by Thomas Wolfe
"Oh, John," one of the girls now said reproachfully, "you know Mrs. Jack is not like that! You know yourself----"
"Oh, she's all right, I reckon," said John, unwillingly as before, yet his tone had softened imperceptibly. "If all of them was like her," he began--but then the memory of the panhandler came back to him, and he went on angrily: "She's too kind-hearted for her own good! Them panhandling bums--they swarm round her like flies every time she leaves the building. I saw one the other night get a dollar out of her before she'd gone twenty feet. She's crazy to put up with it. I'm goin' to tell her so, too, when I see her!"
The old man's face was flushed with outrage at the memory. He had opened the door on the service landing, and now, as the girls stepped out, he muttered to himself again:
"The kind of people we got here oughtn't to have to put up with it...Well, then, I'll see," he said concedingly, as one of the maids unlocked the service door and went in. "I'll get the stuff up to you."
For a second or two after the inner door had closed behind the maids, the old man stood there looking at it--just a dull, blank sheet of painted metal with the apartment number on it--and his glance, had anyone seen it, would somehow have conveyed an impression of affectionate regard. Then he closed the elevator door and started down.
Henry, the doorman, was just coming up the basement stairway as the old man reached the ground floor. Uniformed, ready for his night's work, he passed the service elevator without speaking. John called to him.
"If they try to deliver any packages out front," he said, "you send 'em round here."
Henry turned and looked at the old man unsmilingly, and said curtly: "What?"
"I say," repeated John, raising his voice a trifle shrilly, for the man's habitual air of sullen harshness angered him, "if they try to make any deliveries out front, send 'em back to the service entrance."
Henry continued to look at him without speaking, and the old man added:
"The Jacks are givin' a party to-night. They asked me to get everything up in a hurry. If there are any more deliveries, send 'em back here."
"Why?" said Henry in his flat, expressionless voice, still staring at him.
The question, with its insolent suggestion of defied authority--someone's authority, his own, the management's, or the authority of "the kind of people we got here"--infuriated the old man. A wave of anger, hot and choking, welled up in him, and before he could control himself he rasped out:
"Because that's where they ought to come--that's why! Haven't you been workin' around places of this kind long enough to know how to do? Don't you know the kind of people we got here don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a package to deliver runnin' up in the front elevator all the time, mixin' in with all the people in the house?"
"Why?" said Henry with deliberate insolence. "Why don't they?"
"Because," old John shouted, his face now crimson, "if you ain't got sense enough to know that much, you ought to quit and get a job diggin' ditches somewhere! You're bein' paid to know it! That's part of your job as doorman in a house like this! If you ain't got sense enough by now to do what you're supposed to do, you'd better quit--that's why!--and give your job to somebody who knows what it's all about!"
Henry just looked at him with eyes that were as hard and emotionless as two chunks of agate. Then:
"Listen," he said in a toneless voice. "You know what's goin' to happen to you if you don't watch out? You're gettin' old, Pop, and you'd better watch your step. You're goin' to be caught in the street some day worryin' about what's goin' to happen to the people in this place if they have to ride up in the same elevator with a delivery boy. You're goin' to worry about them gettin' contaminated because they got to ride up in the same car with some guy that carries a package. And you know what's goin' to happen, to you, Pop? I'll tell you what's goin' to happen. You'll be worryin' about it so much that you ain't goin' to notice where you're goin'. And you're goin' to get hit, see?"
The voice was so unyielding in its toneless savagery that for a moment--just for a moment--the old man felt himself trembling all over. And the voice went on:
"You're goin' to get hit, Pop. And it ain't goin' to be by nothin' small or cheap. It ain't goin' to be by no Ford truck or by no taxi-cab. You're goin' to get hit by somethin' big and shiny that cost a lot of dough. You'll get hit by at least a Rolls Royce. And I hope it belongs to one of the people in this house. You'll die like any other worm, but I want you to push off knowin' that it was done expensive--by a big Rolls Royce--by one of the people in this house. I just want you to be happy, Pop."
Old John's face was purple. The veins in his forehead stood out like corded ropes. He tried to speak, but no words came. At length, all else having failed him, he managed to choke out the one retort which, in all its infinitely variable modulations, always served perfectly to convey his emotions.
"Oh yeah!" he snarled dryly, and this time the words were loaded with implacable and unforgiving hate.
"Yeah!" said Henry tonelessly, and walked off.
* * *
14. Zero Hour
Mrs. Jack came from her room a little after eight o'clock and walked along the broad hallway that traversed her big apartment from front to rear. Her guests had been invited for half-past eight, but long experience in these matters told her that the party would not be going at full swing until after nine. As she walked along the corridor at a brisk and rapid little step she felt a tense excitement, not unpleasurable, even though it was now sharpened by the tincture of an apprehensive doubt.
Would all be ready? Had she forgotten anything? Had the girls followed her instructions? Or had they slipped up somewhere? Would something now be lacking?
A wrinkled line appeared between her eyes, and unconsciously she began to slip the old ring on and off her finger with a quick movement of her small hand. It was the gesture of an alert and highly able person who had come to have an instinctive mistrust of other people less gifted than herself. There was impatience and some scorn in it, a scorn not born of arrogance or any lack of warm humanity, but one that was inclined to say a trifle sharply: "Yes, yes, I know! I understand all that. There's no need telling me that kind of thing. Let's get to the point. What can you do? What have you done? Can I depend on you to do everything that's necessary?" So, as she walked briskly down the hall, thoughts too sharp and quick for definition were darting across the surface of her mind like flicks of light upon a pool.
