PEGGY had come to my study in sore dismay.
There was to be a break and interlude, it seemed, in the monotony of our
household arrangements, which, for myself, I was inclined to welcome.
Peggy, however, regarded it with extreme displeasure, not unmixed with
anxiety.
“You see, sir,” she said, “’tis Miss Gertie’s birthday next Tuesday, and
the Rectory’s to be full of the visitors they’ve invited to come for it.
Now, you’d think that woman Josephine would know better,”—Peggy always
had a shy shot at Josephine whom she detested as a foreigner and
interloper—“but no, not she. She’s chosen this very time to invite her
brother—I hope he _is_ her brother—no doubt because she thinks it will be
fine and lively for him with all these rejoicings. And as they can’t
find room for him at the Rectory, what does my lady do but coolly propose
that you and I should take him in? Now, if he were a healthy honest
Englishman I wouldn’t mind. But I can’t abide these foreigners who wont
trouble to talk our language,”—Peggy always premised that to speak
English by intuition was the birthright of every baby both at home and
abroad—“and who live on toads and snails so that one don’t know how to
cook for them.”
“Now, my dear Peggy, don’t worry yourself and me; I’m just in the middle
of my sermon. Let him come by all means. I know a smattering of French,
and shall be rather glad of a chance of improving my accent. Besides,
I’ll order the dinners and take all the responsibility off your hands.”
Never was heavy charge undertaken with so light a heart.
So Peggy retired, muttering her discontent in the little querulous tones,
that, as usual, reminded me of a squirrel when it finds that it has been
robbed of its hoard. “I’ll do my best; I can no more; but I’m not going
to cook frogs and snails for any foreigner,” was what I heard more and
more faintly as her voice receded to the kitchen.
In one respect, at any rate, Peggy was hopelessly astray. Josephine’s
friend was an American, and came from Chicago, so that the hopes I had
formed of furbishing up my French were doomed to disappointment. It was
in a dialect which suggested no possible connection with the French that
he opened the conversation immediately on his arrival.
“I don’t care what ‘tucker’ you give me, only I must have cereals.”
So he began.
In my ignorance I read the word “serials,” and imagined that what he
wanted was intellectual nourishment while he dined, so I promptly offered
him the choice between “Pearson’s” and the “Strand.” “Perhaps,” thought
I, “he wishes to study the statistics—amply supplied by these
periodicals—of how large an animal would be forthcoming if all the oxen
consumed by England in a year were rolled into one.”
But he wanted nothing of the kind. “It is absurd,” he said, “the way you
Britishers tamper with your digestions, filling yourselves with heavy,
heating food, when all that nature requires is corn and oil and wine—and
the less of the latter the better,” he added as an after-thought.
I cordially acquiesced, for he was not a man, I saw, to stand
contradiction in any form. But all the while I was troubling myself
anent the dinner I had in store for him.
He had arrived late in the afternoon, and in my innocence I had ordered
for him a typical English repast—soup, roast beef, and a ‘fondu’ of
cheese.
He waved the soup aside impatiently. “I never touch soup,” he said, “it
interferes with my digestion.” It was the same with the roast beef. But
the Yorkshire pudding saved me. “I can eat the fat of the beef,” he said
condescendingly—“spread on the pudding, it is highly digestible.”
“Rich,” I thought, “much too rich for the ordinary stomach.” But I
resigned it to him willingly, yes, all of it—and it was a remarkably fat
sirloin—if only because my own inclination did not lie that way. So we
got on well for the first day.
But I still had something to learn. I had no idea that “cereals”
comprehended the be-all and end-all of his dietary. So I thought to
tempt him with what was really a very delicate menu.
A clear soup, red mullet, ptarmigan, with a savoury to follow, was the
not un-appetising fare I set before him.
The soup he declined as before, with the air of one who refuses to
re-open a question.
When the mullet followed I felt sure of his approval. Not the veriest
epicure could have resisted the tempting aroma and the sight of the
nut-brown envelopes which enshrouded the “woodcock of the sea.” But no.
“This fish has not been cleaned,” was the objection; “how careless of
your cook.”
Of course this criticism put him outside the pale. A man who would clean
a red mullet would reject the soft roe of a herring or (on occasion)
murder his mother-in-law.
“The fact is,” he repeated—this time a little angrily—“I can’t dine
without cereals.”
My heart sank within me but I said with assumed confidence, “The cereals
will follow later on. You see we outsiders like something a little more
solid to begin with.” But my bravery was all on the surface. For how
was he to sustain nature on one small savoury, even if he sampled the
whole of it? If only I had ordered Peggy to supply the ample rice
pudding or elegant dumplings of nursery tradition! But it was too late
now, for the ptarmigan was already on the table.
“What, no greens?” he said, “broccoli, or beans, or at any rate cabbage?”
I represented to him with deference that none of these dainties were
regarded by epicures as the natural concomitants of ptarmigan.
“More of your silly English customs,” he said, “to reject simple
nourishing food, and heat the blood with these unnatural kickshaws.”
Whereupon a happy thought struck me, and I commandeered from the kitchen
the vegetables which I knew were even then simmering to perfection for
Peggy’s supper. A noble broccoli was the result—the very largest I ever
saw—and reposing on the very largest dish. How his eyes glistened! It
was transferred bodily to his plate, and, drenched in a bottle of salad
oil, was, he admitted, no bad substitute for the “cereals” of commerce.
Again I followed up my fortunate idea, and defrauded Peggy of five noble
apple dumplings, four of which he accounted for on the spot, and begged
(with a smile of repletion which comforted me exceedingly) that the
remaining one might be reserved to furnish forth his breakfast table
before he went his way in the morning. But the attempt to reorganise my
kitchen on a system to suit his digestion proved too heavy a problem for
Peggy and me. So for the remainder of his visit he and I went our
separate ways, as far as the meals were concerned. At dinner he seemed
happy with vegetables and puddings, and for the rest of the day he drank
tea unlimited, and refreshed himself at intervals with apples, bananas,
nuts and cakes, with which I was careful to garnish the sideboard during
the remainder of his stay. “Monkey Brand,” I called him, and he did not
resent the title, “being proud,” he said, “to resemble his ancestors.”
For he was a kindly genial fellow, and never took a joke amiss.
Indeed, his simplicity and cheeriness quite won my heart, and reconciled
me almost to the trouble of catering for him.
But Peggy was far less amenable, and never became tolerant of his ways.
I believe she persuaded herself to the end that he was a Frenchman, who
for some evil purpose was masquerading as an American, and pretended,
from sheer ‘contrariness’ or worse, to have forgotten his mother-tongue.