My prediction was fulfilled. Arthur Tamworth did not appear at the
office. Instead, he telephoned from his house, that, owing to a slight
indisposition, he would remain at home for the day. The clerks were
mystified, as Mr. Tamworth had never been known to absent himself from
his business. To me, of course, it was clear as a pikestaff and grimly I
declined to discuss the matter with the bookkeeper. I had an odiously
guilty feeling, and in the matter of "secrets" it seemed to me that I
could give Lady Audley points. The day dragged horribly. I was weighted
down by my dreary knowledge, and as I sat at my desk, the various
courses of our distinctly coarse and brutal dinner passed before my mind
in lugubrious procession. I felt as Mathias must have done in _The
Bells_ with the odious souvenir of the lime-kiln on his conscience.
However, in exultant optimism, I argued that this little "set-back"
already belonged to the past, and I resolved to keep Tamworth's pitiful
plight from Letitia, unless he died, victim of my hospitality. By the
time I reached our apartment I had driven all these tantalizing
thoughts from my mind, and when Letitia met me with a smile of
affectionate welcome the past had been pushed back to its proper place.
"Sh!" said Letitia mysteriously, with a finger on her lips, as we went
to the drawing-room, "I've got her, Archie. She's in the kitchen
preparing dinner, and--and--you'll never guess, dear, so I may as well
tell you the news. She--she used to be with the Vanderbilts!"
My wife was all excitement. There was a flush on her face, and I had
never seen her look prettier. She was dressed for dinner, in still
another evening gown, all white. There were forget-me-nots in her hair,
and at her bosom. Letitia spoke in a whisper, as though she were afraid
that a mere voice would startle the latest acquisition. Her enthusiasm,
however, was contagious, and as she followed me to my dressing-room,
where I quickly exchanged my business clothes for discreet broadcloth, I
began to share her gay anticipation.
"Yes," she continued eagerly, "I went to the intelligence office and
subscribed. At first, Archie, I felt most mortified. A dozen servant
girls sat there, like at a minstrel show. They seemed to be quite
lacking in old-fashioned respect and were not a bit abashed in the
presence of prospective mistresses. They talked and laughed, and I could
have sworn that they were criticising _me_. I tried not to hear them,
but I know--yes, Archie, I know--that one girl, with a face that I shall
never forget, meant me, when she remarked to a friend, 'She's a fool and
I'm not taking any, thanks. I hate a fool.' Of course, I pretended not
to notice, but--"
Letitia reddened and seemed to forget her present satisfaction in the
thought of her recent humiliation. She went on: "Fortunately, I was not
the only one who needed a cook. At least fifty ladies were there,
looking strangely desperate. One of them spoke to me, most
impertinently, I thought. She was a stout matron and she said to me,
very rudely: 'Is this your first time in hell?' I didn't answer her, and
she smiled and passed on. I heard her tell the proprietress of the
office that she had a bicycle with a coaster brake, that she was
willing, if necessary, to place at the disposal of her cook, but that,
personally, she would prefer a cook who played the piano. I also heard
her say that she, herself, would do all the work for two hours each
morning while cook practised."
"Was it a lunatic asylum, or an intelligence office?" I asked, as I
knotted my tie.
"Oh, it really was an intelligence office," Letitia replied seriously.
"I thought that I must have made a mistake at first, and arrived at a
wrong address. It was all so odd. The ladies seemed to be cooks and the
cooks seemed to be ladies. Really, Archie"--with a laugh--"it was quite
like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, without music. I heard one lady tell
Mrs. Jones, the proprietress, that she was quite willing to allow her
husband to take cook to the theater once a week, but she stipulated that
cook should not ask to go to the Metropolitan Opera House on Wagner
nights."
"Come, Letitia," I said impatiently, "I dare say you mean to be funny,
but I do hope, dear, that you are not going to develop a sense of humor.
You know my views on that subject."
"But, Archie, this is all true. It is, honest Injun. I am as much
mystified as you are. I thought I was dreaming, or at the theater. I
couldn't realize that it was genuine. Fortunately for me, Mrs. Jones
attended to me immediately. Just after I had heard the conversation
about the Metropolitan Opera House on Wagner nights, an old, rather
melancholy looking person came in. Mrs. Jones jumped up and said:
'Here's the very thing for you, Mrs. Fairfax.' And before I knew it, I
was on my way home with a cook who had been with the Vanderbilts. Her
name, Archie, is Mrs. Potzenheimer. She's German."
"So I should judge," I murmured. "Potzenheimer! Good gracious, Letitia!"
"What does the name matter, you silly boy? That which we call a
Potzenheimer, etcetera. Think of our luck, dear. On the way home, I
remembered Aunt Julia's suggestion always to ask for references. I had
quite forgotten all about it, stupid-like. Mrs. Potzenheimer looked very
sad and weary, poor soul. She told me that Mrs. Vanderbilt would be
delighted to give her a reference, but that at present she was in
England, visiting the Duchess of Marlborough."
