The Company Dinner

by Margaret Cameron and Jessie Leach Rector

 

The Company Dinner

 

BY MARGARET CAMERON AND JESSIE LEACH RECTOR

 

"WELL, I'm at peace with the world!" Geoffrey Adams dropped the match with which he had lighted his after-dinner cigar, pulled his coffee-cup nearer, and squinted a little as he looked through the first clinging, aromatic tendrils of smoke at his pretty wife, smiling across a beautifully appointed table, upon which gaily petticoated candles shed their mellow beams. "I wonder whether peacefulness—one way or another—is always a matter of being fed up?"

"Apropos of food," said Suzanne, "do you realize, Geof, that we've simply got to give some dinners?"

"Dinners!" he ejaculated, amazed.

"I begin to feel like an object of charity. All our friends must have demonstrated to their complete satisfaction that it's more blessed to give than to receive!"

"The light and inconsequential way in which the woman speaks of giving dinners!" he murmured. "One of Enga's dinners?"

"Isn't that just like a man?" she retorted. "You arrive at peace with the world by eating one of Enga's dinners, and then call it names!"

"You malign me. Enga's chicken casserole by any other name would taste as good. But don't forget that chicken, plus a salad and a sweet, doesn't constitute a dinner. A dinner, my Suzanne, is a fine flower of civilization."

"A dinner," sententiously observed his wife, "is one of three things. It's either just food, or a stepping-stone, or a canceled debt. It's the latter variety of which I speak."

"Any food would be a perfect dinner for me if salted by your presence," he told her, "but even you can't convert our daily bread into a function for the formal."

"You seem to be putting social amenities on a very material basis. Why not allow the spirit to have some play?" she suggested, and he laughingly returned:

"The spirit's willing enough. It's the food that's weak. If you said spirits, now! They've saved many an otherwise shaky situation. But with the advent of our new national drink, I suppose bottled conviviality should remain in obscurity, gathering cobwebs unto itself."

"Should it, indeed!" sniffed Suzanne. "What has that to do with the fine flower of civilization, I'd like to know?" Whereat they both laughed. "Joking aside, Geof, we've got to do the civilized thing. We can't go on honeymooning for ever. We must contribute our share, and that spells dinners. And why not? We have everything but the food."

"Granting that your setting of choice wedding-gifts is perfect," he rejoined, "for dinner-giving food's really a bit important, isn't it?"

"Y-yes, I suppose it is. And Enga certainly does not—" She stopped thoughtfully, and after a moment he said, with a resigned shrug.

"Oh, well, all right. I see where I travel the suburbanite's well-beaten road to the agencies in search of a cook."

"Not much you don't!" she replied. "I bear the ills I have! Enga may be stupid, but she's willing and clean—and she stays. And the greatest of these is she stays! Geof, I have an inspiration! Couldn't we achieve a company dinner on the instalment plan?"

"I'm game for anything you suggest, but I haven't the remotest notion what you're talking about."

"Listen, then! The cook-book and I have taught Enga to do two or three things really well. Why not one entire menu? One perfect dinner served at intervals to different people ought to get us through the social clearing-house with flying colors."

"Suzanne, you're the eighth wonder of the world!" he declared, and Suzanne blushed. But, while admiration was sweet, her purpose was fixed, and she persisted.

"You say you're game, but are you? Do you fully realize what training Enga is going to mean?"

"Mean? Look here," he demanded, in some dismay, "have we got to eat that company dinner every day until she learns how to cook it?"

"No, my child. On our limited income that wouldn't permit us to have even grape juice when the great occasion arrives. But day by day and course by course I'll train our minion's fumbling fingers in the way they should go, and you—poor dear!—will manfully swallow the result!"

"All right. I'm game! But what do you know about the gentle art of cooking, anyway?"

"My dear," lightly said Suzanne, "any woman of intelligence ought to cook well. So many who haven't any do it perfectly."

It was perhaps three months after this that Marian Fisher first heard that to be invited to one of the Adamses' intimate little dinners was to enjoy the rarest pleasure their small suburban community afforded. The worth-while people one met, the good talk one heard, and last, but by no means least, the good food, made these occasions memorable to those privileged to share in them.

