CHAPTER V
When Martin went on his honeymoon to Atlantic City, he had taken his annual two weeks’ vacation. During the hot weather of summer, therefore, he and Jeannette were obliged to remain in the sweltering city. But Jeannette did not mind the heat. Adventuring in married life was too utterly absorbing; she loved her new home, and each day found new delight in managing it. She and her husband considered themselves deliriously happy. Nights on which they did not go to the theatre, they roamed the bright upper stretches of Broadway, sauntered along Riverside Drive as far as Grant’s Tomb, or meandered into the Park, where electric lights cast a theatrical radiance on trees and shrubbery. On Sundays they made excursions to the beaches, and one week-end they went to Coney Island on Saturday afternoon and stayed the night at the Manhattan Beach Hotel. Jeannette long remembered the glorious planked steak they enjoyed for dinner on that occasion, sitting at a little table by the porch railing, listening to the big military band, while all about them a gay throng chatted and laughed at other tables, and crowds surged up and down the boardwalk as the Atlantic thundered a dull rhythmical bourdon to the stirring music of trumpet and drum.
Her mother departed the first of August for Canada. The concert tour having been finally decided upon,—without the violinist,—every day or so cards arrived from Mrs. Sturgis post-marked “Montreal,” “Quebec,” “Toronto.” The venture could hardly be considered a financial success, she wrote, but she and the girls were having just too wonderful a time! The Canadians were extraordinarily hospitable!
Alice, Roy, and the baby returned from Freeport the last of September; she expected to be confined early in November. The Devlins visited them one Sunday during the last weeks of their stay on Long Island, and Jeannette wondered how her sister could be happy in such an environment. The room the Beardsleys occupied was under the roof and, during the day, like an oven. Etta, Alice told her, woke up sometimes as early as five or five-thirty, and nothing would persuade the child to go to sleep again. As soon as she was awake, she began to fret, and her wails disturbed the other boarders at that hour. Either father or mother would find it necessary to get up, dress, and wheel the child out in her carriage, pushing her around and around the block until she could be brought safely back to the house. On Sundays when breakfast was not until nine o’clock, these hours of the early silent mornings were a long, wearisome, hungry trial. Jeannette thought the food at the boarding-house was markedly meager, and Alice had to admit that as the season was drawing to a close, there were evidences of retrenchment on the part of the landlady, but at first, she assured her sister, the table had been plentiful and good. The effect of all this upon Jeannette had been a determination to order her own life along safer lines. Two or three times Alicehad come up to the city during the summer to spend the night. On these occasions Roy slept at his own flat in the Bronx, as there was only a narrow couch available at the Devlins’. To this Martin had been relegated, and the two sisters occupied the bed together. Alice was very large. It worried Jeannette; she was once more full of apprehensions. She made up her mind that for herself she did not want a baby for a long time, not until she and Martin were out of debt, and had saved something so that she could be sure of a certain amount of comfort and care.
Martin’s attitude about money distressed her. He did not seem to take the matter of their finances with sufficient seriousness. He was ever urging her to engage a maid to attend to the dish-washing and clean up after dinner. He hated kitchen work, himself, and equally hated to have his wife do it. When he finished his dinner and rose from the table, rolling a cigar about between his teeth and filling his mouth with good, strong inhalations of satisfying tobacco smoke, he felt contented, replete, ready for talk and relaxation. To have Jeannette disappear into the kitchen and begin banging around out there with pans and rattling dishes annoyed him. He could not bring himself to help her; something in him rebelled at such work. His wife readily understood how he felt; she sympathized with him, and did not want him to help her, but she had her own aversion to letting the dishes stand over night and having them to do after breakfast the following day. It took the best part of her morning, and meant she could never get downtown until afternoon. But Martin was willing to concede nothing; he answered herarguments by reiterating his advice to her to hire a girl.
“Good God, Jan,” he would say in characteristic vigorous fashion, “she would cost you fifteen or twenty dollars a month, and then you could get out as early as you wanted to in the mornings and we could have our evenings together.”
It was just that fifteen or twenty dollars a month which Jeannette wanted to save to pay on her bills. She had inherited a sense of frugality; it worried her to be in debt. Martin, on the other hand, was blandly indifferent. He was willing to deny himself very little, his wife often felt, to help her contribute to the “till.” They had many arguments about the matter but never reached a conclusion. Their creditors,—they owed a little less than three hundred dollars,—were kept satisfied by a small remittance each month but something more always had to be charged. Jeannette was baffled. She talked it over with Alice. The Beardsleys lived more simply than the Devlins; they did not entertain nor go out to dinner so often nor to the theatre, and they paid only half as much rent. Their whole scale of expenditure was more economical. That was the answer, of course. When Jeannette told Martin they were living beyond their means, he grew angry.
“Damn it,” he answered her, “if there is one thing I hate more than another, it’s a piker! What do you want to crab about the bills for? Haven’t we got everything we want? Aren’t we getting along all right? Who’s kicking?”
Jeannette heaved a sigh of weariness. Some day before long she would have to persuade him to her way of thinking.
Alice’s boy was born in October and was christened Ralph Sturgis Beardsley by the Reverend Doctor Fitzgibbons, much to Mrs. Sturgis’ tearful satisfaction. Alice had a comparatively easy time with the birth of her second child, but again there was an aftermath which kept her weak and anæmic and necessitated an operation just before Christmas.
