Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance

  VIII

  You will be curious to know something concerning the cost of living insuch a house, and you may be sure that I did not fail to question Mrs.Makely on this point. She was at once very volubly communicative; shetold me all she knew, and, as her husband said, a great deal more.

  "Why, of course," she began, "you can spend all you have in New York, ifyou like, and people do spend fortunes every year. But I suppose you meanthe average cost of living in a brown-stone house, in a good block, thatrents for $1800 or $2000 a year, with a family of three or four children,and two servants. Well, what should you say, Dick?"

  "Ten or twelve thousand a year--fifteen," answered her husband.

  "Yes, fully that," she answered, with an effect of disappointment in hisfigures. "We had just ourselves, and we never spent less than seven, andwe didn't dress, and we didn't entertain, either, to speak of. But youhave to live on a certain scale, and generally you live up to yourincome."

  "Quite," said Mr. Makely.

  "I don't know what makes it cost so. Provisions are cheap enough, andthey say people live in as good style for a third less in London. Thereused to be a superstition that you could live for less in a flat, andthey always talk to you about the cost of a furnace, and a man to tend itand keep the snow shovelled off your sidewalk, but that is all stuff.Five hundred dollars will make up the whole difference, and more. You payquite as much rent for a decent flat, and then you don't get half theroom. No, if it wasn't for the stairs, I wouldn't live in a flat for aninstant. But that makes all the difference."

  "And the young people," I urged--"those who are just starting inlife--how do they manage? Say when the husband has $1500 or $2000 ayear?"

  "Poor things!" she returned. "I don't know how they manage. They boardtill they go distracted, or they dry up and blow away; or else the wifehas a little money, too, and they take a small flat and ruin themselves.Of course, they want to live nicely and like other people."

  "But if they didn't?"

  "Why, then they could live delightfully. My husband says he often wisheshe was a master-mechanic in New York, with a thousand a year, and a flatfor twelve dollars a month; he would have the best time in the world."

  Her husband nodded his acquiescence. "Fighting-cock wouldn't be in it,"he said. "Trouble is, we all want to do the swell thing."

  "But you can't all do it," I ventured, "and, from what I see of thesimple, out-of-the-way neighborhoods in my walks, you don't all try."

  "Why, no," he said. "Some of us were talking about that the other nightat the club, and one of the fellows was saying that he believed there wasas much old-fashioned, quiet, almost countrified life in New York, amongthe great mass of the people, as you'd find in any city in the world.Said you met old codgers that took care of their own furnaces, just asyou would in a town of five thousand inhabitants."

  "Yes, that's all very well," said his wife; "but they wouldn't be nicepeople. Nice people want to live nicely. And so they live beyond theirmeans or else they scrimp and suffer. I don't know which is worst."

  "But there is no obligation to do either?" I asked.

  "Oh yes, there is," she returned. "If you've been born in a certain way,and brought up in a certain way, you can't get out of it. You simplycan't. You have got to keep in it till you drop. Or a woman has."

  "That means the woman's husband, too," said Mr. Makely, with his wink forme. "Always die together."

  In fact, there is the same competition in the social world as in thebusiness world; and it is the ambition of every American to live in somesuch house as the New York house; and as soon as a village begins togrow into a town, such houses are built. Still, the immensely greaternumber of the Americans necessarily live so simply and cheaply that sucha house would be almost as strange to them as to an Altrurian. But whilewe should regard its furnishings as vulgar and unwholesome, mostAmericans would admire and covet its rich rugs or carpets, its paperedwalls, and thickly curtained windows, and all its foolish ornamentation,and most American women would long to have a house like the ordinaryhigh-stoop New York house, that they might break their backs over itsstairs, and become invalids, and have servants about them to harass themand hate them.

  Of course, I put it too strongly, for there is often, illogically, agreat deal of love between the American women and their domestics, thoughwhy there should be any at all I cannot explain, except by reference tothat mysterious personal equation which modifies all conditions here. Youwill have made your reflection that the servants, as they are cruellycalled (I have heard them called so in their hearing, and wondered theydid not fly tooth and nail at the throat that uttered the insult), formreally no part of the house, but are aliens in the household and thefamily life. In spite of this fact, much kindness grows up between themand the family, and they do not always slight the work that I cannotunderstand their ever having any heart in. Often they do slight it, andthey insist unsparingly upon the scanty privileges which their mistressesseem to think a monstrous invasion of their own rights. The habit ofoppression grows upon the oppressor, and you would find tender-heartedwomen here, gentle friends, devoted wives, loving mothers, who would bewilling that their domestics should remain indoors, week in and week out,and, where they are confined in the ridiculous American flat, never seethe light of day. In fact, though the Americans do not know it, and wouldbe shocked to be told it, their servants are really slaves, who are nonethe less slaves because they cannot be beaten, or bought and sold exceptby the week or month, and for the price which they fix themselves, andthemselves receive in the form of wages. They are social outlaws, so faras the society of the family they serve is concerned, and they arerestricted in the visits they receive and pay among themselves. They aregiven the worst rooms in the house, and they are fed with the food thatthey have prepared, only when it comes cold from the family table; in thewealthier houses, where many of them are kept, they are supplied with acoarser and cheaper victual bought and cooked for them apart from thatprovided for the family. They are subject, at all hours, to the pleasureor caprice of the master or mistress. Every circumstance of their life isan affront to that just self-respect which even Americans allow is theright of every human being. With the rich, they are said to be sometimesindolent, dishonest, mendacious, and all that Plato long ago explainedthat slaves must be; but in the middle-class families they are mostlyfaithful, diligent, and reliable in a degree that would put to shame mostmen who hold positions of trust, and would leave many ladies whom theyrelieve of work without ground for comparison.