Volume I Part 7 (1/2)
I interrupted. She was silent, and I went on: ”It seems a pity to end your studies in Swedish, Let.i.tia, but fascinating though they be, they do not really necessitate our keeping this barbarian. You can always pursue them, and exercise on me. I don't mind. Even with an American cook, if such a being exist, you could still continue to ask for venison steak in Swedish, and to look forward to arriving at Gothenburg in forty hours.”
Let.i.tia declined to argue. My mood was that known as cranky. We were in the drawing-room, after what we were compelled to call dinner. It had consisted of steak burned to cinders, potatoes soaked to a pulp, and a rice pudding that looked like a poultice the morning after, and possibly tasted like one. Let.i.tia had been shopping, and was therefore unable to supervise. Our delicate repast was capped by ”black” coffee of an indefinite straw-color, and with globules of grease on the surface.
People who can feel elated with the joy of living, after a dinner of this description, are a.s.suredly both mentally and morally lacking. Men and women there are who will say: ”Oh, give me anything. I'm not particular--so long as it is plain and wholesome.” I've met many of these people. My experience of them is that they are the greatest gluttons on earth, with veritably voracious appet.i.tes, and that the best isn't good enough for them. To be sure, at a pinch, they will demolish a score of potatoes, if there be nothing else; but offer them caviare, canvas-back duck, quail, and nesselrode pudding, and they will look askance at food that is plain and wholesome. The ”plain and wholesome”
liver is a snare and a delusion, like the ”bluff and genial” visitor whose geniality veils all sorts of satire and merciless comment.
Let.i.tia and I both felt weak and miserable. We had made up our minds not to dine out. We were resolved to keep the home up, even if, in return, the home kept us down. Give in, we wouldn't. Our fighting blood was up.
We firmly determined not to degenerate into that clammy American inst.i.tution, the boarding-house feeder and the restaurant diner. We knew the type; in the feminine, it sits at table with its bonnet on, and a sullen gnawing expression of animal hunger; in the masculine, it puts its own knife in the b.u.t.ter, and uses a toothpick. No cook--no lack of cook--should drive us to these abysmal depths.
Let.i.tia made no feint at Ovid. I simply declined to breathe the breath of _The Lives of Great Men_. She read a sweet little cla.s.sic called ”The Table; How to Buy Food, How to Cook It, and How to Serve It,” by Alessandro Filippini--a delightful _table-d'hote_-y name. I lay back in my chair and frowned, waiting until Let.i.tia chose to break the silence.
As she was a most chattily inclined person on all occasions, I reasoned that I should not have to wait long. I was right.
”Archie,” said she, ”according to this book, there is no place in the civilized world that contains so large a number of so-called high-livers as New York City, which was educated by the famous Delmonico and his able lieutenants.”
”Great Heaven!” I exclaimed with a groan, ”why rub it in, Let.i.tia? I should also say that no city in the world contained so large a number of low-livers.”
”'Westward the course of Empire sways,'” she read, ”'and the great glory of the past has departed from those centers where the culinary art at one time defied all rivals. The scepter of supremacy has pa.s.sed into the hands of the metropolis of the New World.'”
”What sickening cant!” I cried. ”What fiendishly exaggerated restaurant talk! There are perhaps fifty fine restaurants in New York. In Paris there are five hundred finer. Here we have places to eat in; there they have artistic resorts to dine in. One can dine anywhere in Paris. In New York, save for those fifty fine restaurants, one feeds. Don't read any more of your cook-book to me, my girl. It is written to catch the American trade, with the subtile pen of flattery.”
”Try and be patriotic, dear,” she said soothingly. ”Of course, I know you wouldn't allow a Frenchman to say all that, and that you are just talking cussedly with your own wife.”
A ring at the bell caused a diversion. We hailed it. We were in the humor to hail anything. The domestic hearth _was_ most trying. We were bored to death. I sprang up and ran to the door, a little pastime to which I was growing accustomed. Three t.i.ttering young women, each wearing a hat in which roses, violets, poppies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, feathers and ribbons ran riot, confronted me.
”Miss Gerda Lyberg?” said the foremost, who wore a bright red gown, and from whose hat six spiteful poppies lurched forward and almost hit me in the face.
For a moment, dazed from the cook-book, I was nonplussed. All I could say was ”No,” meaning that I wasn't Miss Gerda Lyberg. I felt so sure that I wasn't that I was about to close the door.
”She lives here, I believe,” a.s.serted the damsel, again shooting forth the poppies.
I came to myself with an effort. ”She is the--the cook,” I muttered weakly.
”We are her friends,” quoth the damsel, an indignant inflection in her voice. ”Kindly let us in. We've come to the Thursday sociable.”
The three bedizened ladies entered without further parley and went toward the kitchen, instinctively recognizing its direction. I was amazed. I heard a noisy greeting, a peal of laughter, a confusion of tongues, and then--I groped my way back to Let.i.tia.
”They've come to the Thursday sociable!” I cried.
”Who?” she asked in astonishment, and I imparted to her the full extent of my knowledge. Let.i.tia took it very nicely. She had always heard, she said, in fact Mrs. Archer had told her, that Thursday nights were festival occasions with the Swedes. She thought it rather a pleasant and convivial notion. Servants must enjoy themselves, after all. Better a happy gathering of girls than a rowdy collection of men. Let.i.tia thought the idea felicitous. She had no objections to giving privileges to a cook. Nor had I, for the matter of that. I ventured to remark, however, that Gerda didn't seem to be a cook.
”Then let us call her a 'girl,'” said Let.i.tia.
”Gerda is a girl, only because she isn't a boy,” I remarked tauntingly.
”If by 'girl' you even mean servant, then Gerda isn't a girl. Goodness knows what she is. h.e.l.lo! Another ring!”
This time Miss Lyberg herself went to the door, and we listened. More arrivals for the sociable; four Swedish guests, all equally gaily attired in flower hats. Some of them wore bangles, the noise of which, in the hall, sounded like an infuriation of sleigh-bells. They were Christina and Sophie and Sadie and Alexandra--as we soon learned. It was wonderful how welcome Gerda made them, and how quickly they were ”at home.” They rustled through the halls, chatting and laughing and humming. Such merry girls! Such light-hearted little charmers! Let.i.tia stood looking at them through the crack of the drawing-room door.
Perhaps it was just as well that somebody should have a good time in our house.
”Just the same, Let.i.tia,” I observed, galled, ”I think I should say to-morrow that this invasion is most impertinent--most uncalled for.”