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, _crême renversé_, 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 _cèpes 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 coupé_, 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 Elyseés_. 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 aimée_."
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 aimée_," 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.