《Bread》 - 免费有声读物

BOOK II

BREAD

CHAPTER I

§ 1

The Chandler P. Corey Company was moving its offices. A twenty-year lease had been taken on a building especially designed to fit its needs in the East Thirties. The new home was a great cavernous concrete structure of eight spacious floors. On the ground floor were to be the new presses destined to print the magazines, and perhaps some of the books in the future; the next two floors were to house the bindery, the composing room and typesetting machines; the editorial rooms were to be located on the fourth floor, and above these would come in order the advertising, circulation and pattern departments, each with a stratum in the great concrete block to itself. The eighth floor was to be given over to surplus stock, and it would also serve as a store-room for paper and supplies.

Both Corey’s Commentary and The Wheel of Fortune had made money for their owners during the past three years. It was the day of the “muck-raking” magazine, and Cavendish had unearthed a Wall Street scandal that sent the circulation of Corey’s Commentary climbing by leaps and bounds. The Wheel of Fortune had been rechristened The Ladies’ Fortune, and its contents were now devoted to women’s interests and fashions. The pattern business, that had been launched in connection with it, had proven from the outset immensely successful. Horatio Stephens was now its editor, and Miss Reubens conducted the special departments appearing among the advertising in its back pages, always referred to in the office as “contaminated matter.” The circulation of both periodicals had increased so rapidly that Mr. Featherstone had been obliged to announce an advance in their advertising rates every three months.

Other branches of the business, too, had grown and shown a profit. Francis Holme, who was head of the Book Sales Department, and now a member of the firm, had developed the manufacture and sale of book premiums and school books. He sold large quantities of the former to the publishers of other magazines, for use in their subscription campaigns, and was even more successful with the latter among private schools and some public ones throughout the country. One or two recent novels had sold over the hundred thousand mark, and the general standing of the Chandler B. Corey publications had improved. It was conceded in the trade they had now a better “line.” Something was being done, too, in the Mail Order Department, in charge of Walt Chase, and more and more sets of standard works were being sold by circularizing methods.

The installation and operation of their own presses had been a grave undertaking. Mr. Kipps had strenuously opposed it, arguing that the new building was enough of a responsibility, and that they should mark time for awhile and see how they stood, rather than incur a new loan of half a million dollars which the new presses involved. Mr. Corey was convinced, however, that a tide had arrived in their affairs which demanded a rapid expansion of the business, and if he and his partners were to make the most of the opportunity thus presented, they must rise to the occasion, and show themselves able to expand with it.

“There’s no use of our trying to crowd back into our shells after we’ve outgrown them, is there, Miss Sturgis?” he said to his secretary, with an amused twinkle in his eye, after a heated conference with the other members of the firm, during which Kipps in high dudgeon had left the room.

Jeannette smiled wisely. She believed that her chief was one of those few men who had far-seeing vision, and could look with keen perception and unfaltering eye into the future, and that he would carry Mr. Kipps, Mr. Featherstone, the office, his family, herself, everybody who attached themselves to him, to fame and fortune in spite of anything any one of them might do. When he was right, he knew it, and knew it with conviction, and nothing could shake him.

He had only one weakness, his secretary felt, and that was his attitude toward his son, Willis, who, two years before, had been withdrawn from the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge, and put into the business, presumably that his father might watch him. He was one of the sub-editors of Corey’s Commentary and demoralized the office by his late hours, his disregard of office rules against smoking, and his condescending attitude toward everyone in his father’s employ.

