Ethel M. Kelley

“ Nancy craftily spurred him on to his most ambitious achievements under pretense of wishing her own appetite stimulated, and the big cook, who adored her, produced triumph after triumph of his art for her delectation, whereupon the biggest part of it was cunningly smuggled out to the artist. From behind her screen of vines Nancy watched the fine features of her quondam friend light with the rapture of the gourmet as be sampled Gaspard’s sauce verte or Hollandaise or lifted the glass cover from the mushrooms sous cloche and inhaled their delicate aroma. ”

“ Nancy dreamed that night that she was married to Dick, and that Hitty made and served them pâté de foies gras dumplings, while Collier Pratt in freckles and overalls sat in a high 150 chair, and had his dinner with the family. Later it was discovered that Betty had poisoned his bread and milk, and he died in Nancy’s arms in dreadful agony, swearing in a beautiful Irish brogue that in all his life he had never looked at another woman,—which even in her dream seemed to Nancy a somewhat irreconcilable statement. ”

“ Collier Pratt said, “little American girl, don’t you understand that there is only one way for a woman to think or feel about a man like me? I have had my life, and I haven’t liked it much. I’m to be loved warmly and lightly till the flesh and blood prince comes along, but I’m never to be mistaken for him.”
“I don’t believe you’re sincere,” Nancy cried; “women must have loved you deeply, tragically, and have suffered all the torture there is, at losing you.” ”

“ At eight o’clock Hitty came in to her, and roused her from the light drowse into which she had fallen at last.
“You was crying in your sleep again,” she said, “your cheeks is all wet. I heard you the minute I put my key into the latch. You’re as bad as Sheila, only I expect she suffers from something laying hard on her stummick. It’s always something on your mind that starts you in.”
“There’s nothing on my mind, Hitty,” Nancy said, sitting up in bed, “nothing but happiness, I mean. In some ways, Hitty dear, this is the happiest day that I’ve ever waked up to.” ”

“ With the serving of the first course of dinner—Gaspard’s wonderful Purée Mongol—an artist’s 265 dream of all the most delicate vegetables in the world mingled together as the clouds are mingled, the tensity in the air seemed to break and shatter about them in showers of brilliant, artificial mirth, which presently, because they were all young and fond of one another and their group had the habit of intimacy, became less and less strained and unreal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nancy stripped off her cap and her apron and resigned her spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. ”

“ Nancy asked, slipping into the empty chair between Dick and Billy; “isn’t the food good and nourishing, and aren’t there a lot of nice-looking people here?”
“Very much, and it is, and there are,” Dick answered with affectionate eyes on her.
“The salad is alligator pear served in half sections, with French dressing,” she said dreamily. “I’m too happy to eat, but I’ll have some with you. Look at them all, don’t they look relaxed and soothed and refreshed? Every individual has a perfectly balanced ration of the most superlatively good quality, slowly beginning to assimilate within him.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most conscientious objector to New York’s traffic regulations can not claim that they fail to regulate. The progress of their cab down the avenue was so scrupulously regulated by the benignant guardians of the semaphores that twilight was deepening into early December evening before they reached their objective point,—the ramshackle studio building on the south side of Washington Square where the man she loved lived, moved and had his being, with the gallant ease and grace which made him so romantic a figure to Nancy’s imagination. ”

“ 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 pungent, acrid odor of hot tomatoes affronted her nostrils. She had a vision now of the pale tired faces of the little stenographers turning in disgust from the contemplation of the flamboyant and sticky purée on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to 126 hope in her heart that Gaspard’s illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. ”

“ He had been so long accustomed to think of himself as the strong silent lover, equipped with the patience and understanding that would outlast all the vagaries of Nancy’s adventurous tendencies, that it was difficult to readjust himself to a new conception of her as a woman that another and even less worthy man had so nearly won,—under his nose. ”

“ Nancy asked.
“California fruit nut bread, or something like that, and call the custards crême renversé, and the ice-cream, French ice-cream.”
“Oh, dear!” Nancy said, “that isn’t the way I want to do things at all.”
“We can slip the ones that needs them a few things from time to time, can’t we, Molly?” Dolly said.
“We’ll do it,” Nancy said. “I hate the way that the most uninspired ways of doing things turn out to be the best policy after all. I don’t believe in stereotyped philanthropy, but I did think I had found a way around this problem of feeding up people who needed it.” ”

