The Root of His Evil

  I was paying very little attention, and had about come to the conclusion that I was going to follow my instincts and not go to the cocktail party, when to my complete astonishment I saw my name appear on the screen with a flash announcement that patrons of the Newsreel Theatre would now get their first glimpse of the Modern Cinderella who had married herself to a million. Then there were shots of the Karb girls on strike and the announcer was rapidly explaining, in a manner very complimentary to me, that while I was now one of the socially elect of New York, I had not renounced my connection with the girls who had followed my leadership in union matters. Then the scene changed to Reliance Hall, with all the girls cheering and me going up on the platform with Mr. Holden, and I certainly had no idea at that time that among the cameras clicking at me was one making moving pictures. Then it changed again to a close shot of me making my little speech to the meeting, and I was surprised how young and unworldly I looked. But at least the green dress was nicely pressed and my hat was on straight and my face was decently powdered, and I thanked my stars I had taken the time to make myself look presentable before going out with the police officer.

  When I came to the point where I mentioned my marriage it broke off and there were a lot of quick shots of the girls cheering, and then single shots of a number of girls, one after the other, with the various expressions on their faces, and I did wish they hadn’t betrayed so clearly what was in their minds, which was that they wished they had married a rich man too. Then there was a quick shot of Mr. Holden telling them I had to leave, and then here we came, he and I, down past the cameras, he with his arm around me, guiding me through the mob of girls who were trying to take me in their arms or shake hands with me or kiss me. Then it went into some automobile factory stuff, and I got up quickly and went out. The newsboys were still calling my name and I had a feeling there was no place I could go where I would have any peace and once again I was panicky and frightened.

  When I got home Grant still hadn’t come, so I sat down and waited and when he came in, around six-thirty, he was cold and formal and different from what he had ever been before. He went in the bedroom and after a few minutes I went in there and asked him if he didn’t think we had better go out to dinner, and he said he supposed so, and then for a few minutes he stood tying and retying his necktie and nothing was said. Then he turned on me quite savagely. “You said something, I believe, about some man who had invited you to come and live with him.”

  “Oh, yes. So I did.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Oh, you met him, I believe. A—labor leader.”

  “Yes, I met him. You and he seem to have been pretty intimate—even after you married me.”

  “I don’t know of any intimacies.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you went to a union meeting with him?”

  “That was in the papers.”

  “Not all of it. You better go up to the Newsreel Theatre and have a look at yourself.”

  “Oh, you saw that?”

  “I saw it three times—especially the end of it, where he had his arm around you and was patting your hand. And you—you didn’t have any objection, did you? Oh, no—you looked up at him every time he did it and—where did you go with him then?”

  He had his fist doubled up and his eyes were glaring in a most frightening way, but something was singing inside of me and I didn’t care whether he hit me or not. So I switched my hips as impudently as I could and said: “I went to dinner.”

  He took me by the shoulders and shook me and then our lips met and everything went swimming around and we lost all track of time until it was quite late. Then we were very near to each other and in love and I told him I had just acted that way because I liked to see him jealous. Then we went to dinner and I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to tell him I had decided not to go to the cocktail party.

  I made all preparations for this horrible event as carefully as I could and yet I became more and more nervous as Friday approached. I went to Miss Eubanks, the saleslady who had been so helpful to me before, and let myself be guided by her advice. She suggested two outfits, one in case the summer weather held, and another in case it should turn cold or rainy or both. This I thought a good idea, and for the first I picked out a chartreuse green. It was very expensive, but Miss Eubanks insisted that my costume should be very simple and reminded me that simplicity is only to be found in well-made clothes. This I knew to be true, so I took it, and she went with me to the hat department and I picked out a very lovely hat to go with it. It was another shade of green, and then we bought bronze shoes. She kept cautioning me not to get anything that looked like an ensemble. “You want to be dressed—not dressed up.” For the other outfit she suggested a suit and I picked out a steel blue which went very well with my hair, brown suede hat and brown shoes. She hesitated about letting me wear a suit that was ready-made, but finally concluded that with my figure, since it was very well tailored, it would be all right. Then she had me buy proper handbags, stockings and all accessories, and I paid with my personal check. It made quite a dent in my savings, but for some reason I wanted to appear in my things and not things that Grant had bought me. And that was why I went for them alone too, as I didn’t want to feel or have him or anybody feel that I had needed any coaching from him.

  Friday was a beautiful day, with just a touch of fall in the air, and he was so delighted with the way I looked in the chartreuse dress that I was almost glad I was going, and yet a nervous feeling kept spreading from the pit of my stomach until, as four-thirty approached, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to go through with it or not. About a quarter after four he suddenly said: “Let’s walk, it’s not far.”

  “Oh, yes—let’s.” Because I thought I would die if I had to sit and watch the El posts go by in a taxi.

  “Then let’s start now.”

  “I’m ready.”

  So we walked, and it did take a little of the nervousness out of me. We went over and turned up Park Avenue. Grant had got a hair-cut in the morning, quite unusual for him, and had on a dark brown suit and a new fall hat and carried a stick. I knew I looked very well, and for a few minutes I was very proud to be swinging along with him up Park Avenue, with people turning to look and a sense of being somebody.