I'm not a snob, not a bit of one. I'm a democrat to the roots of my
hair. Still, as this reflected glory shed itself upon me, I felt a
strange sense of elation.
"Which of the Vanderbilts was it?" I asked.
"How provoking you are, Archie!" exclaimed Letitia impatiently. "Isn't
any Vanderbilt good enough for us--to get a cook from? Suppose it were
Alfred, or Reginald, or William K. Vanderbilt. What difference does it
make? I was so overjoyed that I felt positively pleased to hear that
Mrs. Vanderbilt was with the Duchess of Marlborough. If she had been
here I should have deemed it my duty to call upon her for a reference,
and--you know what these people are--it might have been a bad one.
Absolutely, I'd sooner have a bad Vanderbilt cook, than a good ordinary,
plain affair."
"There is something in what you say, old girl," I was bound to assent.
"If _you_ think so, dear, I am quite satisfied," Letitia responded
readily. "But there is one thing about Mrs. Potzenheimer--by-the-by, she
suggests that we call her Nellie--that troubles me. She says she never
wants to go out."
"And that troubles you!" I exclaimed, astonished. "I should think you
would be rejoiced. We shall feel so much safer in the knowledge that
Mrs. Potzen--Nellie--is always in the kitchen."
"But it is so sad, Archie," persisted Letitia. "When I asked her what
night she would like to go out, she burst out crying. She said she had
nowhere to go--that she was old, and that nobody cared for her. She wept
for ten minutes, and I think--I'm not sure, Archie--that I joined her.
Poor old soul! My first impulse was to ask her to come in and sit with
us--"
"Letitia!"
"I said 'my first impulse,'" she went on firmly. "I never act on first
impulses, and I did not do so this time. Just the same, I felt sorry
for cook. Perhaps she will get chummy with the servants in other
apartments. She seems so respectable and dresses neatly in black. A more
striking contrast to Anna Carter could scarcely be imagined. She is
extremely quiet, and sits down a good deal. Each time I have seen her
she has been 'resting her bones' as she calls it. Isn't it pitiful,
Archie, to think of such a woman being forced to earn her living,
instead of passing her days in a little cottage with honeysuckle all
over it--"
"But there are none in New York, dear."
"You needn't be so disgustingly literal, Archie," Letitia protested with
a pout. "I say that it is a pity she can't pass her days in a little
cottage with honeysuckle all over it, and with her grandchildren grouped
around her knee."
"Is she so fearfully old?" I asked in alarm.
"One needn't be disgracefully antique to have grandchildren," my wife
declared. "You are so old-fashioned, dear. You revel in pictures of
white-haired, toothless, old creatures when you hear of grandmothers. If
my grandmother were alive to-day she would be just fifty-three. She
married at sixteen."
"They always do, nowadays," I retorted cynically. "Sixteen seems to be
the age for women to marry at when they intend to become grandmothers."
"Hush!" cried Letitia, for at that moment Mrs. Potzenheimer came in to
tell us that dinner was served. Most aged and infirm was Mrs.
Potzenheimer, and I looked at her in amazement. She was slightly lame
and her face was wizened and pinched. Her eyes filled with tears as she
told us that dinner was ready. I had felt ravenously hungry, but the
sight of the new domestic nipped my pangs. Not being wholly bad, a
feeling of compassion took possession of me. A horrid idea that I should
be waiting on cook, instead of cook waiting on me, almost overwhelmed
me.
Our places were laid, but the table had no other decoration than a
bottle of Worcestershire sauce on a little mat in the middle. Never have
I seen a bottle of Worcestershire look so funereally lonely. Robinson
Crusoe on his desert island was a crowd in comparison. We sat down,
depressed and gloomy. I felt that like the dove on the mast--in the
song--I must "mourn, and mourn, and mourn."
"I wonder if this table decoration is a duplicate of Mrs. Vanderbilt's,"
I murmured, as I unfolded my table-napkin.
"It _is_ strange," Letitia agreed, in a whisper. "I can't understand
why she has 'starred' the Worcestershire sauce. It is really such an
ugly thing, with the brick-red label and the crude stopper."
"Perhaps there are some tenement-house Vanderbilts," I suggested
moodily.
"I told you, Archie," Letitia insisted, "that the Mrs. Vanderbilt who
employed Nellie is at present visiting the Duchess of Marlborough at
Blenheim Castle, so that settles it. She particularly said Blenheim
Castle."
Mrs. Potzenheimer brought in a seething dish of mutton stew, that
emitted a fragrant odor. She set it down with a heavy sigh. I noticed a
tear trickling down her cheek, and so did Letitia, for I saw my wife's
face grow serious. It was very good stew, indeed. If we could have
called it a _ragoût_, we should have felt more at ease. It was a stew,
however, and, with the best of intentions, it was impossible even to
think of it as anything else.
