The Root of His Evil

  When he came out he lit a cigarette, inhaled it nervously three or four times, then squashed it out and looked at me. “May I make a request?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well—there are certain little decencies around an apartment I like to observe. I realize that women have their own ways of doing things. Just the same—damn it, this is what I’m trying to say: do you mind in the future not using the bathroom for a laundry?”

  I got up and went into the bathroom. It was the worst mess I had ever seen in my life, even worse than our bathroom at the Hutton used to be on the infrequent occasions when Lula had decided that her things were too dirty to wear any more and that she had to wash them. She had tied two or three strings across the room and they were full of stockings, brassieres, and everything else imaginable. The beautiful porcelain hand-basin was full of rings, dirt and soap where she hadn’t washed it out properly after she got done, and even the bathtub was draped with more of her things drying, such as girdles. And in addition to that, you could hardly breathe for the horrible stench of laundry drying.

  I jerked down the strings, gathered everything up into one armful and went in to where she was lying in bed smoking a cigarette. I dumped the whole wet pile over her head, turned on my heel and walked out. Then I went back in the living room.

  I sat down, closed my eyes and tried to begin. But all I could say was: “They weren’t my things.”

  “Then whose were they?”

  “...Lula’s.”

  “Who is Lula?”

  “The maid at the cocktail party.”

  I think I have told you that Grant is very heavily sunburned and under that there is usually a touch of his mother’s high color. As he looked at me and realized the implication of what I had said I saw every bit of the color slowly leave his face until it was like gray chalk. “...You mean she’s here?”

  “She got fired. She—had no place to stay. I took her in.”

  “I—don’t want her here.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then what did you let her in for?”

  “I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “She would have done the same for me.”

  “But good God, we can’t have her here. Why—I won’t have it! I—”

  “I will have it.”

  “You—? You’ll have it?”

  “I invited her in. It’s my home.”

  Afterwards I liked to remember that Grant did not get excited when I told him that or say that it was his home and I had only recently been brought into it, or anything like that. In these trying days Grant constantly seemed like a weak, spineless creature and helpless in the hands of his mother for reasons that he could not at that time help. But meanness was never a part of him. There was a generosity in him that I could always count on and this was one reason why, even when I had the most contempt for him, some little part of me was always proud of him and confident that he would never strike at me in some unfair way.

  “I thought it was our home.”

  That touched me and I started to cry. He bounded over, put his arms around me and pulled me close to him. “What have you got that bum here for, Carrie? We can’t have her come between us! To hell with her! We—”

  I pushed him away and stood up. More than anything I wanted to be in his arms and getting myself clear left me weak and trembling. But I drove myself to say what I had to say. “Grant!”

  “Yes, Carrie, what is it?”

  “That girl has to stay here.”

  “All right, Carrie. I don’t get it, it seems to me a little money would dispose of her case a whole lot better, but if you say she stays she stays. But—keep her out of sight, will you? I don’t want to see her. I—”

  “I will not keep her out of sight.”

  “I warn you, Carrie, you had better keep her away from me or I won’t be responsible for what I—”

  “You are going to accept her.”

  “That—servant girl?”

  “That servant girl is going to live with us until she can find some other place, she is going to eat with us—”

  “With you. You can count me out.”

  “With us!”

  I fairly screamed it. Understand, I wasn’t saying exactly what I meant. Because by this time I had made up my mind that as soon as he accepted Lula, Lula was going out the door as fast as her legs would carry her, and her wet wash along with her. But I was not going to tell him this until I had gained my point.

  When I yelled at him he lit another cigarette, sat down and waited a few moments, evidently to regain some sort of calm. Then he looked at me, smiled in what was meant to be a friendly way, and said: “There’s something back of this, Carrie. All right—here I am. I’m acting reasonably, I hope. I’m not trying to stir up a fight. Now will you tell me what it is? In words of one syllable, so I understand it all?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then, shoot.”

  “Grant, I’m calm too—if you’ll overlook that little outbreak just now—and I’m not trying to stir up a fight either. This is what lies back of it. You think you’re objecting to Lula. That’s not it. You’re really objecting to me.”

  “Why, that’s ridiculous.”

  “You think it is, but it isn’t. Grant, Lula is my friend. She’s almost the only friend I’ve got. I admit she’s not much of a friend. I wish she was different. I bitterly wish she was different. But she’s not different. Lula is the world I came from. Perhaps it’s not much of a world, I don’t know. But it was my world and I can’t change it. The trouble with you is, you’re trying to pretend I was not part of that world at all. You’re trying to convince yourself that in some ways I was an exception, that I didn’t really belong in that world. Well, I’m an exception. I’ve got more gump than most girls in that world have got and I’ve found out by now that I’ve got more brains. I do better than they do. I make more money and I have more ambition. But whether I’m an exception or not, I was a part of that world and I’m still part of it. If it wasn’t for you, money would take care of Lula’s case, and I have money, anyhow a little bit, and I would be willing to take care of it. But I can’t keep you out of it. As you say, there you are, and if you don’t accept Lula you don’t accept me. I have done my best to accept your friends, to say nothing of your family. I have conquered my pride, eaten their bread and drunk their liquor, even when they told me I wasn’t welcome. You are going to do the same. When you sit down to the table and eat dinner with me and Lula Schultz, then I’ll know that it’s not true, some of the things that people say about you.”

  “What do people say about me?”

  “...That was a slip. I shouldn’t mention things that have been said about you, and I’m sorry.”

  “I asked what they say about me.”

  “They say you’re a snob.”

  “All right. Perhaps I am.”

  “I don’t really care what you are, Grant. I’m a snob, too, in a way. I’m terribly conceited and always thinking I’m more capable than other people and—I don’t care about that either. You can be what you are and I’ll not complain. But—you’ll have to accept me. I’ll take no less.”

  “I accept you but I will not accept this—Lula. Whatever her name is.”

  “Grant, whenever I have something difficult I always try to think it over a little before I come to a decision. Will you do that much for me?”

  He came over, put his arms around me again and stood with me a long time, giving me little pats on the arm. “I’ll think it over, Carrie. But I know in advance the decision I’ll come to. I’ll not accept Lula.”

  So he didn’t accept her, and she stayed on and on and on. Every afternoon she would go out on the pretense of seeking work but would be back by five-thirty, in time for dinner, for she always seemed to have a big appetite. But Grant hardly ever saw her. He left the apartment long before she got up, around nine o’clock most mornings, and didn’t come home until eleven or twelve at night.

>   Two or three days of this was bad enough, but when the story of my life began to run in one of the tabloids it was even worse. They had everything in there, from the orphan asylum to my girlhood on the farm, to my job as a waitress in Nyack, but they had it all garbled up, and although it was written in such a way as to seem friendly to me, it made your skin crawl, the things they put in. It was not signed, so it was impossible to tell who was writing it. The night after it started when Grant came home, I tried to get him to do something about it as it seemed to me they had no right to print my life story unless I gave my consent. But he merely shrugged his shoulders and said it didn’t make any difference. Next day I called Mr. Hunt and he said he would consult a lawyer. But the next morning when he called me back, he said the lawyer had told him they did have the right, provided the story was not malicious, and that while I could seek an injunction, if I wanted to, the probability was that I wouldn’t be successful.

  I told him never mind, and the horrible story kept running and running, and when it got to the point of my marriage with Grant it revealed shockingly intimate details of our life together, until I thought I would go insane from reading it. Yet all I could do was sit every morning and every evening with Lula and listen to her gabble about how badly Grant treated me and what she would do if she were in my place.

  One day around lunch time Grant came in with his mother. She made herself very agreeable, and I said nothing to indicate there had been any unpleasantness between us. I remembered that she liked an old-fashioned with Scotch, got out the tray and made her one, gave Grant a rye highball, and waited for her to say what she wanted. She came to the point very quickly. Smiling at me so that her eyes didn’t look like glass at all, she said: “I hear a little situation has developed in connection with the young lady who is staying here.”

  My first impulse was to look surprised and act as though I couldn’t imagine what situation she meant, but on second thought I decided that frankness would probably be the better policy. So I said: “Yes, I’m afraid that’s true.”

  “You feel some sense of loyalty to the girl, Grant tells me.”

  “I feel some sense of that, and I also feel that she represents something I have to make an issue over with Grant. If I back down on Lula I’ve lost everything. I’ve renounced what I was, I can’t change myself into something else, and that will leave me being exactly nothing at all. I won’t be that.”

  “In your place I wouldn’t either.”

  She smiled then and turned to Waldo. “It’s just as I told you—a question of pride. Not stubbornness, not stupidity, not capriciousness. It’s pride, pure and simple, and you have to respect it.”

  “I respect it, but I don’t respect Lula.”

  She sipped her cocktail, smiled at me again and, although I knew I couldn’t for a second trust her, I felt myself yielding to the charm she could turn on when she wanted. “May I call you Carrie?”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Harris.”

  “Then, Carrie, why don’t you let me step in with a plan that might relieve the whole difficulty?”

  “I would be delighted if you could.”

  “The girl, as I understand it, is out of work. Very well, then I’ll give her a job.”

  I didn’t know what to say about this. It didn’t meet the issue I had spoken of, and yet I was so sick of Lula and so miserable about the point I had come to with Grant, that I only wished to wash my hands of the whole mess and start over again, if that was possible. She must have sensed what was in my mind, because she quickly went on to admit that it didn’t quite settle anything, but pointed out that it wasn’t exactly a clear issue since Grant’s objections to the girl were more personal than social, and that the main thing was that he and his family see my point of view, and that this was what she was trying to do. So then I weakly sidestepped the whole thing by saying it wasn’t really up to me at all, it was up to Lula. So then they both looked at each other and she said of course that was it, and there was nothing I could do but call Lula. She came out, and I had one crumb of satisfaction, that she didn’t even try to sit down in the presence of Mrs. Harris, but stood there, first on one foot and then on the other, saying yes ma’am and no ma’am in a frightened way that showed her up for the servant girl she really was.

