, 'Market delicately. Have the soup clear, the entree light and the +salad green with plenty of vinegar.' Even your calories--they do not +help us much. They are in quantities so unexpected in the food that +weighs nothing in the scales. We say you shall go to market and buy +these things, and you go. I stir and walk about, and grow restless for +my _dejeuner_, and when you return from market, hungry too, we are not +the same people who had thought our soup should be clear, and our +entree more beautiful than nutritious. If I go to market myself _late_ +I am inspired there to buy what is right, because by that hour I have +a proper relish and understanding of what all the world should eat." + +"I know he is right," Nancy said to Billy afterward in reporting the +conversation, "I hate to admit it, but even my notion of what other +people should eat is colored by my own relation to food. I never +realized before how little use an intellect is in this matter of food +values. I can actually get up a meal that according to the tables is +scientifically correct that wouldn't feed anybody if they were +hungry." + +"One banana is equal to a pound and three-quarters of steak," Billy +misquoted helpfully. + +"The trouble is that it _isn't_," Nancy said, "except technically." + +"You can't eat it and grow thin." + +"You can't eat it and grow _fat_ unless it happens to be the peculiar +food to which you are idiosyncratic." + +"If that's really a word," Billy said, "I'll overlook your trying it +out on me. If it isn't you'll have to take the consequences." He went +through the pantomime of one preparing to do physical violence. + +"Oh! it's a word. Ask Caroline." Nancy's eyes still held their look of +being focussed on something in the remote distance. "The trouble with +all this dietetic problem is that the individual is dependent on +something more than an adjustment of values. His environment and his +heredity play an active part in his diet problem. Some people can eat +highly concentrated food, others have to have bulk, and so on. You +can't substitute cheese and bananas for steak and do the race a +service no matter what the cost of steak may soar to. You can't even +substitute rice for potatoes." + +"Not unless your patronage is more Oriental than Celtic." + +"Healthy people have to have honest fare of about the type to +which their environment has accustomed them, but intelligently +supervised,--that's the conclusion I've come to." + +"You may be right," Billy said, "my general notion has always been +that everybody ate wrong, and that everybody who would stand for it +ought to be started all over again. I wouldn't stand for it, so I've +never looked into the matter." + +"People don't eat wrong, that's the really startling discovery I've +made recently. I mean healthy people don't." + +"I don't believe it," said Billy; "the way people eat is one of the +most outrageous of the human scandals. I read the newspapers." + +"The newspapers don't know," Nancy said; "the individual usually has +an instinctive working knowledge of the diet that is good for him, and +his digestional experiences have taught him how to regulate it to some +extent." + +"How do you account for the clerk that orders coffee and sinkers at +Child's every day?" + +"That's exactly it," Nancy said. "He knows that he needs bulk and +stimulation. He's handicapped by his poverty, but he gets the nearest +substitute for the diet that suits him that he can get. If he could +afford it he would have a square meal that would nourish him as well +as warm and fill him." + +"I don't see but what this interesting theory lets you out altogether. +Why Outside Inn, with its foxy table d'hote, if what's one man's meat +is another man's poison, and natural selection is the order of the +day?" + +"Outside Inn is all the more necessary to the welfare of a nation +that's being starved out by the high cost of living. All I need to do +is to have a little more variety, to have all the nutritive +requirements in each meal, and such generous servings that every +patron can make out a meal satisfying to himself." + +"Everybody knows that all fat people eat all the sweets that they can +get, and all thin people take tea without sugar with lemon in it." + +"These people aren't healthy. That's where the intelligent supervision +comes in." + +"What do you intend to do about them?" + +"Watch over them a little more carefully. Regulate their servings +craftily. Be sure of my tables. I have lots of schemes. I'll tell you +about them sometime." + +"_Sometime_,--for this relief much thanks," murmured Billy; "just now +I've had as much of these matters as I can stand. I don't see how you +are going to run this thing on a profit, though." + +"I'm not," Nancy said, "I'm losing money every minute. That fifteen +thousand dollars is almost gone now, of course. Billy, do you think it +would be perfectly awful if I didn't try to make money at all?" + +"I think it would be a good deal wiser. I'll raise all the money you +want on your expectations." + +"All right then. I'm not going to worry." + +Billy looked down into the courtyard from the room up-stairs in which +they had been talking. Already the preparations for lunch were under +way. The girls were moving deftly about, laying cloths and arranging +flower vases and silver. + +"Can I get right down there and sit down at one of those tables and +have my lunch," Billy inquired, "or do I have to go out of the back +door and come in the front like a regular customer?" + +"Whichever you prefer. There's Caroline coming in at the gate now." + +"Well, then, I know which I prefer," Billy said, swimming realistically +toward the stairs. + +"You are getting fat, Billy," Caroline informed him critically after +the amenities were over, and the meal appropriately begun. "You ought +to watch your diet a little more carefully." + +"No," Billy said firmly, "I don't need to watch my diet, I'm perfectly +healthy, and therefore my natural cravings will point the way to my +most judicious nourishment. Nancy has explained all to me." + +"That's a very interesting theory of Nancy's," Caroline said, "but I +don't altogether agree with it." + +"I do," said Billy, then he added hastily, "but I agree with you, too, +Caroline. You are to all other women what moonlight is to sunlight, or +I mean--what sunlight is to moonlight. In other words--you are the +goods." + +"Don't be silly, Billy." + +"There's only one thing in all this wide universe that you can't say +to me, Caroline, and 'don't be silly, Billy,' is that thing,--express +this same thing in _vers libre_ if you must say it! Look at the +handsome soup you're getting. What is the name of that soup, Molly?" + +He smiled ingratiatingly at the little waitress, who always beamed at +any one of Nancy's particular friends that came into the restaurant, +and made a point of serving them if she could possibly arrange it. + +"Cream of spinach," she said, "it's a special to-day." + +"Beautiful soup so rich and green," Billy began in a soulful baritone, +"waiting in a hot tureen. Where's mine, Molly?" + +"Dolly's bringing your first course, sir." + +Billy gazed in perplexity at the half of a delicious grapefruit set +before him by the duplicate of the pretty girl who stood smiling +deprecatingly behind Caroline's chair. + +"Where's my soup, Dolly?" Billy asked with a thundering sternness of +manner. + +"I'm sorry, sir," Dolly began glibly, "but the soup has given out. +Will you be good enough to allow the substitution of--" + +"That's a formula," Billy said. "The soup can't be out. We're the +first people in the dining-room. Go tell Miss Nancy that I will be +served with some of that green soup at once, or know the reason why." + +The two waitresses exchanged glances, and went off together +suppressing giggles, to return almost immediately, their risibility +still causing them great physical inconvenience. + +"Intelligent supervision, she says." Dolly exploded into the miniature +patch of muslin and ribbon that served her as an apron. + +"She says that's the reason why," Molly contributed,--following her +sister's example. + +"Nancy doesn't serve soup to a fat man if she can possibly avoid it. +That's part of her theory," Caroline explained. "There's no use making +a fuss about it, because you won't get it." + +Billy sat looking at his grapefruit for some seconds in silence. Then +he began on it slowly. + +"Well, I'll be damned," he said. + +Nancy was learning a great many things very rapidly. The practical +application of her theories of feeding mankind to her actual +experiments with the shifting population of New York, revolutionized +her attitude toward the problem almost daily. She had started in with +a great many ideas and ideals of service, with preconceived notions of +balanced rations, and exact distribution of fuel stuffs to the human +unit. She had come to realize very shortly, that the human unit was a +quantity as incalculable in its relation to its digestive problems as +its psychological ones. She had believed vaguely that in reference to +food values the race made its great exception to its rule of working +out toward normality; but she changed that opinion very quickly as she +watched her fellow men selecting their diet with as sure an instinct +for their nutritive requirements as if she had coached them personally +for years. + +From the assumption that she lived in a world gone dietetically mad, +and hence in the process of destroying itself, she had gradually come +to see that in this phase of his struggle for existence, as well as in +every other, the instinct of man operated automatically in the +direction of his salvation. This new attitude in tie matter relieved +her of much of her responsibility, but left her not less anxious to do +what she could for her kind in the matter of calories. She was, as she +had shown in her treatment of Billy, not entirely blinded by her +growing predilection in favor of the doctrine of natural selection. + +Every day she had Gaspard make, in addition to his regular table +d'hote menu, dozens of nutritive custards, quarts of stimulating +broths and jellies and other dishes containing the maximum of +easily digested and highly concentrated nutriment, and these she +managed to have Molly or Dolly or even Hildeguard--the Alma Tadema +girl--introduce into the luncheon or dinner service in the case of +those patrons who seemed to need peculiarly careful nourishing. Let a +white-faced girl sink into a seat within the range of Nancy's +vision,--she always ensconced herself in the doorway screened with +vines at the beginning of a meal,--and she gave orders at once for +the crafty substitution of invalid broth for soup, of rich nut +bread for the ordinary rolls and crackers, of custards or specially +made ice-cream for the dessert of the day. No overfed, pasty-faced +man ever escaped from Outside Inn until an attempt at least had been +made to introduce a portion of stewed prunes into his diet; and +all such were fed the minimum of bread and other starchy foods, and +the maximum of salad and green vegetables. Nancy had gluten bread made +in quantities for the stouter element of her patronage, and in +nine cases out of ten she was able to get it served and eaten +without protest. Some of her regular patrons began to change weight +gradually, a heavy man or two became less heavy, and a wraithlike +girl now and then took on a new bloom and substantiality. These were +the triumphs for which Nancy lived. Her only regret was that she +was not able to give to each her personal time and attention, and +establish herself on a footing with her patrons where she might learn +from their own lips the secrets of their metabolism. + +She was not known as the proprietor of the place. In fact, the +management of the restaurant was kept a careful secret from those who +frequented it and with the habitual indifference of New Yorkers to the +power behind the throne, so long as its affairs were manipulated in +good and regular order, they soon ceased to feel any apparent +curiosity about it. Betty, who sometimes rebelled at remaining so +scrupulously incognita, defiantly took the limelight at intervals and +moved among the assembled guests with an authoritative and possessive +air, adjusting and rearranging small details, and acknowledging the +presence of _habitues_, but since her attentions were popularly +supposed to be those of a superior head waitress, she soon tired of +the gesture of offering them. + +Nancy's intention had been to allow the restaurant to speak for +itself, and then at the climactic moment to allow her connection with +it to be discovered, and to speak for it with all the force and +earnestness of which she was capable. She had meant to stand sponsor +for the practical working theory on which her experiment was based, +and she had already partially formulated interviews with herself in +which she modestly acknowledged the success of that experiment, but +the untoward direction in which it was developing made such a +revelation inexpedient. + +There was one regular patron to whom she was peculiarly anxious to +remain incognita. Collier Pratt made it his almost invariable habit to +come sauntering toward the table in the corner, under the life-sized +effigy of the _Venus de Medici_, at seven o'clock in the evening, and +that table was scrupulously reserved for him. To it were sent the +choicest of all the viands that Outside Inn could command. Michael was +tacitly sped on his way with his teapot full of claret. Gaspard did +amazing things with the breasts of ducks and segments of orange, with +squab chicken stuffed with new corn, with _filets de sole a la +Marguery_. Nancy craftily spurred him on to his most ambitious +achievements under pretense of wishing her own appetite stimulated, +and the big cook, who adored her, produced triumph after triumph of +his art for her delectation, whereupon the biggest part of it was +cunningly smuggled out to the artist. From behind her screen of vines +Nancy watched the fine features of her quondam friend light with the +rapture of the _gourmet_ as be sampled Gaspard's sauce _verte_ or +Hollandaise or lifted the glass cover from the mushrooms _sous cloche_ +and inhaled their delicate aroma. + +"I wonder if he finds our food very American in character, now," she +said to herself, with a blush at the memory of the real southern +cornbread and candied sweet potatoes that were offered him in the +initial weeks of his patronage. Gaspard still made these delicacies +for luncheon, but they had been almost entirely banished from the +dinner menu. Afternoon tea at the Inn was famous for the wonderful +waffles produced with Parisian precision from a traditional Virginian +recipe, but Collier Pratt never appeared at either of these meals to +criticize them for being American. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AN ELEEMOSYNARY INSTITUTION + + +One night during the latter part of July Betty had a birthday, and +according to immemorial custom Caroline and Nancy and Dick and Billy +helped her to celebrate it at one of the old-fashioned down-town +hotels where they had ordered practically the same dinner for her +anniversaries ever since they had been grown up enough to celebrate +them unchaperoned. Caroline's brother, Preston, had made a sixth +member of the party for the first two or three years, but he had been +located in London since then, in charge of the English office of his +firm, to which he had been suddenly appointed a month after he and +Betty, who had been sweethearts, had had a spectacular quarrel. + +Nancy stayed by the celebration until about half past nine, and +then Dick put her into a taxi-cab, and she fled back to her +responsibilities as mistress of Outside Inn, agreeing to meet the +others later for the rounding out of the evening. As she drew up +before the big gate the courtyard seemed practically deserted. The +waitresses were busy clearing away the few cluttered tables left +by the last late guests, and in one sheltered corner a man and a girl +were frankly holding hands across the table, while they whispered +earnestly of some impending parting. The big canopy of striped awning +cloth had been drawn over the tables, as the rather heavy air of +the evening bad been punctured occasionally by a swift scattering +of rain. Nancy was half-way across the court before she realized +that Collier Pratt was still occupying his accustomed seat under the +shadow of the big Venus. She had not seen him face to face or +communicated with him since the day she had looked him up in the +telephone book and sent his cape to him by special messenger. She +stopped involuntarily as she reached his side, and he looked up and +smiled as he recognized her. + +"You're late again, Miss Ann Martin," he said, rising and pulling out +a chair for her opposite his own. "I think perhaps I can pull the +wires and procure you some sustenance if you will say the word." + +"I've no word to say," Nancy said, "but how do you do? I've just +dined elsewhere. I only stopped in here for a moment to get +something--something I left here at lunch." + +"In that case I'll offer you a drop of Michael's tea in my water +glass." He poured a tablespoonful or so of claret from the teapot into +the glass of ice-water before him, and added several lumps of sugar to +the concoction, which he stirred gravely for some time before he +offered it to her. "I never touch water myself. This is _eau rougie_ +as the French children drink it. It's really better for you than +ice-cream and a glass of water." + +"And less American," Nancy murmured with her eyes down. + +"And less American," he acquiesced blandly. + +Nancy sipped her drink, and Collier Pratt stirred the dregs in his +coffee cup--Nancy had overheard some of her patrons remarking on the +curious habits of a man who consumed a pot of tea and a pot of coffee +at one and the same meal--and they regarded each other for some time +in silence. Michael and Hildeguard, Molly and Dolly and two others of +the staff of girls were grouped in the doorway exactly in Nancy's +range of vision, and whispering to one another excitedly concerning +the phenomenon that met their eyes. + +"The little girl?" Nancy said, trying to ignore the composite scrutiny +to which she was being subjected, by turning determinedly to her +companion, "the little girl that you spoke of--is she well?" + +"She's as well as a motherless baby could be, subjected to the +irregularities of a life like mine. Still she seems to thrive on it." + +"Is she yours?" Nancy asked. + +"Yes, she's mine," Collier Pratt said, gravely dismissing the subject, +and leaving Nancy half ashamed of her boldness in putting the +question, half possessed of a madness to know the answer at any cost. + +"I've discovered something very interesting," Collier Pratt said, +after an interval in which Nancy felt that he was perfectly cognizant +of her struggle with her curiosity; "in fact, it's one of the most +interesting discoveries that I have made in the course of a not +unadventurous life. Do you come to this restaurant often?" + +"Quite often," Nancy equivocated, "earlier in the day. For luncheon +and for tea." + +"I come here almost every night of my life," Collier Pratt declared, +"and I intend to continue to come so long as _le bon Dieu_ spares me +my health and my epicurean taste. You know that I spoke of the food +here before. The character of it has changed entirely. It's +unmistakably French now, not to say Parisian. Outside of Paris or +Vienna I have never tasted such soups, such sauce, such delicate and +suggestive flavors. My entire existence has been revolutionized by the +experience. I am no longer the lonely and unhappy man you discovered +at this gate a short month ago. I can not cavil at an America that +furnishes me with such food as I get in this place. + + "Man may live without friends, and may live without books. + But civilized man can not live without cooks," + +Nancy quoted sententiously. + +"Exactly. The whole point is that the cooking here is civilized. Oh! +you ought to come here to dinner, my friend. I don't know what the +luncheons and teas are like--" + +"They're very good," Nancy said. + +"But not like the dinners, I'll wager. The dinners are the very last +word! I don't know why this place isn't famous. Of course, I do my +best to keep it a secret from the artistic rabble I know. It would be +overrun with them in a week, and its character utterly ruined." + +"I wonder if it would." + +"Oh! I'm sure of it." + +"What is your discovery?" Nancy asked. + +Collier Pratt leaned dramatically closer to her, and Nancy instinctively +bent forward across the tiny table until her face was very near to his. + +"Do you know anything about the price of foodstuffs?" he demanded. + +"A little," Nancy admitted. + +"You know then that the price of every commodity has soared +unthinkably high, that the mere problem of providing the ordinary +commonplace meal at the ordinary commonplace restaurant has become +almost unsolvable to the proprietors? Most of the eating places in New +York are run at a loss, while the management is marking time and +praying for a change in conditions. Well, here we have a restaurant +opening at the most crucial period in the history of such enterprises, +offering its patrons the delicacies of the season most exquisitely +cooked, at what is practically the minimum price for a respectable +meal." + +"That's true, isn't it?" + +"More than that, there are people who come here, who order one thing +and get another, and the thing they get is always a much more +elaborate and extravagant dish than the one they asked for. I've seen +that happen again and again." + +"Have you?" Nancy asked faintly, shrinking a little beneath the +intentness of his look. "How--how do you account for it?" + +"There's only one way to account for it." + +"Do you think that there is an--an unlimited amount of capital behind +it?" + +"I think that goes without saying," he said; "there must be an +unlimited amount of capital behind it, or it wouldn't continue to +flourish like a green bay tree; but that's not in the nature of a +discovery. Anybody with any power of observation at all would have +come to that conclusion long since." + +"Then, what is it you have found out?" Nancy asked, quaking. + +"My discovery is--" Collier Pratt paused for the whole effect of his +revelation to penetrate to her consciousness, "that this whole outfit +is run _philanthropically_." + +"Philanthropically?" + +"Don't you see? There can't be any other explanation of it. It's an +eleemosynary institution. That's what it is." + +Nancy met his expectant eyes with a trifle of wildness in her own, but +he continued to hold her gaze triumphantly. + +"Don't you see," he repeated, "doesn't everything point to that as the +only possible explanation? It's some rich woman's plaything. That +accounts for the food, the setting,--everything in fact that has +puzzled us. Amateur,--that's the word; effective, delightful but +inexperienced. It sticks out all over the place." + +"The food isn't amateur," Nancy said, a little resentfully. + +"Nothing is amateur but the spirit behind it, through which we profit. +Don't you see?" + +"I'm beginning to see," Nancy admitted, "perhaps you are right. I +guess the place is run philanthropically. I--I hadn't quite realized +it before." + +"What did you think?" + +"I knew that the--one who was running it wasn't quite sure where she +was coming out, but I didn't think of it is an eleemosynary +institution." + +"Of course, it is." + +"It's an unscrupulous sort of charity, then," Nancy mused, "if it's +masquerading as self-respecting and self-supporting. I--I've never +approved of things like that." + +"Why quarrel with a scheme so beneficent?" + +"Don't you care?" Nancy asked with a catch in her voice that was very +like an appeal. + +He shook his head. + +"Why should I?" he smiled. + +"Then I don't care, either," she decided with an emphasis that was +entirely lost on the man on the other side of the table. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CAVE-MAN STUFF + + +"Cave-man stuff," Billy said to Dick, pointing a thumb over his +shoulder toward the interior of the Broadway moving-picture palace at +the exit of which they had just met accidentally. "It always goes big, +doesn't it?" + +"It does," Dick agreed thoughtfully, "in the movies anyhow." + +"Caroline says that the modern woman has her response to that kind of +thing refined all out of her." Billy intended his tone to be entirely +jocular, but there was a note of anxiety in it that was not lost on +his friend. + +Dick paused under the shelter of a lurid poster--displaying a fierce +gentleman in crude blue, showing all his teeth, and in the act of +strangling an early Victorian ingenue with a dimple,--and lit a +cigarette with his first match. + +"Caroline may have," he said, puffing to keep his light against the +breeze, "but I doubt it." + +"Rough stuff doesn't seem to appeal to her," Billy said, quite +humorously this time. + +"She's healthy," Dick mused, "rides horseback, plays tennis and all +that. Wouldn't she have liked the guy that swung himself on the roof +between the two poles?" He indicated again the direction of the +theater from which they had just emerged. + +"She would have liked him," Billy said gloomily, "but the show +would have started her arguing about this whole moving-picture +proposition,--its crudity, and its tremendous sacrifice of artistic +values, and so on and so on." + +"Sure, she's a highbrow. Highbrows always cerebrate about the movies +in one way or another. Nancy doesn't get it at just that angle, of +course. She hasn't got Caroline's intellectual appetite. She's not +interested in the movies because she hasn't got a moving-picture house +of her own. The world is not Nancy's oyster--it's her lump of putty." + +"I don't know which is the worst," Billy said. "Caroline won't listen +to anything you say to her,--but then neither will Nancy." + +"Women never listen to anything," Dick said profoundly, "unless +they're doing it on purpose, or they happen to be interested. I +imagine Caroline is a little less tractable, but Nancy is capable of +doing the most damage. She works with concrete materials. Caroline's +kit is crammed with nothing but ideas." + +"Nothing _but_--" Billy groaned. + +"As for this cave-man business--theoretically, they ought to react to +it,--both of them. They're both normal, well-balanced young ladies." + +"They're both runnin' pretty hard to keep in the same place, just at +present." + +"Nancy isn't doing that--not by a long shot," Dick said. + +"She's not keeping in the same place certainly," Billy agreed. +"Caroline is all eaten up by this economic independence idea." + +"It's a good idea," Dick admitted; "economic conditions are +changing. No reason at all that a woman shouldn't prove herself +willing to cope with them, as long as she gets things in the order +of their importance. Earning her living isn't better than the +Mother-Home-and-Heaven job. It's a way out, if she gets left, or +gets stung." + +"I'm only thankful Caroline can't hear you." Billy raised pious eyes +to heaven but he continued more seriously after a second, "It's all +right to theorize, but practically speaking both our girls are getting +beyond our control." + +"I'm not engaged to Nancy," Dick said a trifle stiffly. + +"Well, you ought to be," Billy said. + +Dick stiffened. He was not used to speaking of his relations with +Nancy to any one--even to Billy, who was the closest friend he +had. They walked up Broadway in silence for a while, toward the +cross-street which housed the university club which was their common +objective. + +"I know I ought to be," Dick said, just as Billy was formulating an +apology for his presumption, "or I ought to marry her out of hand. +This watchful waiting's entirely the wrong idea." + +"Why do we do it then?" Billy inquired pathetically. + +"I wanted Nancy to sow her economic wild oats. I guess you felt the +same way about Caroline." + +"Well, they've sowed 'em, haven't they?" + +"Not by a long shot. That's the trouble,--they don't get any forrider, +from our point of view. I thought it would be the best policy to stand +by and let Nancy work it out. I thought her restaurant would either +fail spectacularly in a month, or succeed brilliantly and she'd make +over the executive end of it to somebody else. I never thought of her +buckling down like this, and wearing herself out at it." + +"There's a pretty keen edge on Caroline this summer." + +"I'm afraid Nancy's in pretty deep," Dick said. "The money end of it +worries me as much as anything." + +"I wouldn't let that worry me." + +"She won't take any of mine, you know." + +"I know she won't. See here, Dick, I wouldn't worry about Nancy's +finances. She'll come out all right about money." + +"What makes you think so?" + +"I know so. We've got lots of things in the world to worry about, +things that are scheduled to go wrong unless we're mighty delicate in +the way we handle 'em. Let's worry about _them_, and leave Nancy's +financial problems to take care of themselves." + +"Which means," Dick said, "that you are sure that she's all right. I'm +not in her confidence in this matter--" + +"Well, I am," Billy said, "I'm her legal adviser, and with all due +respect to your taste in girls, it's a very difficult position to +occupy. What with the things she won't listen to and the things she +won't learn, and the things she actually knows more about than I +do--" + +The indulgent smile of the true lover lit Dick's face, as if Billy had +waxed profoundly eulogistic. Unconsciously, Billy's own tenderness +took fire at the flame. + +"Why don't we run away with 'em?" he said, breathing heavily. + +Dick stopped in a convenient doorway to light his third cigarette, end +on. + +"It's the answer to you and Caroline," he said. + +"Why not to you and Nancy?" + +"It may be," Dick said, "I dunno. I've reached an _impasse_. Still +there is a great deal in your proposition." + +They turned in at the portico that extended out over the big oak doors +of their club. An attendant in white turned the knob for them, with +the grin of enthusiastic welcome that was the usual tribute to these +two good-looking, well set up young men from those who served them. + +"I'll think it over," Dick added, as he gave up his hat and stick, +"and let you know what decision I come to." + +In another five minutes they were deep in a game of Kelly-pool from +which Dick emerged triumphantly richer by the sum of a dollar and +ninety cents, and Billy the poorer by the loss of a quarter. + + * * * * * + +There is a town in Connecticut, within a reasonable motoring distance +from New York that has been called the Gretna Green of America. Here +well-informed young couples are able to expedite the business of +matrimony with a phenomenal neatness and despatch. Licenses can be +procured by special dispensation, and the nuptial knot tied as +solemnly and solidly as if a premeditated train of bridesmaids and +flower girls and loving relatives had been rehearsed for days in +advance. + +Dick and his Rolls-Royce had assisted at a hymeneal celebration