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Book 2, Chapter 7, Sections 5-7 Of Bread For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Wild Shimmering Path Bread by Charles G. Norris

Book 2, Chapter 7, Sections 5-7 The good news she had to tell Roy of the job she had secured for him warmed her heart. There was no time to write, but she treasured it to herself and imagined a dozen times a day, as he and Alice were speeding homeward, how she would break it to him. Martin was unable to be present when they arrived at the Grand Central Station,

but Mrs. Sturgis, Jeanette, and the two children were there waiting for them to emerge from the long column of passengers that streamed in a hurrying throng from the Chicago train. There were screams of joy and wet lashes as the parents' arms caught, hugged, and kissed the children again and again. Mrs. Sturgis had a cold luncheon prepared at home, and with bags and children, the four adults bundled themselves into a taxi and drove to 92nd Street, laughing excitedly, interrupting one another with inconsequences after the manner of all arriving travelers. Roy indeed had put on weight. The emaciated look had entirely disappeared. His plumpness

altered his expression materially, and his sister-in-law was not quite sure she liked it. There could be no question about his splendid health. His face was round, and there were actually folds in his neck where it bulged a trifle over his collar. Alice looked prettier than ever, and as Jeanette studied her, she realized how much she had missed her sister during the past few months and how much she loved her. Yet when the children climbed into their

mother's lap and tried awkwardly to twine their short arms about her neck, Etta announcing surely that she loved her bestest in all the world, Jeanette experienced a cruel pang of jealousy. Now Alice would immediately begin to spoil them and undo all her good work. It was going to be very, very hard. Very hard indeed. She was anxious to tell her good news. Roy must be worrying about the future, and it was not fair to keep him in the dark. But when she told him triumphantly,

he and his wife only looked at one another with a significant smile. They had good news of their own. They were going back to California and meant to take the children with them. They intended to live out there for a year or two in a place called Mill Valley, just across the bay from San Francisco, with Roy's father. Dr. Beardsley was a dear old white-headed man, the dearest on earth, Alice declared, and he was rector of a little church in Mill Valley and lived in the most adorable

redwood shake house up on the side of a mountain just above the village. The house was a roomy old place, and Dr. Beardsley had talked and talked to them about coming to California and making their home with him for two or three years until Roy had gained a start, for it appeared that Roy wanted to write. He had always wanted to write, and while he had been convalescing out in California under the big redwoods, he had written a book, not a big one, but a story about an old family dog the

Beardsleys had once owned, and he had sent it to a magazine and they had paid three hundred dollars for the serial rights, and there was a very good chance that some publisher would bring it out in book form. The money was not very much, of course, but it was unquestionably encouraging, and Dr. Beardsley felt that he and Alice ought to combine forces and give Roy a chance at the profession he hungered to follow. He had never had an opportunity to show what he could do with his

pen, and it was not fair to have him give up this ambition merely because he had a wife and two children on his hands. Dr. Beardsley had three or four thousand dollars in the bank, and he declared he had no particular need of the money, and was ready to invest it in his son's career as a promising speculation in which he, himself, had faith. He believed he had said he would get a good return on his money. He had urged Alice and Roy to come with their two children and make their

home with him for a while, live the simplest kind of life. Living was extraordinarily cheap in Mill Valley. Mama wouldn't believe how cheap after New York, and wait until Roy was on his feet with a well-established market for his work. So we talked it over and said we would, concluded Alice with her soft brown eyes shining confidently at her husband. Only it's going to be awfully hard to leave you, Mama and Sis. Mrs. Sturgis promptly grew tearful.

No, no, dearie, she said between watery sniffles and efforts to check herself. I don't know why I'm crying. It's quite right and proper for you and Roy to accept his father's kind offer. There's no question in my mind he'll be a great writer, and I think you're very wise, and it will be lovely and healthy for the children, and I approve of the whole idea thoroughly, only, only California seems so terribly far away. A burst of tears accompanied the last.

Jeanette felt irritated. Her mother would soon be reconciled to Alice and the children being in California. But in her own heart, there was already an ache she knew would not leave it for many months. The end of May, when the dogwood was again powdering the new leafed woods in its white featheriness, when the yacht club had formally opened its season and Martin had towed his adored A-boat out of winter storage,

had pulled it with a rowboat the two and a half miles to its summer moorings, Alice, Roy, and the children departed, and Jeanette faced an empty home, with what seemed to her an empty life. It was inevitable she should reach out for distraction. During the spring, Doc French had married Mrs. Edith Prentiss,

a rich widow whom Jeanette had liked from their first meeting. The new Mrs. French was her senior by only a year or two, and much the same type, tall and dark, with beautiful brows and skin and masses of glistening black hair. She had a great deal of poise and dash and dressed handsomely.

