Late Friday afternoon she manfully struggled with the two suitcases to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry and met Martin as agreed at the entrance of the waiting-room. They had been anxious to catch an early train from Long Island City, and it had been arranged that Mr. Gibbs and Martin should come to the station directly from the office and meet her at the ferry station.
“My God, Jan!” Martin exclaimed after he had swung himself off the trolley-car and come running up to where she was waiting. “My God, you look great! Say,—I never saw you look so—so swell!” Mr. Gibbs was pleasantly cordial, though suffering much discomfort from the excessive heat. Sweat trickled down his expressionless face, and continually he removed his straw hat to mop his forehead with a drenched handkerchief.
It was indeed hot, but the vistas up and down the river as the ferry-boat blunted its way toward the Long Island shore were all of cool pinks, palest greens and lavenders in the late summer afternoon, while the sun, setting through a murky haze, cast an enchanted light over the scene. In the train, Mr. Gibbs took himself off to the smoking car, leaving Martin and Jeannette alone. They sat beside a raised window, their hands linked under a fold of her silk dress, and the air that reached them was rich with the scent of the open country. The girl’s heart was overflowing with happiness as Martin whispered endearments in her ear: she was a wonder, all right; she looked like a million dollars; gosh! he was proud of her; there was no girl in the world like his wife! The holiday that was beginning for them, and the knowledge that they were not to be separated for two whole days—nearly three!—filled both with great felicity.
Cohasset Beach is a little village of two or three thousand inhabitants on the Sound side of the Island, some twenty-five or thirty miles from New York. The Gibbses lived in an unpretentious, white, peaked-roofed house, with plenty of shade trees about it, and a rather patchy, ill-kept lawn, bordered with straggling rosebeds. There was a lattice-sided porch covered with a clambering vine. The place was attractive though shabby; the house sorely in need of paint, the front steps worn down to the natural color of the wood, the edges of the treads frayed and splintery. A sagging hammock hung under scrawny pepper trees, and a child’s toys were scattered about, while close to the latticed porch was a pile of play sand hauled up from the neighboring beach.
Jeannette was disappointed. She had pictured the Gibbses’ house more of an establishment. Cohasset Beach was a fashionable summer resort; the Yacht Club there was famous; she had thought to find her hosts living in some style. But she was not to be daunted; she had come prepared to have a good time and to make these people like her; she reminded herself of her determination not to spoil this visit for Martin.
But on encountering Mrs. Gibbs she realized afresh how little in common she had with her hostess. The woman was devoid of poise, restraint, or dignity; Jeannette had forgotten her volubility and harsh, unpleasant laugh. Mrs. Gibbs welcomed her guest eagerly, keeping up a running fire of remarks, loosing her squeaks of mirth in nervous fashion. She slipped her arm about Jeannette’s waist and before showing her to her room or giving her a chance to remove her hat, led her to the nursery to view little Herbie in his crib. Mr. Gibbs followed for a peep at his son before the child went off to sleep and he brought Martin with him. They all hung over the sides of the crib and exclaimed about the baby, who rolled his solemn, perplexed eyes from face to face. Jeannette noted he was exactly like his father: flat-headed, expressionless, with no curve at the back of his neck, but Martin seemed quite taken with him and when he tickled him with a finger, the baby opened wide his little red mouth, displayed his toothless red gums and crowed vigorously. Jeannette was sure she detected in the sound the shrillness of his mother’s senseless laugh.
The guest room was on the third floor in one gable of the roof, a big room with sloping ceilings; it was equipped with a washstand on which stood a basin and ewer; the bathroom was on the floor below. Hattie, the colored cook, would bring up hot water, Mrs. Gibbs said in her excited way as she left them, urging her guests to make themselves comfortable. Jeannette had carefully packed Martin’s dinner clothes, and her own prettiest dinner frock, but there would evidently be no formal dressing in such a household. She stood at an open latticed window that jutted out above the vine-covered porch and looked out over a rippling billow of tree-tops, softly green now in the fading evening light, that tumbled down to the water’s edge. The Sound was dotted with little boats riding at anchor and there was one private yacht, gay with lights and fluttering pennants. The lambent heavens in the west touched the shimmering water delicately with pink. She pressed her lips resolutely together, and stared out upon the scene unmoved by its beauty.
“Great,—isn’t it?” Martin said, coming to stand beside her and putting his arm about her. “We’ll have a home like this of our own, some day,—hey, old girl? And you’ll be the boss of the show and be cooking me some of your fine dinners when I come home, and I’ll take you out sailing in the yacht on Sundays.” He laughed his rich buoyant peal and caught her in his arms.
“Oh, Martin,” she breathed tremulously, sinking her face against his shoulder, “I love you so,—I love you so!”
As she had foreseen, there was no change of costume for dinner at the Gibbses’ table. The meal itself had as little distinctiveness as the host and hostess: soup and vegetables, a large steak followed by apple pie and the usual accessories. Martin, Mr. Gibbs and his wife drank beer; it appeared that it was imported, and Martin was eloquent in its praise. There were cookies too, which made a special appeal to him; küchen, Mrs. Gibbs called them, but Jeannette thought them hard and tasteless. After dinner, the men walked down to the water and back, smoking their cigars, while Jeannette sat and listened to a long tale by Mrs. Gibbs of how she had happened to meet her Herbert, how her parents had objected, how they had tried to separate them, and how love had finally triumphed.