Read Ebook: Outside Inn by Kelley Ethel M Ethel May King W B Illustrator

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Ebook has 1202 lines and 43018 words, and 25 pages

CAVE-MAN STUFF

"Cave-man stuff," Billy said to Dick, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the interior of the Broadway moving-picture palace at the exit of which they had just met accidentally. "It always goes big, doesn't it?"

"It does," Dick agreed thoughtfully, "in the movies anyhow."

"Caroline says that the modern woman has her response to that kind of thing refined all out of her." Billy intended his tone to be entirely jocular, but there was a note of anxiety in it that was not lost on his friend.

Dick paused under the shelter of a lurid poster--displaying a fierce gentleman in crude blue, showing all his teeth, and in the act of strangling an early Victorian ingenue with a dimple,--and lit a cigarette with his first match.

"Caroline may have," he said, puffing to keep his light against the breeze, "but I doubt it."

"Rough stuff doesn't seem to appeal to her," Billy said, quite humorously this time.

"She's healthy," Dick mused, "rides horseback, plays tennis and all that. Wouldn't she have liked the guy that swung himself on the roof between the two poles?" He indicated again the direction of the theater from which they had just emerged.

"She would have liked him," Billy said gloomily, "but the show would have started her arguing about this whole moving-picture proposition,--its crudity, and its tremendous sacrifice of artistic values, and so on and so on."

"Sure, she's a highbrow. Highbrows always cerebrate about the movies in one way or another. Nancy doesn't get it at just that angle, of course. She hasn't got Caroline's intellectual appetite. She's not interested in the movies because she hasn't got a moving-picture house of her own. The world is not Nancy's oyster--it's her lump of putty."

"I don't know which is the worst," Billy said. "Caroline won't listen to anything you say to her,--but then neither will Nancy."

"Women never listen to anything," Dick said profoundly, "unless they're doing it on purpose, or they happen to be interested. I imagine Caroline is a little less tractable, but Nancy is capable of doing the most damage. She works with concrete materials. Caroline's kit is crammed with nothing but ideas."

"As for this cave-man business--theoretically, they ought to react to it,--both of them. They're both normal, well-balanced young ladies."

"They're both runnin' pretty hard to keep in the same place, just at present."

"Nancy isn't doing that--not by a long shot," Dick said.

"She's not keeping in the same place certainly," Billy agreed. "Caroline is all eaten up by this economic independence idea."

"It's a good idea," Dick admitted; "economic conditions are changing. No reason at all that a woman shouldn't prove herself willing to cope with them, as long as she gets things in the order of their importance. Earning her living isn't better than the Mother-Home-and-Heaven job. It's a way out, if she gets left, or gets stung."

"I'm only thankful Caroline can't hear you." Billy raised pious eyes to heaven but he continued more seriously after a second, "It's all right to theorize, but practically speaking both our girls are getting beyond our control."

"I'm not engaged to Nancy," Dick said a trifle stiffly.

"Well, you ought to be," Billy said.

Dick stiffened. He was not used to speaking of his relations with Nancy to any one--even to Billy, who was the closest friend he had. They walked up Broadway in silence for a while, toward the cross-street which housed the university club which was their common objective.

"I know I ought to be," Dick said, just as Billy was formulating an apology for his presumption, "or I ought to marry her out of hand. This watchful waiting's entirely the wrong idea."

"Why do we do it then?" Billy inquired pathetically.

"I wanted Nancy to sow her economic wild oats. I guess you felt the same way about Caroline."

"Well, they've sowed 'em, haven't they?"

"Not by a long shot. That's the trouble,--they don't get any forrider, from our point of view. I thought it would be the best policy to stand by and let Nancy work it out. I thought her restaurant would either fail spectacularly in a month, or succeed brilliantly and she'd make over the executive end of it to somebody else. I never thought of her buckling down like this, and wearing herself out at it."

"There's a pretty keen edge on Caroline this summer."

"I'm afraid Nancy's in pretty deep," Dick said. "The money end of it worries me as much as anything."

"I wouldn't let that worry me."

"She won't take any of mine, you know."

"I know she won't. See here, Dick, I wouldn't worry about Nancy's finances. She'll come out all right about money."

"What makes you think so?"

"Which means," Dick said, "that you are sure that she's all right. I'm not in her confidence in this matter--"

"Well, I am," Billy said, "I'm her legal adviser, and with all due respect to your taste in girls, it's a very difficult position to occupy. What with the things she won't listen to and the things she won't learn, and the things she actually knows more about than I do--"

The indulgent smile of the true lover lit Dick's face, as if Billy had waxed profoundly eulogistic. Unconsciously, Billy's own tenderness took fire at the flame.

