CHAPTER XIV. A GOOD-BYE
While I strolled into the garden to select a table for our dinner, Eccles went in search of Mr. Delorme; and though he had affected to say that the important duty of devising the feast should be confided to the host, I could plainly see that my respected tutor accepted his share in that high responsibility.
I will only say of the feast in question, that, though I was daily accustomed to the admirable dinners of my father's table, I had no conception of what exquisite devices in cookery could be produced by the skill of an accomplished restaurateur, left free to his own fancy, and without limitation as to the bill.
One thing alone detracted from the perfect enjoyment of the banquet It was the appearance of Mr. Delorme himself, white-cravated and gloved, carrying in the soup. It was an attention that he usually reserved for great personages, royalties, or high dignitaries of the court; and I was shocked that he should have selected me for the honor, not the less as it was only a few hours before he and I had been drinking champagne with much clinking of glasses together, and interchanging the most affectionate vows of eternal friendship.
I arose from my chair to salute him; but, as he deposited the tureen upon the table, he stepped back and bowed low, and retreated in this fashion, with the same humble reverence at every step, till he was lost in the distance.
“Sit down,” said Eccles, with a peculiar look, as though to warn me that I was forgetting my dignity; and then, to divert my attention, he added, “That green seal is an attention Delorme offers you,—a very rare favor, too,—a bottle of his own peculiar Johannisberg. Let us drink his health. Now, Digby, I call this something very nigh perfection.”
It was a theme my tutor understood thoroughly, and there was not a dish nor a wine that he did not criticise.
“I was always begging your father to take this cook, Digby,” said he, with half sigh. “Even with a first-rate artist you need change, otherwise your dinners become manneristic, as ours have become of late.”
He then went on to show me that the domestic cook, always appealing to the small public of the family, gets narrowed in his views and bounded in his resources. He compared them, I remember, to the writers in certain religious newspapers, who must always go on spicing higher and higher as the palates of their clients grow more jaded. How he worked out his theme afterwards I cannot tell, for I was watching the windows of the house, and stealing glances down the alleys in the garden, longing for one look, ever so fleeting, of my lovely partner of the night before.