Come Out of the Kitchen! Part 32

"My dear fellow," cried Crane with some compunction, "were you waiting to see me?"

"I was waiting for my motor," answered the poet. "You know that, imagining this to be an ordinary dinner-party, I ordered it back at a quarter before eleven."

"Where's Tucker?" asked Burton.

At this moment a step was heard on the stairs and Tucker, dressed in a neat gray suit, adapted to traveling, wearing a cap and goggles and carrying his bag, descended the stairs.

On seeing his host he approached and held out his hand. "Good-by, Burton," he said, "I hope the time will come when you will forgive me for having tried too hard to serve you. For myself, I entirely forgive your hasty rudeness. I hope we part friends."

Crane hesitated, and then shook hands with his lawyer. "There's no use in pretending, Tucker," he said, "that I feel exactly friendly to you, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, I can't believe that you feel so to me. You and I have got on each other's nerves lately; and that's the truth. How much that means, only time can show. Sometimes it is very important, sometimes very trivial; but while such a state exists, I agree with you that two people are better apart. Good-by."

Here, Jane-Ellen, who had just finished putting the dining-room in order, came out into the hall followed by Willoughby. As she saw Tucker, she had one of her evil inspirations.

Springing forward, she exclaimed: "Oh, wasn't it a pity, sir, you had to do your own packing! Let me put your bag in the motor for you."

Tucker was again caught by one of his moments of indecision. He did not want Jane-Ellen to carry his luggage, but he did not consider it dignified to wrestle with her for the possession of it, so that in the twinkling of an eye she had seized it and carried it down the steps.

But he was not utterly without resource. He had been holding a two-dollar bill in his hand, more from recollections of other visits than because he now expected to find any one left to fee. This, as Jane-Ellen came up the steps, he thrust into her hand, saying clearly:

"Thank you, my girl, there's for your trouble."

Jane-Ellen just glanced at it, and then crumpling it into a ball she threw it across the hall. Willoughby, who like many other sheltered creatures retained his playfulness late in life, bounded after it, caught it up in his paws, threw it about, and finally set on it with his sharp little teeth and bit it to pieces. But neither Tucker nor the cook waited to see the end. He got into the car and rolled away, and she went back to the kitchen.

Crane glanced at Lefferts, to whom plainly his duty as host pointed, and then he hurried down the kitchen stairs, closing the door carefully behind him.

XIII

JANE-ELLEN was shaking out her last dishcloth, her head turned well over her shoulder to avoid the shower of spray that came from it. He seated himself on the kitchen-table, and watched her for some time in silence.

"And is that the way you treat all presents, Jane-Ellen," he asked, "throwing them to Willoughby to tear to pieces?"

"That was not a present, sir. Presents are between equals, I've always thought."

"Then, Jane-Ellen, I don't see how you can ever hope to get any."

She looked at him and smiled. "Your talk is too deep and clever for a poor girl like me to understand, sir."

He smiled back. "They've all gone, Jane-Ellen," he said.

The news did not seem to disturb the cook in the least. Reed would have been shocked by the calmness with which she received it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "And there was no truth in it?"]

"And now you're all alone, sir," she replied.

"Absolutely alone."

She was still pattering about the kitchen, putting the last things to rights, but--or so it seemed to Crane--a little busier than her occupation warranted.

"They left early, sir, didn't they? But then it did not seem to me that they were really enjoying themselves, not even Mr. Lefferts, though he is such an amusing gentleman. Every one seemed sad, sir, except you."

"I was sad, too, Jane-Ellen."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Something was said at dinner that distressed me deeply."

"By whom, sir?"

"By you."

She did not stop her work nor seem very much surprised, but of course she asked what her unfortunate speech had been.

"I was sorry to hear you say you believed in Miss Revelly's triple engagement."

At this she did stop short, and immediately in his vicinity. "But I did not know you knew Miss Revelly."

"Yet I do."

"And when I was describing her--"

"It was as if I saw her before me."

"I am sorry I said anything about a friend of yours, sir. I had supposed she was quite a stranger to you."

"Sometimes it seems to me, too, as if she were a stranger," Crane answered. "Each time I see her, Jane-Ellen, she seems to me so lovely and wonderful and miraculous that it is as if I saw her for the first time. Sometimes when I am away from her it seems to me quite ridiculous to believe that such a creature exists in this rather tiresome old world, and I feel like rus.h.i.+ng back from wherever I am to a.s.sure myself that she isn't just a creation of my own pa.s.sionate desire. In this sense, I think she will always be a stranger, always be a surprise to me even if I should have the great felicity of spending the rest of my days with her. Does it bore you, Jane-Ellen, to hear me talking this way about my own feelings?"

Jane-Ellen did not answer; indeed something seemed to suggest that she could not speak, but she shook her head and Burton went on.

"So you see why it distressed me to hear from so good an authority as yourself that she had already engaged herself three times. It is not that I am of a jealous nature, Jane-Ellen, but when I ask her to be my wife, if she should say yes, I should want to feel sure that that meant--"

"Oh, Mr. Crane!" said Jane-Ellen, "I said that to make Mr. Reed angry."

"And there was no truth in it?"

There was a pause. Jane-Ellen looked down and wriggled her shoulders a little.

"Well," she admitted, "there was some truth in it. They were not exactly engagements. We think in this part of the world that there's something almost too harsh in a flat no--oh! the truth is," she added, suddenly changing her tone, "that girls don't know what they're doing until they find that they have fallen in love themselves."

"And do you think by any chance that this revelation may have come to Miss Revelly?"

"I know right well it has," answered Jane-Ellen.

"Oh, my dear love!" cried Crane and took her into his arms.