“You’re just playing with your happiness, dearie,” her mother said to her. “Martin Devlin’s a fine young man. You could go a long way before you’d find a better husband. I want to see my dearie-girl in a little home of her own like her sister’s.”
“Oh, Janny,” said Alice, “you don’t know what fun, being married is! Why, after you’ve become a wife, you feel differently about the whole world. Why, I’d marry anybody rather than not be married at all! ... And then, Janny, you haven’t got the faintest idea how sweet it is to have a baby of your own. Etta is just the joy of our lives. You ought to see Roy playing with her when he comes home from the office and I am getting her bath ready!”
Jeannette studied her sister’s radiant face curiously. There was a mystery here; something she did not understand. This was the girl who had borne her child in agony, who had endured nearly fifteen hours of labor, who had been torn and ripped, and had lain helpless on her back for six long months, fighting her way back to strength and normality, despairing and weakly crying! Yet here she was talking of the joy of having a baby, urging her sister to a like experience!
It was puzzling. How soon mothers forgot! Six months of helplessness already unremembered! It had not passed from Jeannette’s recollection. It had been terrible—terrible! ... And yet she would like to have a baby of her own,—a baby without that fearful ordeal,—a little Martin Devlin. She kissed Etta on the back of her wrinkled fat neck where it was sweetly perspiry and fuzzy with the lint from her blankets.
§ 9
Jeannette was equally sure of two things: she loved Martin with all her soul; she would never consent to give up her position with Mr. Corey and marry him. Martin, her mother, Alice, even Mr. Corey, who soon learned of the situation, could not persuade her.
Corey had a long talk with her about the matter.
“I don’t know very much about your young man; Gibbs speaks well of him. He tells me he’s been with them a little more than a year, and is their star salesman. I think he has more possibilities in him than that. Of course you never can tell. I confess I was impressed when I first met him. Somebody at the Quoin Club had him there as a guest and introduced us, and he talked good business from the start. I don’t think much of Gibbs’ engraving, but that’s no reflection on Devlin. Personally I think you ought to marry. I advised you the same way before. Perhaps you were right in not being too hasty in that instance. I can’t know, of course, whether you’re seriously interested or not. Your heart has got to tell you that. If you love Devlin well enough and think you’ll be happy with him, you ought to marry him. I hate to see you wasting your life down here in this office. You’re deserving a better chance. Business is no place for a girl. You ought to be building a home and rearing children of your own. If you make as good a wife as you have a secretary,” he ended with a smile, “your husband will have no occasion to find fault with you.”
But she could not bring herself to give up her independence. That was what stuck in her throat. She came back to it repeatedly. A little apartment like Alice’s to share with Martin, to fix and furnish,—it appealed to her imagination, it had its attractions,—but it would be such a leap in the dark! She was so sure of her happiness living the way she was—why alter it? Yet was there any happiness for her without Martin? She tried to picture it, and her heart misgave her.
Some of the glamor that surrounded him at first had now disappeared. He no longer seemed a scion of wealth, a prince, a lordling, to whistle menials to his beck and call, and to swagger his way in and out of restaurants, leaving a trail of scattered largess in his wake. Familiarity had stripped him of the cloak of splendor with which he first had dazzled her. She liked him all the better without it, for it had only been bluff with him, his way of trying to impress her. She knew him now for an ever merry soul, an amused and amusing companion, possessing rare thoughtfulness, a little vain, a little opinionated, vigorous, direct, domineering, who could, if he so desired, charm an angel Gabriel to softness. He had his faults; she thought she knew them all. He was happy-go-lucky, had small regard for time, appointments, or others’ feelings; he was extravagant in all his tastes; and loved pleasure inordinately. But there was a charm about him that made up to her a thousandfold for these trifling short-comings. He was the handsomest of men, generous and invariably kind-hearted, he could win a smile from an image, or accomplish the impossible, once his mind was made up.