I should like to drop this episode, without further comment, where I
left it at the close of the last chapter. Personally, I hate dotting i's
and crossing t's. An interrogation mark always seems to me most
satisfactory--as delightful as the after-theater supper for which
somebody else pays. Still, I realize that I am in the minority; that the
majority cries for the comfortable adjustment of odds and ends, without
any strain upon the imagination.
I must therefore, put the finishing touches to the "incident" of Olga
Allallami.
The odd thing about Letitia's behavior was that her affection for Miss
Allallami evaporated so quickly that it made me wonder if my wife could
possibly be fickle. It was, however, the twins that settled Letitia. I
feel convinced that had cook been guilty of one mere child, Letitia's
sweet womanly nature would have remained sympathetic. The dual blow
infuriated her. She thought twins vulgar and most unrefined, and could
not bear to discuss them. Perhaps it was just as well. Had Letitia
continued to "feel as a sister" toward our recalcitrant cook, things
would have been very disagreeable, and the indications were that Olga,
with one child, would have been allowed full scope.
As it was, we simply abandoned our apartment. We inflicted ourselves
upon the long-suffering Aunt Julia, in Tarrytown, and left cook and her
brace of children in our home until such time as they could leave it. We
learned that Miss Allallami's husband--for she was, indeed, a wife--had
been employed in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and had returned to Finland to
make a home for his little Olga. She, anxious to earn a few
pennies--honest or otherwise--had remained behind, until she felt
competent to join him.
"It's a mercy she's married," I said as I heard this, but Letitia's
joyous assent was lacking.
"Oh, I don't know," she remarked immorally; "it wouldn't really matter.
If she had been respectable enough to have had one little son, or one
little daughter, I should have asked no questions."
Miss Allallami's kindly and amiable nature had helped her cause. There
had been method in her affability. She had "used" us, so to speak, and
Letitia felt quite embittered about it. She declared that she was losing
all faith in human nature. It would henceforth be impossible for her to
attach herself to anybody. It was enough to sour a seraph, she said.
She had given real affection to Miss Allallami, and her reward had
been--screaming twins. It was maddening. So irate was Letitia, that I
nearly pleaded poor Olga's cause.
"The poor woman herself did not anticipate twins," I said weakly.
"Nonsense!" declared Letitia scornfully, "I'm convinced that she _knew_.
These Finnish women are so crafty. No, don't argue with me about it,
Archie. I'm quite ashamed of the episode. It makes me feel degraded, and
I shall never like our apartment again--never. And yet I was so certain
of Olga's loyalty!"
"You--you can't say, dear, that she isn't loyal. She is merely--"
"That is enough, Archie," said Letitia, doing like the heroines in the
novels, and "drawing herself up to her full height." "That is quite
enough. You are singularly lacking in fine sentiment. I dare say that
you and your charming Mr. Tamworth--never let me meet him again--will
have a high old time chuckling over my misfortune. Yes, I call it _my_
misfortune! Let us for ever drop the abominable subject."
And we did. Of course, it had to be threshed out before final
abandonment, with Aunt Julia, in whose house we stayed until cook's
departure. Mrs. Dinsmore, I grieve to say, was not sympathetic. Some
people seem to find tragedy amusing, and Aunt Julia was one of them. She
said that she should never be able to take us seriously, and asked us to
excuse her mirth, _after_ she had indulged in it. As we were literally
sponging upon her, we were obliged to be indulgent. It was not a
pleasant time that we spent in Tarrytown. Aunt Julia offered to return
to New York and help Letitia in her housekeeping, until such time as we
were "suited"--an offer that Letitia courteously but spiritedly refused.
We found that Miss Allallami's gratitude had taken the form of a
photograph of the twins, neatly framed, and hung in the drawing-room. It
was a little delicate attention that we failed to appreciate. Letitia
tore down the picture and threw it from the window. It was the last
allusion to Olga. We seldom mentioned her case again. We were at home
once more, as unsettled as though we were just beginning our domestic
struggles, and we were determined to face the situation boldly.
"I've been thinking, dear," I said one evening, as we sat dining in the
least objectionable restaurant that I could find, "that perhaps if we
offered fabulous wages, we could secure a fine cook. Suppose we try it.
