By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
“EVEN our digestion is governed by angels!” said William Blake—one of those picturesque phrases with which he was wont to flash on us the mystery that abides eternally just under the surface of the familiar. I have often recalled the phrase as I sat at dinner with the Sphinx; and not, of course, in any trivial, punning spirit, but seriously in regard to that sensitive mood of harmony, and of keen exhilarating intimacy, which seems to come over us when we thus sit at dinner together as it never comes at any other time.
“Why is it,” I asked her recently, after our old friendly waiter had welcomed us with the smile that we really believe he keeps just for us, and had seen us comfortably settled in our own quiet corner, “why is it that I always feel happier with you at dinner than at any other time?”
“You have the dinner as well,” answered the Sphinx, laughing, “on other occasions you have only—me.”
“Admitting the profundity of your explanation,” I rejoined, “I think there must be a still deeper one—but what it is I cannot say. For instance, we are happy together when we take a walk through the woods, or sit through the afternoon in the old garden, or read a book together. How happy we have been on the sea together, with no one but we two under the blue sky. Yet I have never felt so near to you, never so at harmony with you, as when we have sat at this table and looked into each other’s eyes over our wineglasses. Why is it?”
“Just what I say! Very evidently, by your own showing—it is dinner that makes the difference. Not in the woods you say, not in the garden, not with books, not on the sea—not anywhere but at dinner. Ergo, the only possible explanation is—dinner.”
“I am inclined to think you are right,” said I, “if only you will give the term dinner an inclusive significance, and not ascribe the whole miracle to the cooking.”
“The cooking has much to do with it, I am convinced,” persisted the Sphinx, looking more radiantly spiritual than I ever saw her look before. “It is so good that its part in the process passes to some extent unnoticed—though I trust the excellence of these mushrooms is not lost upon you. Were the chef to be changed for the worse, I’m not so sure you would find that harmony you speak of.”
“Then I have owed more to the chef than I have ever realised,” said I, raising my glass to her, and making that salute to her eyes which, however gay our mood, has always a curiously grave, almost sacramental, quality. “Still,” I continued presently, “I am not entirely convinced. Your argument has a negative force, I admit. Bad cooking, like any other extraneous annoyance, might, of course, distract us a little, and so superficially interrupt our harmony; but it is one thing to admit that, and another to say that it follows because bad cooking might destroy our harmony, good cooking therefore makes it. No, I am convinced that the miracle comes of a conflux of pleasant influences, good food and wine being amongst them, which never entirely meet together except at the dinner-table. First of all, the day is over. Its work is behind us. Its anxiety is locked up for the day. We meet the good hour in an attitude of gayety, and we meet it in an atmosphere of other gay people who have come to meet it in the same spirit. Then we meet it refreshed by the lustration of the evening toilet, and arrayed with regard to the pleasure of the eyes we specially aim to please….”
“Are they pleased to-night?” interrupted the Sphinx.
“Are they?” I rejoined. Then I continued my grave discourse: “As I said, we are all free and gay and beautiful and our faces set on pleasure. Then there is the music, the scarce-noted scents and the delicate shapes and colours of flowers, the prismatic glitter of glass, and the exhilarating snowiness of the table-linen….”
“Dave’s beaming smile,” added the Sphinx, referring to our waiter.
“Yes, calling up immediately all the happy dinners we have had at his table. If we were to meet him elsewhere in years to come, how his face would flash these evenings back to us! I believe I could count up the times we have been here by the wrinkles of kindness on his face.”
“I wonder if he really cares about us,” said the Sphinx, wistfully watching Dave as he expertly dismembered a roast duck at a side table. Presently the excellence of the duck turned her thoughts back again to our argument.
“Say what you will, with your conflux of pleasant influences,” she resumed, “roast duck is the real explanation.”
“Who would take you for such a materialist,” said I, “to look at you there, so radiantly delicate, so shiningly spirituelle?—”
“Roast duck,” laughed the Sphinx, “my spirituelle expression comes entirely of roast duck, believe me.”
I could almost believe her in that moment.
“Materialist yourself!” she retorted presently. “You will force me to turn metaphysician and expound to you the mysticism of gastronomy.”
“The metaphysics of duck!” I interjected.
“Precisely.”
“Proceed, then,” said I, and was silent.
“Well,” she began, “I am perfectly serious. It is you that are the materialist, not I, for the reason that the familiarity of the process of eating blinds you to its essentially mysterious nature; that process of transmutation of gastronomic alchemy, by which food is changed into genius and beauty, and the kitchen seen to be the power-house of the soul. After all, my gastronomic theory of the soul is merely one side of the same mystery which we see illustrated every day on another side by the doctor and the chemist. When we take a dose of medicine to tonic our nerves, we don’t laugh sceptically, or even give a thought to the wonder of its operation. Yet surely it is mystery itself that distillations from plants, and tinctures drawn from stones, should hold for us the keys of life and death, and exalt or depress our immortal spirits. Have you ever thought on the marvel that an almost infinitesimal quantity of certain juices distilled from some innocent-faced meadow-flower, a mere dewdrop of harmless-looking liquid, can shatter our life out of us like a charge of dynamite?…”
“A little more duck, m’m?” intervened Dave.
“The dynamics of duck,” I whispered gently. “Go on.”
“Well,” continued the Sphinx, laughing bravely, “the operation of food is exactly the same in its nature as the operation of medicines and poisons. For some unexplained reason, medicines and poisons influence us in certain ways. We don’t know how or why, we only know that they do. The influence of wine again is a part of the same mysterious process. Why should this Rudesheimer affect us differently from this water? Any one unfamiliar with the difference between wine and water would say it was absurd. But it is true for all that—and if you admit the influence of wine, and the influence of various other foreign substances, animal, vegetable and mineral, on the human organism, in the form of medicines, stimulants, poisons and such like, you cannot logically deny the possible influence, say, of duck. Therefore, I contend once more that the harmony between us of which you spoke is a music first composed in the kitchen, transferred to notation on the menu, and finally performed by us in a skillful duet of digestion….”
“Again,” added the Sphinx hastily, as I was preparing to make some comment;
“Again, you know that the intimate connection between supper and dreams is a scientific fact. If supper produces night-dreams, why shouldn’t lunch and dinner produce daydreams!”
“I surrender unconditionally to that,” I laughed, “you have won. We owe it all to the chef. We are but notes in his music—‘helpless pieces of the game he plays!’”
“A little more duck, sir?” intervened Dave, once more.
“Yes, Dave, I will,” said I, with emphasis.