"Oh, thank you, dear!" Adele said in bright protest. "But if you knew what I've got to do Monday! I'm going to have my linen fitted, and I'm going in to see the doctor about that funny, giddy feeling I've had twice. And Miriam wants me to look at hats with her. I'll be simply dead. Miriam and I will get a bite somewhere; we're dying to try the fifty-cent lunch at Shaftner's; they say it isn't so bad. It'll be an awful day, to say nothing of being all tired out from Coney. But I suppose I'll have to get through it."

She smiled resignedly at Martie. But Martie had fallen suddenly into absent thought. She was thinking of the odd look on John's face as he came forward in the pleasant dimness and coolness of the big store.

The next day they went duly to Coney Island; their last trip together, as it chanced, and one of the most successful of their many days in the parks or on the beaches. John, Martie, and Teddy were equally filled with childish enthusiasm for the prospect, and perhaps Adele liked as well her role of amused elder.

It was part of the pleasure for Martie to get up early, to slip off to church in the soft, cool morning. The dreaming city, awaiting the heat of the day, was already astir, churchgoers and holiday-makers were at every crossing. Freshly washed sidewalks were drying, enormous Sunday newspapers and bottles of cream waited in the doorways. Fasting women, with contented faces, chatted in the bakery and the dairy, and in the push-cart at the curb ice melted under a carpet cover. It was going to be a scorcher--said the eager boys and girls, starting off in holiday wear, coatless, gloveless, frantic to be away. Little families were engineered to the surface cars, clean small boys in scalloped blue wash suits, mother straining with the lunch-basket, father carrying the white-coated baby and the newspaper and the children's cheap coats.

Martie, kissing Teddy as a preliminary to her delayed breakfast, came home to discuss the order of events. The route and the time were primarily important: Teddy's bucket, John's camera, her own watch, must not be forgotten. There were last words for Henny and Aurora, good-byes for Grandma; then they were out in the Sunday streets, and the day was before them!

John took charge of the child; Adele and Martie talked and laughed together all the long trip. The extraordinary costumes of the boys and girls about them, the sights that filled the streets, these and a thousand other things were of fresh interest. Adele's costume was discussed.

"My gloves washed so beautifully; he said they would, but I didn't believe him! My skirt doesn't look a bit too short, does it, Martie? I put this old veil on, and then if we have dinner any place decent, I'll change to the other. I wore these shoes, because I'll tell you why: they only last one summer, anyway, and you might as well get your wear out of them. Listen, does any powder show? I simply put it on thick, because it does save you so. It's that dead white. I told her I didn't have colour enough for it; she said I had a beautiful colour--absurd, but I suppose they have to say those things!"

And Adele, her clear brown eyes looking anxiously from her slender brown face, leaned toward Martie for inspection. Martie was always rea.s.suring. Adele looked lovely; she had her hat on just right.

At Coney Teddy played bare-legged in the warm sand. Adele had a beach chair near by. She put on her gla.s.ses, and began her sewing; later they would all read parts of the paper, changing and exchanging constantly.

Martie and John, beaming upon all the world, joined the long lines that straggled into the bath-houses, got their bundled suits and their gray towels, and followed the attendant along the aisles that were echoing with the sound of human voices, and running with the water from wet bathing-suits. Fifteen minutes later they met again, still beaming, to cross under the damp, icy shadow of the boardwalk, and come out, fairly dancing with high spirits, upon the long, hot curve of the beach. The delicious touch of warm sand under her stockinged feet, the sunlight beating upon her glittering hair, Martie would run down the sh.o.r.e to the first wheeling shallows of the Atlantic.

"Nothing I have ever done in my life is so wonderful as this!" she shouted as the waves caught them, and carried them off their feet. John swam well; Martie a little; neither could get enough of the tumbling blue water.

Breathless, they presently joined Adele; Martie spreading her glittering web of hair to dry, as she sat in the sand by the other woman's chair; John stretched in the hot sand for a nap; Teddy staggering to and fro with a dripping pail. They liked to keep a little away from the crowd; a hundred feet away the footmarked sand was littered with newspapers, cigarette-b.u.t.ts, gum-wrappers, and empty paper-bags, the drowsing men and women were packed so close that laughing girls and boys, going by in their bathing-suits, had to weave a curving path up and down the beach.

Presently they had a hearty meal: soft-sh.e.l.l crabs fried brown, with lemon and parsley, coffee ready-mixed with milk and sugar, sliced tomatoes with raw onions, all served in cheap little bare rooms, at scarred little bare tables, a hundred feet from the sea. Later came the amus.e.m.e.nts: railways and flying-swings enjoyed simultaneously with hot sausages and ice-cream cones.

