He didn't say it. But Father had been knocked breathless by an idea. He
was silent all the way home. He made figures on the last leaf of his
little pocket account-book. He manoeuvered to get Mother alone, and
exultantly shot his idea at her.
They were beginning to get old; the city was almost too much for them.
They would pick out some pretty, rustic spot and invest their savings in
a tea-room. At five-hundred per cent. they would make enough during
three months of summer to keep them the rest of the year. If they were
located on Cape Cod, perhaps they could spend the winter with the
Tubbses. They would have a garden; they would keep chickens, dogs,
pussies, yes, a cow; they would buy land, acre by acre; they would have
a farm to sustain them when they were too old for work; maybe they would
open a whole chain of tea-rooms and ride about supervising them in a
motor-car big as a house; they would--
"Now hold your horses, Father," she begged, dizzily. "I never did see
such a man for running on. You go on like a house afire. You ought to
know more, at your time of life, than to go counting your chickens
before--"
"I'm going to hatch them. Don't they tell us in every newspaper and
magazine you can lay your hand on that this is the Age of the Man with
the Idea? Look here. Two slices of home-made bread, I calc'late, don't
cost more than three-fifths of a cent, I shouldn't think, and cream
cheese to smear on them about half a cent; there's a little over a cent;
and overhead--'course _you_ wouldn't take overhead into account, and
then you go and say I ain't practical and hatching chickens, and all,
but let me tell you, Sarah Jane Appleby, I'm a business man and I've
been trained, and I tell you as Pilkings has often said to me, it's
overhead that makes or breaks a business, that's what it is, just like
he says, yes, sir, _overhead_! So say we'll allow--now let me see, ten
plus ten is twenty, and one six-hundredth of twenty would be--six in two
is--no, two in six is--well, _anyway_, to make it ab-so-lute-ly safe,
we'll allow a cent and a half for each sandwich, to cover overhead and
rent and fuel, and then they sell a sandwich at fifteen cents, which is,
uh, the way they figure percentage of profit--well, make it, say, seven
hundred per cent.! 'Course just estimating roughly like. Now can you
beat that? And tea-rooms is a safe, sound, interesting, genteel business
if there ever was one. What have you got to say to that?"
Father didn't often thus deluge her with words, but then he didn't often
have a Revolutionary Idea. She had never heard of "overhead," and she
was impressed; though in some dim confused way she rather associated
"overhead" with the rafters of the tea-room. She emerged gasping from
the shower, and all she could say was: "Yes: it would be very genteel.
And I must say I always did like them hand-painted artistic things. But
do you really think it would be safe, Father?"
"Safe? Pooh! Safe's the bank!"
They were in for it. Of course they were going to discuss it back and
forth for months, and sit up nights to make figures on the backs of
laundry-bills. But they had been fated the moment Father had seen Mother
and himself as delightful hosts playing with people in silk sweaters,
in a general atmosphere of roses, fresh lobster, and gentility.
They explored the Cape for miles around, looking for a place where they
might open a tea-room if they did decide to do so. They said good-by to
the Tubbses and returned to New York, to the noisy streets and the
thankless drudgery at Pilkings & Son's.
In December they definitely made up their minds to give up the shoe
business, take their few hundred dollars from the bank, and, the coming
summer, open a tea-room in an old farm-house on the Cliffs at Grimsby
Head, Cape Cod.
Out of saving money for the tea-room, that winter, the Applebys had as
much fun as they had ever found in spending. They were comrades,
partners in getting along without things as they had been partners in
working to acquire little luxuries. They went to the movies only once a
month--that made the movies only the more thrilling! On the morning
before they were to go Father would pound softly on the pillow by
Mother's head and sing, "Wake up! It's a fine day and we're going to see
a photoplay to-night!"
Mother did without her chocolate peppermints, and Father cut his smoking
down to one cigarette after each meal--though occasionally, being but a
mortal man, he would fall into sinful ways and smoke up three or four
cigarettes while engaged in an enthralling conversation regarding Mr.
