Come Out of the Kitchen! Part 33

The kitchen clock, loudly ticking, looked down upon them on one side, and Willoughby, loudly purring, looked up at them from the other, and a good deal of ticking and purring was done before Claudia broke the silence by saying, like one to whom a good idea has come rather late:

"But I never said it was through you that the revelation came."

"You mustn't say that it hasn't even in fun--not yet."

"When may I?"

"When we've been married five years."

Sometime later, when, that is to say, they had talked a little longer in the kitchen, and then shut it up for the night, and had gone and sat a little while in the parlor so that he might realize that she really was Miss Claudia Revelly, and they had sat a little while in the office so that she might act out for him the impression he had made an her during that first famous interview when he had reproved her conduct, when all these important conversations had taken place, Crane at last took her hand and said gravely: "I mustn't keep you up any longer. Good night, my darling." And he added, after an instant, "I'm so glad--so grateful--that your mind doesn't work like Reed's and Tucker's."

"Like theirs--in what way?"

"I'm glad you haven't thought it necessary to make any protest at our being here alone."

A slight motion of his beloved's shoulders told him she was not fully at one with him.

"How foolish, Burton, of course I trust you absolutely, only--"

"Only what--"

She evidently felt that it was a moment when something decisive must be done, for she came and laid her head, not on his shoulder, but as near as she could reach, which was about in the turn of his elbow.

His arm was coldly limp. "Only what?" he repeated.

"Only we're not really alone."

"What do you mean, Claudia?"

"They're all here--my brothers and sister."

"What, Smithfield, and Lily, and even Brindlebury?"

She nodded in as much s.p.a.ce as she had.

"Where are they?" he asked.

"They're playing c.o.o.n-Can in the garret. And oh," she added with a sudden spasm of recollection, "they'll be so hungry! They haven't had anything to eat for ages. I promised to bring them something as soon as the house was quiet, only you put everything out of my head."

"We'll give them a party in the dining-room--our first," said Crane.

"I'll write the invitation, and we'll send Lefferts to the garret with it."

"Don't you think I'd better go up and explain?" said Claudia.

"The invitation will explain," answered Burton. It read: "Mr. Burton Crane and Miss Claudia Revelly request the pleasure of the Revellys'

company at supper immediately."

They roused Lefferts, who had by this time fallen into a comfortable sleep. "Just run up and give this note to the people you'll find in the garret, there's a good fellow," said Crane.

Lefferts sat up, rubbing his eyes. "The people I'll find in the garret,"

he murmured. "But how about the little black men in the chimney, and the ghosts who live in the wall? This is the strangest house, Crane, the very strangest house I ever knew." But he took the note and wandered slowly upstairs with it, shaking his head.

On the landing of the second story, his eye caught the whisk of a skirt, and pursuing it instantly, he came upon Lily. He cornered her in the angle of the stairs.

"Hold on," he said, "I have a note for you, at least I have if you are one of the people who live in the garret."

Lily, knowing nothing of the explanation that had taken place between Reed and Crane, was not a little alarmed at being thus caught in a house from which she had been so recently dismissed. She did not think quickly in a crisis, and now she could find nothing to say but "I don't exactly live in the garret."

"How interesting it would be," observed Lefferts, "if you would sit down here on the stairs and tell me who you are."

"There's nothing to tell," said Lily, wondering what she had better admit. "I'm just the housemaid."

"Oh," cried Lefferts, "then there are lots of things to tell. I have always wanted to ask housemaids a number of questions. For instance, why is it that you always drop the broom with which you sweep the stairs at six in the morning? Why do you fancy it will conduce to any one's comfort to shut the blinds and turn on all the lights in a bedroom on a hot summer evening? Why do you hide the pillows and extra covering so that one never finds them until one is packing to go away the next morning? If you are a housemaid, you do these things; and if you do these things, you must know why you do them."

Lily smiled. "I'm afraid I was a very poor housemaid," she answered.

"Anyhow, I'm not even that any more. I was dismissed."

"Indeed," said Lefferts. "Now that must be an interesting experience. I have had several perfectly good businesses drop from under me, but I have never been dismissed. Might I ask what led to it in your case?"

A reminiscent smile stole over Lily's face. "Mr. Crane dismissed me,"

she said, "for saying something which I believe he thought himself. I called Mrs. Falkener an old harridan."

Lefferts shouted with pleasure.

"If Crane had had a spark of intellectual honesty, he'd have raised your wages," he said. "It's just what he wanted to say himself."

"Oh! I was glad to be dismissed," returned she. "I never approved of the whole plan anyhow." And then fearing she had betrayed too much, she added, "And now you might tell me who you are."

"My name is Lefferts."

"Any relation to the poet?"

It would be impossible to deny that this unexpected proof of his fame was agreeable to Lefferts. The conversation on the stairs became more absorbing, and the note was less likely to be delivered at all.

In the meantime Claudia, while setting the table in the dining-room, had sent Crane down to the kitchen floor to get something out of the ice-box. As Crane approached this object about which so many sentimental recollections gathered, he saw he had been antic.i.p.ated. A figure was already busy extracting from it a well-filled plate. At his step, the figure turned quickly. It was Brindlebury.

Even Brindlebury seemed to appreciate that, after all that had occurred in connection with his last departure, to be caught once again in Crane's house was a serious matter. It would have been easy enough to save himself by a confession that he was one of the Revellys, but to tell this without the consent of his brother and sisters would have been considered traitorous in the extreme.

He backed away from the ice-box. "Mr. Crane," he said, with unusual seriousness, "you probably feel that an explanation is due you." And there he stopped, not being able at the moment to think of anything to say.

Crane took pity on him. "Brindlebury," he said, "it would be ungenerous of me to conceal from you that our relative positions are reversed. At the present moment the power is all in your hands. Have a cigarette. I believe you used to like this brand."

"Only when I had smoked all my own."

"You see, Brindlebury, it is not only that I am obliged to forgive you, I have to go further. I have to make up to you. For the truth is, Brindlebury, that I want to marry your sister."

"You want to marry Jane-Ellen?"