Читать книгу Come Out of the Kitchen! A Romance - Alice Duer Miller - Страница 4
II
ОглавлениеON the following Monday, late in the afternoon, the old Revelly house was awaiting its new master. Already hunters, ponies, two-wheeled carts, an extra motor, to say nothing of grooms, stable-boys, and a tremendous head coachman, had arrived and were making the stable yards resound as they had not done for seventy years. But they had nothing to do with the household staff. They were all to be boarded by the coachman's wife who was installed in the gardener's cottage.
The house, with its tall pillared portico and flat roofed wings, lost its shabby air as the afternoon light grew dimmer, and by six o'clock, when Crane's motor drew up before the door, it presented nothing but a dignified and spacious mass to his admiring eyes.
No one but Tucker was with him. He had had some difficulty in avoiding the pressing desire of the two Falkener ladies to be with him at the start and help him, as they put it, "get everything in order." He had displayed, however, a firmness that they had not expected. He had been more embarrassed than he cared to remember by Mrs. Falkener's assistance in the real estate office, and he decided to begin his new housekeeping without her advice. He would, indeed, have dispensed with the companionship even of Tucker for a day or two, but that would have been impossible without a direct refusal, and Burton was unwilling to hurt the feelings of so true and loyal a friend, not only of his own but of his father before him.
The dignified butler and the irrepressible boy, Brindlebury, ran down the steps to meet them, and certainly they had no reason to complain of their treatment; bags were carried up and unstrapped, baths drawn, clothes laid out with the most praiseworthy promptness.
Tucker had advocated a preliminary tour of inspection.
"It is most important," he murmured to Crane, "to give these people the idea from the start that you cannot be deceived or imposed upon." But Crane refused even to consider such questions until he had had a bath and dinner.
The plan of the old house was very simple. On the right of the front door was the drawing-room, on the left a small library and a room which had evidently been used as an office. The stairs went up in the center, shallow and broad, winding about a square well. The dining-room ran across the back of the house.
When Tucker came down dressed for dinner, he found Crane was ahead of him. He was standing in the drawing-room bending so intently over something on a table that Tucker, who was not entirely without curiosity, came and bent over it, too, and even the butler, who had come to announce dinner, craned his neck in that direction.
It was a miniature, set in an old-fashioned frame of gold and pearls. It represented a young woman in a mauve tulle ball dress, full in the skirt and cut off the shoulders, as was the fashion in the days before the war. She wore a wreath of fuchsias, one of which trailing down just touched her bare shoulder.
"Well," said Tucker contemptuously, "you don't consider that a work of art, do you?"
Burton remained as one entranced.
"It reminds me of some one I know," he answered.
"It is quite obviously a fancy picture," replied Tucker, who was something of a connoisseur. "Look at those upturned eyes, and that hand. Did you ever see a live woman with such a tiny hand?"
"Yes, once," said Crane, but his guest did not notice him.
"The sentimentality of the art of that period," Tucker continued, "which is so plainly manifested in the poetry——"
"Beg pardon, sir," said Smithfield, "the soup is served."
Crane reluctantly tore himself from the picture and sat down at table, and such is the materialism of our day that he was evidently immediately compensated.
"By Jove," he said, "what a capital purée!"
Even Tucker, who, under Mrs. Falkener's tuition, had intended to find the food uneatable, was obliged to confess its merits.
"I say," said Crane to Smithfield, "tell the cook, will you, that I never tasted such a soup—not out of Paris, or even in it."
"She probably never heard of Paris," put in Tucker.
Smithfield bowed.
"I will explain your meaning to her, sir," he said.
Dinner continued on the same high plane, ending with two perfect cups of coffee, which called forth such eulogies from Crane that Tucker said finally, as they left the dining-room:
"Upon my word, Burt, I never knew you cared so much about eating."
"I love art, Tuck," said the other, slapping his friend on the back. "I appreciate perfection. I worship genius."