“ To Nancy’s surprise Hitty welcomed the little girl warmly, when she was introduced into the family circle. She liked to be busy all day, and her duties in taking care of Nancy were not onerous enough to keep her full energy employed. She liked children and family life, and she seemed to have the feeling that if Nancy continued to assemble the various parts that go to make up a family, she would end by adding to it the essential masculine element, though it was Dick and not Collier Pratt that she visualized at the head of the table cutting up Sheila’s meat for her. ”

“ The kitchen gleamed with copper and granite ware; huge pots for soup and vegetables, mammoth double boilers of white enamel,—Nancy was firm in her conviction that rice and cereal could be cooked in nothing but white enamel,—rows upon rows of shelves methodically set with containers and casseroles and odd-shaped metal serving-dishes, as well as the ubiquitous blue and rose-color chinaware presenting its gay surface from every available bit of space. ”

“ With the luncheon menu before her, Nancy decided that the hour had come for her to prove herself. She had assumed the practical management of the business of the Inn only to have the responsibility and much of the authority of her position taken from her by the very efficiency of her staff. She was far too good a business woman not to realize that this condition was distinctly to her advantage, and to encourage it accordingly, but there was still so much of the child in her that she secretly resented every usurpation of privilege. ”

“ I am full of milk-coffee sopped with bread, and you of bacon with eggs and marmalade. We say, what shall we give to our custom for its dinner and its luncheon? We think sadly—we who have but now brushed away the crumbs of breakfast—of those who must sit down so soon to the table groaning with viands. Therefore we say, ‘Market delicately. Have the soup clear, the entrée light and the salad green with plenty of vinegar.’ Even your calories—they do not help us much. They are in quantities so unexpected in the food that weighs nothing in the scales. ”

“ Caroline said. “Nancy’s the best friend I have in the world, and she doesn’t seem to be quite right in her mind, Billy. Of course, I approve of a good part of her scheme. I believe that she can be of incalculable value as a pioneer in an enterprise of this sort. Her restaurant is based on a strictly scientific theory, and every person who patronizes it gets a balanced ration, if he has the good sense to eat it as it’s served.” ”

“ What actually happened was that Preston Eustace, exactly on time as was his habit, had been waiting some ten minutes on Nancy’s hearth-rug when Betty, delayed by the eccentricities of a casual motor-bus engine, and frantic with anxiety for her friend, burst in upon him. So full was she of the most hectic speculations concerning Nancy’s sudden appeal to her that she scarcely noticed who was waiting there to greet her, and when she did notice, scarcely heeded that recognition. ”

“ 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, 64 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. ”

“ From the moment that she had begun to realize Collier Pratt’s admiration for her she 181 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. ”

“ 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 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.” ”

“ Nancy said, “he understands beautiful things that other people don’t know anything about. He looks at a flower and knows all about it, and—and what it needs to make it flourish. He looks at people that way, too.”
“But he doesn’t always have time to get the flower what it wants,” Sheila said; “my jessamine died in Paris because he forgot to water them.”
“Your father needs taking care of himself, Sheila. We must plan ways of trying to make him more comfortable. Don’t you think of something that he needs that we could get for him?”
“More socks—he would like,” Sheila said unexpectedly. ”

“ If ever I saw a woman spoiling for something of her own to fuss over—”
“If ever there was a woman who had something of her own to fuss over,” Nancy cried ecstatically, “I’m that woman to-day, Hitty. You’re a professional Puritan, and you don’t understand the broader aspects of the maternal instinct.” She sprang out of bed, and tucked her bare pink toes into the fur bordered blue mules that peeped from under the bed, and slipped into the wadded blue silk bathrobe that lay on the chair beside her. “Is my bath drawn, Hitty?” ”

“ When a man marries a modern girl with all the trappings and the suits of modernity, he ought to be prepared to take the consequences cheerfully.”
“Then I’m going to surprise you. I don’t want anything modern at all about my wedding. I want it in church with a huge bridal bouquet 308 and Lohengrin and white satin; Caroline for my matron of honor and Betty for my bridesmaid, and Sheila for flower girl. I want a wedding breakfast at the Ritz and rice and old shoes—just all the old traditional things.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Sheila said, “but I like Central Park better than the Champs Elyseés. In Paris the children are not so gay as 191 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”