While a well-selected little restaurant dinner undoubtedly loosens the
trammels of a too obdurate and persistent domesticity, the restaurant
breakfast can scarcely be said to be conducive to an overweening
amiability. Those who have tried it will not be inclined to dispute the
matter. It is in the early morn that the term restaurant seems
singularly inappropriate. The luminous, glittering, chattering resort
where, at night, one may throw off one's care and temporarily forget
one's home and mother, is, in the forenoon, but--an eating house. One is
there, in vulgar materialism--to eat! The boiled-egg moment, that the
mere ethics of good taste assign to privacy--with the morning ablutions
and the care of the teeth--is a tragedy when translated into publicity.
Conviviality, at the boiled-egg moment, is an impossibility. Ordinary
courtesy is abstruse and difficult. Silence, the morning papers, the
birth of one's daily attitude--the natural cravings of the hour--give
way to the gloomy desolation of the public resort. Cheek-by-jowl with
other unfortunates, in whom it is hope to discover an interest--for
altruism is not born until noon, and mere selfishness monopolizes the
morning hours--the meal is a detestable torture, worthy of a place in
the catalogue of mediæval horrors.
Yet Letitia and I came to it. We came to it next morning. There were no
warm slippers for me; there was no loose dressing-gown for Letitia. We
dressed; we put on our bonnets and shawls; we sallied forth to boiled
egg. We were rather sullen about our sallying, and being devoid of a
sense of humor, we saw nothing amusing in the empty glory of our
prettily furnished apartment. I am told that the situation would have
been saved, for the humorously born, by this mere idea. Yet I am still
thankful for my mental inability to rout tragedy by comedy.
Letitia looked at me unaffectionately; I was able to regard Letitia
without rapture. The maintenance of the honeymoon mood is generally
strenuous--which is not meant for cynicism--but the honeymoon in its
most effulgent radiance must pale, as Lubin and Dulcinea seek their
boiled egg abroad. Alas!
"I dare not try it, Letitia," I said, shivering, as a morning waiter, in
evening dress, set the terrible thing before me. "I have a horrible
presentiment that it is bad. I don't know why, but I can't shake off the
idea. Eggs are such a lottery."
"I wish you wouldn't set me against my food," she retorted peevishly,
slicing the top from the offensive egg and peering timidly into it. Then
with a smile: "Perhaps it's like the curate's egg."
"Don't, Letitia!" I cried indignantly, "I loathe that alleged joke. It
is so silly and so played out. Besides, it was never meant for morning
use. There are some things that it is criminal to jest about--eggs, and
_Parsifal_, and cooks, and the Passion play," I added desperately.
I was determined that I would not taste my egg until I saw how Letitia
took to hers. They were probably of the same brand. It was perhaps
cowardly of me to let a frail little woman explore the mysteries of an
unguessed egg, but I was in a thoroughly perverse mood. I watched her
stolidly as she dipped in her spoon, stirred up the contents, and
transferred a portion of them to her mouth. Nothing happened. She did
not change color and I realized that all was well. For in the case of
the restaurant egg: _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte_.
The tea tasted like boiled hay. It was called English breakfast tea,
probably because the English would never think of drinking it, and if
they did, they would never drink it at breakfast time. But it was hot
and wet--two qualities that are sufficient for those who have not
mastered the sublime art of tea-drinking. Letitia scarcely touched her
breakfast. She immersed herself in the advertising columns of the
morning newspaper, and was quite hidden behind the sheet. I was in that
odious humor when, to be looked at as I ate, was unendurable--something
simply not to be borne with equanimity. I was glad that Letitia couldn't
see me, for while she wasn't looking I did very nicely, and ate my team
of boiled eggs with relish! If Letitia had been looking at me, I should
have left them both. One can not always account for the morning mood.
And yet I have never been called a "crank."
"Archie," she said suddenly (and I quickly hid the egg-shells so that
she should not remark upon my strangely-found appetite), "I think I've
got it at last. It really looks as though there were a way out of our
difficulties. But I do wish, dear boy, that you would try to eat."
She glanced at my plate. She saw the egg-shells. The rolls, butter, tea,
had all disappeared. I felt a flush mount to my brow. Had I been
detected in the commission of a crime, I could not have looked more
uncomfortable.