The three years that Jeannette Sturgis had been Mr. Corey’s secretary had seen many changes. Poor Mrs. Inness had turned out to be a dipsomaniac. Jeannette guessed her secret long before it was discovered by anyone else, and she had been full of pity and sorrow when this gray-haired, regal woman had to be dismissed. Van Alstyne was gone, and Humphrey Stubbs as well; Max Oppenheim likewise had departed. The new Circulation Manager was a shrewd, keen-eyed, spectacled young Scotchman, named MacGregor, whom everyone familiarly spoke to and of as “Sandy.” Miss Holland was still Mr. Kipps’ assistant, and now most of the routine affairs of the business were administered by her. Besides Mr. Holme, there was another new member of the firm, Sidney Frank Allister, who had come into the Chandler B. Corey Company from a rival house, and was now entrusted with the book-publishing end of the business. It was usually his opinion that decided the fate of a manuscript. He had his assistants: a haughty Radcliffe graduate, named Miss Peckenbaugh, whom Jeannette heartily disliked, and old Major Ticknor, who had a stiff leg since his Civil War days, and who stumped into the office two or three times a week with his bundle of manuscripts and stumped out again with a fresh supply. Very rarely Mr. Corey was consulted; he frankly declared he hated to read a book, and would only do so under the most vigorous pressure.

“Do I have to read this, Frank?” Jeannette would often hear him ask Allister, when the latter brought him a bulky manuscript and laid it on his desk. “You know, I don’t know anything about literature,” he would add, smilingly, with his favorite assumption of being only a plain business man and lacking in appreciation of the arts.

“Well, Mr. Corey, this is really important,” Allister would say. “We don’t agree about it in my department.”

“Has Holme read it? He can tell you whether it will sell or not.”

“Mr. Holme doesn’t think it will, but I believe this is a very important book, and one we most assuredly ought to have on our list.”

Frequently Mr. Corey would hand the manuscript over to Jeannette after Mr. Allister had left the room, and beg her to take it home with her, read it, and give him a careful synopsis and her opinion. She used to smile to herself when she would hear him quoting her, and once when he repeated a phrase she had used in her report, he winked at her in a most undignified fashion.

“I’m nothing but a hard-headed business man, you know,” he would say, justifying himself to his secretary when they were alone together. “I haven’t any time to read books. I can hire men to do that,—men with much keener judgment about such things than I have. I’m watching the circulation of our magazines, the advertising revenues, our daily sales report, and seeing that our presses are being worked to their maximum capacity. I’m negotiating with a mill for a year’s supply of paper, and buying fifty thousand pounds of ink, and at the same time arranging for a loan from the bank. I haven’t got time for books. Anyhow I never went to college,”—this with a humorous twinkle as he had a general contempt for college men,—“and I don’t know anything about ‘liter-a-choor.’”

§ 2

Jeannette took a tremendous pride in the new building. She had an office to herself, now,—one adjoining Mr. Corey’s. He left the details of equipping both to her. She took the greatest delight in doing so. She bought some very handsome furniture,—a great mahogany desk covered with a sheet of plate glass for Mr. Corey; some finely upholstered leather armchairs, a rich moquette rug, and she had the walls distempered, and lined on three sides with tall mahogany bookcases with diamond-paned glass doors. She had all the authors’ autographed photographs reframed in a uniform narrow black molding, and hung them herself. She arranged to have some greens always on the bookcases, and a great bunch of feathery pine boughs in a large round earthenware jar on the floor in one corner.

There had come to exist a very warm and affectionate companionship between the president of the publishing house and his secretary. Jeannette thought him the finest man she knew. She admired him tremendously, admired his shrewdness, his cleverness, his extraordinary capacity for work. He was impatient beyond all reason, sometimes. She had often seen him jump up with a bang of a fist on his desk and an angry exclamation on his lips when an office boy had dallied over an errand, or had heard these things when it was she who was keeping him waiting, and he would come himself after the carbon of the letter, or the report, or the book he had asked for. He would stride through the aisles between the desks, or across the floor to somebody’s office with great long steps, his fists swinging, his brows knit, intent upon putting his hands at once upon what he wanted. He could be brutally rude, when annoyed, and he gave small consideration to anyone else’s opinion when he had a definite one of his own. But she could forgive these shortcomings. She saw the odds against which he contended, she saw the ultimate goal at which he aimed, and she saw the vigorous battle he was waging toward this end,—and her esteem for him knew no bounds.