It was just before Christmas that Jeannette urged Martin to ask for a raise. Several circumstances encouraged her: she had learned through Miss Holland that Walt Chase was getting eighty-five dollars a week,—a big mail order concern out in Chicago had made him an offer and Mr. Corey had been obliged to raise his salary in order to keep him; Martin had met John Archibald of the Archibald Engraving Company, the largest color engravers in the city, and Mr. Archibald had bought Martin a drink at the bar in the Waldorf and presented him with a cigar; lastly, her husband had landed a new engraving account a few weeks before and had brought in considerable holiday business. Martin heeded her advice and had a talk with Herbert Gibbs, who promised to take the matter up with his brother, Joe, and seemed disposed to recommend the increase. In the wildest of spirits, Martin came home, waltzed his wife around the apartment, kissed her a dozen times, told her again and again she was a wonder, insisted she stop her preparations for dinner, and carried her off to a café downtown where he ordered a pint of champagne and toasted her.
His elation, however, was not fully justified. Martin had asked for a substantial increase and a commissionon all new accounts. It was evident that in discussing the matter, the brothers had decided this was too much. They agreed to give him three thousand a year on a twelve months’ contract.
“I always detested that flat-headed pig,” Jeannette exclaimed inelegantly when Martin brought home the news. “Think of how we tried to entertain him and that stupid wife of his, and how we went down to visit them and let them bore us to death! I knew he was that kind of a creature!”
“Aw, come, come, Jan,” Martin remonstrated; “you want to be fair. Herb did the best he could; it was old Joe who kicked. Three thousand a year isn’t so bad; that’s two hundred and fifty a month. Not so rotten for a fellow twenty-seven.... Now I hope to God you’ll get a girl in here to help run the kitchen.”
“Well,—all right,” Jeannette conceded, “only you’ve got to go on helping me save. I want to pay off every cent we owe.... I suppose I get my half as usual.”
“Sure. I’ll be paid now twice a month: first and fifteenth.”
“Let’s see; ... that’s a hundred and twenty-five. I get sixty-two fifty; that’s really five dollars more a week, isn’t it?”
“You’re a little tight-wad,—do you know that, darling?”
“No, I’m not,” Jeannette defended herself. “I’m only trying to run things economically and systematically, and to do that you’vegotto plan ahead. The trouble with you, Mart, is that you never do!”
The raise led to the appearance of Hilda in the kitchen. Hilda was a big-boned, good-natured Swedishgirl, willing, but a careless cook, often exasperatingly stupid. Jeannette paid her fifteen dollars a month, and established her in the vacant bedroom not hitherto furnished, which involved an outlay of nearly a hundred dollars.
In spite of the additional income, money continued to be a problem. Jeannette still felt that she and Martin were living too extravagantly, and that her husband did not do his share in helping to retrench. She had been entirely satisfied in the old days before she married to go to the theatre in gallery or rear balcony seats, but Martin scorned these locations. When he went to a show, he said, he wanted to enjoy himself, and sitting in the cheap seats robbed him of any pleasure whatsoever. It was the same whenever they went downtown to dinner; he preferred the expensive hotels and restaurants; when he bought new clothes he went to a tailor and had the suit made to order; he tipped everywhere he went far too generously. If there was any economizing to be done, it was always Jeannette who must do it, and what made it all the harder was that he did not thank her for the self-denial. He spent,—his wife had no way of knowing how much,—a great deal for drinks, and for the gin and vermuth he brought home. Once a week, sometimes oftener, he would arrive with a bottle of each, carefully wrapped up in newspaper, under his arm. Every time they entertained, she knew it meant more gin and more vermuth for cocktails. Martin was not a tippler. Frequently several days or a week would go by without his even suggesting a cocktail. He did not seem to want one, unless there was company, or he happened to come home specially tired. Jeannette had never seen himintoxicated, although on the last day of the year a number of the men at his office had gathered in the late afternoon at a neighboring bar, and wished each other “Happy New Year” over and over. Martin arrived home, glassy-eyed and noisy, wanting her to kiss and love him. She hated him when he had been drinking; she even loathed the odor of liquor on his breath; it made it strong and hot like the breath of a panther. Another expense was his cigars of which he consumed half-a-dozen a day. She knew they cost money, and she knew Martin well enough to feel sure that the kind he liked was not the inexpensive variety.
There was also his card playing to be taken into account. Sandy MacGregor had a circle of friends who played poker together generally once a week, on Friday nights. At first Jeannette had urged Martin to go when Sandy had rung him up, asking if he would like to “sit in.” She considered it part of a good wife’s rôle: a man should not be expected to give up masculine society, or an occasional “good time with the boys” merely because he was married. She did not entirely approve of poker, but Martin loved it. Whenever he won, he woke her up when he came home and announced it triumphantly; when he lost he said nothing about it, and she felt she had no right to ask questions. She suspected he did not tell her the truth about the size of the stakes for which he played, realizing she would worry, so she never inquired, and if Martin came home and put seven or eight dollars on her dressing-table, exultingly telling her that it was half his winnings, she thanked him with a bright smile and a kiss for his generous division, even though she was confident he had won a great deal more.