"Oh, I see you have managed to do very well," she said in a pleased
voice, without a vestige of sarcasm. "In fact"--with a smile--"if you
do as well as that, without an appetite, I am quite unable to imagine
what you would do with one. You are a healthy boy--healthy but silly."
"Well, Letitia," I murmured abjectly, "you were reading, and paying no
attention to me--I might have been down at the Battery for all you
cared--so I had to do something in self-defense."
"Don't apologize," said Letitia, and this time there was an intonation
of ill-timed jocularity in her voice. "I am glad you were hungry, and I
wish that I had been. I've eaten nothing, and you don't even notice it.
You don't urge me to eat. It doesn't matter."
"Letitia!" I cried reproachfully. "Please--please--"
She laughed.
"I'm teasing you, Archie, and I didn't mean to do so. You are such a
lovely subject for persecution that I can't resist the temptation.
But--bother our appetites. I have forgotten the present and am looking
into the future. Here is a little advertisement that will, I think, put
an end to our anguish. Listen--"
She took a pencil and marked round the following, which she then
proceeded to read aloud: "Irish widow lady, with one child, wants
position as cook, in small refined family, of Christian principles.
Good home preferred to big wages. Call 33 Sixth Avenue. Mrs. McCaffrey.
Up one flight."
"Archie," said Letitia solemnly, laying down the paper, "I feel
intuitively that Mrs. McCaffrey is our fate. I read fifty advertisements
while you were trying--I mean while you were eating" (I winced), "and I
felt a warm, rushy sensation when I came to the name of Mrs. McCaffrey.
I believe it was telepathy, from 33 Sixth Avenue."
"Let me look at the advertisement." I took the paper, and read the
portentous lines that Letitia had almost intoned. Then I re-read it.
"I suppose that she means to bring the child with her," I suggested
ruefully. "That is the catch, Letitia. We do want a cook, but we don't
want a child--at least hers."
"But, Archie, dear," said Letitia seriously, "we have none of our own."
"How _could_ we have?" I cried, amazed and indignant.
"We won't argue that point," declared my wife, quite unruffled. "The
fact is, Archie, that we haven't any children, whatever you may say, and
however much you may argue. Under the circumstances, I don't object to a
cook with a child. In fact, I quite like the idea. She will be very
much steadier and less frivolous, and--Archie, I love children. I like
their prattle, and their cunning little ways, and--"
"But," I interrupted, catching at a straw with the zest of a drowning
man, "you notice that she wants to go into the service of a family with
Christian principles. Now, I don't propose to saddle myself with
Christian principles for the sake of my cook. I positively decline. What
difference on earth it can possibly make to a cook whether she broil a
steak for Buddhists, or Mohammedans, or Christian Scientists, or
Swedenborgians--or even, for the Salvation Army, I can't imagine.
Religion in the kitchen is just a bit far-fetched. I consider that
advertisement most insulting, Letitia."
"Archie, really, you--"
"And I suppose," I went on, wound up, "that we should have to sing hymns
with her every night and perhaps go to church with her on Sunday. I
won't lend myself to such new-fangled notions. Cook is a question of
dinner and not of religious belief. Besides, how could she know what our
principles were? We might be atheists, and still inform her that we had
Christian principles! I dare say that if we objected to her cooking, she
would say we were not Christians, and if we protested at her going out
more than eight times a week, she would declare that we were heathens.
The child is bad enough, but the Christian principles are worse. I'm
sorry, Letitia, but this advertisement is really a mass of palpable
loopholes."
Tears came to Letitia's eyes. They seemed to be frequently in abeyance
there nowadays, and they grieved me.
"For a couple who a few weeks ago knew nothing about the servant
question, and indignantly scouted the idea that there was such a thing,
we are getting on well," she said in a low voice. "You are growing
awfully suspicious, Archie. The iron seems to have entered your soul.
Because Anna Carter and Mrs. Potzenheimer were failures--quick failures
I grant--you are now inclined to put every cook in the same boat. Oh,
Archie, I'm ashamed of you. If you are always looking for evil motives
you will find them, sure enough."
