“As you wish, Senhora Juliana.”
“Yes; do me that favor. Good-night.”
Juliana returned to her room, said her prayers, and put out the light. An insupportable heat descended from the roof. She opened the windows again, but the hot air from the tiles made vain the hope of being able to draw an easy breath. And thus it was every night. Besides, the old wood was full of vermin. Never in any house where she had served before had she had a worse room.
The cook began to snore on the other side of the wall, and to Juliana, who felt herself alone in this misery, life seemed a bitter thing.
Juliana was a native of Lisbon. Her full name was Juliana Conceiro Tavira. Her mother had been a laundress, and had died a short time after she herself first went out to service. She had now been in service twenty years. As she herself said, she changed her masters, but not her lot. For twenty years she had been sleeping in filthy cots, rising with the dawn, eating the remnants that others left, wearing shabby clothes, bearing the rude answers and the hard words of her masters, going to the hospital when she was sick, enduring the pangs of hunger when she got well again.
This was too much. There were days now in which only to see the darning-needle or the smoothing-iron gave her nausea. She could never become accustomed to live out at service. From a child her ambition had been to keep a little shop, to order, to rule, to be mistress; but notwithstanding the strictest economy, the crudest privations, the utmost she had been able to save was a few coins at the end of every year. Her horror of the hospital was so great that when she had any slight illness she went to stay with a relative, so that the money so painfully saved was soon spent. She had never completely recovered from an illness she had had, and had now lost all hope of ever doing so. She must live at service till she was an old woman, and pass her life going from the house of one mistress to that of another. This certainty made her continually unhappy. Her disposition began to grow sour.
And then, she had no tact; she did not know how to take advantage of circumstances; she saw her fellow-servants amuse themselves, visit one another, stand at the windows, go out well-dressed on Sundays for a walk, rise with the sun singing, and when the master and mistress went to the theatre, open the door to their sweethearts, and enjoy the rest and the freedom from restraint. She could not do this; she had always been of a serious disposition. She performed her tasks, ate her dinner, and went to bed. On Sundays, when the streets were deserted, she would stand at the window, with an old towel thrown over the iron railing so as not to soil her sleeves, and there she would remain motionless, watching the infrequent passers-by. Others of her fellow-servants were liked by their mistresses, towards whom they conducted themselves with humility, whom they flattered, to whom they carried the gossip of the neighborhood, notes, and confidential messages to be delivered in secret. She could not reconcile herself to these meannesses.
Ever since she had lived at service, no sooner did she enter a house than she experienced a feeling of hostility, a dislike to her master and mistress; her mistresses seldom addressed her, and then with asperity; her fellow-servants conceived an antipathy towards her; while they were chatting and jesting, the severe and unbending countenance of Juliana annoyed them; they called her nicknames,—“the bean-pod,” “the witch,” and other unflattering names, imitating the nervous twitching of her nose; they made mocking verses about her. The only persons from whom she occasionally met with some sympathy were the taciturn Gallician servants,—exiles from beautiful Gallicia,—who cherished sad recollections of their native land, and who performed the humblest offices in the houses of their masters. Gradually she became suspicious and aggressive. She had continual disputes with her fellow-servants; she was not going to let any one tread on her neck, she said.
To the antipathy that met her on all sides she responded by isolating herself more completely, and her disposition grew constantly more sour and aggressive. She was unable to keep a place for any length of time. In a single year she had been in three houses. She had left each, causing a scandal in the neighborhood, bringing the people to their doors by her cries, and leaving her mistress pale and nervous. Her old friend Aunt Victoria, the inculcadeira, had said to her,—
“You will end by not having a roof to shelter you or a crust of bread to eat.”