Chapter VII: § 1 (2)

“Now, Martin,” she reminded her husband, “I’m not going through with this unless you stand back of me. You’ve got to save penny for penny with me, and you’ve got to show me you’re deadly in earnest.”

She said this because he did not seem as enthusiastic, now, as he had been when the plan was first discussed. The eagerness was missing, and he was rather sour about it. She knew he grieved over the sale of his boat, and it was bitter hard for him to give up his club. But this time she was determined. She had renounced her frivolous, expensive friends; he must renounce his; she proposed to get along without the luxury of a servant, he must deny himself, too.

“Well, damn it!” he growled at her implied reproach, “ain’t I doing everything you want? The boat’s gone, and I’ve sent my letter in to the club! What more do you want me to do?”

“Martin! that’s no way to speak to your wife! You’re not doing it for _me_!”

She sighed in discouragement. He had a long way to go.

His efforts to divert himself about the house on Saturday afternoons and Sundays were pathetic. He started vigorously to spade up a bit of ground which he declared would make an admirable vegetable bed in the spring. The spading lasted half a day and all winter Jeannette saw the snow-covered shovel sticking upright in the ground where he had left it. He was bored by inactivity. Books did not interest him; he scorned the solitaire she suggested and in which she herself could find amusement; likewise he grew impatient at walks in the woods now full of autumn tints. Jeannette tried her best to entertain him. Several times she asked the Drigos over for auction bridge but Mrs. Drigo and her husband quarrelled so much when the cards ran against them, that Martin declared he did not care to play with them. Jeannette tried “Rum” but that, too, bored him; there was no pleasure in the game, he told her, without stakes and one couldn’t gamble with one’s wife. At the end of her resources, she shrugged her shoulders and let him seek out his own amusements as best he could. His attitude nettled her. He ought to face the new life, she felt, with the same fortitude, conscientiousness and willingness that she displayed. She told him so with a good deal of rancor one day: he was acting like a spoiled boy; he wasn’t being a good sport about it. He only glowered at her in reply and stalked out of the house.

She had her own suspicions where he went, but she did not reproach him. In her heart she was sorry for him; his empty evenings and his week-ends hung heavy on his hands. She hoped he would get used to the idea and by and by be moved to follow her example.

But as the weeks and then the months began to go by, and she saw that it was only she who was making the sacrifices,--cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, denying herself clothes and even trips to the city to see her mother,--a dull anger kindled within her. This burst into flame when she learned by chance that Martin was still a member of the Yacht Club. ’Stel Teschemacher telephoned her one day to remind her to be sure and come to a bridge tournament the ladies of the club had arranged for the following Wednesday afternoon. Jeannette explained with some relish that she feared she was not eligible to participate since her husband was no longer a member of the club, but ’Stel Teschemacher assured her that such was not the case.

“Oh, no, you’re mistaken, Mrs. Devlin. He’s still a member and a very valued one. The Directors refused absolutely to accept your husband’s resignation; they just positively made him reconsider it.... Why, we couldn’t get along without Mr. Devlin! He’s just the life of the club!”

Jeannette said nothing to Martin. She was bitter, feeling he had tricked her, was not playing fair. She decided she would go to New York and pour out her grievance in a stormy recital to her mother. It would relieve her mind. On the train she met Edith French and when the city was reached, her friend triumphantly carried her off to lunch at the Waldorf.

§ 10

Not very long after this, she learned that Martin had been playing poker, and had lost. He had had a bad streak of luck and was obliged to confess to her he did not have enough money to pay the rent without making a levy upon her share of his salary; she must count on only forty dollars when his next pay-day fell due.

At that her resentment burst forth. She had denied herself consistently since the first of September. With her own hands she had made the little Christmas presents she had sent Alice and the children, and even what she had given her mother, in order to save a few dollars, and here was Martin gambling away at the card table money that was hers!

“You’re no more fit to be a father than a husband,” she told him, her anger blazing. “You expect me to bear a child to a man like you! You’re no better than a common thief!”

“Aw, cut that out, Jan,” he answered, a dull crimson reddening his neck; “I’ll admit I’m in wrong and that you’ve got every right to be sore at me, but what’s the use in accusing me of being dishonest?”

