THE GOBLINS OF THE KITCHEN
Among the things that impressed us amid the general goings-on about
the house was the evidence of a certain sort of humor in the makeup
of the influences that were seemingly responsible for them. That
this humor did not particularly appeal to our taste, I must admit;
it seemed distinctly lacking in subtlety, and suggested that its
authors might be the spirits of certain disembodied low comedians of
the bladder-and-slapstick variety. To some such agency, at least, we
came to attribute the phenomena of the slamming doors, jingling door
bell, and occasional upsetting of the parlor; and from time to time
other things occurred to break this monotony of elfish sprightliness,
and to show us that our spookish friends were not mere creatures of
routine, but were full of waggish resource. The indoor incidents that
I have already narrated may seem to have borne the ancient ghostly--or
"poltergeistic"--trademark, and to have been contrived and employed
after a conventional and long-approved plan:--but if there is anywhere
a Shadowland Patent Office, the originators of the pranks I am about
to describe should be enjoying its protection for their ingenious
inventions.
I was sitting in my room at about noon, one day, awaiting a call to the
luncheon which my wife was preparing. Suddenly I heard her call out
from the front hall: "Come here, quick! I have something queer to show
you!" I went out at once, and found her standing at the door of the
dark chamber I have previously described, wherein we were accustomed to
keep milk, butter, and other such provisions, for the sake of coolness.
"Look in there," said my wife--and I looked in accordingly; but I
observed nothing unusual, and so reported.
"Look up," she said again. I did so, and saw a large milk pan resting
motionless in the air just under the ceiling several feet above my head
and just beneath the perforated opening of the ventilator. I naturally
inquired how it had got there.
"I hardly know," replied my wife; "the thing was done so quickly. The
pan is full of milk, and was resting on the floor of the hollow space
when I came to get some of the milk for our lunch. I had taken up the
pan, when it was snatched from my hands and floated up to the place
where you now see it."
"This is something new," I remarked, "and rather interesting. I hope
the spooks are not drinking the milk"--and as I spoke, the pan began
deliberately to descend. When it was within reach I caught hold of the
handle on each side, and tried to accelerate its motion. It stopped
immediately, and although I employed considerable force I could not
budge it. (The effect was not at all as if I were pulling against a
physical force like my own; the pan was as immovable and inert as
though it were a component part of the masonry of the chamber about
it.) I stood aside, therefore; whereupon it began to float down again,
and shortly settled in its former place on the floor, touching it so
lightly that the contact did not cause even a ripple upon the surface
of the milk. We tasted that milk very carefully before venturing to use
it for our repast, but found nothing wrong with it.
* * * * *
A few evenings after the episode of the levitating milk pan, we all
three went into Melbourne after dinner to attend the theatre. After the
performance and while on the way to our train we passed a cook-shop, in
whose window was displayed a quantity of roasted duck and teal, the
game season then being at its height. They looked so appetizing that I
was moved to go in and purchase a pair of teal for a shilling or two
(these birds were astonishingly plentiful, and correspondingly cheap
in Australia at the time), had them put into a paper box, and carried
them home with the view to a light supper before we should go to bed.
As it seemed hardly worth while to use the dining-room, we went into
the kitchen; where I put the teal on a platter and prepared to carve
them while my wife was arranging the plates and necessary cutlery. The
carving knife was in its usual place in the knife-box, but I could not
find the fork that went with it, and so remarked.
"Why," said my wife, "it's there with the knife, of course." She spoke
with conviction and authority, for among her conspicuous traits was a
love for orderliness in all things pertaining to the household.
Nevertheless, the fork was _not_ there; nor could we find it, although
we overhauled everything in the cupboard in search for it. Meanwhile
our friend, actuated by the laudable purpose of keeping out of the way
of our preparations, was standing near the door, with his hands in his
pockets.
"I see it!" he suddenly exclaimed, and withdrawing one hand from its
confinement, he pointed upward. My eye followed the direction thus
indicated, and I also saw the missing utensil:--it was stuck into the
upper part of the window casing, just under the ceiling, and a folded
paper was impaled upon its tines. I got upon the table and took the
fork from its position. It required considerable force to do so, for
the tines were deeply imbedded in the woodwork. Then I unfolded the
paper. It was about four inches square, and drawn upon it, with much
spirit and a strict adherence to the principles of realism in art, were
a skull and crossbones. These were done in a red medium which at first
we thought was blood, but which we finally decided to be ink, since it
retained its color for weeks, and did not darken, as blood would have
done. There was no writing whatever on the sheet; therefore we had no
reason to regard it as an attention from the "Black Hand"--another
reason being that we had never heard of the "Black Hand" at that time.
We had no red ink in the house, nor any paper like that upon which the
design was drawn--and nothing ever occurred to throw any light on the
matter.