"I wonder if the girls remembered to do everything I told them," she was thinking. "Oh, Lord! If only Nora hasn't started drinking again!--And Janie! She's good as gold, of course, but God, she is a fool!--And Cookie! Well, she can cook, but after that she doesn't know April from July. And if you try to tell her anything she gets flustered and begins to gargle German at you. Then it's worse than if you'd never spoken to her at all.--As for May--well, all you can do is to hope and pray." The line between her troubled eyes deepened, and the ring slipped on and off her finger more rapidly than ever. "You'd think they'd realise how well off they are, and what a good life they lead here! You'd think they'd try to show it!" she thought indignantly. But almost instantly she was touched with a feeling of tender commiseration, and her mind veered back into its more usual channel: "Oh, well, poor things! I suppose they do the best they can. All you can do is to reconcile yourself to it--and realise that the only way you can get anything done right is to do it yourself."
By this time she had reached the entrance to the living-room and was looking quickly about, assuring herself by a moment's swift inspection that everything was in its proper place. Her examination pleased her. The worried expression about her eyes began to disappear. She slipped the ring back on her hand and let it stay there, and her face began to take on the satisfied look of a child when it regards in silence some object of its love and self-creation and finds it good.
The big room was ready for the party. It was just quietly the way she always liked to have it. The room was so nobly proportioned as to be almo
st regal, and yet it was so subtly toned by the labour of her faultless taste that whatever forbidding coldness its essential grandeur may have had was utterly subdued. To a stranger this living-room would have seemed not only homelike in its comfortable simplicity, but even, on closer inspection, a trifle shabby. Almost everything in it was somewhat worn. The coverings of some of the chairs and couches had become in places threadbare. The carpet that covered the floor with its pattern of old, faded green showed long use without apology. An antique gate-legged table sagged a little under the weight of its pleasant shaded lamp and its stacks of books and magazines. Upon the mantel, a creamy slab of marble, itself a little stained and worn, was spread a green and faded strip of Chinese silk, and on top of it was a lovely little figure in green jade, its carved fingers lifted in a Chinese attitude of compassionating mercy. Over the mantel hung a portrait of herself in her young loveliness at twenty, which a painter now dead and famous had made long ago.
On three sides of the room, bookshelves extended a third of the way up the walls, and they were crowded with friendly volumes whose backs bore the markings of warm human hands. Obviously they had been read and read again. The stiff sets of tooled and costly bindings that often ornament the libraries of the rich with unread awe were lacking here. Nor was there any evidence of the greedy and revolting mania of the professional collector. If there were first editions on these utilitarian shelves, they were here because their owner had bought them when they were published, and bought them to be read.
The crackling pine logs on the great marble hearth cast their radiance warmly on the covers of these worn books, and Mrs. Jack had a sense of peace and comfort as she looked at the rich and homely compact of their colours. She saw her favourite novels and histories, plays, poems, and biographies, and the great books of decoration and design, of painting, drawing, and architecture, which she had assembled in a crowded lifetime of work, travel, and living. Indeed, all these objects, these chairs and tables, these jades and silks, all the drawings and paintings, as well as the books, had been brought together at different times and places and fused into a miracle of harmony by the instinctive touch of this woman's hand. It is no wonder, therefore, that her face softened and took on an added glow of loveliness as she looked at her fine room. The like of it, as she well knew, could nowhere else be found.
"Ah, here it is," she thought. "It is living like a part of me. And God! How beautiful it is!" she thought. "How warm--how true! It's not like a rented place--not just another room in an apartment. No"--she glanced down the spacious width of the long hall--"if it weren't for the elevator there, you'd think it was some grand old house.' I don't know--but--" a little furrow, this time of reflectiveness and effort, came between her eyes as she tried to shape her meaning--"there's something sort of grand--and simple--about it all."
And indeed there was. The amount of simplicity that could be purchased even in, those times for a yearly rental of fifteen thousand dollars was quite considerable. As if this very thought had found an echo in her mind, she went on:
"I mean when you compare it with some of these places that you see nowadays--some of the God-awful places where all those rich people live. There's simply no comparison! I don't care how rich they are, there's--there's just something here that money cannot buy."
As her mind phrased the accusing words about "the God-awful places where all those rich people live," her nostrils twitched and her face took on an expression of sharp scorn. For Mrs. Jack had always been contemptuous of wealth. Though she was the wife of a rich man and had not known for years the economic necessity of work, yet it was one of her unshakable convictions that she and her family could not possibly be described as "rich". "Oh, not really," she would say. "Not the way people are who really are." And she would look for confirmation, not at the hundred and thirty million people there impossibly below her in the world's hard groove, but at the fabulous ten thousand who were above her on the moneyed heights, and who, by the comparison, were "really rich".
Besides, she was "a worker". She had always been "a worker". One look at the strength, the grace, the swiftness of those small, sure hands were enough to tell the story of their owner's life, which had always been a life of work. From that accomplishment stemmed deep pride and the fundamental integrity of her soul. She had needed the benefit of no man's purse, the succour of no man's shielding strength. "Is not my help within me?" Well, hers was. She had made her own way. She had supported herself. She had created beautiful and enduring things. She had never known the meaning of laziness. Therefore it is no wonder that she never thought of herself as being "rich". She was a worker; she had worked.
But now, satisfied with her inspection of the big room, she turned quickly to investigate other things. The living room gave on the dining-room through glass doors, which were closed and curtained filmily. Mrs. Jack moved towards them and threw them open. Then she stopped short, and one hand flew to her bosom. She gasped out an involuntary little "Oh!" of wonder and delight. It was too beautiful! It was quite too beautiful! But it was just the way she expected it to look--the way it looked for all of her parties. None the less, every time she saw it, it was like a grand and new discovery.
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 legendry. 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.