“Dishonest?--dishonest?” she repeated furiously, her hands clenched. “Half of every dollar you earn belongs to me,--and don’t you forget it! It’s mine by right of being your wife; it’s mine by right of your definite promise when I married you that we should share and share alike. I made a financial sacrifice then because I thought you and I were going to build a house and rear a family. I used to earn a hundred and forty dollars a month,--let me tell you,--and every cent of it I spent as I chose and for what I chose. I’ve never seen that much or anything like that much, since I married you. Don’t fool yourself you _give_ me a penny! You work in your office and I work here and we both earn your salary. When you take my money and gamble with it and lose it, you’re doing exactly the same as if you put your hand in Herbert Gibbs’s cash drawer and helped yourself! It’s just plain thievery!”

Martin was on his feet, his face congested.

“If you were a man, I’d knock your damned head off.”

“If I were a man,” retorted his wife, “you’d be afraid to!”

§ 11

It was in this mood of fury, with her grievance seething within her, that she gladly agreed to accompany Edith French on a day of shopping in the city. Edith telephoned she had been invited by a certain famous Fifth Avenue importer to witness, at a private showing, the opening of some sealed trunks just received from Paris containing the new spring models. She wanted Jeannette to go with her, and the two women arranged to leave for town on an early morning train.

It was a cold, glittering winter’s day when the crispness in the air set the blood tingling; snow was piled in the street and there was a general scraping of iron shovels on stone and cement. Edith and Jeannette feasted their eyes on the new styles as they eagerly discussed clothes and fashions. Edith, stimulated by her privileged glimpses, bought herself a new hat, which Jeannette declared to be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life! Edith, it seemed to her companion, was free to purchase anything that took her fancy. If a garment or bauble attracted her, she got it without hesitation. Jeannette’s heart was sick with longing. She watched her companion enviously. In a reckless moment, urged by her friend to whom she had confided at luncheon the tale of Martin’s perfidy, and who had been gratifyingly sympathetic, she selected and charged a long woolly, loose tan coat that had a deep collar of skunk. The coat had been “on sale” and Edith had been so full of admiration for the way Jeannette looked in it, that she offered to buy it and give it to her as a present. To this Jeannette would not agree, but later, wrapped in its soft ampleness and with a glowing satisfaction that it was the most becoming garment she had ever owned, she did not press an objection when Edith proposed to telephone Gerald Kenyon and ask him to take them to tea. At five o’clock sitting against the crimson upholstered wall-seats of a glittering café, sipping her hot tea and nibbling her thin, buttered toast, listening to the music and the pleasant chatter of her companions, conscious of Gerald Kenyon’s admiring eyes, Jeannette decided that it was the first happy moment she had known in months, and that if Martin chose to go his way, she had ample justification to go hers.

A madness descended upon her. She was near to tears most of the time but went dry-eyed upon her way, shutting her ears to the voice of conscience, refusing to allow her better nature to assert itself. On and on she stumbled into the forest of imprudence, allowing herself to give no heed to the gathering shadows, taking no thought of how she should ever find her way out of the gloom when the hour came for her to turn back,--for, of course, she must some time turn back!

Little by little she was beguiled into doing the things she had foresworn. She allowed Edith to persuade her into going almost daily with her to the city; she spent here and there the dollars she had so hardly saved; she began heedlessly to charge again: shoes, silk stockings, a smart French veil, gloves. The two friends fell into the habit of lunching or taking tea with Gerald Kenyon and sometimes going to a matinée with him, and the day came--as he had carefully planned it should come,--when Jeannette lunched with him alone. And over the small table at which they sat so intimately, still in the grip of the insanity that fogged her sense of righteousness and values, she confided to his eager, understanding ears the story of her husband’s selfishness, and listened to his persuasive voice as he offered to help her out of her difficulties.

“Why, listen here, Jeannette,” he said, bending toward her earnestly across the littered luncheon cloth, “I can make five thousand dollars for you over night. There’s no sense in your troubling yourself about money matters. If you’re in debt, I can show you a way that will pull you out of the hole and give you all the spending money you need! The old man, you know, is in steel. He’s on the inside and there’s nothing that goes on down in Wall Street that he doesn’t know. He gave me a tip the other day: a sure-fire tip. Did you ever hear of Colusium Copper? Well, it’s one of the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation, and its stock’s going right up. The old man telephoned me to come down and see him, and he says to me: ‘Gerald, put what you can lay your hands on on Colusium Copper; it’s due to go to seventy-five and you want to get out about seventy-two or three.’ It was fifty-eight then; it’s about sixty-six to-day. Why, look here,--it went up a couple of points yesterday.” He showed her the figures convincingly in a newspaper he drew from his pocket. “Now you just let me buy a few of those shares for you this afternoon before the market closes, and I’ll hand you a check for five hundred to-morrow when you meet me for lunch. You don’t have to put up the money; I can fix that for you; I’ll just telephone my brokers you want to buy a few shares and that I’ll O.K. the deal. It’s a sure-fire proposition, Jeannette. You won’t be risking a cent.”