  The house was on Sixty-first Street between Park and Madison, and it was a whole house, not just an apartment. We were let in by a house-man who spoke to Grant and bowed to me. We then went upstairs to a large living room and Mrs. Hunt came in and we sat around talking as though we had never called each other names. We were ahead of the crowd, as she had asked us to be, and it was all very quiet and casual. Then Elsie and Jane arrived and joined in the discussion and you would hardly have known they were giving any party at all. I really didn’t like Mrs. Hunt, or any of them, but I caught the point and remembered it: Never make a fuss about your hospitality, as so many people I had known were so prone to do. Then Mr. Hunt came in. He had just left his office and disappeared for a little while to dress, but he stopped long enough to shake hands with me and I caught him eyeing me sharply and, I thought, in a not unfriendly way. He was considerably older than Mrs. Hunt, who was younger than Grant, as were the other two girls, but even so he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, and was tall and rather good-looking. When he came down again he had on a short black coat and gray trousers, and I had a sudden reminder that, in spite of the pleasant casualness of the preliminaries, what I had to go through with would be, for me at any rate, very formidable indeed.

  Then the guests began to arrive and they were being introduced to me very rapidly and I must say Mrs. Hunt was very graceful and considerate about it and made it seem that everything was in my honor and I almost felt I was welcome. So in a few minutes I was faced with what worried me most of all, which was what to talk about. Once more I had drilled it into myself: “Don’t talk about the weather.” But what else did I know to talk about? This had given me several bad nights, for I try to be honest with myself, and
after a great deal of restless tossing around I had come to the realization that I didn’t know anything to talk about. I had never read any books or heard any music or seen any pictures or done any traveling. Of what is called culture I had none whatever. My world had been limited to my work, my savings and the few people I had come in contact with, and that was all I ever talked about with other girls of my kind from morning until night. But certainly I couldn’t begin complaining about the slowness of Karb’s counterman to these people, or criticize the way the cooks neglected to break the soft-boiled eggs, so the waitress had to do it. For Grant’s sake I had to give some kind of account of myself, and I stood there shaking hands, badly frightened as to what it was going to be, when suddenly an idea hit me.

  I began telling them about the strike. Luck was with me, for all of them became excited and wanted to hear about it, and so the ice was broken in two ways. I had found something that interested them and that I knew enough about not to make a fool of myself in discussing it, and also it relieved them of any embarrassment they may have felt about mentioning my occupation, and I breathed much easier. When another houseman came with a tray of cocktails I took one and sipped it a little so I could laugh and seem to be having a good time, but I was careful of the amount I drank, for I didn’t want any repetition of what had happened before. One thing helped me a great deal. In my work as a waitress I had trained myself to remember people’s names and use them in speaking to them, as that is the way to get regular customers. So it was no trouble for me to keep all the names straight, even after fifty or sixty people had arrived, and this greatly astonished Mrs. Hunt. I thought it advisable not to tell her how I became so name-conscious, but I could see that she was favorably impressed and also was breathing much easier.

  This went on for about an hour and I managed fairly well, for when the strike ran thin one of them would usually say something which permitted me to let them take the lead and I fell back on something which has stood me in good stead before, especially with talkative customers. I professed to be greatly interested, which in a way I was, as I find many things interesting, and asked a lot of eager questions, so that they would do the talking for a little while.

  I must have been acquitting myself quite creditably, because Mr. Hunt drifted by one time, leaned close to me and mumbled in my ear: “You’re doing fine.”

  I had got separated from Grant, as I wanted to be, since I shouldn’t appear a clinging vine that he had to look out for, and of course Mrs. Hunt was too busy to be paying much attention to me anymore. Then two or three women who were talking to me suddenly stopped what they were saying and glanced over my shoulder toward the entrance from the outer hall. I became aware that a strained hush had fallen over the room. I turned around and there, standing with Mrs. Hunt, was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She didn’t appear to be over thirty-eight, she was even smaller than I am, with a lovely figure and beautiful high color in her cheeks that you could tell at once was natural. Her hair was blonde but shot slightly with gold so it was very brilliant. Her eyes were a peculiarly vivid green which I could see even from where I was. She had on the simplest summer dress, black with a design in it, and yet with her figure you could hardly take your eyes off it. She seemed to radiate charm and friendliness, and I was still staring at her when Mrs. Hunt came over to me. Her face was drawn and nervous and she didn’t quite look me in the eye when she spoke. “Don’t say I did this to you. She wasn’t even invited. So come on. But I can tell you this much. The worst you can possibly imagine can’t be as bad as it’s really going to be.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mother.”

  It seemed impossible that one so young could be Grant’s mother, but I later found out she had been married at seventeen and that Grant came along as soon as the law allowed. But in spite of my surprise a chill began to creep up my backbone. I took a deep breath and we crossed the room.

