Her mother, warmly seconded by Alice, refused to allow her to contribute more than ten dollars toward the household expenses. She had her trousseau to buy, they argued, and this was Jeannette’s own money and she ought to spend it just as she chose and for what she chose. Finances at the moment were much less of a problem than they had been for the little household. A wealthy pupil of Signor Bellini with a fine contralto voice had engaged Mrs. Sturgis as her regular accompanist, and paid her ten dollars every time she played for her at an evening concert.
Jeannette allowed herself to be persuaded, and Saturday afternoons became for her orgies of shopping. She priced everything; she ransacked the department stores. She knew what was being asked for a certain type and finish of tailor suit on Fifth Avenue, and what “identically the same thing” could be bought for on Fourteenth Street. She got the tailor suit, and a new hat, a pair of smart, low walking pumps, some half-silk stockings, be-ribboned underwear, a taffeta petticoat, everything she wanted. She lunched at the St. Denis in what she felt to be regal luxury, and indulged herself in a bag of chocolate caramels afterwards. The joy of having money to spend intoxicated her; she revelled in the glory of it; it was exciting, wonderful, marvellous. Not one of the things she bought would she allow herself to wear; everything was to be saved until she was married, and became Mrs. Roy Beardsley.
Her future husband took her one Sunday to inspect the small brick house in Flatbush which could be rented for twenty dollars a month. The weather was unduly warm,—an exquisite day with a golden sun,—one of those foretastes of spring that are so beguilingly deceptive. From the janitor, who showed them over it, they learned that the house would cost them twenty-two dollars a month. It was one of a solid, unrelieved row of fourteen others exactly like it, all warmed by a central heating system, and supplied similarly with water and gas. It was dark, the floors were worn and splintery, the windows dingy; the whole place smelled of old carpets and damp plaster. Still it had three bedrooms upstairs, and a living-room, a really pleasant dining-room, and a kitchen on the ground floor. Roy watched Jeannette’s face eagerly as they stepped from room to room, but he failed to detect any sign of enthusiasm. It impressed the girl as anything but cheerful. She saw herself day after day alone in this place, sweeping, dusting, making beds, washing dishes, getting herself a plate of pick-up lunch and eating it at the end of the kitchen table, trying to read, trying to sew, trying to amuse herself during the empty afternoons until it was time to start dinner and wait for her husband to come home. After the bustle and excitement of the office, it would be insufferably dull.
As they waited a moment on the front steps for the janitor to lock up after them, Jeannette noticed a large, fat woman in a shabby negligée, watching them from the upper window of the adjoining house, her plump, pink elbows resting on a pillow, as she leaned out upon the sill, enjoying the mellowness of the afternoon. On the ground floor behind the looped lace curtains of a front window, her husband was asleep in a large upholstered armchair, Sunday newspapers scattered about him, the comic section across his round, fat abdomen.
“These would be the kind of neighbors she would have!” thought Jeannette. Oh, it wasn’t what she wanted! It wasn’t her kind of a life—at all! She would be lonely, lonely, lonely.
Roy was getting twenty-five dollars a week; she was getting twenty-five dollars a week. Why couldn’t they go on working together in the same office and have a joint income of fifty dollars a week,—two hundred dollars a month! The idea fired her.
But she found no one to share her enthusiasm. Alice pressed a dubious finger-tip against her lips; Roy frowned and said frankly he didn’t think it was the right way for a couple to start in when they got married; her mother indulged in firm little shakes of her head that set her round cheeks quivering. When the heated discussion of the evening was over and Roy had taken himself home, Mrs. Sturgis came to sit on the edge of Jeannette’s bed after the girl had retired, and in the darkness discoursed upon certain delicate matters which evidently her dear daughter hadn’t considered.
“I hope my girl won’t have responsibilities come upon her too soon after she’s married,” she said, after a few gentle clearings of her throat, “but, dearie, you know about babies, and you’ll want to have one, and it’s right and proper that you should. But where would you be if a—if a—you found you were going to have one,—and you were working in an office? You must consider these things. Roy’s perfectly right in not wanting his wife at a dirty old desk all day.... And then, dearie, there are certain decencies, certain proprieties. A bride cannot be too careful; she must always be modest. Suppose you actually tried this—this wild scheme of yours, and after your happy honeymoon, went back to the office among your old associates, the men and women with whom you’ve grown familiar; imagine how it would seem to them, and what dreadful thoughts they might think about you and Roy! One of the lovely things about marriage, Janny, is the dear little home waiting to shield the young bride.”
“Oh, but Mama ...” began Jeannette in weary protest. But she stopped there. What use was it to argue? None of them understood her; none of them was able to grasp her point of view.
Roy voiced the only argument that had weight with her.