On the first and fifteenth of the month he gave her sixty-two dollars and fifty cents. She had to apportion the money among the tradespeople, the bills “downtown,” and keep enough for Hilda’s wages and incidental table expenses for the ensuing fortnight. It left her very little to spend on herself, for clothes and amusements,—far from enough. For years she had been independent, her own mistress, with the disposal of her entire earnings; it was hard for her now to have to economize and compromise and resort to makeshifts because of her husband’s indifference and improvidence. It brought back disturbing memories of old days when she and Alice and their mother had had to skimp and struggle in order to eke out the simplest order of existence. It was just what she feared might happen when she had considered marrying.
A month arrived when Jeannette found upon her grocer’s bill a charge for gin and vermuth and for half a box of cigars: nine dollars and twenty-five cents! It precipitated an angry quarrel between her husband and herself. Martin had been encroaching in various ways upon her half share of his salary, and she proposed now to put a stop to it. He argued that the cocktails and cigars had been for her friends when invited to dinner; she retorted that neither cocktails nor cigars had had any share in the entertainment she provided, and if he chose to have them on hand and offer them, it was his own affair. She taxed him with the whole score of his extravagance, while Martin chafed and twisted under her sharp criticisms, swore and grew sulky. He hated unpleasantness and tried to evade the issue: he’d pay for the booze and cigars and buy her a hat or anything else she fancied, if she’donly “forget it” and quit “ragging” him. But Jeannette felt that the question of an equal division of their financial responsibility was vital to the success of their marriage, the happiness of both, and she refused to be deflected. He finally stormed himself out of the apartment, viciously banging the door shut behind him. Two days of misery followed for them both, when they met with the exchange of monosyllables only, though their thoughts pursued one another through every hour. Their reconciliation was terrific, each willing to concede everything, eager to make promises and to assure the other of utter contriteness.
From Jeannette’s point-of-view matters improved. Twice Martin gave her an extra ten dollars out of his half of his salary.
When the year’s lease on the apartment neared its end, Martin was not for renewing it. Herbert Gibbs had been talking to him about Cohasset Beach, urging him to move there. Summer was approaching, Gibbs pointed out, with all its good times of swimming and boating, and even in winter, he assured Martin, there was plenty of outdoor sport: skating, tobogganing, even skiing. In particular, his employer counselled, there was a remarkable little house,—a bungalow,—with floors, ceilings and inside trim of oak that had just become vacant through the death of its owner, which could be had for fifty dollars a month. It was a great bargain for the money. Martin was enthusiastic. Gibbs had promised he would be at once elected to the Family Yacht Club, and had described the good times its members had: dances every Saturday night and insummer, swimming, yachting, picnics. The “bunch,” he assured the young man, was a “live” one,—the pick of “good fellows.”
Jeannette listened to her husband’s glowing recital with a cold tightening at her heart.
“He says, Jan,” Martin told her eagerly, “that every once in awhile they have masquerade parties down at the Club, and everybody goes all dressed up, with masks on, you know, so nobody recognizes you, and they just have a riot of fun. Then about a dozen or fifteen of the fellows are going to get sail-boats this year. There’s a ship-yard near there, and the ship-builder has designed the neatest little sail-boat you ever saw in your life. He calls it the A-boat, and they are only going to cost ninety dollars apiece. Just think of that, Jan: ninety dollars apiece! A sail-boat,—a little yacht,—for that sum! Gee whillikens! Can you imagine the fun we’ll have? Everybody, you know, starts the same with a new boat. Gibbs was crazy to have me order one,—the Club is anxious to give the ship-builder as big an order as possible so’s to get the price down,—so I fell for it and told him to put me down. I thought maybe I’d call her theAlbatross?”
“You—what?” asked Jeannette blankly.
“Sure, I told him to put me down. You know, it made a hit with him; he’d ’ve been awfully sore if I hadn’t; and it’s up to me to keep in with old Gibbsey. I can sell it if we don’t like it. Gibbs put my name up for membership in the Yacht Club.”
“Hedid?” Jeannette said blankly again.
“Well, darling, it’s only thirty dollars a year and I guess that’s not going to break us; the initiation fee is twenty-five,—something like that. Why the Club isjust intended for young married folks like us; there’re the dances for the ladies, and the card parties and picnics, and there’re the sports for the men. Gee,—I think it will be great! And Gibbsey tells me that by special arrangement this year the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club is going to let us use its tennis courts!”
Jeannette looked into his excited eyes, and a dull exasperation came over her.
“The poor, poor simpleton,” she thought. “He thinks he’ll like it; Gibbs has filled him full. He’ll hate it as I hate it now inside of a fortnight. He never would be contented in such a place; what would he do without his theatres and the gay night life he loves? It’s hard enough for us to live as we are,—we have to struggle and struggle to make ends meet,—and here he is mad to try an even more expensive method of living, involving clubs and club dues, yachts and commutation fares! ... And in such a community with such people! The flat-headed Gibbses and their awful friends picnicking there on the sand that terrible Fourth of July! And Martin proposes I exchange them and their vulgar dreadful society, their masquerades and card parties, for my beautiful little apartment which I’ve tried to make perfect, which everyone admires, and which is my joy and delight!”
There was a dangerous, fixed smile on her face as she rose from the dinner table where they had been lingering over their black coffee, and rang the little brass bell for Hilda to clear away.
“Well, what do you think, Jan? Don’t you believe we’d both come to love the country? Don’t you think we’d have a pack of fun down there?”