You know, Letitia, I always put a little money aside for a rainy day,
and it seems to me that if I refrain from saving and invest it all in
cook, we should be more comfortable. It can never rain worse than it is
now doing."
Letitia looked radiant. I felt I had made a hit. "You are really a
sensible man, after all, Archie," she declared (I could have dispensed
with the "after all"). "If you don't mind paying the same wages to cook
that she would get with Fifth Avenue millionaires, naturally we can not
fail. Moreover, she will have an easier time with us than with them, as
we don't give dinner parties or sit down thirty or forty to a meal. It's
really a lovely idea. And--and--don't you think, dear, that saving is
awfully provincial and petty, and--and--Brooklyn?"
I hadn't looked upon it in that light. Tamworth had advised me to put
something aside, as he said that married men were bound to provide for
emergencies. I had done this systematically. In the meantime, we were
literally "pigging" it. Surely this was the rainy day.
"Why should a young, brainy man like you," continued Letitia, beaming
fondly upon me, "worry himself about what _might_ happen in the distant
future? It seems so--so--little, doesn't it, dear? It is so like the
little Brooklyn clerks whom you see trundling baby-carriages and rushing
away to savings banks with a five-dollar bill. It is really unworthy of
the author of _Lives of Great Men_. The thrifty always seem to me so
namby-pamby."
"You are overthrowing the doctrines of domestic economy, Letitia," I
said with a smile.
"Well, let's do it, Archie. If we can be comfortable, we might as well
overthrow things. Oh, I suppose thrift is all right. 'A penny
saved'--and all that sort of thing! Let's have a culinary student in the
kitchen, and pay her a handsome salary. We shall be happy, and when we
are happy, we prosper. That is surely so. We send forth radiant
thoughts, and they all work for us. I believe in that. Oh, won't it be
fun, Archie?"
There seemed to be logic in this idea. What's the use of saving and
being uncomfortable to-day, when we may die to-morrow? We might better
invest our money in the certainty of a blissful present, than hoard it
in the uncertainty of the future. So we carefully knocked down the
elaborate maxims of the "institutions for savings," and felt relieved.
"It is absurd," said Letitia, as she dipped the tips of her fingers into
a rosy finger-bowl, "all this business of economy. Suppose you _were_
incapacitated, Archie, do you imagine that I am quite helpless? I could
teach Latin, and there must be hundreds of girls just crazy to read
Ovid in the original. Or, I could learn typewriting, or bookkeeping, or
other ugly but profitable accomplishments. We should never starve. I
could even go on the stage, if _everything_ else failed."
"Only if everything else failed, my dear," I suggested.
"Oh, of course; as the very last thing. So many girls do it. If they are
too silly to teach, or too unsympathetic to get married, or too lazy to
learn anything, they go on the stage, and get lovely salaries. I
shouldn't select the life of an actress, but if--"
"We won't discuss such possibilities," I said firmly. "It is unnecessary
to do so. My _Lives of Great Men_ is nearly finished. It is the sort of
book that every home will be obliged to store. There are seventy million
people in the United States. Let us put down seven million homes, at a
low estimate, and there you are with seven million books yielding us a
royalty--not including the sales in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
The prospect is really alluring."
"So it is, Archie," she assented jubilantly, "and here we are,
discussing saving, like Sarah Jane and her young man. It is very narrow
of us. I forgot your book. And yet literature is most profitable, and
such a necessity! The other day, down-town, I saw the complete works of
Shakespeare--plays and poems--bound in leather for fifty cents."
"My book will cost five dollars," I said rather hesitantly.
"Well, dear, it's so much _newer_ than Shakespeare," she asserted
triumphantly. "I don't suppose that it will last quite as long--I could
not say that, Archie--but while it is selling, it may as well sell for
five dollars. Nobody ever thinks of competing with Shakespeare. I'm very
proud of your _Lives of Great Men_ though you have never read any of it
to me."
"Perhaps that's why," I suggested, temporarily moody, as most genius is
said to be.
"You're a silly boy, and I'm not going to flatter you by telling you how
much more interested I am in Archibald Fairfax than in William
Shakespeare. You shall read me your _Lives of Great Men_ as soon as we
have our cook. In the meantime, I'm so glad you have decided not to
save. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die. It is hard
to do those three things, at a seventy-five-cent _table-d'hôte_."
