By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased,
Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had
evidently pleased him.
"So that's all over. Madam won't be bothered with other people's
cat-nasty old servants after to-dye."
She felt a new access of alarm. "But they're not goin' away on account
o' me? Don't let 'em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can't stay
here, where everything's so different from what I'm used to."
He still smiled, his gentle old man's smile which somehow gave her
confidence.
"Madam won't sye that after a dye or two. It's new to 'er yet, of
course; but if she'll always remember that I'm 'ere, to myke
everythink as easy as easy----"
"But what are you goin' to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid----?"
Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was
saying to himself, "If Mr. Rash could only see 'er lookin' up like
this--with 'er eyes all starry--and her cheeks with them dark-red
roses--red roses like you'd rubbed with a little black...." But he
suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:
"If madam will permit me I'll tyke my measures as I've wanted to tyke
'em this long spell back."
Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the
house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs.
Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of "accommodating,"
were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming
to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be
a milliner.
Madam's remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for
madam's comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till
madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye
in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had
left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe's
direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not
been eased by men, in the European fashion, knew what it was to live.
A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves
were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were
sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were
adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful
country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women;
whereas, according to Steptoe's psychology, men should work with women
and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in
heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in
offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in
offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making
beds.
"One of the things the American people 'as got back'ards, if madam'll
allow me to sye so, is that 'ouse'old work is not fit for a white man.
When you come to that the American people ain't got a sense of the
dignity of their 'omes. They can't see their 'omes as run by anything
but slyves. All that's outside the dinin' room and the drorin' room
and the masters' bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down
thing, even when it's hunder 'is own roof. Colored men, yellow men,
may cook 'is meals and myke 'is bed; but a white man'd demean 'imself.
A poor old white man like me when 'e's no longer fit for 'ard outdoor
work ain't allowed to do nothink; when all the time there's women
workin' their fingers to the bone that 'e could be a great 'elp to,
and who 'e'd like to go to their 'elp."
This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in
America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It
was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national
prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler,
and as many strapping indoor men--some of them much better fitted for
manual labor--as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family
of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent
women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they
were women.
"And the women's mostly to blyme," he reasoned. "They suffers--nobody
knows what they suffers better nor me--just because they ain't got the
spunk to do anything _but_ suffer. They've got it all in their own
'ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don't
'ardly ever learn at all."
Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of
wisdom with the question:
"Don't none of 'em?"
Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. "None that's
been drilled a little bit before 'and. Once let woman feel as so and
so is the custom, and for 'er that custom, whether good or bad, is
there to stye. They sye that chyngin' 'er mind is a woman's privilege;
but the woman that chynged 'er mind about a custom is one I never met
yet."
She took him as seriously as he took himself.
"Don't you like women, mister--I mean, Steptoe?"
He pondered before replying. "I don't know as I could sye. I've never
'ad a chance to see much of women except in 'ousework, where they're
out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don't like none
I've ever run into there, because none of 'em never was no sport."
The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.
"No one ain't a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don't
do it cheerful like. No one ain't a sport what undertykes a job and
ain't proud of it. If a woman _will_ go into 'ousework let 'er do it
honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let 'er _be_ a servant, and
not be ashymed to sye she _is_ one. So if madam arsks me if I like 'em
I 'ave to confess I don't, because as far as I see women I mostly 'ear
'em complyne."
Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: "I shouldn't think
they'd complain if they had you to put 'em wise."
He corrected gently. "If they 'ad me to _tell_ 'em."
"If they 'ad you to _tell_ 'em," she imitated, meekly.
"Madam mustn't pick up the bad 'abit of droppin' 'er haitches," he
warned, parentally. "I'll learn 'er a lot, but that's one thing I
mustn't learn 'er. I don't do it often--Oh, once in a wye, mybe--but
that's something madam speaks right already--just like all
Americans."
Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already
she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.
"I said women as 'ad been drilled a bit. But madam's different. Madam
comes into this 'ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that'll myke it
easier for 'er and me."
"You mean that I'll not be a kicker."
Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. "Oh, madam wouldn't be a
kicker any'ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me--we
might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she'd
be--_displeased_."
She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had
better explain more fully.
"It's only the common crowd what kicks. It's only the common crowd
what uses the expression. A man might use it--I mean a real 'igh
gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh--and get awye with it--now and then--if
'e didn't myke a 'abit of it; but when a woman does it she
rubberstamps 'erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn't be a
lydy--and kick. The lyte Mrs. Allerton would never demean 'erself to
kick; she'd only show displeasure."