She eyed him with a cold stare a moment before she answered slowly:
“I won’t consider it.”
His face fell.
“What’s more,” she added briefly, “I think you’re a fool.”
His expression darkened; he glowered at her, hurt to the quick. She ignored him and went about the living-room straightening objects, lowering shades, adjusting lights. All the time she was steeling herself to the wrangle she knew was coming. She would be equal to it; she would give him straight talk; she’d let him have a piece of her mind and make him realize how absurd he was, how utterly insane. Buying yachts and joining clubs! What did he think he was, anyway? A millionaire?
The storm when it broke was the most violent they had yet known; it was even worse than she had anticipated. Martin, usually noisy, cursing, was quick to recover, while she rarely lost control of speech or action. But now the thought of giving up her little home, as he calmly proposed, infuriated her. He had not the faintest conception of how she loved it; he had never done one single thing to improve or beautify it beyond buying those frightful Macy daubs!
For the first time in their quarrels she could not control her tears. Convulsed with sobbing, Martin thought she had capitulated. He waited several minutes in distressed silence and then came to where she lay upon the couch to put his arms about her and draw her to him, but she turned on him with a fury that was shocking. Rebuffed, he stared at her savagely, thensnatched his hat and coat and left her with a violent bang of the door.
Jeannette never for one moment thought she could not swing Martin to her wishes. She could not conceive of herself weakening; Martin had always been easy-going, good-natured. But she had forgotten how purposeful he could be when his intent was hot; she had forgotten his perseverance, his patience, his indefatigability when he wooed her; she had forgotten his winningness, his persuasiveness. He brought all these qualities into play now; there was no side-tracking him, no gainsaying him. His mind was locked against the renewal of their lease, and set upon Cohasset Beach. He argued, he cajoled, he pleaded, he coaxed. Never had she known him so irritating or so winning. If she grew cross, he was amiable; if she grew sorrowful, he was consoling and tender; if she advanced arguments that brooked no reply, he was loving and answered her with kisses. But he was determined; nothing swerved him from his purpose.
Once again, Jeannette found no comforting support in anybody. Her mother said she ought to give in to her husband if he was so set upon the plan; it was the wife’s place to give way. Alice thought it would be delightful to live in the country, and assured her sister she would come to love it; she and Roy had been talking all winter about moving to some place on Long Island or in New Jersey, but it was hard to find anything really nice for twenty-five dollars a month within commuting distance of the city; they were going to board at Freeport again for the summer and they intended to look around and see what they could findthere. It would be ideal for the children.... Was there any hope ... any prospect ...?
“No, thank Heaven,” Jeannette answered fervently. She had enough to bother her without the complication of a baby just now.
On the anniversary of her wedding day she surrendered. Martin had been so sweet and gentle with her, so anxious to please, so considerate, every impulse within her prompted her to do the thing he wanted. She could see how eager he was for his sail-boat, his new club and the country; he was mad to have them; her heart was full of love for him. She reminded herself that when she had entered into this marriage she had been determined to give more, if need be, than he did, to make their union a success. Here was an opportunity. It meant a great sacrifice for herself; she had no faith in the experiment, but felt sure she would learn to hate all the people and the place, and Martin would soon tire of it and them and share her feelings. But now it was the thing above all else he wanted, and it was her chance to be generous.
She extracted from him two promises, however. It was a foregone conclusion, she told him, that she would not be happy at Cohasset Beach, but if she agreed to go and live there with him, it must be understood between them that she was to be free to come into New York as often as she pleased, to shop or to visit her mother and Alice, or do anything she liked. He must also understand that he was to keep a closer watch upon their finances. With commutation, railroad fares and club dues added to their expenses they would have to practise a much more rigid economy. She wanted to get the table expenditures down tofifteen dollars a week, and that would be out of the question if he expected her to entertain. As soon as they were out of debt and had a little ahead, she would be more than willing to have him invite people to visit them.
He promised everything. He was only too anxious and willing, he said, to agree to all she asked, to show his deep gratitude.
The bungalow at Cohasset Beach, at first sight, consoled her in some degree for giving up the apartment. The little house was charming, and charmingly situated. It had been built a few years before by a rich old lady, an invalid, who had been compelled to pass her days in a wheel-chair which she operated herself. Because of the chair, the house had been planned bungalow-fashion, though there was an upstairs of two small bedrooms and an extra bath, and the doorways between rooms had been made particularly wide to permit the easy passage of the chair. Inside there were oak floors throughout, a spacious fireplace, and an oak-timbered ceiling in a generous-sized living-room, off which opened two bedrooms and, opposite, the dining-room. There was an acre or so of unkempt ground about the house with some gnarled old apple trees, in blossom when Jeannette first saw them, and at the rear the ground sloped down to a rush-bordered pool in whose rippleless surface all the colors of the sky, blossoming trees and bordering reeds were intensified in glorious reflection. A white cow stood upon her own inverted image at the farther side. There was no view of the Sound,—the bungalow was a good mile from thewater,—but it was picturesquely set, and Jeannette felt, since she had been forced to abandon the city, she could not have found a home in the country that suited her better.