Suzanne was the daughter of an eminent man whose entire fortune had been swept away in one of those financial cataclysms that occur from time to time, and at his death she had been left quite penniless, but with a large circle of acquaintances who met with disapproval her announcement that she was going to marry Geoffrey Adams. For a girl accustomed to every ease of circumstance, Geof with his large fund of hope and ambition and his modest salary did not seem to offer a brilliant marriage. But Suzanne met their objections lightly, assuring the doubting ones that she would do wonders with Geof's salary; in proof whereof she set about canvassing New York from Washington Heights to Greenwich Village in pursuit of an apartment that met her requirements. After many weary days she said:

"Geof, I can't stand it! The ones with large rooms and open fireplaces have zinc bath-tubs and inclosed plumbing. Those with 'all the modern improvements' have imitation bay-trees and near-marble pillars in the entrance-hall, and six cubby-holes occupying the space of one room. They all have hideous hardwood mantels—generally with colored tiles—which the landlords refuse to paint. At best, that would only convert them into whited sepulchers, for the things don't even cover a hole in the wall! I want something real! Let's look at that place in the country that Betty Benson told us about. She says it's nice."

So they went to the country, and Suzanne found an old red brick house which she insisted had been waiting for her; but now Geoffrey turned scoffer.

"Looks to me as though it had got tired waiting and decided to sit down," he caviled, but she buoyantly returned:

"Never you mind! Putting what we'll save in rent on the inside of that house will be like feeding the hungry. It will cast off its air of dejection and feel like a home. And think how near it is to the Post-road! Don't forget we have friends with motors, even if we do walk ourselves—and not always by preference!"

"All right. Just as you say," he agreed. "But I'm from Missouri!"

"Très-bien!" was her gay retort. "You may incorporate the whole map if you want to. I'd love to 'show' you!"

When, in the course of a few weeks, he saw the result of her labors, he exclaimed: "My dear, we'll have to frame our lease and hang it on the wall, for nobody, seeing this house, can ever be convinced that we're not living beyond our income! How in the name of marvels did you do it?"

Drawn by Edward L. Chase Engraved by C. E. Hart

AS THOUGH THE OLD HOUSE LISTENED WITH HER

"White paint and chintz—and intelligence," he was told, briefly.

Six months of gracious living in these surroundings had made the Adamses feel that theirs was indeed an enviable lot. Geof said sometimes, "Really, Suzanne, this is too good. It tends to dull ambition. " But when he heard that Rhodes Carleton, one of the largest manufacturers in the United States, was looking for an Eastern sales-manager, he knew that for him ambition might hibernate awhile but it was very much alive.

"Far be it from me to count the chickens before the eggs are laid," he said, "but from Mr. Carleton's attitude to-day, I think I have at least as good a chance as anybody of getting the job. Phil Benson—he's Carleton's nephew, you know—says that it rests between Jim Fisher and me."

"How about offering Mr. Carleton the dinner?" she asked, laughing. "It might serve as an incubator, in case the eggs are laid."

"Is there anybody left worthy to be asked to meet such a shining light?" he questioned. "You insist we can't repeat on this thing—though I don't see why not, when the dinner's so good."

"Well, perhaps you're right," she considered. "With a change or two in the things I make myself, perhaps I could offer that dinner twice—or even thrice—to a man."

"Now, why a man? Why not a woman?"

"Dear male creature, a woman sees far beyond the trimmings," she told him. "A few yards of lace on last year's frock and a woman's best smile will convince almost any man that the gown's what she wants him to think it. So with a dinner, too."

"And you think a woman would drop on it, eh? But we can't have only men at this show—and pick your guests with care, dear. Carleton's not the average business slave. He's a descendant as well as an ancestor."

"Then we'll ask the most interesting people we know, and I'll chance anybody's thinking it was necessity and not choice that governed the menu for this particular occasion. We'll have the Bensons, of course, as Mr. Carleton's their guest, but I'm glad we don't know their friends the Fishers. I hope I could be just as cordial, even if he is your rival, but I'd rather not be put to the test."

"You have a flair for knowing the right people, haven't you?" he responded. "Let's see, that must be about the fourth extra sense I've discovered in you. How many more have you concealed about your little person?"

Suzanne did not need her prettiest smile to convince either man or woman that her frock for the Carleton dinner was radiantly new, and at the end of the evening her being was flooded with the glow of satisfaction that comes to every hostess when she has said good-night to her last guest, a successful entertainment achieved. Her complete satisfaction might have been dampened a bit, however, could she have overheard the conversation between Carleton and the Bensons on the way back to town. Betty was all enthusiasm, and said:

"Don't you think Suzanne's a wonder, Uncle Rhodes, to live in the suburbs, and entertain so well, and have such a house to do it in?"

Carleton paused to bite the end off a cigar before answering, rather dryly: "Very nice. But tell me something about Mrs. Adams. Hers seems to be rather a lavish hand."

"She does do things with ease, but she has the habit." Betty's tone was warmly admiring. "All her life she's been in the midst of things, and I think she's wonderful to keep it up! Everyone felt she was taking a risk when she married Geof, on his rather meager salary, but they evidently manage."

"Didn't you tell me she was Peter Sanford's daughter? She may have saved something from the wreck. Or possibly she had money of her own?" Carleton suggested; but his nephew replied:

"No, she hasn't. Geof told me at the time they were married that he wanted to take out some life-insurance, because they had nothing but his salary. I don't know whether he's done it yet."

"Judging from their scale of living, I should say not," was the elder man's comment. "You can't pad the present and prepare for the future on the same dollar. At least, I've never been able to. And I've never heard of any financial Burbank who's made luxury yield a profit."

"Really, Uncle Rhodes, isn't it rather unfair to expect a girl like Suzanne to drop entirely out of her old life?" Betty defended.

"My dear, dropping's not a pleasant sensation, but it would seem to me that those young people are trying for an altitude record in a hot-air balloon with no parachute. When the fall comes, though, I'd like to hire their cook," he added.

"You'll have to be right on the spot then," said Betty. "Enga's the envy of every friend they have. She's the one cook who never chills those things she should not have chilled, nor leaves unheated those things she should have heated. There's nothing lukewarm in that house, either in food or spirits."

"Then they do this sort of thing often?" Carleton probed.

"Well, they haven't been married very long, you know, but all winter they've been giving small dinners—and with such success!" Betty began enthusiastically, but her husband, combating a chill in his uncle's tone, interposed:

"They've been entertained a lot, naturally, and Suzanne's strong for reciprocity. She always plays the game and asks few favors."

"The right to play that game's a privilege," succinctly returned the other man, "and one to be earned. And it comes high."

"Look here, Uncle Rhodes, this isn't going to queer Geof's chances with you, is it?" his nephew asked, anxiously, and the manufacturer replied:

"I'm sorry. He does seem in many ways to be the man I want. Socially they're both delightful, of course, but extravagance is a nasty cutworm that I prefer to avoid. When you've got your plant nicely started, you discover one day that it has no roots. Now, Fisher's personally less agreeable to me, and he lacks Adams's imagination and length of vision. But he's safe."

"Well, you'd have to hunt to find anybody more extravagant than Marian Fisher," Betty mentioned.

"She can afford to be," he returned. "She has a very tidy little fortune of her own."

The next afternoon Suzanne went to town to a matinée. All day the memory of her successful dinner lingered pleasantly with her, and when she failed to find Geof on the train he usually took going home it seemed one more argument that he must bring good news when he came. As she walked up the flagged path, with its brown earth borders that her imagination filled with nodding old-fashioned flowers, she was her most buoyant self. It was nice to help Geof, and she felt sure she had. When she let fall the knocker of the old battened door—"Fancy an electric bell on that door," she had said to Geof—the sound reverberated through the house, and she listened for Enga's heavy step. But she heard nothing. As she stood waiting, it was as though the old house listened with her, and the first little premonition of things not being as usual made her search hurriedly for her key and open the door. Silence and the chill heralding untended fires met her, and her first thought was that Enga might be ill. Hastening to the kitchen, she found it empty, and conspicuously propped against the bread-box was a note, which she seized.

dere mis Adams [she read],

very moch soro it mak me but I go by mis Fischer she say she Pay me many Dolars and no clos I wash. I lik you and mr. Adams moch but Soon I get marid and I need more mony

your obedant ⁠
Enga

Dazed and indignant, she stood with this in her hand for a moment, and then the thought that in half an hour Geoffrey might arrive made her rush with first-aid appliances to each dying fire. As she worked, she remembered that this was the night appointed for the formation of the new golf club, a project in which she and her husband had been prime movers, and that if she took time now to cook a dinner they would inevitably be late at the meeting. She was hastily preparing such an impromptu repast as the contents of the refrigerator made possible when she heard Geof's key in the door and ran to meet him, forgetting Enga's defection in her eagerness to hear the good news she was so confident he was bringing. One glance at his face, however, told her something was wrong, and she gasped:

"Oh, Geof! What is it? What's happened?"

"Nothing," he replied, with a short laugh. "That's it! Nothing at all. And it's been made quite clear to me that nothing's going to happen."

"You mean—Mr. Carleton? But—but why?"

"Give it up." Seeing her dismay, he tried to speak gaily. "Suzanne, that was a castle of cards we were building. There's nothing doing."

Somehow this additional failure of their hopes made the domestic misfortune seem doubly poignant, and she wanted to sit down in the midst of her desolated house and weep, but, being Suzanne, she did not. Instead, she demanded, with a show of spirit:

"Is Jim Fisher going to get it?"

