JOHN WESLEY AND LORENZO DOW AT LUNCHEON
Two days after her lecture to Mrs. Tolbridge, Miss Panney was again in
Thorbury, and, having finished the shopping which brought her there, she
determined to go to see the doctor's wife, and find out if that lady had
acted on the advice given her. She had known Mrs. Tolbridge nearly all
that lady's life, and had always suspected in her a tendency to neglect
advice which she did not like, after the adviser was out of the way. She
did not wish to be over-inquisitive, but she intended, in some quiet way,
to find out whether or not the letter about which she had spoken so
strongly had been written. If it had not, she would take time to make up
her mind what she should do. Kitty Tolbridge and she had scolded each
other often enough, and had had many differences, but they had never yet
seriously quarrelled. Miss Panney did not intend to quarrel now, but if
she found things as she feared they were, she intended to interfere in a
way that might make Kitty uncomfortable, and perhaps produce the same
effect on herself and the doctor; but let that be as it might, she
assured herself there were some things that ought to be done, no matter
who felt badly about it.
She found the doctor's wife in a state of annoyance and disquiet, and was
greatly surprised to be told that this condition had been caused by a
note which had just been brought to her from her husband, stating that he
had been called away to a distant patient, and would not be able to come
home to luncheon.
"My dear Kitty!" exclaimed Miss Panney, "I should have thought you were
thoroughly used to that sort of thing. I supposed a country doctor would
miss his mid-day meal about half the time."
"And so he does," said Mrs. Tolbridge; "but I was particularly anxious
that he should lunch at home to-day, and he promised me that he would."
"Well," said the old lady, "you will have to bear up under it as well
as you can, and I hope they will give him something to eat wherever he
is going."
Mrs. Tolbridge seemed occupied, and did not answer.
"Miss Panney," she said suddenly, "will you stay and take lunch with me?
I should like it ever so much."
"Are you going to have strawberries?" asked Miss Panney.
Mrs. Tolbridge hesitated a little, and then replied, "Yes, we shall
have them."
"Very well, then, I'll stay. The Witton strawberries are small and sour
this year; and I haven't tasted a good one yet."
During the half hour which intervened before luncheon was announced, Miss
Panney discovered nothing regarding the matter which brought her there.
She would ask no questions, for it was Kitty Tolbridge's duty to
introduce the subject, and she would give her a chance; but if she did
not do it in a reasonable time, Miss Panney would not only ask questions,
but state her opinion.
When she sat down at the pretty round table, arranged for two persons,
Miss Panney was surprised at the scanty supply of eatables. There was the
tea-tray, bread and butter, and some radishes. Her soul rose in anger.
"Slops and fruit," she said to herself. "She isn't worthy to have any
sort of a husband, much less such a one as she has."
There was a vase of flowers in the centre of the table; but although Miss
Panney liked flowers, at meal-times she preferred good honest food.
"Shall I give you a cup of tea?" asked her hostess.
The old lady did not care for tea, but as she considered that she could
not eat strawberries on an empty stomach, she took some, and was just
about to cast a critical eye on the bread, when a maid entered, bearing a
dish containing two little square pieces of fish, covered with a greenish
white sauce, and decorated with bits of water-cress.
As soon as Miss Panney's eyes fell upon this dish, she understood the
situation--Mrs. Tolbridge had actually fallen back upon Kipper. Kipper
was a caterer in Thorbury, and a good one. He was patronized by the
citizens on extraordinary festive occasions, but depended for his custom
principally upon certain families who came to the village for a few
months in the summer, and who did not care to trouble themselves with
much domestic machinery.
"Kipper, indeed," thought the old lady; "that is the last peg. A
caterer's tid-bit for a hard-working man. If she would have her fish
cooked properly in her own house, she could give him six times as much
for half the money. And positively," she continued, in inward speech, as
the maid presented the bread and butter, "Kipper's biscuit! I suppose she
is going to let him provide her with everything, just as he does for
those rich people on Maple Avenue."
The fish was very good, and Miss Panney ate every morsel of it, but made
no remark concerning it. Instead of speaking of food, she talked of the
doings of the Methodist congregation in Thorbury, who were planning to
build a new church, far more expensive than she believed they could
afford. She was engaged in berating Mr. Hampton, the minister, who, she
declared, was actually encouraging his flock in their proposed
extravagance, when the maid gave her a clean plate, and handed her a dish
of sweetbread, tastefully garnished with clover blossoms and leaves. Miss
Panney stopped talking, gazed at the dish for a minute, and then helped
herself to a goodly portion of its contents.