The move from town was accomplished without a hitch; even Hilda was successfully transplanted. Jeannette set herself determinedly to work to fit herself and her furniture into the new environment, and was surprised to discover how easily both were accomplished. Expenses alone distressed her. The vans which brought down the household effects cost more than she had expected, and she was obliged to order more furniture and rugs to make the new home attractive. Unfortunately, the bungalow had casement windows and this necessitated cutting and remaking all her curtains. Some in addition, too, were needed for the living-room, and Jeannette had decided that scrim would be both practical and economical, but the clerk in the store had shown her a soft, lovely material, stamped with a design of long green grasses and iris, which he assured her was “sunfast.” The pale purple and green in the goods had appealed to her as so unusually beautiful and effective that she had not been able to resist getting it. She decided to plant iris about the house in the long narrow strips of flower-beds, and to carry iris as amotifthroughout the place. In a Fifth Avenue shop there was some china that had a pattern offleur-de-lisin its center, and her heart was set on some day acquiring it for her new home.
Martin was immediately elected to the Family Yacht Club; the Gibbses had him and his wife to dinner and invited the Websters and another couple to make their acquaintance; Mrs. Rudolph Drigo and Mrs. Blum, whowere neighbors, called, also Doctor Vinegartner of the Episcopal Church. Alice, Roy, and the children spent a Sunday with her sister and Alice was enthusiastic about everything. She told Roy they would have to find a house of their own at Cohasset Beach without delay. Summer had arrived before Jeannette was half aware of its approach.
The weather turned glorious; the dogwood came and went; the country was full of sweet scents; robins and thrushes sang with open throbbing throats in the apple trees and hopped about in the shade; the frogs shrilled musically at evening in the pool, but Jeannette did not find the happiness for which she hoped. She tried to be content; she sought for joy in her new life and surroundings. She found none. Too many things were wrong. Over and over again she decided it was hopeless.
First of all, there was the Family Yacht Club which Martin loved and she despised. She had known beforehand what it was going to be like, and closer acquaintance proved her premise to have been correct. All-year-round residents of Cohasset Beach made up its membership. There were less than three thousand people in the Long Island village during the winter; it was only in summer that the place became fashionable. Among those who belonged to the little yacht club, Jeannette soon discovered, were Tim Birdsell, the village plumber; Zeb Kline, a contractor, hardly better than a carpenter; Fritz Wiggens, who kept an electrical equipment store on Washington Street; Steve Teschemacher and Adolph Kuntz, who were real estate agents and were interested in a development known as “Cohasset Park”; then there were the local dentist and hiswife, the local attorney and his helpmate, and the local doctor, who seemed to be of a better sort than the rest and was fortunately unmarried. The ladies took an active part in the social life of the yacht club and ’Stel Teschemacher, Chairwoman of the Entertainment Committee, went early to call upon the new member’s wife to invite her to come to the “Five Hundred Club” meeting on the following Friday afternoon. There was a sprinkling of others who boasted of a slightly more exalted social status: Mrs. Drigo’s husband operated a large ice plant in New York City. Mrs. Blum was the wife of the well-known confectioner, and Percy Webster was connected with an advertising agency. If there were more interesting members they kept themselves aloof,—at least Jeannette did not meet them. Once when she was describing to her mother with a good deal of relish the type of people who belonged to this club, and was referring to the list of members in the club’s annual booklet, she was surprised to come upon the name of Lester Short and that of a prominent magazine editor well-known to her.
She asked Herbert Gibbs about these people at an early opportunity but elicited nothing more satisfactory from him than: “Oh, they come round occasionally.” If such was the case, Jeannette was unable to identify them. She was interested to learn later that Lester Short and his wife had six children and lived about half-a-mile beyond the village in the region known as the “Point.”
Martin had no fault to find with his new friends. He was welcomed into their hearts; he charmed them all; he was acclaimed immediately the most popular member, and was appointed by the Commodore, old JessHiggenbothen, affable, decrepit and rich, and owner of most of the acres Teschemacher and Kuntz were trying to sell as choice lots in Cohasset Park, to serve on the entertainment committee with ’Stel Teschemacher. Martin was enchanted with the cordiality with which he was accepted; he thought Zeb Kline, Fritz Wiggens, young Doc French “corking good scouts”; Zeb and Fritz were a little rough perhaps but they were regular fellows; Steve Teschemacher was as “funny as a crutch” and his partner, Adolph Kuntz, had about as sharp and shrewd a mind as Martin had ever encountered.
“Why, you ought to hear Adolph talk politics!” he told his wife enthusiastically. “He knows more about what’s going on up in Albany right this minute than all the newspapers in New York. You ought to hear him tell some of his experiences in the Republican Party!”
He might be interesting and clever, everything Martin said of him, but to Jeannette he seemed uncouth, ill-bred, a spitter of tobacco juice.
When the Yacht Club formally opened its summer season, Jeannette put on her prettiest frock and went with her husband to the dance with which it was inaugurated. It was one of the efforts she made to adapt herself to the village life. She loved to dance. Swimming, sailing, tennis did not appeal to her, but from the dances in the club-house she hoped she might derive a certain amount of genuine pleasure. On the night of the affair, after studying the reflection in her mirrorshe had decided she had never looked so well; with truth she could say she was a beautiful woman, and in this estimate of herself, she found ample confirmation in Martin’s eyes. They hired a hack and drove over to the club.