"And the 'to-morrow we die' doesn't seem so hard?"
"No, it doesn't, really, Archie. The way we are living now is enough to
drive anybody to pessimism. It is unnatural; it is wrong; we will spend
our money, and be happy."
There is one certain thing about New York. You can get anything you want
in that "tuberosity of civilized life" if you have the wherewithal, or,
in other words, "the price." It is what Europeans call the middle
classes that suffer the most in the American metropolis, whereas in
other capitals, it is they that are the happiest. The extremely indigent
and the inflatedly wealthy never complain of New York City. It is the
neither-rich-nor-poor who find life difficult and are unable to gratify
the innate need for refinement and comfort; who discover that graceful
life is a knotty problem, and that the art of "keeping up appearances"
with moderate means is well-nigh impossible. New York is the Mecca of
the rich and the poor; it is the Hades of the unhappy medium. Those who
are just "comfortable" in London, are "just uncomfortable" in New York.
So we set about the discovery of an expensive cook. We pored over the
advertisements in the daily papers, in a determined hunt for something
eminently first-class. Letitia rather fancied an "Alsatian chef" who had
been with the "finest families in Europe and America," and modestly
asked one hundred dollars per month, but I felt suspicious.
"You remember, dear," I said warningly, "that Mrs. Potzenheimer came or
did not come from the Vanderbilts. At any rate, she said she did. You
probably recall the fact that the Duchess of Marlborough fancied her
cooking."
"Let bygones be bygones," remarked Letitia solemnly. "Archie, don't be
mean."
The "Alsatian chef," according to his plaintive call in the newspaper,
announced that he was "first-class in every respect," but I couldn't
bear the idea of a man hanging around all day in our cramped and modern
apartment. It would probably be most embarrassing.
"You know, dear," I said, "you were very fond of asking the others to do
odd jobs, and you couldn't possibly request an Alsatian chef to wash out
a few handkerchiefs."
"I hope I understand the etiquette of the arrangement as well as you
do," she retorted, quite vexed. "I am perfectly well aware that a chef
wouldn't do anything of the sort. I believe, Archie Fairfax, that I am
quite able to cope with these matters."
We learned, after incessant study of the advertising columns, that the
expensive cooks emphasized "desserts, soups, jellies" in their list of
attractions, and that the others never mentioned them. Jellies seemed to
be the great distinguishing mark--the boundary line, as it
were--between the expensive and the non-expensive. This was invariable.
No sooner did a cook say "jelly" than she demanded treble wages. It
seemed as though, to be luxurious, one must dote on jelly.
"And yet," said Letitia ruefully, "I really don't care very much about
it. I'd much sooner engage a woman who understood eggs _à la reine_.
Jelly seems to me so insipid. I don't suppose that we should want it
once in a blue moon. All these women harp so on jellies, don't they,
Archie? There must be some reason for it. I was never brought up to
consider jellies as a great accomplishment."
"I suppose they really mean 'jellies' to cover all sorts of sweets," I
suggested. "You see, dear, pie sounds rather vulgar. In this city,
nobody thinks anything of pie. Undoubtedly, however, the woman who
announces her accomplishment in jellies intends to imply pastries of all
kinds."
"It may be so, of course. But as we are not quite sure, that question
must be asked. It would be dreadful if we engaged a cook, at prohibitive
wages, and then found that we had to live on nasty, wobbly jelly.
Besides, it sounds so invalid-y to me. I'm so accustomed to taking jelly
to anybody who has a cold, or who happens to be out of sorts, that I
really dislike it. Why, only yesterday, Archie, I sent some jelly to
Mrs. Archer, who has a stiff neck."
"Here's one," I said, bringing my index finger to a sudden standstill in
its chute down the advertising columns; "'elegant pastries; table
decorations a specialty; French dishes, jellies.' You see, she ends at
jellies, but does not begin with them. She has been 'with the finest
families in the Faubourg St. Germain, Paris.' She is 'reliable'--and
odiously expensive."
"That doesn't matter, we have decided," chirped Letitia. "We may as well
be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I rather fancy that advertisement, dear.
Let me see: 'Address, Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle."
"We could call her Cynthie," I ventured in a light mood.
