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 Alice had 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 her arguments 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 commission on 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’ve got to 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 Swedish girl, 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 him intoxicated, 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’d only “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 in summer, 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 the Albatross?”
“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.”
“He did?” 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 is just 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, then snatched 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 find there. 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 to fifteen 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 the water,—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 a motif throughout the place. In a Fifth Avenue shop there was some china that had a pattern of fleur-de-lis in 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, who were 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 his wife, 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 Jess Higgenbothen, 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 cr