But for the young wife it proved a dismal experience. The yokels,—the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, the dentist and real estate agents,—were afraid to approach her,—not that she wanted them to,—and she had been left to the favor of Herbert Gibbs, Doc French, and the old Commodore. The women eyed her covertly, whispered about her and her gown, and made no advances. Herbert Gibbs danced with her once, twice; Martin was three times her partner; Commodore Higgenbothen had passed his “gallivanting” days; Doc French, whom she liked and to whom she would have been glad to be cordial, did not dance at all. The floor was rough and uneven; the music lugubrious; three small boys kept up a fearful racket playing with some folding chairs stacked in a corner. She watched Martin whirling and wheeling about the floor, his face a broad grin, his eyes and teeth flashing, talking, laughing, exchanging an endless banter with other couples, answering here, there and everywhere to calls of “Martin” and “Mart.” At half-past ten she could stand no more of it. She knew she was dragging her husband away from a hilarious good time, but she was bored, disgusted with the whole evening and the hoidenish, loud-voiced village folk. She would never make the mistake of going to another of their wretched dances. Martin could go if he wanted to; if he liked to hobnob with such people, he could do so to his heart’s content: she wouldn’traise one word of objection, but wild horses wouldn’t drag her there again!
In a fortnight, there was another dance at the club, and this time Martin took himself to the party alone, while Jeannette went to bed with a magazine. He woke her up when he came home a little after twelve, and told her he had had a wonderfully good time, and that Lester Short, his wife and their two older children had been present. But Jeannette had no regrets. The Shorts and her husband could enjoy the society of the plumbers and carpenters and their wives if they chose to do so; she felt satisfied that if she had gone she would have been miserable.
Besides the Yacht Club there were other things in the new order of existence that proved annoying. Meat and vegetables cost considerably more at Cohasset Beach than in the city, and everything else was proportionally dearer. Jeannette had thought she might save a little on her marketing in the country, and it was discouraging to discover that this was quite impossible. She certainly had not expected to find that prices were actually higher. Then there was not nearly the same variety from which to choose in the stores here as there had been in the groceries and particularly the meat markets of Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. She and Martin were especially fond of lamb kidneys which she used to buy at the rate of three for five cents in New York. Pulitzer’s at Cohasset Beach never seemed to have them. And even more exasperatingwas the fact that fish could only be had on Thursdays when the fish-man came around blowing his horn.
The neighborhood, too, was a source of discomfort. Jeannette discovered, within a few days after they had moved into the bungalow, that the reason so attractive a house had been for rent at such a figure, with its acre and more of ground, its apple trees and pond and picturesque setting, was that it was situated on the wrong side of town, beyond the railroad tracks, a mile from the water. The desirable, residential section of Cohasset Beach was that in which the Herbert Gibbses lived, on the hill overlooking the Sound. A block from the bungalow, their rear yards abutting upon the railroad tracks, was a row of shabby cottages occupied by laborers, Polacks mostly, who worked in the quarries down on the “Point.” Here fences sagged and refuse littered the roadway, dirty children scrambled about and screamed at one another, drying laundry fluttered from clothes-lines, and fat dark women in calicoes and shuffling shoes gossiped from doorstep to doorstep. On Saturday nights there were invariably celebrations among these people at which, from the singing and general racket, it was evident that red wine flowed freely, and the doleful whine of an accordion accompanying hoarse masculine voices rose dismally from sundown until the early morning hours, interrupted by shouts of rollicking laughter. Martin assured his wife that these people were simple creatures, peasants transplanted but a few years from their native soil, celebrating after a week of toil, in a harmless jovial way after the fashion to which, in the old country, they had been accustomed.But Jeannette found it disturbing, not a little frightening, especially on those nights when Martin went off to the Yacht Club and left her alone with only Hilda in the house.
Lastly mosquitoes, germinated in the pond within a hundred yards of her own door, made their appearance in hungry numbers early in July. The pool was practically stagnant,—without visible outlet,—and the neighbor who owned it and who operated a small dairy, refused to oil it as his cows watered there. The bungalow windows were unscreened. Jeannette did not understand how she had failed to notice the fact when she first inspected the premises. The matter had to be remedied immediately, or life would be insupportable. The landlord declined to do anything; Martin thought perhaps they could endure the nuisance until cold weather came, but his wife declared that unthinkable. If the windows were shut with the lights on, the bungalow became insufferably hot and stuffy; if left open, moths, winged bugs, every kind of flying insect of the night together with the pests bred in the stagnant pool, flew in to buzz about the globes and torment those beneath them. Zeb Kline agreed to equip the bungalow with screens,—the frames would have to be fitted to the insides of the windows on account of their being casement,—for sixty-five dollars, and Jeannette, angered by Martin’s complacent acceptance of the circumstances, and his indifferent attitude towards that for which she felt him largely responsible, told the carpenter to go ahead.
There were days when in the seclusion of her own bedroom she gave way freely to her tears. She wanted to be happy; she wanted to be a good managerof her house, a good wife to Martin. Life often seemed to demand more from her than she was capable of giving. Concede—concede—concede! It was all concession for her; Martin gave nothing.
There came another Fourth of July, one year from the time of the visit to the Gibbses. Doc French was a member of the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club as well as of the Family Yacht Club. There was to be a wonderful party at the former on the evening of the Fourth; it was the Club’s annual show. A dinner was to be followed by a vaudeville entertainment provided by a number of talented actors from the Lambs Club, and after that a dance which would probably last all night. Doc French invited Martin Devlin and his wife to be his guests; he was giving a little dinner party for his sister-in-law, Lou, and her cousin, Mrs. Edith Prentiss, who were spending the holiday with him.
