Everything had been arranged to perfection. The great dining table glowed faultlessly, like a single sheet of walnut light. In its centre, on a doily of thick lace, stood a large and handsome bowl blossoming with a fragrant harvest of cut flowers. At the four corners, in orderly array, there were big stacks of Dresden plates and gleaming rows of old and heavy English silver, knives and forks and spoons. The ancient Italian chairs had been drawn away and placed against the walls. This was to be a buffet supper. The guests could come and help themselves according to their taste, and on that noble table was everything to tempt even the most jaded palate.
Upon an enormous silver trencher at one end there was a mighty roast of beef, crisply browned all over. It had just been “begun on” at one side, for a few slices had been carved away to leave the sound, rare body of the roast open to the inspection of anyone who might be attracted by its juicy succulence. At the opposite end, upon another enormous trencher, and similarly carved, was a whole Virginia Ham, sugar-cured and baked and stuck all over with pungent cloves. In between and all round was a staggering variety of mouth-watering delicacies. There were great bowls of mixed green salads, and others of chicken salad, crab meat, and the pink, milky firmness of lobster claws, removed whole and perfect from their shells. There were platters containing golden slabs of smoked salmon, the most rare and delicate that money could buy. There were dishes piled with caviar, both black and red, and countless others loaded with hors d’oeuvres—with mushrooms, herring, anchovies, sardines, and small, toothsome artichokes, with pickled onions and with pickled beets, with sliced tomatoes and with devilled eggs, with walnuts, almonds, and pecans, with olives and with celery. In short, there was almost everything that anyone could desire.
It was a gargantuan banquet. It was like some great vision of a feast that has been made immortal in legendary. Few “rich” people would have dared venture on a “supper” such as this of Mrs. Jack’s, and in this fear of venturing they would have been justified. Only Mrs. Jack could do a thing like this; only she could do it right. And that is why her parties were famous, and why everyone who had been invited always came. For, strange to tell, there was nowhere on that lavish board a suggestion of disorder or excess. That table was a miracle of planning and of right design. Just as no one could look at it and possibly want anything to be added, so could no one here have felt that there was a single thing too much.
And everywhere in that great dining-room, with its simplicity and strength, there was evident this same faultless taste, this same style that never seemed to be contrived, that was so casual and so gracious and so right. At one side the great buffet glittered with an array of flasks, decanters, bottle, syphons, and tall glasses, thin as shells. Elsewhere, two lovely Colonial cupboards stood like Graces with their splendid wares of china and of porcelain, of cut-glass and of silver, of grand old plates and cups and saucers, tureens and bowls, jars and pitchers.
After a quick, satisfied appraisal of everything, Mrs. Jack walked rapidly across the room and through the swinging door that led to the pantry and the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. As she approached, she could hear the laughter and excited voices of the maids, broken by the gutturally mixed phrases of the cook. She burst upon a scene of busy order and of readiness. The big, tiled kitchen was as clean and spotless as a hospital laboratory. The great range with its marvellous hood, itself as large as those one sees in a big restaurant, looked as if it had been freshly scrubbed and oiled and polished. The vast company of copper cooking vessels—the skillets and kettles, the pots and pans of every size and shape, from those just large enough to hold an egg to those so huge it seemed that one might cook in them the rations of a regiment—had been scoured and rubbed until Mrs. Jack cloud see her face in them. The big table in the centre of the room was white enough to have served in a surgeon’s office, and the shelves, drawers, cupboards, and bins looked as if they had just been gone over with sandpaper. Above the voices of the girls brooded the curiously quiet, intent, dynamic hum of the mammoth electric refrigerator, which in its white splendour was like a jewel.
“Oh, this!” thought Mrs. Jack. “This is quite the most perfect thing of all! This is the best room in the house! I love the others—but is there anything in the world so grand and beautiful as a fine kitchen? And how Cookie keeps the place! If I could only paint it! But no—it would take a Breughel to do it! There’s no one nowadays to do it justice----”
“Oh, Cookie!” Now she spoke the words aloud. “What a lovely cake!”
Cook looked up from the great layer cake on the table to which she had been adding the last prayerful tracery of frosted icing, and a faint smile illuminated the gaunt, blunt surface of her Germanic face.
“You like him, yes?” said Cook. “You think he is nice?”
“Oh, Cook!” cried Mrs. Jack in a tone of such childlike earnestness that Cook smiled this time a little more broadly than before. “It is the most beautiful—the most wonderful!—” She turned away with a comical shrug of despair as if words failed her.
Cook laughed gutturally with satisfaction, and Nora, smiling, said: