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.