or +two, where a successful rush had been made for the temporary altars of +this beneficent town with the most felicitous results, and he knew the +procedure. When he and Billy organized an afternoon excursion into +Connecticut, they tacitly avoided all mention of the consummation they +hoped to bring about, but they both understood the nature and +significance of the expedition. Dick,--who was used to the easy +accomplishment of his designs and purposes, for most obstacles gave +way before his magnetic onslaught,--had only sketchily outlined his +scheme of proceedings, but he trusted to the magic of that inspiration +that seldom or never failed him. He was the sort of young man that the +last century novelists always referred to as "fortune's favorite," and +his luck so rarely betrayed him that he had almost come to believe it +to be invincible. + +His general idea was to get Nancy and Caroline to drive into the +country, through the cool rush of the freer purer air of the suburbs, +give them lunch at some smart road-house, soothingly restful and dim, +where the temperature was artificially lowered, and they could powder +their noses at will; and from thence go on until they were within the +radius of the charmed circle where modern miracles were performed +while the expectant bridegroom waited. + +"Nancy, my dear, we are going to be married,"--that he had formulated, +"we're going to be done with all this nonsense of waiting and doubting +the evidence of our own senses and our own hearts. We're going to put +an end to the folly of trying to do without each other,--your folly of +trying to feed all itinerant New York; my folly of standing by and +letting you do it, or any other fool thing that your fancy happens to +dictate. You're mine and I'm yours, and I'm going to take you--take +you to-day and prove it to you." This was to be timed to be delivered +at just about the moment when they drew up in front of the office of +the justice of the peace, who was Dick's friend of old. "Hold up your +head, my dear, and put your hat on straight; we're going into that +building to be made man and wife, and we're not coming out of it until +the deed has been done." In some such fashion, he meant to carry it +through. Many a time in the years gone by he had steered Nancy through +some high-handed escapade that she would only have consented to on the +spur of the moment. She was one of these women who responded +automatically to the voice of a master. He had failed in mastery this +last year or so. That was the secret of his failure with her, but the +days of that failure were numbered now. He was going to succeed. + +On the back seat of the big car he expected Billy and Caroline to be +going through much the same sort of scene. + +"We've come to a show-down now, Caroline,--either I sit in this +game, or get out." He could imagine Billy bringing Caroline bluntly +to terms with comparatively little effort. That was what she +needed--Caroline--a strong hand. Billy's problem was simple. +Caroline had already signified her preference for him. She wore his +ring. Billy had only to pick her up, kicking and screaming if need +be, and bear her to the altar. She would marry him if he insisted. +That was clear to the most superficial of observers,--but Nancy was +different. + +The day was hot, and grew steadily hotter. By the time Nancy and +Caroline were actually in the car, after an almost superhuman effort +to assemble them and their various accessories of veils and wraps, and +to dispose of the assortment of errands and messages that both girls +seemed to be committed to despatch before they could pass the +boundaries of Greater New York, the two men were very nearly +exhausted. It was only when the chauffeur let the car out to a speed +greatly in excess of the limitations on some clear stretch of road, +that the breath of the country brought them any relief whatsoever. + +Dick looked over his shoulder at the two in the back seat, and noted +Caroline's pallor, and the fact that she was allowing a listless hand +to linger in Billy's; but when he turned back to Nancy he discovered +no such encouraging symptoms. She was sitting lightly relaxed at his +side, but there was nothing even negatively responsive in her +attitude. Her color was high; her breath coming evenly from between +her slightly parted lips. She looked like a child oblivious to +everything but some innocent daydream. + +"You look as if you were dreaming of candy and kisses, Nancy,--are +you?" he asked presently. + +"No, I'm just glad to be free. It's been a long time since I've played +hooky." + +"I know it." The "dear" constrained him, and he did not add it: +"You've been working most unholy hard. I--I hate to have you." + +"But I was never so happy in my life." + +"That's good." His voice hoarsened with the effort to keep it steady +and casual. "Is everything going all right?" + +"Fine." + +"Is--is the money end of it all right?" + +"Yes, that is, I am not worrying about money." + +"You're not making money?" + +"No." + +"You are not losing any?" + +"I am--a little. That was to be expected, don't you think so?" + +"How much are you losing?" + +"I don't know exactly." + +"You ought to know. Are you keeping your own books?" + +"Betty helps me." + +"Are you losing a hundred a month?" + +"Yes." + +"Five hundred?" + +"I suppose so." + +"A thousand?" + +"I don't really know." + +"A thousand?" he insisted. + +"Yes," Nancy answered recklessly, "the way I run it." + +"It doesn't make any difference, of course;" Dick said, "you've got +all my money behind you." + +"I haven't anybody's money behind me except my own." + +"You had fifteen thousand dollars. Do you mean to say that you have +any of that left to draw on?" + +"No, I don't." + +"Do you mind telling me how you are managing?" + +"Billy borrowed some money for me." + +"On what security?" + +"I don't know." + +"Why didn't he come to me?" + +"I told him not to." + +"Nancy, do you realize that you're the most exasperating woman that +ever walked the face of this earth?" the unhappy lover asked. + +Nancy managed to convey the fact that Dick's asseveration both +surprised and pained her, without resorting to the use of words. + +"I wish you wouldn't spoil this lovely party," she said to him a few +seconds later. "I'm extremely tired, and I should like to get my mind +off my business instead of going over these tiresome details with +anybody." + +"You look very innocent and kind and loving," Dick said desperately, +"but at heart you're a little fraud, Nancy." + +She interrupted him to point out two children laden with wild flowers, +trudging along the roadside. + +"See how adorably dirty and happy they are," she cried. "That little +fellow has his shoestrings untied, and keeps tripping on them, he's so +tired, but he's so crazy about the posies that he doesn't care. I +wonder if he's taking them home to his mother." + +"You're devoted to children, Nancy, aren't you?" Dick's voice +softened. + +"Yes, I am, and some day I'm going to adopt a whole orphan asylum,"--her +voice altered in a way that Dick did not in the least understand. "I +could if I wanted to," she laughed. "Maybe I will want to some day. So +many of my ideas are being changed and modified by experience." + +The road-house of his choice, when they reached it, proved to have +deteriorated sadly since his last visit. The cool interior that he +remembered had been inopportunely opened to the hottest blast of the +day's heat, and hermetically sealed again, or at least so it +seemed to Dick; and the furniture was all red and thickly, almost +suffocatingly, upholstered. Nancy had no comment on the torrid air of +the dining-room,--she rarely complained about anything. Even the +presence of a fly in her bouillon jelly scarcely disturbed her +equanimity, but Dick knew that she was secretly sustained by the +conviction that such an accident was impossible under her system +of supervision at Outside Inn, and resented her tranquillity +accordingly. + +Caroline, behaving not so well, seemed to him a much more human and +sympathetic figure, though her nose took on a high shine unknown to +Nancy's demurer and more discreetly served features; but Billy +evidently preferred Nancy's deportment, which was on the surface calm +and reassuring. + +"Nancy's a sport," he pointed out to Caroline enthusiastically, "no +fly in the ointment gets her goat. She enjoys herself even when she's +perfectly miserable." + +"She doesn't feel the heat the way I do," Caroline snapped. + +"I feel the heat," Nancy said, "but I--" + +"She's got a system," Dick cut in savagely: "she stands it just as +long as she can, and then she takes it out of me in some diabolical +fashion." + +Nancy's gray-blue eyes took on the far-away look that those who loved +her had learned to associate with her most baffling moments. + +"Just by being especially nice to Dick," she said thoughtfully, "I can +make him more furious with me than in any other way." + +Nancy and Caroline finished their sloppy ices at the table together +while Dick and Billy sought the solace of a pipe in the garage +outside. + +"I don't understand coming into Connecticut to-day," Nancy said as +soon as they were alone; "it seems like such a stupid excursion for +Dick to make. He's usually pretty good at picking out places to go. In +fact, he has a kind of genius for it." + +"He slipped up this time," Caroline said, "I'm so hot." + +"So am I," said Nancy, slumping limply into the depths of her red +velour chair. "I want to get back to New York. Oh! what was it you +told me the other day that you had been saving up to tell me?" + +Caroline brightened. + +"Oh, yes! Why, it was something Collier Pratt said about you. You know +Betty has scraped up quite an acquaintance with him. She goes and sits +down at his table sometimes." + +"She's going to be stopped doing _that_," Nancy said. + +"Well, you remember the night when you went home early with a +headache, and passed by his table going out?" + +"Yes, but I didn't know he saw me." + +"He sees everything, Betty says." + +"He didn't suspect me?" + +"He didn't know you came out of the interior. He said to Betty, 'It's +curious that Miss Martin never stays here to dine in the evening, +though she so often drops in.' Betty is pretty quick, you know. She +said, 'I think Miss Martin is a friend of the proprietor.'" + +"So I am," said Nancy, "the best friend she's got. Go on, dear." + +"Then he said slowly and thoughtfully, 'It's a crime for a woman like +that not to be the mother of children. If ever I saw a maternal type, +Miss Ann Martin is the apotheosis of it. Why some man hasn't made her +understand that long ago I can not see.'" + +Nancy's cheeks burned crimson and then white again. + +"How dare Betty?" she said. + +"Wait till you hear. You know Betty doesn't care what she says. Her +reply to that was peculiarly Bettyish. She sighed and cast down her +eyes,--the little imp! 'The course of true love never does run +smooth,' she said; 'perhaps Ann has discovered the truth of that old +saying in some new connection.' She didn't mean to be a cat, she was +only trying to create a romantic interest in your affairs, doing as +she would be done by. The effect was more than she bargained for +though. Collier Pratt's eyes quite lit up. 'I can imagine no greater +crime than frustrating the instincts of a woman like that,' he said. +Imagine that--the instincts--whereupon Betty, of course, flounced off +and left him." + +"She would," Nancy said. Then a storm of real anger surged through +her. "I'll turn her out of my place to-morrow. I'll never look at her +or speak to her again." + +"I think it would be more to the point," Caroline said, "to turn out +Collier Pratt. That was certainly an extraordinary way for him to +speak of you to a girl who is a stranger to him." + +"Caroline, you're almost as bad as Betty is. You're both of you +hopelessly--helplessly--provincially American. I don't think that was +extraordinary or impertinent even," Nancy said. "I--I understand how +that man means things." + + * * * * * + +The car drove up in front of the office of the justice of the peace in +the town beyond that in which they had had their unauspicious luncheon +party. + +"Are we stopping here for any particular reason?" Caroline said. + +Nancy had not spoken in more than a monosyllable since they had +resumed their places in the car again. + +"Not now," Dick said wearily. "I thought I'd point out the sights of +the town. This place is called the Gretna Green of America, you know. +A great many runaway couples come out here to be married. The man +inside that office, the one with whiskers and no collar, is the one +that marries them." + +"Does he?" Billy asked a trifle uncertainly. + +Nancy turned to Dick with a real appeal in her voice. It was the first +time during the day that she had addressed him with anything like her +natural tenderness and sweetness. + +"Oh! Dick, can't we start on?" she said. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SCIENCE APPLIED + + +Gaspard was ill--very ill. He lay in the little anteroom at the top of +the stairs and groaned thunderously. He had a pain in his back and a +roaring in his head, and an extreme disorder in the region of his +solar plexus. + +"Sure an' he's no more nor less than a human earthquake," Michael +reported after an examination. + +Nancy applied ice caps and hot-water bags to the afflicted areas +without avail. The stricken man had struggled from his bed in the +Twentieth Street lodging-house that he had chosen for his habitation, +and staggered through the heavy morning heat to his post in the +basement kitchen of Nancy's Inn, there to collapse ignominiously +between his cooking ranges. With Molly and Dolly and Hildeguard at his +feet and herself and Michael and a dishwasher at his head they had +managed to get him up the two short flights of stairs. It developed +that it would be necessary to remove him in an ambulance later in the +day, but for the time being he lay like a contorted Colossus on the +fragile-looking cot that constituted his improvised bed of pain: "Like +the great grandfather," to quote Michael again, "of all of them +Zeus'es and gargoyles, and other cavortin' gentlemen in the yard +down-stairs." + +With the luncheon menu before her, Nancy decided that the hour had +come for her to prove herself. She had assumed the practical +management of the business of the Inn only to have the responsibility +and much of the authority of her position taken from her by the very +efficiency of her staff. She was far too good a business woman not to +realize that this condition was distinctly to her advantage, and to +encourage it accordingly, but there was still so much of the child in +her that she secretly resented every usurpation of privilege. + +With Gaspard ill she was able to manipulate the affairs of the kitchen +exactly as she chose, and even in the moment of applying the "hot at +the base of the brain and the cold at the forehead" that the doctor +had prescribed as the most effective method for relieving the pressure +of blood in the tortured temples of the suffering man, she had been +conscious of that thrill of triumph that most human beings feel when +the involuntary removal of the man higher up invests them with power. + +Michael did the marketing, and the list went through as Gaspard had +planned it, with some slight adaptations to the exigency, such as the +substitution of twenty-five cans of tomato soup for the fresh +vegetables with which Gaspard had planned to make his tomato bisque, +and brandied peaches in glass jars instead of peach souffle. + +"If I allow myself a little handicap in the matter of details," she +said, "I know I can put everything else through as well as Gaspard;" +whereupon she enveloped herself in a huge linen apron, tucked her hair +into one of the chef's white caps, and attacked the problem of +preparing luncheon for from sixty-five to two hundred people, who were +scheduled to appear at uncertain intervals between the hours of twelve +and two-thirty. Later she must be ready to serve tea and ices to a +problematical number of patrons, but she tried not to think beyond the +immediate task. + +She could make a very good tomato bisque by adding one cup of milk and +a dash of cream to one half-pint can of MacDonald's tomato soup, +enough to serve three people adequately, and she proceeded to multiply +that recipe by twenty-five. She didn't think of getting large cans +till Michael in the process of opening the half-pint tins made the +belated suggestion, which she greeted with some hauteur. + +"I'm not the person to mind a little extra work, Michael, when I am +sure of my results. Precision--that's the secret of the difference +between American and French cooking." + +"An' sure and I fail to see the difference between the preciseness of +a quart can and four half-pint ones, but I suppose it's my ignorance +now." + +"Your supposition is correct, Michael," she said airily, but out of +the corner of her eye she saw him smiling to himself over the growing +heap of half-pint tins, and reddened with mortification at her naivete +in the matter. + +She looked at the vat of terra-cotta puree with considerable dismay +when she had stirred in the last measure of cream. Twenty-five pints +of tomato bisque is a rather formidable quantity of a liquid the chief +virtue of which is its sparing and judicious introduction into the +individual diet scheme. Nancy hardly felt that she wanted to be alone +with it. + +"They'll soon lick it all up, and be polishing their plates like so +many Tom-cats," Michael said, indicating their potential patronage by +waving his hand toward the courtyard. "Here comes Miss Betty, now. +She'll be after lending a hand in the cooking." + +"Keep her away, Michael," Nancy cried; "go out and head her off. Make +her go up-stairs and sit with Gaspard,--anything, but don't let her +come in here. If she does I won't answer for the consequences. +I'll--I'll--I don't know what I'll do to her." + +"Throw her in the soup kettle, most likely," Michael chuckled. "Faith, +an' I never saw a woman yet that wasn't ready to scratch the eyes out +of the next one that got into her kitchen." + +"She isn't safe," Nancy said darkly. "I need every bit of brain and +self-control I have to put this luncheon through. You keep Miss +Betty's mind on something else--anything but me and the way I am doing +the cooking." + +"'Tis done," said Michael; "sure an' I'll protect her from you, if I +have to abduct her myself!" + +"I wish he would," Nancy said to herself viciously, "before she gets +another chance at Collier Pratt.--Creamed chicken and mushrooms. It's +a lucky thing that Gaspard diced the chicken last night, and fixed +that macedoine of vegetables for a garnish.--She's a dangerous woman; +she might wreck one's whole life with her unfeeling, histrionic +nonsense.--I wonder if thirteen quarts of cream sauce is going to be +enough." + +It turned out to be quite enough after the crises in which the butter +basis got too brown, and the flour after melting into it smoothly +seemed unreasonably inclined to lump again as Nancy stirred the cold +milk into it, but the result after all was perfectly adequate, except +for the uncanny brown tinge that the whole mixture had taken on. Nancy +was unable to restrain herself from taking a sample of it to Gaspard's +bedside. + +"_Mais_--but I can not eat it now," he cried, misunderstanding the +purpose of her visit, "nor again--nor ever again. _Jamais!_" + +"I don't want you to eat it, Gaspard, I want you to look at it, and +tell me what makes it that color. It turned tan, you see. I don't want +to poison any one." + +"I am too miserable," Gaspard said. "The sauce--you have made into +Bechamel with the browning butter, _voila tout_. It is better so,--it +would not hurt any one in the world but me--and me it would kill." + +"Poor thing," sighed Nancy, as she took her place by the kitchen +dresser again, trying to remember where she had last seen brown eyes +that reflected the look of stricken endurance that glazed Gaspard's +velvet orbs, recalled with a start that Dick had gazed at her in +much the same helpless fashion on their drive home from their +recent motor trip in Connecticut. She had been too absorbed in her +own distresses to consider anybody's state of mind but her own, on +that occasion, but now Dick's expression came back to her vividly, +and she nearly ruined a big bowl of French dressing, at the crucial +moment of putting in the vinegar, trying to imagine which one of +the events of that inauspicious day might conceivably have caused it. + +After the actual serving of the meal began, however, she had very +little time for reflection or reminiscence. The distribution of +food to the waitresses as they called for it required the full +concentration of her powers. Molly and Dolly coached her, and with +their assistance she was soon able to fill the bewilderingly rapid +orders from the line of girls stretching from the door to the open +space in front of her serving-table, which never seemed to diminish +however adequately its demands were met. + +Mechanically she took soup and meat dishes from the hooded shelves at +the top of the range where they were kept warming, and ladled out the +brick-colored bisque, the creamed chicken and garnishing of the +individual orders. The chicken looked delicious with its accompaniment +of vari-colored vegetables,--Nancy had done away with the side dish +long since--and each serving was assembled with special reference to +its decorative qualities. The girls went up-stairs to put the salad on +the plates, where the desserts were already dished in the quaint blue +bowls in which stewed fruits and the more fluid sweets were always +served. + +In her mind's eye Nancy could see the picture. At noon the court was +almost entirely in the shade, and instead of the awning top, which +shut out the air, there were gay striped umbrellas at the one or two +tables that were imperfectly protected from the sun. She had recently +invested in some table-cloths with bright blue woven borders. Flowers +were arranged in low bowls and baskets on respective tables. Nancy +instinctively grouped tired young business men in blue serge and soft +collars at the tables decorated with the baskets of blue flowers; and +pale young women in lingerie blouses before the bowls of roses. She +could see them,--those big-eyed girls with delicate blue veins +accentuating the pallor of their white faces--sinking gratefully into +the wicker seats and benches, and sniffing rapturously at the faint +far-away fragrance of the woodland blossoms. + +"I hope they will steal a great many of them," she thought, for her +patrons were given to despoiling her flower vases in a way that +scandalized the good Hildeguard, who was a just but ungenerous soul in +spite of her ample proportions and popular qualities. Molly and Dolly +were rather given to encouraging the vandals, knowing that they had +Nancy's tacit approval. + +Automatically dipping the huge metal ladle--one filling of which was +enough for a service--into the big soup kettle, she stood for a moment +gazing into its magenta depths oblivious to everything but the +rhapsodic consideration of her realized dream. Now for the first time +she was contributing directly her own strength and energy to the +public which she served. She had prepared with her own hands the meal +which her grateful patrons were consuming. The little girls with the +tired faces, the jaded men, the smart, weary business women--buyers +and secretaries and modistes,--who were occupied in the neighborhood +were all being literally nourished by her. She had actually +manufactured the product that was to sustain them through the weary +day of heat and effort. + +"How do they like the lunch, Molly?" she asked, as she deftly +deposited the forty-fifth serving of chicken with Bechamel sauce on +the exact center of the plate before her. "Are they pleased with the +soup? Are they saying complimentary things about the chicken?" + +"Some of them is, Miss Nancy. Some of them is complaining that they +can't get any other kind of soup. Them that usually gets invalid broth +don't understand our running out of it." + +"I forgot about the specials," Nancy cried. + +"That red-haired girl that we feed on custards and nut bread and that +special cocoa Gaspard makes for her, she acted real bad. They get +expecting certain things, and then they want them." + +"I'm sorry," Nancy said; "I'll make all those things to-morrow." + +"The old feller that always has the stewed prunes is terrible pleased +though. I give him two helps of the peaches, and he wanted another. He +was pleased to get white bread too. He complains something dreadful +about his bran biscuit every day." + +"I meant to send to the woman's exchange for different kinds of health +bread, but I forgot it," Nancy moaned. "Do they like the peaches at +all?" + +"Most of them likes them too well. There was one old lady that got one +whiff of them, and pushed back her chair and left. I guess she had +took the pledge, and the brandy went against her principles." + +"I never thought of that. I only thought that brandied peaches would +be a treat to so many people who didn't have them habitually served at +home." + +The picture in Nancy's mind changed in color a trifle. She could see +sour-faced spinsters at single tables pushing back their chairs, +overturning the rose bowls in their hurry to shake the dust of her +restaurant from their feet. + +"Don't accept any money from people who don't like their luncheon," +she admonished Molly, who was next in line with several orders to be +filled at once. "Tell them that the proprietor of Outside Inn prefers +not to be paid unless the meal is entirely satisfactory." + +"I'm afraid there wouldn't never be any satisfactory meals if I told +them that, Miss Nancy." + +"I don't want any one ever to pay for anything he doesn't like," Nancy +insisted. "Slip the money back in their coat pockets if you can't +manage it any other way." + +"There's lots of complaints about the soup," Dolly said; "so many +people don't like tomato in the heat. Gaspard, he always had a choice +even if it wasn't down on the menu. I might deduct, say fifteen cents +now, and slip it back to them with their change." + +"Please do," Nancy implored. "Tell Molly and Hildeguard." + +"Hilda would drop dead, but Molly'd like the fun of it." + +It was hot in the kitchen. The soup kettle bad been emptied of more +than half its contents, but the liquid that was left bubbled thickly +over the gas flame that had been newly lit to reheat it. The pungent, +acrid odor of hot tomatoes affronted her nostrils. She had a vision +now of the pale tired faces of the little stenographers turning in +disgust from the contemplation of the flamboyant and sticky puree on +their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft +wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the +fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning +she began to hope in her heart that Gaspard's illness might be a +matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the +other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to +eke out the chicken, which, owing to her unprecedented generosity in +the matter of portions, seemed to be diminishing with alarming +rapidity. + +From the kitchen closet beyond came the clatter of dishwashing, the +interminable splashing of water, and stacking of plates, punctuated by +the occasional clang of smashing glass or pottery. She had discharged +two dishwashers in less than two weeks' time, with the natural feeling +that any change in that department must be for the better, but the +present incumbent was even more incompetent than his predecessors. +Even Nancy's impregnable nerves began to feel the strain of the +continual clamorous assault on them. + +Betty appeared in the doorway that led directly from the restaurant +stairs. + +"I'm sorry to intrude," she said. "Don't blame Michael, I'm breaking +my parole to get in here. He locked me in and made me swear I'd keep +out of the kitchen before he'd let me out at all, but I had to tell +you this. The tomato soup has curdled and you ought not to serve it +any more." + +"Well, I thought it looked rather funny," Nancy moaned. + +"It won't do anybody any harm, you know. It just looks bad, and a lot +of people are kicking about it. Did Molly tell you about the old +fellow that got tipsy on the peaches?" + +"No, she didn't. I sent Michael out for some ripe peaches and other +fruit to serve instead." + +"That's a good idea. How's the food holding out? There are lots of +people you know up-stairs," she rattled on, for Nancy, who was getting +more and more distraught with each disquieting detail, made no +pretense of answering her. "Dolly has probably kept you informed. +Dick's aunt is here, and that terribly highbrow cousin of Caroline's; +and that good-looking young surgeon that suddenly got so famous last +winter, and admired you so much. Dr. Sunderland--isn't that his name? +I never saw Collier Pratt here for lunch before. There's a little girl +with him, too." + +"Collier Pratt?" Nancy cried, "Oh, Betty, he isn't here. He couldn't +be. Don't frighten me with any such nonsense. He never comes here in +the day-time." + +"He is though," Betty said, "and a queer-looking little child with +him, a dark-eyed little thing dressed in black satin." + +"It seems a good deal to me as if you were making that up," Nancy +cried in exasperation; "it's so much the kind of thing you do make +up." + +"I know it," Betty said, unexpectedly reasonable, "but as it happens +I'm not. Collier Pratt really is up-stairs with a poor little orphan +in tow. Ask any one of the girls." + +At this moment Dolly, her ribbons awry and her china-blue eyes widened +with excitement, appeared with a dramatic confirmation of Betty's +astonishing announcement. + +"There's a little girl took sick from the peaches, and moved up-stairs +in the room next to Gaspard's," she cried breathlessly. "The doctor +that was sitting at the next table, had her moved right up there. He +wants to see the lady that runs the restaurant, and he wants a lot of +hot water in a pitcher, and some baking soda." + +"You see," Betty said, "go on up, I'll take your place here. Dolly, +get the things the doctor asked for." + +Nancy stripped off her cap and her apron and resigned her spoons and +ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she +would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs +that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters +of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of +fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could +hear Gaspard's stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of +distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of grave and +low-voiced conference, such as one hears in the chambers of the dead. +The convulsive application of a powder puff to the tip of her burning +nose--her whole face was aflame with exertion and excitement--was +merely a part of her whole subconscious effort to get herself in hand +for the exigency. Her mind, itself, refused any preparation for the +scene that awaited her. + +On one of the cushioned benches against the wall in the most +decorative of the dining-rooms of the up-stairs suite, a little girl +was lying stark against the brilliant blue of the upholstery. She was +a child of some seven or eight, lightly built and delicate of features +and dressed all in black. Her eyes were closed, but the long lashes +emphasizing the shadows in which they were set, prepared you for the +revelation of them. Nancy understood that they were Collier Pratt's +eyes, and that they would open presently, and look wonderingly up at +her. She recognized the presence of Dr. Sunderland, of Michael and +several of the waitresses, and a flighty woman in blue taffeta--an +ubiquitous patron,--but she made her way past them at once, and sank +on her knees before the prostrate child. + +"It's nothing very serious, Miss Martin," the young surgeon reassured +her, "delicate children of this type are likely to have these +seizures. It's not exactly a fainting fit. It belongs rather to the +family of hysteria." + +"Wasn't it the peaches?" Nancy asked fearfully. "They--they had a +little brandy in them." + +"They may have been a contributing cause," Dr. Sunderland acknowledged, +"but the child's condition is primarily responsible. Let her alone +until she rouses,--then give her hot water with a pinch of soda in it +at fifteen-minute intervals. Keep her feet hot and her head cold and +don't try to move her until after dark, when it's cooler." + +"All right," Nancy said, "I'll take care of her." + +"Here comes her poor father, now," the lady in taffeta announced with +the dramatic commiseration of the self-invited auditor. "He thought an +iced towel on her head might make her feel better. Is the dear little +thing an orphan--I mean a half orphan?" + +The assembled company seeming disinclined to respond, she repeated her +inquiry to Collier Pratt himself, as with the susceptive grace that +characterized all his movements, he swung the compress he was carrying +sharply to and fro to preserve its temperature in transit. "Is the +poor little thing a half orphan?" + +"The poor little thing is nine-tenths orphan, madam," said Collier +Pratt, "that is--the only creature to whom she can turn for protection +is the apology for a parent that you see before you. Would you mind +stepping aside and giving me a little more room to work in?" + +"Not at all." Irony was wasted on the indomitable sympathizer in blue. +"Hasn't she really anybody but you to take care of her?" + +Collier Pratt arranged the towel precisely in position over the little +girl's forehead, smoothing with careful fingers the cloud of dusky +hair that fell about her face. + +"She has not," he answered with some savagery. + +"Hasn't she any women friends or relatives that would be willing to +take charge of her?" + +"No, madam." + +"Then some woman that has no child of her own to care for ought to +adopt her, and relieve you of the responsibility. It's a shame and +disgrace the way these New York women with no natural ties of their +own go around crying for something to do, when there are sweet little +children like this suffering for a mother's care. I'd adopt her myself +if I was able to. I certainly would." + +"I'm perfectly willing to give over the technical part of her bringing +up to some one of the women whom you so feelingly describe," Collier +Pratt said. "The trouble is to find the woman--the right woman. The +vicarious mother is not the most prevalent of our modern types, I +regret to say." + +The little girl on the couch stirred softly, and the hand that Nancy +was holding, a pathetic, thin, unkempt little hand, grew warm in hers. +The lids of the big eyes fluttered and lifted. Nancy looked into their +clouded depths for an instant. Then she turned to Collier Pratt +decisively. + +"I'll take care of your little girl for you, if you will let me," she +said. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SHEILA + + +"I had _mal de mer_ when I was on the steamer," the child said, in her +pretty, painstaking English--she spoke French habitually. "I do not +like to have it on the land. The gentleman in there," she pointed to +the room beyond where Gaspard was again distressfully sleeping the +sleep of the spent after a period of the most profound physical +agitation, "he does not like to have it, too,--I mean either." + +Nancy had propped the little girl up on improvised pillows made of +coats and wraps swathed in towels and covered her with some strips of +canton flannel designed to use as "hushers" under the table +covers. As soon as the intense discomfort and nausea that had +followed the first period of faintness had passed, Nancy had +slipped off the shabby satin dress, made like the long-sleeved +kitchen apron of New England extraction, and attired the child in a +craftily simulated night-gown of table linen. Collier Pratt had +worked with her, deftly supplementing all her efforts for his little +girl's comfort until she had fallen into the exhausted sleep from +which she was only now rousing and beginning to chatter. Her father +had left her, still sleeping soundly, in Nancy's care, and gone +off to keep an appointment with a prospective picture buyer. He had +made no comment on Nancy's sudden impulsive offer to take the child +in charge, and neither she nor he had referred to the matter again. + +"Are you comfortable now, Sheila?" Nancy asked. She had expected the +child to have a French name, Suzanne or Japonette or something equally +picturesque, but she realized as soon as she heard it that Sheila was +much more suitable. The cloudy blue-black hair, and steel-blue eyes, +the slight elongation of the space between the upper lip and nose, the +dazzling satin whiteness of the skin were all Irish in their +suggestion. Was the child's mother--that other natural protector of +the child, who had died or deserted her--Nancy tried not to wonder too +much which it was that she had done,--an Irish girl, or was Collier +Pratt himself of that romantic origin? + +"_Oui_, Mademoiselle, I mean, yes, thank you. I do not think I will +say to you Miss Martin. We only say their names like that to the +people with whom we are not _intime_. We are _intime_ now, aren't we, +now that I have been so very sick _chez vous_? In Paris the +_concierge_ had a daughter that I called Mademoiselle Cherie, and we +were _very intime_. I think I would like to call you Miss Dear in +English after her." + +"I should like that very much," Nancy said. + +"I am glad the sick gentleman is called Gaspard. So many _messieurs_--I +mean gentlemen in Paris are called Gaspard, and hardly any in the +United States of America. American things are very different from +things in Paris, don't you think so, Miss Dear?" + +"I'm afraid they are," Nancy acquiesced gravely. + +"I'm afraid they are too," the child said, "but afraid is what I try +not to be of them. My father says America is full of beasts and +devils, but he does not mind because he can paint them." + +"Do you live in a studio?" Nancy asked after a struggle to prevent +herself from asking the question. She felt that she had no right to +any of the facts about Collier Pratt's existence that he did not +choose to volunteer for himself. + +"Yes, Miss Dear, but not like Paris. There we had a door that opened +into a garden, and the birds sang there, and I was allowed to go and +play. Here we have only a fire-escape, and the _concierge_ is only a +janitor and will not allow us to keep milk bottles on it. I do not +like a janitor. _Concierges_ have so much more _politesse_. Now, no +one takes care of me when father goes out, or brings me soup or +_gateaux_ when he forgets." + +"Does he forget?" Nancy cried, horrified. + +"Sometimes. He forgets himself, too, very often except dinner. He +remembers that because he likes to come to this Outside Inn +restaurant, where the cooking is so good. He brought me here to-day +because it was my birthday. I think the cooking is very good except +that I was so sick of eating it, but father swore to-day that it was +not." + +"Swore?" + +"He said damn. That is not very bad swearing. I think _nom de Dieu_ is +worse, don't you, Miss Dear?" + +"I'm going to take you up in my arms," said Nancy with sudden passion. +"I want to feel how thin you are, and I want to feel how you--feel." + +"Why, your eyes are wetting," the little girl exclaimed as she nestled +contentedly against Nancy's breast, where Nancy had gathered her, +converted table-cloth and all. + +"It's your not having enough to eat," Nancy cried. "Oh! baby child, +honey. How could they? It's your calling me Miss Dear, too," she said. +"I--I can't stand the combination." + +The child patted her cheek consolingly. + +"Don't cry," she said; "my father cries because I get so hungry, when +he forgets, but he does forget again as soon." + +"Would you like to come and live with me, Sheila?" Nancy asked. + +"I think so, Miss Dear." + +"Then you shall," Nancy said devoutly. + +Collier Pratt found his child in Nancy's arms when he again mounted +the stairs to the third floor of Outside Inn. The place was curiously +cool to one who had been walking the sun-baked streets, and he gave an +appreciative glance at the dim interior and the tableau of woman and +child. Nancy's burnished head bent gravely over the shadowy dark one +resting against her bosom. + +"All right again, is she?" he inquired with the slow rare smile that +Nancy had not seen before that day. + +"Yes," Nancy said, "she's better. She's under-nourished, that's what +the trouble is." + +"I suspected that," Collier Pratt said ruefully. "I'm not specially +talented as a parent. I feed her passionately for days, and then I +stop feeding her almost entirely. Artists in my circumstances eat +sketchily at best. The only reason that I am fed with any regularity +is that I have the habit of coming to this restaurant of yours. By the +way, is it yours? I found you in charge to-day to my amazement." + +"I am in charge to-day," Nancy acknowledged; "in fact I have taken +over the management of it for--for a friend." + +"The mysterious philanthropist." + +"Ye-es." + +"Then I will refrain from any comment on the lunch to-day." + +"Oh! that--that was a mistake," Nancy cried, "an experiment. Gaspard +the _chef_--was ill." + +"He was very ill, father, dear," Sheila added gravely, "like crossing +the Channel, much sicker than I was. I was only sick like crossing the +ocean, you know." + +"These fine distinctions," Collier Pratt said, "she's much given to +them." His eyes narrowed as they rested again on the picture Nancy +made--the cool curve of her bent neck, the rise and fall of the +breast in which the breathing had quickened perceptibly since his +coming,--the child swathed in the long folds of white linen outlined +against the Madonna blue of the dress that she was wearing. Nancy +blushed under the intentness of his gaze, understanding, thanks to +Caroline's report of his conversation with Betty, something of +what was in his mind about her. + +"Gaspard is going to be taken away in an ambulance," the child said, +"to the hospital." + +"Then who is going to cook my dinner?" Collier Pratt asked. + +"Good lord, I don't know," Nancy cried, roused to her responsibilities. + +She looked at the watch on her wrist, a platinum bracelet affair with +an octagonal face that Dick had persuaded her to accept for a +Christmas present by giving one exactly like it to Betty and Caroline. +It was twenty-five minutes of five. Dinner was served every night +promptly at half past six, and there was absolutely no preparation +made for it, not so much as a loaf of bread ordered. Instead of doing +the usual marketing in the morning she had sent Michael out for the +things that she needed in the preparation of luncheon, and planned to +make up a list of things that she needed for dinner just as soon as +her midday duties in the kitchen had set her free. She thought that +she would be more like Gaspard, "inspired to buy what is right" if she +waited until the success of her luncheon had been assured. The ensuing +events had driven the affairs of her cuisine entirely out of her mind. +She was constrained by her native tendency to concentrate on the +business in hand to the exclusion of all other matters, big and +little. She had dismissed Betty during the excitement that followed +Sheila's illness, and Betty had seemed unnaturally willing to leave +the hectic scene and go about her business. Michael had made several +ineffectual attempts to speak to her, but she had waved him away +impatiently. She knew that neither he nor any one else on the +restaurant staff would believe that she hadn't made some adequate and +mysterious provision for the serving of the night meal. She had never +failed before in the smallest detail of executive policy. She set the +child back upon the cushion, and arranged her perfunctorily in +position there. + +"I don't know _what_ you are going to have for dinner," she said, +"much less who's going to cook it for you." + +"Perhaps I had better arrange to have it elsewhere, since this seems +to be literally the cook's day out." + +"There'll be dinner," said Nancy uncertainly. + +Dick came up the stairs three at a time, and in his wake she heard the +murmur of women's voices--Caroline's and Betty's. + +"I heard you were in difficulties," Dick said, "so I made Sister Betty +and Caroline give up their perfectly good trip into the country, in +order to come around and mix in." + +"I didn't know Betty was going driving with you," Nancy said. "She +didn't say so. Oh! Dick, there isn't any dinner. I forgot all about +it. This is Mr. Collier Pratt and his little daughter,--Mr. Richard +Thorndyke. She's coming to live with me soon, I hope, and let Hitty +take care of her." + +The two men shook hands. + +"Hold on a minute," Dick said, "that paragraph is replete with +interest, but I want to get it assimilated. Sure, Betty was going +driving with me. I told her to ask you if she thought it would be any +use, but she allowed it wouldn't. I am delighted to meet Mr. Pratt, +and pleased to know that his daughter is coming to live with you, but +isn't that rather sudden? Also, what's this about there not being any +dinner?" + +"There isn't," Nancy was beginning, when she realized that Caroline +and Betty, who had followed closely on Dick's footsteps, were looking +at her with faces pale with consternation and alarm. She could see the +anticipatory collapse of Outside Inn writ large on Caroline's +expressive countenance. Caroline was the type of girl who believed +that in the very nature of things the undertakings of her most +intimate friends were doomed to failure. "There isn't any dinner yet," +Nancy corrected herself, "but you go up to my place, Dick, and get +Hitty. Tell her she's got to cook dinner for this restaurant to-night. +She can cook three courses of anything she likes, and have _carte +blanche_ in the kitchen. You have more influence with her than +anybody, so, no matter what she says, make her do it. Then when she +decides what she wants to cook, drive her around until she collects +her ingredients. She won't let anybody do the marketing for her." + +"All right," Dick said, "I'll do my best." + +"You'll have to do more than that," Betty laughed as he started off, +"but you're perfectly capable of it. How do you do, Mr. Pratt? This is +Miss Eustace, pale with apprehension about the way things are going, +but still recognizable and answering to her name." Betty always +enjoyed introducing Caroline with an audacious flourish, since +Caroline always suffered so much in the process. + +"And this is little Miss Sheila Pratt," Nancy supplemented. + +"_Enchante_," the little girl said, "I mean, I am very pleased to meet +you. I was very sick, but I am better now, and I am going to live with +Miss Dear." + +"It seems to be settled," her father said, shrugging. + +"Would you mind it so very much?" Nancy asked. + +"I wouldn't mind it at all," Collier Pratt said. "I think it would be +a delightful arrangement,--if I'm to take you seriously." + +"Nancy is always to be taken seriously," Betty put in. "What she +really wants of the child is to use her for dietetic experiment, I'm +sure." + +"That's what she's used to, poor child," Collier Pratt said ruefully. + +The removal of Gaspard created a diversion. Nancy took Sheila in to +bid him good-by, and the great creature was so touched by the farewell +kiss that she imprinted on his forehead, and the revelation of the +fact that a fellow being had been suffering kindred throes in the +chamber just beyond his own that he was of two minds about letting +himself be moved at all from her proximity. A group of waitresses +collected on the second landing, and Nancy and her friends stood +together at the head of the stairs while the white-coated intern from +the hospital rolled his great bulk upon a fragile-looking stretcher, +and with the assistance of all the male talent in the establishment, +managed to head him down the stairs, and so on across the court and +into the waiting ambulance. + +Nancy's eyes filled with inexplicable tears, and she caught Collier +Pratt regarding them with some amusement. + +"He's such a dear," she said somewhat irrelevantly. "I really didn't +care whether he was sick or not this morning,--but you get so fond of +people that are around all the time." + +"I don't," said Collier Pratt,--he spoke very lightly, but there was +something in his tone that made Nancy want to turn and look at him +intently. She seemed to see for the first time a shade of defiant +cruelty in his face,--"I don't," he reiterated. + +"I do," Nancy repeated stubbornly, but as she met his slow smile, the +slight impression of unpleasantness vanished. + +"We artists are selfish people," he said. "I'm going to run away now, +and leave my daughter to cultivate your charming friends. Will you +come and eat your dinner at my little table to-night, and talk, +discuss this matter of her visit to you?" + +"I will if there is any dinner," Nancy said, putting out a throbbing +hand to him. + +There was a dinner. It was Hitty's conception of an emergency +meal--the kind of thing that her mother before her had prepared on +wash-day when an unexpected relative alighted from the noon train, and +surprised her into inadvertent hospitality. It began with steamed +clams and melted butter sauce. Hitty knew a fish market where the +clams were imported direct from Cape Cod by the nephew of a man who +used to go to school with her husband's brother, and he warranted +every clam she bought of him. They were served in soup plates and the +drawn butter in demi-tasses, but Hitty would have it no other way. The +_piece de resistance_ was ham and eggs, great fragrant crispy slices +of ham browned faintly gold across their pinky surface, and +eggs--Hitty knew where to get country eggs, too--so white, so +golden-yolked, so tempting that it was difficult to associate them +with the prosaic process of frying, but fried they were. With them +were served boiled potatoes in their jackets,--no wash-day cook ever +removed the peeling from an emergency potato,--and afterward a course +of Hitty's famous huckleberry dumplings, the lightest, most ephemeral +balls of dumplings that were ever dipped into the blue-black deeps of +hot huckleberry--not blueberry, but country huckleberry--sauce. + +"Where's the coffee?" Nancy asked Dolly miserably, when the +humiliating meal was drawing to its close. + +"She won't make coffee," Dolly whispered; "she says it will keep +everybody awake, and they're much better off without it, but Miss +Betty, she's watching her chance, and she's making it." + +Collier Pratt had received each course in silence, but had eaten +heartily of the food that was set before him. + +"I suppose he was hungry enough to eat anything," Nancy thought; "the +lunch was humiliating enough, but this surpasses anything I dreamed +of." + +She had given up trying to estimate the calories that each man was +likely to average in partaking of Hitty's menu. She noticed that a +great many of her patrons had taken second helpings, and that threw +her out in her calculation of quantities, while the relative +digestibility of the protein and the fats in pork depend so much upon +its preparation that she could not approximate the virtue of Hitty's +bill of fare without consultation with Hitty. + +"That was a very excellent dinner," Collier Pratt broke through her +painful reverie to make his pronouncement. "Astonishing, but very +satisfactory. It reminds me of days on my grandfather's farm when I +was a youngster." + +"I should think it might," Nancy said, for the first time in her +relation with her new friend becoming ironical on her own account. +Then she added seriously, "It's Hitty, you know, that will have all +the real care of Sheila. I'm pretty busy down here, and I--" she +hesitated, half expecting him to threaten to remove his child at once +from the prospective guardianship of a creature who reverted so +readily to the barbarism of ham and eggs. + +"Well, if it's Hitty that is to have the care of Sheila," Collier +Pratt said, and Nancy was not longer puzzled as to which element of +her parentage Sheila owed her Irish complexion, "why, more power to +her!" + +Nancy dreamed that night that she was married to Dick, and that Hitty +made and served them _pate de foies gras_ dumplings, while Collier +Pratt in freckles and overalls sat in a high chair, and had his dinner +with the family. Later it was discovered that Betty had poisoned his +bread and milk, and he died in Nancy's arms in dreadful agony, +swearing in a beautiful Irish brogue that in all his life he had never +looked at another woman,--which even in her dream seemed to Nancy a +somewhat irreconcilable statement. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PORTRAIT + + +To Nancy's surprise Hitty welcomed the little girl warmly, when she +was introduced into the family circle. She liked to be busy all day, +and her duties in taking care of Nancy were not onerous enough to keep +her full energy employed. She liked children and family life, and she +seemed to have the feeling that if Nancy continued to assemble the +various parts that go to make up a family, she would end by adding to +it the essential masculine element, though it was Dick and not Collier +Pratt that she visualized at the head of the table cutting up Sheila's +meat for her. Collier Pratt was to her a necessary but insignificant +detail in Nancy's scheme of things, a poor artist who had "frittered +away so much time in furrin parts" that he was incapable of supporting +his only child--"poor little motherless lamb!"--in anything like a +befitting and adequate manner. Whenever he came to see Sheila she +treated him with the condescension of a poor relation, and served his +tea in the second best china with the kitchen silver and linen, unless +Nancy caught her at it in time to demand the best. + +Nancy had expected that Collier Pratt would try to make some business +arrangement with her when she took Sheila in charge,--that he would +insist on paying her at least a nominal sum a week for the child's +board. She had lain awake nights planning the conversations with him +in which she would overcome his delicate but natural scruples in the +matter and persuade him to her own way of thinking. She had even fixed +on the smallest sum--two dollars and a half a week--at which she +thought she might induce him to compromise, if all her eloquence +failed. She knew that he considered her the hard working, paid manager +of Outside Inn, and took it for granted that she had no other source +of income. She was a little disconcerted that he made no effort, +beyond thanking her sincerely and simply for her kindness, to put the +matter on a more concrete basis, but when he told her presently that +he was going to do a portrait of her, she scourged herself for her New +England perspective on an affair that he handled with so much +delicacy. + +Her friends were, on the whole, pleased with her experiment in +vicarious motherhood. Dick instinctively resented the fact that Nancy +had taken Collier Pratt's daughter into her home and heart, but the +child herself was a delight to him, and he spent hours romping with +her and telling her stories, loading her with toys and sweetmeats, and +taking her off for enchanting holiday excursions "over the Palisades +and far away." Billy was hardly less diverted with her, and Betty +regarded her advent as a provision on the part of Providence against +things becoming too commonplace. Caroline, as was her wont, took the +child very seriously, and tried to interest Nancy in all the latest +educational theories for her development, including posture dancing, +and potato raising. + +Nancy herself had loved the child from the moment the big lustrous +gray eyes opened, on the day of her sudden illness at Outside Inn, and +looked confidingly up into hers. For the first time in her life her +maternal ardor--the instinct which made her yearn to nourish and +minister to a race--had concentrated on a single human being. Sheila, +hungry for mothering, had turned to her with the simplicity of the +people among whom she had been brought up, taking her sympathetic +response as a matter of course; and the two were soon on the closest, +most affectionate terms. + +Sheila and Outside Inn divided Nancy's time to the practical exclusion +of all other interests. She had, without realizing her processes, +taken into her life artificial responsibilities in almost exact +proportion to the normal ones of any woman who makes the choice of +marriage rather than that of a career. She was doing housekeeping on a +large scale,--she had a child to care for, and she felt that she had +entirely disproved any lingering feeling in the mind of any one +associated with her that she ought to marry,--at least that she ought +to marry Dick. + +No woman ought to marry for the sake of marrying, but she was growing +to understand now that the experiences of love and marriage might be +necessary to the true development of a woman like herself; that there +might even be some tragedy in missing them. She was twenty-five, +practically alone in the world, and the growing passion of her life +was for a child that she had borrowed, and might be constrained to +relinquish at any moment. + +She was tired. The unaccustomed confinement of the long hours at the +Inn, the strain of enduring the thick, almost unalleviated heat of an +exceptionally humid New York summer, and the tension engendered by her +various executive responsibilities, all told on her physically, and +her physical condition in its turn reacted on her mind, till she was +conscious of a nostalgia,--a yearning and a hunger for something that +she could not understand or name, but that was none the less +irresistible. She fell into strange moods of brooding and lassitude; +but there were two connections in which her spirit and ambition never +failed her. She never failed of interest in the distribution of food +values to her unconscious patrons, and incidentally to Collier Pratt, +or in directing the activities and diversions of Sheila. + +She bathed and dressed the child with her own hands every morning, +combed out the cloudy black hair, fine spun and wavy, that framed the +delicate face, and accentuated the dazzling white and pink of her +coloring. She had bought her a complete new wardrobe--she was spending +money freely now on every one but herself--venturing on one dress at a +time in fear and trepidation lest Collier Pratt should suddenly call +her to account for her interference with his rights as a parent, but +he seemed entirely oblivious of the fact that Sheila had changed her +shabby studio black for the most cobwebby of muslins and linens, +frocks that by virtue of their exquisite fineness cost Nancy +considerably more than her own. + +"I say to my father, 'See the pretty new gown that Miss Dear bought +for me,' and my father says to me, 'Comb your hair straight back from +your brow, and don't let your arms dangle from your shoulders.'" +Sheila complained, "He sees so hard the little things that nobody +sees--and big things like a dress or a hat he does not notice." + +"Men are like that," Nancy said. "Last night when I put on my new +rose-colored gown for the first time, your friend Monsieur Dick told +me he had always liked that dress best of all." + +"_Comme il est drole_, Monsieur Dick," Sheila said; "he asked me to +grow up and marry him some day. He said I should sit on a cushion and +sew a fine seam, and feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream--like +the poetry." + +"And what did you say?" Nancy asked. + +"I said that I thought I should like to marry him if I ever got to be +big enough,--but I was afraid I should not be bigger for a long time. +Miss Betty said she would marry him if I was _trop petite_." + +"What did Dick say to that?" Nancy could not forbear asking. + +"He said she was very kind, and maybe the time might come when he +would think seriously of her offer." + +There was a feeling in Nancy's breast as if her heart had suddenly got +up and sat down again. Betty bore no remotest resemblance to the pale +kind girl, practically devoid of feminine allure, that Nancy had +visualized as the mate for Dick, and frequently exhorted him to go in +search of. + +"Miss Betty was only making a joke," she told Sheila sharply. + +"We were all making jokes, Miss Dear," Sheila explained. + +"I have never loved any one in the world quite so much as I love you, +Sheila," Nancy cried in sudden passion as the little girl turned her +face up to be kissed, as she always did when the conversation puzzled +her. + +"I like being loved," Sheila said, sighing happily. "My father loves +me,--when he is not painting or eating. He is very good to me, I +think." + +"Your father is a very wise man, Sheila," Nancy said, "he understands +beautiful things that other people don't know anything about. He looks +at a flower and knows all about it, and--and what it needs to make it +flourish. He looks at people that way, too." + +"But he doesn't always have time to get the flower what it wants," +Sheila said; "my jessamine died in Paris because he forgot to water +them." + +"Your father needs taking care of himself, Sheila. We must plan ways +of trying to make him more comfortable. Don't you think of something +that he needs that we could get for him?" + +"More socks--he would like," Sheila said unexpectedly. "When his socks +get holes in them he will not wear them. He stops whatever he is doing +to mend them, and the mends hurt him. He mends my stockings, too, +sometimes, but I like better the holes especially when he mends them +on my feet." + +Sheila could have presented no more appealing picture of her father to +Nancy's vivid imagination. Collier Pratt with the incongruous sewing +equipment of the unaccustomed male, using, more than likely, black +darning cotton on a white sock--Nancy's mental pictures were always +full of the most realistic detail--bent tediously over a child's +stocking, while the precious sunlight was streaming unheeded upon the +waiting canvas. She darned very badly herself, but the desire was not +less strong in her to take from him all these preposterous and +unbefitting tasks, and execute them with her own hands. She stared at +the child fixedly. + +"You buy him some socks out of your allowance," she said at last. Then +she added an anxious and inadequate "Oh, dear!" + +"Aren't you happy?" Sheila asked in unconscious imitation of Dick, +with whom she had been spending most of her time for days, while Nancy +superintended the additions and improvements she was making in the +up-stairs quarters of her Inn, preparatory to moving in for the +winter. + +"Yes, I'm happy," Nancy said, "but I'm sort of--stirred, too. I wish +you were my own little girl, Sheila. I think I'll take you with me to +the Inn to-day. You might melt and trickle away if I left you alone +here with Hitty." + +"_Quelle joie!