Jeannette was overjoyed at the prospect. She spent a day shopping in New York, and bought herself silver satin slippers, a pair of gray silk stockings to wear with a silver dress,—part of her trousseau,—which she had had no occasion to put on since she moved to the country. It promised to be a delightful affair and Martin shared her excitement.
It turned out to be all she expected. The spacious dining-room, the dancing floor, even the awninged porches were crowded with tables, gay with flowers and patriotic decorations. There was a beguiling atmosphere of soft lights, color and music, smart and lovely women, elaborate costumes, attractive men.Jeannette felt that she herself bloomed with beauty, that she appeared tall, statuesque, superb. People at other tables threw appraising glances and occasionally she saw a lorgnette levelled in her direction. Doc French was admiring and attentive; she liked his sister-in-law and particularly Mrs. Prentiss; the vaudeville show on an improvised stage at one end of the long room was one of the best she had ever witnessed. Some of the actors were head-liners in their profession; with songs and stories, they kept the audience rocking with laughter and stirred it to roars of applause. One of the entertainers particularly drew Jeannette’s interest,—a young actor, named Michael Carr. An unusually attractive youth, renowned for his good looks, a matinée idol, he had held the boards on Broadway all winter as the leading attraction in a Viennese opera. Jeannette thought he sang delightfully, and had a most charming personality.
Towards midnight the chairs and tables were cleared away and the dancing began. Doc French did not dance, himself, but he had no difficulty in securing partners for his guests, and Jeannette floated around the gaily decorated ball-room through the soft colors of calcium lights thrown upon the dancers, in an intoxication of pleasure. Men, young and old, seemed anxious to know her and ask her to dance; she was in demand every moment, and in one of these dizzying whirls she was interrupted by Doc French to introduce Michael Carr. The actor had asked to be presented; could he have a dance? The next was promised, but he could have it just the same, she said with shining eyes. She drifted away in his arms presently, a sweet giddiness enveloping her senses, rocking her in sensuous delight.They glided from the dance and wandered out upon the long pier over the water. The lisping waves lapped the piles and rhythmically beat upon the pebbled shore, the music of the dance reached them plaintively, yachts white and ghostly stood sentinels at their moorings, their cabins pin-pricked with lights, their starboard lanterns glowing green. The night air was caressing, gay voices floated toward them, there was smothered laughter from hidden corners, the heavens were a myriad of golden stars. Quite simply Michael Carr took the slim silver figure in his arms, she melted into his embrace and their lips clung to one another’s long and lovingly. It was a night of love, a night for lovers.
The brilliantly lit ball-room, the music drew them back. Jeannette had no sense of guilt; the mood of the hour still wrapped her; for the moment she loved this man whole-heartedly; he was divine, a super-man, a god. No thought of Martin came to distress her. She was supremely content, supremely happy; it was rapture, bliss, enchantment. In her ear he kept whispering:
“You are wonderful, you are beautiful, you are adorable.”
Doc French was beckoning to her, but she only smiled amiably at him as she passed and floated on in Michael’s arms, bending and undulating with him in perfect symmetry of motion. There was no such thing as time or space; she shut her eyes, and seemed to be floating—floating—floating—— Doc French stopped them with a hand on the actor’s arm.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I fear I must. Your husband, Mrs. Devlin.... May I speak to you a moment?”
Carr said, “Oh, I beg pardon,” and stepped aside, but Jeannette’s thoughts followed him.
“What is it, Doc?”
“Martin had better go home, Mrs. Devlin. He’s been downstairs at the bar, and I guess he’s had a bit too much. I was going to take him home myself but I didn’t know how to get into your house.”
“Martin?”
“He’s been downstairs at the bar, and I’m afraid the fellows there wouldn’t let him get away.”
“Martin?”
Reality came blindingly upon her with a glare of hideous white light. Her dream shattered. Ugliness obtruded,—things naked and angular, harshness and cold cruelty! She felt as if she were being jerked from enchanted slumber by a rude and horrid hand.
She clutched at her heart as if to tear out the pain that had already stabbed her there.
“Martin!” she breathed again, gasping a little, the blood draining from her face.
“He’s all right, Mrs. Devlin,—quite all right, I assure you. Nothing’s happened to him—nothing wrong. There’s been no accident.”
“Accident?” Her eyes widened with sudden fear.
“No—no; it’s all right. He’s just drunk a little too much, and I thought he’d better go home.”
“Oh, surely—right away. Where is he?”
“Well, we’ve got him out in my car.”
“Let’s go—let’s go then; let’s go quickly. I’ll get my wraps.” She started for the dressing-room.
“Good-night,” Michael’s voice called after her but she did not turn her head.
Doc French led her to the motor car. Martin layhuddled in the back, insensate, a long string of saliva trailing from his under lip. A strange man supported him.
A trembling, whispered exclamation escaped Jeannette. Her companion kept on reassuring her.
“There’s nothing—nothing the matter,” he repeated. “He’s had too much to drink, that’s all.... Get in the front seat with me and I’ll drive you straight home and we’ll put him to bed.”
