“Well! What happened to you, darling? I thought that You would never get here.”
He liked all the things that men are fond of. All of them he had enjoyed himself, each in its proper time and place, and he expected everyone to act as well as he. But ripeness with Mr. Jack was everything, and he always knew the time to stop. His ancient and Hebraic spirit was tempered with a classic sense of moderation. He prized the virtue of decorum highly. He knew the value of the middle way.
He was not a man to wear his heart upon his overcoat, nor risk his life on every corner, nor throw himself away upon a word, nor spend his strength on the impulse of a moment’s wild belief. This was such madness as the Gentiles knew. But, this side idolatry and madness he would go as far for friendship’s sake as any man. He would go with a friend up to the very edge of ruin and defeat, and he would even try to hold him back. But once he saw a man was mad, and not to be persuaded by calm judgment, he was done with him. He would leave him where he was, although regretfully. Are matters helped if the whole crew drowns together with a single drunken sailor? He thought not. He could put a world of sincere meaning in the three words: “What a pity!”
Yes, Mr. Frederick Tack was kind and temperate. He had found life pleasant, and had won from it the secret of wise living. And the secret of wise living was founded in a graceful compromise, a tolerant acceptance. If a man wanted to live in this world without getting his pockets picked, he had better learn how to use his eyes and ears on what was going on around him. But if he wanted to live in this world without getting hit over the head, and without all the useless pain, grief, terror, and bitterness that mortify human flesh, he had also better learn how not to use his eyes and ears. This may sound difficult, but it had not been so for Mr. Jack. Perhaps some great inheritance of suffering, the long, dark ordeal of his race, had left him, as a precious distillation, this gift of balanced understanding. At any rate, he had not learned it, because it could not be taught: he had been born with it.
Therefore, he was not a man to rip the sheets in darkness or beat his knuckles raw against a wall. He would not madden furiously in the envenomed passages of night, nor would he ever be carried smashed and bloody from the stews. A woman’s ways were no doubt hard to bear, but love’s bitter mystery had broken no bones for Mr. Jack, and, so far as he was concerned, it could not murder sleep the way an injudicious wiener schitzel could, or that young Gentile fool, drunk again, probably, ringing the telephone at one a.m. to ask to speak to Esther.
Mr. Jack’s brow was darkened as he thought of it. He muttered wordlessly. If fools are fools, let them be fools where their folly will not injure or impede the slumbers of a serious man.
Yes, Men could rob, lie, murder, swindle, trick, and cheat—the whole world knew as much. And women—well, they were women, and there was no help for that. Mr. Jack had also known something of the pain and folly that twist the indignant soul of youth—it was too bad, of course, too bad. But regardless of all this, the day was day and men must work, the night was night and men must sleep, and it was, he felt, intolerable
* * *
“One!”
Red of face, he bent stiffly, with a grunt, until his fingers grazed the rich cream tiling of the bathroom floor.
—_intolerable!_----
“Two!”
He straightened sharply, his hands at his sides.
—_that a man with serious work to do_----
“Three!”
His arms shot up to full stretching height above his head, and came swiftly down again until he held clenched fists against his breast.
—_should be pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night by a crazy young fool!_----
“Four!”
His closed fists shot outwards in a strong driving movement, and came back to his sides again.
—_It was intolerable, and, by God, be had half a mind to tell her so!_
His exercises ended, Mr. Jack stepped carefully into the luxurious sunken tub and settled his body slowly in its crystal-blue depths. A sigh, long, lingering, full of pleasure, expired upon his lips.
11. Mrs. Jack Awake
Mrs. Jack awoke at eight o’clock. She awoke like a child, completely alert and alive, instantly awake all over and with all sleep shaken clearly from her mind and senses the moment that she opened her eyes. It had been so with her all her life. For a moment she lay flat on her back and stared straight up at the ceiling.