_ I mean, how nice that will be! Then I can talk about +Paris to Gaspard, and he will give me some baba, with a _soupcon of +maraschine_ in the sauce, if you will tell him that I may, Miss Dear." + +"I'll think about it." It was Nancy's dearest privilege to be asked +and grant permission for such indulgences. "Put on that floppy white +hat with the yellow ribbon, and take your white coat." + +"When I had only one dress to wear I suppose I got just as dirty," +Sheila reflected, "only it didn't show on black satin. Now I can tell +just how dirty I am by looking. I make lots of washing, Miss Dear." + +"Yes, thank heaven," Nancy said, unaccountably tearful of a sudden. + +The first part of the day at the Inn went much like other days. +Gaspard, eager to retrieve the record of the week when Hitty and a +Viennese pastry cook had divided the honors of preparing the daily +menus between them--for Nancy had never again attempted the +feat--never let a day go by without making a new _plat de jour_ or +inventing a sauce; was in the throes of composing a new casserole, and +it was a pleasure to watch him deftly sifting and sorting his +ingredients, his artist's eyes aglow with the inward fire of +inspiration. Nancy called all the waitresses together and offered +them certain prizes and rewards for all the buttermilk, and prunes +and other health dishes that they were able to distribute among +ailing patrons,--with the result they were over assiduous at the +luncheon hour, and a red-headed young man with gold teeth made a +disturbance that it took both Hilda and Michael, who appeared +suddenly in his overalls from the upper regions where he was +constructing window-boxes, to quell. But these incidents were not +sufficiently significant to make the day in any way a memorable +one to Nancy. It took a telephone message from Collier Pratt, +requesting, nay demanding, her presence in his studio for the first +sitting on her portrait, to make the day stand out upon her calendar. + +"Sheila is with me. Shall I bring her?" Nancy asked. + +"No," Collier Pratt said uncompromisingly, "I am not a parent at this +hour. She would disturb me." + +"What shall I wear?" + +"What have you got on?" + +"That blue crepe, made surplice,--the one you liked the other night." + +"That's just what I want--Madonna blue. Can you get down here in +fifteen minutes?" + +"Yes, I'll send Michael up-town with Sheila." + +The bare, ramshackle studio on Washington Square shocked her,--it was +so comfortless, so dingy; but the canvases on the walls, set up +against the wainscoting, stacked on every available chair, gave her a +new and almost appalling impression of his personality, and the +peculiar poignant power of him. She could not appraise them, or get +any real sense of their quality apart from the astounding revelation +of the man behind the work. + +"They're wonderful!" she gasped, but "You're wonderful" were the words +she stifled on her lips. + +He painted till the light failed him. + +"It's this diffused glow,--this gentle, faded afternoon light that I +want," he said. "I want you to emerge from your background as if you +had bloomed out of it that very moment. Oh! I've got you at your hour, +you know! The prescient maternal--that's what I want. The conscious +moment when a woman becomes aware that she is potentially a mother. +Sheila's done that for you. She's brought it out in you. It was ready, +it was waiting there before, but now it's come. It's wonderful!" + +"Yes," Nancy said, "it's--it's come." + +"It hasn't been done, you know. It's a modern conception, of course; +but they all do the thing realized, or incipient. I want to do it +_implicit_--that's what I want. I might have searched the whole world +over and not found it." + +"Well, here I am," said Nancy faintly. + +"Yes, here you are," Collier Pratt responded out of the fervor of his +artist's absorption. + +"It's rather a personal matter to me," Nancy ventured some seconds +later. + +Collier Pratt turned from the canvas he was contemplating, and looked +at her, still posed as he had placed her, upright, yet relaxed in the +scooped chair that held her without constraining her. + +"Like a flower in a vase," he said; "to me you're a wonderful +creature." + +"I'm glad you like me," Nancy said, quivering a little. "This is a +rather uncommon experience to me, you know, being looked at so +impersonally. Now please don't say that I'm being American." + +"But, good God! I don't look at you impersonally." + +"Don't you?" Nancy meant her voice to be light, and she was appalled +to hear the quaver in it. + +"You know I don't." He glanced toward a dun-colored curtain evidently +concealing shelves and dishes. "Let's have some tea." + +"I can't stay for tea." Nancy felt her lips begin to quiver +childishly, but she could not control their trembling. "Oh! I had +better go," she said. + +Collier Pratt took one step toward her. Then he turned toward the +canvas. Nancy read his mind like a flash. + +"You're afraid you'll disturb the--what you want to paint," she said +accusingly. + +"I am." He smiled his sweet slow smile, then he took her stiff +interlaced hands and raised them, still locked together, to his lips +where he kissed them gently, one after the other. "Will you forgive +me?" he asked, and pushed her gently outside of his studio door. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BILLY AND CAROLINE + + +It was one night in middle October when Billy and Caroline met by +accident on Thirty-fourth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. +Caroline stood looking into a drug-store window where an automatic +mannikin was shaving himself with a patent safety razor. + +"There's a wax feller going to bed in an automatic folding settee, a +little farther down the street," Billy offered gravely at her elbow; +"and on Forty-second Street there is a real live duck pond advertising +the advantages of electric heaters in the home." + +"H'lo," said Caroline, who was colloquial only in moments of real +pleasure or excitement. "I've just written to you. I asked you to come +and see me to-morrow evening," she added more seriously, "to talk +about something that's weighing on my mind." + +"I'm going out with a blonde to-morrow, night," Billy said speciously, +"but what's the matter with to-night? I'm free until six-fifty A. M. +and I could spare an hour or two between then and breakfast time." + +"I can't to-night," Caroline said, "I promised Nancy to dine at the +Inn." + +"That wasn't your line at all," Billy groaned. "Who's the blonde?--that +was your cue. If it's only Nancy you're dining with--that can be +fixed." + +"I regard an engagement with Nancy as just as sacred as--" + +"So do I," Billy cut in. "She is the blonde. Well, let to-morrow night +be as it may; let's you and I call up the Nancy girl now and tell her +that we're going batting together; she won't care." + +"I don't like doing that," Caroline said; "it's a nice night for a +bat, though." + +"I walked down Murray Hill and saw the sun set in a nice pinky gold +setting," Billy said artfully. Caroline liked to have him get an +artistic perspective on New York. "Let's walk down the avenue to the +Cafe des Artistes and have Emince Bernard, and a long wide high, tall +drink of--ginger ale," he finished lamely. + +"We'd have to telephone Nancy," Caroline hesitated. + +Billy took her by the arm and guided her into the interior of the +drug-store to the side aisle where the telephones were, and stepped +into the first empty booth that offered. Caroline stopped him firmly +as he was about to shut himself inside. + +"I'd rather hear what you say," she said. + +Billy slipped his nickel in the slot and took up the receiver. + +"Madison Square 3403 doesn't answer," Central informed him crisply +after an interval. + +"Oh! Nancy, dear," Billy replied softly into her astonished ear. +"Caroline and I are going off by ourselves to-night, you don't care, +do you?" + +"Ringing thr-r-ree-four-o-thr-r-ee, Madison Square." + +"That's nice of you," Billy responded heartily. "I thought you'd say +that." + +"Madison Square thr-r-ree-four-o-t-h-r-r-ree doesn't answer. Hang up +your receiver and I'll call you if I get the party." + +"Of course I will. You're always so tactful in the way you put things, +always so generous and kind and thoughtful. I can't tell you how much +I appreciate it." + +"What did Nancy say?" Caroline asked, as they turned away from the +booth. + +"You heard my end of the conversation," Billy said blandly. "You can +deduce hers from it." + +"There was something about your end of the conversation that sounded +queer to me somehow. It was odd that Central should have returned your +nickel to you after you had talked so long." + +"Yes, wasn't it?" Billy asked innocently. "Well, I suppose mistakes +will happen in the best regulated telephone companies." + +"I like you," Billy said contentedly, as the lights of the avenue +strung themselves out before them. "I like walking down this royal +thoroughfare with you. You're a kind of a neutral girl, but I like +you." + +"You're a kind of ridiculous boy." + +"Don't you like me a little bit?" + +"Yes, a little." + +"What did you get engaged to me for if you only like me a little?" + +"Ought not to be engaged to you. That's one of the things I want to +talk to you about." + +"Well, you are engaged to me, and that's one of the things I don't +care to discuss--even with you." + +"Oh! Billy," Caroline sighed, "why can't we be just good friends and +see a good deal of each other without this perpetual argument about +getting married?" + +"I don't know why we can't, but we can't," Billy said firmly. "What +was the other thing you wanted to talk to me about?" + +"Nancy's affairs. The reckless--the criminal way she is running that +restaurant, and the unthinkable expenditure of money involved. I can't +sleep at night thinking of it." + +"And I thought this was going to be a pleasant evening," Billy cried +to the stars. + +"I wish you'd be serious about this," Caroline said. "Nancy's the best +friend I have in the world, and she doesn't seem to be quite right in +her mind, Billy. Of course, I approve of a good part of her scheme. I +believe that she can be of incalculable value as a pioneer in an +enterprise of this sort. Her restaurant is based on a strictly +scientific theory, and every person who patronizes it gets a balanced +ration, if he has the good sense to eat it as it's served." + +"And not leave any protein on his plate," Billy murmured. + +"I don't even mind the slight extra expenditure and the deficit that +is bound to follow her theory of stuffing all her subnormal patrons +with additional nourishment. That is charity. I believe in devoting a +certain amount of one's income to charity, but what I mind about the +whole proceeding is the crazy way that Nancy is running it. She's not +even trying to break even. She orders all the delicacies of the +season--no matter what they are. She's paid an incredible amount for +the new set of carved chairs she has bought for up-stairs. You'd think +she had an unlimited fortune behind her, instead of being in a +position where the sheriff may walk in upon her any day." + +"Handy men to have around the house,--sheriffs. I knew a deputy +sheriff once that helped the lady of the house do a baby wash while he +was standing around in charge of the place. All the servants had +deserted, and--" + +"You pretend to be Nancy's friend, and you're the only thing remotely +approaching a lawyer that she has, and yet you can shake with joy at +the thought of her going into bankruptcy." + +"That isn't what I'm shaking with joy about." + +"Nancy must have spent at least twice the amount of her original +investment." + +"Just about," Billy agreed cheerfully. + +Caroline turned large reproachful eyes on him. + +"Billy, how can you?" + +"Listen to me, Caroline, honey love, it will be all right. Nancy isn't +so crazy as she seems. She is running wild a little, I admit, but +there's no danger of the sheriff or any other disaster. She knows what +she's doing, and she's playing safe, though I admit it's an +extraordinary game." + +"She's unhappy," Caroline said. "You don't suppose she's going to +marry Dick to get out of the scrape, and that she's suffering because +she's had to make that compromise." + +"No, I don't," said Billy. + +"I can't imagine anything more dreadful than to give up your +career--your independence because you were beaten before you could +demonstrate it." + +"Let's go right in here," Billy said, guiding her by the arm through +the door of the grill of the Cafe des Artistes which she was ignoring +in her absorption. + +It was early but the place was already crowded with the assortment of +upper cut Bohemians, Frenchmen, and other discriminating diners to +whom the cafe owed its vogue. Billy and Caroline found a snowy table +by the window, a table so small that it scarcely seemed to separate +them. + +"If it's Dick that Nancy's depending on," Caroline shook out her +mammoth napkin vigorously, "then I think the whole situation is +dreadful." + +"I don't see why," Billy argued; "have him to fall back on--that's +what men are for." + +"Your opinion of women, Billy Boynton, just about tallies with the +most conservative estimate of the Middle Ages." + +"Charmed, I'm sure," he grinned, then his evil genius prompting, he +continued. "Isn't that just about what you have me for--to fall back +on? You're fond of me. You know I'll be there if the bottom drops out. +You're sure of me, and you're holding me in reserve against the time +when you feel like concentrating your attention on me." + +"Is that what you think?" + +"Sure, it's the way it is. If I haven't got any kick coming I don't +see why you should have any. You're worth it to me. That's the +point." + +Caroline opened her lips to speak, and then thought better of it. The +dangerous glint in her pellucid hazel eyes was lost on Billy. He was +watching the clear cool curve of her cheek, the smooth brown hair +brushed up from the temple, and tucked away under the smart folds of a +premature velvet turban. + +"I like those mouse-colored clothes of yours," he said contentedly. + +"I think the only reason a woman should marry a man is that +she--she--" + +"Likes him?" Billy suggested. + +"No, that she can be of more use in the world married than single. She +can't be that unless she's going to marry a man who is entirely in +sympathy with her point of view." + +"That I know to be unsound," Billy said. "Caroline, my love, this is a +bat. Can't we let these matters of the mind rest for a little? See, +I've ordered _Petite Marmite_, and afterward an artichoke, and all the +nice fattening things that Nancy won't let me eat." + +"I wish you'd tell me about Nancy," Caroline said. "It makes a lot of +difference. You haven't any idea how much difference it makes." + +"See the nice little brown pots with the soup in them," Billy implored +her. "Cheese, too, all grated up so fine and white. Sprinkle it in +like little snow-flakes." + +But in spite of all Billy's efforts the evening went wrong after that. +Caroline was wrapped in a mantle of sorrowful meditation the opacity +of which she was not willing to let Billy penetrate for a moment. +After they had dined they took a taxi-cab up-town and danced for an +hour on the smooth floor of one of the quieter hotels. Billy's dancing +being of that light, sure, rhythmic quality that should have installed +him irrevocably in the regard of any girl who had ever danced with a +man who performed less admirably. Caroline liked to dance and fell in +step with an unexpected docility, but even in his arms, dipping, +pivoting, swaying to the curious syncopation of modern dance time, she +was as remote and cool as a snow maiden. + +At the table on the edge of the dancing platform where they sat +between dances, Billy pledged her in nineteen-four _Chablis Mouton_. + +"This is what you look like," he said, holding up his glass to the +light, "or perhaps I ought to say what you act like,--clear, cold +stuff,--lovely, but not very sweet." + +"If it's Dick,"--Caroline refused to be diverted--"Nancy is merely +taking the easiest way out. Just getting married because she hasn't +the courage to go through any other way. She and Dick have hardly a +taste in common--they don't even read the same books." + +"What difference does that make?" + +"If you don't know I can't tell you. When you see somebody else in +danger of following the same course of action that you, yourself, are +pursuing," she added cryptically, "it puts a new face on your own +affairs." + +"Oh! let's get out of here," Billy said, signaling for his check. + +Caroline lived, for the summer while her family were away, in an +elaborate Madison Avenue boarding-house. The one big room into +which the entrance gave, dim and palatial in effect--at least in +the light of the single gas-jet turned economically low--seemed +scarcely to present a departure from its prototype, the great +living hall of the private residence for which the house was +originally designed. It was only on the second floor that the +character of the establishment became unmistakable. Billy took +Caroline's latchkey from her,--she usually opened the door for +herself--and let her quietly into the dim interior. Then he +stepped inside himself, and closed the door gently after him. +Being a man he entirely failed to note the drift of psychological +straws that indicated the sudden sharp turn of the wind, and the +presage of storm in the air. He was thinking only of the illusive, +desirable, maddening quality of the girl that walked beside him, +filled with inexplicable forebodings for a friend, whom he knew to +be invulnerable to misfortune. Certain phrases of Dick's were ringing +in his ears to the exclusion of all more immediate conversational +fragments. + +"Cave-man stuff--that's the answer to you and Caroline.... This +watchful waiting's entirely the wrong idea...." + +Billy made a great lunge toward the figure of his fiancee, and caught +her in his arms. + +"I've never really kissed you before," he cried, "now I shan't let you +go." + +She struggled in his arms, but he mastered her. He covered her cool +brow with kisses, her hands, the lovely curve of her neck where the +smooth hair turned upward, and at last--her lips. + +"You're mine, my girl," he exulted, "and nothing, nothing, nothing +shall ever take you away from me now." + +There was a click in the latch of the door through which they had just +entered. Another belated boarder was making his way into the domicile +which he had chosen as a substitute for the sacred privacy of home. +Caroline tore herself out of Billy's arms just in time to exchange +greetings with the incoming guest with some pretense of composure. He +was a fat man with an umbrella which clattered against the balusters +as he ascended the carved staircase. + +"Caught with the goods," Billy tried to say through lips stiffened in +an effort at control. + +Caroline turned on him, her face blazing with anger, the transfiguring +white rage of the woman whose spiritual fastnesses have been invaded +through the approach of the flesh. + +"There is no way of my ever forgiving you," she said. "No way of my +ever tolerating you, or anything you stand for again. You are +utterly--utterly--utterly detestable in my eyes." + +"Is--is that so?" Billy stammered, dizzied by the suddenness of the +onslaught. + +"I--I've got some decent hold on my pride and self-respect--even if +Nancy hasn't, and I'm not going to be subjugated like a cave woman by +mere brute force either." + +"Aren't you?" said Billy weakly, his mind in a whirl still from the +lightning-like overthrow of all his theories of action. + +"I'm not going to do what Nancy is going to do, just out of sheer +temperamental weakness, and--and tendency to follow the line of least +resistance." + +Billy had no idea of the significance of her last phrase, and let it +go unheeded. Caroline turned and walked away from him, her head high. + +"But, good lord, Nancy isn't going to do it," he called after her +retreating figure, but all the answer he got was the silken swish of +her petticoat as she took the stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +MORE CAVE-MAN STUFF + + +When Nancy left Collier Pratt's studio on the day of her first sitting +for the portrait he was to do of her, she never expected to enter it +again. She was in a panic of hurt pride and anger at his handling of +the situation that had developed there, and in a passion of +self-disgust that she had been responsible for it. + +It was a simple fact of her experience that the men she knew valued +her favors, and exerted themselves to win them. She had always had +plenty of suitors, or at least admirers who lacked only a few smiles +of encouragement to make suitors of them, and she was accustomed to +the consideration of the desirable woman, whose privilege it is to +guide the conversation into personal channels, or gently deflect it +therefrom. An encounter in which she could not find her poise was as +new as it was bewildering to her. + +From the moment that she had begun to realize Collier Pratt's +admiration for her she had scarcely given a thought to any other man. +With the insight of the artist he had seen straight into the heart of +Nancy's secret--the secret that she scarcely knew herself until he +translated it for her, the most obvious secret that a prescient +universe ever throbbed with,--that a woman is not fulfilled until she +is a mate and a mother. The nebulous urge of her spirit had been +formulated. In Nancy's world there was no abstract sentimentality--if +this man indulged himself in emotional regret for her frustrated +womanhood--she called it that to herself--it must in some way concern +him. She had never in her life been troubled by a condition that she +was not eager to ameliorate, and she could not conceive of an +emotional interest in an individual disassociated from a certain +responsibility for that individual's welfare. She took Collier Pratt's +growing tenderness for her for granted, and dreamed exultant dreams of +their romantic association. + +The scene in the studio had shocked her only because he put his art +first. He had taken a lover's step toward her, and then glancing at +the crudely splotched canvas from which his ideal of her was presently +to emerge, he had thought better of it, soothing her with caresses as +if she were a child, and like a child dismissing her. She felt that +she never wanted to see again the man who could so confuse and +humiliate her. But this mood did not last. As the days went on, and +she feverishly recapitulated the circumstances of the episode, she +began to feel that it was she who had failed to respond to the +beautiful opportunity of that hour. She had inspired the soul of an +artist with a great concept of womanhood, and had, in effect, demanded +an immediate personal tribute from him. He had been wise to deflect +the emotion that had sprung up within them both. After the picture was +done--. She became eager to show him that she understood and wanted to +help him conserve the impression of her from which his inspiration had +come, and when he asked her to go to the studio again the following +week she rejoiced that she had another chance to prove to him how +simply she could behave in the matter. + +She looked in the mirror gravely every night after she had done her +hair in the prescribed pig-tails to try to determine whether or not +the look he had discovered in her face was still there,--the look of +implicit maternity that she had been fortunate enough to reflect and +symbolize for him,--but she was unable to come to any decision about +it. Her face looked to her much as it had always looked--except that +her brow and temples seemed to have become more transparent and the +blue veins there seemed to be outlined with an even bluer brush than +usual. + +She was busier than she had ever been in her life. The volume of her +business was swelling. With the return of the native to the city of +his adoption--there is no native New Yorker in the strict sense of the +word--Outside Inn was besieged by clamorous patrons. Gaspard, with the +adaptability of his race, had evolved what was practically a perfect +system of presenting the balanced ration to an unconscious populace, +and the populace was responding warmly to his treatment. It had taken +him a little time to gauge the situation exactly, to adapt the supply +to the idiosyncrasies of the composite demand, but once he had +mastered his problem he dealt with it inspiredly. His southern +inheritance made it possible for him to apprehend if he could not +actually comprehend the taste of a people who did not want the flavor +of nutmeg in their cauliflower, and who preferred cocoanut in their +custard pie, and he realized that their education required all the +diplomacy and skill at his command. + +Nancy found him unexpectedly intelligent about the use of her tables. +He grasped the essential fact that the values of food changed in the +process of cooking, and that it was necessary to Nancy's peace of mind +to calculate the amount of water absorbed in preparing certain +vegetables, and that the amount of butter and cream introduced in +their preparation was an important factor in her analysis. He also +nodded his head with evident appreciation when she discoursed to him +of the optimum amount of protein as opposed to the actual requirements +in calories of the average man, but she never quite knew whether the +matter interested him, or his native politeness constrained him to +listen to her smilingly as long as she might choose to claim his +attention. But the fact remained that there was no such cooking in any +restaurant in New York of high or low degree, as that which Gaspard +provided, and as time went on, and he realized that expense was not a +factor in Nancy's conception of a successfully conducted restaurant, +the reputation of Outside Inn increased by leaps and bounds. + +To Nancy's friends--with the exception, of course, of Billy, who was +in her confidence--the whole business became more and more puzzling. +Caroline, her susceptibility to vicarious distress being augmented by +the sensitiveness of her own emotional state, yearned and prayed over +her alternately. Betty, avid of excitement, spent her days in the +pleasurable anticipation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on Dick, +however, that the actual strain came. He saw Nancy growing paler and +more ethereal each day, on her feet from morning till night +manipulating the affairs of an enterprise that seemed to be assuming +more preposterous proportions every hour of its existence. He made +surreptitious estimates of expenditures and suffered accordingly, +approximating the economic unsoundness of the Inn by a very close +figure, and still Nancy kept him at arm's length and flouted all his +suggestions for easing, what seemed to him now, her desperate +situation. + +He managed to pick her up in his car one day with Sheila, and +persuaded her to a couple of hours in the open. She was on her way +home from the Inn, and had meant to spend that time resting and +dressing before she went back to consult with Gaspard concerning the +night meal. She had no complaint to make now of the usurpation of her +authority or the lack of actual executive service that was required of +her. With the increase in the amount of business that the Inn was +carrying she found that every particle of her energy was necessary to +get through the work of the day. + +"I'm worried about you," Dick said, as they took the long ribbon of +road that unfurled in the direction of Yonkers, and Nancy removed her +hat to let the breeze cool her distracted brow. His man Williams, was +driving. + +"Well, don't tell me so," she answered a trifle ungraciously. + +"Miss Dear is cross to-day," Sheila explained. "The milk did not come +for Gaspard to make the poor people's custard, _creme renverse_, he +makes--deliciously good, and we give it to the clerking girls." + +"The buttermilk cultures were bad," Nancy said. "And I wasn't able to +get any of the preparations of it, that I can trust. There are one or +two people that ought to have it every day and their complexions show +it if they don't." + +"I suppose so," Dick said, with a grimace. + +"These people who have worked in New York all summer have run pretty +close to their margin of energy. You've no idea what a difference a +few calories make to them, or how closely I have to watch them, and +when I have to substitute an article of diet for the thing they've +been used to, it's awfully hard to get them to take it." + +"I should think it might be," Dick said. "It's true about people who +have worked in New York all summer, though. I have--and you have." + +"Oh! I'm all right," Nancy said. + +"So am I," Sheila said, "and so is Monsieur Dick, _n'est-ce pas_?" + +"_Vraiment, Mademoiselle."