She felt herself to be his only real ally though she did not overestimate her services. Among those who came close to him—his business associates and family—she was the only one not an actual drag upon him. Mr. Featherstone and Mr. Kipps were of no more assistance to him in conducting the affairs of the company than any two of the salaried clerks. Frequently they hampered him, rubbing their chins or hemming and hawing over one of his brilliant flashes of wisdom, to rob him of his enthusiasm. As the business increased, they were more and more inclined to demur at any new scheme he proposed. His family were so much dead weight about his neck. The boy had proved himself of small account, the daughter was epileptic, Mrs. Corey an exacting, extravagant, capricious wife.

Jeannette’s surmise upon their first meeting that her employer’s wife was already unaccountably jealous of her soon found ample confirmation. Mrs. Corey grew more and more resentful of Jeannette’s intimate knowledge of her personal affairs, the complete confidence of her husband which she enjoyed, the close daily association with him. Jeannette was aware there had been several violent quarrels over her between husband and wife, Mrs. Corey demanding that she be dismissed, Mr. Corey firmly declining to agree. It did not make matters any too pleasant for the girl. Whenever Mrs. Corey encountered her, she was effusively sweet, but her manner suggested: “You and I, my dear, we know about him,” or “We women,—his secretary and his wife,—must stand together for his protection.” Jeannette was keenly conscious of the utter falseness and insincerity of this attitude. She knew that Mrs. Corey hated her, and would gladly see her summarily dismissed. She would smile with equally apparent sweetness in return, and fume in silence. She considered she was often doing for Mr. Corey what his wife should have been doing, that she filled the place of assistant, philosopher and friend only because Mrs. Corey was utterly incompetent to fill any of these rôles. If her relation to her employer had grown to be that of companion and helpmate, if she had been obliged to assume part of the province of a wife, none of the compensations were hers, she reflected indignantly. Mrs. Corey lived in luxury, came and went as she pleased, observed no hours, exercised no self-restraint, posed as her husband’s partner in life, his guide and counsellor, spent his money extravagantly, and enjoyed the satisfaction of being the wife of the president of what had now become one of the big publishing houses in New York, while she, Jeannette, who worked beside him eight, nine, sometimes eleven or twelve hours out of every twenty-four, got thirty-five dollars a week!

But in moments of fairer judgment she realized she received much more than merely the contents of her pay envelope. She had an affection and a regard from Mr. Corey that he never had given his wife. She was closer to him than anyone else in the world; she was what both wife and daughter should have meant to him; he loved her with a warm paternal feeling, and her love for him in return was equally sincere, deep and devoted. She sometimes felt that she and this man for whom she slaved and whom she served and helped could conquer the world. There existed no sex attraction between them; each recognized in the other the half of an excellent team of indefatigable workers; their relation was always that of father and daughter, but their feelings could only be measured in terms of love,—staunch, enduring, unswerving loyalty.

§ 3

There was nothing in Jeannette’s life from which she derived more satisfaction than the way in which she had deflected Roy Beardsley’s interest in herself to her sister. There was a time after she had made up her mind she could not marry him, when dark hours and aching thoughts assailed her, when she felt she was sacrificing all her happiness in life to a mere idea. But she had fought against these disturbing reflections, resolutely banishing Roy from her mind, and making herself think of ways in which their relationship could be put upon a platonic basis. She took walks with him, made him read aloud to her when he came in the evenings, persuaded him to take her to lectures, and formed the habit of going with him once a week to a vaudeville show in a neighboring theatre on upper Broadway. Her policy was always to be doing things with him, never to be idle or to sit alone with him, for this always led to intimate talk and love-making. She strove to keep the conversation impersonal. Roy was so easily managed, she sometimes smiled over it. And yet there came times when it was hard to deny herself the firm hold of his young arms.