She paused, and the tears welled up again. The sight was so painful to
me that--in sheer dread of its continuance--I succumbed. That is to say,
I had no further adverse comments to make and the field was Letitia's!
Undoubtedly, she knew it.
"You see, dear," she said in mollified tones, "you don't understand the
probable position of poor Mrs. McCaffrey. Imagine her alone in the
world with a child. She is poor. She must earn a living for the two of
them. All she knows how to do is to cook. She places herself in the
market as a cook. But there is the child! She can not smother it, and
she must take it with her. She is therefore anxious that the place to
which she takes it shall be respectable and--religious. I don't suppose
that she is too fearfully particular. But naturally, she would not like
to see the dear little thing in the house of a man who drank and swore,
and of a woman who--well, of a woman who behaved in the femininely
equivalent. So, just to protect herself, she says Christian principles.
I admire her for it, Archie."
Silence on my part. Letitia's triumphant logic was of course
unanswerable. I made no attempt to answer it, and Letitia was "riled."
"Do say something, dear," she urged.
"I don't want to vex you, Letitia," I said, "and that is why I am
silent. But you surely must know that men with Christian principles do
swear and do drink. Our old servant at Oxford had thoroughly Christian
principles, but he used to beat his wife regularly every night. The
Christian principles were there, but they were not sufficient."
Letitia knew that she had won the day and was instantly her own
delightful, charming self. "You are splitting straws," she said, "you
baby! I have a great mind to tell Mrs. McCaffrey exactly what you
said--and don't believe! It would serve you right if I went to 33 Sixth
Avenue and said, 'You'll like our home, Mrs. McCaffrey. My husband has
Christian principles. He drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper, and
beats his wife like a British workingman. But he is _such_ a Christian!'
Archie, I believe you're jealous, and that's the trouble with you. You
think that if there is a child your nose will be out of joint. Such a
foolish husband!"
And Letitia rose in her seat and kissed me over the table, although
there were two waiters in dangerous proximity, and an enormous married
couple, who seemed scandalized, at the very next table. It really did
look most unseemly at such an ungodly hour of the morning!
"Now confess," she said tauntingly, "confess that you are pleased.
Confess it at once, sir, or--or I shall kiss you again, and this time
much louder."
I tried to be stern, and to recall the various grades of vexation that I
had known since the boiled eggs were brought in. But my irritation had
vanished. My wife, witch-like, had dissipated the mists that had
obscured my good nature. After all, if she were pleased, why need I
worry? The affairs of our household were assuredly hers--although, up to
the present, I had suffered from their most uncomfortable reflection. I
felt better. Perhaps the much-despised breakfast was, in spite of all,
partly responsible for the mental metamorphosis.
"She certainly will have a good home," said Letitia, pursuing her
thoughts aloud, "and it is really nice to meet a woman who wants one. It
shows a refined mood. What did Anna Carter care for a good home, except
to go away from it every night? And Mrs. Potzenheimer? You are very
domesticated for a man, Archie--whatever you may be, you are that--and I
feel sure that Mrs. McCaffrey will take to you at once. And, Archie--I
shall teach the child to call you uncle, and me auntie. It will be so
dear and sweet."
"What an absurd girl you are, Letitia," I exclaimed, amused in spite of
myself at her ingenuous remarks. "You remind me of Dora, the child-wife,
in _David Copperfield_."
"I call that most unkind," she declared indignantly. "I always hated
that character. Dora was such a fool that I was glad when she died.
Please don't compare me to her again, Archie. I don't think I am a
fool. Of course, I select a rosy outlook. I hope for the best, and I
believe that most things are meant to turn out well. But I think I am
most practical, and sensible, and staid, and sophisticated, and--old
before my years."
I settled my account with the persistently smiling waiter, who appeared
to regard us as jokes, and we left the restaurant. Letitia determined to
ride down town with me and to set out at once in quest of the Irish
McCaffrey. I had some qualms about permitting her to meander around the
lower extremities of Sixth Avenue in the seclusion of the one-flight-up
resorts. But she overruled my objections in her usual vivid manner.
"When you come home this evening," she said gaily, as we sat in the
elevated train, and were whizzed south, "you'll find a nice little wife,
a nice little cook, and a nice little child."