Tucker began to feel sincerely distressed. Indeed he lay awake for hours, worrying. He had counted, from Mrs. Falkener's description, on finding the servants so incompetent that the house would be impossible. He had hoped that one dinner would have been enough to send Crane to the telegraph office of his own accord, summoning servants from the North. He had almost promised Mrs. Falkener that when she and her daughter arrived the next afternoon, they would find a new staff expected, if not actually installed. Instead he would have to greet her with the news that the pocket Venus with the polished nails had turned out to be a cordon bleu. That is, if she were really doing the cooking. Perhaps—this idea occurred to Tucker shortly before dawn—perhaps she was just pretending to cook; perhaps she had hired some excellent old black Mammy to do the real work. That should be easily discoverable.
He determined to learn the truth; and on this resolution fell asleep.
The consequence was that he came down to breakfast rather cross, and wouldn't even answer Crane, who was in the most genial temper, when he commented favorably on the omelette. In fact, he let it appear that this constant preoccupation with material details was distasteful to him.
Crane, as he rose from the table, turned to Smithfield:
"Will you tell the cook I'd like to see her," he said. "I'm expecting some ladies to stay, this afternoon, and I want to make things comfortable for them. Be off, Tuck, there's a good fellow, if this sort of thing bores you."
But wild horses would not at that moment have dragged Tucker away, and he observed that he supposed there was no objection to his finishing his breakfast where he was.
Smithfield coughed.
"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but if you could tell me what it is you want, I would tell the cook. She has a peculiar nature, Jane-Ellen has, sir; has had from a child; and, if you would forgive the liberty, I believe it would be best for you not to interview her yourself."
Tucker looked up quickly.
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Crane.
"She is very timid, sir, very easily affected by criticism—"
"Good heavens, I don't want to criticize her!" cried Crane. "I only want to tell her how highly I think of her."
"In my opinion, Burton," Tucker began, when an incident occurred that entirely changed the situation.
A very large elderly gray cat walked into the room, with the step of one who has always been welcome, and approaching Tucker's chair as if it were a familiar place, he jumped suddenly upon his knee and began to purr in his face.
Tucker, under the most favorable circumstances, was not at his best in the early morning. Later in the day he might have borne such an occurrence with more calm, but before ten o'clock he was like a man without armor against such attacks. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation, and drove the cat ahead of him from the room, returning alone an instant later.
"It is outrageous," he said, when he returned, "that our lives are to be rendered miserable by that filthy beast."
"Sit down, Tuck," said Burton, who was talking about wines with the butler. "My life is not rendered in the least miserable. The champagne, Smithfield, ought to go on the ice—"
Tucker, however, could not distract his mind so quickly from the thought of the outrage to which he had just been subjected.
"I must really ask you, Burton," he said, "before you go on with your orders, to insist that that animal be drowned, or at least sent out of the house—"
"Oh, I beg, sir, that you won't do that," broke in Smithfield. "The cat belongs to the cook, and I really could not say, sir, what she might do, if the cat were put out of the house."
"We seem to hear a vast amount about what this cook likes and doesn't like," said Tucker, dribbling a little more hot milk into his half cup of coffee. "The house, I believe, is not run entirely for her convenience."
It is possible that Crane had already been rendered slightly inimical to his friend's point of view, but he was saved the trouble of answering him, for at this moment the cook herself entered the room, in what no one present doubted for an instant was a towering rage. She was wearing a sky blue gingham dress, her eyes were shining frightfully, and her cheeks were very pink.
At the sight of her, all conversation died away.
The butler approaching her, attempted to draw her aside, murmuring something to which she paid no attention.
"No," she said aloud, pulling her arm away from his restraining hand, "I will not go away and leave it to you. I will not stay in any house where dumb animals are ill-treated, least of all, my own dear cat."
It is, as most of us know to our cost, easier to be pompous than dignified when one feels oneself in the wrong.
"Pooh," said Tucker, "your cat was not ill-treated. She had no business in the dining-room."
"He was kicked," said the cook.
"Come, my girl," returned Tucker, "this is not the way to speak to your employer."