"Please don't jest. We can be frivolous, later on--when we are not
hungry. The advertisement reads very well, and in a case like this, even
if she can't do all that she announces, it won't matter at all. For
instance, we may find that 'table decorations a specialty' is just a
pure ghost story. I shouldn't care a bit; should you? As long as the
table is neatly set, with a pretty plant, a table-center, and delicately
folded serviettes, the other decorations wouldn't matter in the least."
"There you are right, Letitia," I assented. "I don't suppose that she
would place a bottle of Worcestershire sauce in the middle of the table
as a decoration, like--"
"You are always dragging up those detestable women whom we are trying to
forget," asserted Letitia petulantly. "Do, for goodness' sake, forget
the past. We are going to place things on a different footing. We are
going to engage the best and be satisfied with the merely--better. I
think I shall go and see Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle. The 'elegant
pastries' capture me. I'm so sick of bread pudding and baked apples. Her
name, too, is reassuring. Of course, you know--or should know--that a
French cook is the most economical person on earth. It is a science with
her. What other people throw away, she makes into _ragoût_, or
_croquettes_, or _blanquette_, and other delightful things all ending in
'ette'."
"I believe they call it hash, here," I interrupted.
"What they call hash here," said Letitia spitefully, "is just a horrid
resurrection, not fit for plow-boys. The French housewife cooks very
differently. Why, even the _pot au feu_ is delicious, and what could be
cheaper? She serves an exquisite soup, and she offers the meat with
which it was made in an appetizing way. We shall certainly save money
in one direction, Archie, even if we spend it in another."
"You seem thoroughly to understand the art of cooking, Letitia," I said
admiringly. "I wonder that you never went in for it."
"I understand it theoretically," she said sedately. "It is, of course, a
science, and if I had to begin life again, I would go to Paris and
study. Girls go there to cultivate the voice; I'd go to cultivate the
stomach. But it is too late now. I admire the French knack and system.
They produce masterpieces of gastronomic skill at a moderate cost. Here
they throw away the delicate parts of meat and fish because they don't
know what to do with them; there, they use them artistically and
economically."
"If you really think that Madame de Lyrolle can do all this--"
"I'm sure she can, Archie. I feel it intuitively. Of course, she asks a
fearful remuneration, but as long as she thinks she can get it, you
can't blame her for asking. At home, she might probably be an ordinary
cook, getting nothing a month, with privileges; here, she would probably
be a wonder, and is entitled to high wages. Please--please let us have
her, Archie."
"And the Alsatian chef?"
"You provoking boy! You know he didn't appeal to you and that you
brought me round to your way of thinking"--oh, Letitia!--"and I gave in,
as I always give in, because you are such a hopelessly spoiled person.
You know you thought the Alsatian chef wouldn't wash my handkerchiefs.
Well, though I shall never ask her to do so, I'm sure that Madame
Hyacinthe de Lyrolle would gladly help me. Anyway, I want her. May
I--may I--go and see about it?"
Letitia spoke wheedlingly, with the old charm that I had never been able
to resist. It was as potent as ever.
"One thing, Letitia," I said, "what _could_ we call the woman? It would
be so embarrassing to address her as Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle.
Imagine calling out, 'Please come here, Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle, I
want to speak to you.' You must arrange to address her as Mary, or--or
Sarah."
"Don't be silly, Archie. You are straining at trifles. We can call her
Madame. It sounds French-y, and impressive. That is the least of our
difficulties, and not worth considering. To-morrow morning, I shall go
and interview her, and--you noble boy--I know that you will never regret
the expense. You like to see me happy, don't you?"
"Oh, Letitia, have I ever--"
"Of course. I know you do. I've never doubted it for one moment, even
with our darkest cook. And I _am_ happy at the mere idea of Madame
Hyacinthe de Lyrolle. Say you consent; say it as though you meant it;
say 'Letitia, please, like a dear, go and engage Madame Hyacinthe de
Lyrolle, for I want her!' Say that, please."
I said it. There was even a tinge of emphatic yearning in my voice. The
outsider, could he have heard me, might have believed that life, without
Madame Hyacinthe de Lyrolle, would be a blank. Strangest thing of all--I
quite believed that I wanted her. Letitia's influence was hypnotic.