OMELETTE
The mystery lay on a plate in the middle of the table. In colour it
resembled scrambled eggs, except that it was tinted a more brownish, or
coppery, gold--rather like a first-class Yorkshire pudding. He suspected
for an instant that it might be a Yorkshire pudding according to the
new-fangled recipe of Board Schools. But four eggs! No! He was sure that
so small a quantity of Yorkshire pudding could not possibly have
required four eggs.
He picked up the teapot, after his manner, and was in the act of
pouring, when she struck him into immobility with a loud cry:
"Milk first!"
He understood that she had a caprice for pouring the tea on the top of
the milk instead of the milk on the top of the tea.
"What difference does it make?" he demanded defiantly.
"What!" she cried again. "You think yourself a great authority on China
tea, and yet you don't know that milk ought to be poured in first! Why,
it makes quite a different taste!"
How in the name of Confucius did she know that he thought himself a
great authority on China tea?
"Here!" she said. "If you don't mind, I'll pour out the tea. Thank you.
Help yourself to this." She pointed to the mystery. "It must be eaten
while it's hot, or it's worse than useless."
"What is it?" he asked, with false calm.
"It's a kidney omelette," she replied.
"Omelette!" he repeated, rather at a loss. He had never tasted an
omelette; he had never seen an omelette. Omelettes form no part of the
domestic cuisine of England. "Omelette!" he repeated. How was he
familiar with the word--the word which conveyed nothing to his mind?
Then he remembered: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Of course she had broken eggs. She had broken four eggs--she had broken
the entire household stock of eggs. And he had employed that proverb
scores, hundreds of times! It was one of half-a-dozen favourite proverbs
which he flung at the less sagacious and prudent of his tenants. And yet
it had never occurred to him to wonder what an omelette was! Now he
knew. At any rate, he knew what it looked like; and he was shortly to
know what it tasted like.
"Yes," she said. "Cut it with a knife. Don't be frightened of it.
You'll eat _it_; it won't eat you. And please give me very little. I ate
a quarter of a pound of chocolates after dinner."
He conveyed one-third of the confection to his plate, and about a sixth
to hers.
And he tasted--just a morsel, with a dash of kidney in the centre of it,
on the end of his fork. He was not aware of the fact, but that was the
decisive moment of his life--sixty though he was!
Had she really made this marvel, this dream, this idyll, this
indescribable bliss, out of four common fresh eggs and a veal kidney
that Mrs. Butt had dropped on the floor? He had come to loathe kidney.
He had almost come to swearing that no manifestation or incarnation of
kidney should ever again pass between his excellent teeth. And now he
was ravished, rapt away on the wings of paradisaical ecstasy by a
something that consisted of kidney and a few eggs. This omelette had all
the finer and nobler qualities of Yorkshire pudding and scrambled eggs
combined, together with others beyond the ken of his greedy fancy. Yes,
he was a greedy man. He knew he was greedy. He was a greedy man whose
evil passion had providentially been kept in check for over a quarter of
a century by the gross unskilfulness, the appalling monotony, of a Mrs.
Butt. Could it be that there existed women, light and light-handed
creatures, creatures of originality and resource, who were capable of
producing prodigies like this kidney omelette on the spur of the moment?
Evidently! Helen existed. And the whole omelette, from the melting of
the butter to the final steady glance into the saucepan, had not
occupied her more than six minutes--at most. She had tossed it off as he
might have tossed off a receipt for a week's rent. And the exquisite
thought in his mind, the thought of penetrating sweetness, was that
whence this delicacy had come, other and even rarer delicacies might
have come. All his past life seemed to him to be a miserable waste of
gloomy and joyless years.
"Do you like it?" she inquired.
He paused, as though reflecting whether he liked it or not. "Ay," he
said, judicially, "it's none so bad. I could do a bit more o' that."
"Well," she urged him, "do help yourself. Take it all. I shan't eat any
more."
"Sure?" he said, trembling lest she might change her mind.
Then he ate the remaining half of the omelette, making five-sixths in
all. He glanced at her surreptitiously, in her fine dress, on which was
not a single splash or stain. He might have known that so extraordinary
and exotic a female person would not concoct anything so trite as a
Yorkshire pudding or scrambled eggs.
Not till the omelette was an affair of the past (so far as _his_ plate
was concerned) did he begin to attend to his tea--his tea which
sustained a mystery as curious as, and decidedly more sinister than, the
mystery of the omelette.
He stared into the cup; then, to use the Five Towns phrase, he supped it
up.