"I suppose so. Anyhow, it's evident I'm not."

"This must be the Fishers' day," she said, dully. "They've got Enga, too."

"Enga!"

"Yes—she's gone. Mrs. Fisher offered her more money, and of course we weren't paying her very much. When I got home, I found the house empty and cold, and no dinner—and you must run along and get ready, dear. You know we've got to go to that meeting to-night, and we mustn't be late," she added, hastily, realizing that she had tears, but that to shed them now would be a craven's part.

As they ate their improvised dinner, they tried to talk, but when they found banalities the only conversation they could muster they grew silent, and it was not until they returned from the meeting of the golf club, where they lost some of their own dejection in arousing other people's enthusiasm to the point of successful organization, that they could broach the subject lying at the back of their minds. As they turned in at their gate Suzanne said, plaintively:

"Geof, I'm hungry. How does creamed chicken in the chafing-dish sound to you?"

"Sounds like the relief of Lucknow!" he returned. "The famine raging in my interior is 'something fierce.'"

So Suzanne covered her gown with a big Dutch apron and set about getting supper while her husband replenished the fires. Presently she said:

"Look here, Geof o' my heart, what are we glooming about, anyway? Everything's just as it was ten days ago, before we heard of Mr. Rhodes Carleton and his old position. Come on, let's forget him! We were perfectly happy before he came, and his advent hasn't changed a thing except our attitude toward what we have. Sweden's still on the map, and Ellis Island's within call."

"You're a brick, Suzanne! I know you're just as much disappointed as I am."

"I am not! I was, but that was fully two minutes ago. I've forgotten it! Why don't we light all the candles and have a party, just by ourselves? We wasted a perfectly good one last night on your unappreciative old curmudgeon!"

"Our baked meats furnished forth a funeral, all right!" He laughed, but it was rather ruefully. "Suzanne, does nothing ever get you down?"

"Oh yes, it's easy enough to get me down," she blithely admitted, "but I don't stay put! I'm a reversion to type. You know, a New England grandmother has set her hand and seal on me, and when I see food to prepare my spirits soar! Lights! Lights, ho!"

While he was attending to the candles Adams chuckled a little, and after a moment he began:

"I wonder what the Fishers—"

"Don't speak that name in my presence!" she interrupted, humorously brusque. "No woman who'll snare another woman's cook out of her kitchen is to be mentioned in my house."

"Aye, aye, sir," he said, saluting. "But, just the same, it would be interesting to know what the kidnapper's doing with the dear departed, now she's got her."

"Teaching her to cook, probably. That's what I did." Suzanne laughed a little in spite of herself. "Oh, Geof, do you suppose Enga confessed that broiling a chop is her only accomplishment, save for the substantials of the one perfect dinner?"

"If she didn't, it's likely to burst upon them convincingly some time," he grinned. "Anyway, it's rather a joke on us, you know, our one and only dinner breaking loose from its moorings this way. Do you think they'll eat it every night?"

"Well, they can afford to. We couldn't. But if they do—Geof, remember what that dinner, bereft of its trimmings, did to us while Enga was learning to cook it!"

Her preparations were almost complete when the knocker sounded and she looked at her husband with startled eyes.

"Who on earth can that be, at this hour?" he exclaimed, and went at once to find out. Through the open door Suzanne heard Betty Benson's gay accents, and, forgetting her enveloping apron, ran out to greet her, calling:

"Betty, how splendid! Where have you two been so late?" Then, seeing the tall form of Rhodes Carleton beside Geof and Phil Benson, she added, with a degree of formality in her still cordial tone: "Oh, how nice of you all to stop!"

"That's very kind of you. I feel that it's rather an imposition," was Carleton's reserved response, but Betty's vivacious voice broke in hastily:

"I just had to stop when I saw the light. Uncle Rhodes was very reluctant, but I told him it might be his only opportunity to make a dinner call, as he insists he must go home in two or three days, and he still has a lot to do."

"Humph! You might understand better Betty's sudden enthusiasm for midnight dinner calls," chuckled Benson, "if you'd heard her crow, 'Oh, there's a light in the Adamses' dining-room!' She hoped it augured food."

"I knew it did!" his wife corrected, and then, as she glimpsed the table with its lighted candles and generally festive air of hospitality, she cried in dismay: "Oh, Suzanne, are you expecting guests?"

"Not a soul," was the reply. "We were having a little party all by ourselves. You're just in time."

"There! What did I tell you?" triumphed her friend, glancing back over her shoulder at the men of her party divesting themselves of motor-coats in the hall. "Hurry, you people! Next time, perhaps you'll not hesitate to follow my impulse. I was never so hungry in my life."