And at this, with one of those complete changes of manner so disconcerting in the weaker sex, the cook turned to Crane, and said, with the most melting gentleness:
"I'm sure it was not you, sir. I am sure you would not do such a thing. You will excuse me if I was disrespectful, but perhaps you know, if you have ever loved an animal, how you feel to see it brutally kicked downstairs."
"Preposterous," said Tucker, carefully indicating that he was addressing Crane alone. "This is all preposterous. Tell the woman to keep her cat where it belongs, and we'll have no more trouble."
"It hasn't troubled me, Tuck," answered Crane cheerfully. "But I am curious to know whether or not you did kick him."
"The question seems to be, do you allow your servants to be insolent or not?"
Crane turned to the cook.
"Mr. Tucker seems unwilling to commit himself on the subject of the kick," he observed. "Have you any reason for supposing your cat was kicked?"
"Yes," said Jane-Ellen. "The noise, the scuffle, the bad language, and the way Willoughby ran into the kitchen with his tail as big as a fox's. He is not a cat to make a fuss about nothing, I can tell you."
"I beg your pardon," said Crane, who was now evidently enjoying himself, "but what did you say the cat's name is?"
"Willoughby."
Burton threw himself back in his chair.
"Willoughby!" he exclaimed, "how perfectly delightful. Now, you must own, Tuck, prejudiced as you are, that that's the best cat name you ever heard in your life."
But Tucker would not or could not respond to this overture, and so Crane looked back at Jane-Ellen, who looked at him and said:
"Oh, do you like that name? I'm so glad, sir." And at this they smiled at each other.
"Don't you think you had better go back to the kitchen, Jane-Ellen?" said the butler sternly.
In the meantime, Tucker had lighted a cigar and had slightly recovered his equanimity.
"As a matter of fact," he now said, in a deep, growling voice, "I did not kick the creature at all—though, if I had, I should have considered myself fully justified. I merely assisted its progress down the kitchen stairs with a sort of push with my foot."
"It was a kick to Willoughby," said the cook, in spite of a quick effort on Smithfield's part to keep her quiet.
"O Tuck!" cried Crane, "it takes a lawyer, doesn't it, to distinguish between a kick and an assisting push with the foot. Well, Jane-Ellen," he went on, turning to her, "I think it's not too much to ask that Willoughby be kept in the kitchen hereafter."
"I'm sure he has no wish to go where he's not wanted," she replied proudly, and at this instant Willoughby entered exactly as before. All four watched him in a sort of hypnotic inactivity. As before, he walked with a slow, firm step to the chair in which Tucker sat, and, as before, jumped upon his knee. But this time Tucker did not move. He only looked at Willoughby and sneered.
Jane-Ellen, with the gesture of a mother rescuing an innocent babe from massacre, sprang forward and snatched the cat up in her arms. Then she turned on her heel and left the room. As she did so, the face of Willoughby over her shoulder distinctly grinned at the discomfited Tucker.
Not unnaturally, Tucker took what he could from the situation.
"If I were you, Burt," he said, "I should get rid of that young woman. She is not a suitable cook for a bachelor's establishment. She's too pretty and she knows it."
"Well, she wouldn't have sense enough to cook so well, if she didn't know it."
"It seems to me she trades on her looks when she comes up here and makes a scene like this."
"Beg pardon, sir," said Smithfield, with a slightly heightened color, "Jane-Ellen is a very good, respectable girl."
"Certainly, she is," said Crane, rising. "Nothing could be more obvious. Just run down, Smithfield, and ask her to send up a menu for to-night's dinner." Then, as the man left the room, he added to his friend:
"Sorry, Tuck, if I seem lacking in respect for you and your wishes, but I really couldn't dismiss such a good cook because you think her a little bit too good-looking. She is a lovely little creature, isn't she?"
Jane-Ellen sprang forward and snatched the cat from Tucker's knee
"She doesn't know her place."
Crane walked to the window and stood looking out for a minute, and then he said thoughtfully:
"If ever I have a cat I shall name it Willoughby."
"Have a cat!" cried Tucker. "I thought you detested the animals as much as I do."
"I felt rather attracted toward this one," said Crane.