At the opening of the season for the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club, when there was a dinner and dance, the Devlins were Dr. and Mrs. French's guests and had a particularly good time. Jeanette bought herself a new dress for the occasion. She would not have been able to go otherwise, she told Martin, as she had absolutely nothing to wear.

All the pretty clothes that had formed her trousseau were completely gone now. She did not have a single decent evening frock left. The affair led to the young Devlins being asked to a Sunday luncheon on board the new Commodore's sumptuous yacht, and this had been another happy event. Martin had been in high feather and had proven himself unusually amusing and entertaining. The Commodore's wife had singled him out for attention.

The Commodore himself and Doc French had urged him to allow his name to be put up for membership in the yacht club. It was a great temptation for both the young husband and wife, but it was out of the question for them to belong to two yacht clubs, and Martin resolutely refused to resign from the family. No, he said, there were too many good scouts in the little club, and he wouldn't and couldn't throw them down. Jeanette did not urge it, although it was hard to decline the invitation to join the

Cohasset Beach Club, yet she felt that membership in it was beyond their means and would lead to other extravagances, while especially was she afraid the free drinking that went on there. Martin had a mercurial temperament. One drink excited him. More made him noisy and silly. He was not the type that could stand it. Better the family yacht club as the lesser of the two evils. She would have been satisfied if he never entered either. She voiced her complaint to her

mother with a good deal of vexation. It makes me so mad. Martin won't economize, won't help me save, and insists upon being a member of that cheap little one-horse organization with its cheap common members, spending his time and money in a place he knows I detest and where I never set my feet that I don't regret it. And if he would only help me get out of debt and would behave himself when there was liquor around, we might be able to join the Cohasset Beach and associate

with nice, decent people of our own class and enjoy some kind of social life. It's unfair, Rottenly unfair. I've been struggling all winter taking care of my sister's babies. And of course it's been expensive. And we haven't been able to put by a cent.

I've done my level best to economize. I haven't bought myself so much as a pair of shoes since last year. And look at me. She held out her foot and showed her mother where the stitching along the sole had parted. Mrs. Sturgis shook her head distressfully and made tut-tutting noises with her tongue.

And what does he expect me to do? Jeanette went on, her voice rising as her sense of injustice grew upon her. Here's Doc French and his wife, Edith. She's really a stunning girl, Mama, and I like her so much. Anxious to be nice to me, wanting me to go with them to the smart yacht club all the time, asking me to their house for dinner and cards, or to go to motoring with them in their beautiful new car, and Commodore and Mrs. Adams inviting me to luncheon on the seagull,

and I haven't a decent stitch to my back. If I complain to Martin, he says I'm crabbing, or tells me to get what I need and charge it. And that's just madness, Mama. You know that. He denies himself nothing and expects me to do all the self-sacrificing. I declare I'm sorely tempted sometimes to take him at his word, to go ahead just as I like, get whatever I need, and let him meet the bills as best he can. That's what most wives would do. I've never known such

humiliation since I went to the Armenian dance with Dijkron Najarian. In all the time I was supporting myself, I was never so shabbily dressed as I am right this minute. It does seem to me that Martin could manage better. I know I did when I was earning my own money and financing my own problems. Martin makes just about what you and I used to have when we were living together. And you know perfectly well, Mama, we had money to throw away then. Why, we used to go to the

theater and everything. I haven't been inside a theater in, well, since last September, and that's nearly a year. I don't know what he does with his money. He swears he doesn't gamble anymore, but he's always broke, and I have the hardest time getting my $62.50 out of him on the 1st and the 15th. He tried to borrow some of it back from me last month. I tell you, he didn't get it. He never takes me into his confidence about money matters, and he never comes and gives what's coming to me

out of his pay envelope of his own accord. I always have to ask him for it. Think of it, Mama, having to ask him to give me what's my right. I never had to go to Mr. Corey and ask him for my salary on Saturday mornings, and I worked ten thousand times harder for Martin Devlin than I ever did Mr. Corey. I was no shrinking violet when Martin married me. I was a self-supporting, self-respecting businesswoman, and when we married, we made a bargain, and I

intend he shall live up to it. I don't propose he's going to Welsh on me merely because I'm a woman. He's got to give me just as much consideration as he would a man with whom he's made a contract. Our marriage was an honorable agreement with certain specified provisions, and if he doesn't live up to them, neither shall I. Oh, Jenny, Jenny, cried her mother in alarm. Don't talk so reckless, dearie. What on earth do you mean? Walk out on him, flashed Jeanette. I'll go back

to my job and run my own life the way it suits me. Martin spent every Saturday afternoon at the family yacht club tuning up his boat. He loved to tinker about her, adjusting this, tightening that. He was never finished with her. There was always something still remaining to be done. He and Zeb Klein sailed the albatross together in the races. They constituted her crew.