"Why don't we run away with 'em?" he said, breathing heavily.

Dick stopped in a convenient doorway to light his third cigarette, end on.

"It's the answer to you and Caroline," he said.

"Why not to you and Nancy?"

They turned in at the portico that extended out over the big oak doors of their club. An attendant in white turned the knob for them, with the grin of enthusiastic welcome that was the usual tribute to these two good-looking, well set up young men from those who served them.

"I'll think it over," Dick added, as he gave up his hat and stick, "and let you know what decision I come to."

In another five minutes they were deep in a game of Kelly-pool from which Dick emerged triumphantly richer by the sum of a dollar and ninety cents, and Billy the poorer by the loss of a quarter.

There is a town in Connecticut, within a reasonable motoring distance from New York that has been called the Gretna Green of America. Here well-informed young couples are able to expedite the business of matrimony with a phenomenal neatness and despatch. Licenses can be procured by special dispensation, and the nuptial knot tied as solemnly and solidly as if a premeditated train of bridesmaids and flower girls and loving relatives had been rehearsed for days in advance.

Dick and his Rolls-Royce had assisted at a hymeneal celebration or two, where a successful rush had been made for the temporary altars of this beneficent town with the most felicitous results, and he knew the procedure. When he and Billy organized an afternoon excursion into Connecticut, they tacitly avoided all mention of the consummation they hoped to bring about, but they both understood the nature and significance of the expedition. Dick,--who was used to the easy accomplishment of his designs and purposes, for most obstacles gave way before his magnetic onslaught,--had only sketchily outlined his scheme of proceedings, but he trusted to the magic of that inspiration that seldom or never failed him. He was the sort of young man that the last century novelists always referred to as "fortune's favorite," and his luck so rarely betrayed him that he had almost come to believe it to be invincible.

His general idea was to get Nancy and Caroline to drive into the country, through the cool rush of the freer purer air of the suburbs, give them lunch at some smart road-house, soothingly restful and dim, where the temperature was artificially lowered, and they could powder their noses at will; and from thence go on until they were within the radius of the charmed circle where modern miracles were performed while the expectant bridegroom waited.

"Nancy, my dear, we are going to be married,"--that he had formulated, "we're going to be done with all this nonsense of waiting and doubting the evidence of our own senses and our own hearts. We're going to put an end to the folly of trying to do without each other,--your folly of trying to feed all itinerant New York; my folly of standing by and letting you do it, or any other fool thing that your fancy happens to dictate. You're mine and I'm yours, and I'm going to take you--take you to-day and prove it to you." This was to be timed to be delivered at just about the moment when they drew up in front of the office of the justice of the peace, who was Dick's friend of old. "Hold up your head, my dear, and put your hat on straight; we're going into that building to be made man and wife, and we're not coming out of it until the deed has been done." In some such fashion, he meant to carry it through. Many a time in the years gone by he had steered Nancy through some high-handed escapade that she would only have consented to on the spur of the moment. She was one of these women who responded automatically to the voice of a master. He had failed in mastery this last year or so. That was the secret of his failure with her, but the days of that failure were numbered now. He was going to succeed.

On the back seat of the big car he expected Billy and Caroline to be going through much the same sort of scene.

"We've come to a show-down now, Caroline,--either I sit in this game, or get out." He could imagine Billy bringing Caroline bluntly to terms with comparatively little effort. That was what she needed--Caroline--a strong hand. Billy's problem was simple. Caroline had already signified her preference for him. She wore his ring. Billy had only to pick her up, kicking and screaming if need be, and bear her to the altar. She would marry him if he insisted. That was clear to the most superficial of observers,--but Nancy was different.

Dick looked over his shoulder at the two in the back seat, and noted Caroline's pallor, and the fact that she was allowing a listless hand to linger in Billy's; but when he turned back to Nancy he discovered no such encouraging symptoms. She was sitting lightly relaxed at his side, but there was nothing even negatively responsive in her attitude. Her color was high; her breath coming evenly from between her slightly parted lips. She looked like a child oblivious to everything but some innocent daydream.

"You look as if you were dreaming of candy and kisses, Nancy,--are you?" he asked presently.

"No, I'm just glad to be free. It's been a long time since I've played hooky."

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