_ + +"Father isn't very right, though. Even when Miss Dear has all the +beautiful things in the most beautiful colors in the world cooked for +him and sent to him, he won't eat them unless she comes and sits +beside him and begs him." + +"He's very fond of _sauce verte_," Nancy said hastily, "and _apricot +mousse_ and _cepes et pimentos_, things that Gaspard can't make for +the regular menu,--bright colored things that Sheila loves to look +at." + +"He likes _petit pois avec laitue_ too and _haricot coupe_, and +_artichaut mousselaine_. Sometimes when he does not want them Miss +Dear eats them." + +"I'm glad they are diverted to some good use," Dick said. + +"I've been looking into the living conditions of my waitresses." Nancy +changed the subject hastily. "Did you realize, Dick, that the +waitresses have about the unfairest deal of any of the day laborers? +They're not organized, you know. Their hours are interminable, the +work intolerably hard, and the compensation entirely inadequate. +Moreover, they don't last out for any length of time. I'm trying out a +new scheme of very short shifts. Also, I'm having a certain sum of +money paid over to them every month from my bank. If they don't know +where it comes from it can't do them any harm. That is, I am not +establishing a precedent for wages that they won't be able to earn +elsewhere. I consider it immoral to do that." + +"You are paying them an additional sum of money out of your own +pocket? You told me you paid them the maximum wage, anyhow, and they +get lots of tips." + +"Oh! but that's not nearly enough." + +"Nancy," Dick said dramatically, "where do you get the money?" + +"Oh, I don't know," Nancy said, "it comes along. The restaurant makes +some." + +"Very little." + +"I could make it pay any time that I wanted to." + +"Sometimes I wonder if you are in full possession of your senses." + +"Caroline is affected that way, too. I feel that she is likely to get +an alienist in at any time. She is so earnest in anything she +undertakes. She and Billy have had a scrap, did you know it?" + +"I didn't." + +"Billy wants to marry her, and he has shocked her delicate feelings by +suggesting it to her." + +"I imagine you have a good deal to do with her feelings on the +subject," Dick said gloomily. "I suppose at heart you don't believe in +marriage, or think you don't and you've communicated the poison to +Caroline." + +"I've done nothing of the kind," Nancy insisted warmly. "I do believe +in marriage with all my heart. I think the greatest service any woman +can render her kind in this mix-up age is to marry one man and make +that marriage work by taking proper scientific care of him and his +children." + +"This is news to me," Dick said. "I thought that _you_ thought that +the greatest service a woman could do was to run Outside Inn, and +stuff all the derelicts with calories." + +"That's a service, too." + +"Sure." + +They were out beyond the stately decay of the up-town drive, with its +crumbling mansions and the disheveled lawns surrounding them, beyond +the view of the most picturesque river in the world, though, +comparatively speaking, the least regarded, covering the prosaic +stretch of dusty road between Van Courtland Park and the town of +Yonkers. + +"I like the _Bois_ better," Sheila said, "but I like Central Park +better than the _Champs Elysees_. In Paris the children are not so gay +as the grown-up people. Here it is the grown-up people who are without +smiles on the streets." + +"Why is that, Dick?" Nancy asked. + +"That's always true of the maturer races, the gaiety of the French is +appreciative enthusiasm,--if I may invent a phrase. The children +haven't developed it." + +"I would like to have my hand held, Monsieur Dick," Sheila announced. +"I always feel homesick when I think about Paris. I was so contente +and so _malheureuse_ there." + +"Why were you unhappy, sweetest?" Nancy asked. + +"My father says I am never to speak of those things, and so I +don't--even to Miss Dear, my _bien aimee_." + +Dick lifted Sheila into his lap, he took the hand that still clung to +Nancy's in his warm palm, and held them both there caressingly. + +"My _bien aimee_," he said softly. + +Beyond the town a more gracious and magnificent country revealed +itself; lovely homes set high on sweeping terraces, private parks and +gardens and luxuriant estates, all in a blaze of October radiance with +the glorious pigments of the season. + +"Isn't it time to go back?" Nancy asked. + +"Not yet," Dick said. "I want to show you something. There's an old +place here I want you to see. That colonial house set way back in the +trees there." + +"Williams is driving in," Nancy said as they approached it. + +"He's been here before." + +"Are we going to get out?" Sheila asked. + +Dick was already opening the door of the tonneau and assisting Nancy +out of the car. + +"I'm going to leave Sheila with Williams, and take you over the house, +Nancy. She'll be more interested in the grounds than she would in the +interior. I want you to see the inside." + +He took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the stately door. +Everything about the place was gigantic, stately,--the huge columns +that supported the roof of the porch, the big elms that flanked it, +and the great entrance hall, as they stepped into its majestic +enclosure. + +"It's a biggish sort of place, isn't it?" Nancy said. + +"But it's rather lovely, don't you think so?" Dick asked anxiously. +"These old places are getting increasingly hard to find,--real old +homes, dignified and beautiful, within a reasonable distance from +town." + +"It is lovely," Nancy said, "it could be made perfectly wonderful to +live in. I can see this big hall--furnished in mahogany or even carved +oak that was old enough. Thank heaven, we're no longer slaves to a +_period_ in our decorating; we can use anything that's beautiful and +suitable and not intrinsically incongruous with a clear conscience." + +"Come up-stairs." + +Nancy lingered on the landing of the fine old staircase, white +banistered with a mahogany hand-rail, that turned only once before it +led into the region up-stairs. + +"I'd rather see the kitchen," she said. + +"The kitchen isn't the thing that I'm proudest of. Its plumbing is +early English, or Scottish, I'm afraid. I think this arrangement up +here is delightful. See these front suites, one on either side of the +hall. Bedroom, dressing-room, sitting-room. Which do you like best? I +thought perhaps I might take the one that overlooks the orchard." + +Nancy stopped still on her way from window to window. + +"Dick Thorndyke, whose house _is_ this?" she demanded. + +"Mine." + +"Yours--have you bought it?" + +"Yes, I put the deed in my safe deposit vault yesterday. Come in +here. Isn't this a cunning little guest chamber nested in the +trees? Be becoming to Betty's style of beauty, wouldn't it?" He +held the door open for her ingratiatingly, and she passed under +his arm perfunctorily. + +"What on earth did you buy a house like this for?" + +"I thought you might like it." + +"I--what have I to do with it?" + +Dick turned the rusty key in the lock deliberately, and put it in his +pocket, thus closing them into the little musty room which had no +other exit. A branch of flaming maple leaves tapped lightly on the +window. + +"You've a whole lot to do with it, Nancy," he said. "It's yours, and +I'm yours, and I want to know how much longer you're going to hedge." + +"I'm not hedging," Nancy blazed. "Take that key out of your pocket. +This is moving-picture stuff." + +"I know it is. I can't get you to talk to me any other way, so I +thought I'd try main force for a change." + +"Well, it is a change," she agreed. "Shall I begin to scream now, or +do you intend to give me some other provocation?" + +"Don't be coarse, darling." There is a certain disadvantage in having +known the woman who is the object of your tenderest emotions all your +life, and to be on terms of the most familiar badinage with her. Dick +was feeling this disadvantage acutely at the moment. He took a step +toward her, and put a heavy hand on her shoulder. "Nancy, don't you +love me?" he said, "don't you really?" + +"No," Nancy said deliberately, "I don't, and you know very well I +don't. Unlock that door, and let's be sensible." + +"Don't you know, dear, or care that you're hurting me?" + +"No, I don't," Nancy said. "You say so, and I hear you, but I don't +really believe it. If I did--" + +"If you did--what?" + +"Then I'd be sorrier." + +"You aren't sorry at all, as it stands." + +"I find it's awfully hard to be sorry for you, Dick, in any +connection. There's really nothing pathetic about you, no matter how +tragic you think you are being. You're rich and lucky and healthy. You +have everything you want--" + +"Not everything." + +"And you live the way you want to, and eat the food you want to--" + +"The ruling passion." + +"And make the jokes you want to." Nancy literally stuck up a saucy +nose at him. "There is really nothing that I could contribute to your +happiness. I mean nothing important. You are not a poor man whom I +could help to work his way up to the top, or a genius that needs +fostering, or a--" + +"Dyspeptic that needs putting on a special diet,--but for all that I +do need a mother's love, Nancy." + +"I don't believe you do," Nancy said, a trifle absently. "Unlock the +door, Dick. I don't think Sheila put on that sweater when I told her +to, and I'm afraid she'll get cold." + +"Kiss me, Nancy." + +"Will you unlock the door if I do?" + +"Yes'um." + +Nancy put up cool fragrant lips to meet a brother's kiss, and for the +moment was threatened with a second salute that was very much less +fraternal, but the danger passed. Dick unlocked the door and let her +pass him without protest. + +"If you had been any other girl," he mused, as they went down the +stairs together companionably, "you wouldn't have got away with +that." + +"With what?" Nancy asked innocently. + +"If you don't know," Dick said, "I won't tell you. If you'd been any +other girl I should have thrown that key out of the window when you +began to sass me." + +"And then?" Nancy inquired politely. + +"And then," Dick replied finally and firmly. + +"Are there any other girls?" Nancy asked, faintly curious, as they +stood on the deep steps of the porch waiting for Sheila and Williams +who were emerging from the middle entrance. + +Dick met her glance a little solemnly, and hesitated for a perceptible +instant. + +"Are there, Dick?" she insisted. + +"Yes, dear," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE HAPPIEST DAY + + +It was thoroughly characteristic of Nancy to turn her back on the most +significant facts of her experience, and occupy herself exclusively +with its by-products. She refused to consider herself as an heiress +entitled to spend money lavishly for her own uses, but she squandered +it on her pet enterprise. She dismissed the idea that Dick, whom she +neglected to discourage as decisively as her growing interest in +another man would seem to warrant, had bought a country estate for the +sole purpose of ensconcing her there as mistress. She dreamed of +Collier Pratt and his ideal of her, and presented herself punctually +at his studio as a model for that ideal, while ignoring absolutely the +fact that he was nearly a hundred dollars in debt to her for meals +served at Outside Inn. She had sufficient logic and common sense to +apply to these matters, and sufficient imagination to handle them +sympathetically, had she chosen to consider them at all, but she did +not choose. She was deep in the adventure of her existence as +differentiated from its practical working out. + +The day Collier Pratt finished his portrait of her she was not alone +in the studio with him. Sheila, in a fluffy white dress with a floppy +black satin hat framing her poignant little face, was omnipresent at +the interview which succeeded the actual two hours of absorption when +he put in the last telling strokes. + +"It's done," he said, as he set aside pigments and brushes, and +divested himself of his painting apron. "I don't want to look at it +now. I've got it, but I can't stand the strain of contemplating it +till my brain cools a trifle. Let's go out and celebrate." + +"Where shall we go?" Nancy said. This was the moment she had dreamed +of for weeks, the hour of fruition when the work was done, and they +could face each other, man and woman again with no strip of canvas +between them. + +"The place I always go when I've finished a picture is a little cafe +under the shadow of _Notre Dame_, where I get cakes and beer and an +excellent perspective on all my favorite gargoyles." + +"And the little birds flutter in the sun, and eat my crumbs and the +great music swells out while you ask the _garcon_ for another _bock_. +Do you remember, father dear, the day that _she_ found us there?" + +"I remember only that you made yourself ill eating _Madelaines_ and +had to be taken home _en voiture_," Collier Pratt said quickly. "We +will go and have some coffee at the Cafe des Artistes, and discuss +ships and shoes and sealing wax--anything but the art of painting." + +"And cabbages and kings," Sheila contributed ecstatically. "I used to +think when I was a very little girl and couldn't read English very +well that it was really Heaven where Alice went, and it made me sad to +think she was dead and I didn't understand it, but now Miss Dear has +explained to me." + +"Miss Dear has made a good many things clear to us both," Collier +Pratt said, but he said no more that might be even remotely construed +as referring to the issue between them, and Nancy finished out her day +with dragging limbs and an aching empty heart that a word of +tenderness would have filled to running over. + +But after her work for the day was done, and she was back in her own +apartment with Sheila tucked snugly in bed, and Hitty out for the +night with a sick friend, there came the touch on her bell that she +knew was Collier Pratt's; and she opened the door to find him standing +on her threshold. + +"I knew you'd come," she said, as women always say to the man they +have that hour given up looking for. + +"I wasn't sure I would," Collier Pratt said, "but I did, you see." + +"Why weren't you sure?" She stood beside him in her little rectangular +hall while he divested himself of his cape, and placed his hat, stick +and gloves in orderly sequence on the oak settee beside it. She liked +to watch the precision with which he always arranged these things. + +"Why should I be sure?" He turned and faced her. "Miss Dear," he said +to himself softly, "Miss Dear," and she saw that in his eyes which +made the moment simpler for her to bear. + +She led the way into her drawing-room. + +"Light the candles," he said, "this firelight is too good to drown in +a flood of electric light!" + +"Is that better?" she asked. + +They were standing before the fireplace; the embers had burned to a +gentle glowing radiance. Of the four candles she had lighted, the wick +of only one had taken fire and was burning. Nancy's breath caught in +her throat, and she could not steady it. Collier Pratt took a step +forward and held out his arms. + +"No, this is better," he said. + +"I thought there was some place in the world where I could +be--comfortable," Nancy said, when she finally lifted her head from +the shoulder of the shabby, immaculate black suit, "but I wasn't quite +sure." + +"Are you sure now, you little wonder woman?" He held her at the length +of his arm for a moment and gazed curiously into her face. Then he +drew her slowly toward him again. She met his kiss bravely, so bravely +that he understood the quality of her courage. + +"I didn't realize that this would be the first time," he said. + +"There couldn't have been any other time," Nancy breathed, "you know +that." + +"I didn't know," Collier Pratt said thoughtfully. "Oh! you little +American girls, with your strange, straight-laced little bodies and +your fearless souls!" + +"Betty told you something," Nancy cried, scarcely hearing him, "but it +wasn't true. There never has been anybody else." She put her head down +on his shoulder again. "It is comfortable here," she said, "where I +belong." + +She felt the sudden passion sweep through him,--the high avid wave of +tenderness and desire,--and she exulted as all purely innocent women +exult when that madness surges first through the veins of the man they +love. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her into the +armchair by the fire, and there she took his head on her breast and +understood for all time what it means for a woman to be called the +mother of men. + +"You wonder woman," he murmured again. + +She brushed the dark hair back from his forehead and kissed his eyes. +"You dear," she said, "you boy, you little boy." + +Suddenly through the darkness came the sound of a shrill cry, and the +thud of a fall in some room down the corridor. + +"It's Sheila," Nancy said, "she has those little nightmares and falls +out of bed." + +"I know she does," Collier Pratt said, "but she picks herself up +again." + +"Not always," Nancy said; "don't you want to come in and help me put +her back?" + +"I do not," Collier Pratt said with unnecessary emphasis. + +Nancy was of two minds about picking the child up in her little white +night-gown and bringing her out to her father, flushed and lovely with +sleep as she was. It was Collier Pratt's baby she had in her arms; her +charge, the child she loved, and the child of the man she loved, a +part of the miracle that was slowly revealing itself to her; but a +sudden sharp instinct warned her that her impulse was ill-timed. + +"I had forgotten the child was here," Collier Pratt said when she +returned to him. + +"I hadn't," Nancy said happily. + +"I suppose she has to be somewhere, poor little wretch," he said. +"She's an extraordinarily picturesque baby, isn't she?" + +Nancy crept nearer to him. He stood leaning against the mantel and +frowning slightly, but he made no move toward her again. + +"She doesn't have nightmares often now," Nancy said with stiffening +lips. "She used to have them almost every night, but by watching her +diet carefully we have practically eliminated them." + +"The Hitty person doesn't like me," Collier Pratt said. "_Pas du +tout_. She treats me as if I were a book agent." + +"She loves Sheila, she--she'd do anything for her." + +"The women who do not find me attractive are likely to find me quite +conspicuously otherwise, I am afraid." He had been carefully avoiding +Nancy's eyes, but her little cry at this drew his gaze. She was +standing before him, slowly blanching as if he had struck her, +absolutely still except for the trembling of her lips. + +"What am I," he said, "to hold out against all the forces of the +Universe? Do you love me, Nancy, do you love me?" + +"You know," she whispered, once more in the shelter of the shabby +shoulder. + +"This is madness," he swore as he kissed her; "we're both out of our +senses, Nancy; don't you know it?" + +"The picture is done, anyhow," she said. "I don't know how I can ever +bear to look it in the face, but I shall have to." + +"It's the best work I've ever done," he said. + +"I don't look like it now, do I?" + +He held her off to see. + +"No, by jove, you don't. It's gone, now--just that thing I painted." + +"How do I look now?" + +"Much more commonplace from the point of view from which I painted +you. Much more beautiful though,--much more beautiful." + +"I'm glad." + +"I might paint you again,--like this. No, I swear I won't. I got the +thing itself down on canvas. I'll never try to paint you again." + +"Is--that flattering?" + +"Supremely." + +"When am I going to have my picture?" she asked after another +interlude. "Do you want me to send for it?" + +"I can't give you the picture," he said. "I intended to if I had done +merely a portrait, but I can't part with this. It has got to make my +fame and fortune." + +"I thought I was to have it," Nancy said. "I--I--" then she felt she +was being ungenerous, unworthy, "but I couldn't take it, of course, +it's too valuable." + +"Please God." + +"It would be wonderful, wouldn't it, if my picture did make you +famous!" + +"I think it will." + +"I'm nothing but a grubby little working girl, and you're a great +artist,--and you love me." + +"You're not a grubby little working girl to me," he said, "you're a +glorious creature--a wonder woman. I ought to go down on my knees to +you for what you've given me in that picture." + +"In the picture?" Nancy said. "I love you. I love you. That wasn't in +the picture--I kept it out." + + * * * * * + +"I won't marry him until he is ready for me," she said to herself at +one time during the night. She lay perfectly quiet till morning, her +hands folded upon her breast, and her little girl pig-tails pulled +down on either side of the coverlet, wide-eyed and tranquil. She could +not bear to sleep and forget for a moment the beautiful thing that had +happened to her between dawn and dawn. "I'll take care of him and +Sheila, and nourish him, and help him to sell my picture. It isn't +every woman who would understand his kind of loving, but I understand +it." + +At eight o'clock Hitty came in to her, and roused her from the light +drowse into which she had fallen at last. + +"You was crying in your sleep again," she said, "your cheeks is all +wet. I heard you the minute I put my key into the latch. You're as bad +as Sheila, only I expect she suffers from something laying hard on her +stummick. It's always something on your mind that starts you in." + +"There's nothing on my mind, Hitty," Nancy said, sitting up in bed, +"nothing but happiness, I mean. In some ways, Hitty dear, this is the +happiest day that I've ever waked up to." + +"Well, then, there's other ways that it isn't," Hitty said, opening +the door to stalk out majestically. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +BETTY + + +"There's a lady waiting to see you, sir," Dick's man servant informed +him on his arrival at his apartment one evening when he had been +dining at his club, and was putting in a leisurely appearance at his +own place after his coffee and cigar. + +"A lady?" + +"Yes, sir, she has been here since nine. She says it's not important, +but she insisted on waiting." + +"The deuce she did." + +Dick's quarters were not, strictly speaking, of the bachelor variety. +That is, he had a suite in one of the older apartment houses in the +fifties, a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged +married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen +heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the +place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep +his foothold in New York had retired to the country, leaving Dick in +possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young +gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his +surroundings would have certainly protected him from incongruous +indiscretion in their vicinity. + +Betty rose composedly from the pompous red velour couch that ran along +the wall under a portrait of a gentleman that looked like a Philip of +Spain, but was really Dick's maternal great grandfather. + +"Why, Betty," Dick said, "this isn't _convenable_ unless you have a +chaperon somewhere concealed. We don't do things like this." + +"I do," Betty said. "I wanted to see you, so I came. In these +emancipated days ladies call upon their men friends if they like. It's +archaic to prattle of chaperons." + +"Still we were all brought up in the fear of them." + +"Mine were brought up in the fear of me. I like this place, Dicky. Why +don't you give us more parties in it? You haven't had a crowd here for +months." + +"Everybody's so busy," Dick said, "we don't seem to get together any +more. I'm willing to play host any time that the rest want to come." + +"You mean Nancy is so busy with her old Outside Inn." + +"You are busy there, too." + +"I'm not so busy that I wouldn't come here when I was asked, Dicky." + +"Or even when you weren't?" Dick's smile took the edge off his +obviously inhospitable suggestion. + +"Or even when I wasn't," Betty said impudently. "Won't you sit down, +Mr. Thorndyke?" + +"Can't I call you a cab, Miss Pope?" + +"I don't wish to go away." + +"Betty, be reasonable," Dick said, "it's after ten o'clock. It is not +usual for me to receive young ladies alone here, and it looks badly. I +don't care for myself, of course, but for you it looks badly." + +"If it's only for me--I don't care how it looks. Come and sit down +beside me, and talk to me, Dicky, and I'll tell you really why I +came." + +Dick folded his arms and looked down at her. Betty's piquant little +face, olive tinted, and pure oval in contour, was turned up to him +confidently; under the close seal turban the soft brown hair framed +the childish face, while the big dark eyes danced with mischief. She +patted the couch by her side invitingly. + +"I'll go away in fifteen minutes, Dicky dear. It certainly wouldn't +look well if you put me out immediately, after all your establishment +knowing that I waited here an hour for you." + +Dick took out his watch. + +"Fifteen minutes, then," he said. "What's your trouble, Betty?" + +"Well, it's a long sad story," she temporized. "Perhaps I had better +not begin on it now that our time is so short. You wouldn't like to +hold my hand, would you, Dicky?" + +"I'm not going to, at any rate." + +"I thought you'd say that," she sighed. "Have you seen Nancy lately?" + +"Yesterday." + +"She's looking better, don't you think so?" + +"Yes." + +"Preston Eustace is back." + +"Is that so? I didn't know he was here yet. I knew he was coming." + +"He's to be here six months, or so." + +"Have you seen him?" + +"No, Caroline told me." Her voice was carefully steadied but Dick +noticed for the first time the shadows etched under the big brown +eyes, and the flush of excitement splotched high on her cheek-bones. +She had been engaged to Preston Eustace for three months succeeding +her twentieth birthday. + +"On second thoughts I think I will hold your hand, Betty," he said, +covering that childlike member with his own rather brawny one. "You +are not a very big little girl, are you, Betty?" + +"My mother used to tell me that I was a very destructive child." + +"I shouldn't wonder if you were that yet." + +"Don't let's talk about me. Let's talk about you, Dicky." + +"About me?" + +"Yes, please. I think you're a very interesting subject." + +Having arrived at some conclusion concerning this unprecedented attack +upon his privacy, Dick was disposed to be kind to his unexpected +visitor. The fact that Preston Eustace was in town and Betty had not +seen him shed an entirely new light on her recklessness. Like every +other incident in Betty's history her love-affair had been very +conspicuously featured. + +"The interesting things about me just at present are--" he was just +about to say "six shirts of imported gingham" but he bethought himself +that she would be certain to demand to see them, so he finished lamely +with--"my game of golf, and my new dogs." + +"What kind of dogs?" + +"Belgian police dogs." + +"Where do you keep them?" + +"I haven't taken them over yet." + +"I heard that you had bought a place up in Westchester, but I asked +Nancy, and she said she didn't know. I don't think Nancy appreciates +you, Dick." + +"That so often happens." + +"I mean that seriously." + +"It's a serious matter--being appreciated. The only person who I ever +thought really appreciated me was Billy's old aunt. Every time she saw +me she used to say to me, 'You're such a clean-looking young man I +can't take my eyes off you.'" + +"You _are_ clean-looking, and awfully good-looking too." + +"Do you mind if I smoke, Betty?" Dick carefully disengaged his hand +from her clinging fingers, and a look of something like intelligence +passed between them, before Betty turned her ingenuous child's stare +on him again. + +"Not if you'll give me a cigarette, too." + +Dick fumbled through his pockets. + +"It's awfully stupid, but I haven't any about me," he said, fingering +what he knew that she knew to be the well filled case he always +carried in his inner pocket. He did not approve of women smoking. + +But "Poor Dicky!" was all she said. + +"Your fifteen minutes are up, Betty," he said presently, taking out +his watch. + +"Well, I suppose I'll have to go then." + +Dick rose politely. + +"You really don't care whether I go or stay, do you?" she sighed. + +"I would rather have you go, Betty," he said gravely. + +Betty's eyes filled with sudden tears, that Dick to his surprise +realized were genuine. + +"I wanted you to want me to stay," she said incoherently. + +"I suppose you're just a miserable little thing that doesn't want to +be alone," he concluded. "Come, I'll take you home." + +The telephone bell on the table beside him rang sharply. + +"I'm just going out," he said to Billy, on the wire. "Betty is here +with a fit of the blues. I'm going to take her home. Ride up with us, +will you?" + +"He'll meet us down-stairs in ten minutes," he said. "I'll order a +taxi." + +"I don't want to see Billy," Betty said rebelliously. She rose +suddenly, pulling on her gloves, and took a step forward as if about +to brush by him petulantly, but as she did so she staggered, put her +hand to her eyes, and fell forward against his breast. + +Dick picked up the limp little body, and made his way to the couch +where he deposited it gently among the stiff red pillows there. Then +he began to chafe her hands, to push back the tumbled hair from which +the fur hat had been displaced, and finally fallen off, and to call +out her name remorsefully. + +"Betty, dear, dearest," he cried, "I didn't know, I didn't dream,--I +thought you were just trying it on. I'm so sorry, dear, I am so +sorry." + +She moaned softly, and he bent over her again more closely. Then he +gathered her up in his arms. + +"Betty, dear, Betty," he said again. + +She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and +she lifted her lips. + +"You little devil," Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he +kissed her. + +"She deserves to be spanked," he told Billy grimly at the door. "She +got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till +I came in, to make me a visit." + +"He doesn't understand me," Betty complained, as she cuddled +confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, "when I'm serious he +doesn't realize or appreciate it, and he doesn't understand the nature +of my practical jokes." + +"I don't like--practical jokes," Dick said. "Have you seen Preston +Eustace, Billy?" + +"I haven't seen Caroline," Billy said, as if that disposed of all the +interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or +the future. + +"It's a nice-looking river," Betty said, looking out at the softly +gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. "It looks +strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats. +I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a +barque or a barkentine--I don't know what a barkentine is--all dead +like Elaine or Ophelia,--with your hands neatly folded across your +breast?" + +"For heaven sake's, Betty," Billy cried, "I don't like your style of +conversation. I'm in a state of gloom myself, to-night." + +"I didn't say I was in a state of gloom," Betty said. They rode the +rest of the way in silence, but when Dick got out of the cab to open +her door for her, she whispered to him, "I'm awfully ashamed, Dick," +before she fled up-stairs through the darkened hallway of her own +home. + +"Queer little thing,--Betty," Billy said as Dick stepped back to the +cab again, "you never know where you have her. Full of the deuce as +she can stick. Unscrupulous little rascal, too, but made of good +stuff." + +"Don't you think so?" Billy inquired presently as Dick did not +answer. + +"Think what?" + +"That Betty's a queer sort of girl." + +Dick took his pipe out of his pocket and began stuffing it full of +tobacco. When this was satisfactorily accomplished, he struck a match +on his boot heel, and lit the mixture, drawing at it critically +meanwhile. + +"Damn' queer," he admitted, between puffs. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CLOUDS OF GLORY + + +Nancy, trailing clouds of glory, took up the management of her Inn +with renewed vigor. She had found her touchstone. The flower of love, +which she had scarcely understood to be indigenous to the soil of her +own practical little garden, had suddenly lifted up its head there in +fragrant, radiant bloom. She was so happy that she was impatient of +all the inadequate, inefficient manipulation of affairs in the whole +world. She felt strong and wise to put everything right in a neglected +universe. + +She loved. She was satisfied to live in that love for the present, +with no imagination of the future except as her lover should construct +it for her; and in him she had absolute faith. The things that he had +said or left unsaid had no significance to her. Before she had dreamed +of a personal relation with him he had singled her out as a creature +made for the consummation and fulfilment of the greatest passion of +all. The merest suspicion that there had been a man in the world who +could have frustrated this beautiful potentiality in her had moved him +profoundly. There was nothing in her experience to help her to +differentiate between the sensibility of the artistic temperament and +the manifestations of the more reliable emotions. The presence in the +human breast of a fire that gave out light and not heat was a +condition undreamed of in her philosophy. To doubt Collier Pratt's +love for her in the face of his tacit pursuit of her, and the +acceptance of the obligation she had chosen to put him under, would +have seemed to her the rankest kind of heresy. + +She had been brought up on terms of comradely equality with boys and +men, and she understood the rules of all the pretty games of fluffing +and light flirtation that young men and women play with each other, +but serious love-making--that was a thing apart. In the world of honor +and fair dealing a man took a woman's kiss of surrender for one reason +and one reason only----that she was his woman, and he so held her in +his heart. + +Now that she was in this sort committed to her love for Collier Pratt, +her one ambition was to put her life in order for him,--to pick up the +raveling threads of her achievement and prove to him and to herself +that she was the kind of woman who accomplishes that which she +attempts. In the light of his indefatigable patience in all matters +that pertained to his art--his clean-cut workmanship--his skill in +handling his material--she blushed for the amateur spirit that +animated all her undertakings, and for the first time recognized it +for what it was. + +"Gaspard," she said one morning soon after her miracle had been +achieved, "where do you think the greatest leak is? We spend a great +deal too much money in running this place. As you know, that is not +the most important matter to me. Getting my customers properly +nourished with invitingly prepared food is the essential thing, but if +there was a way to adjust the economical end of it, I should feel a +great deal more comfortable in my mind." + +"But certainly, mademoiselle, I should like myself to try the pretty +little economies. The Frenchman he likes to spend his money when it is +there, but it hurts him in the heart to waste this money without +cause." + +"Am I wasting money without cause, Gaspard, in your opinion?" + +"What else?" + +"How can I stop it?" + +"By calculation of the tall cost of living, and by buying what is good +instead of what is expensive." + +"What do you mean, Gaspard?" + +Gaspard contemplated her for a moment. + +"We have had this week--squab chicken," he said, "racks of little +unseasonable lambs, sweetbreads, guinea fowl and _filet du boeuf_. We +have with them mushrooms, fresh string bean, cooked endive, and new, +not very good peas grown in glass. We have the salted nuts, the +radish, the olive, the celery, the _bon bon_, all extra without pay. +Then you make in addition to this the health foods, and your bills are +sky high up. Is it not?" + +"I'm afraid it is, Gaspard. I had no idea I was as reckless as all +that." + +"But yes, and more of it." + +"What would you do if you were running this restaurant, Gaspard?" + +"I would give _ragout_, and rabbits--so cheap and so good too--stewed +in red wine, and the good pot roast with vegetables all in the +delicious sauce, and carrots with parsley and the peas out of the can, +cooked with onion and lettuce, and macedoine of all the other things +left over. Lentils and flageolet I should buy dried up, and soak them +out.--All those things which you have said were needless.--In my way +they would be so excellent." + +"You make my mouth water, Gaspard. I don't know whether it's a Gallic +eloquence, or whether that food really would work. They might like it +for a change anyhow." + +"I have many personal patrons now," Gaspard said with some pride; "all +day they send me messages, and very good tips. I think what I would +serve them they would eat.--But there is one thing--" he paused and +hesitated dejectedly, "that, what you say, takes the heart out of the +beautiful cooking." + +"What thing is that, Gaspard?" + +"Those calories." + +"Why, Gaspard, surely you're used to working with tables now. It must +be almost second nature to you. My whole end and aim has been to serve +a balanced ration." + +"I know, but the ration when he is right, he balances himself. These +tables they are like the steps in dancing--to learn and to forget. I +figure all day all night to get those calories, and then I find I have +eight--and eight are so little--lesser than I would have had without +the figuring, and if our customer he has taken himself one piece of +sweetmeat outside, he has more than made it up." + +"I always have worried about what they eat between meals," Nancy +said,--"but that, of course, we can't regulate." + +"Could I perhaps go to it, as you say, and cook like the _bourgeoisie_ +for a week or two of trials?" + +"Yes, I think you could, Gaspard," Nancy said thoughtfully. "Go to it, +as we say, and I won't interfere in any way. Maybe they'd like it. +Perhaps our food is getting to be too much like hotel food, anyway." + +She knew in her heart that the gradually increasing scale of luxury on +which she had been running her cuisine had been largely due to her +desire to provide Collier Pratt with all the delicacies he loved, +without making the fact too conspicuous. The specially prepared dishes +sent out to his table had become a matter of so much comment among the +members of the staff, and the target of so much piquant satire from +Betty that she had become sensitive on the subject, especially since +Betty had access to the books, and knew in actual dollars and cents +how much this favoritism was costing her. Now that matters had been +settled between herself and her lover, she felt vaguely ashamed of +this elaboration of method. It was so simple a thing to love a man and +give him all you had, with the eyes of the world upon you, if +necessary. She felt that she handled the matter rather unworthily. + +She had also a consultation with Molly and Dolly about the economic +problem, and discovered that they agreed with Gaspard about the +unnecessary extravagance of her management. + +"Them health foods," Dolly said,--she was not the more grammatical of +the twins, "the ones that gets them regular gets so tired of them, or +else they gets where they don't need them any more. There's one girl +that crumbs up her health muffins and puts them on the window-sill +every day when I ain't looking, so's not to hurt my feelings." + +"That accounts for all those chittering sparrows," Nancy said. + +"And some of those buttermilk men threatens not to come any more if I +don't stop serving it to them." + +"What do you say to them, Dolly, when they object to it?" + +"Well, sometimes I say one thing, and sometimes another. Sometimes I +say it's orders to serve it; and sometimes I say will they please to +let it stand by their plate not to get me in trouble with the +management; and sometimes I coax them to take it." + +"By an appeal to their better nature," Nancy said. "I'm glad Dick +can't hear all this,--he'd think it was funny." + +"We don't have so much trouble with the broths," Molly said, "but so +many people would rather have the cream soups Gaspard makes, that we +waste a good deal." + +"It sours on us," Dolly elucidated. + +"What do you think would be the best way out of that?" + +"I think to charge for the invalid things," Dolly said; "people would +think more of them if they was specials, and had to be paid good money +for. Health bread, if you didn't call it that, would go good, if it +cost five cents extra." + +"What would you call it?" Nancy asked. + +"California fruit nut bread, or something like that, and call the +custards creme renverse, and the ice-cream, French ice-cream." + +"Oh, dear!" Nancy said, "that isn't the way I want to do things at +all." + +"We can slip the ones that needs them a few things from time to time, +can't we, Molly?" Dolly said. + +"We'll do it," Nancy said. "I hate the way that the most uninspired +ways of doing things turn out to be the best policy after all. I don't +believe in stereotyped philanthropy, but I did think I had found a way +around this problem of feeding up people who needed it." + +"They get fed up pretty good if they do pay a regular price for it," +Dolly said. "You can't get something for nothing in this world, and +most everybody knows it by now." + +"I'm managing my restaurant a little differently," she told Collier +Pratt a few days later, as she took her place at the little table +beside him, where she habitually ate her dinner. "If you don't like it +you are to tell me, and I'll see that you have things you will like." + +"This dinner is good," he said reflectively, "like French home +cooking. I haven't had a real _ragout_ of lamb since I left the +pension of Madame Pellissier. Has your mysterious patroness got tired +of furnishing _diners de luxe_ to the populace?" + +"Not exactly that," Nancy said, "but she--she wants me to try out +another way of doing things." + +"I thought that would come. That's the trouble with patronage of any +kind. It is so uncertain. There is no immediate danger of your being +ousted, is there?" + +"No," Nancy said, "there--there is no danger of that." + +"I don't like that cutting you down," he said, frowning. "It would be +rather a bad outlook for us all if she threw you over, now wouldn't +it?" + +"Oh!--she won't, there's nothing to worry about, really." + +"It would be like my luck to have the only cafe in America turn me +out-of-doors.--I should never eat again." + +"I promise it won't," Nancy said; "can't you trust me?" + +"I never have trusted any woman--but you," he said. + +"You can trust me," Nancy said. "The truth is, she couldn't put me out +even if she wanted to. I--she is under a kind of obligation to me." + +"Thank God for that. I only hope you are in a position to threaten her +with blackmail." + +"I could if anybody could," Nancy said. She put out of her mind as +disloyal, the faintly unpleasant suggestion of his words. He owed her +mythical patron a substantial sum of money by this time. He was not +even able to pay Michael the cash for the nightly teapot full of +Chianti that Nancy herself now sent out for him regularly. For the +first time since her association with him she was tempted to compare +him to Dick, and that not very favorably; but at the next instant she +was reproaching herself with her littleness of vision. He was too +great a man to gauge by the ordinary standards of life. Money meant +nothing to him except that it was the insignificant means to the end +of that Art, which was to him consecrated. + +They were placed a little to the left of the glowing fire--Nancy had +restored the fireplace in the big central dining-room--and the light +took the brass of the andirons, and all the polished surface of copper +and pewter and silver candelabra that gave the room its quality of +picturesqueness. + +"Some of those branching candlesticks are very beautiful," he said; +"the impression here is a little like that of a Catholic altar just +before the mass. I've always thought I'd like to have my meals served +in church, _Saint-Germain-des-Pres_ for instance." + +"It is rather dim religious light." Nancy had no wish to utter +this banality, but it was forced from her by her desire to seem +sympathetic. + +"Can we go to your place for a little while to-night?" + +These were the words she had spent her days and nights hungering for; +yet now she hesitated for a perceptible instant. + +"Yes, we can, of course. There is a friend of mine--Billy Boynton, up +there this evening. He is not feeling very fit, and phoned to ask if +he could go up and sprawl before my fire, so, of course, I said he +could." + +"Oh! yes, Sheila's friend. Can't he be disposed of?" + +"I think so. We could try." + +But at Nancy's apartment they found not only Billy, but Caroline, and +the atmosphere was like that of the glacial regions, both literally +and figuratively. + +"Hitty had the windows open, and the fire went out, and I forgot to +turn on the heat," Billy explained from his position on the hearth +where he was trying to build an unscientific fire with the morning +paper, and the remains of a soap box. There was a long smudge across +his forehead. + +Caroline drew Nancy into the seclusion of her bedroom and clutched her +violently by the arm. + +"I can't stand the strain any longer," she cried, "you've got to tell +me. Are you or are you not going to marry Dick Thorndyke for his +money, and is Billy Boynton putting you up to it--out of cowardice?" + +"No, I'm not and he isn't," Nancy said. "What's the matter with you +and Billy anyway?" + +"I haven't seen him for weeks before. I just happened to be in this +neighborhood to-night, and ran in here, and there he was." + +"Why don't you take him home with you?" Nancy said. + +"I don't want him to go home with me." + +"Don't you love him?" + +"Oh, I don't know. That isn't the point." + +"It is the point," Nancy said; "there isn't any other point to the +whole of existence. There's nothing else in the world, but love, the +great, big, beautiful, all-giving-up kind of love, and bearing +children for the man you love; and if you don't know that yet, +Caroline, go down on your bended knees and pray to your God that He +will teach it to you before it is too late." + +"I--I didn't know you felt like that," Caroline gasped. + +"Well, I do," Nancy said, "and I think that any woman who doesn't is +just confusing issues, and taking refuge in sophistry. I wouldn't give +_that_"--she snapped an energetic forefinger, "for all your silly, +smug little ideas of economic independence and service to the race, +and all that tommy-rot. There is only one service a woman can do to +her race, and that is to take hold of the problems of love and +marriage,--and the problems of life, birth and death that are involved +in them--and work them out to the best of her ability. They _will_ +work out." + +"You--you're a sort of a pragmatist, aren't you?" Caroline gasped. + +"Billy loves you, and you love Billy. Billy needs you. He is the most +miserable object lately, that ever walked the face of the earth. I'm +going to call a taxi-cab, and send you both home in it, and when you +get inside of it I want you to put you arms around Billy's neck, and +make up your quarrel." + +"I won't do that," said Caroline, "but--but somehow or other you've +cleared up something for me. Something that was worrying me a good +deal." + +"Shall I call the taxi?" Nancy said inexorably. + +"Well, yes--if--if you want to," Caroline said. + +The fire was crackling merrily in the drawing-room when she stepped +into it again after speeding her departing guests. Collier Pratt was +walking up and down impatiently with his hands clasped behind his +back. + +"You got rid of them at last," he said. "I was afraid they would +decide to remain with us indefinitely." + +"I didn't have as much trouble as I anticipated," admitted Nancy +cryptically. + +Collier Pratt made a round of the rose-shaded lamps in the room--there +were three including a Japanese candle lamp,--and turned them all +deliberately low. Then he held out his arms to Nancy. + +"We'll snatch at the few moments of joy the gods will vouchsafe us," +he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CHRISTMAS SHOPPING + + +Sheila and Nancy were doing their Christmas shopping. The weather, +which had been like mid-May--even to betraying a bewildered Jersey +apple tree into unseasonable bloom that gave it considerable newspaper +notoriety,--had suddenly turned sharp and frosty. Sheila, all in gray +fur to the beginning of her gray gaiters, and Nancy in blue, a smart +blue tailor suit with black furs and a big black satin hat--she was +dressing better than she had ever dressed in her life--were in that +state of physical exhilaration that follows the spur of the frost. + +"We mustn't dance down the avenue, Sheila," Nancy said, "it isn't +done, in the circles in which we move." + +"It is you who are almost very nearly dancing, Miss Dear," Sheila +said, "I was only walking on my toetips." + +"Oh! don't you feel good, Sheila?" Nancy cried. + +"Don't you, Miss Dear?" + +"I feel almost too good," Nancy said, "as if in another minute the top +of the world might come off." + +"The top of the world is screwed on very tight, I think," said Sheila. +"I used to think when I was a little girl that it was made out of blue +plush, but now I know better than that." + +"It might be," Nancy argued, "blue plush and bridal veils. There's a +great deal of filmy white about it, to-day." + +"It's a long way off from Fifth Avenue," Sheila sighed, "too far. I am +not going to think about it any more. I am going to think hard about +what to give my father. Michael said to get a smoking set, but I don't +know what a smoking set is. Hitty said some hand knit woolen +stockings, but I am afraid he would be scratched by them. Gaspard said +a big bottle of _Cointreau_, but I do not know what that is either." + +"Couldn't we give him a beautiful brocaded dressing-gown and a Swiss +watch, thin as a wafer, and some handkerchiefs cobwebby fine, and a +dozen bottles of _Cointreau_, and--then get the other things as we +think of them?" + +"Are we rich enough to do _that_?" Sheila asked, her eyes sparkling +with excitement. + +"Rich enough to buy anything we want, Sheila," Nancy cried. "I had no +idea it was going to be such a heavenly feeling. When you say your +prayers to-night, Sheila, I hope you will ask God to bless somebody +you've never heard of before. _Elijah Peebles Martin_, do you think +you could remember that long name, Sheila?" + +"Yes, Miss Dear,--do you remember him in your prayers every night?" + +"Well, I haven't," Nancy said, "but I intend to from now on. Do you +think Collier--father--would like to have a new pipe?" + +"I don't know," Shelia said; "wouldn't Uncle Dick like to have one?" + +"I don't know whether Uncle Dick is going to want a Christmas present +from me or not, Sheila." Nancy answered seriously. "There may +be--reasons why he won't come to see us for a while when he knows +them." + +"Oh, dear," Sheila said, "but I can buy him a Christmas present +myself, can't I? I don't want it to be Christmas if I can't." + +"Of course, dear. What shall we buy Aunt Caroline and Uncle Billy?" + +"Some pink and blue housekeeping dishes, I think." + +"I'm going to have trouble buying Caroline _anything_," Nancy said. +"She's so sure I can't afford it. If I give a silver chest I'll have +to make Billy say it came from his maiden aunt." + +"What shall we give Aunt Betty?" + +"I don't know exactly why," Nancy said, "but someway I feel more like +giving her a good shaking than anything else." + +"For a little surprise," Sheila said presently, "do you think we could +go down to see my father in his studio, after we have shopped? I feel +like seeing my father to-day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I +think of Hitty and my breakfast, and the canary bird, and of you, Miss +Dear, fast asleep where I can hear you breathing in your room--if I +listen to it--and then other mornings I wake up thinking only of my +father, and how he looks in his shirt-sleeves and necktie. I was +thinking of him this morning like that. So now I should like to see +him." + +"You shall, dear. I want him to see you in your new clothes. He'll +think you look like a little gray bird with a scarlet breast." + +"Then I must open the front of my coat when I go in so he shall see my +vest at once, mustn't I?" + +"Do you know how much I love you, Sheila?" Nancy cried suddenly. + +"Is it a great deal, Miss Dear?" + +"It's more than I've ever loved anybody in this world but one person, +and if I should ever be separated from you I think it would break my +heart--so that you could hear it crack with a loud report, Sheila." + +The little girl slipped her gray gloved hand into Nancy's and held it +there silently for a moment. + +"Then we won't ever be separated, Miss Dear," she said. + +The shops were crowded with the usual conglomerate Christmas throng, +and their progress was somewhat retarded by Sheila's desire to make +the acquaintance of every department-store and Salvation Army Santa +Claus that they met in their peregrinations. In the toy department of +one of the Thirty-fourth Street shops there was a live Kris Kringle +with animated reindeers on rollers, who made a short trip across an +open space in one end of the department for a consideration, and +presented each child who rode with him a lovely present, tied up in +tissue and marked "Not to be opened until Christmas." Sheila refused a +second trip with him on the ground that it would not be polite to take +more than one turn. + +Nancy was able to discover the little girl's preferences by a tactful +question here and there when they were making the rounds of the +different counters. She wanted, it developed, a golden-haired doll +with a white fur coat, a pair of roller skates, an Indian costume, a +beaded pocketbook, with a blue cat embroidered on it, a parchesi board +to play parchesi with her Uncle Dick, some doll's dinner dishes, a +boy's bicycle, some parlor golf sticks, a red leather writing set, a +doll's manicure set, a sailor-boy paper doll, a dozen small suede +animals in a box, a drawing book and crayon pencils and several other +trifles of a like nature. The things she did not want she rejected +unerringly. It pleased Nancy to realize that she knew exactly what she +did want, even though her range of taste was so extensive. Nancy had a +sheaf of her own cards with her address on them in her pocketbook, and +each time Sheila saw the thing her heart coveted Nancy nodded to the +saleswoman and whispered to her to send it to the address given and +charge to her account. + +They took their lunch in a famous confectionary shop, full of candy +animals and alluring striped candy sticks and baskets. Here Sheila's +eye was taken by a basket of spun sugar flowers, which she insisted on +buying for Gaspard. By the time they were ready to resume their +shopping tour, Sheila began to show signs of fag, so they bought only +brooches for the waitresses, and the watch as thin and exquisite of +workmanship as a man's pocket watch could be, for Collier Pratt. + +"I think we had better give it to him now, Miss Dear," Sheila decided. +"I don't see how he can wait till Christmas for it--it is so +beautiful. He has not had a gold watch since that time in Paris when +we had all that trouble." + +"What trouble, Sheila dear?" Nancy said. She had tucked the child in a +hansom, and they were driving slowly through the lower end of Central +Park to restore Sheila's roses before she was exhibited to her +parent. + +"When we lost all our money, and my father and some one I must not +speak of, had those dreadful quarrelings, and we ran away. I do not +like to think of it. My father does not like to think of it." + +"Well, then, you mustn't, dear," Nancy said, "but just be glad it is +all over now. I don't like to realize that so many hard things +happened to you and him before I knew you, but I do like to think that +I can perhaps prevent them ever happening to you again." + +She closed resolutely that department of her mind that had begun to +occupy itself with conjectures concerning the past of the man to whom +she had given her heart. The child's words conjured up nightmare +scenes of unknown panic and dread. It was terrible to her to know that +Collier Pratt had the memory of so much bitterness and distress of +mind and body locked away in the secret chambers of his soul. "Some +one of whom I must not speak," Sheila had said, "and some one of whom +I must not think," Nancy added to herself. It was probably some one +with whom he had quarreled and struggled passionately maybe, with +disastrous results. He could not have injured or killed anybody, else +how could he be free and honorably considered in a free and honorable +country? She laughed at her own melodramatic misgivings. It was only, +she realized, that she so detested the connotation of the words "ran +away." Nancy had never run away from anything or anybody in her life, +and she could not understand that any one who was close to her should +ever have the instinct of flight. + +The most conscientious objector to New York's traffic regulations can +not claim that they fail to regulate. The progress of their cab down +the avenue was so scrupulously regulated by the benignant guardians of +the semaphores that twilight was deepening into early December evening +before they reached their objective point,--the ramshackle studio +building on the south side of Washington Square where the man she +loved lived, moved and had his being, with the gallant ease and grace +which made him so romantic a figure to Nancy's imagination. + +She had never been to his studio before without an appointment, and +her heart beat a little harder as, Sheila's hand in hers, they tiptoed +up the worn and creaking stairs, through the ill-kept, airless +corridors of the dingy structure, till they reached the top, and stood +breathless from their impetuous ascent, within a few feet of Collier +Pratt's battered door. + +"I feel a little scared, Miss Dear," Sheila whispered. "I thought it +was going to be so much fun and now I don't think so at all. Do you +think he will be very angry at my coming?" + +"I don't think he will be angry at all," Nancy said. "I think he will +be very much surprised and pleased to see both of us. Turn around, +dear, and let me be sure that you're neat." + +Sheila turned obediently. Nancy fumbled with her pocket mirror, and +then thought better of it, but passed a precautionary hand over the +back of her hair to reassure herself as to its arrangement, and +straightened her hat. + +"Now we're ready," she said. + +But Sheila put out her hand, and clutched at Nancy's sleeve. + +"There's some one in there," she said, "somebody crying. Oh! don't +let's go in, Miss Dear." + +From behind the closed door there issued suddenly the confused murmur +of voices, one--a woman's--rising and falling in the cadence of +distress, the other low pitched in exasperated expostulation. + +"It's Collier," Nancy said mechanically, "and some woman with him." + +Sheila shrank closer into the protecting shelter of her arms. + +"Don't let's go in, Miss Dear," she repeated. + +"It may be just some model," Nancy said. "We'll wait a minute here and +see if she doesn't come out." + +"I--I don't want to see who comes out," the child said, her face +suddenly distorted. + +There was a sharp sound of something falling within, then Collier +Pratt's voice raised loud in anger. + +"You'd better go now," he said, "before you do any more damage. I +don't want you here. Once and for all I tell you that there is no +place for you in my life. Weeping and wailing won't do you any good. +The only thing for you to do is to get out and stay out." + +This was answered by an indistinguishable outburst. + +"I won't tell you where the child is," Collier Pratt said steadily. +"She's well taken care of. God knows you never took care of her. +There's nothing you can do, you know. You might sue for a restitution +of conjugal rights, I suppose, but if you drag this thing into the +courts I'll fight it out to the end. I swear I will." + +"You brute,--you--" + +At the first clear sound of the woman's voice the child at Nancy's +side broke into sobs of convulsive terror. + +"Take me away, Miss Dear. Oh! take me away from here, quickly, +quickly, I'm so frightened. I'm so afraid she'll come out and get me. +It's my _mother_," she moaned. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +GOOD-BY + + +Nancy had no memory of her actions during the time that elapsed +between leaving the studio building and her arrival at her own +apartment. She knew that she must have guided Sheila to the beginning +of the bus route at the lower end of the square, and as perfunctorily +signaled the conductor to let her off at the corner of Fifth Avenue +and her own street, but she could never remember having done so. Her +first conscious recollection was of the few minutes in Sheila's room, +while she was slipping off the child's gaiters, in the interval before +she gave her over to Hitty for the night. The little girl was still +sobbing beneath her breath, though her emotion was by this time purely +reflexive. + +"I didn't understand that your mother was living, Sheila," she said. + +"She isn't very nice," the little girl said miserably. "We don't tell +any one. She always cries and screams and makes us trouble?" + +"Did she live with you in Paris?" + +"Only sometimes." + +"Does she do--something that she should not do, Sheila?" Nancy asked, +with her mind on inebriety, or drug addiction. + +"She just isn't very nice," Sheila repeated. "She is _histerique_; she +pounded me with her hands, and hurt me." + +Nancy telephoned to the Inn that she had a headache, and shut herself +into her room, without food, to gather her scattered forces. She lay +wide-awake all the night through, her mind trying to work its way +through the lethargy of shock it had received. She remembered falling +down the cellar stairs, when she was a little girl, and lying for +hours on the hard stone floor, perfectly serene and calm, without +pain, until she tried to do so much as move a little finger or lift an +eyelid, when the intolerable nausea would begin. She was calm now, +until she made the attempt to think what it was that had so prostrated +her, and then the anguish spread through her being and convulsed her +with unimaginable distress of mind and body. + +By morning she had herself in hand again,--at least to the extent of +dealing with the unthinkable fact that Collier Pratt, her lover, the +man to whom she had given the lover's right to hold her in his arms +and cover her upturned face with kisses, had a living wife, and that +he was not free to make honorable love to any woman. + +Her life had been too sound, too sweet, to give her any perspective on +a situation of the kind. It was inconceivable to her that a married +man should make advances to an unmarried woman,--but gradually she +began to make excuses for this one man whose circumstances had been so +exceptional. Tied to an insane creature, who beat his child, who made +him strange hectic scenes, and followed him all over the world to +threaten his security, and menace that beautiful and inexplicable +creative instinct that animated him like a holy fire, and set him +apart from his kind; she began to see how it might be with him. She +was still the woman he loved,--she believed that; he was weaker than +she had thought,--that was all, weaker and not so wise. This being +true, she must put aside her own pain and bewilderment, her own +devastating disillusionment, and comfort him, and help him. She rose +from her bed that morning firmly resolved to see him before the day +was through. + +She breakfasted with Sheila, and made a brave attempt to get through +the morning on her usual schedule, but once at the Inn she collapsed, +and Michael and Betty had to put her in a cab and send her home again, +where Hitty ministered to her grimly,--and she slept the sleep of +exhaustion until well on into the evening, and into the night again. + +On the day following she was quite herself; but she still hesitated to +bring about the momentous interview that she so dreaded, and yet +longed for. She intended to take her place at the table beside Collier +Pratt when he came for his dinner that night, but when the time came +she could not bring herself to do it, and fled incontinently. Later in +the evening he telephoned that he wanted to see her, and she told him +that he might come. + +She faced him with the facts, breathlessly, and in spite of herself +accusingly,--and then waited for the explanation that would extenuate +the apparent ugliness of his attitude toward her, and set all the +world right for her again. As she looked into his face she felt that +it must come. She noted compassionately how the shadows under the dark +eyes had deepened; how weary the pose of the fine head; and for the +moment she longed only to rest it on her breast again. Even as she +spoke of the thing that had so tortured her it seemed insignificant in +light of the fact that he was there beside her, within reach of her +arms whenever she chose to hold them out to him. + +"I regret that the revelation of my private embarrassments should have +been thrust upon you so suddenly," he said, when she had poured out +the story to him. "My marriage has proved the most uncomfortable +indiscretion that I ever committed; and unfortunately my indiscretions +have been numberless as the well-known leaves of Vallombrosa." + +"You always said that Sheila was motherless," Nancy said. + +"It is simpler than stating that she is worse than motherless." + +"Why didn't you tell me you were married?" + +Collier Pratt smiled at her--kindly it seemed to Nancy. + +"It hadn't anything to do with _us_," he said. "I should never want to +marry again--even if I were free. The thought is horrible to me. You +mean a great deal to me. _Think_, if you doubt that and think again. I +have had in this little front room of yours the only real moments of +peace and happiness that I have had for years. I value them--you can +not dream or imagine how much--but surely it is understood between us +that our relation can not be anything but transitory. I am an artist +with a way to make for my art: you are a working woman with a career, +odd as it is," he smiled whimsically, "that you have chosen, and that +you will pursue faithfully until some stalwart young man dissuades you +from it, when you will take your place in your niche as wife and +mother, and leave me one more beautiful memory." + +"Surely," Nancy said, "you know it isn't--like that." + +"What is it like then?" + +Nancy felt every sane premise, every eager hope and delicate ideal +slipping beyond her reach as she faced his mocking, tender eyes. + +"It can't be that you believe you have been--fair with me," she +faltered. + +"I don't think I have been unfair," he said, "I have made no +protestations, you know." + +Nancy shut her eyes. Curious scraps of her early religious education +came back to her. + +"You have partaken of my bread and wine," she said. + +"It wasn't exactly consecrated." + +"I think it was," she said faintly. "Oh! don't you understand that +that isn't a way for a man to think or to feel about a woman like +me?" + +"Little American girl," Collier Pratt said, "little American girl, +don't you understand that there is only one way for a woman to think +or feel about a _man_ like _me_? I have had my life, and I haven't +liked it much. I'm to be loved warmly and lightly till the flesh and +blood prince comes along, but I'm never to be mistaken for him." + +"I don't believe you're sincere," Nancy cried; "women must have loved +you deeply, tragically, and have suffered all the torture there is, at +losing you." + +"That may be. Sincerity is a matter of so many connotations. You +haven't known many artists, my dear." + +"No," said Nancy. "No, but I thought they were the same as other men, +only worthier." + +"How should they be? He who perceives a merit is not necessarily he +who achieves it. Else the world would be a little more one-sided than +it is." + +"I can't believe those things," Nancy said. "I want to believe in you. +You _must_ care for me, and what becomes of me. You have known so long +what I was like, and what I was made for. All this seems like a +terrible nightmare. I want you to tell me what it is you want of me, +and let me give it to you." + +"I am proving some faint shadow of worthiness at least, when I say to +you that I want absolutely nothing of you. I love, but I refrain." + +"You love," Nancy cried, "you _love_?" + +"Not as you understand loving, I am afraid. In my own way I love +you." + +"I don't like your way, then," Nancy said wearily. + +"We're both so poor, little girl,--that's one thing. If I were free +and could overcome my prejudice against matrimony, and could be a +little surer of my own heart and its constancy,--even then, don't you +see, practical considerations would and ought to stand in our way. I +couldn't support you, you couldn't possibly support me." + +"I see," said Nancy. "Would you marry me If I were rich?" she said +slowly. + +"I already have one wife," Collier Pratt smiled. Nancy remembered +afterward that he smiled oftener during this interview than at any +other. "But if somebody died, and left you a million, she might +possibly be disposed of." + +For one moment, perhaps, his fate hung in the balance. Then he took a +step forward. + +"Kiss me good night, dear," he said, "and let us end this bitter and +fruitless discussion." + +"Kiss you good night," Nancy cried. "Kiss you good night. Oh! how dare +you!--How dare you?" And she struck him twice across his mouth. "I +wish I could kill you," she blazed. "Oh! how dare you,--how dare +you?" + +"Oh! very well," said Collier Pratt calmly, wiping his mouth with his +handkerchief. "If that's the way you feel--then our pleasant little +acquaintanceship is ended. I'll take my hat and stick and my +child--and go." + +"Your child?" Nancy cried aghast. "You wouldn't take Sheila away from +me." + +"I don't feel exactly tempted to leave her with you," he said +deliberately. "I don't mind a woman striking me--I'm used to that; it +is one of my charming wife's ways of expressing herself in moments of +stress--but I do object to any but the most purely formal relations +with her afterward. There is a certain degree of intimacy involved in +your having charge of my child. I think I will take the little girl +away with me now." + +"Please, please, please don't," Nancy said. "I love her. I couldn't +bear it now. You can't be so cruel." + +"Better get it over," Collier Pratt said. "Will you call Hitty, or +shall I?" + +"Sheila is in bed," Nancy cried. "You wouldn't take her out of her +warm bed to-night. I'll send her to you to-morrow at whatever hour you +ask." + +"I ask for her now." + +There was no fight left in Nancy. She called Hitty and superintended +the dressing of the little girl to its last detail. She could not +touch her. + +"Won't you kiss me good night, Miss Dear?" Sheila said, drowsily, as +she took her father's hand at the door. + +"Not to-night," Nancy said hoarsely. "I've a bad throat, dear, I +wouldn't want you to catch it." + +"I don't know where I'm going," the little girl said, "but I suppose +my father knows. I'll come back as soon as I can." + +"Yes, dear," Nancy said. "Good-by." + +Collier Pratt turned at the door and made an exaggerated gesture of +farewell. + +"We part more in anger than in sorrow," he said. + +"Oh! Go," Nancy cried. + +As the door closed upon the two Nancy sank to her knees, and thence to +a crumpled heap on the floor, but remembering that Hitty would find +her there shortly, and being entirely unable to regain her feet +unaided, she started to crawl in the direction of her own room, and +presently arrived there, and pushed the door to behind her with her +heel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +TAME SKELETONS + + +It was Sunday night, and New Year's Eve. Gaspard was preparing, and +Molly and Dolly were serving a special dinner for Preston Eustace, +planned weeks before on his first arrival in New York. + +Before the great logs--imported by Michael for the occasion--that +blazed in the fireplace, a round table was set, decorously draped in +the most immaculate of fine linen, and crowned with a wreath of holly +and mistletoe, from which extended red satin trailers with a present +from Nancy for each guest, on the end of each. All the impedimenta of +the restaurant was cleared away, and a couch and several easy chairs +that Nancy kept in reserve for such occasions were placed comfortably +about the room. Only the innumerable starry candles and branching +candelabra were reminiscent of the room's more professional aspect. + +Billy and Caroline were the first to arrive,--Caroline in pale +floating green tulle, which accentuated the pure olive of her +coloring, and transported Billy from his chronic state of adoration to +that of an almost agonizing worship. Dick and Betty were next. He had +realized the possible awkwardness of the situation for her, and had +been thoughtful enough to offer to call for her. She was in defiant +scarlet from top to toe, and had never looked more entrancing. Preston +Eustace was to come in from Long Island where he was spending the +holidays with a married sister. Michael received the guests and did +the honors beamingly. + +"Where's Nancy?" Dick asked, as, divested of his outer garments, he +appeared without warning in the presence of the lovers. "Don't bother +to drop her hand, Billy. I don't see how you have the heart to, she's +so lovely to-night." + +"We don't know where Nancy is," Caroline answered for him. "It seems +to be all right, though. She's expected, Michael says." + +"Where's Nancy?" Betty asked, in her turn, appearing on the threshold +with every hair most amazingly in place. + +"Coming," Dick reassured her. + +"Has anybody heard from her?" Betty asked. + +"Michael has, I think." + +"You aren't worried about her, are you?" Caroline asked. + +"Yes, I am," Betty said. + +"I thought you and Nancy were rather on the outs," Caroline suggested. +"It seems odd to have you worrying about her like her maiden aunt." + +"You wait till you see her, you'll be worried about her, too." + +"What's wrong?" Dick asked quickly. + +"She's lost Sheila for one thing. That unspeakable Collier Pratt--I +hope he chokes on his dinner to-night, and I hope it's a rotten +dinner--has taken the child away." + +"The devil he has." + +There was a step on the rickety stair. + +"Hush! There she is now," Caroline cried. + +"No," Betty said quietly, listening. "That's not Nancy. That's your +brother, Caroline." + +"I haven't heard his step for such a long time I've forgotten it," +Billy said. + +"I haven't heard it for a long time either," Betty said, her face +draining of its last bit of color. + +"Promises to be one of those merry little meals when everybody present +is attended by a tame skeleton," Billy whispered, "except us, +Caroline." + +"I don't feel that we have any right to be so happy with the whole +continent of Europe in the state it's in," Caroline whispered in +reply. + +"I feel better about the continent of Europe than I did a while back," +Billy said, contentedly. + +"Hello, everybody," Preston Eustace said as Michael held the door for +him. "How's everything, Caroline?" + +"All right," Caroline said. Then she added unnecessarily, "You--you +know Betty, don't you?" + +"I used to know Betty," he said slowly. + +The two looked at each other, with that look of incredulity with which +lovers sometimes greet each other after absence and estrangement. +"This can't be you," their eyes seem to be saying, "I've disposed of +you long since, God help me!" + +"How do you do, Preston?" Betty said, giving him her hand. Then she +smiled faintly, and added with a caricature of her usual manner: +"Lovely weather we're having for this time of year, aren't we?" + +"I'm very fond of you, Betty,"--Dick smiled as she sank into the chair +beside him and Preston turned to his sister. "I think you're a little +sport." + +"I don't know how you can, Dicky," she smiled at him forlornly. "I've +got a bad black heart, and I play the wrong kind of games." + +"Well, I see through them, so it's all right. What's this about +Nancy?" + +"I'll tell you later," Betty said; "there she comes now." + +Nancy, stimulated by massage and steam, her hair dressed by a +professional; powdered, and for the first time in her life rouged to +hide the tell-tale absence of her natural quickening color, came +forward to meet her guests in supreme unconsciousness of the pathos of +the effect she had achieved. She was dressed in snowy white like a +bride,--the only gown she had that was in keeping with the holiday +decorations, and she moved a little clumsily, as if her brain had +found itself suddenly in charge of an unfamiliar set of reflexes. Her +lids drooped over burning eyes that had known no sleep for many +nights, and every line and lineament of her face was stamped with +pain. + +"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," she said. Her voice, +curiously, was the only natural thing about her. "I've been scouring +off every vestige of my work-a-day self, and that takes time. Thank +you for the roses, Dick, but the only flowers I could have worn with +this color scheme would have been geraniums." + +"I'll send you some geraniums to-morrow." + +"Don't," she said. "How do you do, Preston?" + +She gave him a cold hand, and he stared at her almost as he had stared +at Betty. He was a tall grave-looking youth, with Caroline's straight +features and olive coloring, and a shock of heavy blond hair. + +"I hope you'll like your party," Nancy hurried on. "Gaspard is +bursting with pride in it. I think it would be a nice thing to have +him in and drink his health after the coffee. He would never forget +the honor." + +"My God!" Dick said in an undertone to Betty, "how long has she been +like this?" + +"I'll tell you later," she promised him again. + +With the serving of the first course of dinner--Gaspard's wonderful +_Puree Mongol_--an artist's dream of all the most delicate vegetables +in the world mingled together as the clouds are mingled, the tensity +in the air seemed to break and shatter about them in showers of +brilliant, artificial mirth, which presently, because they were all +young and fond of one another and their group had the habit of +intimacy, became less and less strained and unreal. + +Nancy's tired eyes lost something of their unnatural glitter, and +Betty seemed more of a woman than a scarlet sprite, while Caroline's +smile began to reflect something of the real gladness that possessed +her soul. Dick and Billy took up the burden of the entertainment of +the party, and gave at least an excellent imitation of inspirational +gaiety. + +"This _filet of sole_," Billy observed as he sampled his second course +appreciatively, "is common or barnyard flounder,--and the shrimp and +the oyster crab, and that mushroom of the sea, and the other little +creature in the corner of my plate who shall be nameless, because I +have no idea what his name is,--are all put in to make it harder." + +"Gaspard is using some of the simpler native products now instead of +the high-priced imported ones," Nancy said eagerly, "and he is getting +wonderful results, I think." + +"Flounder _a la Francaise_ is all right," Dick said. + +"Our restaurant has reformed," Betty said. "We're running it on a +strictly business basis." + +"And making money?" Dick asked quickly. + +"We're not losing much," Betty said. "That's a great improvement." + +"Some of those little girls from the publishing houses look paler to +me than they did," Nancy said. "I wish I could give them hypodermics +of protein and carbohydrates." + +"Give me the name and address of any of your customers that worry +you," Dick said, "and I'll buy 'em a cow or a sugar plum tree or a +flivver or anything else they seem to be in need of." + +"Don't those things tend to pauperize the poor?" Caroline's brother +put in gravely. + +"Sure they do," Billy agreed, "only Nancy has kind of given up her +struggle not to pauperize them." + +"I started in with some very high ideals about scientific service," +Nancy explained. "I was never going to give anybody anything they +hadn't actually earned in some way, except to bring up the average of +normality by feeding my patrons surreptitious calories. I had it all +figured out that the only legitimate charity was putting flesh on the +bones of the human race,--that increasing the general efficiency that +way wasn't really charity at all." + +"You don't believe that now?" Preston Eustace asked. + +"I don't know what I believe now." + +"What is scientific charity, anyhow?" Dick looked about inquiringly. + +"There ain't no such animal," Billy contributed. + +"It's substituting the cool human intellect for the warm human heart, +I guess," Betty said dreamily. + +"But that so often works," Caroline said. + +"I was never going to make any mistakes," Nancy said. "I was going +to keep my fists scientifically shut, and my heart beatifically +open." She hesitated. "I--I was going to swing my life, and my +undertakings--right." It became increasingly hard for her to +speak, and a little gasp went round the table. "I've--I've made +nothing--nothing but mistakes," she finished piteously. + +"But you've rectified them," Betty put in vigorously. "Nancy, dear, +I've never known you to make a mistake that you haven't rectified, and +that is more than I can say of any other person in the world." + +"Sirloin and carrots," Caroline said, as the next course came in. +"I'll wager you've cut the price of this dinner in two by judicious +ordering." + +"There's nothing else but field salad," Nancy said, still piteously, +"and raspberry _mousse_." + +"Nancy, you'll break my heart," Betty said, wiping her eyes frankly, +but Nancy only looked at her wonderingly, wistfully, preoccupied and +remote, while Preston Eustace gazed at Betty as if he too would find a +welcome relief in shedding a heavy tear or two. + +"Collier Pratt has broken her heart, Dick," Betty told him in the +limousine on the way home. "It's been going on ever since the first +time she saw him. Down at the restaurant we've all known it. She's +been eating at his table every night for months, and Gaspard and +everybody else in the place, in fact, has been a slave to his lightest +whim. I've always disliked him intensely, myself." + +"Why didn't you tell me before, Betty?" + +"It wasn't my business to tell you. I thought it was coming off, you +know." + +"What was coming off?" + +"Their affair. I thought it was past my meddling." + +"Do you mean to say that you thought Nancy was going to marry Collier +Pratt--_Nancy_?" + +"Why, yes, if I hadn't I--I wouldn't have acted up the way I did in +your rooms that night." + +But Dick neither heard nor understood her. + +"Do you mean to say that you think Collier Pratt has been making love +to her?" + +"I think so." + +"But the damned scoundrel is married." + +"Oh!" Betty cried. "_Oh!_--I didn't know that." + +"I've known it--I've always known it," Dick said. "I never dreamed +that Nancy had any special interest in him." + +"Well, she had. She's going through everything, Dick, even Sheila--you +know how she loved Sheila?" + +"I know," Dick said grimly. "Do you mind going on home alone, Betty? +You'll be perfectly safe with Williams, you know." + +"Of course not. What are you going to do, Dick? Are you going to +Nancy?" + +"No, I'm not going to Nancy." + +Betty, looking at him more closely, realized for the first time that +she was sitting beside a man in whom the rage of the primitive animal +was gaining its ascendency. His breath was coming in short stertorous +gasps, his hands were clinched, the purplish color was mounting to his +brows, but he still went through the motions of a courteous +leave-taking. + +"Where are you going, Dick?" she asked again, as he stood on the curb +where he had signaled Williams to leave him, with the door of the car +in his hand, staring down at it, and for the moment forgetting to +close it. + +"I'm going to find Collier Pratt," he said thickly. Then with a slam +that splintered the hinge of the door he was holding he crashed it in +toward the car. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +OTHER PEOPLE'S TROUBLES + + +Nancy was trying conscientiously to interest herself in other people's +troubles. After the first great shock of pain following her loss at a +blow of her lover and Sheila, she began automatically to try to work +her way through her suffering. The habit of application to the daily +task combined with her instinct for taking immediate action in a +crisis stood her in good stead in her hour of need. She decided what +to occupy herself with, and then devoted herself faithfully to the +prescribed occupation. + +The Inn did not need her. With Betty to guide him economically Gaspard +was able to superintend all the details of the establishment +adequately and artistically. Sheila was gone. She packed up several +trunks of dresses and toys and other childish belongings and sent them +to Washington Square, but even without these constant reminders of +her, the hunger for the child's presence did not abate. The little +girl was curiously dissociated from her father in Nancy's mind. She +had seen so little of the two together that they seemed to belong to +entirely different compartments of her consciousness. It was only the +anguish of losing them that linked them together. + +Nancy decided to devote a certain proportion of her days and nights to +remedying such evils as lay under her immediate observation;--to +helping the individuals with whom she came into daily contact--the +dependents and tradespeople with whom she dealt. She had always been +convinced that the people who ministered to her daily comfort in New +York should occupy some part in her scheme of existence. It was one of +her favorite arguments that a little more energy and imagination on +the part of New York citizens would develop the communal spirit which +was so painfully lacking in the soul of the average Manhattanite. + +So the milkman and the corner grocer, the newspaper man, and Hitty's +small brood of grand nieces and nephews, to say nothing of the Italian +fruit man's family, and her laundress's invalid daughter, were all +occupying a considerable place in Nancy's daily schedule. In a very +short interval she had the welfare of more than half a dozen families +on her hands, and was involved in all manner of enterprises of a +domestic nature,--from the designing of confirmation gowns to the +purchase of rubber-tired rolling chairs, and heterogeneous woolen +garments and other intimate necessities. + +She was a little ashamed of her new line of activities, and still hurt +enough to shun the scrutiny of her friends, and thereby succeeded in +mystifying and alarming Billy and Dick and Betty and Caroline almost +beyond the limit of their endurance by resolutely keeping them at +arm's length. She was supremely unconscious of anything at all +remarkable in her behavior, and believed that they accepted her +excuses and apologies at their face value. She had no conception of +the fact that her tortured face, with tragedy looking newly out of her +eyes, kept them from their rest at night. + +Sheila wrote to thank her for sending the trunks. + + * * * * * + +"My dear, _ma chere_, Miss Dear," she said. "_Merci beaucoup pour_ my +clothes and other beautiful things. I like them. _Je t'aime--je t'aime +toujours_. My father will not permit me to go back. _Comme_--how I +desire to see you! My father has been sick. He fell down or was hurt +in the street. There was blood--a great deal. Are they well--the +others? Tell Monsieur Dick I give him _tout mon coeur_. Come to see me +if it is _permit_. No more. You could write _peut-etre_. _Je +t'aime_." + + "Yours, + "SHEILA." + + * * * * * + +Nancy read this letter, in the quaint childish hand, with a great wave +of dumb sickness creeping over her--a devastating, disintegrating +nausea of soul and body. The most significant fact in it, however, +that Collier Pratt had fallen down "or been hurt in the street," of +course escaped her entirely, except to stir her with a kind of dim +pity for his distress. + +In one of her long night vigils Preston Eustace's face came back to +her oddly. She remembered suddenly the strange sad way he had stared +at Betty on the evening of her party at the Inn. She reconstructed +Betty's love-story, and its sudden breaking off, three years before, +and with her new insight into the human heart, decided that these two +loved each other still, and must be helped to the consummation of +their happiness. She telephoned to them both the next day that they +could be of service to her; and made an appointment to meet them at a +given hour the next evening at her apartment. + +She expected and intended to be there herself to give the meeting the +semblance of coincidence, and to offer them the hospitality of her +house before she was inspired with the excuse that would permit her an +exit that left them alone together; but she found herself in the slums +of Harlem by an Italian baby's bedside at that hour, and decided that +even to telephone would be superfluous, as once finding each other the +lovers would be oblivious to all other considerations. + +What actually happened was that Preston Eustace, exactly on time as +was his habit, had been waiting some ten minutes on Nancy's hearth-rug +when Betty, delayed by the eccentricities of a casual motor-bus +engine, and frantic with anxiety for her friend, burst in upon him. So +full was she of the most hectic speculations concerning Nancy's sudden +appeal to her that she scarcely noticed who was waiting there to greet +her, and when she did notice, scarcely heeded that recognition. + +"Where's Nancy?" she demanded breathlessly. + +"I don't know, Betty," Preston Eustace said. + +"Doesn't Hitty know?" + +"She says she doesn't!" + +"How did you happen to be here?" + +"She sent for me." + +"She's probably sent for everybody else," Betty said. "She's killed +herself, I know she has." + +"What makes you think so?" + +"Her heart is broken, she's been suffering terribly." + +"I don't think she would have sent for me if she had been going to +kill herself," Preston Eustace said, a little as if he would have +added, "We are not on those terms." + +"I don't suppose she would," Betty said. "But oh, Preston, I'm so +worried about her. I don't know where she is or anything. I tell you +her heart is broken." + +"I didn't know you believed in hearts--broken or otherwise, Betty." + +"I believe in Nancy's heart." + +"You never believed in mine." + +"You never gave me much reason to, Preston. You--you let me give you +back your ring the first time I threatened to." + +"Of course I did." + +"You never came near me again." + +"Of course I didn't." + +"You let three years go by without a word." + +"Of course--" + +"If you say 'of course I did' again I'll fly straight up through this +roof. If you'd ever loved me you wouldn't have gone away and left +me." + +"If I hadn't loved you I wouldn't have gone away." + +"Oh, dear," Betty sighed. "I don't see how you can stand there and +think about yourself with Nancy out in the night--we don't know +where." + +"Ourselves, Betty--did you ever really love me?" + +"It doesn't make any difference whether I did or not," Betty said. "I +hate men." + +"I think I'd better be going," Preston Eustace said, his face dark +with pain. He was rather a literal-minded young man, as Caroline's +brother would have been likely to be. + +Betty buried her face in her hands. + +"My head aches," she said, "and I was never in my life so mad and so +miserable. I can't understand why everything and everybody should +behave so--devilishly. You and every one else, I mean. I just simply +can't bear to have Nancy suffer so. My head aches and my heart aches +and my soul aches." She lifted her head defiantly. + +"I think I had better be going," Preston Eustace repeated, looking +down at her sorrowfully. + +"Oh! don't be going," Betty said. "What in the name of sense do you +want to be going for?" Then without warning or premeditation she +hurled herself at his breast. "Oh! Preston, if there is anything +comforting in this world," she said, "tell it to me, now." + +Preston Eustace gathered her to his breast with infinite tenderness. + +"I love you," he said with his lips on her brow. "Doesn't that comfort +you a little?" + +"Yes," she admitted, "yes," winding her arms about his neck, "but you +have no idea what a little devil I am, Preston." + +"I don't want to have any idea," he said, still holding her hungrily. + +"No, I don't think you do," Betty said. "Oh! kiss me again, dear, and +tell me you won't ever let me go now." + +When Nancy came in she found the lovers so oblivious to the sound of +her key in the latch or her footstep in the corridor that she decided +to slip into bed without disturbing them, and did so, without their +ever realizing that for the latter part of the evening at least, they +had a hostess within range of the sound of their voices--indeed, she +was obliged to stuff the pillow into her ears to prevent herself from +actually hearing what they were saying. + + * * * * * + +At first her freedom--her release from the monotonous constraint of +her daily confinement at the Inn--the unaccustomed independence of her +new activities which justified her most untoward goings and +comings--was very soothing to her. She liked the feeling of slipping +out of the house at night, accountable to no one except the +redoubtable Hitty to whom she presented any explanation that happened +to occur to her,--however wide its departure from the actual +facts--and losing herself in the resurgent town. But after a while her +liberty lost its savor. She began to feel uncared for and neglected. +The unaccountable anguish in her breast was neither assuaged nor +mitigated by the geographical latitude she permitted herself. She kept +doggedly on with her personally conducted philanthropies, but she +began to feel a little frightened about her capacity for endurance. +Her body and brain began to show strange signs of fatigue. She was +afraid that one or the other might suddenly refuse to function. + +One night, on coming out into the heterogeneous human stream on Avenue +A, after a visit to a Polish family in the model