He was very earnest, very persuasive; his voice was gentle and so kindly. Five hundred dollars! thought the girl; it would wipe out all those little purchases here and there that she had had charged to her account about which Martin knew nothing!

Gerald was a _dear_! He was really a most generous, warm-hearted friend! It was wonderful of him to take such an interest in her trifling financial problems.

And the next day he showed her the check: $515.60 beautifully made out,--W. G. Guthrie & Company, Stock Brokers,--and it was drawn in her name. Her fingers trembled a little as she took the stiff bank paper in her hands.

“You see what I told you!” Gerald said with a triumphant smile. “Why, say, I could have made it five thousand just as easy if you had only said the word. The old man knows when anything like this is coming off in the Street. You have to laugh at the way the public runs in and lets the big guns fleece them. The big fellows stick up the bait and the poor fools rush after it and then chop--chop go the axes! ... Any time, Jeannette, you want a bit of change just let me know and I can fix it for you. I’ll just give the old man a ring and ask him what’s good.... Now, for Heaven’s sake don’t get the idea that what I’m able to do for you on a little flier down in Wall Street is anything in the nature of a present or anything like that. I’m just slipping you a little piece of inside information,--savvy, dearie?”

The endearment was unfortunate. It suddenly reminded Jeannette of her mother and she remembered she had not been to see her in weeks. Besides, it was the first time Gerald had addressed her with any such familiarity.

“I don’t think I’d better take this,” she said abruptly, tossing the folded check at him. She leaned back in her chair and drew her hands close to her breast.

He picked it up, tapped his fingers gently with it and began to argue. He argued long and eloquently: the money did not belong to him, it was hers, it represented the profits of her own little deal, he hadn’t a right to a cent of it, it was impossible for him to touch it. But now no word from him could reach Jeannette. Fear was awake in her; she began to be very frightened; her panic grew. Suddenly she wanted to get up from the table and run into the street. She wanted to go to her mother; she wanted her mother badly. She felt she must get out of the restaurant, must get into the air, must get away from that table and this man at any price. She was like one who stands with her back to a precipice and, turning around, finds herself within a few inches of its edge, a chasm yawning at her feet. Fright made her giddy, her mouth was dry, her throat closed convulsively.

“If I can only stand it for ten minutes more,” she said to herself, gripping tight her folded hands beneath the table, “and keep my head and not let him suspect! ... I must go on and pretend.... Just ten minutes more.”

She managed it badly. The experienced eye of her companion guessed all that was passing in her mind, and he cursed himself for having been too precipitous. The wary hare that he had been at such pains to coax to his side for so many months had taken flight at the first lift of his finger. He would have to begin all over again, and this time proceed more leisurely. For the present, he knew his cue was to withdraw.

He let her make her escape without remonstrance. He asked if she would not allow him as a friend to mail her the check, and when with more vehemence than she meant to display, she refused, he tore the paper neatly into bits and let the fragments flutter from his finger-tips to the table.

“Well,--it’s too bad,” he said with a shrug that eloquently expressed his hurt. “Sorry. My only object was to try and help a bit.”

He left her at the door of the restaurant with a graceful lift of his hat, saying he hoped to see her soon again. It was lost upon the girl. She hurried to a telephone booth in a drug store at hand and tried to reach the apartment on Ninety-second Street, but there was no answer. She thought of Martin but there was the uncomfortable confession she would have to make to him of her recent extravagances. Her recklessness, she realized, had robbed her of the righteousness of her quarrel with him; reproach he could meet with reproach.

She longed then for her sister,--her quiet, brown-eyed sister,--who had never judged her harshly in her life, but Alice was in far-away California. There was nobody, nobody in the world to whom she could turn for comfort, for sympathy and counsel, and then coming toward her with a pleased and smiling recognition in his face she saw Mr. Corey. She fluttered to him with almost a sob, and put both her hands in his; as he greeted her affectionately she wanted desperately to lay her head against his shoulder and give way to the fury of tears that fought now to find escape. In that moment, everyone seemed to have failed her,--mother, sister, husband,--but this staunch, loyal, rock-solid friend who believed in her, who knew only the best of her, whose faith in her was unbounded, who knew her as she really was.

