Part 16 (2/2)

I was too bewildered by all this detail to pay much attention to what he was saying about the smallness of the kettle's mouth; but I remembered it vividly afterwards.

Nodding gaily to me, he hurried back to the oven, from which the blue odorous smoke was still pouring. I lingered long enough to see him take the turkey out of it, stand it on the shelf in the corner, and then open the window.

As I pa.s.sed Robbins, he let his paper flutter to his knee, and said, meaningly: ”I hope yon chap, sir, don't think he's still firing on the engine.”

As I smilingly shook my head and pa.s.sed on, a presentiment of approaching disaster took possession of me--so that the recollection of the speaker's prophecies of evil regarding our cook did not come back with that keen sense of humor one would have expected.

When I reached Fielding's side, he said anxiously, ”I hope he is getting along all right, William.” As I noted his anxiety, and the hungry expression of his face, I answered with a glibness which I was far from feeling, that things were getting along swimmingly. I was now beginning to feel such a weight of responsibility in the success of the dinner that I sincerely wished I had not taken such an active interest in the appointment of the cook.

About an hour later, when we ceased our game, I noticed the odor of roast turkey was no longer prevalent; so with apprehensive heart, though nonchalant air, I made my way over to the kitchen again, and was just in time to see Ovide s.n.a.t.c.h the turkey--which now looked cold and forlorn enough--from the shelf and shove it into the still fervent oven, and to hear him mutter, ”Dat's too bad I'm forgot to put you back for so long.”

He did not see me until he had closed the oven door, and then he said, joyously, pointing to the kettle: ”De puddin' she's in dare, and she's nearly all done now, and in fifteen or twenty minute more de dinner she's all be ready.”

I suppose if I had not seen the bird's entrance into the oven for the second time, the announcement of the early approach of the festivities would have allayed some of my apprehensions, and perhaps have afforded me a little of the satisfaction Fielding and the conductor experienced when they heard the news. The effect of the tidings upon old Robbins, however, was tantalizing in the extreme. He threw his paper to one side, rested his elbows on his knees, and holding up his grizzly chin with his hands, began softly to whistle a monotonous, soul-disturbing air.

Ovide was true to his word, for scarcely had the twenty minutes elapsed, when in he bustled, pulled the table into the centre of the car, set it fairly well, after a number of amusing blunders, and then drawing up the chairs, said, with great gusto: ”Now, Messieurs, I'm go and get de dinner.”

As we seated ourselves, Fielding said, with a satisfaction that comes back to me vividly as I pen these words: ”Well, William, I am glad it is ready; I never remember being so hungry.” The kindly look which he bestowed on Ovide as he came in with the smoking turkey will also never be difficult to conjure up. But the moment my eyes fell upon that unfortunate bird, my heart began to beat with renewed apprehensions. Never before had I seen such an ill-favored, uninviting-looking fowl placed upon a table; its naturally white, smooth skin was now as seamy, black and arid-looking as the mouth of an ancient crater.

Covertly I glanced at Fielding to see what effect this steaming, yet mummified-looking object had upon him. My worst fears were verified: the complacent expression had fled, and was succeeded by a look in which consternation, anger and amazement were all blended.

The short, trying silence was broken by a rasping cough from Robbins, and then Fielding said, in a constrained tone, as he whetted his knife: ”Well, this animal looks as though it had been through the fiery furnace created by Nebuchadnezzar for the undoing of the three Israelites.”

Ovide, who was standing complacently behind Fielding's chair, not understanding the allusion, and thinking that he was called upon to say something, said brightly, ”Oh, yes, sir, dat turkey is de finest turkey I never see.”

Now, I had known Fielding, on numerous occasions, to laugh heartily at a much less amusing blunder, but on this occasion I sought his usually expressive face in vain for even the ghost of a smile. To add to my annoyance and the constraint of the situation, old Robbins found it necessary to again loudly clear his troublesome throat.

To save himself from making an angry reply, Fielding somewhat viciously commenced operations on the turkey, and attempted to carve off a leg; but in some unaccountable manner the knife came to a sudden halt as soon as it had pierced the dark skin. This unlooked-for interruption brought a puzzled look into Fielding's face; but he was a man not easily daunted by anything, and thinking that he had somehow come across a bone hitherto unknown to him in a turkey's anatomy, he twisted the bird round and confidently began the dissection of the other leg. The result was equally disheartening; the blade went a little below the skin, and then refused to budge.

Poor Fielding! His patience was by this time pretty well exhausted, and turning to the now anything but jubilant Ovide, said grimly: ”In the name of all that is good, man, what is the matter with this turkey?”

He had gone however, to the wrong fount, for information this time, as Ovide wonderingly shook his head, and said, ”Dat is de queerest ting I'm never see, sir.”

The angry words on Fielding's lips were prevented by a low comprehensive laugh from old Robbins, who said, as he pointed satirically at his fireman, ”Oh, aye; oh, aye; thou knows how to cook; thou does, of course thou does.” Then turning to Fielding he said, with a side glance at me: ”That bird, sir, has n.o.bbut had its hide cooked, and all beneath it is frozen.”

Even before Fielding, to verify this startling statement, had seized the knife, and, laying open the skin, exposed to view the partly frozen flesh, the whole miserable catastrophe was clear to my mind. I recalled how I had borne down on Ovide soon after he had put the bird for the first time into the blazing oven; how, in deference to my fears, he had taken it out and stood it on the shelf--when its skin, of course, could only have been scorched--where it had remained over an hour while he was superintending the construction and cooking of the pudding; and, finally, how the prevaricating fellow--whom I knew understood little more about cooking than I did--must have concluded, from the cinder-like appearance of the skin when he took it out of the oven the second time, after another twenty minutes' scorching, that it was cooked to the very marrow.

”Well!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fielding, letting his knife and fork fall noisily on the table, and turning to our guilty-looking cook, ”of all the pure--”

But I am sure, the reader will agree with me that under such trying circ.u.mstances, my friend should not now have recorded against him, in cold print, every word he uttered on that occasion.

When Fielding had somewhat relieved his feelings and sat down again, Ovide, in his ludicrous English, tried to throw the blame for what had happened upon the stove, which, he explained, burned much more zealously than he wanted it to; but his lame excuses were cut short by Fielding telling him to take the thing away.

Ovide, however, was a difficult subject to silence, and said apologetically, as he took up the platter: ”It's vary much too bad, sir, dat I'm forgot to mak her freeze out before I'm put her in de oven. But de puddin', sir,”--with a sudden revival of his old self-confidence--”no danger of de same trouble with her; I'm sure she's cook vary well all de way over.”

Somewhat mollified by the outlook of getting a little of something to eat, Fielding replied somewhat less shortly, ”Well, hurry up and bring it along.”

As we silently waited for him to return, we heard him noisily lift the kettle containing the now doubly precious pudding off the stove; but scarcely had he done so when he uttered an amazed cry, and a few moments later hurried up to the table again, the big kettle in his hand and his eyes fairly bulging with excitement.

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