Her mother had borrowed five hundred upon the old paid-up policy, asserting that she had done so for Alice, and the older daughter was entitled to a like amount upon getting married. And besides all this, Martin had turned over to his wife on the day the lease had been signed, several hundreds more.
It appeared that a year before, about the very time he had met Jeannette, his mother died. She had lived in Watertown, New York, where Martin was born, and where she had an interest in a small grocery business. Martin’s father,—dead for sixteen years,—had been a grocer and had run a “back-room” in connection with his store, where Milwaukee beer had been dispensed but never “hard” liquor. Jeannette did not give her mother these facts when she learned them; it was nobody’s business, she contended; everybody when he came to America was a pioneer and began in a humble way. Paul Devlin’s old partner, Con Donovan, who had come over from Ballaghaderreen with him in ’73, had carried on the business after his demise, and there had been money enough to send Martin to school and to support the boy and Paul’s widow. But when his mother had followed his father to the grave, Martin had no longer any interest in groceries, and he gladly accepted the three thousand dollars Con Donovan offered him for his inherited share of the business. It hadn’t been enough to do anything with, Martin explained to his wife; so he had just “blown” it. It accounted for the theatre tickets, the presents, the entertainments with which he had backed his wooing. There was nearly a thousand dollars left after the honeymoon to Atlantic City, and Martin had gone to his bank and transferred the whole account to his wife’s name upon their return, telling her to go ahead and furnish the new home in any way she fancied.
Jeannette had nearly seventeen hundred dollars in the bank when she began. She had no thought of spending so much, but it melted away in the most surprising fashion. Martin, in a way, was responsible for this: whenever she consulted him, he was always in favor of the more expensive course. She would have been quite satisfied with a two-hundred-and-twenty-dollar dining-room set, but he decided in favor of the one that cost three hundred and fifty. When she said she would be contented with the simple white-painted wooden bed, he had chosen a brass one and ordered the box-spring mattress that had cost nearly a hundred dollars more. He had also persuaded her against her judgment in the matter of the big davenport and the upholstered chairs that went with it for the living-room. Then there had been the matter of the two oil paintings in ornate gold frames upon which they had chanced in Macy’s while on a shopping tour. Jeannette had grave doubts about the oils; she did not know whether they were good or bad. Her misgivings in regard to them may have sprung from the fact that they hung in Macy’s art gallery; but there could be no questioning the handsomeness and impressiveness of the gold frames.
“Why sure, let’s have ’em,” Martin said, eyeing them judicially as he and his wife stood together considering the purchase; “they look like a million dollars, and anything I hate are bare walls! You want to have the place lookin’—oh, you know—artistic and classy.”
“The autumn coloring in this one is most lifelike,” the eager young salesman ventured. “It seems to me they both have a great deal of depth and quality,—don’t you think?—and while, of course, the size has nothing to do with the art, still I really think you ought to take into consideration the fact that this canvas is thirty-six by twenty-seven, and the other one is nearly as large. Now for twenty-five and thirty dollars....”
“Sure, let’s have ’em,” Martin decided in his lordly, arbitrary way, “and if I find out they’re no good,” he added to the beaming salesman, “I’ll come back here and slap Mrs. Macy on the wrist!”
This last was most appreciated, and the very next day, in much excelsior and paper wrappings, the two heavily framed paintings arrived and now hung facing one another in the front room. Jeannette used to study them, finger on lip, wondering if they had merit or were nothing but daubs. They appeared all right; there was nothing to criticize about them as far as she could see, but she knew they would never mean anything to her as long as she remembered they had been bought at Macy’s. Her mother warmly shared her husband’s enthusiasm.
“Why, dearie, they look perfectly beautiful,” she told her daughter, “and they give your home such an air of distinction. I wouldn’t worry my head about where they came from, as long as they give you pleasure.”
But if Jeannette had misgivings about the pictures, she had no doubts about anything else her perfect little home contained. It was complete as far as she could make it, from the service of plated flat silver her old associates at the office had clubbed together and given her, to the carpet sweeper that had a little closet of its own to stand in along with the extra leaves of the dining-room table. There were towels, sheets, table linen, chairs, pictures and rugs. She had indulged her fancy somewhat in curtaining, had decided on plain net at the windows with narrow strips of some brightly colored material on either side. She had picked out a salmon-tinted, satin-finished drapery at Wanamaker’s for the living-room, and gay cretonne for her bedroom, and she had had these curtains made at the store.
“I’d be forever doing the work,” she had said in justifying this extravagance to Martin, “and we want to get settled some time!”