As for domestic peace, future fireside comfort, agreeable life in the collective bosom, if any, of his family—ha, ha! To himself within he laughed a hollow despairing laugh. He began to understand why strong men in their prime might look favorably upon suicide as an escape from it all.
In his ears, like demoniac echoes, rang the semi-hysterical laments of his womenfolk. There was, to begin with, the poignant memory of what that outraged woman, Mrs. Golightly, had cried out:
“Wouldn’t it be just like him to disgrace us this way? I ask you, wouldn’t it?” Ignoring his abased presence she was addressing her two daughters, her deep voice rising above their berating tones. “What else could we have expected from such a father and such a husband? Does he think of us? Does he give a thought to my efforts to be somebody ever since we moved here to New York? Does he care for all my scheming to get you girls into really exclusive society? Or to get you married off into the right set? Do our ambitions mean anything to him? No, no, NO! What does he do? To gratify his own cheap cravings for notoriety he lets this shameful detestable vulgar rag expose us before the whole world. We’ll be the laughing stock of everybody. Can you hear what the Hewitt Strykers will say when they read these awful admissions?”
In her agony, the poor mother waved aloft the clutched copy of Achievements and seared him with a devastating sidewise glare. “Can’t you hear the Pewter-Walsbergs gloating and snickering when they find out that your father’s first name is Ephraim and that he used to be called ‘Eph’ for short and that he started life as a day-laborer and that then he worked at the trade of a bricklayer and that secretly all these years he’s been paying his dues in a dirty old union and carrying a dirty old union card—a thing which even I, knowing his common tastes as I did, never suspected before! But here’s a picture of it printed in facsimile to prove it!” And now she beat with a frenzied forefinger on a certain page of the offending periodical. “And then he goes on to tell how with his own hands he made some of the very bricks that went into the office-building where his office is now! And then—then—then—oh, how can I ever hold up my head again?—then he says that when we were first married we had to live on twelve dollars a week and do all our own housework and that I even used to wash out his undershirts!”
“Oh, mommer!” This was the senior Miss Golightly, bemoaning their ruin.
“And well may you say ‘Oh, mommer’—with the invitations out for your formal début next week!”
“Oh, popper!” exclaimed the stricken Miss Golightly. In the shock of the moment she had temporarily forgotten about her scheduled début. “Oh, popper, how could you do such a thing to me!”
“And Evelyn here expecting to join the Junior League—what chance has the poor child now? How can she ever forgive you?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” screamed the younger Miss Golightly, not addressing anyone in particular.
It was at this point that Mr. Golightly had grabbed his hat and clamped it on his degraded head and fled from this house of vain and utter repinings.