What proved an immediate and tremendous help in conquering herself was a discovery she made from a chance glimpse of her sister’s earnest, brown eyes fixed upon Roy’s face. The three of them were in the studio one evening, and happened to be discussing religion. Roy delivered himself sententiously of a trite truism, something like: “It should be part of everyone’s religion to respect the religion of others.” As Jeannette was considering him rather than his words at the moment, her gaze happened to light upon her sister’s face, and little Alice’s secret stood revealed. The girl sat with her mouth half-open, staring at Roy with wide eyes, and an adoring look, eloquent of her thoughts. Jeannette was staggered. She was instantly aware of a great pain in her own heart, a great longing and hurt. It was clear Alice did not understand herself, had no suspicion that she was in love.

At once the elder sister began to readjust herself, “clean house,” as she expressed it. She marvelled again and again about Alice; it was hard to accept the idea that love had come to her little sister, yet the look in the rapt face had been unmistakable, and as the days went by Jeannette found plenty of evidence to confirm her suspicions. It was surprising how much the knowledge of her sister’s secret helped her to overcome any weakness for Roy that remained in her own heart. She saw at once the suitableness of a match between them; Alice and Roy were ideally suited to each other, and their coming to care for one another would surely be the best possible solution to her own problem. She could not, would not, marry him; the next best thing, of course, would be for him to marry her sister.

She set about her schemes at once. The very next evening it had been arranged Roy was to go with her to the theatre. They usually sat in one of the back rows of the balcony. That afternoon she left a little note on his desk to say she wanted to see him when he came in, and when he appeared, told him she would be obliged to work with Mr. Corey that evening, and suggested he take her sister to the show in her place. When he came of an evening to see her at her home, she would send Alice out to talk to him, while she dallied over her dressing. Whenever Alice happened to join her and Roy, she found an excuse to leave them together. She persuaded the young man frequently to include her sister in their jaunts or walks, and in the evenings, more and more often she complained of a headache, took herself to bed, and left Alice to entertain him. Poor little Alice was blindly unconscious of the strings that were being pulled about her, but she came to a full and terrifying realization at last of where her heart was leading her. She began to mope and weep, to talk of going away. She spoke of wanting to be a trained nurse.

Roy was still placidly indifferent to her interest in him. His ardor for Jeannette had cooled, but he still fancied himself in love with her, and expected that some day they would be married. He no longer fretted her, however, with demands or troubled her with love-making. His days were full of interests: he had his friends, his work at the office, his companionship with the two Sturgis girls,—all of which was very agreeable and entertaining. Jeannette and he would be married some day before long; he was content to let matters drift until she was ready to name the day.... Alice? Oh, Alice was a lovely girl,—a deuce of a lovely girl. She was going to be his sister-in-law soon.

Before long Mrs. Sturgis came fluttering in great agitation to her oldest daughter. By various circumlocutions, she approached the subject which was causing her so much distress. It was quite evident that Alice was not well; she was run down and getting terribly nervous. Had Jeannette noticed anything wrong with her? Jeannette didn’t suppose it could be a man, did she? The little brown bird was still her mother’s baby after all, but you never could tell about girls. Alice was,—well, Alice was nineteen! And if it was a man,—the dear child acted exactly as if there was one,—who could it possibly be? She didn’t see anybody but Roy; she didn’t go any place with anybody else. Now her mother didn’t want to say one word to distress Jeannette, or to say anything that would—would upset her.... Perhaps she was all wrong about it anyway, but—but did Jeannette think it was possible that Alice and Roy,—that Alice,—that Alice....

Amused, Jeannette watched her anxious little mother floundering on helplessly. Then she suddenly took the plump and worried figure in her arms, hugged her, and told her all about it.

Mrs. Sturgis could only stare in amazement and interject breathless exclamations of “But, dearie!” “Why, dearie!” “Well, I don’t know what to make of you!”

But the question now remaining was how to jog Roy’s consciousness awake, make him see the little brown flower at his feet that looked up at him so adoringly, only waiting to be plucked. Jeannette said nothing to her mother, but she went to Roy direct. She felt sure of her touch with him.

First she made him realize that she could never be satisfied with being his wife. She explained carefully and convincingly why it could never be, and then while he gazed tragically at the ground, twisting his lean white fingers, she spoke to him frankly of Alice.