As soon as Martin reached Cohasset Beach from the city on the last day of the week, he hurried directly from the station to the yacht club. He kept his outing clothes, they consisted of little more than a shirt, a pair of duck pants, and sneakers, in a locker at the club.

By two o'clock he was squatting in the cockpit of the teetering little boat, busy with wrench, knife, or rag, thoroughly happy. If there was sufficient wind later in the afternoon, he and Zeb might take a short sail up on the sound, round the red buoy and home again, or over two legs of the course. The afternoon was all too short, it was six, seven, before a realization of the passing time came to him. He wanted a quick swim then before redressing himself, and if someone did not give him a lift, there was the long hike homeward.

He would be sure to find one of three situations when he opened the door of the bungalow upon reaching home. Jeanette would be there, coldly unresponsive, resentful of his tardiness. She would be dressing for a dance at the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club in frivolous mood, or she would have already departed to dine with Doc and Edith French, having left word with Hilda for him to follow if he cared to.

He came to accept these circumstances. He did not particularly like them, but he did not know how to go about changing them. To dress and join his wife was generally too much effort after his long afternoon on the water. He either found his own amusements or else, thoroughly weary, went to bed. At an early hour on Sunday he was usually astir and often left the house while Jeanette was still asleep or else they breakfasted together about nine o'clock and

made polite inquiries as to one another's plans for the day. Every Sunday afternoon during the summer there was a race, and Martin would not have missed one for any consideration. As soon as he could leave the house, he was off to the club and Jeanette did not see him again until he came stumbling home late in the evening, sunburnt and thoroughly exhausted. One Saturday night, it was nearly eight o'clock, when the flickering acetylene lamps of Steve Teschenmacher's big

brass-fitted motor car swept into the circular driveway before the Devlins' home, and Martin got out, called, Good night, and many thanks, and opened the door of his house. Disheveled, his hair blown, his shirt open at the throat, carrying his cravat and collar, he walked in upon a dinner party his wife was giving. The four people at his table were all in immaculate evening dress. He recognized Doc French and Edith, but the remaining person in the quarters was a man

he had never seen before. Mr. Kenyon, my dear, said Jeanette, introducing him. Our little party was quite impromptu. I didn't know how to get you. I telephoned the club twice, but Wilbur said you were out on the water. Doc French welcomed him, clapping him on the back. Get a move on, Mart, he said jovially. Your cocktail's getting cold. Martin hurried. The blankness passed that had come to him as unprepared. He arrived upon the scene. His good nature asserted itself.

He was always ready for a good time. In fifteen minutes he was entertaining his wife's guests with an Irish story told with inimitable brogue and had them all roaring with laughter. Kenyon he did not fancy. The man was too perfectly dressed. His white silk vest had a double row of gold buttons and fitted his slim waist too snugly. The movements of his hands were too graceful, too studied. His heavily lashed eyes squinted shut when he laughed, and the eyes themselves were glittering and glassy.

Martin went with the party to the Cohasset Beach Yacht Club for the dance to which they were bound. Since he had declined to become a member, he felt he ought not to go at all to the club, but Doc French on this particular night would not listen to him and carried him off with the others. There were the usual drinks, the usual gay crowd, the usual music, and the usual dance. Martin, pleasantly exhilarated, had his usual good time. He saw his wife here and there upon

the dancing floor during the evening, and thought her unusually vivacious and pretty. But it was not until three or four days later that a casual happening brought back to him, a disquieting recollection that each time he had caught a glimpse of her that night, her partner had been Kenyon. The incident that stirred this memory was the chance discovery of two cigarette stubs in a little glass ashtray on the mantle above the fireplace. Jeanette did not

smoke. She explained readily that Gerald Kenyon had been to tea the previous afternoon, but Martin was not satisfied. Kenyon was a type of rich man's son, idler and trifler, whom Martin thought he recognized. Jeanette had said nothing about having had him to tea, and the circumstance was too unusual for her to have forgotten to mention it. Now he recalled the matter of the dance. One of their old angry quarrels followed, it left both shaken and repentant, and in the

reconciliation that followed, much of their early warm love and confidence in one another returned. Many differences were settled, many concessions and promises were made, and better harmony existed between them thereafter than they had known for a long time.