He was talking but she listened not to his words but to her own heart that told her here was the haven for which she sought, here was the counsellor, the friend who would help her without cavil or reproach.

“Tell me about yourself,” he was saying. “You promised you’d come in to see me once in awhile,--and that brother-in-law of yours? I thought we were going to find a job for him? What happened?”

Jeannette attempted to explain: Roy was trying to become an author, his first story was appearing as a serial and he and his wife and babies were in California. As she spoke of Alice, her voice suddenly grew husky and when she tried to clear her throat, the hot prick of tears sprang to her eyes, and she was obliged to stop and press her lips together. Mr. Corey’s brows met sharply.

“What’s the matter? You’re in trouble?” He waited for her to speak but she could only shake her head helplessly and blink her swimming eyes.

“Come in here with me,” he said in the old authoritative voice she still loved to obey. They turned from the crowded street where they were being jostled, into the drug store she had just quitted. It was crowded in here, too, with a swarm of elbowing people before the soda fountain. Corey guided the girl to the rear and they stopped by a deserted counter.

“Now what is it? Tell me about it,” he said shortly. “Can I help you?”

She tried again to answer him but she was still too shaken; at any effort to speak her tears threatened.

“Please,” she managed, gulping.

He left her, went to the soda counter and returned with a glass of water. She drank it gratefully; the cold drink steadied her.

“I’ve just been acting foolishly,” she said at last, dabbing her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief. “It’s all my fault, I guess.”

By degrees he pried her story from her: Martin had been treating her badly; he had been very unfair to her; their marriage was a hopeless failure; she couldn’t make it a success alone; she had struggled and struggled and she didn’t believe it was any use; he was fearfully extravagant and she had to do all the saving to keep them out of debt; she had done without a servant just so they could get a little ahead, but try as she would, they kept falling behind, and Martin didn’t care....

She had no intention of misrepresenting her case to Mr. Corey, but hungered for his sympathy, for his justification and approval, for his censure of her husband.

He heard her with furrowed brows, his keen eyes watching her face, and when she fell silent, he waited a long moment.

“Life’s hard on young people,” he said at length with a deep breath and a dubious shake of his head. “It’s hard enough for them to get adjusted to one another without having to worry over money matters. I’m sorry your marriage has not turned out well. I feel particularly badly because I urged you into it. Devlin seemed a likely fellow to me.”

They both considered the matter, studying the floor. Jeannette felt as she stood there her life was breaking to pieces.

“If you’re in debt,” said Mr. Corey at length, “and it’s merely a question of money to tide you over present difficulties; you must let me lend you what you need.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” she said quickly.

“Oh, yes, but you must,” he insisted.

With firmness she declined. She wasn’t begging; she just had had one man try to give her money; she couldn’t accept financial assistance from anyone. No, it was her own problem,--she could work it out herself without anyone’s help.

“Very well, then,” he suggested, “come back and work for me awhile. I’ve an abominable person as secretary now; I intended to fire her anyhow, and it will give me tremendous satisfaction to do so at once, for I never needed efficient help more desperately than now.”

The words of polite thanks on Jeannette’s lips died. She raised her eyes and fixed them on the face of the man before her, a light breaking slowly in them.

“You mean ...?” she began. Her face was like radiant dawn.

“I mean exactly what I say: come back for as long as you wish. Stay until you’ve earned what you need, and be free to go when you’re ready: three months, six months, whenever you like.... It will be good to see you back even for a short time at your old desk.”

Her intent gaze leaped from pupil to pupil of his smiling, earnest eyes. Her thoughts raced: there was Martin; he would say “No” of course; he wouldn’t consider letting her do this; he’d be furious, but Martin would have to be won over, and if not ... well then ... there was her mother and her own old room waiting for her in the apartment on Ninety-second Street!

“Well?” said Mr. Corey amused, at the glowing color in her face.

“Mrs. Corey?” Jeannette faltered.

“She’s in Germany and a very sick woman. It’s rheumatism, you know, and she’s been crippled a long time. I doubt anyhow if she’d care.”

Somewhere up above like pigeons fluttering forth from heaven’s dome came happiness winging down upon the girl.

“Oh, yes,--if you’ll have me,--indeed I’ll come back.... I’ll be there Monday morning! ... Oh, it will be _wonderful_!”

END OF BOOK II