This incident--like that of the hurled stone--seemed so palpably
referable to human agency that it revived the rather feeble hope
we had from time to time entertained that we might, after all, be
the victims of some ingenious trickery. Therefore our friend and I
devoted one afternoon to a close search of the house, outhouse, and
the premises generally, particularly exploring the dusty attic for
concealed machinery--in short, for anything that might give a clue
to the mystery. We emerged from the attic looking like a couple of
sweeps, but this was the only result achieved; nor did we accomplish
anything else in all our investigations. As for the attic, nobody could
get into it otherwise than by bringing the ladder into the house from
the outhouse and raising it to the trap-door in the ceiling of the
bathroom. As to outside origin of the various pranks that had been
played upon us, we could see no way in which they could be performed
in view of the fact that we had every facility to observe the approach
of any mischief-maker:--since we had a wide street on two sides of us,
and the houses on each of the other two sides were at least a hundred
yards away. The fact that most of the "manifestations" with which we
had been favored had occurred in the daytime added to the puzzle; the
only two things that we could explain as perhaps the work of beings
like ourselves (the episodes of the thrown stone and of the fork) had
occurred under the cover of darkness:--therefore, hoping that, with
these data to go upon, we might get to the cause of our annoyances, we
set a trap with the hope that if any practical joker were at work, he
might walk into it.
In furtherance of this purpose I sent my wife and our friend to the
theatre, a few evenings later, accompanying them to the railway station
after extinguishing all the lights in the house in order to create
the impression in the mind of any possible watcher of our movements
that we were all three equally on pleasure bent in town, and returning
by a devious route which finally brought me by a scramble over the
orchard fence to the back door. I quietly let myself into the house,
arranged an easy chair at a point where I could command the hall in
both directions, and sat down amid utter darkness, with my revolver
in my jacket pocket and my shot gun, heavily charged in both barrels,
across my knees. I was fully determined to test the materiality--or
otherwise--of any shape that might present itself, by turning my
artillery loose thereon without any preliminary word of challenge; but
although my vigil lasted until midnight, I was obliged to report to my
returning companions that nothing whatever had happened.
I may add that that evening was the longest and least agreeable I ever
experienced.
* * * * *
It may be that the incident with which I shall close this rather
rambling chapter was promoted by the same humorists who devised
the conceit of the floating milk pan, and was employed as a means
of enabling us to recognize therein the authors of the former
whimsicality. The two pleasantries seemed, at all events, to have been
conceived in the same spirit, and although both were equally odd and
purposeless, the superior elaborateness of the second distinctly showed
an advance over the first, and gained our applause accordingly. There
was no connection between these episodes in point of time; in fact, the
second occurred several months after the first, in the hottest part of
the year.
Our friend being a Briton by birth and an Australian by adoption, he
had enjoyed rather a narrow experience in dietetics, particularly in
the vegetable line. During the early part of our housekeeping we had
found much difficulty in securing for our table any garden delicacies
outside the conventional list of potatoes, "vegetable marrow," and
cauliflower--until Providence brought to our back door an amiable
Chinese huckster, who, with several compatriots, had established a
small truck-farm in the neighborhood. Earnest representations regarding
our vegetableless conditions inspired his interest, and the promise of
good prices awakened his cupidity; and as a result of the agreement of
these motives it was not long before our table greatly improved.
And I cannot help saying--although this is a digression--that our
often-expressed words of satisfaction to our purveyor stimulated him to
produce and bring to us everything of the best that he could raise. In
his way he was an artist, with an artist's craving for praise--so that
now and then he would appear with a gift of some new product for us to
try, and occasionally with a small packet of choice tea or some other
Celestial delicacy, for which he would invariably refuse payment.
"You should not bring me these things," my wife said to him one day.
"You can't afford them."
"Me likee bling 'em," he replied. "An' me likee _you_. You no ploud.
Mos' lady too ploud"--and swinging his baskets to his shoulder he
departed.
It was my wife's delight to tempt our friend's appetite with all sorts
of culinary novelties, which the new and more liberal order of things
allowed her to prepare. With true British conservatism he would venture
gingerly upon an unfamiliar dish, admit it "wasn't half bad," and end
by eating as much of it as both of us others together. It was finally
discovered that a particularly effective way of appeal to his nature
was through the medium of baked stuffed tomatoes:--of these he seemed
never to have enough, and, as a consequence, they were frequently
upon our bill-of-fare during the summer. It seems incredible--and
lamentable--that a man should have got well into the fifties without
ever having eaten a baked stuffed tomato:--such, however, was our
friend's unhappy case, and my wife made strenuous efforts to ameliorate
it.
"I have a treat for you to-night," she said to our friend. "Guess what
it is."
"Baked stuffed tomatoes," he responded promptly--and baked stuffed
tomatoes it was.
"Now," continued my wife, "you two men must eat your dinner in the
kitchen to-night. The woman who cooks for me is ill to-day, and you
will have to take pot-luck. I have let the fire in the stove go out,
and have been using the gas range; so you will find the kitchen cooler
than the dining-room, and by eating there you will save me work,
besides."
So we went into the kitchen, where we found the table already laid for
us.
