Not very long after this, she learned that Martin had been playing poker, and had lost. He had had a bad streak of luck and was obliged to confess to her he did not have enough money to pay the rent without making a levy upon her share of his salary; she must count on only forty dollars when his next pay-day fell due.
At that her resentment burst forth. She had denied herself consistently since the first of September. With her own hands she had made the little Christmas presents she had sent Alice and the children, and even what she had given her mother, in order to save a few dollars, and here was Martin gambling away at the card table money that was hers!
“You’re no more fit to be a father than a husband,” she told him, her anger blazing. “You expect me to bear a child to a man like you! You’re no better than a common thief!”
“Aw, cut that out, Jan,” he answered, a dull crimson reddening his neck; “I’ll admit I’m in wrong and that you’ve got every right to be sore at me, but what’s the use in accusing me of being dishonest?”
“Dishonest?—dishonest?” she repeated furiously, her hands clenched. “Half of every dollar you earn belongs to me,—and don’t you forget it! It’s mine by right of being your wife; it’s mine by right of your definite promise when I married you that we should share and share alike. I made a financial sacrifice then because I thought you and I were going to build a house and rear a family. I used to earn a hundred and forty dollars a month,—let me tell you,—and every cent of it I spent as I chose and for what I chose. I’ve never seen that much or anything like that much, since I married you. Don’t fool yourself you give me a penny! You work in your office and I work here and we both earn your salary. When you take my money and gamble with it and lose it, you’re doing exactly the same as if you put your hand in Herbert Gibbs’s cash drawer and helped yourself! It’s just plain thievery!”
Martin was on his feet, his face congested.
“If you were a man, I’d knock your damned head off.”
“If I were a man,” retorted his wife, “you’d be afraid to!”
§ 11
It was in this mood of fury, with her grievance seething within her, that she gladly agreed to accompany Edith French on a day of shopping in the city. Edith telephoned she had been invited by a certain famous Fifth Avenue importer to witness, at a private showing, the opening of some sealed trunks just received from Paris containing the new spring models. She wanted Jeannette to go with her, and the two women arranged to leave for town on an early morning train.