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 tête-à-tête. 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 café. 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 _Père 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 Café 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 café 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
café--not with the one object in life--to cram a _Châteaubriand_ 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.