As she talked it came over her with fresh conviction that, had she married him, she could have done as she liked with Roy; he was putty in her hands. But her husband must be a man who would mold her, make her do what he wished, bend her to his will. Only such a man would awaken her love and keep it. She despised Roy for his amiability.

He looked very boyish and silly to her now, as he rumpled his stuck-up hair, and dubiously shook his head. He was surprised to hear about Alice, and,—Jeannette could see,—at once interested. She left the thought with him and confidently waited for it to take hold. Mr. Corey, she felt, would have handled the situation in just some such fashion as she had,—direct, cutting the Gordian knot, plunging straight to the heart of the matter.

One night at dinner she casually told her mother and sister that her engagement with Roy had been broken by mutual consent. She explained they both had begun to realize they did not really love one another well enough to marry and had decided to call it off. Roy was a sweet boy, she added, and would make some girl a splendid husband. She glanced covertly at Alice. The girl was bending over her plate, pretending an interest in her food, but her face was deadly white. A rush of tenderest love flooded Jeannette’s heart. At the moment she would have given much to have been free to take her little sister in her arms and tell her everything, assure her that the man she loved was beginning to love her in return and would some day make her his wife.

And that was how it turned out. A year later Roy and Alice were married by the Reverend Doctor Fitzgibbons in the church on Eighty-ninth Street in just the way the bride’s mother had planned for her older daughter, and now they were living in a small but pretty four-room apartment out in the Bronx for which they paid twenty-five dollars a month. Happy little Mrs. Beardsley’s mother and sister were aware that very shortly those grave responsibilities at which Mrs. Sturgis had often mysteriously hinted were to come upon her. Alice was “expecting” in March.

Roy was no longer an employee of the Chandler B. Corey Company. He had found another job just before he married and was now with The Sporting Gazette, a magazine devoted to athletic interests, gaming, and fishing, where he was getting forty dollars a week as sub-editor. He had always wanted to write and this came nearer his ambition than soliciting advertisements. Moreover there was the increase in salary. Of course The Sporting Gazette was new and had nothing like the circulation of the Corey publications, but Roy considered it a step ahead. He had given Mr. Featherstone a chance to keep him, but Mr. Featherstone had rubbed his chin and wagged his head dubiously when asked for a raise. No,—there mustn’t be any more raises for awhile, no more increases in salary until the company was making larger profits; they were expanding; there was the new building with the larger rent, and all those new presses to be paid for. So Roy had gone in quest of another job, and had found it in one of three rough little rooms comprising the editorial offices of The Sporting Gazette. He considered himself extremely happy, extremely fortunate.

The attraction Jeannette had once felt for him was as dead as though it had never been.

§ 4

Mrs. Sturgis no longer had to work so hard. She had given up her position as instructor in music at Miss Loughborough’s Concentration School for Little Girls and her work as accompanist for Signor Bellini’s pupils. Jeannette had made her resign from both places. With Alice married and gone, it was better for her mother to stay at home and take charge of the housekeeping. Mrs. Sturgis gave private lessons, now,—a few hours only in the morning or afternoon,—and these, she asserted, were a “real delight.” It left her plenty of time for marketing and for preparing the simple little dinners she and her daughter enjoyed at night. She took the keenest interest in these, and was always planning something new in the way of a surprise for her “darling daughter when she comes home just dead beat out at the end of the day.” Finances were no longer a problem. Jeannette contributed twenty dollars a week to the household expenses while her mother earned as much and sometimes more. She often reminded her daughter she could do even better than that, especially during the winter months, but Jeannette would not hear of her working harder.

“But what’s the use, Mama?” she would ask. “We’ve got everything we want. I can dress as I like on what’s left out of my salary, and there is no sense in your teaching all day. I love the idea of your being free to go to a concert now and then, and Alice’s going to need you a lot when the baby comes and afterwards.”