With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three
points as to which she had received information that morning. She must
say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she
must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her
aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only
raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a
higher standard than Steptoe's. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton
speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.
She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:
"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less
as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a
'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."
Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her
eyes.
"It's--clothes."
The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged
back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her
lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except
those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.
"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might
sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from
the ground up we must begin there."
She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.
"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."
"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and
I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the
'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."
* * * * *
Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be,
bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business
men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable.
A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly
have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to
public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.
It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a
subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as
"my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than
there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave
him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and
good-naturedly take their fun.
He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself
the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was
kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of
black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could
expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only
passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it
from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a
help.
It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find
it--far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as
to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of
Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of
access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery
of Fifth Avenue.
It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish
it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in
the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he
had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what
Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would
be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put
it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his
luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors' sheaves in
gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.
But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this
particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour.
His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the
spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt
with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their
principal themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the
endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being
given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters as were to be answered,
Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.
It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or
three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He
did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the
fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had
been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not
the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.
Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the
fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly
has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that
height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he
was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth
Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the
Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless
ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them
merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward
downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals.
Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving
spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind,
or tropic birds.
He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a
debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough
defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a
fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life
which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got
something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained,
but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."
And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act
of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust.
He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide
which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save
him a scrap of dignity--and such a sorry scrap!--would be going to the
devil by the shortest way.
He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that
seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he
had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that
would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited
to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.
Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing
something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to
be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed
fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be
different. If he got _anything_ he should not feel so wastefully
thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain
afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if
credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world
he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not--what it
was in truth--an idiotic state of nerves.
At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he
swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he
closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his,
Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had
clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's little
round. He wouldn't come in till the letters were finished, certainly
not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost
smiled at the old man's probable consternation on finding him so
before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the
high forenoon....
He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via
Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened
it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a
kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in
the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done
more quickly without its mitigation.
* * * * *
While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas
and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a
small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which
he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and
eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he
found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.
"Curse the girl!"
The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn't know where
anything was, or how anything should be done. From the simple
expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants
with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky
previous night. He simply didn't have the bones. This was not to say
that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later
in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so
obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning anyway. With
irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward
daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....
It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was
out of practice. He couldn't remember doing anything of the sort since
the days before he married Letty's mother. Even then he had never
tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out
of practice he was at a loss.
"Curse the girl!"
The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn't take him
long. He found bread, butter, milk that had turned sour, the usual
condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could
only light the confounded gas stove....
A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it
timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped
back as from an exploding cannon.
"Curse the girl!"
Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful.
Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue
buttons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which he
had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a
saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he
retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.
"Curse the girl!"
Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling
tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He
observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an
actress. His role being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care,
the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed
some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the
more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might
prove for his old age.
"Curse the girl!"
It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he had allowed more
than the necessary time for his breakfast to be ready for consumption.
Hurrying back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing as
the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon and took it in his
hand, but he didn't keep it there. Dashing it to the table, whence it
crashed upon the floor, he positively screamed.
"Curse the girl!"
He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of his fingers and
examining them to see if they were scalded. No such calamity having
occurred he took up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it
lay. Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding the usual
milk, he poured in the coffee, which became a muddy dark brown
mixture, with what appeared to be a porridge of seeds floating on the
top. One sip, which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the
beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he meant to insult.
"Curse the girl!"
The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied now by a series of
up-to-date terms of objurgation, the mere act of utterance, mental or
articulate, churned him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he
had replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the wall. It
struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a hideous calsomining which
had once been blue, and fell to the floor like a living thing knocked
insensible.
The resemblance maddened him still more. It might have been Letty,
struck down after having provoked him beyond patience. He rushed at
it. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. The
exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty,
but to those angers over his luck of last night which as "a good
loser" he hadn't been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions
he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come
off in this solitary passion of destruction.
When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty
cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his
mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty's mother. The
association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! After the
cup went the stone-china sugar bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the
plate with the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter plate
the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which merely gurgled out a splash
of milk and fell without breaking.
"Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl! I'll learn her to go
away and leave me! I'll find her and drag her back if she's in...."