The Hired Girl (23 page)

I didn’t want to answer. I knew where the conversation was tending. I sobbed harder
on purpose.
I’m ashamed that I did that, because it wasn’t fair. It was feminine wiles; that’s what it was, and I don’t think much of feminine wiles.

“You have to answer me,” he said, not unkindly, but firmly. “Would you be willing to give the kitty up if you could be sure she was happy and safe?”

I looked down at Moonstone. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the handkerchief. He — no, I must learn to write
she —
didn’t like it that the game had stopped. I brushed the handkerchief against the floor, and she leaped forward and caught it between her paws. Then she rolled over on her back and bit the cloth, fierce and merry at the same time. Oh, her little tail, her pink-padded paws, the sweet triangle of her face!

“Yes,” I said wretchedly.

“Then I’ll help you,” said Mr. Solomon, and he smiled his sweet-for-a-man smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t give up until I’ve found her a good home. We’ll start with my sister Anna. She’s afraid of mice, which is good. And I think Oskar’s old enough to be gentle with a kitten.”

I wasn’t sure whether I liked that idea or not. Mrs. Friedhoff seems like such a shadowy person, nice, but dull, and Oskar seems like a snake lover, not a kitten lover. On the other hand, the Friedhoffs live nearby, and I might be able to visit Moonstone if she went to live there. “She isn’t trained,” I said, remembering the mess in the room.

“I’ll tell Anna to keep a box of sand in the house,” Mr. Solomon assured me. “It’s easy to train them, if you have a box of sand.”

A box of sand. I’d never have thought of that. “What if she says no?”

“I think I can talk her into saying yes. If she doesn’t, one of Mother’s bridge ladies lost her pug dog a little while ago. I might be able to persuade her to try a kitten.” He reached for Moonstone and gathered her up. “I’ll go see Anna right after breakfast. Can you find me a basket, or a cardboard box with a lid?”

My heart tightened. “Do you have to take her right away?”

He nodded. “When you ask people if they want a kitten, they say no. But if they see the kitten, it’s a different matter.”

I could see this. But I could also see something else — that my time with Moonstone was at an end. Right after breakfast, Mr. Solomon would take her away. I started to cry again, but this time it wasn’t feminine wiles.

I’m shedding tears as I write this, but I’m almost finished. Mrs. Friedhoff did take Moonstone, and Oskar made her a little house out of a baby quilt and a cardboard box. Mr. Solomon says Oskar spends a lot of time dragging little pieces of string across the floor so Moonstone can chase them. And Anna — I mean Mrs. Friedhoff — has promised that some night when she and Mr. Friedhoff go out, I can look after Oskar and see Moonstone again.

So I am grateful. I have to be grateful. But I’m sure that Moonstone was meant to be my cat, not Oskar’s, not Anna’s, not even Mimi’s. (Mimi isn’t half as sorry as I am that Moonstone’s gone. I think she’s a very fickle sort of girl.)

After Mr. Solomon came back, he asked if I would do something for him. I said, “Anything.” Because I
would
do anything for him, but I would prefer it to be something heroic, like saving him from a burning building, or helping him win the hand of Nora Himmelrich. It turned out that what he wanted was for me to forgive Mrs. Rosenbach — not only forgive her but apologize to her. Apparently she told him I
flounced
when she said I couldn’t keep the kitten, and Tuesday night, everyone could hear me banging the plates when I loaded the dumbwaiter. It seems I’m not supposed to flounce or bang plates. I guess hired girls shouldn’t have any feelings.

I didn’t want to forgive Mrs. Rosenbach, but Mr. Solomon looked very earnest and pleading. He said Mrs. Rosenbach was hurt by my ingratitude. I wouldn’t have thought that anything I did could hurt someone like her, but I guess I should be grateful. She pays me well and she bought me two dresses that are a lot nicer than they have to be. All the same, I wish Mr. Solomon hadn’t asked me to forgive her, because I was kind of enjoying being angry. On the other hand, I’m supposed to forgive people; I’m
trying
to be a good Catholic.

So I humbled myself and agreed to forgive Mrs. Rosenbach and say I was sorry for the flouncing. I
wasn’t
sorry, but I strained myself to say so. The apologizing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, because Mrs. R. wasn’t cold or scornful, only grave. She said she knew I was disappointed but the important thing was that Moonstone had a good home, and I was free to go on with my duties. She even said she valued my apology, because she knew I was an honest person and wouldn’t say I was sorry unless I meant it.

Then I felt guilty, because I didn’t really mean it. But there was no point in saying so. I said, “Yes, ma’am.” And I was careful not to flounce when I left the room.

Monday, August the seventh, 1911

I have had an adventure!

It was late last night and I was in the library trying to read the
Meditations
of Marcus Aurelius. That was Mr. Rosenbach’s idea. I finished
The Moonstone
and was going to start
The Woman in White,
which is also by Mr. Wilkie Collins. It begins in
such
a fascinating way:
This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
How can anyone not want to read that? But yesterday Mr. Rosenbach asked me what I was reading. When I told him, he looked thoughtful and said that if I wanted to become truly educated, I must read history and philosophy as well as novels.

So I asked for some philosophy because I thought that sounded elevated, and he gave me the
Meditations.
It isn’t long, for which I am grateful because it’s slow going. It seems to me that Marcus Aurelius doesn’t want anybody to get excited about anything. I don’t want to live like that. If anything exciting ever happens to me, I want to get excited about it. Of course, thus far my life has been tedious because of Steeple Farm and being only the hired girl, but there is such a thing as
real life,
and sooner or later it’s going to begin. I suppose I might have to suffer a little because real life is like that, but I hope I will suffer
nobly.
Mr. Marcus Aurelius has some ideas about that, too.

So there I was, reading Marcus, and then I decided to refresh myself with
The Picturesque World.
I look through the plates almost every night; they are so fascinating. As I was musing over engravings of the Alhambra, I heard the sound of footsteps on the front porch.

I was in my nightgown. My kimono is perfectly lovely, cream colored with apple blossoms on it, but I don’t always wear it once I get inside the library because these summer nights are hot, and my kimono’s too nice to perspire in. I tell myself that if I ever heard anyone coming, there’d be time to put it on. But when I heard the front door open, I didn’t think about my kimono. It was nearly midnight, and everyone was in bed: Mr. and Mrs. Rosenbach, and Mr. Solomon, and Mimi, and Malka.
No one
ought to be coming into the house.

And whoever was coming in was coming in stealthily. Usually the front door sticks, so that opening it makes a sound like a sneeze, but this time the door opened slowly, so that the sneeze was muffled and prolonged.

I thought of screaming to rouse the house, but I didn’t dare. Isn’t that queer? My heart beat like a rabbit’s, but my mouth was too dry to scream. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

But it
was
happening. And even though my mind couldn’t believe it, my body knew it was time to be frightened, because the footsteps were coming
toward the library.
So I moved — oh, so swiftly! — to the hearth. I picked up the poker, grasped it with all my strength, and glided forward — my feet were bare and the carpet is thick and I scarcely made a sound.
I saw the doorknob turn.
As the door opened, I leaped forward and brought the poker slashing through the air.

He swerved and ducked. It makes my blood run cold to think how close I came to killing him. He leaped back and held up his hands in surrender. “Jehoshaphat!” he cried. “Great Jakes, don’t kill me!”

At that instant — that very instant — I knew who he was. I gasped, “You’re David!”

He gaped at me with a queer mixture of amusement and shock — because I really had frightened him. “Yes, I’m David,” he said, “but who are you? What are you doing in Papa’s library in the middle of the night?”

I was so startled I almost said my real name. I stammered, “I’m Jo — Janet”— like that. I don’t think he noticed the slip. “The hired girl. Your father gave me permission to read his books.”

“You’re Papa’s little girl?” he said incredulously. “That’s what he calls you, you know: the little girl who loves to read.” He gave a shout of laughter and looked at me, and that’s when I realized that I was
in my nightgown.
I was dreadfully mortified. Thank heavens it wasn’t that awful old rag I brought from Steeple Farm but one of the new things I bought with Mimi.

I know I blushed. I flew to the chair where I’d left the kimono and put it on as fast as ever I could. Even when I’d knotted the belt, I felt flustered. Mr. David is so — well, he’s
not
handsome, now that I think it over. He has an enormous crooked nose. I couldn’t help staring because I’d heard something about Jews having big hooked noses, but I’d made up my mind it was all twaddle, because none of the Rosenbachs have noses like that. Mr. R.’s nose is hawkish but it isn’t large. Mr. Solomon has a handsome nose. Mrs. R.’s nose is fine and straight, and Mimi told me hers is what they call retroussé.

But David’s — I should write
Mr. David’
s
— nose is large and very crooked. He caught me staring at it and said, “A nose like mine is the banner of a great man, Janet. When it blows, it’s a typhoon; when it bleeds, the Red Sea. But it’s a monument — never doubt that — a monument to a generous heart, a towering spirit, and an expansive soul.”

I stood nonplussed. I never heard anybody talk like that before, and between being embarrassed because of my kimono and almost murdering him with the poker — well, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I just stared at him.

“I broke it.” He lowered his voice as if he was sharing a secret. “I was ten years old and walking on top of a fence — showing off for a little girl with blue eyes. I waved to her, she smiled at me”— he shrugged, throwing up his hands —“I lost my balance. Fell flat on my face.”

I couldn’t help laughing. But while I was laughing, a funny idea stole into my mind. It sounds silly now, but for a moment, just a shred of a moment, I wondered if he might be flirting with me. I mean, he was talking about blue eyes, and I
have
blue eyes. Now that I write it down, I see that what I was thinking was awfully far-fetched. But at the time, it confused me.

And as a matter of fact,
he
confused me. Feature for feature, he isn’t as good-looking as Mr. Solomon. But he’s taller than his brother, lean and easy in his movements, and he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up, and I liked looking at his forearms. His hair is curly and nearly black, and he has his mother’s heavy-lidded eyes, except his are full of mischief. He has to be at least eighteen, because he graduated from high school, but he doesn’t look much older than that. He’s young.

I said, “Why are you here in the middle of the night?”

“I took a late train.”

“They’re not expecting you.”

“
I
wasn’t expecting me,” he said, which was no answer at all. But I guess he doesn’t have to explain himself to me, because I’m only the hired girl. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to knock me on the head with a poker, either. Would you really have hit me?” He sounded admiring.

“Yes, sir,” I said proudly — because if he
had
been a burglar, I would have shown courage and resolution.

“Papa described you as a nice, bright little thing, and Mama said you get along with Malka. Nobody told me you were dangerous. What are you reading?
The Picturesque World
? Are you a lover of the picturesque?”