Adele liked none of this so much as she liked to go up toward the big hotels at about five o'clock, to find a table near the boardwalk, and sit twirling her parasol, and watching the people stream by. The costumes and the types were tirelessly entertaining. At six they ordered sandwiches and beer, and Teddy had milk and toast. The uniformed band, coming out into its paG.o.da, burst into a bra.s.sy uproar, the sun sank, the tired crowd in its brilliant colours surged slowly to and fro. Beyond all, the sea softly came and went, waves broke and spread and formed again unendingly.

Martie felt that she would like to sit so forever, with her son's soft, relaxed little body in her arms. To-night she did not a.n.a.lyze the new emotion that John's glances, John's voice, John's quiet solicitude for her comfort, had lent the day. Of course he liked her; of course he admired her; that was a fact long recognized with maternal amus.e.m.e.nt by Adele and herself. Of course he laughed at her, but every one laughed at Martie when she chose to be humorous. Let it go at that!

Sandy, sore, sleepy, and sunburned, they were presently in the returning cars, all wilted New York returning with them. Teddy slept soundly, sometimes in his mother's arms, sometimes in John's. It was John who carried him up the steps of the Seventieth Street house at ten o'clock.

A gentleman waiting to see Mrs. Bannister? Goodness, Aurora, why didn't you ask Mrs. Curley to see him? Martie surrendered her loose coat and hat to the maid, put a hand to her disordered hair. Apologetic, smiling, she went into the parlour.

Wallace Bannister was waiting for her; she was in her husband's arms.

"But, Wallace--Wallace--Wallace, what does it matter, dear? You don't have to tell me all about it, all the sickness and failure and bad luck! You're home again, now, and you've gotten back into your own line, and that's all that matters!"

Thus Martie, laughing with lashes still wet. She understood, she forgave; what else was a wife for? All that mattered was that he was here, and was deep in new plans, he had a new part to work up, he was to begin rehearsing next week, and the past was all a troubled dream.

Ah, this was worth while; this made up for it all!

Not quite a dream, for he seemed much older; the boyish bravado was gone. He was stout, settled, curiously deliberate in manner. But then she was older, too.

He answered her generous concession only with compliments. She had grown handsome, by George, she had a stunning figure, she had a stunning air! Martie laughed; she knew it was true.

He felt his old hatred for her employment at the boarding-house, and she was as eager as he to launch into real housekeeping at last. After the lonely years, it was wonderful to have a husband again! He bought whatever she wanted, took her proudly about. She went with him to his first rehearsals, finding the old stage atmosphere strangely exhilarating. Adele was frankly jealous of this new development, Martie saw and heard her as little as she noticed John's silence and seriousness, and Mrs. Curley's dubious cooperation.

A friend of Wallace proposed to sub-let them a furnished apartment in East Twenty-sixth Street. Martie inspected it briefly, with eyes too dazzled with dreams to see it truly.

She was not trained to business responsibility: she merely laughed because her old employer was annoyed to have her housekeeper desert her. After all, could there be a better reason for any move than that one's husband wished it? Swiftly and gaily she snapped the ties that bound her to the boarding-house.

There seemed to be plenty of money for teas and dinners: she stared about the brightly lighted restaurants like an excited child. Wallace was boisterously fond of his son, but he was too busy to be much with Teddy, and he wanted his wife all day and every day. So Martie engaged a housekeeper to take her place in the house, and a little coloured girl to take care of Teddy, and devoted herself to Wallace.

CHAPTER V

The flat in East Twenty-sixth Street was not what Martie's lonely dreams had fashioned, but she accepted it with characteristic courage and made it a home. She had hoped for something irregular, old-fashioned: big rooms, picturesque windows, picturesque inconveniences, interesting neighbours.

She found five rooms in a narrow, eight-story, brick apartment-house; a narrow parlour with a cherry mantel and green tiles, separated from a narrow bedroom by closed folding doors, a narrow, long hall pa.s.sing a dark little bathroom and the tiny dark room that Teddy had, a small dining room finished in black wood and red paper, and, wedged against it, a strip of kitchen.

