Part 18 (1/2)
Billy made a great lunge toward the figure of his fiancee, and caught her in his arms.
”I've never really kissed you before,” he cried, ”now I shan't let you go.”
She struggled in his arms, but he mastered her. He covered her cool brow with kisses, her hands, the lovely curve of her neck where the smooth hair turned upward, and at last--her lips.
”You're mine, my girl,” he exulted, ”and nothing, nothing, nothing shall ever take you away from me now.”
There was a click in the latch of the door through which they had just entered. Another belated boarder was making his way into the domicile which he had chosen as a subst.i.tute for the sacred privacy of home.
Caroline tore herself out of Billy's arms just in time to exchange greetings with the incoming guest with some pretense of composure. He was a fat man with an umbrella which clattered against the bal.u.s.ters as he ascended the carved staircase.
”Caught with the goods,” Billy tried to say through lips stiffened in an effort at control.
Caroline turned on him, her face blazing with anger, the transfiguring white rage of the woman whose spiritual fastnesses have been invaded through the approach of the flesh.
”There is no way of my ever forgiving you,” she said. ”No way of my ever tolerating you, or anything you stand for again. You are utterly--utterly--utterly detestable in my eyes.”
”Is--is that so?” Billy stammered, dizzied by the suddenness of the onslaught.
”I--I've got some decent hold on my pride and self-respect--even if Nancy hasn't, and I'm not going to be subjugated like a cave woman by mere brute force either.”
”Aren't you?” said Billy weakly, his mind in a whirl still from the lightning-like overthrow of all his theories of action.
”I'm not going to do what Nancy is going to do, just out of sheer temperamental weakness, and--and tendency to follow the line of least resistance.”
Billy had no idea of the significance of her last phrase, and let it go unheeded. Caroline turned and walked away from him, her head high.
”But, good lord, Nancy isn't going to do it,” he called after her retreating figure, but all the answer he got was the silken swish of her petticoat as she took the stairs.
CHAPTER XII
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 pa.s.sion 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 disa.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociation.
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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.u.t.ter and cream introduced in their preparation was an important factor in her a.n.a.lysis. 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.