"Feathers," she said to herself; "no more than froth and feathers to a
man who has been working hard half a day, and as to the extravagance of
such flimsy victuals--" She could keep quiet no longer, she was obliged
to speak out, and she burst into a tirade against people who called
themselves pious, and yet, wilfully shutting their eyes, were about to
plunge into wicked wastefulness. She ate as she talked, however, and she
had brought up John Wesley, and was about to give her notion of what he
would have had to say about a fancy church for a Thorbury congregation,
when the plates were again changed, and a dainty dish of sirloin steak,
with mushrooms, and thin slices of delicately browned potatoes, was put
before her.
"Well!" inwardly ejaculated the old lady, "something substantial at last.
But what money this meal must have cost!"
As she cut into the thick, juicy piece of steak, which had been broiled
until it was cooked enough, and not a minute more, Miss Panney's mind
dropped from the consideration of congregational finances into that of
domestic calculation. She knew Kipper's charges; she knew everybody's
charges.
"That dish of fish," she said to herself, "was not less than sixty cents;
the sweetbreads cost a dollar, if they cost a cent; this sirloin, with
mushrooms, was seventy-five cents; that, with the French biscuit, is two
dollars and a half for a family lunch for two people."
Miss Panney did not let her steak get cold, for she could talk and eat at
the same time, and the founder of Methodism never delivered so scorching
a tirade against pomp and show in professors of religion as she gave
forth in his name.
Mrs. Tolbridge had been very quiet during the course of the meal, but
she was now constrained to declare that she had nothing to do with the
plans for the new Methodist church, and, in fact, she knew very little
about them.
"Some things concern all of us," retorted Miss Panney. "Suppose Bishop
White, when he was ordained and came back to this country, had found a
little village--"
Her remarks were stopped by a dish of salad. The young and tender leaves
of lettuce were half concealed by a mayonnaise dressing.
"This makes three dollars," thought Miss Panney, as she helped herself,
"for Kipper never makes any difference, even if you send your own lettuce
to be dressed." And then she went on talking about Bishop White, and what
he would have thought of a little cathedral in every country town.
"But the Methodists do not have cathedrals," said Mrs. Tolbridge.
"Which makes it all the worse when they try to build their
meeting-houses to look like them," replied the old lady.
It was a long time since Miss Panney had tasted any mayonnaise dressing
as good as this. But she remembered that the strawberries were to come,
and did not help herself again to salad.
"If one of the old Methodist circuit-riders," she said, "after toiling
over miles of weary road in the rain or scorching sun, and preaching
sometimes in a log meeting-house, sometimes in a barn, and often in a
private house, should suddenly come upon--"
The imaginary progress of the circuit-rider was brought to a stop by the
arrival of the last course of the luncheon. From a pretty glass dish
uprose a wondrous structure. Within an encircling wall of delicate,
candied tracery was heaped a little mound of creamy frost, the sides of
great strawberries showing here and there among the veins and specks of
crimson juice.
Miss Panney raised her eyes from this creation to the face of her
hostess.
"Kitty," said she, "is this the doctor's birthday?"
"No," answered Mrs. Tolbridge, with a smile; "he was born in January."
"Yours then, perhaps?"
Mrs. Tolbridge shook her head.
"A dollar and a half," thought the old lady, "and perhaps more. Five
dollars at the very least for the meal. If the doctor makes that much
between meals, day in and day out, she ought to be thankful."
The dainty concoction to which the blazing-eyed old lady now applied
herself was something she had never before tasted, and she became of the
opinion that Kipper would not get up a dish of that sort, and so much of
it, for less than two dollars.
"There was a Methodist preacher," she said, spoonful after spoonful of
the cold and fruity concoction melting in her mouth as she spoke, "a
regular apostle of the poor, named Lorenzo Dow. How I would like to have
him here. He was a man who would let people know in trumpet tones, by day
and by night, what he thought of wicked, wasteful prodigality, no matter
how pleasant it might be, how easy it might be, or how proper in people
who could afford it. Is there to be anything more, Kitty Tolbridge?"
The doctor's wife could not restrain a little laugh.
"No," she said, "there is to be nothing more, unless you will take a
little tea."
Miss Panney pushed back her chair and looked at her hostess. "Tea after a
meal like that! I should think not. If you had had champagne during the
luncheon, and coffee afterwards, I shouldn't have been surprised."