"Motoring does put an edge on one's appetite," said Geof, trying to throw off a consciousness of constraint; and Suzanne, with the hostess's natural desire to make things move easily, began talking rather at random as she made excursions to and from the kitchen, arranging additions to her feast.

"We're hungry, too," she said. "We had only an impromptu dinner to-night, for we've lost our cook."

Carleton looked up with the first glimmer of real interest he had shown, exclaiming: "You've lost that wonderful cook, Mrs. Adams, and are able to talk calmly about it?" while the Bensons demanded with one voice what had happened to the incomparable Enga.

"She's been corrupted with gold—snared under our very roof," lightly returned Suzanne. "When I went to town this morning I left her tending our hearthfire, and I returned to find it cold. Just at dinner-time, too!"

"That's what you get for feeding your friends not wisely but too well," observed Benson. "Anyhow, temptation's removed from our path, Betty. Somebody else got her first."

"At least, I wasn't betrayed by the tooth of a taster!" Suzanne declared, laughing. "Our friends have threatened to lure her away, but as it turns out we go mourning because of the oppression of our enemy."

"You're going St. Paul one better," suggested Carleton, with a humorous gleam. "When your enemy hungers, you hand over the cook!"

"Anyway, Suzanne, you can't be as hungry as we are," Betty insisted, "for even if your dinner was impromptu, it was real food. We've dined on profuse apologies."

"Really, Betty, you're incorrigible!" her husband reproached. "You can't eat people's food and then talk about it!"

Drawn by Edward L. Chase Engraved by Frank E. Pettit

"WHAT DID YOU HAVE TO EAT?" BREATHLESSLY DEMANDED SUZANNE

"Now, Phil! It isn't food, but salt, that forms the sacred bond," she parried, "and this was food sans salt—and sans everything else that goes to make flavor! And coming on the heels of that perfect dinner last night—⁠ By the way, Suzanne," she broke off, as Phil frowned heavily at her, "what's become of Enga? Do you know who got her?"

"Mrs. Fisher's the happy possessor of my lost treasure."

"Mrs. Fisher! Mrs. Jim Fisher? But that's where we've been dining!"

"What!" Suzanne and Geoffrey stared blankly at each other.

"Betty!" sharply warned Benson.

"But it is! We've just come from there!" his wife persisted.

"What did you have to eat?" breathlessly demanded Suzanne. "Any of the things you had here last night?"

"Mercy, no!" Betty replied. "Nothing remotely like them."

"Suzanne," said Geoffrey, "evidently that dinner's still dragging its anchor!"

Suzanne giggled. Then, as the full import of the situation dawned upon them, she and her husband broke into peal upon peal of laughter, and the others, catching the mirthful infection, laughed with them without knowing why, until Betty seized her hostess's arm and shook her, demanding:

"What's it all about?"

"Oh—I'm sorry!" Her friend strove for self-control with caught breath. "I can't tell you—but it is so funny!"

"Why can't you tell it?" Geoffrey demurred, wiping away his own tears of laughter. "The murder's out. Anyway, we've got the story left, and if we don't tell it, somebody else will—and that would be flat plagiarism! You invented it! It's yours! Go to it!"

So pretty Mrs. Adams, with an apologetic word to Carleton for the introduction of details so intimately personal, explained the origin of the company dinner, touching lightly and humorously upon the limited income which had made it necessary.

"Of course, I never could have done it if Geof hadn't been the stuff heroes are made of," she concluded. "He's been the martyr to a menu."

"Oh, I don't know!" he returned. "We both ate it, didn't we? And I didn't have to cook it first. Anyhow, never again can anybody put over on me that quail-a-day-for-thirty-days stunt as any particular achievement! It's a cinch—if Suzanne seasons the quail!"

"I don't think you've suffered much," dryly commented Carleton. "I'd like an opportunity to dine on that delicious hors-d'œuvre for thirty days myself."

"We were spared that," laughed Suzanne. "Hors-d'œuvres and salads and sweets and sauces are still dark mysteries to poor Enga."

"Evidently!" feelingly contributed Betty.

"Yes," Adams cast an amused glance at his wife, "they were the products of intelligence."

"Well, if you ask me, the whole thing was the result of genius." Carleton spoke slowly. "If you were a man, Mrs. Adams, I should offer you my own job and sit at your feet. As it is, I'm perfectly confident that with larger means and increased opportunity you'll treble the efficiency of my Eastern sales-manager—that is, if you'll help me persuade your husband to accept the position. Will you?"