"To say nothing of a nice little dinner," I added materially. "At any
rate, Letitia, I do hope you'll insist that the Christian principles are
not cooked with the dinner. If there is anything on earth that I detest,
it is Christian food. Porridge and griddle cakes for breakfast, cold
rubbish for luncheon, and overdone chops, followed by indigestible,
chunky pie--that is my conception of Christian food. I can't help
thinking that much of the immorality in the world is simply due to
Christian food."
"Stop it!" cried Letitia, laying a gloved finger on my lips. "You think
you are getting clever. You are trying to imitate Grundy, Pinero, and
Barrie, and I assure you that it is all lost on me. I want a cook, and
not an epigram."
"As I said," I continued forcefully and rather loudly, "much of the
immorality of the world is simply due to Christian food. Christian food
is easy and generally--boiled. The mistaken idea that sound morals are
the result of bad digestion is responsible for the inartistic plight of
England and America."
"Hush, Archie!" exclaimed Letitia, looking around her nervously. "You
talk as though you were haranguing a mob. And just the sort of nonsense
that a mob loves, too. As for the plight of England and America--you are
forgetting France. And look where French gluttony has led the nation! As
for lack of morality--"
"Bah!" I remarked perversely, "France's lack of morality is a phrase
used for advertising purposes, my girl. There is a bigger lack of it in
London and New York, but you don't hear so much about it, because it is
ugly--like English plum pudding and American baked beans. No people can
be really wicked who have invented the Duval restaurants. Compare the
light-hearted, cheerful, exhilarating, comfortably-stomached Parisians,
sitting outside their _cafés_ and sipping their _eaux sucrées_, with the
greedy English, absorbing stodgy buns and dingy lemonade, and with the
criminal Americans, assimilating poisonous ice-creams, and destroying
their mucous membranes with odious candies."
"At the next station I get out and walk," declared Letitia furiously.
"I'll leave you, Archie. Your breakfast has gone to your head. What is
the matter with you? Really, I begin to think that our domestic troubles
have unseated your reason."
The train was stopping at the Fifty-third Street station and Letitia
rose, prepared to get out. As a matter of fact, I had been enjoying
myself immensely. My words had been addressed to Letitia, but they were
selfishly designed for my own delectation. I liked to hear myself
talk--in which respect, I resembled a good many other people I knew.
"Sit down, Letitia," I said, "I've finished. I just wanted to relieve
myself of a few thoughts, which seemed relevant to the occasion."
"Everybody is looking at you," she asserted in vexation, "and--I'll get
out, Archie, if you continue. What must these people think of a young
man, excitedly discussing the ethics of food in the Sixth Avenue
elevated railroad?"
"In a train positively littered with advertisements of food," I added
savagely. "All around us are legends of pickles, and biscuits, and
sauces, and catsup--and horrid things that are bought cooked, because we
live in a country where the art is unknown, and where the cooks talk of
Christian principles. You are not logical, Letitia. It seems to me that
this is the very place where, if you don't think of food, advertisers
lose their money."
"Well, think of it," muttered Letitia defiantly, "but don't talk about
it."
"Following the example of English and Americans in the matter of
immorality," I couldn't help saying. Then lightly: "Well, Letitia, you
must admit that I am bright. You may not appreciate my clever remarks,
but I'm sure they would make a hit in print."
"Not with me, dear," retorted my unappreciative wife. "I think they're
silly, and old, and book-y, and I like you better in a home mood. I've
never seen you as obstreperous as this before, and it has handicapped
Mrs. McCaffrey for me, as she was the cause of it. And now, here I am at
my station, and--you can ride back to yours. Don't work too hard to-day,
Archie, and take a good luncheon--something warm and nourishing. I'm
sure that you are not quite well, and I shall call in Dr. De Voursney if
you have any more of these alarming symptoms to-night."
"One thing, Letitia," I said rather penitently, for it began to dawn
upon me that I had made an ass of myself. "Mrs. McCaffrey advertises
herself as a widow. Well, I want you to make sure that Mr. McCaffrey is
good and dead, and that we don't get a cook-in-law as well as a child."
And this time Letitia laughed and dropped a curtsey, as I lifted my hat
and left her.