They bumped over the car-tracks in Washington Street and the dusty uneven ground in front of the station. The dawn was coming up angry and on fire in the east.
Before the bungalow, Jeannette jumped from the motor car and struggled to insert the twisted latch-key in the lock, but her fingers shook so much it took her some time to manage it. Behind her, Doc French and the strange man were lifting Martin from the car. As they wrenched him free he groaned painfully.
Jeannette flew into the house, flung on lights, tore back the gay-figured cretonne cover of the bed. Her underclothes lay upon the chair where she had tossed them when she had been so happily dressing. She gathered these with one swift reach and threw them to the floor of a closet. The stumbling feet were coming; the men were carrying Martin head and feet. With a concerted effort they heaved him upon the bed and he lay there inertly, sprawling, just as he had fallen.
“Can I help you, Mrs. Devlin?” asked the Doctor, dusting off his hands.
“Oh, no,—thank you very much,” Jeannette answered in a strained voice.
“Don’t you think we’d better undress him? He’s pretty heavy for you to manage alone.”
Jeannette looked at the helpless figure flung out across the bed, ungainly postured like a child’s discarded doll, purple lips parting with each breath, the hair damp and tousled. One of his garters had loosened and dangled now from the wrinkled hose that covered a patent-leather pump.
“No,” she said again slowly, “thank you very much for all your kindness, Doc,—but it’s my—my job; he belongs to me; I’ll take care of him.”
Three hours later she walked out on the back porch. The heat of the Sunday morning was moist and tropical, giving promise of a scorching day. The bells of the Catholic Church on the “Point” road were ringing sweetly for the children’s mass. Her eyes felt burnt out from lack of sleep: two black holes in her head. Hilda was making a small fuss in the kitchen, rattling pans, droning hoarsely to herself. Jeannette stood at the porch railing and looked off across the quiet country, misty with the early heat. Emotions were at war in her heart, and there was pain—pain—pain.
She had not been to bed; she had not even lain down. The silver gown had been put away, her finery discarded, and now she wore the striped velveteen wrapper in which she usually did her morning’s work. She had undressed her husband, removed his shoes, drawn off his dress suit, tugging at its arms, rolling him from one side to another to free the clothing. She hadwashed his face with a cold wet rag and brushed the rumpled hair from his eyes. Then she had put the room in order, opened the casement windows, drawn the shades, closed the door and left him to peace and sleep. The house had needed straightening and to this she had turned her attention, adjusting rugs, pushing chairs into position, emptying ash receivers, carrying away newspapers, arranging magazines and books in neat piles, using broom and dust-pan, wiping the furniture with a dust cloth. Hilda had given her some coffee at eight o’clock and she had drunk it black and crunched some thin slices of buttered toast. Now nothing remained to be done and the thoughts to which she had resolutely shut her mind clamored for admittance to her weary brain. Remorse and reproach, censure and repugnance, disillusionment, humiliation, grief and regret,—they swarmed upon her like so many black flies.
The hours of the morning ticked themselves away. She could not sleep; she could not rest. Over and over her thoughts turned to the incidents of the night, giving her no peace, no surcease. Every little while she would go softly to Martin’s door and silently look in upon him; he lay as she had left him. In spite of the opened windows the room reeked of alcohol.
Towards noon she fell asleep on the couch in the living-room, and the afternoon light was waning when she opened her eyes. The sound of water woke her; Martin was running a bath, and when presently she entered the bedroom, she found him shaving. She was shocked at his appearance; his face was dead white, the eyes bloodshot, and his hand trembled as he held the razor, but it was Martin, restored to life and sanity.
They avoided one another’s glance, and constraint held them silent. She could see that physically he was weak, his nerves still shattered and that his mind was sick with remorse, and fear of her displeasure. He could not guess she wanted only to take him in her arms, to kiss and comfort him, wanted only to be kind and good to him, to restore him to health and strength again, wanted to utter no word of reproach but to give him all the love she could and so ease the pain and shame within herself.
Three weeks later, Doc French drove up in front of the bungalow door in his lumbering motor car. It was late in the afternoon. There had been a heavy thunderstorm about two o’clock but now the sun was glittering on all the dripping trees and drenched shrubbery and the air was fragrant with sweet grassy and woodland smells.
There was to be another dance at the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club the following Saturday night. Doc’s sister-in-law and Mrs. Prentiss were coming down for it and would stay with him over the week-end; it happened to be Lou’s birthday and he wanted Martin and Jeannette to help celebrate the event at a small dinner he was arranging at the Cohasset Beach club-house before the dance.
Jeannette thanked him and said that, no, she was sorry but she and Martin had another engagement; Doc was very kind to think of them but it would have to be another time.
When her husband came home on the five-twenty, she told him about it.
“Oh, you bet you,” he agreed. “No more of that kind of stuff for this young fellow. We’re out of our class at that club, Jan.”
“I thought,” suggested Jeannette, “we might go to the other club that night. There’s always a dance there, and it would be our excuse to Doc French. It occurred to me that perhaps after we got to know those people a little better, we might like it.”
Martin’s face beamed with pleasure.
“Would you? Would you really go?” he asked eagerly. “Say, Jan, that’ll be fine. Say, if you only wouldn’t be so standoffish and proud, you’d learn to like that gang and they’d learn to like you. They’re awfully good-hearted.”
“Well, I’ll try,” said his wife.