Pilkings's meanness with fellow-clerks at lunch at the Automat.
Afterward he would be very repentant; he would have a severe case of
conviction of sin, and Mother would have to comfort him when he accused
himself:
"Seems as if I couldn't doggone never learn to control myself. I ain't
hopeless, am I? I declare, I'm disgusted with myself when I think of
your going without your chocolates and me just making a profane old
razorback hog of myself."
There was no sordidness in their minute economy; no chill of poverty;
they were saving for an excursion to paradise. They crowed as they
thought of the beauty of their discovery: lonely Grimsby Head, where the
sea stretched out on one side of their house and moors on the other,
with the State road and its motorists only two hundred feet from their
door. Though they should live in that sentinel house for years, never
would they enjoy it more than they now did in anticipation when they sat
of an evening in their brown flat, looking down on a delicatessen, a
laundry, and a barber-shop, and planned to invest in their house of
accomplished dreams the nickels they were managing to save.
The only thing that worried Father was the fact that their project put
upon Mother so great a burden in the way of preparations. At first he
took it for granted that only women could know about tea and tea-cups,
decorations and paper napkins and art and the disposal of garbage. He
determined to learn. By dint of much deep ratiocination while riding in
the Elevated between flat and store he evolved the new idea--cheapness.
It was nonsense, he decided, to have egg-shell china and to charge
fifteen cents for tea. Why not have neat, inexpensive china, good but
not exorbitant tea, and charge only five or ten cents, as did the
numerous luncheon-places he knew? Mother eagerly agreed.
Then the man of ideas began to turn his brain to saving Mother the
trouble of selecting the tea-room equipment. It was not an easy problem
for him. This gallant traveler, who wore his cap so cockily and paid a
three-dollar-and-sixty-cent check so nonchalantly when he was traveling,
was really an underpaid clerk.
He began by informing himself on all the technicalities of tea-rooms. He
lunched at tea-rooms. He prowled in front of tea-rooms. He dreamed about
tea-rooms. He became a dabster at tucking paper napkins into his neat
little waistcoat without tearing them. He got acquainted with the
waitress at the Nickleby Tavern, which was not a tavern, though it was
consciously, painstakingly, seriously quaint; and he cautiously made
inquiry of her regarding tea and china. During his lunch-hours he
frequented auction sales on Sixth Avenue, and became so sophisticated in
the matter of second-hand goods that the youngest clerk at Pilkings &
Son's, a child of forty who was about to be married, respectfully asked
Father about furnishing a flat. He rampaged through department stores
without buying a thing, till store detectives secretly followed him. He
read the bargain-sale advertisements in his morning paper before he even
looked at the war-news head-lines.
Father was no fool, but he had been known to prefer kindliness to
convenience. When he could get things for the same price he liked to buy
them from small struggling dealers rather than from large and efficient
ones--thereby, in his innocent way, helping to perpetuate the old
system of weak, unskilled, casual, chaotically competitive businesses.
This kindliness moved him when, during his search for information about
tea-room accessories, he encountered a feeble but pretentious
racket-store which a young Hungarian had established on Twenty-sixth
Street, just off Sixth Avenue. The Hungarian and one girl assistant were
trying by futile garish window-decorations to draw trade from the great
department stores and the five-and-ten-cent stores on one side of them
and the smart shops on the other side. But the Hungarian was clever, too
clever. He first found out all of Father's plans, then won Father's
sympathy. He coughed a little, and with a touching smile which was
intended to rouse admiration, declared that his lungs were bad, but
never mind, he would fight on, and go away for a rest when he had
succeeded. He insinuated that, as he was not busy now, he could do all
the buying and get better terms from wholesalers or bankruptcy bargain
sales than could Father himself. The Hungarian's best stock in trading
with Father was to look young and pathetically threadbare, to smile and
shake his head and say playfully, as though he were trying to hide his
secret generosity by a pretense of severity, "But of course I'd charge
you a commission--you see I'm a hard-hearted fella."
