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'hôte," 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'hôte 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!"