You have deserted me in my old age; you have left me to die alone.
Ah, Lord!
It was a bitter day for us all when your gloating eyes first fell upon this damnable, this awful, this murderous and bloody Barn.
There is no ignominy to which you will not stoop if you think it will put a nickel in your pocket.
You have fallen so low not even your own brothers will come near you.
‘Nor beast, nor man hath fallen so far.’”
And in the pantries, above the stove, into the dining-room, the rich voices of the negresses chuckled with laughter.
“Dat man sho’ can tawk!”
Eliza got along badly with the negroes.
She had all the dislike and distrust for them of the mountain people.
Moreover, she had never been used to service, and she did not know how to accept or govern it graciously.
She nagged and berated the sullen negro girls constantly, tortured by the thought that they were stealing her supplies and her furnishings, and dawdling away the time for which she paid them.
And she paid them reluctantly, dribbling out their small wages a coin or two at a time, nagging them for their laziness and stupidity.
“What have you been doing all this time?
Did you get those back rooms done upstairs?”
“No’m,” said the negress sullenly, slatting flatfootedly down the kitchen.
“I’ll vow,” Eliza fretted.
“I never saw such a good-for-nothing shiftless darkey in my life.
You needn’t think I’m going to pay you for wasting your time.”
This would go on throughout the day.
As a result, Eliza would often begin the day without a servant: the girls departed at night muttering sullenly, and did not appear the next morning.
Moreover, her reputation for bickering pettiness spread through the length and breadth of Niggertown. It became increasingly difficult for her to find any one at all who would work for her.
Completely flustered when she awoke to find herself without help, she would immediately call Helen over the telephone, pouring her fretful story into the girl’s ear and entreating assistance:
“I’ll declare, child, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I could wring that worthless nigger’s neck.
Here I am left all alone with a house full of people.”
“Mama, in heaven’s name, what’s the matter?
Can’t you keep a nigger in the house?
Other people do.
What do you do to them, anyway?”
But, fuming and irritable, she would leave Gant’s and go to her mother’s, serving the tables with large heartiness, nervous and animated good-humor.
All the boarders were very fond of her: they said she was a fine girl.
Every one did.
There was a spacious and unsparing generosity about her, a dominant consuming vitality, which ate at her poor health, her slender supply of strength, so that her shattered nerves drew her frequently toward hysteria, and sometimes toward physical collapse.
She was almost six feet tall: she had large hands and feet, thin straight legs, a big-boned generous face, with the long full chin slightly adroop, revealing her big gold-traced upper teeth.
But, in spite of this gauntness, she did not look hard-featured or raw-boned.
Her face was full of heartiness and devotion, sensitive, whole-souled, hurt, bitter, hysterical, but at times transparently radiant and handsome.
It was a spiritual and physical necessity for her to exhaust herself in service for others, and it was necessary for her to receive heavy slatherings of praise for that service, and especially necessary that she feel her efforts had gone unappreciated.
Even at the beginning, she would become almost frantic reciting her grievances, telling the story of her service to Eliza in a voice that became harsh and hysterical:
“Let the least little thing go wrong and she’s at the phone.
It’s not my place to go up there and work like a nigger for a crowd of old cheap boarders.
You know that, don’t you? DON’T you?”
“Yes’m,” said Eugene, meekly serving as audience.
“But she’d die rather than admit it.
Do you ever hear her say a word of thanks?
Do I get,” she said laughing suddenly, her hysteria crossed for the moment with her great humor, “do I get so much as ‘go-to-hell’ for it?”
“NO!” squealed Eugene, going off in fits of idiot laughter.
“Why, law me, child.
H-m! Yes.
It’s GOOD soup,” said she, touched with her great earthy burlesque.