  Mrs. Harris had nothing to say to her of what we had been talking about but merely offered her a job and told her the pay and a few other things about it. But when Lula got it through her head what was meant she at once acted very shifty and confused, and said she would have to think it over before she could give her answer. Mrs. Harris said if there was something she wanted to talk to me about privately—and she very carefully called me “Mrs. Harris” in Lula’s presence—she would be very glad to wait. But Lula said it wasn’t that. She had the offer of a job somewhere, but she wouldn’t know until late this afternoon when she returned from Brooklyn, where she had to go to see about it.

  I had heard nothing up to then about any job that she had, but almost before Mrs. Harris had got through saying she would stop by again later in the afternoon Lula was gone. She disappeared, grabbed her hat and streaked out of the apartment without saying a word to me or anybody. Grant, however, acted as though a great load had been lifted from his mind and proposed that all three of us go to lunch, and this we did, walking up to the Plaza. Many people came up and spoke to us, and Mrs. Harris presented them to me in the most respectful way, and yet all the time we were eating I kept having an uneasy feeling that something lurked back of it and that I didn’t know what it was.

  But I had to find out, if I could, so I suggested to Grant that he take his mother to a matinee, and off they went. I jumped in a cab, came home and called Mr. Hunt at his office. He knew nothing about Mrs. Harris’s scheme for Lula but at once warned me there must be something wrong with it. Then he thought for a moment or two and told me that his guess would be that Mrs. Harris would issue invitations to a large party in my honor, knowing all the time that with Lula in the house I would not dare attend. Then I would be put in the position with Grant of refusing to have anything to do with his mother. It dawned on me then the clever trick that Mrs. Harris was trying to play on me. For the result would be, so long as she had Lula in her house, that I would not dare go there and probably Grant wouldn’t either, for that matter. Thus, while getting credit in Grant’s eyes for doing something very gracious about Lula, she would be driving a wedge between me and Grant that could only sink deeper all the time.

  I knew then that I had to do something about Lula, but I still didn’t want to put myself in the position of backing down on my point. If I could make it appear that Lula had got a job herself, and in that way I got rid of her, at any rate I had stood by my guns, and while Grant had also stood by his, he and the whole family had found out I was not to be trifled with.

  Ten

  AS SOON AS MR. Hunt hung up I called Mr. Holden. He was at his hotel, fortunately, and almost before I had time to take the cocktail tray out of the living room and put some fresh ice and glasses on it he was announced and then I let him in and he was walking around looking at everything in a very interested way and making comments on everything he saw. He seemed to know a great deal about American history and when he picked up one of the Aztec knives, told me I should read Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico” and I would “find out how quick the ruling class can tear a man’s heart out,” as he put it. Some other time I would have been pleased to hear intelligent remarks about Grant’s work, but just then I didn’t care how the ruling classes tore out hearts. I told him about Lula, and when I got to the things in the bathroom he laughed loudly and didn’t wait to hear any more. “So you want somebody to take her off your hands?”

  “Dead or alive.”

  “That’s easy. Where’s your telephone?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Put in a call.”

  I took him in the bedroom and stood there while he picked up the receiver, but he cocked his head on one side in a way that
meant get out, so there was nothing for me to do but leave him there and close the door. I could hear him talking some little time, and started to make him a brandy and soda. Then 1 remembered he didn’t drink, and I had a cup of coffee waiting for him by the time he was through. He came back in the living room, sat down beside the coffee, thanked me for it and laughed. “It’s all arranged.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Found her a job.”

  “Where?”

  “Karb’s.”

  “But they’re on strike. There’s no job for her there.”

  “Oh, yes, there is. Strike-breaker.”

  He said this as though it were an amusing piece of news, but I was greatly startled by it. “Do you mean to say that you, a union organizer, actually proposed that Karb’s take on a strike-breaker?”

  “They’ve already taken on fifty—or so I heard. I haven’t been in close touch with the thing lately. One more won’t hurt.”

  “But it’s—asking a favor of the enemy.”

  “In all warfare there’s an occasional exchange of prisoners. It makes things simple.”

  “I don’t believe you’re unfriendly with Karb’s at all.”

  “I? Unfriendly with Karb’s? I should say not. Carrie, the wars are fought on the field. The treaties are signed on a table. But a table discussion should be carried on by gentlemen who understand each other. I always observe the courtesies of the field for the sake of the discussion at the table. Asking a harmless little favor with a wink in my eye—”

  “They didn’t see the wink.”

  “They felt it. It traveled over the wires by a rare form of television.”