“Why, you ought to hear Adolph talk politics!” he told his wife enthusiastically. “He knows more about what’s going on up in Albany right this minute than all the newspapers in New York. You ought to hear him tell some of his experiences in the Republican Party!”
He might be interesting and clever, everything Martin said of him, but to Jeannette he seemed uncouth, ill-bred, a spitter of tobacco juice.
§ 5
When the Yacht Club formally opened its summer season, Jeannette put on her prettiest frock and went with her husband to the dance with which it was inaugurated. It was one of the efforts she made to adapt herself to the village life. She loved to dance. Swimming, sailing, tennis did not appeal to her, but from the dances in the club-house she hoped she might derive a certain amount of genuine pleasure. On the night of the affair, after studying the reflection in her mirror she had decided she had never looked so well; with truth she could say she was a beautiful woman, and in this estimate of herself, she found ample confirmation in Martin’s eyes. They hired a hack and drove over to the club.
But for the young wife it proved a dismal experience. The yokels,—the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, the dentist and real estate agents,—were afraid to approach her,—not that she wanted them to,—and she had been left to the favor of Herbert Gibbs, Doc French, and the old Commodore. The women eyed her covertly, whispered about her and her gown, and made no advances. Herbert Gibbs danced with her once, twice; Martin was three times her partner; Commodore Higgenbothen had passed his “gallivanting” days; Doc French, whom she liked and to whom she would have been glad to be cordial, did not dance at all. The floor was rough and uneven; the music lugubrious; three small boys kept up a fearful racket playing with some folding chairs stacked in a corner. She watched Martin whirling and wheeling about the floor, his face a broad grin, his eyes and teeth flashing, talking, laughing, exchanging an endless banter with other couples, answering here, there and everywhere to calls of “Martin” and “Mart.” At half-past ten she could stand no more of it. She knew she was dragging her husband away from a hilarious good time, but she was bored, disgusted with the whole evening and the hoidenish, loud-voiced village folk. She would never make the mistake of going to another of their wretched dances. Martin could go if he wanted to; if he liked to hobnob with such people, he could do so to his heart’s content: she wouldn’t raise one word of objection, but wild horses wouldn’t drag her there again!
In a fortnight, there was another dance at the club, and this time Martin took himself to the party alone, while Jeannette went to bed with a magazine. He woke her up when he came home a little after twelve, and told her he had had a wonderfully good time, and that Lester Short, his wife and their two older children had been present. But Jeannette had no regrets. The Shorts and her husband could enjoy the society of the plumbers and carpenters and their wives if they chose to do so; she felt satisfied that if she had gone she would have been miserable.
§ 6
Besides the Yacht Club there were other things in the new order of existence that proved annoying. Meat and vegetables cost considerably more at Cohasset Beach than in the city, and everything else was proportionally dearer. Jeannette had thought she might save a little on her marketing in the country, and it was discouraging to discover that this was quite impossible. She certainly had not expected to find that prices were actually higher. Then there was not nearly the same variety from which to choose in the stores here as there had been in the groceries and particularly the meat markets of Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. She and Martin were especially fond of lamb kidneys which she used to buy at the rate of three for five cents in New York. Pulitzer’s at Cohasset Beach never seemed to have them. And even more exasperating was the fact that fish could only be had on Thursdays when the fish-man came around blowing his horn.
The neighborhood, too, was a source of discomfort. Jeannette discovered, within a few days after they had moved into the bungalow, that the reason so attractive a house had been for rent at such a figure, with its acre and more of ground, its apple trees and pond and picturesque setting, was that it was situated on the wrong side of town, beyond the railroad tracks, a mile from the water. The desirable, residential section of Cohasset Beach was that in which the Herbert Gibbses lived, on the hill overlooking the Sound. A block from the bungalow, their rear yards abutting upon the railroad tracks, was a row of shabby cottages occupied by laborers, Polacks mostly, who worked in the quarries down on the “Point.” Here fences sagged and refuse littered the roadway, dirty children scrambled about and screamed at one another, drying laundry fluttered from clothes-lines, and fat dark women in calicoes and shuffling shoes gossiped from doorstep to doorstep. On Saturday nights there were invariably celebrations among these people at which, from the singing and general racket, it was evident that red wine flowed freely, and the doleful whine of an accordion accompanying hoarse masculine voices rose dismally from sundown until the early morning hours, interrupted by shouts of rollicking laughter. Martin assured his wife that these people were simple creatures, peasants transplanted but a few years from their native soil, celebrating after a week of toil, in a harmless jovial way after the fashion to which, in the old country, they had been accustomed. But Jeannette found it disturbing, not a little frightening, especially on those nights when Martin went off to the Yacht Club and left her alone with only Hilda in the house.
Lastly mosquitoes, germinated in the pond within a hundred yards of her own door, made their appearance in hungry numbers early in July. The pool was practically stagnant,—without visible outlet,—and the neighbor who owned it and who operated a small dairy, refused to oil it as his cows watered there. The bungalow windows were unscreened. Jeannette did not understand how she had failed to notice the fact when she first inspected the premises. The matter had to be remedied immediately, or life would be insupportable. The landlord declined to do anything; Martin thought perhaps they could endure the nuisance until cold weather came, but his wife declared that unthinkable. If the windows were shut with the lights on, the bungalow became insufferably hot and stuffy; if left open, moths, winged bugs, every kind of flying insect of the night together with the pests bred in the stagnant pool, flew in to buzz about the globes and torment those beneath them. Zeb Kline agreed to equip the bungalow with screens,—the frames would have to be fitted to the insides of the windows on account of their being casement,—for sixty-five dollars, and Jeannette, angered by Martin’s complacent acceptance of the circumstances, and his indifferent attitude towards that for which she felt him largely responsible, told the carpenter to go ahead.