soul was legible, and Helen turned, came up on the porch, opened the hall door, and came into the parlour where they were, beginning to speak immediately in a tone of frenzied and tortured exacerbation of the nerves and with her large, gaunt, liberal features strained to the breaking point of nervous hysteria.
“My God!” she said in a tone of weary exasperation. “If I don’t get away from them soon I’m going to lose my mind!… From the moment that I get up in the morning I never get a moment’s peace! Someone’s after me all day long from morn to night! Why, good heavens, Mama!” she cried out in a tone of desperate fury, and as if Eliza had contradicted something she had said, “I’ve got troubles enough of my own, without anyone else putting theirs on me! Have they got no one else they can go to? Haven’t they got homes of their own to look after? Do I have to bear the burden of it all for everyone all my life?” she stormed in a voice that was so hoarse, strained and exasperated now that she was almost weeping. “Do I have to be the goat all my life? Oh, I want a little peace,” she cried desperately, “I just want to be left alone by myself once in a while!—The rest of you don’t have to worry!” she said accusingly. “You don’t have to stand for it. You can get away from it!” she cried. “You don’t know—you don’t know!” she said furiously, “what I put up with—but if I don’t get away from it soon, I’m going all to pieces.”
During all the time that Helen had been pouring out her tirade of the wrongs and injuries that had been inflicted on her, Luke had acted as a kind of dutiful and obsequious chorus, punctuating all the places where she had to pause to pant for breath, with such remarks as—
“W-w-w-w-well, you d-d-do too much for everyone and they don’t appreciate it—that’s the trouble,” or, “I f-f-f-f-fink I’d tell them all to p-p-p-p-politely step to hell—f-f-frankly I fink you owe it to yourself to do it! W-w-w-wy you’ll only w-w-w-wear yourself out doing for others and in the end you d-d-d-don’t get so m-m-m-much as one good Goddamn for all your trouble! F-f-f-frankly, I mean it!” he would say with a very earnest look on his harassed and drawn face. “W-w-w-wy hereafter I’d let’em g-g-g-g-go to hell!”
—“If they’d only show a little appreciation once in a while I wouldn’t mind so much,” she panted. “But do you think they care? Do you think it ever occurs to them to lift a hand to help me when they see me working my fingers to the bone for them? Why”—and here her big-boned generous face worked convulsively—“if I should work myself to death for them,
