On three sides of the room, bookshelves extended a third of the way up the walls, and they were crowded with friendly volumes whose backs bore the markings of warm human hands. Obviously they had been read and read again. The stiff sets of tooled and costly bindings that often ornament the libraries of the rich with unread awe were lacking here. Nor was there any evidence of the greedy and revolting mania of the professional collector. If there were first editions on these utilitarian shelves, they were here because their owner had bought them when they were published, and bought them to be read.
The crackling pine logs on the great marble hearth cast their radiance warmly on the covers of these worn books, and Mrs. Jack had a sense of peace and comfort as she looked at the rich and homely compact of their colours. She saw her favourite novels and histories, plays, poems, and biographies, and the great books of decoration and design, of painting, drawing, and architecture, which she had assembled in a crowded lifetime of work, travel, and living. Indeed, all these objects, these chairs and tables, these jades and silks, all the drawings and paintings, as well as the books, had been brought together at different times and places and fused into a miracle of harmony by the instinctive touch of this woman’s hand. It is no wonder, therefore, that her face softened and took on an added glow of loveliness as she looked at her fine room. The like of it, as she well knew, could nowhere else be found.
“Ah, here it is,” she thought. “It is living like a part of me. And God! How beautiful it is!” she thought. “How warm—how true! It’s not like a rented place—not just another room in an apartment. No”—she glanced down the spacious width of the long hall—“if it weren’t for the elevator there, you’d think it was some grand old house.’ I don’t know—but—” a little furrow, this time of reflectiveness and effort, came between her eyes as she tried to shape her meaning—“there’s something sort of grand—and simple—about it all.”
And indeed there was. The amount of simplicity that could be purchased even in, those times for a yearly rental of fifteen thousand dollars was quite considerable. As if this very thought had found an echo in her mind, she went on:
“I mean when you compare it with some of these places that you see nowadays—some of the God-awful places where all those rich people live. There’s simply no comparison! I don’t care how rich they are, there’s—there’s just something here that money cannot buy.”
As her mind phrased the accusing words about “the God-awful places where all those rich people live,” her nostrils twitched and her face took on an expression of sharp scorn. For Mrs. Jack had always been contemptuous of wealth. Though she was the wife of a rich man and had not known for years the economic necessity of work, yet it was one of her unshakable convictions that she and her family could not possibly be described as “rich”. “Oh, not really,” she would say. “Not the way people are who really are.” And she would look for confirmation, not at the hundred and thirty million people there impossibly below her in the world’s hard groove, but at the fabulous ten thousand who were above her on the moneyed heights, and who, by the comparison, were “really rich”.
Besides, she was “a worker”. She had always been “a worker”. One look at the strength, the grace, the swiftness of those small, sure hands were enough to tell the story of their owner’s life, which had always been a life of work. From that accomplishment stemmed deep pride and the fundamental integrity of her soul. She had needed the benefit of no man’s purse, the succour of no man’s shielding strength. “Is not my help within me?” Well, hers was. She had made her own way. She had supported herself. She had created beautiful and enduring things. She had never known the meaning of laziness. Therefore it is no wonder that she never thought of herself as being “rich”. She was a worker; she had worked.
But now, satisfied with her inspection of the big room, she turned quickly to investigate other things. The living room gave on the dining-room through glass doors, which were closed and curtained filmily. Mrs. Jack moved towards them and threw them open. Then she stopped short, and one hand flew to her bosom. She gasped out an involuntary little “Oh!” of wonder and delight. It was too beautiful! It was quite too beautiful! But it was just the way she expected it to look—the way it looked for all of her parties. None the less, every time she saw it, it was like a grand and new discovery.