"When father came home in the evening, he seemed to sense trouble at once, for suddenly coming down on the table with his fist, he demanded: 'What in hell is the matter? Here you both are going around with faces as if you were at a funeral. I'm working hard all day, and when I come home at night, by God, I don't want to see such faces around me. What in hell is it, now tell me!'
"Mother told him, and he said: 'Very well, just wait till I've had supper, for I'm damned hungry, then we'll have a little understanding with my lady, who's so mighty high-toned since she worked for those swells. I'll soon show her, though, she is no better than we are.'
"When the important task of supper was over he called me to him. I was trembling in every limb, for I knew that my father was a man of few words and that he would without delay proceed to action. I managed to get a chair between him and me. He went to work deliberately, as if he were a prize-fighter. First, he spat on his hands, and was about to give me a knock-out-blow, when I, with the courage of desperation, raised the chair above my head, crying out, 'Father, if you strike me, I'll hit you with this chair.' He was so astonished at my audacity that his arms fell to his sides and he gazed at me as if he had lost his senses. I took advantage of this pause to make for the door, but before I could escape, he seized me by the arm and hurled me back into the room, and then with blood-shot eyes and bull-like voice he cursed and cursed. My mother, fearing the effect of his terrible rage, tried to intercede, but he pushed her aside, shouting, 'Oh, she's the daughter of her mother all right, and she'll turn out to be a damned —— just like you!'
"He then came up to me, where I was standing really expecting my death, and to my surprise only pressed his fist gently against my head saying: 'See how easily I could crush you. The next time I hear anything about you, I will.' Cursing me and mother, he left the house and he took him to a nearby saloon where he drank himself insensible. Toward morning he was brought home. Poor man, he just couldn't bear to see long faces about him, especially after a hard day's work!
"In a few days I secured another place, this time in a middle-class family. I remained there nearly a year and was considered by my mistress a model of willingness, patience, endurance, gentleness, and all the other slavish virtues. I never spoke except when spoken to and then I answered so respectfully! The children might kick and abuse me in any way they chose without any show of resentment from me. This my mistress noticed and duly commended. 'Those dear children,' she said. 'You know they do not realise what they are about, and so one ought not to be harsh to the dear pets.'
"I gave up reading books and even newspapers; partly I suppose because I had for the time satiated myself, especially with sentimental and trashy novels, and had not yet learned to know real literature, and partly because, in my state of humility, I listened to my mistress when she said reading took too much time, that it was better to sew, dust, and the like, when I was not busy with the children. Everything I do, I must do passionately, it seems, even to being a slave. I gave up dances, too, and on my days out dutifully visited my parents. I had no friends or companions and was in all respects what one calls a perfect servant—so perfect that the friends of my mistress quite envied her the possession of so useful a slave.
"I got pleasure out of doing the thing so thoroughly; but yet it would not have been so interesting to me if it had not been painful, too. I was enough of a sport to want as much depth of experience, while it lasted, in that direction as in any other—in spite of, perhaps partly because of, the pain. And what pain it was, at times! Who knows of the bitter hatred surging in my heart, of the long nights spent in tears, of the terrible mental tortures I endured! Sometimes it was as if an iron hand were squeezing my heart so that I almost died; sometimes as if a great lump of stone lay on my chest. And my mistress seemed each day somehow to make the iron hand squeeze tighter and tighter and the stone weigh heavier and heavier. If she had only known what a deadly hatred I bore her—a hatred that would not have been so severe if I had not been so good a servant—had given myself rope, had satisfied my emotions! If she had understood that my calm, modest bearing was only a mask which hid a passionate soul keenly alive to the suffering inflicted on me, she would have hesitated, I think, before she entrusted her precious darlings to my care.
"This period of virtuous serving was the severest strain to which my nature, physical and moral, was ever put. I finally became very ill, and had to be removed to my mother's house, as completely broken in body as I had apparently been in spirit.
"I sat near the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody was kind to me. My mother gave me novels to read and money to go to the dances. The books I scarcely glanced at, and what I did read seemed so silly to me! And the dances had lost their charm. I went once or twice, but the music did not awaken any emotion in me, and I sat dully in a corner watching, without any desire to join in. And this, when I was hardly past sixteen years of age!