These were small quarters after the airy bareness of the Curley home, and they were additionally reduced in effect by the peculiar taste their first occupant had shown in furnishing. The walls were crowded with heavily framed pictures, coloured photographs of children in livid pink and yellow gowns dancing to the music played by draped ladies at grand pianos; kittens in hats, cheap prints of nude figures, with ugly legends underneath. The chairs were of every period ever sacrificed to flimsy reproduction: gilt, Mission, Louis XIV, Pembroke, and old English oak. There were curtains, ta.s.sels, fringes, and portieres everywhere, of cotton brocade, velours, stencilled burlap, and "art"

materials generally. There was a Turkish corner, with a canopy, daggers, crescents, and cushions. The bookcase in the parlour and the china cabinet in the dining room were locked. The latter was so large, and the room it adorned so small, that it stood at an angle, partly shutting out the light of the one window. Every room except the parlour opened upon an air-well, spoken of by the agent as "the court." The rent was fifty dollars, and Wallace considered the place a bargain.

For the first day or two Martie laughed bravely at her surroundings, finding in this vase or that picture cause for great amus.e.m.e.nt. She promised herself that she would store some of these horrors, but inasmuch as there was not a spare inch in the flat for storage, it was decidedly simplest to leave them where they were. Wallace did not mind them, and Wallace's happiness was her aim in life.

But, strangely, after the first excitement of his return was over, a cool distaste descended upon her. Before the first weeks of the new life were over, she found herself watching her husband with almost hostile eyes. It must be wrong for a wife to feel so abysmal--so overwhelming an indifference toward the man whose name she bore.

Wallace, weary with the moving, his collar off, his thick neck bare, his big pale face streaked with drying perspiration, was her husband after all. She was angry at herself for noticing that his sleek hair was thinning, that the old look of something not fine was stamped more deeply upon his face. She resolutely suppressed the deepening resentment that grew under his kisses; kisses scented with alcohol.

Generations of unquestioning wives behind her, she sternly routed the unbidden doubts, she deliberately put from her thoughts many another disillusion as the days went by. She was a married woman now, protected and busy; she must not dream like a romantic girl. There was delightfully novel cooking to do; there was freedom from hateful business responsibility. All beginnings were hard, she told her shrinking soul; she was herself changed by the years; what wonder that Wallace was changed?

Perhaps in his case it was less change than the logical development of qualities that would have been distinctly discernible to clearer eyes than hers in the very hour of their meeting. Wallace had always drifted with the current, as he was drifting now. He would have been as glad as she, had success come instead of failure; he did not even now habitually neglect his work, nor habitually drink. It was merely that his engagement was much less distinguished than he had told her it was, his part was smaller, his pay smaller, and his chances of promotion lessening with every year. He had never been a student of life, nor interested in anything that did not touch his own comfort; but in the first days of their love, days of youth and success and plenty, Martie had been as frankly an egotist as he. His heaviness, his lack of interest in what excited her, his general unresponsiveness, came to her now more as a recollection than a surprise.

The farce in which he had a part really did prove fairly successful, and his salary was steady and his hours comfortable until after the new year. Then the run ended, and Wallace drifted for three or four weeks that were full of deep anxiety for Martie.

When he was engaged again, in a vaudeville sketch that was booked for a few weeks on one of the smaller circuits about New York, she had some difficulty in making him attend rehearsals, and take his part seriously. His friends were generally of the opinion that it was beneath his art. His wife urged that "it might lead to something."

Wallace was amused at her concern. Actors never worked the whole year round, he a.s.sured her. There was nothing doing in the summertime, ever.

Martie remarked, with a half-sorry laugh, that a salary of one hundred dollars a week for ten weeks was less than eighty-five dollars a month, and the same salary, if drawn for only five weeks, came to something less than a living income.

"Don't worry!" Wallace said.

"Wallace, it's not for myself. It's for the--the children. My dear! If it wasn't for that, it would be a perfect delight to me to take luck just as it came, go to Texas or Canada with you, work up parts myself!"

she would answer eagerly. She wanted to be a good wife to him, to give him just what all men wanted in their wives. But under all her bravery lurked a sick sense of defeat. He never knew how often he failed her.

And he was older. He was not far from forty, and his youth was gone. He did not care for the little dishes Martie so happily prepared, the salads and m.u.f.fins, the eggs "en cocotte" and "suzette." He wanted thick broiled steak, and fried potatoes, and coffee, and nothing else.

He slept late in the mornings, coming out frowsy-headed in undershirt and trousers to breakfast at ten or eleven, reading the paper while he ate, and scenting the room with thick cigar smoke.

Martie waited on him, interrupting his reading with her chatter. She would sit opposite him, watching the ham and eggs vanish, and the coffee go in deep, appreciative gulps.

"How d'you feel, Wallie?"

"Oh, rotten. My head is the limit!"

"Too bad! More coffee?"

"Nope. Was that the kid banging this morning?"