Mrs. Jack did not know clearly what she meant by “that kind of person”, but she felt momentarily the detached curiosity that a powerful, rich, and decisive character may feel when he pauses for a moment from the brilliant exercise of a talent that has crowned his life with triumphant ease and success almost every step of the way, and notes suddenly, and with surprise, that most of the other people in the world are fumbling blindly and wretchedly about, eking out from day to day the flabby substance of grey lives. She realised with regret that such people are so utterly lacking in any individual distinction that each seems to be a small particle of some immense and vicious life-stuff rather than a living creature who is able to feel and to inspire love, beauty, joy, passion, pain, and death. With a sense of sudden discovery the mistress was feeling this as she looked at the servant who had lived with her familiarly for almost twenty years, and now for the first time she reflected on the kind of life the other woman might have had.
“What is it?” she kept thinking. “What’s gone wrong with her? She never used to be this way. It has all happened within the last year. And Nora used to be so pretty, too!” she thought, startled by the memory. “Why, when she first came to us she was really a very handsome girl. Isn’t it a shame,” she thought indignantly, “that she should let herself go to seed like this—a girl who’s had the chances that she’s had! I wonder why she never married. She used to have half a dozen of those big policemen on the string, and now there’s only one who still comes faithfully. They were all mad about her, and she could have had her pick of them!”
All at once, as she was looking at the servant with kindly interest, the woman’s breath, foul with a stale whisky stench, was blown upon her, and she got suddenly a rank body smell, strong, hairy, female, and unwashed. She frowned with revulsion, and her face began to burn with a glow of shame, embarrassment, and acute distaste.
“God, but she stinks!” she thought, with a feeling of horror and disgust. “You could cut the smell round her with an axe! The nasty things!” she thought, now including all the servants in her indictment. “I’ll bet they never wash—and here they are all day long with nothing to do, and they could at least keep clean! My God! You’d think these people would be so glad to be here in this lovely place with the fine life we’ve made for them that they would be a little proud of it and try to show that they appreciate it! But no! They’re just not good enough!” she thought scornfully, and for a moment her fine mouth was disfigured at one corner by an ugly expression.
It was an expression which had in it not only contempt and scorn, but also something almost racial—a quality of arrogance that was too bold and naked, as if it were eager to assert its own superiority. This ugly look rested only for a second, and almost imperceptibly, about the edges of her mouth, and it did not sit well on her lovely face. Then it was gone. But the maid had seen it, and that swift look, with all its implications, had stung and whipped her tortured spirit to a frenzy.
“Oh, yes, me fine lady!” she was thinking. “It’s too good fer the likes of us ye are, ain’t it? Oh me, yes, an’ we’re very grand, ain’t we? What wit’ our fine clothes an’ our evenin’ gowns an’ our forty pairs of hand-made shoes! Jesus, now! Ye’d think she was some kind of centipede to see the different pairs of shoes she’s got! An’ our silk petticoats an’ step-ins that we have made in Paris, now! Yes! That makes us very fine, don’t it? It’s not as if we ever did a little private monkey-business on the side, like ordinary people, is it? Oh, me, no! We are gathered together wit’ a friend fer a little elegant an’ high-class entertainment durin’ the course of the evenin’! But if it’s some poor girl wit’out an extra pair of drawers to her name, it’s different, now! It’s: ‘Oh! you nasty thing! I’m disgusted wit’ you An’ there’s many a fine lady livin’ on Park Avenoo right now who’s no better, if the truth was told! That I know! So just take care, me lady, not to give yerself too many airs!” she thought with rancorous triumph…
“Ah! if I told all that I know! ‘Nora,’ she says, ‘if anyone calls when I’m not here, I wish ye’d take the message yerself. Mr. Jack don’t like to be disturbed.’...Jesus! From what I’ve seen there’s none of ‘em that likes to be disturbed. It’s love and let love wit’ ‘em, no questions ast an’ the divil take the hindmost, so long as ye do it in yer leisure hours. But if ye’re twenty minutes late fer dinner, it’s where the hell have ye been, an’ what’s to become of us when ye neglect yer family in this way?...Sure,” she thought, warming with a flush of humour and a more tolerant and liberal spirit, “it’s a queer world, ain’t it? An’ these are the queerest of the lot! Thank God I was brought up like a Christian in the Holy Church, an’ still have grace enough to go to Mass when I have sinned! But then----”
As often happens with people of strong but disordered feelings, she was already sorry for her flare of ugly temper, and her affections were now running warmly in another direction: