HIGHLY civilized beings laugh seldom and never cry at all, but Lizzie, who upon slight provocation could laugh loud and long, cried over anything she wanted to. It made her feel good all over, she said, to holler aloud with her cheek pressed against the cool oilcloth of the kitchen table. Lizzie was a Slavic cook I had (mournful past tense!) — a large girl, with masses of coarse black hair, dusky eyes, and extremely fair and beautiful skin. Her only fault was a disposition to raise her voice in lament all the way up to my third-floor sewing-room when, for instance, a cake was burned on the bottom, when mom (spouse to ‘pop’) ‘smacked her awful,’ or when my little girl, Henrietta, got a pain.

Consequently, when those familiar robust sobs drowned the voice of my sewing-machine that day of Lizzie’s great misfortune, — and mine, too, for I had trained her for three years into a perfect cook, and besides I loved the great big child, — I did not go down to inquire until I had most callously finished my seam. Then, glancing around the kitchen and seeing no stimuli for tears on the stove, sink, or table, I looked out into the back yard, where I saw the freshly laundered napkins strewn upon the ground, cause indeed for despair.

‘Yes’m,’ gasped Lizzie, on the crest of a sob, ‘clothesline fall from clean napkins and make all dirty, but that not why I cry.’ Then, with this negative explanation, the arms that could shove my piano across the sitting-room were stretched out again on the soothing oilcloth, her face hidden against them, only the tangle of hair visible — wet around the edges with the heat of the kitchen stove combined with her emotion.

‘My mom say, “You must marry.” ’ And the girl broke forth as though her former demonstration had been but a hint of her real power in the lachrymose line.

‘But Lizzie, don’t you want to marry ?’ I asked, amazed. I had never yet had a girl who did n’t leave me to get married as soon as I had trained her. A cook lamenting because she did n’t want to get married upset my theories.

Lizzie, looking like a swimmer who had been some time submerged, mopped her face and hair on the corner of her apron.

‘My man very bad dirty fellow,’ she explained. ‘You teach me be clean nice girl, go-to-bed-very-early-everynight. You have nice white baby with yellow hair and clean dress. My babies come all the time to lie on floor. Such babies I hate. Such husbands I hate. Mom and pop I hate fierce. I love you, and Henri, and Mr. Stanley. I like how Mr. Stanley stay away from us women when he get drunk — ’

‘Why, Lizzie,’ I gasped, an outraged matron, ‘Mr. Stanley never got drunk in his life.’

Her eyes and mouth flew open. ‘Mum? I know he don’t come home when he drunk, but I never know a man not get drunk, especially Saturday. But such a man that don’t bother me when he drunk I like very well to marry and have-a little baby with a clean dress.’

She paused, speculating. But happy anticipation had to give way to the real pressure of facts, and while I was attempting to grasp the situation the girl broke forth anew.

‘It shame for us girls not to marry, and mom say, “Liz, you get a day older every day, you know. Soon no one want you for wife.” I ’m most twenty. But I never see a fellow I like. Our fellows is all little short men, too lazy to grow. They marry us just to work us. Lots of lads keep company with me just because they see my big broad back. But I rather work for you than such ugly fellows.’

‘You said you would like children,’ I suggested weakly.

But the girl interrupted.

‘Yes’m, but I get tired having so many. And their pop don’t love them. And it make a difference that he don’t love me, you say. You told me more times than clothespins ’ — a peculiar comparison of Lizzie’s evidently founded on wash-day — ‘ how a girl must not marry except she loves and she must be good girl after she marry just same as before. But I do not love such a man my mom picks out for me. And my mom she say she never hear of a girl being good like you say, and she say, “You big fool, Liz, to care that your fellow get drunk. Don’t your own pop get drunk whenever he want? All men in the world get drunk.”

‘ I say, “Do the priest drink then, mom?” And she say, “Course not, but you can’t marry the priest, they don’t marry, so what you talk so silly for?” Then I need n’t marry, I think, but mom say, “Shut up.” I marry my fellow next week. Ugh! He’s that short, Mrs. Stanley, that I mostly only see the top of his head. But mom say I marry,’ she reiterated.

My poor Lizzie! Of course I offered her my home as long as she wanted to live in it.

‘You been good to me, Mrs. Stanley,’ she said, shyly grateful, ‘and I like to live here in so nice place with a clean table-cloth and such nice little cakes of that sweet soap in the bathroom what I smell when I clean out the tub — I rub a little on my dress, Mrs. Stanley, on Sunday — I know you don’t care. And I just love to look at Mr. Stanley when I wait on table. He such a lovely young man and say, “Thanks, Lizzie,” just like that, like you never tell him you pay me every week to wait on him. Sounds nice, don’t, you think — “Thanks, Lizzie”?’

‘Do stay with me then,’ I urged. ‘You support yourself, and there’s plenty of room for you here.’

‘No, ma’am, it would be a great sin,’ she replied with mournful conviction. ‘Mom say she tell the priest about me and she say he say, “Lizzie must obey her parents” — that’s mom and pop, you know — “and marry to increase the faithful.” If I don’t obey the priest I go to the bad place, and you know I think what that is every time I burn myself just a little on the range — awful — ’

‘There, Lizzie,’ I interrupted, patting her shoulder soothingly. I had heard of her Hell before and had no desire to revisit those awful infernal scenes under the guidance of my domestic Dante. ‘ Suppose you wash your face now and see about, dinner. Nothing is ever as bad as you think it is going to be.’ Such my hypocritical platitude.

After her wedding I was too engrossed in the training of another Slav to interest myself seriously in Lizzie’s matrimonial adventures. I often wondered, however, why she did not come to see me. I could not ascribe her indifference to a settled content in her own home, where I knew she must be working herself to death, though my husband said that this was fine sentimental reasoning. He remarked that I seemed to feel an inner satisfaction in imagining the girl unhappy, due to the fact that I had trained her into a being somewhat higher than her own people. ‘You are crediting Lizzie with nerves, almost with temperament,’ he declared; ‘and cooks don’t have such things,’ he added largely.

One day Lizzie came. She brought Henrietta gifts after a child’s heart: a cake full of raisins for little fingers to pick out and scatter crumbs all over the place, and a bottle of cologne, somewhat more powerful and permeating than smelling-salts, called ‘Breath of Wild Violets.’ She played with the child, scarcely speaking to me. Once tears came slowly to her eyes, but she wiped them away and none followed.

‘You used always to cry on this very piece of oilcloth, Lizzie. Help yourself,’ said I, patting her hand.

Lizzie ignored me and lifted Henrietta from her broad knees, where the child, reeking with the scent of the ‘Wild Violets,’ sat absorbed in meditation like a fat Buddha.

‘I have a baby soon,’ she said.

There was a pause. The girl’s face flushed suddenly and painfully, and I could scarcely catch her words.

‘ I don’t know nothing. I very frightened. He scare me and mom say I big fool. My own mom she say, “Lizzie, you great big fool.” But I most unhappy mother of baby like its pop, just like its ugly pop, dark, dirty-looking. —My God, Mrs. Stanley, am I a pig like my husband and my children little pigs? And I work all day for my husband since we got married, but do he care for me any different from another, any other, woman? All our men and women crowd together, spend their nights together to make God sick — you know how it is, and you teach me be clean girl, you know, but I wish you teach me nothing nice. I wish I die long ago. I never grow a woman till I married and now — now I can’t still even cry good and loud like I used to once.’ She was accumulating sorrow on sorrow like a hurt child.

I did n’t know what on earth to say. The situation was indeed unprecedented in my rather brief domestic experience. My husband had said that cooks did n’t have ‘nerves,’ that surcharged feeling or temperament was the peculiar burden of those who did not have the question of the next meal and a Slavic villain of a husband to contend with. The exceptionally poor and degraded, in my theory of compensation, were to be spared exceptional insight. No cook should be devastated from within by ‘those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things.’ But of course my theories did not blaze a trail for Lizzie. I put my arm about the girl, and told her to come up to the nursery with me and look over some of Henrietta’s first baby clothes that might be of use to her.

‘My child not pretty and sweet little thing like Henri,’ said the girl sullenly, but smoothing out with evident pleasure the rumpled little clothes. ‘And she just grow up very quick like babies do, and she live unhappy all her life like me. She won’t learn like me here, though, to like a pretty thing and to try to be nice all the time. I very dumb, but I learn much more here than to broil a beefsteak for Mr. Stanley and how not so much onion in things is better tasting. But what t he use? No use at all, and now I don’t like to live with a man and cut his hair and sole his shoes and bake and clean. And you wouldn’t believe how I have so great number of things to tell on myself at confession, how awful I swear, and how Satan tempts me to hit my husband, me so much larger than him and such a good useful strength in my two arms. — My heavenly Father,’ she cried suddenly, ‘ if my baby a boy baby — you can’t think how I hate men, except Mr. Stanley of course. — But I like these little clothes fine. Don’t you think they cute? And all mine. I like very much to dress her — this baby, I mean.’

‘You will bring her around often to see Henri and me,’ I urged as she was leaving.

‘Yes, ma’am, if you should like.’

‘I love your baby dearly already,’ said I; but, stopping short, embraced the girl.

Her wistful darkening eyes were so eloquent a tongue that my own was silenced.

When I leaned over to peep at the little bundle in its mother’s arms I was greeted by screams from such powerful lungs that I concluded sorrowfully that, contrary to Lizzie’s wishes, the infant must certainly be a boy and a very energetic one. But its mother answered my unspoken question.

‘It’s a little girl, Mrs. Stanley. Its pop is that mad at its not being a boy. I hope I don’t have another. But I like this one, this little girl.’ She lay silently with her one good possession pressed to her side. ‘Don’t you think it’s a awful cute little baby ? ’ said its mother, running her fingers lightly over the funny fuzzy little head. ‘Do you think it favors me or the pop, Mrs. Stanley? We think it looks like me. My mom say she don’t just happen to remember what I looked like when I was small, she’s had so many babies since, but she thinks I most likely looked about like this baby of mine, real fat,’ — she rolled back the sleeve from the infant’s arm, — ‘and do look, its arms are certainly powerful looking for such a small baby, ain’t they, and you remember how I can move your piano? — But dear God! I do feel so weak as water now.’

‘What are you going to name her, Lizzie? Is she to be a little Lizzie Number Two?’

‘No, ma’am. I wanted to ask you if you cared if I named her after Henrietta. And pop’s name’s Bevarik, you know, so her name’ll be Henrietta Stanley Bevarik. Ain’t that a nice name? Sounds almost as if she were a lady already like your Henri. With a name like that she’ll surely be a whole lot better than me, don’t you think? Well, I think I get up to-morrow. I have a lot to do for the baby that nobody here know how to do but me. And did n’t you say I should wash her ears along with her face, Mrs. Stanley? ’

‘Yes, Lizzie.’

‘I knew it,’ said the young mother triumphantly. ‘Mom say it ’ud make her deaf to wash her ears much. But mom don’t know about babies like I do, do she?’