tenements on +Seventy-ninth Street, she ran into Dick. + +"Why, Dick," she said, "what an extraordinary place to find you!" + +"Yes, isn't it?" he said. "My business often brings me up this way." + +"Your business? What business?" she asked incredulously. + +"I don't know exactly what business it is. The ministering business, I +guess." He motioned toward the basket on her arm: "Let me carry that, +and you, too, if you'll let me, Nancy. You look tired." + +"I am tired, Dick," she said. "Have you got a car anywhere around?" + +"I can phone for it in two shakes," he said. "Here in this ice-cream +parlor. Can I buy you a cone while you're waiting?" + +"Buy cones for that crowd of children and I'll watch them eat them. +Doesn't that little girl in the pink dress look like Sheila, Dick?" + +She sank down on a stool in the interior of the candy shop and rested +her elbows on the damp marble table in front of her, splotched and +streaked still with the refreshment of the last customer who occupied +the seat there and watched the horde of dirty clamorous street +children devouring ice-cream cones and cheap sweets to the limit of +their capacity. + +"I didn't know you believed in this promiscuous feeding of children +between meals," Dick said, when she was settled comfortably at last +among the cushions of his car, which had arrived on the scene with an +amazing, not to say, suspicious promptness. + +"I don't," Nancy said, "in the least; but I don't _really_ believe in +the things I believe in any more." + +"Poor Nancy!" Dick said. + +"I've had some trouble, Dick. I'm shaken all out of my poise. I can't +seem to get my universe straight again." + +"I'm sorry for that," he said. "Anything I can do?" + +"Stand by; that's all, I guess." + +"You couldn't tell me a little more about it, could you?" + +"No, I couldn't, Dick." + +"I'm not even to guess?" + +"You couldn't guess. It's the kind of thing that's entirely outside +of--of the probabilities. I think it's outside of the range of your +understanding, Dick. I don't think you know that there is exactly that +kind of trouble in the world." + +"And you think you'd better not enlighten me?" + +"I couldn't, Dick, even if I wanted to. Funny you happened to be in +this part of town to-night just when I really needed you." + +He smiled. Every night of his life he followed her, watching over her, +dodging down dark alley ways, waiting at squalid entrances until she +came out. To-night he had ventured to speak to her only because he +knew her to be in need of actual physical assistance. + +"Awfully glad to be anywhere around when you need me," he said; "still +I hope you don't mind my suggesting that this is a Gehenna of a place +for either of us to be in." + +"Haven't you any feeling for the downtrodden?" Nancy asked, with a +faint reflection of what Billy referred to as her "older and better +manner." + +"I'm downtrodden myself, Nancy." + +She smiled in her turn. + +"You don't look very downtrodden to me," she said. "_You've_ got +everything to live for." + +"Everything?" + +"Well, money and freedom and--and--" + +"Money is the only thing I've got that you haven't, and that doesn't +mean much unless you can share it with the person you love." + +"No, it doesn't, does it?" Nancy said unexpectedly. "What's that scar +on your forehead?" + +"That's a scratch I got." + +"How?" + +"Shaving or fighting, or something like that." + +"_Was_ it fighting, Dick?" + +"Yes." + +"Who were you fighting with?" + +"I wasn't fighting. I was assaulting and battering." + +"Why, Dick!" + +"If it's any satisfaction to you to know it I made one grand job of +it." + +"Why should it be any satisfaction to me?" + +"I don't know." + +"Why, Dick!" Nancy said again. "I didn't know you had any of that kind +of brutality in you." + +"Didn't you?" + +"What happens to a man when he--does a thing like that?" + +"He gets jugged." + +"Did he get jugged?" + +"Well, that wasn't the part that interested me." + +An odd picture presented itself to Nancy's mind of the men of the +world engaged in one grand melee of brawling; struggling, belaying one +another with their bare fists, drawing blood; brutes turned on +brutes. + +"Men are queer things," she said. + +Dick's face was turned away from her. It was not at the moment a face +she would have recognized. The eyes were contracted: the nostrils +quivering: the teeth set. + +"I'm always at your service, Nancy," he said presently. "Is there +anything in the world you want that I can get for you?" + +"The only thing I want is something you can't get?" + +"And that is?" + +"Sheila." + +"No," Dick said. "I can't get Sheila for you. I'm sorry. I suppose +that's the whole answer to you," he went on musingly. "You want +something, somebody to mother--to minister to. It doesn't make so much +difference what else it is, so long as it's--downtrodden. That's why +I've never made more of a hit with you. I've never been downtrodden +enough. I didn't need feeding or nursing. I've always sort of +cherished the feeling that I liked to be the one creature you didn't +have to carry on your back. I thought that to stand behind _you_ was a +pretty good stunt, but you've never needed anything yet to fall back +on." + +"I don't think I ever shall," Nancy said. "Not,--not in the way you +mean, Dick." + +"So be it," he said, folding his arms. "But there's still one thing +you'll take from me, and that's the thing I've got that you +haven't--money. I never have cared much about it before, but now that +there are so many things I can't put right for you, I know you won't +be selfish enough to deny this one satisfaction. Let me make over to +you all the money you need to get you out of your difficulties with +the Inn. Let me hand out a good round sum for all these charities of +yours. If you knew how everything else in connection with you had +conspired to hurt me,--how this being discounted and losing out all +around has cut into me, you wouldn't deny me this one privilege. You +don't want _me_, you wouldn't take me, but for God's sake, Nancy, take +this one thing that I can give you." + +They had just swung into the lower entrance of the Park, and the big +car was speeding silently into the deepening night, low hung with +silver stars, and jeweled with soft lights. + +"You're awfully good to me, Dick," Nancy said, "and I appreciate every +word you've been saying. I'd take your money, not for myself, but for +the things I'm doing, if I needed it, but I don't, you know." She +looked out into the coolness of the evening, lulled by the transition +to a region of so much airiness and space, soothed by the soft motion, +and the presence of a friend who loved her. The conversation in which +she was engaged suddenly became trivial and unimportant to her. She +was very tired, and she found herself beginning to rest and relax. "I +don't need it," she repeated vaguely. "I've got plenty of money of my +own. Over a million, Billy says now. Uncle Elijah left it to me. I +didn't want him to, but perhaps it was all for the best." She put her +head back against the cushions and shut her eyes. "I'm terribly +sleepy," she said, "and as for the Inn--that's making money, too, you +know. Last month we cleared more than two hundred dollars." + +And Dick saying nothing, but continuing to stare into space--the +panoramic space fleeting rhythmically by the car window,--she let +herself gradually slip into the depths of sudden drowsiness that had +overtaken her. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +HITTY + + +Hitty put on her bonnet--she had worn widow's weeds for twenty-five +years--and went out into the morning. She finally succeeded in +boarding a south-bound Sixth Avenue car,--though since it was her +habit to ignore the near side stop regulation, she always had +considerable trouble in getting on any car,--and in seating herself +bolt upright on the lengthwise seat, her black gloved hands folded +indomitably before her. + +At Fourth Street she descended and made her way east to the square, +and thence to the top floor of the studio building to which Collier +Pratt had taken his little daughter on the memorable occasion when he +had plucked her from her warm nest of blankets and led her, sleepy and +shivering, into the cold of the night. She had been at some pains to +secure the address without taking Nancy into her confidence. + +She took each creaking stair with a snort of disgust, and reaching the +battered door with Collier Pratt's visiting card tacked on the smeary +panel on a level with her eye, she knocked sharply, and scorning to +wait for a reply, turned the knob and walked in. + +Collier Pratt was making coffee on a small spirit lamp, set on the +wash-stand, which was decorously concealed during the more formal +hours of the day behind a soft colored Japanese screen. He was wearing +a smutty painter's smock, and though his face was shining with soap +and water, his hair was standing about his face in a disorder eloquent +of at least a dozen hours' neglect. Sheila, in a mussy gingham dress, +was trying to pry off the pasteboard covering of a pint bottle of milk +with a pair of scissors, and succeeding only indifferently. They both +turned on Hitty's entrance, and the milk bottle went crashing to the +floor when the little girl recognized her friend, but after one +terrified look at her father she made no move at all in Hitty's +direction. + +"And to what," Collier Pratt ejaculated slowly and disagreeably, as is +any man's wont before he has had his draught of breakfast coffee, "am +I to attribute the pleasure of this visit?" + +"It ain't no pleasure to me," Hitty said, advancing, a figure of +menace, into the center of the dusty workshop, strangely uncouth and +unprepossessing in the cold morning light,--"and if it's any pleasure +to you, that's an effect that I ain't calculated to produce. I've come +here on business--the business of collecting that poor neglected child +there, and taking her back where she belongs, where there's folks that +knows enough to treat her right." + +"Another of Miss Martin's friends and well-wishers, I take it. These +American girls are given to surrounding themselves with groups of warm +and impulsive associates. Do you by any chance happen to know a young +lawyer by the name of Boynton, Hitty? A collection lawyer?" + +"I'll thank you to call me Mrs. Spinney, if you please, or if you +don't please. Mrs. Spinney is the name I go by when I'm spoken to by +them that knows their manners. If Billy Boynton thinks he can collect +blood out of a stone he's welcome to try, but I should think he was +too long headed to waste his time." + +"I gave him my I. O. U.," Collier Pratt said wearily. "If you don't +mind, Hitty,--I really must be excused from your inexcusable +surname--I am going to drink a cup of coffee before we continue this +interesting discussion--_cafe noir_, our late unfortunate accident +depriving me of _cafe au lait_ as usual. Sheila, get the cups." + +"You don't mean to say that you feed that peaked child with full +strength coffee, do you? It'll stunt her growth; ain't you got the +sense to know that?" + +"I don't like _big_ women," Collier Pratt said. "She's very fond of +coffee." + +"Well! I've come to get her and take her away where you won't be in a +position to stunt her growth, whatever your ideas on the subject is." + +Collier Pratt seated himself at the deal table that Sheila had set +with the coffee-cups and a big loaf of French bread, and began slowly +consuming a bowl of inky fluid, strong of chicory, into which from +time to time he dipped a portion of the loaf. Sheila imitated his +processes with less daintiness and precision, since she was shaken +with excitement at Hitty's appearance. + +"I should spread a newspaper down if I was you," Hitty said, "before I +et my vittles off a table that way. If a table ain't scrubbed as often +as twice a day it ain't fit to be et off." + +"I know your breed," Collier Pratt said. "You'd be capable of taking +your breakfast off _The Evening Telegram_ if no more appropriately +colored sheet were at hand. Tell me, did Miss Martin send you here +this morning, or was the inspiration to come entirely your own?" + +"Nobody had to send me. Wild horses wouldn't have kept me away from +here." + +"Nor drag you away from here, I suppose, until your gruesome visit is +accomplished. What makes you think that I would give up Sheila to +you?" + +"I don't _think_ you would. I know you're a-goin' to." + +"Indeed." + +"We want the child. You don't want her, and you can't pretend to me +that you do. Even if you did want her you can't take care of her in no +way that's decent." + +"There's a great deal in what you say, Hitty." + +"What you're going to do is to sign a paper giving up your claim to +her, and then Nancy can adopt her when she sees fitting to do so." + +"What would you suggest my doing about the child's mother? She has a +mother living, you know." + +"Well, I didn't know," Hitty said, "but now I do know I guess I ain't +going to have so much trouble as I thought I was. You're just a plain +low-down yellow cur that any likely man I know would come down here +and lick the lights out of." + +"Well, don't send any more of them, Hitty," Collier Pratt protested. +"My work won't stand it." + +"You 'tend to the child's mother then, and I'll 'tend to you. You'd +better let Sheila come away peaceable without any more trouble." + +"What do you propose doing to me if I don't?" + +"There's so many different things I could use," Hitty said thoughtfully, +"that I don't know which one to hold over your head first." + +"I don't see how you could use anything you've got." + +"I'd just as soon use something I hadn't got," Hitty said grimly. "I'd +sue you for breach o' promise myself ruther than lose what I come +after." + +"I don't doubt you're capable of it," Collier Pratt said, surveying +her ruefully. "That certainly would ruin my reputation. But seriously, +supposing I were to give my consent to Sheila's going back to Miss +Martin--Sheila's fond of her, and I should be very glad to do Miss +Martin a service--little as you may be inclined to believe it of me. +I'm fond enough of the child, but she is a considerable embarrassment +to a man situated as I am. Supposing I should consent to giving her up +as you suggest, how can a woman situated as Miss Martin is situated +undertake such a charge permanently? How could she afford it? What +kind of a future should I be surrendering my little girl to? One has +to think of those things. Miss Martin is a poor girl--" + +"It's a lucky thing that you didn't know it before," Hitty said +deliberately. "What you don't know that a woman's got, you wouldn't be +trying to get away from her. Nancy's Uncle Elijah that died last year +left her a million dollars in his will." + +"The devil he did--" + +"I guess if anybody's going to talk about devils it had better be me," +Hitty said dryly. "Does the child go or stay?" + +"Oh! she goes," Collier Pratt said. "I'm sorry you didn't come after +me too, Hitty." + +"Nobody from up our way is ever coming after you. You can put that in +your pipe and smoke it. Put on your bonnet, Sheila." + +"In some ways that is more of a relief than you know, Hitty. Some of +the young men from up your way are so violent." + +"It ain't generally known yet," Hitty said as a parting shot when, +Sheila's hand in hers, she stood at the door preparatory to taking her +triumphal departure. "But Nancy is going to marry considerable money +in addition to what she's inherited." + +Nancy finding it impossible to spend an hour of her time idly and with +no appointments before noon that day, was engaged in darning a basket +full of slum socks that she had brought home from the tenements to +occupy Hitty's leisure moments. She was not very expert at this +particular task, and the holes were so huge, and their method of +behaving under scientific management so peculiar--it is hardly +necessary to say that Nancy knew the theory of darning perfectly--that +she was becoming more and more dissatisfied with her progress. Hitty's +unprecedented and taciturn donning of her best bonnet in the early +morning hours, followed by her abrupt departure without explanation or +apology, was also a little disconcerting to any one acquainted with +her habits. Nancy was relieved to hear her key in the lock again, and +put down her work to greet her. + +The door opened and Sheila stood on the threshold. Hitty was close +behind her, but Nancy had eyes only for the child. + +"Don't cry, Miss Dear," Sheila said, in her arms. "I cried hard every +night when I was gone from you, but now I have come back. My father +does not want me, and he says that you can have me." + +"He signed a paper," Hitty said. "I've got it in my bag with my specs. +If ever he shows his face around here we can have the law on him." + +"Can I really have Sheila?" Nancy cried. "I can't believe that--her +father would let her go. I can't understand it." + +"He's a kind of a poor soul," Hitty said. "He ain't got no real +contrivance. He's glad enough to get rid of her." + +"Did he say so?" + +"Well, nearabout. He has a high-falutin way of talking but that was +the amount of it. He knows which side his bread is buttered. He ain't +nobody's fool. I'll say that for him." + +"I can't say that you make him out a very pleasant character," Nancy +said. "But he's an artist, Hitty. Artists don't react to the same set +of laws that we do. They're different somehow." + +"They ain't so different, when it comes to that," Hitty said dryly. +"They won't take a hint, but the harder you kick 'em the better for +all concerned. Don't you go sticking up for that low-down loon. He +ain't worth it." + +"I suppose he isn't," Nancy said; "he's a pretty poor apology for a +man as we understand men, Hitty, but there's something about him,--a +power and a charm that you can't altogether discount, even though you +have lost every particle of your respect for him." + +"He has a kind of way," Hitty conceded, "but I ain't one o' them kind +o' women that hankers much for the society of a man that's once shown +himself to be more of a sneak than the average." + +"I don't think that I am, either," Nancy said gravely. + +"I want to be your little girl always," Sheila announced, "if I may +talk now, may I? And Monsieur Dick's, too, and sit on a cushion and +sew a fine seam, and feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream. I want +to see Monsieur Dick. Where is he?" + +"He's been sick," Nancy said, "but he's getting better now, I think. I +haven't seen him for some time, myself." + +"Don't you love him very much and aren't you very sorry?" + +"He probably isn't very sick," Nancy said. "I don't think he could +be--but if he were I should be sorry, of course." + +"I don't want him to be sick," Sheila said, making herself a nest in +Nancy's lap, and curling around in it like a kitten. "If he was I +should be very, very unhappy, and I am tired of being unhappy, Miss +Dear." + +Nancy's arms closed tight about her little body, which was lighter in +her arms than she had ever known it. "Oh! I'm going to make such a +strong well, little girl of you," she cried, "and we're going to have +so many pleasant times together. I'm tired of being unhappy, too, +Sheila, dear." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +LOHENGRIN AND WHITE SATIN + + +Dick, having la grippe, and doing his bewildered best to get pneumonia +and gastritis by creeping out of bed when his temperature was highest, +and indulging in untrammelled orgies of food and drink and exposure to +draughts, had finally succeeded in making himself physically very +miserable indeed. His mind had been out of joint for weeks. He reached +the phase presently of refusing all nourishment and spiritual +consolation, indiscriminately, and finding himself unbenefited by +these heroic methods, decided in his own mind that all was over with +him. + +He knew nothing about sickness, having led a charmed life in that +respect since the measles period, and the persistent misery in his +interior, attacking lung and liver impartially,--to say nothing of the +top of his head and the back of his neck, and as his weakness +increased, his cardiac region where there was a perpetual palpitation, +and the calves of his legs which set up an ache like that of a +recalcitrant tooth,--persuaded him that such suffering as his must be +a certain indication of the approaching end. He had dismissed his +doctor after the first visit, and denying himself to visitors, found +himself alone and apparently in a desperate condition, with no one to +minister to him but paid dependents. It was then that the loss of +Nancy began to assume spectral proportions. He had been so long +accustomed to think of himself as the strong silent lover, equipped +with the patience and understanding that would outlast all the +vagaries of Nancy's adventurous tendencies, that it was difficult to +readjust himself to a new conception of her as a woman that another +and even less worthy man had so nearly won,--under his nose. + +He had never thought much of his money until it began to acquire the +virtue of an alkahest in his mind, an universal solvent that would +transmute all the baser metals in Nancy's life and the lives of the +people in whom Nancy was interested, into the pure gold of luxury and +ease. He knew that the conventional fairy gifts would mean very little +to her, but he had dreamed, when she was ready, of working out with +her some practicable and gracious scheme of beneficence. There was one +power she coveted that he could put in her hands,--one way that he +could befriend and relieve her even before she conceded him that +prerogative. When he learned that she had a fortune of her own his +hopes came tumbling about his head, and he lay disconsolate among the +ruins. His creeping physical disability seemed significant of the +cataclysmic overthrow of all his dreams and desires. From having +secretly and in some terror arrived at the conclusion that death was +imminent, he began to look upon such a solution of his misery with +some favor. + +It was a very gaunt and hollow-eyed caricature of the Dick she had +known that confronted Nancy, when instigated by Betty, who had his +illness heavily on her mind, she forced her way unannounced into the +curious Georgian living-room of the suite wherein he was incarcerated. +He had been stretched in an attitude of abandon on the couch when she +opened the oak paneled door, but he jumped to his feet in a spasm of +rage and alarm when he discovered that he had a visitor. + +"Go away," he said, "I am not able to see anybody. There's a mistake. +I gave strict orders that nobody at all was to be admitted." + +"I know, Dick," Nancy said gently, "don't blame your faithful +servitors. I thought I should have to use a gun on them, but I +explained to them that you must be looked after." + +"I don't want to be looked after. I'm all right, thank you. Are you +alone?" + +"No, Hitty's outside. Betty simply insisted on my bringing her,--I +don't know why, but she said you'd be kinder to me if I did. I don't +think you're very kind." + +A flicker of a smile crossed Dick's face, which seemed to say that if +anything could bring back a momentary relish of existence the mention +of Betty's name would be that thing. Nancy saw the expression and +misinterpreted it. + +"I don't want to see anybody," Dick repeated firmly. "Will you be good +enough to go away and leave me to my misery?" + +"No, I won't," Nancy said, "I never left anybody to their misery yet, +and I'm not going to begin on you. Of course, if you'd rather see +Betty, I'll send for her. She seems to know a good deal about your +habits and customs. You look like a monk in that bathrobe. I'm glad +you're not a fat man, Dick. It's so very hard to calculate just how +much to cut down on starches and sweets without injury to the health. +What are you feeding up on?" + +"You know very well that I'm not feeding up on anything, but if you +think you can come around here, and dope out one of your darned health +menus for me, and sit around watching me eat it, you are jolly well +mistaken. I wish you'd go home, Nancy. I don't like you to-day. I +don't like myself or anybody in this whole universe. I'm not fit for +human society--don't you see I'm not?" + +"You're awful cross, dear." + +"Don't call me dear. I'm not Sheila or one of your sick waitresses, +you know." + +"Sheila's back." + +"Is she?" + +"Don't you care?" + +"Oh, I suppose so." + +"She loves you." + +"She's unique." + +"You told me once there were other girls, Dick." + +"They're all over it by now." + +"Dick, can't I do something for you?" + +"Yes, leave me alone." + +"I've never seen you like this before." + +"No, thank God." + +"I didn't know you were ever anything but sort of smug and superior." + +"Grand description." + +"You ought to be in bed, dear--I didn't mean to call you dear, it +slipped out, Dicky,--and taking nourishment every hour or so. What +does the doctor say?" + +"Nothing, he's given me up as a bad job." + +"Given you up?" + +"Yes, there's nothing he can do for me." + +"Why, Dick, my dear, what is it?" + +"Oh! lungs or liver or something. I don't know." + +"What are you taking, Dick?" + +"I tell you I can't take anything," he said, misunderstanding her. "It +makes me sick to eat. Every time I try to eat anything I feel a lot +worse for it." + +"When did you try last?" + +"Oh, yesterday some time. Now what in the name of sense makes a woman +shed tears at a simple statement like that? I'm not in shape to stand +this. Once and for all, Nancy, will you get out and leave me? I tell +you I never wanted to see you less in my life. I'll write you a letter +and apologize if you'll only go, now." + +"Oh, I'll go," Nancy said. "I couldn't really believe that you wanted +me to,--that's all." + +She started for the door--but Dick, weakened by lack of food, tortured +beyond his endurance by the sudden assault on his nerves made by +Nancy's appearance, gave way to his relief at her going an instant too +soon. Like a small boy in pain he crooked his elbow and covered his +face with his arm. + +Nancy ran to him and knelt at his side, taking his head on her +breast. + +"Dear," she said, "you do want me. We want each other. You love me, +Dicky, and I am going to love you--if you'll only let me look after +you and nurse you back to health again." + +"I don't want to be nursed," Dick blubbered, his head buried in her +bosom, "I want to look out for you, and take care of you, and--and now +look at me. You'll never love me after this, Nancy." + +"Yes, I shall, dear," Nancy said. "I've always loved you somehow. +It'll--it'll be the saving of me, Dick." + +"Well, then I do want to be nursed. I--I haven't cried before since I +had the measles, Nancy." + +"I'm glad you cried, now, then," Nancy said. + + * * * * * + +"I suppose you'll want to be married in the courtyard of the Inn," +Dick said some weeks later, when they were conventionally ensconced in +Nancy's own drawing-room; Hitty happily rattling silverware in the +butler's pantry in the rear, "with old Triton blowing his wreathed +horn above us, and all the nymphs and gargoyles and Hercules as +interested spectators. Well, go as far as you like. I haven't any +objection. I'll be married in a Roman bath if you want me to, and eat +bran biscuit and hygienic apple sauce for my wedding breakfast." + +"Betty and Preston are going to be married at the Inn," Nancy said; +"you know her mother's an invalid, and they can't have it at home. Do +you know what I'd like to give them as a wedding present?" + +"I don't." + +"Well, you know, Preston's firm has gone out of existence. The war +simply killed it. They haven't much money ahead, and he may have a +harder time than he thinks getting located again." + +"Yes?" + +"I thought I'd like to give them Outside Inn for a wedding present. +Besides, I don't see what else there is to do with it. It's making +several hundred a month, now, and promises to make more." + +"Good idea," Dick said. + +"You don't seem exceedingly interested." + +"Oh, I am," Dick said, "I'm more interested in our wedding than +Betty's wedding present, but that doesn't imply a lack of merit in +your idea. _You'll_ want to be married at the Inn, I take it?" + +"You'd let me, wouldn't you?" + +"Sure I'd let you. When a man marries a modern girl with all the +trappings and the suits of modernity, he ought to be prepared to take +the consequences cheerfully." + +"Then I'm going to surprise you. I don't want anything modern at all +about my wedding. I want it in church with a huge bridal bouquet and +_Lohengrin_ and white satin; Caroline for my matron of honor and Betty +for my bridesmaid, and Sheila for flower girl. I want a wedding +breakfast at the Ritz and rice and old shoes--just all the old +traditional things." + +"Gee whiz," Dick ejaculated, "is this straight, or are you only making +it up to sound good to me? You can have it anyway you like it, you +know." + +"That's the way I like it," Nancy said. "It's good to be a modern +girl, but I really prefer to be an old-fashioned wife--with +reservations," she added hastily. + +"That's what we all come to in the end," Dick said, "no matter how we +feel or think we feel about it--being modern with reservations." + +"I saw Collier Pratt to-day," Nancy said suddenly, as she watched a +log split apart in the fireplace and scatter its tiny shower of +sparks, "on the avenue." + +Dick carefully stamped out two smoldering places on the rug before he +answered. + +"Did you?" he said. + +"He had a cheap little creature with him, dark haired in messy +cerise." + +"It may have been his wife. I hear that she's living with him again." + +"Is she?" + +"Nancy," Dick said with an effort, after a few minutes of silence, +"are you all over that? Is it really fair and right of me to take you? +I've been puzzling over that lately. I want you on any terms, you +know, as far as I am concerned, but I'm a sort of monogamist. If a +woman has once cared for a person, no matter who or what that person +is, can she ever care again in the same way for any one? Isn't it pity +you feel for me, after all?" + +"No it isn't pity," Nancy said slowly. "I cared for that man until I +found that he was the shadow and not the substance. He isn't fit to +black your shoes, Dick.--Besides--if--if it was pity," she added +irrelevantly, "that's the way to get me started, you know." + +"If I only have got you started--really." + +Nancy crossed the two feet of space between them and sank at his feet, +leaning her head back against his knee while he stroked her hair +silently. + +"There's one way of proving," she said presently, "if--if you've made +a woman really care for you. I should think you'd know that. I told +you how you'd made me feel about the bridal bouquet and _Lohengrin_." + +"Does that prove something?" + +"Doesn't it?" + +"I suppose it does. You mean it proves that a woman truly loves a man +if he's made her feel that she wants to be an old-fashioned wife--" + +"And mother, Dick," Nancy finished for him bravely. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Outside Inn, by Ethel M. 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