She extracted from him two promises, however. It was a foregone conclusion, she told him, that she would not be happy at Cohasset Beach, but if she agreed to go and live there with him, it must be understood between them that she was to be free to come into New York as often as she pleased, to shop or to visit her mother and Alice, or do anything she liked. He must also understand that he was to keep a closer watch upon their finances. With commutation, railroad fares and club dues added to their expenses they would have to practise a much more rigid economy. She wanted to get the table expenditures down to fifteen dollars a week, and that would be out of the question if he expected her to entertain. As soon as they were out of debt and had a little ahead, she would be more than willing to have him invite people to visit them.
He promised everything. He was only too anxious and willing, he said, to agree to all she asked, to show his deep gratitude.
§ 4
The bungalow at Cohasset Beach, at first sight, consoled her in some degree for giving up the apartment. The little house was charming, and charmingly situated. It had been built a few years before by a rich old lady, an invalid, who had been compelled to pass her days in a wheel-chair which she operated herself. Because of the chair, the house had been planned bungalow-fashion, though there was an upstairs of two small bedrooms and an extra bath, and the doorways between rooms had been made particularly wide to permit the easy passage of the chair. Inside there were oak floors throughout, a spacious fireplace, and an oak-timbered ceiling in a generous-sized living-room, off which opened two bedrooms and, opposite, the dining-room. There was an acre or so of unkempt ground about the house with some gnarled old apple trees, in blossom when Jeannette first saw them, and at the rear the ground sloped down to a rush-bordered pool in whose rippleless surface all the colors of the sky, blossoming trees and bordering reeds were intensified in glorious reflection. A white cow stood upon her own inverted image at the farther side. There was no view of the Sound,—the bungalow was a good mile from the water,—but it was picturesquely set, and Jeannette felt, since she had been forced to abandon the city, she could not have found a home in the country that suited her better.
The move from town was accomplished without a hitch; even Hilda was successfully transplanted. Jeannette set herself determinedly to work to fit herself and her furniture into the new environment, and was surprised to discover how easily both were accomplished. Expenses alone distressed her. The vans which brought down the household effects cost more than she had expected, and she was obliged to order more furniture and rugs to make the new home attractive. Unfortunately, the bungalow had casement windows and this necessitated cutting and remaking all her curtains. Some in addition, too, were needed for the living-room, and Jeannette had decided that scrim would be both practical and economical, but the clerk in the store had shown her a soft, lovely material, stamped with a design of long green grasses and iris, which he assured her was “sunfast.” The pale purple and green in the goods had appealed to her as so unusually beautiful and effective that she had not been able to resist getting it. She decided to plant iris about the house in the long narrow strips of flower-beds, and to carry iris as a motif throughout the place. In a Fifth Avenue shop there was some china that had a pattern of fleur-de-lis in its center, and her heart was set on some day acquiring it for her new home.
Martin was immediately elected to the Family Yacht Club; the Gibbses had him and his wife to dinner and invited the Websters and another couple to make their acquaintance; Mrs. Rudolph Drigo and Mrs. Blum, who were neighbors, called, also Doctor Vinegartner of the Episcopal Church. Alice, Roy, and the children spent a Sunday with her sister and Alice was enthusiastic about everything. She told Roy they would have to find a house of their own at Cohasset Beach without delay. Summer had arrived before Jeannette was half aware of its approach.
The weather turned glorious; the dogwood came and went; the country was full of sweet scents; robins and thrushes sang with open throbbing throats in the apple trees and hopped about in the shade; the frogs shrilled musically at evening in the pool, but Jeannette did not find the happiness for which she hoped. She tried to be content; she sought for joy in her new life and surroundings. She found none. Too many things were wrong. Over and over again she decided it was hopeless.
First of all, there was the Family Yacht Club which Martin loved and she despised. She had known beforehand what it was going to be like, and closer acquaintance proved her premise to have been correct. All-year-round residents of Cohasset Beach made up its membership. There were less than three thousand people in the Long Island village during the winter; it was only in summer that the place became fashionable. Among those who belonged to the little yacht club, Jeannette soon discovered, were Tim Birdsell, the village plumber; Zeb Kline, a contractor, hardly better than a carpenter; Fritz Wiggens, who kept an electrical equipment store on Washington Street; Steve Teschemacher and Adolph Kuntz, who were real estate agents and were interested in a development known as “Cohasset Park”; then there were the local dentist and his wife, the local attorney and his helpmate, and the local doctor, who seemed to be of a better sort than the rest and was fortunately unmarried. The ladies took an active part in the social life of the yacht club and ’Stel Teschemacher, Chairwoman of the Entertainment Committee, went early to call upon the new member’s wife to invite her to come to the “Five Hundred Club” meeting on the following Friday afternoon. There was a sprinkling of others who boasted of a slightly more exalted social status: Mrs. Drigo’s husband operated a large ice plant in New York City. Mrs. Blum was the wife of the well-known confectioner, and Percy Webster was connected with an advertising agency. If there were more interesting members they kept themselves aloof,—at least Jeannette did not meet them. Once when she was describing to her mother with a good deal of relish the type of people who belonged to this club, and was referring to the list of members in the club’s annual booklet, she was surprised to come upon the name of Lester Short and that of a prominent magazine editor well-known to her.
She asked Herbert Gibbs about these people at an early opportunity but elicited nothing more satisfactory from him than: “Oh, they come round occasionally.” If such was the case, Jeannette was unable to identify them. She was interested to learn later that Lester Short and his wife had six children and lived about half-a-mile beyond the village in the region known as the “Point.”
Martin had no fault to find with his new friends. He was welcomed into their hearts; he charmed them all; he was acclaimed immediately the most popular member, and was appointed by the Commodore, old Jess Higgenbothen, affable, decrepit and rich, and owner of most of the acres Teschemacher and Kuntz were trying to sell as choice lots in Cohasset Park, to serve on the entertainment committee with ’Stel Teschemacher. Martin was enchanted with the cordiality with which he was accepted; he thought Zeb Kline, Fritz Wiggens, young Doc French “corking good scouts”; Zeb and Fritz were a little rough perhaps but they were regular fellows; Steve Teschemacher was as “funny as a crutch” and his partner, Adolph Kuntz, had about as sharp and shrewd a mind as Martin had ever encountered.