"I did not order coffee," said Mrs. Tolbridge, "because we don't take it
in the middle of the day, but--"
"You ordered quite enough," said her visitor, severely; "and I will say
this for Kipper, that he never got up a better meal, although--"
"Kipper!" interrupted Mrs. Tolbridge. "Kipper had nothing to do with this
luncheon. It was prepared by my new cook. It is the first meal she has
given us, and I am so sorry the doctor could not be here to eat it."
Miss Panney rose from her chair, and gazed earnestly at Mrs. Tolbridge.
"What cook?" she asked, in her deepest tones.
"Jane La Fleur," was the reply; "the woman you urged me to write to. I
sent the letter that afternoon. Yesterday she came to see me, and I
engaged her. And while we were at breakfast this morning, she arrived
with her boxes, and went to work."
"And she cooked that meal? She herself made all those things?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Tolbridge, "she even churned the butter and made the
biscuit. She says she is going to do a great deal better than this when
she gets things in order."
"Better than this!" ejaculated Miss Panney. "Do you mean to say, Kitty
Tolbridge, that this sort of thing is going to happen three times a day?
What have you done? What sort of a creature is she? Tell me all about it
this very minute."
Mrs. Tolbridge led the way to the parlor, and the two sat down.
"Now," said the doctor's wife, "suppose you finish what you were saying
about the Methodist church, then--"
Miss Panney stamped her foot.
"Don't mention them!" she cried. "Let them build tower on tower, spire on
spire, crypts, picture galleries, altars, confessionals, if they like.
Tell me about your new cook."
"It will take a long time to tell you all about her, at least all she
told me," said Mrs. Tolbridge, "for she talked to me more than an hour
this morning, working away all the time. Her name is Jane La Fleur, but
she does not wish any one to call her Jane. She would like the family to
use her last name, and the servants can do the same, or call her 'madam.'
She is the widow of two chefs, one a Florentine, named Tolati, and the
other a Frenchman, La Fleur. She acted as 'second' to each of these, and
in that way has thoroughly learned the art of Italian cooking, as well as
the French methods. She herself is English, and she has told me about
some of the great families she and her husbands lived with."
"Kitty," said Miss Panney, "I should think she was trying to impose upon
you with a made-up story; but after that luncheon I will believe anything
she says about her opportunities. How in the world did you get such a
woman to come to you?"
"Oh, the whole business of engaging her was very simple," answered
Mrs. Tolbridge. "Her last husband left her some money, and she came to
this country on a visit to relatives, but she loved her art so much,
she said--"
"Did she call it art?" asked Miss Panney.
"Yes, she did--that she felt she must cook, and she lived for some time
with a family named Drane, in Pennsylvania, with whom the doctor used
to be acquainted. She had a letter from them which fully satisfied me.
On her part she said she would be content with the salary I paid my
last cook."
"Did she call it salary?" exclaimed the old lady.
"That was the word she used," answered Mrs. Tolbridge, "and as I said
before, the only question she asked was whether or not my husband was
in trade."
"What did that matter?" asked the other.
"It seemed to matter a great deal. She said she had never yet lived with
a tradesman, and never intended to. She was with Mrs. Drane, the widow of
a college professor, for several months, and when the family found they
could no longer afford to keep a servant who could do nothing but cook,
La Fleur returned to her relatives, and looked for another position; but
not until I came, she said, had any one applied who was not in trade."
"She must be an odd creature," said Miss Panney.
"She is odder than odd," was the answer. At this moment the maid came in
and told Mrs. Tolbridge that the madam cook wanted to see her. The lady
of the house excused herself, and in a few minutes returned, smiling.
"She wished to tell me," said she, "before my visitor left, that the
name of the 'sweet' which she gave us at luncheon is _la promesse_, being
merely a promise of what she is going to do, when she gets about her
everything she wants."
"Kitty Tolbridge," said Miss Panney, solemnly, "whatever happens, don't
mind that woman's oddity. Keep your mind on her cooking, and don't
consider anything else. She is an angel, and she belongs to the very
smallest class of angels that visit human beings. You may find, by the
dozen, philanthropists, kind friends, helpers and counsellors, the most
loving and generous; but a cook like that in a Thorbury family is as rare
as--as--as--I can't think of anything so rare. I came here, Kitty, to
find out if you had written to that woman, and now to discover that the
whole matter has been settled in two days, and that the doors of Paradise
have been opened to Dr. Tolbridge--for you know, Kitty, that the Garden
of Eden was truly Paradise until they began to eat the wrong things--I
feel as if I had been assisting at a miracle."