“That may be all very true, dearie, but I don’t just feel right about having so much time to myself. I could easily do more. There was a lady called this afternoon and just begged me to take her little girl. You know I have all Saturday morning.”

“No,” said Jeannette decisively; “I won’t consider it.”

They were really very comfortably situated, the girl would reflect. Once a week, sometimes oftener, Mrs. Sturgis would be asked to accompany a singer at a recital. That meant five dollars, often ten,—ten whenever Elsa Newman sang. Then there was the twenty she, herself, contributed weekly, and the lessons that brought in an equal amount. Between her mother’s earnings and her own, their income was never less than two hundred and fifty dollars a month. They were rich; they lived in luxury; they need never worry again. Jeannette knew she could remain with Mr. Corey for life if she wanted to; there was no possible danger of her ever losing her job. Her mother fussed about the apartment, cooked delicious meals, took an interest in arranging and managing their little home in a way that previous demands upon her time had never permitted. A new rug was bought for the studio, and some big easy chairs, which they had talked about purchasing for years. The piece of chenille curtaining that had done duty as a table cover so long in the dining-room was supplanted by a square of handsomer material; the leaky drop-light vanished and was replaced by one more attractive and serviceable. More particularly Jeannette had seen to it that her mother got new clothes. Mrs. Sturgis had always favored lavender as the shade most becoming to her, and her daughter bought her a lovely lavender velvet afternoon dress which had real lace down the front and was trimmed with darker lavender velvet ribbon. Some lavender silk waists followed, and a small lavender hat upon which the lilac sprays nodded most ingratiatingly. Mrs. Sturgis was radiant over her new apparel. Her extravagant delight touched the daughter. It was pathetic that so little could give so much intense enjoyment.

Once or twice a month, Jeannette took her mother to a matinée. She loved to go to the theatre herself, and studied the advertisements, read all the daily theatrical notes and never missed a review. She would secure seats for the play, weeks in advance, and always took her mother to lunch downtown before the performance. These were wonderful and felicitous occasions for both of them. They had great arguments each time as to where they should eat, what they should select from the magnificent menus, and later about the play itself. Jeannette liked to startle her mother by selecting some extravagant item from the bill-of-fare, or surprise her by handing her a little present across the table. Sometimes as they came out of the theatre she would pilot her without preamble toward a hansom-cab and before the excited little woman knew what it was about, would help her in, and tell the cabby to drive them home slowly through the Park.

“Oh, dearie, you’re not going to do this again!” Mrs. Sturgis would expostulate drawing back from the waiting vehicle. She really wished to protest against the needless extravagance. Jeannette would smile lovingly at her, and urge her in. Later as they were rumbling through the leafless Park and met a stream of automobiles and sumptuous equipages going in the opposite direction, Mrs. Sturgis would settle herself back with a sigh of contentment and say:

“Really, dearie, I don’t think there is anything I enjoy quite as much as riding in a hansom. You’re very good to your old mother. We may land in the poorhouse, but we’re having a good time while the luck lasts.”

On the occasion of the first performance of Parsifal at the Metropolitan, Jeannette, through Mr. Corey, was able to secure one ten-dollar seat for her mother. It was the greatest event in little Mrs. Sturgis’ life. She longed for Ralph, and wept all through the Good Friday music.

Frequently on Sunday afternoons Jeannette’s mother made her daughter accompany her to Carnegie Hall for a concert or a recital. Then, she declared, it was her turn to treat and she would not allow the girl to pay for anything. Her entertainments were never as “grand” as her daughter’s, but she took a keen delight in playing hostess, and after the music always suggested tea. They were both exceedingly fond of toasted crumpets, and Mrs. Sturgis was ever on the lookout for new places where they were served. But neither of her daughters inherited her love for music. Jeannette went to the concerts dutifully, but the satisfaction derived from these afternoons came from giving her mother pleasure rather than from the jumble of sound made by the wailing strings, tooting wood-winds and blaring trumpets. She could make nothing out of it all. When there was a soloist she was interested, especially if it was a woman, of whose costume she made careful notes.

