by Thomas Wolfe
No--no escape, except for her, the maid was thinking bitterly, with a dull feeling of inarticulate outrage, and for her, for her, there was never anything but triumph. For her the years brought nothing but a constantly growing success. And why? Why?
It was here, upon this question, that her spirit halted like a wild beast baffled by a sheer and solid blank of wall. Had they not both breathed the same air, eaten the same food, been clothed by the same garments, and sheltered by the same roof? Had she not had as much--and as good--of everything as her mistress? Yes--if anything she had had the better of it, for she would not drive herself from morning to night, she thought with contemptuous bitterness, the way her mistress did.
Yet here she stood, baffled and confused, glowering sullenly into the shining face of the other woman's glorious success--and she saw it, she knew it, she felt its outrage, but she had no word to voice her sense of an intolerable wrong. All she knew was that she had been stiffened and thickened by the same years that had given the other woman added grace and suppleness, that her skin had been dried and sallowed by the same lights and weathers that had added lustre to the radiant beauty of the other, and that even now her spirit was soured by her knowledge of ruin and defeat while in the other woman there coursed for ever an exquisite music of power and control, of health and joy.
Yes, she saw it plainly enough. The comparison was cruelly and terribly true, past the last atom of hope and disbelief. And as she stood there before her mistress with the weary distemper in her eyes, enforcing by a stern compulsion the qualities of obedience and respect into her voice, she saw, too, that the other woman read the secret of her envy and frustration, and that she pitied her because of it. And for this Nora's soul was filled with hatred, because pity seemed to her the final and intolerable indignity.
In fact, although the kind and jolly look on Mrs. Jack's lovely face had not changed a bit since she had greeted the maid, her eye had observed instantly all the signs of the unwholesome fury that was raging in the woman, and with a strong emotion of pity, wonder, and regret she was thinking:
"She's been at it again! This is the third time in a week that she's been drinking. I wonder what it is--I wonder what it is that happens to that kind of person."
Mrs. Jack did not know clearly what she meant by "that kind of person", but she felt momentarily the detached curiosity that a powerful, rich, and decisive character may feel when he pauses for a moment from the brilliant exercise of a talent that has crowned his life with triumphant ease and success almost every step of the way, and notes suddenly, and with surprise, that most of the other people in the world are fumbling blindly and wretchedly about, eking out from day to day the flabby substance of grey lives. She realised with regret that such people are so utterly lacking in any individual distinction that each seems to be a small particle of some immense and vicious life-stuff rather than a living creature who is able to feel and to inspire love, beauty, joy, passion, pain, and death. With a sense of sudden discovery the mistress was feeling this as she looked at the servant who had lived with her familiarly for almost twenty years, and now for the first time she reflected on the kind of life the other woman might have had.
"What is it?" she kept thinking. "What's gone wrong with her? She never used to be this way. It has all happened within the last year. And Nora used to be so pretty, too!" she thought, startled by the memory. "Why, when she first came to us she was really a very handsome girl. Isn't it a shame," she thought indignantly, "that she should let herself go to seed like this--a girl who's had the chances that she's had! I wonder why she never married. She used to have half a dozen of those big policemen on the string, and now there's only one who still comes faithfully. They were all mad about her, and she could have had her pick of them!"
All at once, as she was looking at the servant with kindly interest, the woman's breath, foul with a stale whisky stench, was blown upon her, and she got suddenly a rank body smell, strong, hairy, female, and unwashed. She frowned with revulsion, and her face began to burn with a glow of shame, embarrassment, and acute distaste.
"God, but she stinks!" she thought, with a feeling of horror and disgust. "You could cut the smell round her with an axe! The nasty things!" she thought, now including all the servants in her indictment. "I'll bet they never wash--and here they are all day long with nothing to do, and they could at least keep clean! My God! You'd think these people would be so glad to be here in this lovely place with the fine life we've made for them that they would be a little proud of it and try to show that they appreciate it! But no! They're just not good enough!" she thought scornfully, and for a moment her fine mouth was disfigured at one corner by an ugly expression.
It was an expression which had in it not only contempt and scorn, but also something almost racial--a quality of arrogance that was too bold and naked, as if it were eager to assert its own superiority. This ugly look rested only for a second, and almost imperceptibly, about the edges of her mouth, and it did not sit well on her lovely face. Then it was gone. But the maid had seen it, and that swift look, with all its implications, had stung and whipped her tortured spirit to a frenzy.
"Oh, yes, me fine lady!" she was thinking. "It's too good fer the likes of us ye are, ain't it? Oh me, yes, an' we're very grand, ain't we? What wit' our fine clothes an' our evenin' gowns an' our forty pairs of hand-made shoes! Jesus, now! Ye'd think she was some kind of centipede to see the different pairs of shoes she's got! An' our silk petticoats an' step-ins that we have made in Paris, now! Yes! That makes us very fine, don't it? It's not as if we ever did a little private monkey-business on the side, like ordinary people, is it? Oh, me, no! We are gathered together wit' a friend fer a little elegant an' high-class entertainment durin' the course of the evenin'! But if it's some poor girl wit'out an extra pair of drawers to her name, it's different, now! It's: 'Oh! you nasty thing! I'm disgusted wit' you!'...Yes! An' there's many a fine lady livin' on Park Avenoo right now who's no better, if the truth was told! That I know! So just take care, me lady, not to give yerself too many airs!" she thought with rancorous triumph...
"Ah! if I told all that I know! 'Nora,' she says, 'if anyone calls when I'm not here, I wish ye'd take the message yerself. Mr. Jack don't like to be disturbed.'...Jesus! From what I've seen there's none of 'em that likes to be disturbed. It's love and let love wit' 'em, no questions ast an' the divil take the hindmost, so long as ye do it in yer leisure hours. But if ye're twenty minutes late fer dinner, it's where the hell have ye been, an' what's to become of us when ye neglect yer family in this way?...Sure," she thought, warming with a flush of humour and a more tolerant and liberal spirit, "it's a queer world, ain't it? An' these are the queerest of the lot! Thank God I was brought up like a Christian in the Holy Church, an' still have grace enough to go to Mass when I have sinned! But then----"
As often happens with people of strong but disordered feelings, she was already sorry for her flare of ugly temper, and her affections were now running warmly in another direction:
"But then, God knows, there's not a better-hearted sort of people in the world! There's no one I'd rather work fer than Mrs. Jack. They'll give ye everything they have if they like ye. I've been here twenty years next April, an' in all that time no one has ever been turned away from the door who needed food. Sure, there's far worse that go to Mass seven days a week--yes, an' would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes if they got the chance! It's a good home we've been given here--as I keep tellin' all the rest of 'em," she thought with virtuous content, "an' Nora Fogarty's not the one to turn an' bite the hand that's feedin' her--no matter what the rest of 'em may do!"
All this had passed in the minds and hearts of the two women with the instancy of thought. Meanwhile, the maid, having set the tray down on the little table by the bed, had gone to the windows, lowered them, raised the blinds to admit more light, slightly adjusted the curtains, and was now in the bathroom drawing the water in the tub, an activity signalised at first by the rush of tumbling w
aters, and later by a sound more quiet and sustained as she reduced the flow and tempered the boiling fluid to a moderate heat.
While this was going on, Mrs. Jack had seated herself on the edge of her bed, crossed her legs jauntily, poured out a cup of black steaming coffee from the tall silver pot, and opened the newspaper which lay folded on the tray. And now, as she drank her coffee and stared with blank, unseeing eyes at the print before her, there was a perplexed frown on her face, and she was slipping one finger in and out of a curious and ancient ring which she wore on her right hand. It was a habit which she performed unconsciously, and it always indicated a state of impatience and nervousness, or the troubled reflection of a mind that was rapidly collecting itself for a decisive action. So, now, her first emotions of pity, curiosity, and regret having passed, the practical necessity of doing something about Nora was pressing at her.
"That's where Fritz's liquor has been going," she thought. "He's been furious about it...She's got to stop it. If she keeps on at this rate, she'll be no good for anything in another month or two...God! I could kill her for being such a fool!" she thought. "What gets into these people, anyway?" Her small and lovely face now red with anger, the space between her troubled eyes cleft deeply by a frown, she determined to speak plainly and sternly to the maid without any more delay.
This decision being made, she was conscious instantly of a sense of great relief and a feeling almost of happiness, for indecision was alien to the temper of her soul. The knowledge of the maid's delinquency had been nagging at her conscience for some time, and now she wondered why she had ever hesitated. Yet, when the maid came back into the room again and paused before going out, as if waiting for further orders, and looked at her with a glance that now seemed affectionate and warm, Mrs. Jack felt acute embarrassment and regret as she began to speak, and, to her surprise, she found herself beginning in a hesitant and almost apologetic tone.
"Oh, Nora!" she said somewhat excitedly, slipping the ring rapidly on and off her finger. "There's something I want to talk to you about."
"Yes, Mrs. Jack," Nora answered humbly, and waited respectfully. "It's something Miss Edith wanted me to ask you," she went on quickly, somewhat timidly, discovering to her amazement that she was beginning her reproof quite differently from the way she had intended.
Nora waited in an attitude of studious and submissive attention.
"I wonder if you or any of the other girls remember seeing a dress Miss Edith had," she said, and went on quickly--"one of those dresses she brought back last year from Paris. It had a funny grey-green kind of colour and she used to wear it in the morning when she went to business. Do you remember--hah?" she said sharply.
"Yes, ma'am," said Nora with a solemn, wondering air. "I've seen it, Mrs. Jack."
"Well, Nora, she can't find it. It's gone."
"Gone?" said Nora, staring at her with a stupid and astonished look.
But even as the servant repeated the word, a furtive smile played round her mouth, betraying her sullen humour, and a look of sly triumph came in her eyes. Mrs. Jack read the signs instantly:
"Yes! She knows where it is!" she thought. "Of course she knows! One of them has taken it! It's perfectly disgraceful, and I'm not going to stand it any longer!"--and a wave of indignation, hot and choking, boiled up in her. "Yes, gone! It's gone, I tell you!" she said angrily to the staring maid. "What's become of it? Where do you think it's gone to?" she asked bluntly.
"I don't know, Mrs. Jack," Nora answered in a slow, wondering tone. "Miss Edith must have lost it."
"Lost it! Oh, Nora, don't be stupid!" she cried furiously. "How could she lose it? She's been nowhere. She's been here all the time. And the dress was here, too, hanging in her closet, up to a week ago! How can you lose a dress?" she cried impatiently. "Is it just going to crawl off your back and walk away from you when you're not looking?" she said sarcastically. "You know she didn't lose it! Someone's taken it!"
"Yes, ma'am," Nora said with dutiful acquiescence. "That's what I think, too. Someone must have sneaked in here when all of yez was out an' taken it. Ah, I tell ye," she remarked with a regretful movement of the head, "it's got so nowadays ye never know who to trust and who not to," she observed sententiously. "A friend of mine who works fer some big people up at Rye was tellin' me just the other day about a man that came there wit' some kind of a floor-mop he had to sell--ast to try it out an' show 'em how it worked upon their floors, ye know, an' a finer, cleaner-lookin' boy, she says, ye wouldn't see again in yer whole lifetime. 'An' my God! she says--I'm tellin' ye just the way she told it to me, Mrs. Jack--'I couldn't believe me own ears when they told me later what he'd done! If he'd been me own brother I couldn't have been more surprised!' she says.--Well, it just goes to show ye that----"
"Oh, Nora, for heaven's sake!" Mrs. Jack cried with an angry and impatient gesture. "Don't talk such rot to me! Who would come in here without your knowing it? You girls are here all day long, there's only the elevator and the service entrance, and you see everyone who comes in! And besides, if anyone ever took the trouble to break in, you know he wouldn't stop with just one dress. He'd be after money or jewellery or something valuable that he could sell."
"Well, now, I tell ye," Nora said, "that man was here last week to fix the refrigerator. I says to May at the time: 'I don't like the look of him,' I says. 'There's somethin' in his face that I don't like. Keep yer eye on him,' I says, 'because----'"
"Nora!"
At the sharp warning in her mistress's voice the maid stopped suddenly, looked quickly at her, and then was silent, with a dull flush of shame and truculence upon her face. Mrs. Jack stared back at her with a look of burning indignation, then she burst out with open, blazing anger.
"Look here!" Mrs. Jack cried furiously. "I think it's a dirty shame the way you girls are acting! We've been good to you! Nora," and now her voice grew gentler with pity, "there are no girls in this town who've been better treated than you have."
"Don't I know it, Mrs. Jack," Nora answered in a lilting and earnest tone, but her eyes were sullenly hostile and resentful. "Haven't I always said the same? Wasn't I sayin' the same thing meself to Janie just the other day? 'Sure,' I says, 'but we're the lucky ones! There's no one in the world I'd rather work fer than Mrs. Jack. Twenty years,' I says, 'I've been here, an' in all that time,' I says, 'I've never heard a cross word from her. They're the best people in the world,' I says, 'an' any girl that gets a job wit' 'em is lucky!' Sure, don't I know all of ye"--she cried richly--"Mr. Jack an' Miss Edith an' Miss Alma? Wouldn't I get down on me knees right now an' scrub me fingers to the bone if it would help ye any?"
"Who's asking you to scrub your fingers to the bone?" Mrs. Jack cried impatiently. "Lord, Nora, you girls have it pretty soft. There's mighty little scrubbing that you've had to do!" she said. "It's the rest of us who scrub!" she cried. "We go out of here every morning--six days in the week--and work like hell----"
"Don't I know it, Mrs. Jack?" Nora broke in. "Wasn't I sayin' to May just the other day----"
"Oh, damn what you said to May!" For a brief moment Mrs. Jack looked at the servant with a straight, burning face. Then she spoke more quietly to her. "Nora, listen to me," she said. "We've always given you girls everything you ever asked for. You've had the best wages anyone can get for what you do. And you've lived here with us just the same as the rest of us, for you know very well that----"
"Sure," Nora interrupted in a richly sentimental tone. "It hasn't been like I was workin' here at all! Ye couldn't have treated me any better if I'd been one of the family!"
"Oh, one of the family my eye!" Mrs. Jack said impatiently. "Don't make me laugh! There's no one in the family--unless maybe it's my daughter, Alma--who doesn't do more in a day than you girls do in a week! You've lived the life of Riley...here! The life of Riley!" she repeated, almost comically, and then she sat looking at the servant for a moment, a formidable little dynamo trembling with her indignation, slowly clenching and unclenching her small hands at her sid
es. "Good heavens, Nora!" she burst out in a furious tone. "It's not as if we ever begrudged you anything! We've never denied you anything you asked for! It's not the value of the dress! You know very well that Miss Edith would have given it to any one of you if you had gone to her and asked her for it! But--oh, it's intolerable!--intolerable!" she exclaimed suddenly in uncontrollable anger--"that you should have no more sense or decency than to do a thing like that to people who have always been your friends!"
"Sure, an' do ye think I'd be the one who'd do a thing like that?" cried Nora in a trembling voice. "Is it me ye're accusin', Mrs. Jack, when I've lived here wit' yez all this time? They could take me right hand"--in her rush of feeling she held the member up--"an' chop it from me arm before I'd take a button that belonged to one of yez. An' that's God's truth," she added solemnly. "I swear it to ye as I hope to live an' be forgiven fer me sins!" she declared more passionately as her mistress started to speak. "I never took a pin or penny that belonged to any one of yez--an' so help me God, that's true! An' yes! I'll swear it to ye be everything that's holy!" she now cried, tranced in a kind of ecstasy of sacred vows. "By the soul an' spirit of me blessed mother who is dead----"
"Ah, Nora!" Mrs. Jack said pityingly, shaking her head and turning away, and, in spite of her indignation, breaking into a short laugh at the extravagance of the servant's oaths. And she thought with a bitter, scornful humour: "God! You can't talk to her! She'll swear a thousand oaths and think that makes everything all right! Yes! and will drink Fritz's whisky and go to Mass if she has to crawl to get there--and cross herself with holy water--and listen to the priest say words she cannot understand--and come out glorified--to act like this when she knows that one of the girl's is taking things that don't belong to her! What strange and magic things these oaths and ceremonies are!" she thought. "They give a kind of life to people who have none of their own. They make a kind of truth for people who have found none for themselves. Love, beauty, everlasting truth, salvation--all that we hope and suffer for on earth is in them for these people. Everything that the rest of us have to get with our blood and labour, and by the anguish of our souls, is miraculously accomplished for them, somehow," she thought ironically, "if they can only swear to it 'by the soul an' spirit of me blessed mother who is dead.'"