  Eight

  WE HAD NO SOONER done so than I discovered that the warm friendliness was all on the outside, with none on the inside whatever. She had shaken hands with some woman and stood there talking about a Commander in the Navy and the funny way he used to kick the goals when he was a midshipman at Annapolis, keeping Mrs. Hunt and me waiting and never looking at us at all. Even the woman was getting uncomfortable and Mrs. Hunt was growing more irritated by the second. Suddenly she cut in sharply:

  “Mother!...If you can interrupt that fascinating discourse on the drop kicks long enough—”

  “Place kicks, dear. Not drop kicks.”

  “They’ll be just plain shin kicks if I hear any more about them—I’d like to present Granny’s new bride, the young Mrs. Harris.”

  Mrs. Harris looked at me then and her eyes seemed to shrink into two pieces of hard green glass. She opened her arms, drew me to her and spoke in a voice that fairly throbbed with emotion: “Darling! Oh, I’ve been looking forward so much to meeting you! Every day I made up my mind to pay you a visit but I’ve been so ill—really, you have no idea. Will you overlook it—can you bring yourself to forgive me?”

  She didn’t look ill and I didn’t believe she cared whether I forgave her or not, but I thought if she was going to be hypocritical I might as well too, so I made my voice sound as gushy as I could and said: “And I too, Mrs. Harris! I so wanted to call at the hospital the moment I heard you were there but I wasn’t sure you would like it, because so few of us look well in hospitals, do we?”

  This dirty crack seemed to surprise her greatly but nothing like as much as it surprised me, so we stood grinning at each other, our arms intertwined, and for a moment neither of us had any more to say. Then a servant came up with a tray of cocktails and she stood there at her favorite trick of making everybody wait. This time it was while she decided what kind of cocktail she wanted. There were Martinis, Manhattans and side-cars on the tray, but of course, after changing her mind for five minutes she had to have an old-fashioned and, just to make it good and complicated, it had to be an old-fashioned made with Scotch. I wanted to get away from her, so, having been audacious about my occupation once with some success, I thought I would try it again and appear to be exceedingly nice to her while at the same time removing myself from where she was. I said: “Oh, Mrs. Harris, do let me make you one. I know exactly how you want it and I’m an expert at old-fashioneds with Scotch —I used to make so many when I was a waitress at the Solon Cocktail Bar.”

  Her eyes opened wide, as though this was the most heavenly idea she had ever heard in her life. “Oh, darling—would you?” Then she looked around at everybody and exclaimed: “Isn’t that marvelous? Think of being an expert!” And then to me again: “There’s so much that you’ll have to teach me!”

  By that time the big table at one side of the room had been converted into a sort of bar and one of the housemen was mixing drinks while the other passed them around. But of course some of the guests were standing around getting their drinks direct from the bar, so when I stepped over, there was quite a gallery, some of them rather friendly toward me. An old-fashioned with Scotch was nothing new to me, so I put it together very quickly, and when I got through two or three men laughed and gave me a little hand. When I went over with it to Mrs. Harris she was again talking about place kicks, and kept me standing there, glass in my hand. But as though to be very friendly, she raised her hand and without looking around put it on my arm. There was an exclamation from somebody and there went the cocktail all over her dress, and the orange, cherry and ice all over the floor.

  I had served rush orders in a crowded cocktail bar with drunks elbowing me from every side and I assure you it is almost impossible to make me drop anything or do something clumsy like spilling a cocktail. That grip on my arm was like iron and it was deliberate. But there was nothing for me to do but get down and begin dabbing at her dress with my handkerchief, then call for a napkin and dry her off as best I could. All that time she talked a mile a minute, loudly proclaiming that it was all her fault, and that I
mustn’t mind, as the dress was an old rag anyhow, but there I was, stooped in front of her, making a holy show of myself when I wanted to be at my best.

  It was Mr. Hunt who rescued me. He lifted me to my feet, patted my arm and drew me aside. Then for the first time Mrs. Harris became shrill. “But, Bernie, I’m wringing wet! Just look at my dress!”

  “That’s what we have dry cleaners for.”

  “And that’s what we have such dresses for.” It was Mrs. Hunt who said this, very grimly. “That’s the third cocktail that’s been spilled on it this year. Or was it a Tom Collins last time?”

  Mrs. Harris’ answer to this was to make a speech in which she said she didn’t know what people were coming to, the ill-bred way they got drunk and spilled drinks all over her, but Mrs. Hunt took me to another part of the room and that seemed to be the end of it. She gave me a cocktail and mumbled: “Don’t worry about her dress. It’s last color, quick-drying crepe, bought especially to have cocktails spilled on it and get women down on their knees and make them feel foolish. You behaved very well and you needn’t give it a thought.”

  The man who had been passing cocktails came up just then and said: “She’s here, Mrs. Hunt.”

  “Oh. Then you’d better take out some of those glasses and tell her to wash them up as quickly as she can, but don’t wait for her to get through with them. You come back to keep things moving here, and have her bring them in as soon as they’re ready.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hunt.”

  She turned to me. “I did something I rarely do. I borrowed a maid from Mrs. Norris, but of course the children had to be taken to the park as usual and she has only now arrived—when it’s almost all over.”