Mother and daughter also went to church sometimes. Doctor Fitzgibbons had made a deep impression upon Mrs. Sturgis when he officiated at the marriage of Roy and Alice. She had been “flattered out of her senses” when the clergyman called upon her a few weeks after the ceremony to inquire for the young couple. He had talked to her about “parish work,” and expressed the hope that she would see her way clear “to join the church” and become interested in his “guild.” Mrs. Sturgis had laughed violently at everything he said, and had promised all he suggested. Thereafter she referred to him as her “spiritual adviser,” and Jeannette was aware she called occasionally at the rectory to discuss what she termed her “spiritual problems.”

Sunday evenings, Mrs. Sturgis and Jeannette usually invited Alice and Roy to dinner, and sometimes they were the guests of the young couple in the little Bronx apartment. Roy and Alice were like two children playing at keeping house, Mrs. Sturgis said with one of her satisfied chuckles. Jeannette, too, thought of them as children. Alice had always seemed younger to her than she really was, and even when her own thoughts had been filled with Roy, he had always impressed her as a “boy.” She often wondered nowadays, when he and his happy, dimpling, brown-eyed bride sat side by side on the sofa, their arms around one another, their hands linked, exchanging kisses every few minutes in accepted newly-wed fashion, what she had ever seen in him that had made her own senses swim and her heart pound. He was just a sweet, amiable boy to her now, with a fresh, eager manner, and rather an attractive face. She still liked his quaint mouth, his whimsical smile, his quick flashing blue eyes, but they no longer stirred her. She could kiss him in affectionate sisterly fashion without a tremor.

Jeannette and Mrs. Sturgis took great delight in observing the young couple together, in watching them in their diminutive but pretty home, and in discussing them afterwards. They were ideally happy,—laughing, romping, playing little jokes upon one another, deriving vast amusement from words, signs and phrases, the meaning of which were known to them alone. Both were affectionately demonstrative, forever holding hands, caressing one another and kissing. Jeannette said it made her sick, was disgusting, but her mother scolded when she betrayed her distaste, and reminded her it was “only right and proper.”

Roy, against the prospect of his marriage to Jeannette, had saved money; Mrs. Sturgis, urged by her older daughter, had once again placed a loan of five hundred dollars upon the nest-egg in the savings bank; Jeannette had contributed another hundred, and Roy’s father had shipped from San Francisco a half car-load of family furniture which had been in storage for many years. The wedding had awaited the arrival of this freight, and as soon as it came the stuff had been uncrated, and installed in the little Bronx apartment. The ceremony then followed and Roy took his blushing, laughing, excited bride from her mother’s arms, from the old-fashioned apartment where she had lived almost since she could remember, and from the wedding supper, direct to the new home in the Bronx which together they had furnished with such joy and hours of planning and discussion.

They had nearly a thousand dollars to spend, but Alice wisely decided, so her mother thought, that only half of it should go into house-furnishing. The furniture shipped by the Reverend Dwight Beardsley was designed in the style of an earlier day and much of it was too large for the snug little rooms of the Bronx flat. A large sideboard with a marble slab top and huge mirror could not be brought into the apartment at all, and was sold to a second-hand furniture dealer on Third Avenue for fifteen dollars. But most of the furniture from California was usable, and all of it good and substantial. Alice made the curtains for the dining and living rooms herself; she and Roy, on their hands and knees, painted the floors a warm walnut tone. They bought three or four rugs, a fine second-hand sofa with a rich but not too gaudy brocaded cover, bed and table linen, and everything needed for the kitchen. Horatio Stephens and his family sent them a colored glass art lamp, and Mr. Corey, consulting Jeannette, presented a beautiful clock with silvery chimes.

No young husband and wife ever took greater delight in their first home. They were always “fixing” things, arranging and rearranging them, cleaning and dusting. Roy bought a Boston fern during an early week of the marriage, paid three dollars for a brass jardiniere at a Turkish vendor’s to hold it, and the plant flourished on a small taboret in the front windows. They took the most assiduous care of this, watering it several times a day and digging about its roots with an old table knife whenever either of them had an idle moment. When one of the curling fronds began to turn brown, they had long discussions as to whether it should be trimmed off or not. They acquired a canary, too, which shared with the fern the young couple’s devotion. Alice had bought the bird because she was so “miserably lonely” without Roy all day long that she would “go out of her senses wanting him” unless there was something alive ’round the house to keep her company. The fact that the canary never opened his throat to make a sound,—although Alice had been assured by the man in the bird-store that he would “sing his head off”—did not in any wise detract from her love for the little feathered creature that hopped about in his cage and made a great fuss over giving himself a bath in the mornings. They called him “Sonny-boy” and took turns at the pleasure of feeding him.

Alice was a good cook. She had a gift for the kitchen, and Jeannette and her mother would exclaim in admiration over the delicious meals she prepared when they came to dinner. Roy would glance from mother to sister-in-law when the roast appeared or when a particularly appetizing-looking pudding was brought in, and at their exclamations of delight, he would say:

“Guess I’ve got a pretty smart wife,—hey? Guess I know a good cook when I see one, huh? Why, Alice’s got most women I know skinned a mile! She’s just a wonder; she can do anything. I only wish I was good enough for her. She’s a wonder, all right—all right.”

Jeannette was deeply moved when her sister told her she was going to have a baby. It tore at her heart to think of little Alice, to herself so young, so immature, so tender and weak and inexperienced, bringing a child into the world. She worried about it, wondered if Alice would die, felt with terrifying conviction that that would be the way of it. Her mother’s pleasure and complacency about the matter reassured her but little. Alice was having a child much too soon after her wedding; she ought to have waited for a year or so at least.

She watched the changes in her sister’s face and figure with growing wonder. Child-bearing was a mystery. Jeannette had never known a woman intimately who had had a baby; now she was both curious and concerned. After the early months of discomfort had passed, a benign gentleness settled upon Alice; her expression became placid, serene, beautiful. A quality of goodness transfigured her. She moved through the days toward her appointed time with supreme tranquillity. Whenever Alice spoke of “my baby,” Jeannette winced, while her mother maddened her each time with the remark that it was “only right and proper.”

One morning early in March, shortly after Jeannette had reached the office, her mother telephoned her in a great state of excitement. She had just heard from Roy; Alice’s baby would arrive that day; they were taking her right away to the hospital; she wasn’t in any pain yet, but the doctor thought it would be best to have her there; he didn’t say when the child was likely to be born.

There was no more news. The morning stretched itself out endlessly. Jeannette worried and suffered in silence; at noon she telephoned the hospital and got Roy; there was little change; Alice was miserable, but there was no talk about when the baby would be born; the doctor had promised to be in at three; Roy would let her know if anything happened. All afternoon there was a meeting of the members of the firm in Corey’s office; the question of the move to the new building was being discussed; it lasted until four, until five, until quarter to six. Jeannette was beside herself. Alice was dead and they were afraid to let her know!

At six o’clock her mother telephoned again. Alice was having her pains with some regularity now; the baby ought to be there about eight or nine o’clock, the doctor said.

As soon as she was at liberty Jeannette left the office. She did not want to eat, but took the elevated direct to the hospital. Her mother and Roy met her and they kissed one another again and again. Alice was “upstairs” now. They sat with their elbows touching on a hard leather-covered seat in the reception-room. Jeannette’s head began to ache; she counted the sixty-three squares in the rug on the floor twenty-two times; the black on the Welsbach burner in the lamp looked exactly like two people kissing.

Towards midnight the baby was born.

When Jeannette first saw her niece, the upper part of the little head and forehead were carefully bandaged. Her mother whispered that it had been an “instrument case”; Roy was not to know for a while at any rate. The baby was perfect,—a fine, healthy, eight-pound girl, and Alice was doing nicely.

But Alice did not leave the hospital for six weeks and was six months in recovering her old strength and buoyancy.