She persuaded Roy to postpone the wedding. There was no special need for hurry. It would require a lot more saving before they could properly furnish a little house or an apartment; it was much wiser for them to start in right; in a few months they could have two or three hundred dollars. She presented the matter to him in a rush of words one evening and, as she had foreseen, he was overborne by her vehemence. Roy was sweet-tempered, he was amiable, he was always willing to give way in an argument. Often she had felt impatient with him for this easy tractability. He didn’t have enough backbone! Even now his readiness to concede what she asked disappointed her. Something within her clamored for an indignant rejection of her proposal. She wanted him to insist with an oath that their marriage must take place at once, that she must make good her promise without further to-do. He lost something very definite in her regard at that moment; he never meant quite so much to her again. It was the pivotal point in their relationship.
Alice let her hands and sewing fall into her lap when her sister told her the marriage was to be postponed, and said anxiously: “Oh, Janny,—I’m awfully sorry,” but her mother unexpectedly approved.
“There’s no need of your rushing into all the troubles and worries of marriage, dearie,—until you’re quite, quite prepared. I think you’re very wise to wait a little while; it’s right and proper; you and Roy are showing a lot of real common sense. You’ll have some capital to start in with, and you can take your time about finding just the right kind of a place to live in. And then it means I’m going to have my darling all summer.... Only,” she added with a reproachful glance at the girl and a pout of lips and cheeks, “I wish you’d give up that horrid, old office and stay at home with your mother and sister, and have a few months to yourself before you fly away to be a bride.”
What a relief to know she had escaped for a time at least the net that had been spread for her! With head held high, and a free heart, with eager step and a pulse tuned to the joy of living, Jeannette plunged on with her work.
CHAPTER VI
§ 1
The cold of winter clung with a tenacious grip to the city that year until far into April. Jeannette had eagerly looked forward to the spectacular flower-vendors’ sale of spring blooms in Union Square on the Saturday before Easter but a bitter wind began to assert itself early in the day and by ten o’clock had wrought pitiful havoc with the brave show of potted lilies and azaleas. The Square was littered with their battered petals and torn leaves. Three days before the first of May a flurry of snow clothed the city again in white, and then, without warning, summer breathed its hot, moist breath upon the town. The air was heavy with water; a mist, thick and enervating, spread itself like a miasma from a stagnant pool, through the streets. A tropical heat,—the wet clinging heat of a conservatory,—enveloped New York. And in June came the rain, an intermittent downpour that lasted for weeks.
It was a trying time for everyone. The office felt damp, and there was a constant smell all day of wet rubber and damp woolens. Black streams of water meandered over the floor from the tips of wet umbrellas, stacked in corners. On the fifth floor the roof leaked, and old Hodgson had to be moved elsewhere. In the midst of the general discomfort Mr. Corey fell sick.
It proved nothing more serious than a heavy bronchial cold, but his physician ordered him to bed, and he was warned he must not venture into the damp streets until the last vestige of the cold had disappeared. The doctor consented to let him see his secretary and to keep in touch with the office by telephone. It was thus that Jeannette came to visit her employer in his own home.
Mr. Corey lived in one of three cream-painted brick houses on Tenth Street, a hundred yards or so from the corner of Fifth Avenue. The houses were quaint affairs, only two stories in height, with square-paned glass in the shallow windows and wide, deep-panelled front doors ornamented in the center with heavy, shining brass knockers. They were old buildings, dating back to the early nineteenth century, and had somewhat of a colonial atmosphere about them. The Corey family consisted of Mrs. Corey and two children,—a boy of eighteen, Willis Corey, in his first year at Harvard, and a girl, Helen, a year younger, who lived at home and was called “Babs.” Jeannette was disappointed, not to say disturbed, at meeting her employer’s wife.