The Cooks Decameron | Page 6

useless to
prolong suspense, so she began by opening the envelope addressed in
the familiar handwriting of Sir John Oglethorpe, and this was what Sir
John had to say--
"My Dear Marchesa, words, whether written or spoken, are powerless
to express my present state of mind. In the first place, our dinner on
Thursday is impossible, and in the second, I have lost Narcisse and
forever. You commented favourably upon that supreme of lobster and
the Ris de Veau a la Renaissance we tasted last week, but never again
will you meet the handiwork of Narcisse. He came to me with
admirable testimonials as to his artistic excellence; with regard to his
moral past I was, I fear, culpably negligent, for I now learn that all the
time he presided over my stewpans he was wanted by the French police
on a charge of murdering his wife. A young lady seems to have helped
him; so I fear Narcisse has broken more than one of the commandments
in this final escapade. The truly great have ever been subject to these
momentary aberrations, and Narcisse being now in the hands of
justice--so called--our dinner must needs stand over, though not, I hope,
for long. Meantime the only consolation I can perceive is the chance of
a cup of tea with you this afternoon.
J. O."
Sir John Oglethorpe had been her husband's oldest and best friend. He
and the Marchesa had first met in Sardinia, where they had both of
them gone in pursuit of woodcock, and since the Marchesa had been a
widow, she and Sir John had met either in Rome or in London every
year. The dinner so tragically manque had been arranged to assemble a
number of Anglo-Italian friends; and, as Sir John was as perfect as a
host as Narcisse was as a cook, the disappointment was a heavy one.
She threw aside the letter with a gesture of vexation, and opened the

next.
"Sweetest Marchesa," it began, "how can I tell you my grief at having
to postpone our dinner for Friday. My wretched cook (I gave her
seventy-five pounds a year), whom I have long suspected of
intemperate habits, was hopelessly inebriated last night, and had to be
conveyed out of the house by my husband and a dear, devoted friend
who happened to be dining with us, and deposited in a four- wheeler.
May I look in tomorrow afternoon and pour out my grief to you? Yours
cordially,
"Pamela St. Aubyn Fothergill."
When the Marchesa had opened four more letters, one from Lady
Considine, one from Mrs. Sinclair, one from Miss Macdonnell, and one
from Mrs. Wilding, and found that all these ladies were obliged to
postpone their dinners on account of the misdeeds of their cooks, she
felt that the laws of average were all adrift. Surely the three remaining
letters must contain news of a character to counterbalance what had
already been revealed, but the event showed that, on this particular
morning, Fortune was in a mood to strike hard. Colonel Trestrail, who
gave in his chambers carefully devised banquets, compounded by a
Bengali who was undoubtedly something of a genius, wrote to say that
this personage had left at a day's notice, in order to embrace
Christianity and marry a lady's-maid who had just come into a legacy
of a thousand pounds under the will of her late mistress. Another
correspondent, Mrs. Gradinger, wrote that her German cook had
announced that the dignity of womanhood was, in her opinion, slighted
by the obligation to prepare food for others in exchange for mere
pecuniary compensation. Only on condition of the grant of perfect
social equality would she consent to stay, and Mrs. Gradinger, though
she held advanced opinions, was hardly advanced far enough to accept
this suggestion. Last of all, Mr. Sebastian van der Roet was desolate to
announce that his cook, a Japanese, whose dishes were, in his
employer's estimation, absolute inspirations, had decamped and taken
with him everything of value he could lay hold of; and more than
desolate, that he was forced to postpone the pleasure of welcoming the
Marchesa di Sant' Andrea at his table.
When she had finished reading this last note, the Marchesa gathered the
whole mass of her morning's correspondence together, and uttering a

few Italian words which need not be translated, rolled it into a ball and
hurled the same to the farthest corner of the room. "How is it," she
ejaculated, "that these English, who dominate the world abroad, cannot
get their food properly cooked at home? I suppose it is because they, in
their lofty way, look upon cookery as a non-essential, and consequently
fall victims to gout and dyspepsia, or into the clutches of some
international brigandaccio, who declares he is a