Malta dropped several curtseys, but not, thank God, her stomach; said, ‘Holy Angels, my Lard, whatsoe’er I’m given to cook, I shall cook it fine, for Missus she’s wrote out the words for me real big on a nice piece of pasteboard.’ Malta could read and she had the recipe? Well, well. Hope for the best. New Chum would perhaps not mind or even notice if the luncheon fell short of standard, but Eszterhazy, after all, would have to eat it, too.
However.
The roof of the Great Chamber did not indeed fall in on the meeting of the Proposed Canal Committee, but many other things happened, which he would hope had rather not. The chairman had forgotten the minutes of the last meeting and would not hear of the reading being skipped, pro hac vice, so all had to wait until they had been fetched in a slow hack, if not indeed a tumbril or an ox-cart. Then the Conservative delegation had wished to be given assurances the most profound that any land taken for the Canal would be paid for at full current market value; next, well before the Conservoes were made satisfied with such assurances, the Workingchaps’ delegation had taken it into its collective head that Asian coolie labour might be employed in Canal construction and demanded positive guarantees that it would not. Then the Commercial representation desired similar soothing in regard to brick and building-stone—not only that it would not be imported from Asia, but from anywhere else outside the Empire—’Even if it has to come from Pannonia!’—something which the Pannonian delegation somehow took much amiss. Cries of Point of order! and Treason! and What has the Committee got to hide? and Move the previous question! were incessant. And Eszterhazy realised that he was absolutely certain to miss anyway most of his luncheon engagement with Enderson.
So he sent word that the meal was to proceed without him, and his apologies to his guest, and he (Eszterhazy) would join him as soon as possible.
‘As soon as’ was eventually reached, though he had feared it wouldn’t be. As he was making his way out of the Great Chamber he encountered Professor Blumpkinn, almost in tears. ‘I have missed my luncheon!’ said the Imperial Geologist (he did not look as though he had missed many) dolefully. ‘They have prepared none for me at home, and in a restaurant I cannot eat, because my stomach is delicate: if anything is in the least greasy or underdone or overdone, one feels rising, then, the bile: and one is dyspeptic for days!’
‘Come home with me, then, Johanno,’ said Eszterhazy.
‘Gladly!’
One might ask, How far can a pullet go? but the pullet was after all intended merely as garnish to only one course of several; also a cook in Bella would sooner have suffered herself to be trampled by elephant cows rather than fail to provide a few Back-up Entrances, as they were called, in case of emergencies. A singularly greedy guest might become an Untoward Incident in a foreign pension: but not in a well-ordered house in Bella: What a compliment! God—who gives appetite—bless the man! and the order would be passed on, via an agreed-upon signal, to bring out one of the back-ups.
Going past the porte-cochère of the Great Hall, which was jammed with vehicles, Eszterhazy held up his hand and the red steam runabout darted forward from a nearby passage; almost before it had come to a stop, Schwebel, the engineer, had vaulted into the back to stoke the anthracite: Eszterhazy took the tiller. His guest, an appreciative sniff for the cedar wood-work (beeswax ‘compliments of prince Vlox’), sat beside him.
‘Who’s that?’ asked an Usher of a Doorkeeper, watching the deft work with the steering-gear.
‘He’m Doctors Eszterhazy, th’ Emperor’s wizard,’ said Doorkeeper to Usher.
‘So that’s him!—odd old bird!’ And then they both had to jump as the delegations poured out, demanding their coaches, carriages, curricles, hacks, and troikas. None, however, demanded steam runabouts.
‘It will not offend you if we enter by way of the kitchen?’ the doctor (although his doctorate was plural, he himself was singular…very singular) asked the professor.
Who answered that they might enter by way of the chimney. ‘Cannot you hear my stomach growling? Besides, it is always a pleasure to visit a well-ordered kitchen.’ Blumpkinn rang with pleasure the hand-bell given him to warn passers-by—the steamer was almost noiseless—and drivers of nervous horses.
‘A moderate number of unannounced visits help keep a kitchen well-ordered.’ Besides, with a temporary cook and a guest with a very delicate stomach, an inspection, however brief, might be a good idea: and, in a few minutes, there they were!—but what was this in the alley? a heavy country wagon—and at the door, someone whose canvas coat was speckled with feathers—someone stamping his feet and looking baffled. ‘I tells you again that Poulterer Puckelhaube has told me to bring this country-fed bird, and to git a skilling and a half for it! ‘Tain’t my fault as I’m late: the roads about the Great Chamber was filled with kerritches.’
But, like the King of Iceland’s oldest son, Malta Cook was having none. ‘You’s heard I’m only temporal here,’ she said, hands on hips, ‘and thinks to try your gammon on me!—but you’ll get no skilling and a half at this door! The country chicking has already been delivered couple hours ago, with the other firm’s compliments, and the foreign guest is eating of it now. Away with ye, and—’ She caught sight of Eszterhazy, curtseyed, gestured towards the deliveryman, her mouth open for explanation and argument.
She was allowed no time. Eszterhazy said, ‘Take the bird and pay for it, we’ll settle the matter later.—Give him a glass of ale,’ he called over his shoulder. Instantly the man’s grievance vanished. The money would, after all, go to his employer. But the beer was his ... at least for a while.
At the table, napkin tucked into his open collar, sunburned and evidently quite content, sat Newton Charles (‘New Chum’) Enderson, calmly chewing. Equally calmly, he returned the just-cleaned-off bone to its platter, on which (or, if you prefer, whereon) he had neatly laid out the skeleton. Perhaps he had always done the same, even with the cockatoo and the kangaroo. Eszterhazy stared in intense disbelief. Blumpkinn’s mouth was opening and closing like that of a barbel, or a carp. ‘Welcome aboard,’ said New Chum, looking up. ‘Sorry you’ve missed it. The journey has given me quite an appetite.’ At the end of the platter was a single, and slightly odd, feather. Malta had perhaps heard, if not more, of how to serve a pheasant.
‘My God!’ cried Blumpkinn. ‘Look! There is the centra free as far as the sacrum, and the very long tail as well as the thin coracoid, all the ribs non-unciate and thin, neither birdlike nor very reptilian, the un-birdlike caudal appendage, the separate and unfused metacarpals, the independent fingers and claws.’
‘Not bad at all,’ said Enderson, touching the napkin to his lips. ‘As I’ve told you, I don’t know one bird from another, but this is not bad. Rather like bamboo chicken—goanna, or iguana, you would call it. Though a bit far north for that…but of course it must be imported! My compliments to the chef! By the way, I understand that the man who brought it said that there weren’t any more . . . whatever that means…You know how to treat a guest well, I must say!’
Contentedly, he broke off a bit of bread and sopped at the truffled gravy. Then he looked up again. ‘Oh, and speaking of compliments,’ he said, ‘who’s Prince Vlox?’