You Can't Go Home Again (24 page)

“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 sides. “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.’”

“—An’ so help me God, by all the Blessed Saints, an’ by the Holy Virgin, too!” she heard Nora’s voice intoning; and, wearily, she turned to the maid again and spoke to her softly, with an almost pleading earnestness:

“Nora, for God’s sake have a little sense,” she said. “What is the use of all this swearing by the Virgin and the Saints, and getting up and going out to Mass, when all you do is come back home to swill down Mr. Jack’s whisky? Yes, and deceive the people who have been the best friends you ever had!” she cried out bitterly. Then, seeing the old mutinous look flaring again in the maid’s sullen and distempered eyes, she went on almost tearfully: “Nora, try to have a little wisdom. Is this all you’ve been able to get from life—to come in here and act this way and blow your stinking breath on me, when all we’ve ever done has been to help you?” Her voice was trembling with her pity and her sense of passionate outrage, yet her anger was more than personal. She felt that the maid had betrayed something decent and inviolable in life—a faith and integrity in human feeling that should be kept and \honoured everywhere.

“Well, ma’am,” said Nora with a toss of her black head, “as I was sayin’, if it’s me ye’re accusing’----”

“No, Nora. Enough of that.” Mrs. Jack’s voice was sad, tired, dispirited, but its tone was also firm and final. She made a little dismissing gesture with her hand. “You may go now. I don’t need anything more.”

The maid marched to the door, her head held high, her stiff back and neck eloquently expressive of outraged innocence and suppressed fury. Then she paused, her hand upon the knob, and half-turned as she delivered her parting shot.

“About Miss Edith’s dress”—she said with another toss of her head—“if it’s not lost, I guess it’ll turn up. Maybe one of the girls borrowed it, if ye know what I mean.”

With this, she closed the door behind her and was gone.

Half an hour later Mr. Frederick Jack came walking down the hall with his copy of the
Herald-Tribune
under his arm. He was feeling in very good humour. By now he had completely forgotten his momentary annoyance at the telephone call that had awakened him in the middle of the night. He rapped lightly at his wife’s door and waited. There was no answer. More faintly, listening, he rapped again.

“Are you there?” he said.

He opened the door and entered noiselessly.

She was already deeply absorbed in the first task of her day’s work. On the other side of the room, with her back to him, she was seated at a small writing-desk between the windows with a little stack of bills, business letters, and personal correspondence on her left hand, and an open cheque-book on her right. She was vigorously scrawling off a note. As he advanced towards her she put down the pen, swiftly blotted the paper, and was preparing to fold it and thrust it in an envelope when he spoke.

“Good morning,” he said in the pleasant, half-ironic tone that people use when they address someone who is not aware of their presence.

She jumped and turned round quickly.

“Oh, hello, Fritz!” she cried in her jolly voice. “How are youhah?”

He stooped in a somewhat formal fashion, planted a brief, friendly, and perfunctory kiss on her cheek, and straightened up, unconsciously shrugging his shoulders a little, and giving his sleeves and the bottom of his coat a tug to smooth out any wrinkle that might have appeared to disturb the faultless correctness of his appearance. While his wife’s quick glance took in every detail of his costume for the day—his shoes, socks, trousers, coat, and tie, together with the perfection of his tailored form and the neat gardenia in his buttonhole—her face, now bent forward and held firmly in one cupped hand in an attitude of eager attentiveness, had a puzzled and good-natured look which seemed to say: “I can see that you are laughing at me about something. What have I done now?”

Mr. Jack stood before her, feet apart and arms akimbo, regarding her with an expression of mock gravity, in which, however, his good humour and elation were apparent.

“Well, what is it?” she cried excitedly.

In answer, Mr. Jack produced the newspaper which he had been holding folded back in one hand, and tapped it with his index finger, saying:

“Have you seen this?”

“No. Who is it?”

“It’s Elliot in the
Herald-Tribune
. Like to hear it?”

“Yes. Read it. What does he say?”

Mr. Jack struck a pose, rattled the paper, frowned, cleared his throat in mock solemnity, and then began in a slightly ironic and affected tone, intended to conceal his own deep pleasure and satisfaction, to read the review.

“‘Mr. Shulberg has brought to this, his latest production, the full artillery of his distinguished gifts for suave direction. He has paced it brilliantly, timed it—word, scene, and gesture—with some of the most subtly nuanced, deftly restrained, and quietly persuasive acting that this season has yet seen. He has a gift for silence that is eloquent—oh, devoutly eloquent!—among all the loud but for the most part meaningless vociferation of the current stage. All this your diligent observer is privileged to repeat with more than customary elation. Moreover, Mr. Shulberg has revealed to us in the person of Montgomery Mortimer the finest youthful talent that this season has discovered. Finally----’”

Mr. Jack cleared his throat solemnly—“Ahem, ahem!”—flourished his arms forward and rattled the paper expressively, and stared drolly at his wife over the top of it. Then he went on:

“‘Finally, he has given us, with the distinguished aid of Miss Esther Jack, a faultless and unobtrusive
décor
which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon. In these three acts, Miss Jack contributes three of the most effective settings she has ever done for the stage. Hers is a talent that needs make obeisance to no one. She is, in fact, in the studied opinion of this humble but diligent observer, the first designer of her time.’”

Mr. Jack paused abruptly, looked at her with playful gravity, his head cocked over the edges of the paper and said: “Did you say something?”

“God!” she yelled, her happy face flushed with laughter and excitement. “Did you hear it? Vat is dees?” she said comically, making a Jewish gesture with her hands—“an ovation?—What else does he say—hah?” she asked, bending forward eagerly.

Mr. Jack proceeded:

“‘It is therefore a pity that Miss Jack’s brilliant talent should not have had better fare to feed on than was given it last evening at the Arlington. For the play itself, we must reluctantly admit, was neither----’”

“Well,” said Mr. Jack, stopping abruptly and putting down the paper, “the rest of it is you know”—he shrugged slightly—“sort of soso. Neither good nor bad. He sort of pans it.—But
say!
” he cried, with jocular indignation. “I like the nerve of that guy! Where does he get this Miss Esther Jack stuff? Where do I come in?” he said. “Don’t I get any credit at all for being your husband? You know,” he said, “I’d like to get in somewhere if it’s only a seat in the second balcony. Of course”—and now he began to speak in the impersonal manner that people often use when they are being heavily sarcastic, addressing himself to the vacant air as if some invisible auditor were there, and as if he himself were only a detached observer—“of course, he’s nothing but her husband, anyway. What is he?
Bah!
” he said scornfully and contemptuously. “Nothing but a business man who doesn’t deserve to have such a brilliant woman for his wife! What does be know about art? Can he appreciate her? Can he understand anything she does? Can he say—what is it this fellow says?” he demanded, suddenly looking at the paper with an intent stare and then reading from it again in an affected tone—“‘a faultless and unobtrusive
décor
which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon.’”

“I know,” she said with pitying contempt, as if the florid words of the reviewer aroused in her no other emotion, although the pleasure which the reviewer’s praise had given her was still legible in her face. “I know. Isn’t it pathetic? They’re all so fancy, these fellows! They make me tired!”

“‘Hers is a talent that needs make obeisance to no one,’” Mr. Jack continued. “Now that’s a good one! Could her husband think of a thing like that? No!” he cried suddenly, shaking his head with a scornful laugh and waving a plump forefinger sideways before him. “Her husband is not smart enough!” he cried. “He is not good enough! He’s nothing but a business man! He can’t appreciate her!”—and all at once, to her amazement, she saw that his eyes were shot with tears, and that the lenses of his spectacles were being covered with a film of mist.