At five minutes of six Bertram and Calderwell came. Bertram gave his
peculiar ring and let himself in with his latchkey; but Billy did not
meet him in the hall, nor in the drawing-room. Excusing himself, Bertram
hurried up-stairs. Billy was not in her room, nor anywhere on that
floor. She was not in William's room. Coming down-stairs to the hall
again, Bertram confronted William, who had just come in.
“Where's Billy?” demanded the young husband, with just a touch of
irritation, as if he suspected William of having Billy in his pocket.
William stared slightly.
“Why, I don't know. Isn't she here?”
“I'll ask Pete,” frowned Bertram.
In the dining-room Bertram found no one, though the table was prettily
set, and showed half a grapefruit at each place. In the kitchen--in the
kitchen Bertram found a din of rattling tin, an odor of burned food--, a
confusion of scattered pots and pans, a frightened cat who peered at him
from under a littered stove, and a flushed, disheveled young woman in a
blue dust-cap and ruffled apron, whom he finally recognized as his wife.
“Why, Billy!” he gasped.
Billy, who was struggling with something at the sink, turned sharply.
“Bertram Henshaw,” she panted, “I used to think you were wonderful
because you could paint a picture. I even used to think I was a little
wonderful because I could write a song. Well, I don't any more! But I'll
tell you who _is_ wonderful. It's Eliza and Rosa, and all the rest of
those women who can get a meal on to the table all at once, so it's fit
to eat!”
“Why, Billy!” gasped Bertram again, falling back to the door he had
closed behind him. “What in the world does this mean?”
“Mean? It means I'm getting dinner,” choked Billy. “Can't you see?”
“But--Pete! Eliza!”
“They're sick--I mean he's sick; and I said I'd do it. I'd be an oak.
But how did I know there wasn't anything in the house except stuff that
took hours to cook--only potatoes? And how did I know that _they_ cooked
in no time, and then got all smushy and wet staying in the water? And
how did I know that everything else would stick on and burn on till
you'd used every dish there was in the house to cook 'em in?”
“Why, Billy!” gasped Bertram, for the third time. And then, because
he had been married only six months instead of six years, he made the
mistake of trying to argue with a woman whose nerves were already at the
snapping point. “But, dear, it was so foolish of you to do all this! Why
didn't you telephone? Why didn't you get somebody?”
Like an irate little tigress, Billy turned at bay.
“Bertram Henshaw,” she flamed angrily, “if you don't go up-stairs and
tend to that man up there, I shall _scream_. Now go! I'll be up when I
can.”
And Bertram went.
It was not so very long, after all, before Billy came in to greet her
guest. She was not stately and imposing in royally sumptuous blue velvet
and ermine; nor yet was she cozy and homy in bronze-gold crêpe de
Chine and swan's-down. She was just herself in a pretty little morning
house gown of blue gingham. She was minus the dust-cap and the ruffled
apron, but she had a dab of flour on the left cheek, and a smutch of
crock on her forehead. She had, too, a cut finger on her right hand,
and a burned thumb on her left. But she was Billy--and being Billy,
she advanced with a bright smile and held out a cordial hand--not even
wincing when the cut finger came under Calderwell's hearty clasp.
“I'm glad to see you,” she welcomed him. “You'll excuse my not appearing
sooner, I'm sure, for--didn't Bertram tell you?--I'm playing Bridget
to-night. But dinner is ready now, and we'll go down, please,” she
smiled, as she laid a light hand on her guest's arm.
Behind her, Bertram, remembering the scene in the kitchen, stared in
sheer amazement. Bertram, it might be mentioned again, had been married
six months, not six years.
What Billy had intended to serve for a “simple dinner” that night was:
grapefruit with cherries, oyster stew, boiled halibut with egg sauce,
chicken pie, squash, onions, and potatoes, peach fritters, a “lettuce
and stuff” salad, and some new pie or pudding. What she did serve was:
grapefruit (without the cherries), cold roast lamb, potatoes (a mush of
sogginess), tomatoes (canned, and slightly burned), corn (canned, and
very much burned), lettuce (plain); and for dessert, preserved peaches
and cake (the latter rather dry and stale). Such was Billy's dinner.
The grapefruit everybody ate. The cold lamb too, met with a hearty
reception, especially after the potatoes, corn, and tomatoes were
served--and tasted. Outwardly, through it all, Billy was gayety itself.
Inwardly she was burning up with anger and mortification. And because
she was all this, there was, apparently, no limit to her laughter and
sparkling repartee as she talked with Calderwell, her guest--the guest
who, according to her original plans, was to be shown how happy she and
Bertram were, what a good wife she made, and how devoted and _satisfied_
Bertram was in his home.
William, picking at his dinner--as only a hungry man can pick at a
dinner that is uneatable--watched Billy with a puzzled, uneasy frown.
Bertram, choking over the few mouthfuls he ate, marked his wife's
animated face and Calderwell's absorbed attention, and settled into
gloomy silence.
But it could not continue forever. The preserved peaches were eaten at
last, and the stale cake left. (Billy had forgotten the coffee--which
was just as well, perhaps.) Then the four trailed up-stairs to the
drawing-room.
At nine o'clock an anxious Eliza and a remorseful, apologetic Pete
came home and descended to the horror the once orderly kitchen
and dining-room had become. At ten, Calderwell, with very evident
reluctance, tore himself away from Billy's gay badinage, and said good
night. At two minutes past ten, an exhausted, nerve-racked Billy was
trying to cry on the shoulders of both Uncle William and Bertram at
once.
“There, there, child, don't! It went off all right,” patted Uncle
William.
“Billy, darling,” pleaded Bertram, “please don't cry so! As if I'd ever
let you step foot in that kitchen again!”
At this Billy raised a tear-wet face, aflame with indignant
determination.
“As if I'd ever let you keep me _from_ it, Bertram Henshaw, after this!”
she contested. “I'm not going to do another thing in all my life but
_cook!_ When I think of the stuff we had to eat, after all the time I
took to get it, I'm simply crazy! Do you think I'd run the risk of such
a thing as this ever happening again?”