Come Out of the Kitchen! Part 11

"You would rather work for your living than marry a man you don't love?"

Crane asked, almost in spite of himself.

For the first time the cook looked up, straight at him, as she answered:

"I think I would rather die, sir."

This time it was Crane's eyes that dropped. Fortunately, he reflected, she could not have any idea how sharply her remark had touched his own inner state. How clearly she saw that it was wrong to do just what he was contemplating doing--to marry for prudence, rather than for love.

He found himself speculating on the genesis of the moral sense, how it developed in difficulties rather than in ease. That was why he could learn something on the subject from his cook. Here was a girl working for her living, working hard and long, for wages which though he had once, he remembered, told Reed they seemed excessive, now appeared to him the merest pittance; certainly it seemed as if all the hardships of such a life would be smoothed away by this suggested marriage, and yet she could a.s.sert clearly that she would rather die than make it; whereas he, with nothing very much at stake, had actually been contemplating for several months the making of just such a marriage--He was interrupted by her respectful tones:

"Will that be all, sir?"

"Yes," he answered in a voice that lacked finality. "I suppose that's all, except if that fellow comes bothering you any more, let me know, and I'll tell him what I think of him."

Jane-Ellen lifted the corner of her mouth in a terrible smile.

"Oh," she said, "I don't think he'll come bothering any more."

"You're very optimistic, Jane-Ellen."

"I beg your pardon, sir, those long words--"

"Very hopeful, I meant. He'll be back to-morrow."

"Not after what I said to him."

"Well, Jane-Ellen, if you have really found the potent thing to say under such circ.u.mstances, you're a true benefactor to your s.e.x."

She looked at him with mild confusion.

"I'm afraid I don't rightly understand, sir."

He smiled.

"It was my way of asking you what you had said to him that you imagined would keep him from coming back."

"I told him I had only pretended to like him, all these years. People, particularly gentlemen, don't like to think you have to pretend to like them."

Crane laughed aloud, wondering if the girl had any idea how amusing she was. In the pause that followed, the sound of a deep masculine voice could be heard suddenly under their feet. The office was immediately above the servants' sitting-room, and it was but too evident that a visitor had just entered.

Crane looked at the cook questioningly, and she had the grace to color.

"Why, did you ever, sir," she said. "There he is, this very moment!"

"Shall I go down and forbid him the house?" asked Burton, and though he spoke in fun, he would have been delighted to act in earnest.

"Oh, no, sir, thank you," she answered. "I am not going back to the kitchen."

This reminded her employer of the extreme difficulty he had experienced in seeing his cook at all.

"Why did you try and get out of seeing me, Jane-Ellen?" he said. "You knew about what I had to say, I suppose?"

"I had a notion, sir."

"And were you afraid?"

At this question, the cook bent her head until a shadow fell upon it, but Crane had a clear impression that she was laughing, so clear that he said:

"And may I ask why it is a comic idea that a servant should be afraid of her employer?"

The cook now raised a mask-like face and said most respectfully:

"No, sir, I was not exactly afraid," and, having said this, without the slightest warning she burst into an unmistakable giggle.

n.o.body probably enjoys finding that the idea of his inspiring terror is merely ludicrous. Crane regarded his cook with a sternness that was not entirely false. She, still struggling to regain complete gravity at the corners of her mouth, said civilly:

"Oh, I do hope you'll excuse my laughing, sir. The fact is that it was not I who tried to avoid seeing you. It was Smithfield's idea."

"Smithfield!" cried Crane.

"Yes, sir. He had the notion, I think, that you might be very severe with me, sir, and Smithfield is peculiar, he has a very sensitive nature--"

"Well, upon my word," cried Crane, springing to his feet, "that is exactly what Smithfield says about you. It seems to me I have a d.a.m.ned queer houseful of servants."

The cook edged to the door.

"Perhaps it seems so, sir," she said. "Will that be all for to-night?"

"Yes. No," he added hastily, "I have one more thing to say to you, Jane-Ellen, and it's this. Don't make the mistake of fancying that I have taken this whole incident lightly. I don't. It really must not happen again. Understand that clearly."

"You mean if that gentleman came back, you would dismiss me, sir?"

"I think I would," he answered.

"Even if it weren't my fault?"

"Was the fault entirely his, Jane-Ellen?"

"Ask him, sir."

"You know much more about it than he does. Was the fault entirely his?"

The cook wriggled her shoulders, crumpled her ap.r.o.n and seemed unwilling to answer a direct question directly. At last an idea occurred to her.

She looked up brightly.

"It was the ice-cream, sir," she said. "I was trying to teach him how to freeze ice-cream slowly. It ought to be done like this." And bending over an imaginary freezer, she imitated with her absurdly small hand the suave, gentle, rotary motion essential to the great American luxury.

As he stood looking down on her, it seemed to Crane extraordinarily clear how it had all happened, so clear indeed that for a second it almost seemed as if he himself were in the place of the culprit whose conduct he had just been condemning.

He stepped back hastily.