It was January. In a month, now, Mother would be grunting heavily and
beginning the labor of buying for the tea-room. So far she had done
nothing but crochet two or three million tidies for the tea-room chairs,
"to make them look homey."
The Hungarian showed Father tea-cups with huge quantities of gold on
them. He assured Father that it was smarter to buy odd cups--also
cheaper, as thus they could take advantage of broken lots and
closing-out sales. Fascinated, Father kept hanging around, and at last
he bolted frantically and authorized the Hungarian to purchase
everything for him.
Which the Hungarian had already done, knowing that the fly was on the
edge of the web.
You know, the things didn't look so bad, not so very bad--as long as
they were new.
Tea-cups and saucers gilded like shaving-mugs and equally thick.
Golden-oak chairs of mid-Chautauquan patterns, with backs of saw-mill
Heppelwhite; chairs of cane and rattan with fussy scrolls and curlicues
of wicker, the backs set askew. Reed tables with gollops of wicker;
plain black wooden tables that were like kitchen tables once removed;
folding-tables that may have been suitable to card-playing, if you
didn't play anything more exciting than casino. Flat silver that was
heavily plated except where it was likely to wear. Tea-pots of mottled
glaze, and cream-jugs with knobs of gilt, and square china ash-trays on
which one instinctively expected to find the legend "Souvenir of Niagara
Falls." Too many cake-baskets and too few sugar-bowls. Dark blue plates
with warts on the edges and melancholy landscapes painted in the
centers. Chintzes and wall-papers of patterns fashionable in 1890.
Tea-cartons that had the most inspiring labels; cocoa that was bitter
and pepper that was mild; preserves that were generous with hayseed and
glucose.
But everything was varnished that could be varnished; everything was
tied with pink ribbon that would stand for it; the whole collection
looked impressively new to a man accustomed to a shabby flat; the prices
seemed reasonable; and Mother was saved practically all the labor of
buying.
She had clucked comfortably every time he had worried aloud about her
task. Yet she was secretly troubled. It gave her a headache to climb
down the four flights of stairs from their flat. The acrid dust of the
city streets stung her eyes, the dissonant grumble of a million hurrying
noises dizzied her, and she would stand on a street-corner for five
minutes before daring to cross. When Father told her that all the buying
was done, and awaiting her approval, she gasped. But she went down with
him, was impressed by the shininess and newness of things--and the
Hungarian was given a good share of the Applebys' life-savings,
agitatedly taken out of the savings-bank in specie.
They had purchased freedom. The house at Grimsby Head was eager for
them. Mother cried as she ripped up the carpet in their familiar flat
and saw the treasured furniture rudely crated for shipment to the
unknown. She felt that she was giving up ever so many metropolitan
advantages by leaving New York so prematurely. Why, she'd never been
inside Grant's Tomb! She'd miss her second cousin--not that she'd seen
the cousin for a year or two. And on the desert moors of Grimsby she
couldn't run across the street to a delicatessen. But none of the
inconveniences of going away so weighed upon her spirit as did the
memory of their hours together in this flat.
But when she stood with him on the steamer again, bound for the Cape,
when the spring breeze gave life to her faded hair, she straightened her
shoulders and stood like a conqueror.
"Gee! we'll be at Grimsby to-morrow," piped Father, throwing his coat
open and debonairly sticking his thumbs into his lower waistcoat
pockets. "The easy life for me, old lady. I'm going to sit in a chair in
the sun and watch you work."
"How you do run on!" she said. "You wait and find out the way you have
to wash dishes and all. We'll see what we see, my fine young whiffet."
"Say, James J. Jerusalem but I've got a fine idea. I know what we'll
call the tea-room--'The T Room'--see, not spelling out the T. Great,
eh?"