"She is much older than you implied, Letitia," I said, as cook limped
out of the room and we began dinner. "She really seems positively
decrepit."
Letitia sat looking at her food rather wistfully. "It is the electric
light, I think," she whispered--the constant whispering made me
nervous--"I admit, Archie, that she looks twenty years older, lighted
up. In the daytime I put her down as forty. But you know, dear, I
engaged her in such a hurry that I couldn't be quite sure. It does seem
cruel to allow such an old woman--"
"Well, dear,"--I was growing cheerful in the material comfort of the
moment,--"we don't force her to do it. She evidently wanted a position,
or you wouldn't have found her at the intelligence office."
"She was crying when she brought in the stew." Letitia's lip quivered
ominously.
"Why should she cry?" I asked with asperity--I carefully turned on the
asperity in order to combat Letitia's weakness. "Why should she cry? She
naturally expects to cook. It can't be a surprise to her. She must know
that she isn't here just as an ornament, or--"
"You are so hard, Archie," Letitia faltered. "You can sit there and
enjoy a dinner cooked by a poor old soul. Of course, I'm glad you enjoy
it. It is better so. But still--I can't touch it. She has unnerved me.
She must be thinking of her loved ones."
"You said she hadn't any."
"I didn't!" cried Letitia indignantly. "I said nothing of the sort. I
said she ought to be with her grandchildren, and so she ought. I dare
say she has dozens of grandchildren. Germans always have. It is their
custom. I suppose they don't want her--the wretches--as she has nowhere
to go. And she seems so inoffensive and simple."
"Do try and eat, Letitia," I urged. "You make me feel so greedy. Don't
be angry, dear, but don't you think it's a bit far-fetched? You engage a
cook with your eyes open, and then you won't touch the food she prepares
because she is old. She was just as old this morning."
"It isn't her age exactly," Letitia explained hesitantly, "but I can't
bear to see a human being in tears. Who are we that we should distress a
nice old woman so poignantly? What right have we to do it?"
I did not answer, for I thought that Letitia was a trifle exaggerated.
However, she made a brave effort to dine, and being young and healthy, I
was glad to notice that the succulent stew overcame her sentimental
regrets. I fancy that she felt a little better after she had partaken of
nourishment. Still, it was with great reluctance that she rang the bell,
and as Mrs. Potzenheimer ambled in, Letitia was distinctly nervous. We
tried to talk lightly during the removal of the dishes, but it was
impossible. Mrs. Potzenheimer's eyes were suffused and she sighed
stertorously. It was a long time before she emerged from the kitchen
with a rice pudding. I observed that one of her thumbs was almost hidden
in the pudding and this rather encouraged me, for I thought that it
would vex Letitia and stem the tide of her ill-advised sympathy.
Letitia, however, was studying Mrs. Potzenheimer's face and not her
thumb. It is my opinion that cook's entire hand could have been
submerged 'neath the rice and Letitia would never have noticed it. So I
called her attention to my unappetizing discovery.
"If she did that in Mrs. Vanderbilt's house," I said sternly, "no wonder
that lady has fled to the Duchess of Marlborough, and to rice puddings
_minus_ thumbs."
"I fail to see that there is anything particularly criminal in a thumb,"
Letitia retorted. "It is not the thumb of an outsider. She made the
pudding herself with her own hands and thumbs. Don't be so exasperating,
Archie. Oh, yes, I know that it isn't nice, and that it's very bad form.
But I shan't tell her about it. I'm not going to add to her burden.
Evidently, she feels her position--"
"And our rice pudding--"
"--very acutely. She seems to me like a woman who has known better days.
Probably the Vanderbilts treat their inferiors very badly. There is
nothing like the insolence and the superciliousness of people of that
class. It shall be my endeavor to show her the difference. I shall go
out of my way to be sweet and soothing to her. She feels strange, of
course. You can go into the drawing-room and smoke there to-night. I
shall go and see that Nellie is comfortable."
It was no use arguing. I went to the drawing-room, discontentedly
enough, and broke the rules of the house by smoking there. It was with
Letitia's permission, to be sure, but I felt uneasy. It was the thin end
of the wedge, and I hated to think of the whole wedge. My nerves were on
edge and I could settle to nothing. I kept fancying I heard Mrs.
Potzenheimer sobbing, and Letitia soothing her, with a "There now!" Even
the unsatisfied yearning sensation that had succeeded Anna Carter's
delicatessen dinner was better than this. We seemed to have engaged
trouble, at big wages, and the thought was maddening. If Letitia
Potzenheimered every night after dinner, what would become of me, I
selfishly wondered. Of course, I had my _Lives of Great Men_, but just
at present mere greatness "riled" me. The very thought of greatness
evaporated in reflections upon Mrs. Potzenheimer.
