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 almost 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 legendary. 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.
“You like him, yes?” said Cook. “You think he is nice?”
“Oh, Cook!” cried Mrs. Jack in a tone of such childlike earnestness that Cook smiled this time a little more broadly than before. “It is the most beautiful— the most wonderful! —” She turned away with a comical shrug of despair as if words failed her.
Cook laughed gutturally with satisfaction, and Nora, smiling, said:
“Yes, Mrs. Jack, that it is! It’s just what I was after tellin’ her meself.”
Mrs. Jack glanced swiftly at Nora and saw with relief that she was clean and plain and sober. Thank heaven she had pulled herself together! She hadn’t taken another drink since morning — that was easy to see. Drink worked on her like poison, and you could tell the moment that she’d had a single one.
Janie and May, passing back and forth between the kitchen and the maid’s sitting-room in their trim, crisp uniforms and with their smiling pink faces, were really awfully pretty. Everything had turned out perfectly, better than she could possibly have expected. Nothing had been forgotten. Everything was in readiness. It ought to be a glorious party.
At this moment the buzzer sounded sharply. Mrs. Jack looked startled and said quickly:
“The door-bell rang, Janie.” Then, almost to herself: “Now who do you suppose —?”
“Yes’m,” said Janie, coming to the door of the maids’ sitting-room. “I’ll go, Mrs. Jack.”
“Yes, you’d better, Janie. I wonder who —” she cast a puzzled look up at the clock on the wall, and then at the little shell of platinum on her wrist. “It’s only eight-fifteen! I can’t think any of them would be this early. Oh!”— as illumination came —“I think, perhaps, it’s Mr. Logan. If it is, Janie, show him in. I’ll be right out.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jack,” said Janie, and departed.
And Mrs. Jack, after another quick look about the kitchen, another smile of thanks and approbation for Cookie and her arts, followed her.
It was Mr. Logan. Mrs. Jack encountered him in the entrance hall where he had just paused to set down two enormous black suitcases, each of which, from the bulging look of them, carried enough weight to strain strong muscles. Mr. Logan’s own appearance confirmed this impression. He had seized the biceps of one muscular arm with the fingers of his other hand, and with a rueful look upon his face was engaged in flexing the aching member up and down. As Mrs. Jack approached he turned, a thickset, rather burly-looking young man of about thirty, with bushy eyebrows of a reddish cast, a round and heavy face smudged ruddily with the shaven grain of his beard, a low, corrugated forehead, and a bald head gleaming with perspiration, which he proceeded to mop with his handkerchief.
“Gosh!” said Mr. Piggy Logan, for by this affectionate title was he known to his more intimate acquaintance. “Gosh!”— the expletive came out again, somewhat windy with relief. At the same time he released his aching arm and offered his hostess a muscular and stubby hand, covered thickly on the back up to the very fingernails with large freckles.
“You must be simply dead!” cried Mrs. Jack. “Why didn’t you let me know you had so much to carry? I’d have sent a chauffeur. He could have handled everything for you.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” said Piggy Logan. “I always manage everything myself. You see, I carry all of it right here — my whole equipment.” He indicated the two ponderous cases. “That’s it,” he said, “everything I use — the whole show. So naturally,” he smiled at her quickly and quite boyishly, “I don’t like to take any chances. It’s all I’ve got. If anything went wrong — well, I’d just rather do it myself and then I know where I am.”
“I know,” said Mrs. Jack, nodding her head with quick understanding. “You simply can’t depend on others. If anything went wrong — and after all the years you must have put in making them! People who’ve seen it say it’s simply marvellous,” she went on. “Everyone is so thrilled to know you’re going to be here. We’ve heard so much about it — really all you hear around New York these days is ——”
“Now —” said Mr. Logan abruptly, in a manner that was still courteous but that indicated he was no longer paying any attention to her. He had become all business, and now he walked over to the entrance of the living-room and was looking all about with thoughtful speculation. “I suppose it’s going to be in here, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes — that is, if you like it here. If you prefer, we’ll use another room, but this is the largest one we have.”
“No, thank you,” crisply, absently. “This is quite all right. This will do very nicely . . . Hm!” meditatively, as he pressed his full lower lip between two freckled fingers. “Best place, I should think, would be over there,” he indicated the opposite wall, “facing the door here, the people all round on the other three sides . . . Hm! Yes . . . Just about the centre there, I should think, posters on the bookshelves . . . We can clear all this stuff away, of course,” he make a quick but expansive gesture with his hand which seemed to dispose of a large part of the furnishings. “Yes! That ought to do it very well! . . . Now, if you don’t mind,” he turned to her rather peremptorily and said: “I’ll have to change to costume. If you have a room —&mdas............