CHAPTER VII

CAVE-MAN STUFF

"Cave-man stuff," Billy said to d.i.c.k, 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," d.i.c.k 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.

d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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 appet.i.te. 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," d.i.c.k 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."

"Nothing _but_--" Billy groaned.

"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," d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k said a trifle stiffly.

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

d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k, I wouldn't worry about Nancy's finances. She'll come out all right about money."

"What makes you think so?"

"I know so. We've got lots of things in the world to worry about, things that are scheduled to go wrong unless we're mighty delicate in the way we handle 'em. Let's worry about _them_, and leave Nancy's financial problems to take care of themselves."

"Which means," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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.

d.i.c.k 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?"

"It may be," d.i.c.k said, "I dunno. I've reached an _impa.s.se_. Still there is a great deal in your proposition."

They turned in at the portico that extended out over the big oak doors of their club. An attendant in white turned the k.n.o.b 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," d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k 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 rehea.r.s.ed for days in advance.