The clock struck nine, and still I sat smoking in solitary silence. I
picked up Letitia's Cicero, open at _De Senectute_, and it seemed
ominous. "Neither gray hairs nor wrinkles," I read, "can suddenly catch
respect; but the former part of life, honorably spent, reaps the fruit
of authority at the close. For these very observances, which seem light
and common--"
I shut the book with a bang. In sudden irritation I wondered how Letitia
could read such rubbish. Yes, rubbish, I asserted in mental indignation.
Thank goodness that my wife didn't hear me, and that nobody heard me. My
mood was surely no excuse for an insult hurled at the sacred memory of
Cicero, amiably addressing Titus Pomponius Atticus. How could Letitia
toboggan from Cicero to Mrs. Potzenheimer?
It was just ten o'clock when my wife joined me. She looked very tired
and I saw that she had been weeping. This touched me, and the hasty
words that my lips had formed remained unsaid.
"She is asleep," said Letitia gently. "She literally cried herself to
sleep, Archie. I insisted that she should go to bed and let me take her
in a little dinner. She managed to eat some stew and some rice pudding.
Her appetite was really good. In fact"--with a smile "she ate more than
both of us together. But I fancy she did it to please me. She saw that I
was genuinely distressed."
"You shouldn't have let her see it, Letitia," I protested.
"How could I help it?"--reproachfully. "She told me a good deal about
herself. She has no grandchildren. Don't interrupt, Archie. She has no
grandchildren for the very good reason that she had no children. She was
married many years, but never had--anything! Isn't it odd, dear, for a
German? She always had to earn her own living. She was a nurse girl at
seven. How sad to think of it!"
"What did she say about the Vanderbilts?" I repeat that I am not a snob,
but one can't help being curious.
"She doesn't like to talk about them, Archie. I don't know why. I
imagine that they must be very hard to get along with. But she did say
that the Duchess of Marlborough was crazy to take her to England.
However, she wouldn't go; she was too old, she said, and then she wept
bitterly. She asked me a lot of questions about the people in the
house--which, of course, I couldn't answer. And although she has only
been here a few hours, and has been crying most of the time, she seems
to have struck up an acquaintance with Mrs. Archer's cook below. While I
was in the kitchen, Mrs. Archer's cook called up the dumb-waiter. I
heard her say: 'What cheer?' and Mrs. Potzenheimer replied, in very low
tones: 'Rotten.' I suppose she meant that she felt ill."
"What a horrid expression!" I exclaimed.
"Nellie seemed rather perturbed when she noticed that I had heard her,"
Letitia went on, "and explained that she had met Mrs. Archer's cook at
the intelligence office. She didn't allude to the expression she used.
When she was in bed she called for a little whisky, and I gave her
some."
"Letitia, you shouldn't--"
"She hated it, Archie," said Letitia, with a wry face. "She told me that
it positively went against her, but that she took it for her heart. She
has a weak heart, dear. She drank half a tumblerful, as she says it
always puts her on her feet again after one of these little attacks."
"I don't like it, Letitia," I remarked suspiciously. "I don't like it at
all."
Letitia smiled and kissed me. "Of course you don't, you silly old boy,"
she said lightly, "you've been left alone, and I'm glad you don't like
it. I should be vexed if you did. Did-ems leave-ems all alone-ems? But
one must do a little good in the world, Archie. Suppose you were ill in
a strange place, wouldn't you be grateful to anybody who tried to make
you comfortable? Put yourself in Mrs. Potzenheimer's place."
"You are a foolish girl, Letitia," I declared, mollified in spite of
myself. "But if we are going to start a Home for the Aged--"
"Stop it, Archie. Now, stop it. You mustn't be harsh and unreasonable.
What happened to-night will probably never happen again. Would you like
me if I were hard-hearted, and cold-blooded? Think of Nellie as though
she were your own grandmother."
"Why should I, Letitia?" I asked impatiently, wound up again. "I've been
trying to think of her as my cook. That is all I bargained to do. It is
not likely that I should engage my own grandmother--"
"Oh, you are so cross--so cross!" sighed Letitia; "I have never seen you
so disagreeable. After all, Archie, you are a great big baby. You are
vexed because I left you alone for a few moments."
"An hour and a half!"
"An hour and a half? Was it really so long? It couldn't have been. Well,
perhaps it was. Anyway, I'm glad you missed me. It is a consolation. I
missed you, dear. It wasn't at all amusing waiting on a lachrymose old
woman, plying her with drink and tucking her up in bed. It was really
most objectionable, and I'm extremely lacking as a ministering angel. I
can't minister for a cent. But I can try, can't I? And--let's be as
quiet as we can, Archie, and not disturb the poor thing."