There could be no doubt; it was his special China tea. It had a peculiar
flavour (owing, perhaps, to the precedence given to milk), but it was
incontestably his guarded and locked tea. How had she got it?
"Where didst find this tea, lass?" he asked.
"In the little corner cupboard in the scullery," she said. "I'd no idea
that people drank such good China tea in Bursley."
"Ah!" he observed, concealing his concern under a mask of irony, "China
tea was drunk i' Bursley afore your time."
"Mother would only drink Ceylon," said she.
"That doesna' surprise me," said he, as if to imply that no vagary on
the part of Susan could surprise him. And he proceeded, reflectively:
"In th' corner cupboard, sayst tha?"
"Yes, in a large tin box."
A large tin box. This news was overwhelming. He rose abruptly and went
into the scullery. Indubitably there was a large tin box, pretty nearly
half full of his guarded tea, in the corner cupboard.
He returned, the illusion of half a lifetime shattered. "That there
woman was a thief!" he announced.
"What woman?"
"Mrs. Butt."
And he explained to Helen all his elaborate precautions for the
preservation of his China tea. Helen was wholly sympathetic. The utter
correctness of her attitude towards Mrs. Butt was balm to him. Only one
theory was conceivable. The wretched woman must have had a key to his
caddy. During his absence from the house she must have calmly helped
herself to tea at five shillings a pound--a spoonful or so at a time.
Doubtless she made tea for her private consumption exactly when she
chose. It was even possible that she walked off from time to time with
quantities of tea to her own home. And he who thought himself so clever,
so much cleverer than a servant!
"You can't have her back, as she isn't honest, even if she comes back,"
said Helen.
"Oh, her won't come back," said James. "Fact is, I've had difficulties
with her for a long time now."
"Then what shall you do, my poor dear uncle?"
"Nay," said he, "I mun ask you that. It was you as was th' cause of her
going."
"Oh, uncle!" she exclaimed, laughing. "How can you say such a thing?"
And she added, seriously: "You can't be expected to cook for yourself,
can you? And as for getting a new one--"
He noticed with satisfaction that she had taken to calling him simply
uncle, instead of great-stepuncle.
"A new 'un!" he muttered, grimly, and sighed in despair.
"I shall stay and look after your supper," she said, brightly.
"Yes, and what about to-morrow?" He grew gloomier.
"To-morrow's Sunday. I'll come to-morrow, for breakfast."
"Yes, and what about Monday?" His gloom was not easily to be dispersed.
"I'll come on Monday," she replied, with increasing cheerfulness.
"But your school, where ye teach everything, lass?"
"Of course, I shall give up school," said she, "at once. They must do
without me. It will mean promotion for some one. I can't bother about
giving proper notice. Supposing you had been dangerously ill, I should
have come, and they would have managed without me. Therefore, they _can_
manage without me. Therefore, they must."
He kept up a magnificent gloom until she left for the night. And then he
danced a hornpipe of glee--not with his legs, but in his heart. He had
deliberately schemed to get rid of Mrs. Butt by means of Helen Rathbone.
The idea had occurred to him as he entered the house. That was why he
had encouraged her to talk freely about servants by assuring her that
Mrs. Butt was not in the scullery, being well aware that Mrs. Butt was
in the scullery. He had made a tool of the unsuspecting, good-natured
Helen, smart though she was! He had transitory qualms of fear about the
possible expensiveness of Helen. He had decidedly not meant that she
should give up school and nearly thirty shillings a week. But, still, he
had managed her so far, and he reckoned that he could continue to manage
her.
He regretted that she had not praised his music. And Helen wrote the
same evening to her mother. From a very long and very exciting letter
the following excerpts may be culled:
"I saw the fat old servant in the scullery at once. But uncle thought
she wasn't there. He is a funny old man--rather silly, like most old
men----but I like him, and you can say what you please. He isn't silly
really. I instantly decided that I would get rid of that servant. And I
did do, and poor uncle never suspected. In a few days I shall come to
live here. It's much safer. Supposing he was taken ill and died, and
left all his money to hospitals and things, how awfully stupid that
would be! I told him I should leave the school, and he didn't turn a
hair. He's a dear, and I don't care a fig for his money--except to spend
it for him. His tiny house is simply lovely, terrifically clean, and in
the loveliest order. But I've no intention that we shall stay here. I
think I shall take a large house up at Hillport. Uncle is only old in
some ways; in many ways he's quite young. So I hope he won't mind a
change. By the way, he told me about your age. My dearest mother, how
could you--" etc.
In such manner came Helen Rathbone to keep house for her
great-stepuncle.