Outside Inn. Ethel M. Kelley
“Slight as it is”—except for a prodigious frown, Billy ignored the interruption, though he took advantage of her suddenly upright position to encircle her neatly with a barrel hoop, as if she were the iron peg in a game of quoits—“enables me to put the fact before you in a few short, sharp, well-chosen sentences. I won’t again attempt to read the document—”
“You’d better not,” Nancy interrupted witheringly, “your delivery is poor. Besides, I don’t want to know what is in that will. If I had, it stands to reason that I would have found out long before this. I’ve had it three days.”
“You’ve had it three days and never once looked into it?” Billy groaned. “Who started all this scandal about the curiosity of women, anyway?”
6
“I don’t want to know what’s in it,” Nancy insisted. “As long as I’m not in possession of any definite facts, I can ignore it. I’ve got the kind of mind that must deal with concrete facts concretely.”
Billy grinned. “I’d hate the job of trying to subpœna you,” he said, “but you’d make a corking good witness, on the stand. Of course, you can proceed for a certain length of time on the theory that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, but take it from me, little girl, what you ought to know and don’t know is the thing that’s bound to hurt you most tremendously in the long run. What are you afraid of, anyway, Nancy?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Nancy corrected him, with some heat. “I just plain don’t want to be interrupted at this stage of my career. I consider it an impertinence of Uncle Elijah, to make me his heir. I never saw him but once, and I had no desire to see him that time. It was about ten years ago, and I caught a grippe germ from him. He told me between sneezes that I was too big a girl to wear a mess of hair streaming down my back like a baby. I stuck out my tongue at him, but he was 7 too near-sighted to see it. Why couldn’t he have left his money to an eye and ear infirmary? Or the Sailors’ Snug Retreat? Or—or—”
“If you really don’t want the money,” Billy said, “it’s your privilege to endow some institution—”
“You know very well that I can’t get rid of money that way,” Nancy cried hotly. “I am at least a responsible person. I don’t believe in these promiscuous, eleemosynary institutions. It would be against all my principles to contribute money to any such philanthropy. I know too much about them—but he didn’t. He could have disposed of his money to any one of a dozen of these mid-Victorian charities, but no—he was just one of those old parties that want to shift their responsibilities on to young shoulders, and so he chose mine.”
“You don’t speak very kindly of your dear dead relative.”
“I don’t feel very kindly toward him. He was a meddling old creature. He never gave any member of the family a cent when they wanted it and needed it. Now that I’ve just got my life in shape, and know what I want to 8 do with it without being beholden to anybody on earth, he leaves me a whole lot of superfluous money.”
“If I weren’t engaged to Caroline, who is a jealous woman, though I say it as shouldn’t, I’d be tempted to undertake the management of your fortune myself,” Billy said reflectively; “as it is—honor—”
“I know what I want to do with my life,” 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.”
She looked about her ruefully. The sun, through the barred dusty windows, struck in long slant rays, athwart the confusion of the cellar, illuminating piles upon piles of gay, blue latticed chinaware—cups set out methodically in rows on the lids and bottoms of packing boxes; assorted sizes of plates and saucers, graded pyramidically, rising from the floor. There were also individual copper casseroles and serving dishes, and a heterogeneous assortment of Japanese basketry tangled in excelsior 9 and tissue. A wandering sunbeam took her hair, displaying its amber, translucent quality.
“I’ve just got capital enough to get it going right; to swing it for the first year, even if I don’t make a cent on it. It’s my one big chance to do my share in the world, and to work out my own salvation. This legacy is a menace to all my dreams and plans.”
“I see that,” Billy said. “What I don’t see is what you gain by refusing to let it catch up with you.”
“You’re not it till you’re tagged. That’s all. If I don’t know whether my income is going to be five thousand dollars or twenty-five thousand a year, I can go on unpacking teacups with—”
Billy whistled.
“Five thousand or twenty-five—my darling Nancy! You’ll have fifty thousand a year at the very lowest estimate. The actual money is more than five hundred thousand dollars. The stock in the Union Rubber Company will amount to as much again, maybe twice as much. You’re a real heiress, my dear, with wads of real money to show for it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Fifty thousand a year!” Nancy turned a 10 shocked face, from which the color slowly drained, leaving it blue-white. “Fifty thousand a year! You’re mad. It can’t be!”
“Yes’um. Fifty thousand at least.”
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 clutched at his sleeve.
“Don’t, Billy!” she besought. “I’m past joking now. Fifty thousand a year! Why, Uncle Elijah bought fifteen-dollar suits and fifteen-cent lunches. How could a retired sea captain get all that money by investing in a little rubber, and getting to be president of a little rubber company?”
“That’s how. Be a good sensible girl, and face the music.”
“I’ll have to give up the tea-room.”
Billy laid a consolatory arm over her shoulder, and patted her awkwardly.
“Cheer up,” he said, “there’s worse things in this world than money. The time may come when you’ll be grateful to your poor little old 11 uncle, for his nifty little fifty thousand per annum.”
Nancy turned a tragic face to him.
“I tell you I’m not grateful to him,” she said, “and I doubt if I ever will be. I don’t want the stupid money. I want to work life out in my own way. I know I’ve got it in me, and I want my chance to prove it. I want to give myself, my own brain and strength, to the job I’ve selected as mine. Now, it’s all spoiled for me. I’m subsidized. I’m done for, and I can’t see any way out of it.”
“You can give the money away.”
“I can’t. Giving money away is a special science of itself. If I devote my life to doing that as it should be done, I won’t have time or energy for anything else. I’m not a philanthropist in that sense. I wanted my restaurant to be philanthropic only incidentally. I wanted to cram my patrons with the full value of their money’s worth of good nourishing food; to increase the efficiency of hundreds of people who never suspected I was doing it, by scientific methods of feeding. That’s my dream.”
“A good little dream, all right.”
“To make people eat the right food; to help 12 them to a fuller and more effective use of themselves by supplying them with the proper fuel for their functions.”
“You could buy a chain of restaurants with the money you’ve got.”
“I don’t want a chain of restaurants.”
“You can endow a perpetual diet squad. You can buy out the whole Life Extension