"Before we sit down," said my wife, turning smilingly to our friend,
"I am going to show you the treat you were so clever in guessing. But
you are not to have it at once; that will come after the cold meat. The
tomatoes are nice and hot, and I have put them in here to keep them
from cooling too fast:"--and with these words she kneeled upon the
floor and opened the iron door which shut in a wide but shallow cavity
in the masonry that formed the base of the open fireplace.
This fireplace was an unusual feature in a modern kitchen, and we,
at least, had never put it to any use. It projected slightly into
the room, and on the sides of it, and against the wall in each case,
were, respectively, the cook stove and gas range. Under its hearth,
and but a few inches above the level of the room, was the hollow space
I have mentioned--I believe it was what is sometimes called a "Dutch
oven"--eight inches high, perhaps, two feet wide, and eighteen inches
deep. From this space my wife partly drew out for our inspection
an iron baking pan, in which an even dozen of deliciously cooked,
golden-and-red, crumb-stuffed tomatoes were sociably shouldering each
other:--then, after hearing our expressions of satisfaction with their
appearance, she pushed the pan back again, closed the iron door, and
sat down with us to dinner.
The table stood against the wall, directly under the window. My wife
was seated at the end next to the fireplace, I was opposite her,
and our friend was at the side, his back to the hall door and his
face to the window. Thus he and my wife were each within two feet of
the fireplace and the chamber under it, and the iron door guarding
our treasure was in direct range of my own eyes from the position I
occupied.
Having despatched the earlier portions of the repast, my wife arose,
removed the used dishes to a side table, set others in their places,
and with the remark: "Now for the tomatoes!" swung open the iron door
under the fireplace. The interior, however, was absolutely empty:--the
tomatoes, and the heavy baking pan that had held them, had disappeared!
Our friend and I sprang from our chairs in astonishment and
incredulity--but the fact was undoubted; the treat which had been so
much anticipated had been snatched, as it were, from our very lips.
Our friend turned from one to the other of us a face so comically set
between wonder and disappointment that I burst out laughing in spite of
myself. But my ill-timed levity was promptly checked by my wife, who
was at the moment giving a competent imitation of a lioness robbed of
her whelps.
"Oh!" she cried, seemingly addressing nothing in particular, although
she might have felt--as I did--that she was speaking to a derisive
audience; "that is too bad of you! To steal my tomatoes, when I worked
over them so long! Bring them back instantly!" But they remained
invisible, and over all a sarcastic silence brooded. Then she turned
upon us unfortunate men.
"Have you been playing me a trick?" she demanded. "Do _you_ know what
has become of those tomatoes?" "Certainly not"--this to both questions.
Neither of us had moved from his chair since we sat down to dinner
and she had shown us the pan and its contents. Nor had she, for that
matter, except when she had risen to change the dishes, and even then
she had not left the room.
All that could be said was that the tomatoes had been exhibited, and
then had been shut up again behind the door. There was no possible
doubt about that--it was equally certain that they had vanished.
Very well, then let us search for them! This we did, and with great
thoroughness, all over the house, and in every part of the grounds;
the outhouse at the back was also carefully inspected. I even got the
ladder and went, in turn, upon the roofs of both structures, looked
down the chimneys:--"nothing doing" (to employ an Oriental expression
not then, unhappily, in use); nowhere any trace of the missing pan or
of the tomatoes.
We gave it up finally, and went back to our dessert and coffee. My
wife refused to be satisfied that the tomatoes were actually gone. She
was constantly getting up to open the iron door and view the emptiness
behind it--as if she expected the apparent dematerialization of the pan
and tomatoes to be reversed,--while our friend looked on with an aspect
of forced resignation.
I left them after a time, and went out for an after-dinner smoke on the
back doorstep. I had hardly lighted my pipe when I heard a cry blended
of two voices in the kitchen--a shriek from my wife, and a mildly
profane ejaculation from our friend. Rushing in, I saw an astonishing
sight--our friend, with staring eyes and blanched face, supporting
himself against the table as if staggered by a blow, my wife kneeling
in front of the open iron door beneath the fireplace, and the baking
pan and its dozen tomatoes lying before her on the floor!
It was some time before I could get a coherent account of what had
happened. It was finally developed, however, that after I had left the
room the conversation continued on the inexplicable conduct of the
tomatoes. "I can't believe they are not there!" my wife asserted, and,
for the dozenth time or so, she again knelt on the floor and again
opened the door.
"I was standing right behind her," said our friend, "and saw her swing
the door open, but there was nothing inside. At the same instant I
heard a thump on the floor, and there the whole outfit was, just in
front of her. I don't know where the things came from--perhaps down the
chimney:--at any rate, one moment there was nothing there; the next,
the pan and the tomatoes were on the floor."
After we had regained our composure we considered what we should do
with the tomatoes. Our friend said he didn't think _he_ wanted any of
them, and I confessed to an equal indifference--so capricious, and
often influenced by slight circumstances, is the appetite!
My wife, as usual, settled the matter. "Take them away!" she said.
"Throw them into the garbage barrel!"--which was accordingly done;
melancholy end of a culinary triumph! Yet we ought at least to have
tasted those tomatoes: under the title "_tomato à la diable_" they
might have found a place in the cook books.